19800903 Vyāsa-pūjā Darshan Communist And Kumbh Mela

(Disclaimer: The following is a machine-generated transcript and may contain errors or inaccuracies. It will be reviewed and verified against the original audio soon.)

The following is a lecture on Vyāsa-pūjā Darshan Communist And Kumbh Mela given by His Holiness Jayapatākā Swami Mahārāja on September 3, 1980 – in Chicago, USA.

I have been told that Śrīla Prabhupāda had a different mood of dealing with the devotees india and the devotees in the western countries after 1970. Of course, when I was in the west then Śrīla Prabhupāda practically, he’s always dealt with me the same way. He’s practically always been my GBC. Even when the GBCs were present india. Practically Prabhupāda was the GBC when I was in Montreal. I have a stack of 50 or 100 letters that were constantly writing Prabhupāda how to do Pooja, how to do this, how to do that. Because he only established the DBC in 1970, probably because of all a lot of the headaches that I came. But then he sent me to India and the. So there also Śrīla Prabhupāda. Whenever he would come, he would make a whole inspection the first day. We always knew that it was very crazy.

Oh, how wonderful. So many nice devotees. Everything’s clean, would be always praised kind of the first day. But after a couple of times then we could understand that was just a lead up. That was like the buffer encourage us. But then the real critique was going to come at any time after 24 hours, maximum 48 hours, within that time it’s going to hit. I remember one time were living in how the. The building where he lived in was put off bounds for Brahmacharis, that he was going on a tour and he went up to the roof. He would live on the Anglo American third floor. And he went up to the fourth floor and there the Brahmacharis had strung a rope around the edge of the building to hanging their clothes.

And by the effect of the wind blowing the clothes that had worn a gash, you know, like rubbed a line into the actual plaster of the wall. Prabhupāda saw that and that was just set it off. He said, already you’re ruining the building. You’re destroying everything I have done. Then he walked. Then he done it from that once. It just, it just takes something to get his mercy ignited. And then he would just go and just look for more ammunition. And were always of course able to provide him with plenty of that. Then he went into the Brahmacharya room and there he saw that one of the Brahmacharis sitting there eating sugar cane from the field, chewing it, spitting out the spittings. There was a big pile of spittings.

And I have built this building so you can spit on the floor, you know, and Just now you just make making this into a. You know what he said? Some just fresh parrot. I mean, I don’t know, he had his own language. But no, I mean, it was like just, you know, we all got the message that they were making a mess of the place, so said, no more brahmacharis here. We all move over to some other building. Brahmacharis mean mess. So then of course, there was nearby, there was an attack one of the villages. And I went over there and saw the bomb blast. They make handmade bombs out of coconuts. Empty the coconut out, fill them with gunpowder and stones, and then they throw them.

And I don’t know exactly the formula, but by the rubbing of the stones inside the coconut, it becomes like volatile. And as soon as it hits something, it blows up. So I went over and saw the bombs glass. But, you know, it’s like not very powerful. I mean, it could go off five feet away from you and you might not get hurt. But if it hit you or just right within five, six feet, then you might lose a leg or die or something. And it was, you know, it would shoot off little pieces of stone and nails or whatever they put inside it. So then Prabhupāda heard and he said, well, we should have some guns because what if they attack us? And he gave the story about Nārada Muni having one disciple who was a snake.

He said that Nārada Muni had a disciple who was a snake. And what happened was that the disciple, you know, once he was turned into a vaiṣṇava, he wouldn’t bite anybody. So everyone kind of knew it. And so all the kids would come and throw stones at him and spit on him and harass him. And so he was suffering like anything. You know, normally it didn’t bother him, but now because he didn’t bite him, they’re causing so much trouble. So next time he saw Nārada Muni, he saw he was very lean and thin and unhappy. He said, what’s the matter? He said, well, all the kids spit at me and throw stones and pester and just, you know, because I have a vaisnam, I can’t bite them. So Nairvani said, no, you don’t bite them, but you can just show them your hood, Prabhupāda.

Then he, Prabhupāda showed with his hand, they will stay away. So like that we can show our hood. And he had us even. So then we applied and went through the whole thing and we got the guns. Actually, the guns are still in the name of Prabhas who’s in Detroit right now, he just called me up yesterday. He used to cook over the name of Detroit and we’d go up on the roof and once a night he said like at night you just shoot off one. Let him know that we here we are. He would always take with great enthusiasm because I show you hood. So I just wanted everyone to know that eyeball and when he was there. Now we have a pretty big wall and surrounded and as much more devotees.

