# Back to Godhead Magazine #54 *2020 (03)* Back to Godhead Magazine #54-03, 2020 PDF-View Welcome When Śrīla Prabhupāda incorporated the International Society for Kṛṣṇa Consciousness in New York City in 1966, he listed as one of the purposes of the corporation “To erect for the members and for society at large a holy place of transcendental pastimes, dedicated to the Personality of Kṛṣṇa.” Prabhupāda’s disciple Rādhānāth Swami spent his early years at one such “holy place of transcendental pastimes”—New Vrindaban, ISKCON’s farm community in West Virginia. He has now lived in India for many years and has long wanted to create a Kṛṣṇa-centered rural community there. His disciples have helped him fulfill that desire, and the cover story in this issue gives us a look at the result: Govardhan Ecovillage in the Sahyadri mountains of Maharashtra. Perhaps the most prominent characteristic of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s devotion to Lord Kṛṣṇa was his dedication to spreading Kṛṣṇa consciousness. When complimented on his success, he would always credit his guru, Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī, who urged his disciples to carry Lord Caitanya’s teachings beyond India’s borders. Śrīla Prabhupāda would sometimes mention a German godbrother of his named Sadānanda Swami. In this issue, Satyarāja Dāsa tells the story of Walther Eidlitz, an Austrian student of Sadānanda Swami and one of Europe’s first Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas. Hare Kṛṣṇa. —*Nāgarāja Dāsa, Editor* Founder's Lecture: How Kṛṣṇa Displays God’s Qualities *The great sage Parāśara, the father of Vyāsadeva, listed six essential qualities of God. Śrīla Prabhupāda shows that Kṛṣṇa has them all.* Los Angeles—May 18, 1972 *Lord Kṛṣṇa meets the definition of God given in the Vedic literature, and He can teach us everything about the nature of reality.* Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you very much for your kindly participating in this Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement. When this society was registered in 1966 in New York, some friend suggested that the society may be named “God consciousness.” They thought that “Kṛṣṇa” is a Hindu god’s name. In the English dictionary also, this is said. But actually if any name can be fixed up for God it is “Kṛṣṇa.” Practically, God has no name. “No name” means He has a name, but nobody knows how many names He has. [Laughter.] Yes, that is the way. Because God is unlimited, His names must also be unlimited. You cannot fix up one name. Kṛṣṇa is sometimes called Yaśodā-nandana, the son of mother Yaśodā. That is quite all right because He played the part of the son of Yaśodā-mā. So Yaśodā-nandana means the son of Yaśodā; Devakī-nandana, the son of Devakī; Vasudeva-nandana, the son of Vasudeva; Nanda-nandana the son of Nanda. He is also called Pārtha-sārathi, which means He acted as the charioteer of Arjuna, Pārtha, the son of Pṛthā. Arjuna’s mother’s name was Pṛthā, so one of Arjuna’s names is Pārtha. And because Kṛṣṇa acted as the charioteer of Pārtha, one of Kṛṣṇa’s names is Pārtha-sārathi. Kṛṣṇa, or God, has many dealings with His many devotees, and according to the particular dealing, His is called by a certain name. He has innumerable devotees; therefore He has innumerable names. You cannot fix up one name. The name Kṛṣṇa means “all-attractive.” He attracts everyone. You have seen Kṛṣṇa’s picture. He is attractive to the animals, cows, calves, birds, bees, trees, plants, and water in Vṛndāvana. He’s attractive to the cowherd boys, He’s attractive to the gopīs, He’s attractive to Nanda Mahārāja, He’s attractive to the Pāṇḍavas. He’s attractive to the whole human society. Therefore if any particular name can be given to God, that name is Kṛṣṇa. *Defining God* Parāśara Muni, a great sage—the father of Vyāsadeva, who compiled all the Vedic literatures—gave a definition of God: > aiśvaryasya samagrasya > vīryasya yaśasaḥ śriyaḥ > jñāna-vairāgyayoś caiva > ṣaṇṇāṁ bhaga itīṅganā “Full wealth, strength, fame, beauty, knowledge, and renunciation—these are the six opulences of the Supreme Personality of Godhead.” (*Viṣṇu Purāṇa* 6.5.47) By these six opulences one can ascertain what is God. First, He’s the proprietor of all riches. Here we have got experience that one may be a very rich man, but nobody can say that he is the richest, that there is no man richer than him. Nobody can say that. But Kṛṣṇa, when He was present, as we have described in our book Kṛṣṇa, had 16,108 wives. And each wife had a big palace made of marble and bedecked with jewels. The furniture was made of ivory and gold. The descriptions are there. In the history of the human society you cannot find any person who had 16,000 wives and 16,000 palaces. Not only that, it is not that He used to go to one wife’s house one day or one night and to another’s house the next day or night. No. He was personally present in every house. That means He expanded Himself into 16,108 forms. That is not very difficult for Him. If God is unlimited, then He can expand Himself into unlimited forms; otherwise there is no meaning of unlimited. If God is omnipotent, He can maintain 16,000 wives. Why 16,000? If He maintains 16,000,000, still it is imperfect. Otherwise there is no meaning of omnipotence. These are the attractive features of God. Here, in this material world, if a man is very rich he is attractive. In your country there are rich men—Rockefeller, Ford. They are very attractive on account of their wealth. They do not possess all the wealth of the world; still they are attractive. So how attractive will God be, because He’s the possessor of all the wealth? Similarly *vīryasya*, strength. When Kṛṣṇa was present, from the beginning of His life He had to fight. When He was only three months old, He was lying down on the lap of His mother, and a demon named Pūtanā arrived there. She wanted to kill Kṛṣṇa, but He killed her. That is God. God is God from the very beginning. Not that by some meditation, by mystic power, one becomes God. Kṛṣṇa was not that type of God. Kṛṣṇa was God from the very beginning of His appearance. Then *yaśasaḥ*, reputation. His fame, reputation, is still going on. We are devotees of Kṛṣṇa, so we may glorify Him. But apart from us, still many millions of people in this world know how reputed and famous Kṛṣṇa is through His *Bhagavad-gītā*. In all countries, all over the world, *Bhagavad-gītā* is read by philosophers, scholars, religionists. There are many editions in your country. All of them are selling nicely, but the latest report from the trades manager of Macmillan Company, our publisher, is that our *Bhagavad-gītā* *As It Is* is increasing in sales while others are decreasing. The reason is that we are presenting *Bhagavad-gītā* *As It Is*, without any adulteration. Gold, if it is pure, has more customers. Milk, if it is pure, has more customers. Because we are presenting *Bhagavad-gītā* *As It Is*, we are finding more customers. So this is the fame of Kṛṣṇa. And *śriyaḥ*, beauty. Kṛṣṇa is Himself very beautiful, and all His associates are very beautiful. That is also an opulence. In this material world those who are pious—whose past background is pious life—get opportunities such as birth in a good family, in a good nation. Therefore I say so many times that you American people, your birth in a rich nation, your beauty, these are the result of your past pious activities. You are attractive, the American nation, all over the world. Why? Due to this. You are advanced in scientific knowledge. You are advanced in riches. You are advanced in beauty. So these are the opulences. This planet is an insignificant planet within this universe, and within this planet, America is one country. And in that country, if there are so many attractive features, just imagine how many attractive features must be there in God, who is the creator of the whole cosmic manifestation. How beautiful He must be, the one who has created all the other beauties. Then *jñāna*, knowledge. If a man is perfectly advanced in knowledge, he’s attractive. Some scientist, some philosopher, because he gives nice knowledge is attractive. And Kṛṣṇa’s knowledge is described in *Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam* and *Bhagavad-gītā*. You can study these books. You are studying. Now we are presenting sublime knowledge in English translation. There is no comparison in the world. *Vairāgya* means renouncement. Practically, Kṛṣṇa is not here within this material world. For example, a big man has his factory going on, his business is going on, but it is not necessary that he be present there. Similarly, Kṛṣṇa’s potency is working. His assistants, His numerous demigods, are working. They’re described in the *śāstra*, the scripture. One of His potencies is the sun. In the śāstra the sun is described as one of the eyes of God. He’s