BY: ROCANA DASA
Oct 22, 2021 — CANADA (SUN) — Studying Srila Prabhupada's conversations with ISKCON leaders.
Today's Talks was inspired by Srila Prabhupada's February 15, 1976, Mayapur lecture on Srimad-Bhagavatam 7.9.8. I'm continuing to make comment on the Bhagavatam classes and morning walks that transpired during the Mayapur festival season, and particularly during the GBC meetings.
We've recently been discussing these GBC meetings as they pertain to Ravindra Svarupa dasa's remarks on the proposed bylaws. Here in 1976, on this particular date, we find yet more relevant comments from Srila Prabhupada that can be applied to the bylaws discussion.
If the reader consults Hari-sauri's Transcendental Diary, on page 456 you'll find a very interesting pastime of Srila Prabhupada's wherein he called for Tamal Krishna Goswami to come to his room along with Trivikrama Swami and Gopal Krishna. Srila Prabhupada stated that he had been up all night thinking about the importance of preaching in the Communist countries. He had concluded that he wanted Tamal Krishna Goswami to definitely go to China, and he wanted Gopal Krishna to go to Russia. Trivikrama Swami was to accompany Tamal Krishna Goswami.
Now at this particular point in time, Tamal Krishna was all hyped-up about the Radha Damodar Party, and he was surrounded by his entourage of poobah's that were running the party. They were enjoying planning for the next year's big programs. At the same time, however, the Temple Presidents had organized themselves and made a report to Srila Prabhupada on the negative impact this Radha Damodar Party was having on the temples. Srila Prabhupada concluded that Tamal Krishna Goswami was the culprit - the person who was causing all this strife -- and his way of dealing with it was to send Tamal Krishna Goswami to China and to put someone else in charge of the Radha Damodar Party. It was Madhudvisa prabhu that was chosen for this task.
The other candidates that Srila Prabhupada had chosen were enthusiastic but Tamal Krishna Goswami was very upset about having to go to China, and he decided to make a passionate plea to change Srila Prabhupada's mind on this. He even brought some back-up along in the form of Guru Kripa Swami. After making two or three attempts to get Srila Prabhupada to change his mind using seemingly convincing arguments, Srila Prabhupada cut him off, becoming very angry. He had to state that Tamal Krishna Goswami was causing a lot of problems, and that prior to that he'd had an opportunity to just accept the order of the Spiritual Master and not be confronted with the fact that this was a form of punishment.
Tamal Krishna Goswami then had to negotiate with Srila Prabhupada, and said that he wanted Dristadumnya, who was a brahmacari at that time and later a sannyasi, to accompany him instead of Trivikrama. Srila Prabhupada agreed with that, and then quickly changed his mood. Right after this meeting, Srila Prabhupada gave this Srimad-Bhagavatam class. Hari-sauri also commented on the fact that this class was appropriate for the particular set of circumstances.
The class itself was very sastrically based in the sense that Srila Prabhupada was commenting on Prahlad Maharaja. He started the lecture by stating that the demons like to engage in big, big physical projects like building big factories, bridges and so on. He referred to how the British did that when they came to India, and people became very impressed by their big construction projects. But then he said that Hiranyakasipu was also good at this, and that demons love to do this sort of big project work, manipulating the material energy for big, grandiose projects. Of course, much of what Tamal Krishna Goswami did with the Radha Damodar Party was along similar lines. Prior to his involvement the Party was a sweet, sattvic program, but Tamal Krishna bought all sorts of buses and turned it into a big, huge production.
Srila Prabhupada mentions that Prahlad was into sattvic life while his father was into ugra-karma. And really, devotional service is sudha-sattva. Then Srila Prabhupada brought up two examples of brahmans from the sastra who became contaminated on account of bad association: first of all Ajamila, and secondly the Jagai and Madhi example from Sri Caitanya lila.
Of course, the message is that you should not only be very careful of being infected by bad association, but also that Lord Caitanya's movement was designed to rescue people like that. Srila Prabhupada states, "Now this same flow is going on in this Krsna consciousness movement. So ugra-karma." In other words, he's converting demons or people who are very, very fallen into devotees. That is our program. So he's making a statement here, though I'm sure it went over the heads of most devotees, and especially the leaders -- that they're really just like Jagai, Madhi and Ajamila. They have to very carefully follow his program and try to remain unaffected by the lower modes as much as possible in an attempt to stay in the mode of goodness.