But that time we only 20, 50 devotees, I forget how many. So we would be keeping an all night watch and Prabhupāda would say, you know, I want to make you should all, you know, person who is away should be alert. And one of the devotees, he was on watch and he was walking by and he walked by the stairwell underneath the stairs. Suddenly he sensed that somebody was there. Then he got, you know how when, you know, when you’re like, you know, it’s two at night, you’re on wads, you know, as it is, you know, sometimes the devotees, they’d be walking and you get up at 2 in the morning or something and you’re walking down, you know, Kauai. You can’t hear pin drop Kīrtana’s going softly in the temple, 24 hour kīrtana. But still kind of, you know, just start to go.

Sometimes people are walking and kind of just walking to the wall or something, falling asleep. I heard that Naruto Mananda gave a demonstration of that last night. Just walking down the road here and just start in the middle of the road. So you know, those things would happen. But you know, when it’s like you start after your three, four hours, you know, or two hours watching, suddenly you start just thinking that you might have heard something or saw something. You don’t really know because it’s just so quiet, nothing happening that after a while your mind starts to. So you know, sometimes you just get really like something someone’s there, you know, you get all excited. So suddenly I saw I was going suddenly he felt there’s someone there under the stairs, you know.

And he, you know, jumped around and put his flashlight and there was Śrīla Prabhupāda kneeling down and he stood up, said I was just checking. So remember that Prabhupāda would tell the devotees in 1976, 77 years old Sikh people shouldn’t touch his feet. But especially in Bengal, the people would just. When they see a sadhu, I am just like, I mean anywhere india in general they want touch a Sadhu’s feet. Just like our president, you know, gave the example how he just wanted touch Prabhupda’s feet. I mean they came all the way to Chicago just touch his feet. I mean they have a very strong sentiment. It’s like pulling the Roth car at something. It’s you know, the most valuable thing. Of course more valuable than touching the sad speed is actually follow its instructions. But that’s the second lesson.

They didn’t read that far in the book but they got the first one that’s easier. But so anyway, the people are of course our president, he really understood. I mean he’s wonderful devotee. Any one thing leads to the next. So I don’t know Brahmananda and others, you know, people would come up and they’d just die for Prabhupāda’s feet, you know, and there’d be this huge thing of Prabhupāda. Sometimes they would treat the people so harshly, think that, you know, they’re going to be ready to kill them or something. You know, not literally but I mean they would, you know, like just jump. Oh, you can’t touch this, you know, and Prabhupāda would have to stop, you know, otherwise create a whole scene. But it was such a drama whenever Karaba went into a public place. Remember in 1971 that time there was.

There’s different kinds of communists india. There’s a total of about 17 political parties who are like national parties. Apart from that another, you know, unlimited regional parties. And Prabhupāda’s Bhagavi talks about political politics india. It’s unbelievable. Sometimes seven parties form a coalition and run election together and you know, pull 20% of the vote against another coalition of four parties who are against another third coalition of another three parties. And you know, and then no one gets the majority and the government gets voted in with a 35% vote. I can’t figure it out. You know, it’s a real weird situation but I want to forget myself in this, what I am talking about. So at this particular time there was a seven party communist coalition government.

But at that time the head of that government there was these fanatical Maoist Lenin Marxist communists who were completely anti government and they were doing a rampage. There was in headlines every day 14 people killed, 10 people killed. I mean it was so unusual that when I was staying in North Calcutta and was one place we used to go in the morning after morning program we’d go out on the balcony and watch the two gangs, the communist and the democratic side, having, like we have in the west. The kids, you know, snowball fights. They would have bomb fights and this big road one side was the communist gang. And it was just like here they have gang wars there. The gangs are all under the guise of political parties. All the political parties adopt all the gangs.

And by using these ruffians, they force the people into submission, you know, in that area. So it’s the whole thing. So that was the kind of mood, I mean, that Calcutta was in 68, about 69, 70, 71. So we came there in 70. We were putting on the biggest pando in May of 1971, just at the kind of the end of this whole period. And so we got anonymous letter in the mail. Fly or die, you know, have a panel and we will blow you to the sky or something like that. Just, you know, it was just, you know, written. It was just like, you know, you see in the movies with, you know, written like with the left hand backwards and a few pasted out from books. They cut it in and the whole thing, it’s very dramatic.