seeing everything. You cannot hide yourself from the seeing of God, as you cannot hide yourself from the sunshine. So if any name can be given to God, it is the name Kṛṣṇa. It is admitted in the Vedic literature that God has got many names, but this Kṛṣṇa name is the chief name. And it is very nicely explained as meaning “all-attractive.” In so many ways He’s all-attractive. *Spirit and Its Reflection* The Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement is propagating God’s name, God’s glory, God’s activities, God’s beauty, God’s love. Everything. We have got many things within this material world, and all of them are in Kṛṣṇa. The most prominent feature in this material world is sex attraction. So that is there in Kṛṣṇa. We are worshiping Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa. There is attraction between Them. But that attraction and the attraction in the material world are not the same. That is real, and this is unreal. We are also dealing with everything present in the spiritual world, but here it is only a reflection. It has no real value. In the tailor’s shop, sometimes there are many beautiful dolls—a beautiful girl is standing. But nobody cares to see it, because everyone knows that it is false. However beautiful it may be, it is false. But a living woman, if she is beautiful, so many people want to see her. Because that is real. This is only an example, because here the so-called living is also dead. The body is matter. It is a lump of matter. As soon as the soul goes away from the same beautiful woman, nobody cares to see it, because it is as good as the doll in the window of the tailor shop. The real factor is the spirit soul, and because here everything is made of dead matter, it is simply imitation, reflection. The real thing is in the spiritual world. There is a spiritual world. Those who have read *Bhagavad-gītā* can understand. The spiritual world is described there. There is another nature beyond this nature. We can see this nature up to the limit of the sky. The scientists are trying to go to the highest planet, but they are calculating it will take forty thousand years. Who is going to live for forty thousand years to go and come back? We cannot calculate even the length and breadth of this material world, what to speak of the spiritual world. Therefore we have to know from authoritative sources. The most authoritative source is Kṛṣṇa. We have already described that nobody is wiser or more knowledgeable than Kṛṣṇa. Kṛṣṇa gives the knowledge “Beyond this material world there is another world, the spiritual sky.” (*Gītā* 8.20) In the spiritual sky there are innumerable planets. And that sky is far, far greater than this sky. This sky is one fourth only, and the spiritual sky is three fourths. That is described in the *Bhagavad-gītā* (10.42), *ekāṁśena sthito jagat.* Suppose God’s creation is one hundred. The material world is only twenty-five percent; seventy-five percent is the spiritual sky. Similarly, a very small portion of the living entities are here. The major portion are there, in the spiritual world. This material world is compared to a prison. It is not that the whole population of the country is within the prison house. No. A portion of the population, those who are criminals, are in the prison house. Similarly, those who are criminals, those who have revolted against God, are within this material world. If I say, “I don’t care for the government,” then what will happen? I’ll be arrested. I’ll be punished. Similarly, living entities are originally part and parcel of God, like sons. The Christian people also understand that God is the supreme father and we are all His sons. They go to church and pray, “God, Father, give us our daily bread.” That is the conception in the *Bhagavad-gītā* also. Kṛṣṇa says, “I am the father of all living entities.” There are 8,400,000 species of life: the aquatics, the trees, the plants, the birds, the bees, the insects. Then human beings. And out of the human beings, many are uncivilized. Civilized human beings are very few. And out of the civilized human beings, very few take to religious life. Very few. And out of these so-called religious persons in human society, most of them simply designate, “I am Hindu,” “I am Muslim,” “I am Christian,” but they do not know about religion. Those who are a little attracted are engaged in philanthropic work—to give help to the poor or to open a school or a hospital. This is called *karma-kāṇḍa*. Out of many millions of these *karma-kāṇḍa* people, one is a *jñānī*. *Jñānī* means “one who knows.” Out of millions of persons who know, one is liberated. And out of millions of liberated persons, one can understand what is Kṛṣṇa. This is the position of Kṛṣṇa. > manuṣyāṇāṁ sahasreṣu > kaścid yatati siddhaye > yatatām api siddhānāṁ > kaścin māṁ vetti tattvataḥ “Out of many thousands among men, one may endeavor for perfection, and of those who have achieved perfection, hardly one knows Me in truth.” (*Gītā* 7.3) *God Explains Himself* To understand Kṛṣṇa is a little difficult. Actually, to understand God is a very difficult subject matter. But God Himself is explaining Himself in the *Bhagavad-gītā*: “I am like this. I am like this. This material nature is like this. The spiritual nature is like this. The living entities are like this.” Everything is completely described in the *Bhagavad-gītā*. God Himself is giving His own knowledge. That is the only process to understand God. Otherwise, by speculation we cannot understand God. It is not possible. He is unlimited, and we are limited. Our knowledge, our perception, all of these are very limited. So how can we understand the unlimited? But if we accept the version of the unlimited—“I am like this, like that”—then we can understand. That is perfect knowledge. Speculative knowledge of God has no value. I give this example: If a boy wants to know who his father is, the simple thing is to ask his mother. His mother says, “Here is your father.” That is perfect knowledge. And if he speculates, “Who is my father?” and asks the whole city, “Are you my father? Are you my father? Are you my father?” his knowledge will always remain imperfect. He’ll never find out who is his father. But if he accepts this simple process, if he takes the knowledge of his father from the authority, his mother—“My dear boy, here is your father”—then his knowledge is perfect. The process is similar in regard to transcendental knowledge. I was speaking that there is a spiritual world. It is not the subject matter of our speculation. But when God says, “Yes, there is a spiritual world. That is My headquarters,” that is all right. So we receive knowledge from Kṛṣṇa, the best authority. Therefore our knowledge is perfect. We are not perfect, but our knowledge is perfect because we receive knowledge from the perfect. The same example: I am not perfect to understand who is my father, but my mother is perfect, and because I accept the perfect knowledge of my mother, therefore my knowledge of my father is perfect. *The Real Problems* This Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement is for giving perfect knowledge to the human society: what you are, what is God, what is this material world, why you have come here, why you have to undergo so much tribulation in the miserable condition of life, why you die. I do not like to die, but death is compulsory. I do not like to be an old man, but still it is compulsory. I do not like to suffer from disease, but it is compulsory. These are to be solved. These are the real problems of human life. Simply improving the method of eating, sleeping, mating, and defending is not human life. A man sleeps; a dog sleeps. Because a man sleeps in a very nice apartment, that does not mean he’s more advanced than the dog. The business is sleeping, that’s all. Man has discovered atomic weapons for defending, and the dog has his nails and teeth; it can also defend itself. So defending is there for both man and animal. You cannot say, “Because I have got this atomic bomb, therefore I can conquer the whole world or the whole universe.” That is not possible. You can defend in your own way, and the dog can also defend in his own way. A gorgeous method of defending, a gorgeous method of eating, a gorgeous method of sleeping, and a gorgeous method of sex life do not make a nation or a person advanced. That is not advancement. That is the same thing in a different form. Proportionately, five hundred over two thousand and five over twenty is the same ratio. Therefore, having animal qualities in a polished way, in a scientific way, does not mean that the human society is advanced. That may be called polished animalism, that’s all. Real advancement means to know God. That is advancement. There are so many rascals denying the existence of God. That is very nice in their minds, because if there is no God then they can go on with their sinful activities unrestrictedly: “There is no God. Very nice.” But simply by your denying God, God will not die. God is there. God is there, and His administration is there. By His order the sun is rising, the moon is rising, the water is flowing. The ocean is abiding by His order. Everything is under His order. Everything is going on nicely, without any change. How can you say God is dead? If there is some mismanagement, you can say there is no government, but if there is nice management, how you can say there is no government? So God is there. You do not know God. Therefore some of you say, “God is dead,” “There is no God,” “God has no form,” “God is zero”—so many things. But no. We are firmly convinced that there is God and Kṛṣṇa is God, and we are worshiping Him. That is the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement. Try to understand it. Thank you very much. “Aggressive Grace”: The Spiritual Journey of Walther Eidlitz *An Austrian truth-seeker in India discovers Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism at a WWII internment camp.