Srila Prabhupada commented on the fact that in this verse of Bhagavatam, the demigods who were present in front of Lord Nrsimhadeva appealed to Prahlad to go before the Lord, because Nrsimhadeva only appeared on account of the fact that Prahlad was his absolutely pure devotee. He appeared for that reason only, so now it's Prahlad's duty to go and appease Nrsimhadeva, not theirs, even though they were the big authorities and controllers in the universe.
Srila Prabhupada then brought up the fact that he had been discussing his plan for a planetarium in Mayapur, and that the planetarium was intended to demonstrate to the world the Vedic conception of the universe, so as to defeat or challenge the modern scientific version. The planetarium would describe what's going on in siddha-loka, all the planets of these great demigods who were present there in front of Lord Nrsimhadeva. But then Srila Prabhupada brings up what is still a very controversial aspect of this whole plan - in fact, you could call it a central factor. That is, that the Vedic, sastric version is based on the principle that the sun is not fixed up, but is moving. I know for certain that many of the authorities in ISKCON, then and now, have a really hard time with this fact. In his morning walk conversations around this time Srila Prabhupada bring this point up, because he knew that they were having a hard time accepting it. He repeated this point a number of times in the lecture. In a sense, this was a great test for the devotees: were they going to accept Srila Prabhupada and the Vedic version, or the modern scientific version that had been conditioned to believe? And when we say accept, it means in your heart, not just nodding in front of Srila Prabhupada and saying you do. Accepting means having the same conviction that Srila Prabhupada had.
Of course, various personalities in ISKCON have given us some very interesting explanations of this Vedic science conclusion, but we don't hear it being discussed much. Nor is the planetarium built after 30 years, although we hear lots of talk about samadhis being built.
Then Srila Prabhupada explains that you have a choice and you have to make this decision. In fact, he says "So this is an opportunity, this human form of life, to decide where you want to go. Are you going to hell or heaven or back to home, or back to Godhead?" Of course, going back to Godhead means following Srila Prabhupada and his program, and believing 100% in these principles that he's declaring to be extremely important. Needless to say, the planetarium illustrating the science of Vedic astronomy plays a central part in that.
Srila Prabhupada goes on to explain about false pride, and that we think we can control circumstances. But the fact is that even the biggest controllers don't want to become old men, although they're forced to. They think they're independent but they're finished in the end, just like Hiranyakasipu.
Then Srila Prabhupada explains about Vaisnava humbleness, and how Prahlad Maharaja was a great Vaisnava, but he was very humble about that. Prahlad said well, how am I qualified - I'm just the son of a demon? Similarly, Srila Prabhupada himself commented at various times about his childhood and his personal circumstances, and never proclaimed himself to be a nitya-siddha maha-bhagavata, in the same spirit as Prahlad. This exemplifies Vaisnava humbleness, and it is not that we should take this to be Srila Prabhupada declaring the absolute truth in relation to himself, although that's basically what you find in the Lilamrta. This is also the way Srila Prabhupada is often described in official ISKCON literature.
Srila Prabhupada ends the lecture by stating that when you become a Vaisnava just like Prahlad, then you can expect even your father to be against you. He ends with the encouraging words:
"So don't be hesitant and don't be agitated by such circumstances. Prahlada Maharaja had to suffer so many things. Still, he remained Krsna conscious, and ultimately he saw Lord Nrsimhadeva and had the privilege of offering prayers."
While we can understand that this was a message for all of us, it's also clear that Srila Prabhupada knew Tamal Krishna Goswami was very agitated about the circumstance of being sent to China. In hindsight, Tamal Krishna Goswami never did go to China. Instead, he supervised others going there, on the pretense that he was somehow following Srila Prabhupada's instructions in that way. In fact, a good friend of mine performed many austerities by preaching in China. He said that when Tamal Krishna came to Beijing, he would stay at the best hotel and act in the guise of a big American businessman. At the same time, he insisted that the devotees had to live in very austere conditions themselves, although he never did.