So we gave it to the police and they put it in all the papers. You know, Hare Kṛṣṇa’s threatened, you know, but, you know, Prabhupāda, he said, what? Chandrika got a few extra volunteers and he made arrangements. There was plenty of police there, and of course, there was maybe a little water or something. There was about 30,000 people coming every night. And it was a very big function. Prabhupāda, he appreciated it very much. He would come every night and we would start chanting Aarti. And sometimes he would stand up and raise his hands. Everyone would dance. Sometimes he would just stay seated and he would give a lecture. And he would always say that I am teaching you. I am doing this, you see, to show you how to preach. This is how you should preach. I am doing this to show you.

I am not going to be here very long. How much can I do? But I am doing this. He would always indicate to us that we should learn to do from him by seeing how he was doing things. But of course, no one can do exactly the way Prabhupāda does. But in general, that having big programs, preaching. So remember that then Prabhupāda, before that, he had sent all of us to the Kumbha Mela, said he wanted to have a Kumbh mela program. And this was the half kumba. There’s a Kumbha Mela in Allahabad. It’s the biggest india. There’s four Kumbhas, then Allahabad, that’s Prayag Nasik, then Rishikesh Hardwar and then Rishikesh Hardware, one of the two. And there’s another one, Nasik and Ujjain, I think. So they have these four, or Dwarka maybe is the fourth four Kumbhas.

But the really big one that is known for Kumbha Mela is the one in Allahabad that because they’re in the half a Kumba that we had, 21 million people came in and 77, the full Kumbha there was 30 million. 83 is the next half of Kumba, which will have 25 some. Who knows how many might. So then Prabhupāda had us go there. He sent Madhavisa and this one, Sagar Maharaj, there in advance. And they made the arrangements. And the devotees came from Bombay and from Calcutta. And then we stayed there for about two weeks, 10 days or two weeks, doing daily programs. And hundreds of people would come by. Anybody that’s anybody goes to the Kumbh Mela. And Prabhupāda had encouraged people. They should go to the early morning. And that time is always January, and it’s very cold.

I mean, it’s freezing for India. I mean, it’s freezing. You don’t have any heat. You don’t have really warm garments. This is right. What this is that the Ganges in the rainy season get so big. But in the winter it gets, you know, just to like an ordinary river, like about a couple hundred feet, about, say, 1,000 yards or 500 yards wide, maybe even two football fields wide. 200 yards, but two, three football fields wide. But in the rainy season it gets like a mile wide. So that whole sandy beach, which is like a huge Ganges shore, where the three Ganges, Dimuna and the Saraswati. Saraswati, you can’t see it, but it comes under the earth where the three meet. So in that valley which is formed, it’s all just a whole river basin. That is where the camp is.

And it’s just like a huge city for miles and miles. As far as you can see, there’s just tents. And early in the morning, our kīrtana was going first. We were the first to chant our Mangalar teacher friend. And then after that, they’d have mostly other people put on record players over loudspeakers. Jaya Jagadish. Oṁ Hardy. Jaya Jaga. You know, they’d have Some movie, some cinema star records singing Jai Jagadishmi. But Prabhupāda used to have his Chan har Kṛṣṇa drown him out. And so many respectable people and saints and sadhus and would come there and devotees would ask why we are coming here. There’s so many Mayavadis standing. Prabhupāda said, we’re coming here anyway, they’re sadhus. We’re coming here to get association.

And of course, I always felt that Prabhupāda was saying that humbly, but also he was giving association to these sadhus and to the people coming so that they get a chance for a pure devotional service. And many, of course sincere people, they came by to see Rla Prabhupāda and see the devotees. And we put up some displays and had our. That Panda Rādhā Madhav went to the Kumbh. And the small Rādhā Matav deities who were in Māyāpur, they actually went quite a number of places around India. They were in Kumbh Mela, they went to Gorakpur, they went to. I don’t know if they went to Vrindavan or Pandy, but they went on a tour with Śrīla Prabhupāda before they came back to Myanpur. So Prabhupāda, where he first sang Dai Rādhā Madhav to them, I believe in Gorakhpur.