* By Satyarāja Dāsa *A fortuitous encounter in a British holding camp in India during World War II heralds Kṛṣṇa consciousness in the West.* The spiritual odyssey of Walther Eidlitz (1892–1976), an Austrian writer, poet, and Indologist who became a devotee of Kṛṣṇa in the 1930s, is remarkable, to say the least. Decades before Śrīla Prabhupāda’s success in establishing ISKCON, incorporated in 1966, Eidlitz was one of the few beneficiaries of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism’s initial mission to the Western world. In the early 1970s, as a young devotee, I had heard about two books that deeply stimulated my interest, both by Eidlitz. The first was an autobiographical account, Bhakta, eine indische Odyssee, written in German. The book was eventually translated into English as Unknown India: A Pilgrimage into a Forgotten World and published in 1952. It was then republished as Journey to Unknown India in 1998. Descriptive and well-paced, this may well be one of the most effective Vaiṣṇava memoirs of all time. The second book, Kṛṣṇa-Caitanya: Sein Leben und seine Lehre, had not yet, in my fledgling devotee years, been translated into English, but I had heard that it was used in universities throughout Germany and had won considerable acclaim among scholars worldwide. It was translated in 2014 by Mario Windisch, Bengt Lundborg, Kid Samuelsson, and Katrin Stamm as Kṛṣṇa-Chaitanya, India’s Hidden Treasure, His Life and Teachings. The book is historically unique. Rather than merely retelling the spiritual narrative of Śrī Caitanya’s life, Eidlitz’s text allows the original sources to speak for themselves: Murāri Gupta’s *Kaḍacā*, Kavi Karṇapūra’s *Caitanya Candrodaya* *Nāṭakam* and *Caitanya-carita-mahākāvya*, Prabodhānanda Sarasvatī’s *Caitanya-Candrāmṛta*, Vṛndāvana Dāsa Ṭhākura’s *Caitanya Bhāgavata*, Jayānanda Miśra’s *Caitanya Maṅgala*, Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja Gosvāmī’s *Caitanya-caritāmṛta*, and so on—all are brought to bear to illuminate Śrī Caitanya’s life and teachings. But before exploring Eidlitz’s inner and outer journey, I would be remiss to not introduce and credit His Holiness Sadānanda Swami (1908–1977), his teacher and dearest friend. Sadānanda was an emissary of Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura (founder of the Gauḍīya Maṭh and spiritual master of Śrīla Prabhupāda), and, though this singular German disciple found himself incarcerated for years on end in a British holding camp during World War II,1 his life was imbued with deep and renewed meaning because of that confinement: He was able to extend the mercy of Śrī Caitanya to Eidlitz, who was also an inmate, and who, as it turned out, would be his prize student. *Sadānanda Swami: The First Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava in Europe* Sadānanda was born Ernst Georg Schulze in Zittau, a city close to the tripoint border of Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic. In 1933 he met Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta’s disciples in Berlin. They had recently arrived to fulfill predictions that the name of Kṛṣṇa would reach foreign shores. At the time, Sadānanda had been developing a reputation as a scholar, having just completed higher studies in philosophy, theology, and the history of religion. His formidable erudition included proficiency in several languages, such as Hindi, Pali, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and classical Chinese. Eventually, in London, he joined the Indian *sannyāsīs* of the Gauḍīya-Vaiṣṇava Mission and took up the study of Sanskrit. The *sannyāsīs*, Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta’s disciples, had established a center there and, under their *guru’s* direction received by letter, duly initiated Sadānanda on his behalf. Thus in 1934 Sadānanda became the first initiated European disciple of Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī. Within one year, Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta invited him to India, and the eager student arrived there in September 1935. The two soon became quite close, eventually traveling to holy places of India together. In fact, Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta once remarked in the presence of other disciples, “Sadānanda, you and I, we have always been together.”2 Yet the fledgling devotee’s initial meeting with the Gauḍīya Maṭh, at least in this life, had only been two years earlier. While in India, he served under Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta directly for just over a year, until the *guru’s* passing at the dawn of 1937. But Sadānanda continued to stay on in India, studying and serving his teacher’s mission, for another three decades.3 It was merely two years after his *guru’s* departure that he would meet Eidlitz. As already stated, Eidlitz eventually landed in an internment camp, where he was forced to live under severe and often intolerable conditions. By Kṛṣṇa’s divine will, however, the prison offered a beacon of light in the midst of deep darkness: a luminous German-born Vaiṣṇava named Sadānanda happened to be in that same camp. Eidlitz’s life story is a riveting transcendental narrative in which a spiritual seeker, having embarked on a boat to sacred India in 1938 in pursuit of peace and enlightenment, finds himself in an exotic land troubled by the eruption of World War II, a time of bloody war and disastrous upheaval. His journey was to begin in the Himalayas, at the Manasarovar Lake in Tibet, where he had hoped to write two books focusing on the question “What does ancient India have to teach Germany and Europe?” Soon after arriving in India, however, he met Yogiraj Shri Vishwanath Maharaj Keskar of Nashik, Maharashtra, an Advaitin with whom he had been corresponding from Vienna. This sidetracked him from his initial goals in India, and he found himself studying Raja Yoga, soon becoming Shri Maharaja’s disciple. Thus, for the moment, he became thoroughly indoctrinated with Advaita Vedānta. Shri gave him the name Vamandas and taught him carefully. This Advaita Vedānta component would make Sadānanda’s task more difficult when the two of them would meet as prisoners of war in the British holding camp. He would have to “unteach” Eidlitz all he had learned from his Śaṅkarite *guru*. *A Savior in Saffron* Internment centers were created for “hostile aliens.” That is to say, if one were a citizen of Germany, for example, and happened to be in India during the war, one was considered an enemy of the State. Thus military officials in British colonial India would forcefully place citizens of Germany in holding centers, just as American authorities did with the Japanese during this same period.4 It was at the facility in Ahmednagar, Maharashtra, that Sadānanda first met Eidlitz. They were later transferred to a camp in Dehra Dun,5 where they became lifelong friends, even as Sadānanda became Eidlitz’s spiritual mentor as well. Dehra Dun, the capital of Uttarakhand, housed a conglomerate of internment camps at the Himalayan foothills. Double-fence barbed wire, armed guards, and maltreatment were everyday realities for all who lived there. Citizens of Germany, Italy, and some other countries who happened to be in India at the time were, if unlucky, placed in a holding camp as a matter of course, with no knowledge of when—or if—they might be released. The internees were kept in dark straw-roofed huts with little protection from the elements. Eidlitz studied under Sadānanda in these conditions and gradually learned the truths of Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Sadānanda was visually prominent at the holding camp, mainly because of the contrast between his white skin and the traditional saffron dress of an Indian sannyāsī. Eidlitz was drawn to him. In one of his diaries, Eidlitz summed up the time he shared a single room with his new guru: “For one year I was living together with him in a tiny room in the camp and yet I didn’t recognize him for what he was, i.e., sometimes I guessed it and instantly he hid himself again, as this belongs to the play. And it is grace, grace, grace when he shows his true nature.” But Sadānanda was not always easy on him, for Eidlitz had to be lifted from an impersonal understanding of the Absolute, garnered from Shri Maharaj in the Himalayas, to the personal philosophy of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism, which would not be easy. Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī was known as the siṁha-*guru* (“lion-*guru*”), forcefully presenting ultimate reality with ferocious passion, and Sadānanda had adopted that same technique. “He wanted to wake me up by hitting the human ego that stood in the way,” Eidlitz wrote. “Indeed, I’ve come to call this method of teaching, ‘aggressive grace.’”6 From Eidlitz’s notes it is clear that life in the holding camp caused suffering in numerous ways, not least being denied the practice of his religion and access to vegetarian food. Nevertheless, he spent most of his time studying and chanting with Sadānanda, and that gave him great solace. He became ill on numerous occasions, as did his teacher—they were both on the verge of death at one point—but forged on in the practice of Kṛṣṇa consciousness. *Eidlitz wrote:* The Indian camps, in which I lived for almost six years, were mostly good camps. There were no gas chambers, no cremation ovens and no torture- and punishment-rooms. These camps could not be compared in any way to those of Germany and surrounding countries. The simple food was good and sufficient, but consisted almost solely of meat, which diet was certainly not the fault of the authorities because in many parts of India there was actually famine. That I personally suffered and occasionally starved was my own mistake, because I selfishly endeavoured to follow the strict vegetarian lifestyle I had learned in the house of my guru. But despite the good treatment, there was no one in the camp (and I was no exception) who was not at some time overcome by despair and close to committing suicide to end the suffering, concerns and problems of a tortured world.7 They were released at the end of the war. In the summer of 1946, Eidlitz took initiation from Bhakti Hridaya Bon Swami, a disciple of Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta, receiving the name Śrī Vimala-Kṛṣṇa Vidyāvinoda Dāsa. Many continued to call him Vamandas, despite his Vaiṣṇava initiation, for, as he liked to say, “the older name simply stuck.” Soon after initiation, he boarded a Bombay ship to London. Before long, he moved to Sweden with his wife, Hella, and son, Gūnther, whom he had left behind before his long Eastern journey. Keeping up his correspondence with Sadānanda, he amassed a considerable amount of material for his writing, and a few years later, in the beginning of the 1950s, he returned to India for five months. While there, he and Sadānanda visited holy places, such as Vrindavan, Mathura, Mayapur (Bengal), Puri (Orissa), and Benares, and in this way he deepened his knowledge of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism and attachment for it. Eventually, in 1975, Eidlitz received an honorary doctoral degree from the prestigious Lund University in Sweden. He is now remembered chiefly for his scholarly and insightful books on Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism, particularly his autobiographical Unknown India and his tome on Śrī Caitanya. *Inward Journey* Eidlitz’s spiritual journey is particularly instructive for those of us living in the West. Let’s briefly examine some of the remarkable features of his spiritual evolution. Although his life began with a more or less conventional Judaeo-Christian background, upon arriving in India he had the first of his notable transformations when he met Shri Maharaj, from whom he imbibed the impersonal understanding of the Absolute—so antithetical to the Vaiṣṇava identity he grew into. Thus he began his extraordinary inward journey that far outdistanced his external one. Although often unaware of it, most of us in Western countries are beleaguered by such limiting conceptions of an impersonal Absolute, and we are therefore profoundly indebted to Śrīla Prabhupāda. As his *praṇāma-mantra* proclaims: > namas te sārasvate deve gaura-vāṇī-pracāriṇe > nirviśeṣa-śūnyavādi-pāścātya-deśa-tāriṇe “Our respectful obeisances are unto you, O spiritual master, servant of Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Gosvāmī. You are kindly preaching the message of Lord Caitanya and delivering [liberating] the Western countries, which are filled with impersonalism and voidism.” But as we have seen above, there is more to the Eidlitz story. His trajectory evinces an exceptional yet gradual shift from the impersonalism of Advaita Vedānta to the unequivocally personalistic culture of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism. This specifically occurred when he entered the British holding camp in India and began studying under Sadānanda Swami. History bears witness to the miraculous effect of the Swami’s spiritual association. He did his job well, systematically taking Eidlitz through various levels of spirituality—and placing him at the lotus feet of Śrī Caitanya. On a much grander scale, our divinely empowered Śrīla Prabhupāda was able to manifest the same for many sincere souls in the Western world, and no less in the East. The metaphor of imprisonment is telling in Eidlitz’s story. Sadānanda and Eidlitz spent years in a holding camp cultivating Kṛṣṇa consciousness. While the environment was in many ways a living hell, they were, in another sense, no worse off than most of us. Their unfortunate sojourn can be seen as emblematic of Everyman’s stay in the material world—we too are prisoners, of sorts, subject to the often seemingly arbitrary and cruel dictates of the veiled warden known as Māyā, or illusion personified, and strictly bound by the bars of our own inevitable mortality. Indeed, if any of us are fortunate enough to meet a pure devotee and learn the art and science of Kṛṣṇa consciousness, the odious prison cell of material confinement transforms into Vaikuṇṭha, Lord Kṛṣṇa’s spiritual kingdom, and the highest liberation awaits us. Finally, Śrīla Prabhupāda specifically referred to Sadānanda Swami in written correspondence, calling him, “an intimate friend.” And His Divine Grace referred to Eidlitz’s book on Śrī Caitanya as “authorized” as well. These are words of highest praise that Prabhupāda never used lightly. A couple of years back, I spoke to Brahmānanda Dāsa, an early disciple of Śrīla Prabhupāda who was traveling with Prabhupāda when Eidlitz’s book was initially released. He remembered Prabhupāda’s receiving the book through the mail—and Prabhupāda’s reaction too. “It was very interesting,” Brahmānanda told me. “Prabhupāda approved the book after Eidlitz sent him a copy, even though he couldn’t read the foreign language. He said it was ‘nice’ and ‘authorized,’ and he later wrote to me to send the three-volume set of Delhi *Bhāgavatams* to Eidlitz in return. This was in 1968.” Prabhupāda’s “authorization” of the book was also confirmed during one of his lectures in Montreal, on July 28, 1968: “He [Eidlitz] has written a very nice authorized book on Lord Caitanya in German language, and it is a very big book, paperback, five hundred pages. It is approved by the Sweden university, and he has sent me.”8 Prabhupāda expressed appreciation for Sadānanda Swami in a February 25, 1968 letter to (Prabhupāda’s disciple) Maṇḍali Bhadra Dāsa (Mario Windisch), one of the translators of Kṛṣṇa-Caitanya: *Sein Leben und seine Lehre*: I am very sorry to learn that my dear brother Sadananda is seriously ill and the doctors have advised complete rest for him. He is my intimate friend and God-brother, so although I wanted to open correspondence with him, I voluntarily restrain myself from doing so, taking into consideration his present health. I pray to Kṛṣṇa that he may recover very soon, so that we may not only open correspondence, but maybe I can see him personally. . . . In Bombay sometimes we lived together and he used to treat my little sons very kindly. His heart is so soft, as soft as a good mother’s, and I always remember him and shall continue to do so. When you meet him next, kindly offer my respectful obeisances. Further, in a letter to his disciple Haṁsadūta Dāsa on August 16, 1970, Prabhupāda wrote, Regarding my Godbrother, Sadananda Swami, I have heard many things about him as you have also informed me, but I think as he is old man we should not give him the trouble of teaching you Bengali or Sanskrit. . . . Please offer my obeisances to Sadananda Swami. He is my old friend and Godbrother, and so you should offer him all due respects whenever he comes, but do not try to engage him in some work in his old age. It should thus be clear that Prabhupāda thought fondly of both teacher and student, Sadānanda and Eidlitz, and even specifically praised Eidlitz’s work on Śrī Caitanya. As a disciple of Śrīla Prabhupāda, I can think of no better endorsement. *Notes* 1. The United Kingdom, along with many of its allies, declared war on Nazi Germany in September 1939, and since India was controlled by the United Kingdom, the powers that be set up internment camps to hold “enemy aliens”—civilians believed to be a potential threat because of their country of origin. Internees were not treated like prisoners of war as such, and were given more privileges, but their lives were difficult and their freedom was denied. 2. See Journey to Unknown India (San Rafael, California: Mandala Publishing, 1998), p. 117. 3. A quick summary of Sadānanda’s life after meeting Eidlitz: In 1954 he received sannyāsa from Baraswami, or Swami Satyabastabya Brajabasi, who then belonged to the Gauḍīya Maṭh in Benares. Thus Sadānanda became Sadānanda Swami. In 1961 he returned to Europe, where he stayed until his demise in 1977. Throughout his time in India and for the rest of his life in the Western world, he continued to work on German translations from Sanskrit and Bengali. His stated goal was to help Eidlitz with his publications, lectures, and courses, and bring the teachings of Śrī Caitanya to the Western world. Although a *sannyāsī*, in his humility he preferred to be called merely Sadānanda or Sadānanda Swami Dāsa, as opposed to Sadānanda Swami. 4. “Japanese American internment” refers to the forced relocation of thousands of Japanese Americans to detention camps during World War II, resulting in massive ill treatment and deplorable living conditions. 5. An interesting side note: As World War II began in 1939, Heinrich Harrer, the Austrian mountaineer and traveler, was captured by British soldiers while on expedition in Kashmir. He was promptly interned at Dehra Dun, i.e., the exact holding camp in which Sadānanda and Eidlitz found themselves. In 1953 Harrer wrote a book about his experiences, which eventually became the Brad Pitt movie Seven Years in Tibet, released in 1997. 6. For the “aggressive grace” reference, see Journey to Unknown India, ibid., p. 123. 7. Ibid., p.86. 8. https://vedabase.io/en/library/transcripts/680728sp-montreal/ *Bibliography* Eidlitz, Walther. Bhakta. Eine indische Odyssee (Hamburg: Claassen, 1951). ––––. Unknown India. Journey into a forgotten world (New York: Roy Publishers, 1952), and republished as Journey to Unknown India (San Rafael, California: Mandala Publishing, 1998). ––––. Die indische Gottesliebe (Olten und Freiburg im Breisgau: Verlag Otto Walter, 1955). ––––. Der Glaube und die Heiligen Schriften der Inder (Olten und Freiburg im Breisgau: Verlag Otto Walter, 1957). ––––. Kṛṣṇa-Caitanya, Sein Leben und Seine Lehre (Stockholm University, 1968), translated into English by Mario Windisch, Bengt Lundborg, Kid Samuelsson, and Katrin Stamm as Kṛṣṇa-Chaitanya, India’s Hidden Treasure, His Life and Teachings (hastrṭm, Sweden: Produktion & Tryck, Umeṛ, 2014). ––––. De glṭmda vārlden. Om hinduism and meditation. Ny utvidgad upplaga (second edition, Stockholm: Askild & Kārnekull, 1972). Stamm, Katrin. “‘Be Careful With Bhakti’ Or, Why the Guru Withdraws: The Unconventional Life and Teachings of Svami Sadananda Dasa,” in Journal of Vaiṣṇava Studies (25.2, Spring 2017): 131–150. ––––. “From Poet to Kavi: Walther Eidlitz’s Spiritual Odyssey,” in Journal of Vaiṣṇava Studies (28.1, Fall 2019): 150–171. *Satyarāja Dāsa, a disciple of Śrīla Prabhupāda, is a BTG associate editor and founding editor of the Journal of Vaishnava Studies. He has written more than thirty books on Kṛṣṇa consciousness and lives near New York City.* *In regard to this article, the author thanks Katrin Stamm for personal correspondence and the fruits of her research.* From the Use-and-Throw Culture to the Care-and-Share Culture *While Rāvaṇa coldly discarded the fallen soldiers in his army, Lord Rāma cherished the sacrifices of His monkey warriors.* By Caitanya Caraṇa Dāsa *A lesson drawn from the contrasting relationships of Rāma and Rāvaṇa with their respective soldiers.* In the Rāmāyaṇa’s climactic battle between Rāma’s monkey forces and Rāvaṇa’s demon forces, the odds heavily favored the demons. The monkeys had very few proper weapons, whereas the demons were armed with formidable weapons. The monkeys were in a foreign territory they had never seen before, whereas the demons were on home territory. The monkeys were far less organized for war than were the demons. And yet the monkeys won. *Devoted to the Devoted* While the battle ultimately boils down to the final confrontation between Rāma and Rāvaṇa, which Rāma won decisively, the trends were set earlier in the battle, with Rāvaṇa’s many generals falling, one by one, to Rāma’s monkeys. To better appreciate the extraordinary dedication of the monkeys, let’s compare the relationships of the two armies with their respective leaders. The demons had known Rāvaṇa for a long time; he had been their monarch for decades, many of them having known him throughout their life. And despite his atrocities elsewhere while plundering and conquering the universe, he seemed to have brought phenomenal prosperity to Lanka, earning for it the sobriquet “the golden city.” The demons had seen both Rāvaṇa’s power and his prosperity, the latter being shared abundantly with his citizens. In contrast, Rāma could provide nothing to the monkeys assisting Him. He was an exile with no wealth to share. Moreover, the monkeys hadn’t known Rāma for long. For that matter, even their present king, Sugrīva, who was Rāma’s ally in their own ranks, hadn’t been their king for long. Yet the monkeys were ready to lay down their lives for Rāma. Where did their dedication come from? It could partly be from the ethic of obedience to authority that is drummed deeply into soldiers. Additionally, the leading monkeys were great devotees; so, their devotion for Rāma could have inspired similar devotion among the other monkeys. But beyond all such factors, the major cause of their devotion was the character of the object of their devotion: Rāma. The Rāmāyaṇa brings out the contrast between Rāma and Rāvaṇa graphically by describing what they did during the war at the end of each day’s battles. Each night, Rāvaṇa would tell his surviving soldiers to throw the corpses of the slain soldiers into the ocean, and throw them so deep into the ocean that they would not float back ashore. The reason? He didn’t want the monkeys to see any demons’ corpses on the shore. He wanted them to become disheartened by thinking that their fight the previous day had been largely ineffective with hardly any casualties among the demons. Rāvaṇa spared practically no thought for his martyrs; he exhibited a “use-and-throw” attitude towards them: Use them for his purposes as long as they could fight, and throw them away once they couldn’t fight. In contrast, Rāma, after each day’s battle, stayed awake late into the night performing the last rites of His martyrs. Whereas Rāvaṇa was always above his army in his majestic chariot and his magnificent palace, Rāma was always with His army, living with them, eating with them, sleeping with them, fighting with them, and praying with them for the loss of their loved ones. He cared. During the war, every day they saw how great a warrior He was—how He routed hordes of demons, wreaking havoc in their ranks. And every night they saw how great a person He was, commiserating with them in their sorrows. No wonder the monkeys were ready to lay down their life for Him. *Seeking Help for Those Who Help* When the war ended with the fall of Rāvaṇa, the gods assembled in the sky, lauded Rāma for His heroic achievement, and urged Him to ask for some benedictions. Of course, Rāma, as the God of the gods, is the giver of benedictions, not the receiver. But because He had descended to the world to demonstrate the role of an ideal human being, He played that role to perfection, acting as subordinate to those who were actually subordinate to Him. Responding to the gods, Rāma didn’t ask any benediction for Himself, but instead asked benedictions for His monkeys. Acknowledging that they had accepted immense hardships on His account, He requested that they be blessed with abundant food and water wherever they lived. More importantly, He asked the immortals to revive the monkeys who had been slain but whose bodies hadn’t been totally mutilated. And those monkeys sprang back to life, healthy and happy. Soon, after Sītā was reunited with Rāma, and Vibhīṣaṇa crowned the king of Lanka, the time