There he was giving a lecture during that period on Sanātana Goswami. And when he described how Sanātana Goswami met with Lord Caitanya and he described that the mood of Sanātana Goswami meeting with Lord Caitanya was exactly the mood of the Gopīs when they meet with Kṛṣṇa. That joy of again being in the association of Lord Caitanya was exactly the mood of the Gopīs when they come in association of Kṛṣṇa. And when he was saying that, he suddenly, right in the middle of the lecture, he just completely choked up. And for about five minutes there was just nothing, no speech. He just. He was just sitting there and, you know, tear was rolling down his cheek. And then he said Chen Kirta. And he kept it completely hidden. You know, it was like it was completely uncontrolled. Otherwise he never shows anything.

But he completely got stunned and there was nothing he could do. He was unable to move. I have heard from that Bhakti Siddhānta. One time he was giving a lecture and he became so affected by describing the pastimes of Vocaitanya that he started to manifest ecstasy. He ran out of the room and went upstairs to his room. He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t. As a principle, he would never show anything before public. Because these sahajyas, all they do is show ecstasy and make it cheap. If someone can imitate crying, then that’s the calling card that I am a real sadhu. So as a matter of principle, they never want to show, you know, outward show of asta satika bhav. But on certain occasions, I mean, it couldn’t be controlled. But it’s not. It shows the mood of the cryas because this has been misused.

It’s a very confidential reciprocation of devotion with Kṛṣṇa. When one cries or when his body is shivering or is laughing uncontrollably or stunned or faints. And apart from the association of devotees and even generally it’s just kept very confidential because just like you don’t tell people about the intimate relations of friends and friends to us, to strangers. It’s just kept on a very intimate level because it’s very dear to Kṛṣṇa, his devotees, tears. Kṛṣṇa likes them very much. But, you know, whole thing gets contaminated. Of course, Lord Caitanya, people used to tell him that you love Kṛṣṇa so much. And he said, what do you mean I don’t love Kṛṣṇa? Well, you’re always crying for Kṛṣṇa. And he said, that’s just to get false fame. I used to get some prestige. I am crying for Kṛṣṇa. I don’t have any love for Kṛṣṇa.

Lord Chaitanya would refuse to admit that he had love for Kṛṣṇa as a matter of principle. Even he would call his manifestations of ecstasy as oh, this is just because I am looking for cheap praise. Obviously he’s not. But there was uncontrollable ecstasies. But the mood is that one never puts himself in a position where he’s claiming to have because certain.

(Side B of the Cassette)

Because then the idea is that one should always be endeavoring to advance in devotional service. As soon as the material life, one is always trying to attain something. And when they attain it, then they think, now I have got it, they can take it easy. But devotional service, the service is always increasing. We never want that. Our service should. Now it’s finished. Now I have reached it. I don’t have to do anything. No, our service is always increasing. And we don’t want that other people then, oh, they can just claim, oh yes, I have love of God. Love of Godhead is actually visible by Anubhav. In fact, Bhaktivedino Thakur, he advised Prabhupāda advised in his books quoting Bhakti Vinothakva that the actual symptoms one should look for in advanced devotee is that he’s always engaged in Kṛṣṇa service.

He does not how he’s able to attract other living entities to devotional service and different, you know, practical symptoms which are, you know, verifiable. He’s not. And the same thing is given in Caitanya chart. Amita. There’s nine Anubhavs. Like one doesn’t waste even a moment spent idol. He’s always busy in Kṛṣṇa service. He doesn’t have any false pride. That means that he’s Bhirakhti. If something’s taken away from material, he doesn’t affect him. Just like Chichaketu, he was a great king. He was riding around on a plane given by Nantadva. He’s cursed by Pārvatī. You become a demon. You have offended Lord Shiva. You. He wasn’t the least bit affected. I mean, he was sorry that she misunderstood him to think that he didn’t mean to offend Lord Shiva. He was thinking in a different way. But she took it very offensively.

So she figured this is Kṛṣṇa’s mercy. If I am going to take birth as a demon, it must be Kṛṣṇa’s will to bring any closer to him. So that’s anubhav that when he was given the bad news that he was going to be born as a demon, it didn’t affect him. He really lost everything. It didn’t affect him. He was fixed. These are the symptoms that one is supposed to. Because the other symptoms are crying. You know, india there’s one famous Hadu and he always cries, you know, whenever he reads the Bhāgavatam. And he has two people, one on each side to take big handkerchiefs and they rub his eyes, you know, it’s a whole like ceremony.

And they’re rubbing and then Chukananda told me he went in the back to see him after the show and he caught him pulling a chili out of his nose. So, you know, of course, a lot of them don’t even need chilies. I mean, they can just do it, you know, just like in drama. I mean, there’s people that can cry at drop of a hat. So the idea is not to push yourself to manifest symptoms, but to actually follow in the footsteps, fix your mind to always be on Kṛṣṇa, to be enthusiastic, to be patient, to be determined. All the good qualities of devotion. And automatically from the heart, you see, just like an artesian well, it bubbles out. The affection for Kṛṣṇa will come. And that’s real, that’s satisfying.

The other thing is, of course they find it satisfying, but it’s not the real thing. They’re cheating themselves. Just recently, only two years, only a year or two ago, there was one sadhu india who just as an alisa, he had big hair and everything. And he would sit in like a little daily room and he would be sitting in his padma asana and all the people would come and at a certain time they’d close the door and they’d open the door and he’d be gone. And then they’d see, you know, they’d open this. Look at he’s gone. Then they closed the door again and after about three hours, they’d open it up and there he was. And he would have in front of him all fresh, hot Jagannath Prashada. Just, you know, like at the time when the offering and Jagannath pray.

So everyone, you know, understood that by his mystic siddhis, he would transfer himself to Jagannath Purī and bring the prashad back and give to his devotees. So he was, you know, getting pretty famous. And thousands of people would come. So it happened, you know, that he had a few things with some of the local women there. And people started, you know, the police were kind of thinking that it must be a little. They wanted cid, Central Intelligence Department or cbi, Central Bureau of Investigation. They got into it and they found that like about half a mile away there was a chimney coming out of the ground. So they did a raid and after he closed the door, they broke it in and went in there and they found there was like a false door and there was a tunnel.

And underneath the ground they had cooks, the whole kitchen everywhere. And they’re making, you know, making the prashad there and then bringing it up they bring it up and that’s why it’s hot. He had a whole thing set up. People giving him money left and right. And he was. He was cleaning up. So the people, they cleaned him up. The police, they didn’t bother to. They didn’t bother to find. They just told it. They just brought. The people said, look at this. Because it was a central bureau, you know, it was a state thing. So they just said, all right. They just gave him the sadhu and left. And they pulled out every hair on his face and his head one by one before, you know, before the police got there to the regular police to do their thing.

But it was a big thing. So these things, you know, going on. So Prabhupāda, you know, he was very strict. He’s giving the real thing as it is. But sometimes, I mean, you would see that it was like the example Prabhupāda gave that actually what the spiritual master is experiencing, all you can see is just like the tip of an iceberg. That’s the way it should be. And the whole depth of it is actually beneath the surface. These other people, what they are showing is like the iceberg. And all they’re experiencing is like the. Because even if you fake it, you get some, you know, just by the sake of Kṛṣṇa. They might feel some kind of a shadow feeling sometimes.

You know, I mean, if they’re not completely cheater in the sense of, you know, just money and that if they’re just doing it for fame, they might even feel something or because they’re misled by false spiritual master. But that would only be, just like you said, a shadow. Well, what they’re showing is like, you know, Mahabhab. And actually, if you study the devotees of Lord Caitanya, usually they don’t feel anything. But I am just giving it, you know, if anyone does. And even if you study the devotees of the Lord Caitanya that they didn’t show such type of ecstasies as Kṛṣṇa did. He would, you know, his arms would stretch out 18 inches at the joints and everything. But like Roop and Sanātana, of course, in the end they were running sometimes through Vrindavan crying, hey, Radhe.

You know, in that way they would by chanting and running and, you know, but they wouldn’t show. You know, that was also in the private as no one else in Vrindavan at that time. It was very confidential. So. And most of the devotees, you know, they had their big kirtans when everyone kind of just completely went wild. But apart from that, I mean, ordinarily, no one would really. You don’t find so many devotees showing so many different symptoms in public, at least in such a way, dance to the Prabhupāda. When he came to India, we would always hear that when he went to the west, he would never tell the devotees anything. He would tell them book distribution. He wouldn’t get into the temple management at all, very much, more or less. His idea was, well, they’re making their own money that I am spending.