came for the separation of the monkeys from their master. The separation came so suddenly as to seem like a rupture. With His fourteen-year exile nearly ending, Rāma was anxious to return to Ayodhya on time—primarily because His brother Bharata, reluctantly ruling in Rāma’s absence, had said that he wouldn’t sustain his life for one moment beyond the fourteen years. To ensure that He reached Ayodhya in time, Rāma, on the suggestion of Vibhīṣaṇa, decided to take the Pushpaka plane that Rāvaṇa had stolen from his cousin, the treasurer of the gods, Kuvera. As Rāma was about to ascend the plane and depart, He saw the solemn, even dejected, faces of the monkeys. Reading their minds, Rāma invited them to join Him in the plane, which had the mystical capacity to expand. And thus the monkeys had the ride of their life as they flew through the sky along with their beloved Lord to His kingdom. When the plane was flying over Kishkinda, the monkey’s kingdom, Rāma ordered the plane to descend and asked the monkeys to invite their wives and children to join in the journey to Ayodhya. Thus they all came to Rāma’s capital and had a wonderful time enjoying the festivities as they beheld the glorious coronation of their glorious Lord. Rāma’s example demonstrates how we can be mindful of those who are serving us. In today’s corporate culture—where interactions tend to become highly depersonalized, where employees may be handed a pink slip on any day without even the least intimation, where security guards watch over fired employees as they clear their desks lest the disgruntled employees place some bugs in their computers or otherwise sabotage the projects from which they have been evicted, where termination is conveyed in such heavily sanitized jargon that people feel the voice at the other end comes from a mouthpiece, not a human being—the relationship between employer and employee in the Rāmāyaṇa can be an inspiring model for sustainable relationships. Where employers have, like Rāma, an ethos of caring and sharing, the relationships formed go beyond ordinary business-centered give and take to personal bonds that bring out the best from everyone for everyone’s well-being. *Use-and-Throw Culture* We live in a culture of use and throw; we buy objects only to throw them away when they stop seeming attractive enough, even if they are still usable. Such a use-and-throw attitude, when applied to things, has serious environmental consequences—much land, water, and air is damaged in our efforts to manage what we have rejected as waste. Still, the consequence of this attitude may seem remote to us unless we live near the environmental degradation. However, when the use-and-throw attitude is applied to human beings, the cost is far more immediately and intensely felt. We may not feel that cost when we happen to be the holders of this attitude, but we do feel it when we become its targets—when people trash us out of their lives. We may rant at their insensitivity or even monstrosity, but they are simply the bitter fruits of the seeds we have sown, individually and socially. Which seeds? The seeds of the materialistic culture we have adopted. In materialism, life has no purpose except to enjoy material pleasures—and others’ existence has no purpose unless they contribute to our material pleasure. While most of us won’t say things that bluntly, sanitized speech doesn’t change the reality—it only dulls our awareness of the reality. In contrast with such a materialistic worldview, a spiritual worldview is far more conducive to cultivating a culture of care and share. With a spiritual vision, we see people not as things to be used for our gratification but as persons with emotions who, in their essential nature, are just like us. We understand that we all are souls and thus parts of the Supreme Whole, who appears in this world as Rāma, Kṛṣṇa, and other divine incarnations. When we see that we all are parts of the one same divine family, we don’t depersonalize others, but sense our connection with them and feel inspired to treat them more personally. Personal interactions are best fostered by not just a spiritual worldview but by a spiritual devotional worldview. Practicing bhakti-yoga to kindle our devotion to the personal Whole infuses within us a service attitude towards Him and by extension to His parts, thus foundationally transforming how we relate with others. *The One Master Among Many Masters* That the Lord is the supreme master eminently worthy of our service and devotion is a recurrent theme in bhakti literature. In an insightful verse from the devotional composition *Mukunda-mālā-stotra* (17), the great saint Kulaśekhara, who had been a powerful king in his pre-devotional life, compares serving the Lord with serving an ordinary master: “Our master, the Personality of Godhead Nārāyaṇa, who alone rules the three worlds, whom one can serve in meditation, and who happily shares His personal domain, is manifest before us. Yet still we beg for the service of some minor lord of a few villages, some lowly man who can only meagerly reward us. Alas, what foolish wretches we are!” He contrasts mundane masters with the divine master on four counts: 1. *The master’s position:* Materialistic masters may be owners of a few villages. The verse was composed at a time when feudal lords owned most of the land; today’s bosses might be characterized as being owners of a few thousand square feet of office space. In contrast with both feudal lords and corporate bosses, the Lord is the owner of all of existence. His wealth is beyond compare—in fact, He is the master of the goddess of fortune, who bestows all fortune. 2. *The master’s character:* Materialistic masters are often self-centered and selfish; they usually see us as factors in the production equation meant to fill their coffers. In contrast, the Lord is selfless and caring; He accompanies us lifetime after lifetime as our immanent friend and guide, eager to prompt us towards spiritual evolution and the supreme happiness thereof. 3. *The endeavor needed for serving:* Mundane masters often make their employees slave to the breaking point. While this characterization may not apply to all worldly bosses, the principle of exploitation is widely present in corporate culture. As is sarcastically and yet truly said, “The harder you work, the nicer the vacation—your boss goes on.” In contrast, the Lord can be served simply by remembrance—if we just remember Him affectionately, He is pleased by that expression of devotion. Of course, devotees naturally want to serve Him more and more, assisting in His mission of compassion to benefit all living beings. But even if we are circumstantially unable to contribute practically, as when we become diseased or aged, the privilege of serving Him is not denied to us—we can still serve Him simply by cultivating His devotional remembrance and thus progress towards Him. 4. *The reward for the service:* Materialistic masters offer as reward some money we can use to take care of our needs and maybe some of our desires. In contrast, the Lord offers us the supreme liberation: residence in His personal abode as His eternal associate. Attaining that abode frees us from unworthy yet unending bodily cravings and fulfills our deepest need: our longing to love and be loved. The foregoing doesn’t necessarily mean we shouldn’t serve our bosses—it means we shouldn’t identify ourselves with our role, but should harmonize it with our identity as servants of our eternal Lord. *Devotion’s Inclusiveness: Unqualified, But Not Disqualified* While these four factors focus on the Lord and what He as the master brings to the bhakti table, another theme recurrent in bhakti literature is that we don’t need to bring much—all we need is the desire to serve. Even if we are materially unqualified, having no significant abilities or having a regrettable track record of wrongdoings, we are still never disqualified. Rāma, by engaging monkeys in His service, demonstrates that His service is open to everyone. He doesn’t need us to be highly trained and qualified to be able to serve Him. We can start our service from where we are with what we have. And He, by His inconceivable potency, will guide and empower us to do more and better service. Of course, many of the monkeys serving Rāma were gods who had descended from the celestial realm to the terrestrial realm through the path of monkey wombs. Still, that those gods took birth in the humble monkey species and from there rendered extraordinary service is instructive and illustrative of the inclusiveness of *bhakti*. Thus the Rāmāyaṇa gives us the confidence that no matter how unqualified we may be, we are never disqualified—we can still strive to serve our Lord and thereby progress devotionally towards inner satisfaction and outer contribution. When we learn to live in harmony with our nature as the servants of our Lord, we become conscious agents of change who help replace the use-and-throw culture with the care-and-share culture. *Caitanya Caraṇa Dāsa, a disciple of His Holiness Rādhānāth Swami, serves full time at ISKCON Chowpatty, Mumbai. He is a BTG associate editor and the author of twenty-five books. To read his other articles or to receive his daily reflection on the Bhagavad-gītā, "Gita-Daily," visit gitadaily.com.