But india, he said, this is my money. This is my blood. You don’t drop one, you know. You don’t, you know, lose or waste one drop of my blood. And when I was put like that, I mean, you know, you didn’t want to lose anything. We were riding out on the Tamakṛṣṇa, Goswami and myself. We were riding on the lorries with steel on them because were afraid people would steal. Because when you buy the steel, you buy 10 tons at one time. And along the way, there’s no way to weigh it once it gets to Māyāpur and there’s steel rods. I mean, it’s a huge. There’s no way to know whether there’s 9.8 tons and 9.5 or even 9 tons. Hardly.

Unless you cow, you know, a thousand pieces of steel and work it out that way, which no one’s going to do, you know. And so. And sometimes it’s very difficult. So we had definite hunch that they were stealing the steel. So there was no other recourse. And there was only five, six devotees. So even sometimes. I remember one time, one devotee, Udareta, was in one truck, and Tamal, Kṛṣṇa, Goswami, myself and Gopal. Four trucks were going out. So we stopped along the way. We were sitting on the top of the truck, and the truck driver said, listen, why don’t you come in and have some milk? It’s a vegetarian hotel. You just have some milk. I know you don’t eat outside, but, you know, you can take milk. So, you know, we thought, well, maybe a little milk wouldn’t be too bad.

So we came in there and we’re sitting down with our buttermilk cups and we’re going to take some milk. And then some guy came by and whispered in my ear and said, listen, they’re unloading the steel from your trucks. Better watch out. We ran out, and immediately we saw that they’d already, like, unloaded about 20 rounds from the truck and they’re going to throw it off in the Bushes, you know, just in that time. I mean, they’re so insidious. So, you know, it was a real thing that Prabhupāda said, you know, you are so innocent, you have to watch out these people, you can’t. They’re there. And you know, as far as theft, Leela, I can tell you so many, how many times I caught people red handed.

But it was all by Prabhupāda’s mercy that he made us conscious that we had to be very careful with Kṛṣṇa. We had to take it just as the Guru’s blood or the Guru’s personal property and be very careful. And that was instilled because Prabhupāda was so emphatic on that point. He was so why don’t you just turn that light on? He was so strong in that point that if anything wasted, I remember that he put on T lock and he would say, see? Not one drop wasted. Then he’d see someone else put T lock and a drop of water hit the floor. You are wasting, you are wasting Kṛṣṇa’s water. And that was the way that he was training. Even to this day, I don’t think I can exactly never drop a drop of water. But he was a prime minister.

Prabhupāda was so careful. The way we saw Prabhupāda in America in 1968, 1969, when I was a devotee, is that he would take all the envelopes, that letters were sent to him and open them up and write on the back of the envelopes, you know, his notes and things. Not to waste any. Kṛṣṇa, we don’t want to waste any. It’s a nice paper. He was so careful and that was basically the mood that he would always criticized you Westerners. You waste so much, you simply waste. He said, you are just like Damji Babu. What is it? Damchi Babu? You know, they’re kind of interested to know.

We didn’t have the guts to ask, you know, but he could just tell, you know, like, damn cheap Babu, the way we’re looking, he would say, and he would drop a line like that and everyone would just be, you know, no one knew what he was talking about, but that everyone would be in suspense, you know, that would wake everybody up, you know. And then he told a story about. They said that just like a city man, he’s buying his papaya in the city for a dollar, you know, a dollar a kilo, a dollar a pound there he said, you know, a rupee, a kilo, whatever. And when he goes, you know, to the village, there he saw one seller, peddler at the side of the road with so many nice papayas. And so he said, how much? And he said, 50 cents.

50 cents. Damn cheap. Damn cheap. Immediately Puk Sa gives the guy 50 cents and walks off. Then someone says, how much did he pay for that? 50 cents. 50 cents. You got ripped. Wine. This is 6 cents per each wine. You know, this is damn cheap. Bubbles, you come from the city, it’s a little cheaper. You think, oh, this is so cheap, you know. But actually you’re paying 10 times what it’s worth because it’s so cheap. You don’t even have the slightest idea how cheap it is outside the city. If we are like this damn cheap babus. So he will teach us by joking and criticism and you know, as well as encouraging words. Sometimes he would say that, well, I am feeling he would say that. I don’t know how you can tolerate all the time. I simply find myself simply, I am criticizing.

I don’t know how you can. But this is my duty. This is the duty of the spiritual master. If he doesn’t find a fault in the disciple, then how the disciple will make a mess. But he didn’t only find fault. I mean, he also found good things which he would usually not tell directly to the person, but would tell the other that this is a good quality in him. You should note it which, you know, he’d kind of get it through the grapevine. And usually the first day when he came, he would, Śrīla Prabhupāda would find good things to say. Of course, when, you know, when he comes, everything is also very first class. Takes a few days for things to revert back to the normal situation where you can easily find a few things loose.

I mean, he wanted, he said, I want this to be like the ideal, perfect example of Kṛṣṇa consciousness. He’d walk around and then, you know, someone’s Brahman underwear suddenly blow off from the, you know, somewhere and would be lying in the field. What is, you know, you just said, where is the guy that did that? You know, but you know, and then, you know, and then if he was walking around and I wasn’t there, Bhavananda Maharaj, he would say, you know, they’d say, well, ask Bhavananda Maharaj and Jayapa. They say everything. Bhavananda Jaivataka. No one else has any responsibility. Then he would tell us, you must delegate your authority. I want to know exactly who’s responsible for each thing.

Then he would get Both of us, both the person that was responsible for that thing, plus, but so that was, you know, I mean, he’d do that for like an hour a day. He would go and just train us to be very conscientious because the tendency is to be lax, to not see the dirt, to not see the things that are very plain right, you know, in front of you. Then sometimes in the evening, he’d come two times in the year, usually at Gor Pūrṇimā. And then in the fall, just after the rainy season. So sometimes he would come earlier, right after the rainy season. There’s so much moisture and the sun is beating, so many bugs are born. And one time he was standing and watching. Every night there’d be a new species would come.

Sometimes the species would hit the light and they’d lose their wings. And there’d be piles of wings everywhere. And they’d be running around on the walls, you know, playing around. And sometimes there were little small ones that had a bad smell. And it’s all different kinds. I mean, Prabhupāda was. He even commented, I am amazed, you know that. How many kinds. Every night a different breed. It was like one after another. And so one day, he was looking at them flying around the light, and he said, just see. Not one collision. You see how Kṛṣṇa has. They’re always colliding, these. What do you call them, jungles? They’re always colliding. There’s not so many here, there’s countless, but they’re not. And you know, you look and not one of them. You know, they don’t. You don’t just. And here they got radar. They have everything, right?

The problem would bring us into focus. And I remember one time, sometimes he’d go on the roof, and then he would enjoy the air. And then sometimes he’d say, you know the story about when the spiritual master said, this is a rope. You’re supposed to say, it’s a rope. Then he’d say, this is a snake. No, it’s a snake. Yes. No, it’s a rope. Yes, it’s a rope. No, it’s a snake. Yes, it’s a snake. There’s a story about we see through the eyes of the spiritual master. One time, Prabhupāda Bhaṭṭa was saying, one night he’d come up and say, I think the moon is made out of green cheese. What do you think? Yes to the Prabhupāda. Then I said, I think the next night. Then he said, I think it’s made of ice. Otherwise how it’s so cold. Look at this.

We’re here so far, but it’s so cooling. It’s hot, very cool. It must be made of ice. And then every night he would give a different, you know, discourse and then describe showing different logics how, you know, although the scientists are saying one thing, actually no one’s challenging it. They’re accepting. But why? They don’t accept what the scriptures are saying about. About life, other things that whatever the scientists are blindly just showing us, you know, that. That śrī have so blindly sold ourselves out to scientists. There’s so many ways that you could understand things if you wanted to. How can it just be dust? He said, it’s so brilliant. How does the light reflect it so brilliantly just on some dull rocks? And he would pose so many different things.

And then one point, he said that just like we just said, there are living entities on those planets. And they’re looking down upon us just as we look down upon small ants. We’re looking at ants and thinking, oh, how ants you can look at. They’re building their little houses and cities and they’re living, you know, a few days. And how we’re so great in there. And they’re just like that. We’re living how long? 60 years. They’re living thousands of years, some of them tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, even millions of years. And they’re looking down upon us just like we’re looking at the little insects. Oh, look at those human beings. But in this human life, we can go back to Kṛṣṇa. That is the difference. That is a special facility.

But he’d help to bring us in perspective because everyone tends to think that I am the center of the universe, Earth Planet, everything. But actually, human beings are not very powerful compared to other creatures in the universe.