* Govardhan Ecovillage: A Longing Fulfilled *This Kṛṣṇa-centered village in India’s Sahyadri mountains arose from the desire to fulfill one of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s primary aims for his movement.* By Gaurāṅga Darśana Dāsa The vision for Govardhan Ecovillage, and the manifestation of that vision. In March 2010 Rādhānāth Swami asked a group of young men—some his disciples, some soon to be—to move from ISKCON’s Śrī Śrī Rādhā-Gopīnātha temple in Chowpatty, Mumbai, to Govardhan Ecovillage, 108 kilometers from Mumbai, to develop a farm project there. It was his ardent desire to fulfill the dream of his beloved guru, His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, by developing this farm community centered on spiritual principles. Later, in December 2010, he spoke to these devotees before leaving for the annual pilgrimage he leads for a large group of devotees. “While you are doing work here,” he told the Govardhan Ecovillage team, “I will be praying for you during the pilgrimage. We will be visiting holy places, and you will be creating a holy place.” *Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Desire* ISKCON’s first farm community is in Moundsville, West Virginia. Śrīla Prabhupāda went there for the first time on May 21, 1969. He had numerous ideas about how to develop the place as a replica of Vrindavan Dhama. In a letter to Hayagrīva Dāsa (March 1968), Śrīla Prabhupāda wrote, “I am so glad to learn that one gentleman is going to open an ashram in the West Virginia, and he has secured a big tract of land, 320 acres, and I wish that this tract of land may be turned into New Vrindaban. You have New York, New England, and so many “New” duplicates of European countries in the USA; why not import New Vrindaban in your country?” In letters to Hayagrīva, Kīrtanānanda Swami, and others between 1968 and 1973, Śrīla Prabhupāda shared his vision for New Vrindaban and emphasized its vital aspects: cow protection, agriculture, simple village life, a place of pilgrimage (a replica of Vrindavan), a place of higher learning, and ultimately a place for people to develop their love for Kṛṣṇa. *A Step Toward Fulfilling the Vision* One of the purposes of ISKCON that Śrīla Prabhupāda had listed on its founding documents was “To erect for the members and for society at large a holy place of transcendental pastimes, dedicated to the personality of Kṛṣṇa.” Rādhānāth Swami had been longing for decades to fulfill Śrīla Prabhupāda’s desires in this regard, and he inspired the devotees at ISKCON Chowpatty to work in that direction. Expressing his eagerness and emphasizing the urgency of the project, Rādhānāth Swami told the devotees in 2009, “Now our number one priority is developing the farm community. We want to put our best men and resources to develop this project into a wonderful place where we can demonstrate to the whole world the glories of protecting cows and living with respect for and harmony with Mother Earth.” He wanted the project to be eco-friendly, which he explained meant living in harmony with nature and according to the way Kṛṣṇa wants us to live materially and spiritually, and living with respect for Mother Earth, Bhūmi Devī, the consort of Lord Varāhadeva. “She is Lakṣmī herself,” he explained, “and we must honor her and live in ways that replenish her resources rather than exploit them. We must use whatever resources she gives us, by her grace, for the service of Lord Viṣṇu.” Govardhan Ecovillage (GEV) is situated in the lush green Sahyadri mountain range, close to the Vaitarna River in the Palghar district of Maharashtra. Spread over 140 acres, it is home to several eco-friendly initiatives. Sanat-kumāra Dāsa, the director of rural development and co-president of ISKCON Chowpatty; Rūpa Raghunātha Dāsa, the head of the rural outreach section; Śrī Nandanandana Dāsa, the head of the cow-care section; and Venudhārī Dāsa, a rural preacher, moved to GEV in 2003. These pioneer residents initiated various projects that made steady progress in the early years, including organic farming, cow care, spiritual outreach in the villages, and an orphanage and school for underprivileged rural children. In 2009 GEV began its focus on the development of a spiritual retreat center. Gaurāṅga Dāsa, the director of strategy and communications, and Vāsudeva Dāsa, the director of administration and sustainability, began research on various eco-centers in India and found an eco-friendly technology—compressed stabilized earth blocks—for making green buildings, and built the first guesthouse. In June 2010, on Rādhānāth Swami’s request (mentioned in the opening paragraph), fifteen young brahmacārīs moved from Chowpatty to GEV, and full-scale development of various facilities began. They included an Ayurvedic wellness center, guestrooms, a satsaṅga bhavan (“spiritual assembly building”) with an auditorium, seminar halls, conference rooms, and more. Devarṣi Nārada Dāsa and Sarvātmā Hari Dāsa coordinated most of the construction. *Various Features at Govardhan Ecovillage* Govardhan Ecovillage uniquely combines ancient Vedic principles of ideal human life and modern sustainable technology to create a vibrant spiritual eco-community. It strives to uphold the principle of “simple living and high thinking.” “Śrīla Prabhupāda, being a visionary,” says Sanat-kumāra Dāsa, “could foresee the environmental imbalance coming in the next several decades, and he envisioned farm communities as effective outreach tools. People who would not otherwise visit a temple would visit farm communities and get an opportunity to get spiritual wisdom.” Animal care: About 108 cows and bulls, along with a few goats, sheep, donkeys and dogs, happily reside at GEV in the loving care of its residents, especially Śrī Nandanandana Dāsa. Rādhānāth Swami says, “Cow protection is the foundation of what we represent. Cow protection is not just to not slaughter the cows, but to make them happy from the moment they are born till they naturally leave their bodies.” To uphold these principles, a magnificent goshala, with an array of facilities for cows, was built on three and a half acres close to the foothills of Mt. Kohoj. Organic farming: Under the guidance and supervision of Sanat-kumāra Dāsa, the agriculture team strives to set an example of growing food in an environment-friendly way by employing innovative and traditional technologies, including crop rotation, companion planting, and chemical-free fertilizers. A plant nursery on three acres boasts hundreds of varieties of flora. Water conservation and waste management: Water conservation involves harvesting rainwater, and water protection involves recharging the groundwater so that its quality isn’t contaminated by sewage. After a thorough hydrogeological survey, GEV identified locations for water bodies and implemented green sewage-management technologies. They include a soil biotechnology plant that processes up to thirty thousand liters of sewage daily, recycling up to ten million liters of water annually. For all these efforts, led by Gaurāṅga Dāsa, Vāsudeva Dāsa, and Gaṅgā Nārāyaṇa Dāsa, GEV has won several awards. “Having achieved one hundred percent recovery or recycling of water at GEV,” says Vāsudeva Dāsa, “we would like to focus on harvesting every drop of water that falls here. We are also planning to double the production of solar electricity.” Outreach: Under the direction of Rūpa Raghunātha Dāsa, GEV holds regular satsaṅga programs in more than fifty villages nearby. Hundreds of villagers have taken to bhakti and visit the temples at the GEV during festivals like Janmāṣṭamī and special programs like Jagannātha Rathayātrā. Education: Bhaktivedānta Vidyāpīṭha Research Centre (BVRC) at GEV provides systematic training in *bhakti* scriptures through full-time residency, part-time and online courses, and various publications, such as the Subodhinī series (www.vidyapitha.in). The Vidyāpīṭha is affiliated with the University of Mumbai. GEV also conducts regular courses for farmers and yoga teachers, and runs English and Marathi schools for rural children. Rural development: GEV also inspires and assists local farmers to take to organic farming. And apart from doing chemical-free agriculture, these farmers also take up Kṛṣṇa consciousness. GEV is also active in empowering women, in rural health care, and in free-food distribution to thirty thousand school children. Other significant projects at GEV include alternative energy (solar) and the manufacture of natural products and cow products under the brand name Eco Oasis. *The First Stone Temple* On April 14, 2014, a beautiful stone temple was inaugurated at GEV with the presiding deities of Śrī Śrī Rādhā–Vṛndāvana-Behārī. Vṛndāvana-Behārī is a name of Lord Kṛṣṇa denoting His playful wandering in the Vrindavan forest along with His intimate friends, especially Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī, the personification of devotion. The gorgeous deity of Kṛṣṇa is the first black marble deity in the Mumbai area. And the temple, made of pink sandstone in fine Rajasthani-style architecture, is ISKCON’s first stone temple. Mahābhāgavata Dāsa, an artist and resident brahmacārī at GEV, was instrumental in fashioning the exquisite forms of Śrī Śrī Rādhā–Vṛndāvana-Behārī. From sketching Them on paper to giving Them Their final shapes, including Their expressions and the precise proportions of Their limbs, he directed the carvers in Jaipur. At the same time, Anupama Gaurāṅga Dāsa, another brahmacārī artist, oversaw the carving of the stones for the temple. Manamohana Dāsa supervised the intricate carving of the incredible wooden altars of the deities and Śrīla Prabhupāda and also the making of the huge circular temple hall. And with the efforts of many devotees under the expert leadership of Gaurāṅga Dāsa, the magnificent thirty-foot-high stone temple manifested within the very short time of less than a year. The temple is a fine example of the rich traditions of Indian architecture. Experienced Rajasthani architects designed the temple, and an architect from Bayana had the stones intricately carved. For the outer walls of the temple, expert artisans in Orissa elaborately shaped detailed carvings of prominent scenes from all twelve cantos of *Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam* and from Lord Kṛṣṇa’s Vrindavan pastimes. While circumambulating the temple, one is enlivened and enlightened to see and discuss these eternal pastimes etched in stone. Another exciting feature of the temple is a huge carved stone placed as the roof at the entrance. It is in the shape of Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī’s candrikā, the crescent-moon-shaped ornament She wears on Her head. It weighs five tons, and ten people took six months to intricately carve the loops of candrikās on it. It was placed in its position after the temple was inaugurated. According to śilpa śāstras (scriptures on architecture), the piece is called a kalpa-vṛkṣa, after the desire-fulfilling tree of the spiritual world. Two years after the temple’s inauguration, in 2016, a white marble deity of Lord Śrī Gaurāṅga (Caitanya Mahāprabhu) was installed next to Śrī Śrī Rādhā–Vṛndāvana-Behārī. The deities are lovingly worshiped by the residents of GEV with fine natural ingredients. All the major Vaiṣṇava festivals are grandly celebrated. It’s an out-of-this-world experience for visitors to GEV to have the darśana of the deities gorgeously decorated with local forest flowers. *Forest of Grace* Surcharging the eco-friendly ambience of GEV with spiritual vibrations is a ten-acre replica of Lord Kṛṣṇa’s Vrindavan village. Vrindavan Forest is the heart of GEV. For about four decades, Rādhānāth Swami had longed to re-create Vrindavan in this way. “The Vrindavan Forest at Govardhan Ecovillage is a place to absorb ourselves in the remembrance of original Vrindavan in feelings of separation,” says Rādhānāth Swami, defining its purpose. Hosting Vrindavan’s twelve main forests, nine major temples, the Yamunā River, Govardhan Hill, and many diorama exhibits depicting various pastimes of Lord Kṛṣṇa, this replica of Vraja (Vrindavan) gives its visitors a distraction-free spiritual experience. The resident devotees regularly go for Vraja-parikramā (a devout walk around Vraja), especially in the month of Kārttika. Vrindavan Forest includes scaled-down red-sandstone-clad versions of the main temples of Vrindavan: Rādhā-Govindajī, Rādhā–Madana-Gopāla, Rādhā-Ramaṇa, Rādhā-Śyāmasundara, Rādhā Dāmodara, Rādhā Gokulānanda, and Rādhā Gopīnātha. The dimensions of these versions were meticulously worked out by Mahābhāgavata Dāsa and his team, and the construction was overseen by Anupama Gaurāṅga Dāsa and Braja Govinda Dāsa. The beautiful landscaping of the entire ten acres was coordinated and supervised by Aloka Nimāi Dāsa and Mādhava Gaura Dāsa. Later, Śrījī Mandir of Barsana and Nanda Bhavan of Nandagram were built at well-chosen locations. The Śrījī temple gives a spellbinding view of Mount Kohoj, and its courtyard offers a perfect peaceful ambience for satsaṅgas and congregational *kīrtanas*. Large framed photos of the original deities of Vrindavan are placed in these temples, and āratis and meals are offered daily. Inside the Rādhā-Damodara temple are replicas of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s room and kitchen at the Rādhā-Dāmodara temple in Vrindavan. There are also the bhajana-kuṭir and samādhi of Śrīla Rūpa Gosvāmī. This charming area with cow-dung flooring offers a wonderful setting for spiritual discussions and meetings. Smaller temples of Kushalbiharījī, Mān-mandir, Mor-kuṭir, Gopeśvara Mahādeva, Baṅke-Behārī, Rādhā-Vallabha, and others, along with samādhīs of various Vaiṣṇava ācāryas, are present in either stone or wood. Natural sitting places with stone and wooden benches are available in various places so that visitors can meet, chat, chant, and meditate. The enchanting Yamunā River at Keśī-ghāṭa attracts residents and visitors at sunset for a daily ārati. Yamunāṣṭakam, a devotional song by Śrīla Rūpa Gosvāmī glorifying the Yamunā River, is sung during the ārati. In this Yamunā, Śrī Śrī Rādhā-Ban-Behārī, the festival deities of the main temple, enjoy a boat festival and water games. Govardhan Hill was made by assembling hundreds of huge boulders, many weighing over five tons. Surrounding the hill are Aniyor-kṣetra, Govinda-kuṇḍa, Mādhavendra Purī Baithak, Apsarā-kuṇḍa, Naval-kuṇḍa, Loṭa-bābā Mandir, Vallabhācārya Baithak, Surabhi-kuṇḍa, Manasā Gaṅgā, Harideva Mandir, Raghunātha Dāsa Gosvāmī Samādhi, Jāhṇava Mātājī Baithak, Rādhā-kuṇḍa, and Śyāma-kuṇḍa. On the banks of Rādhā-kuṇḍa a śilā (stone) of the original Govardhan is worshiped. Govardhan Pūjā is a major festival celebrated at GEV. Hundreds of food preparations are lovingly offered to Girirāja (Govardhan) while hundreds of devotees offer Him prayers and circumambulate the hill. A Vaiṣṇava memorial on the bank of Śyāma-kuṇḍa honors recently departed Vaiṣṇavas. Vrindavan Forest, with its natural stone temples, sand pathways, flowering plants, soothing water bodies, and sweetly chirping birds in the green trees and groves moves visitors’ hearts, leaving a lasting transformative impression. Devotees conduct guided tours of Vrindavan Forest every day and special retreats during weekends, festivals, and holidays. Daily *yajñas* (fire sacrifices) are conducted in the *yajña-śālā* (yajña building). *Madana-mohana Magnificence* In 1997, when Rādhānāth Swami became ISKCON’s governing body commissioner for New Vrindaban in West Virginia, the first thing he wanted was to build a Madana-mohana temple. “I became a devotee in Vrindavan,” he recalled one day. “When I was in New Vrindaban, I had a serious fear that I would forget my experiences in Vrindavan, because they were so deeply sacred to me. So every single day for nine years, before eating I would go for Vrindavan parikramā for twenty minutes in my meditation. I would remember my life in Vrindavan in each place. I would visualize standing by the Yamunā and offering oblations toward the Madana-mohana temple.” In 1999 Rādhānāth Swami asked one of his disciples, Jaya Gopāla Dāsa in Pune, then a civil engineering student, to study old stone structures. Rādhānāth Swami wanted a full-size replica of the original Madana-mohana temple to be built at GEV. Jaya Gopāla made detailed layouts of the original Madana-mohana temple, and they were used to make the temple at GEV. The foundation of the temple is fourteen feet deep. Huge red stones carved by Indra Acharya’s team from Bayana were transported to GEV. Assembling stones of a few tons each to make the hundred-foot-high monument was not an easy task. It took months of work with cranes and other heavy equipment. Braja Govinda, who coordinated and supervised the construction, shares his experience. “As the height increased, the difficulty in transferring the stones increased. The scaffolding around the structure had to be very sturdy. But by the grace of Madana-mohanajī and the prayers of Rādhānāth Swami, the entire construction went smoothly without any major accidents.” As the temple was getting ready inch by inch to resemble its original counterpart, Mahābhāgavata and his team researched making replicas of the original Madana-mohana deities, now worshiped in Karoli, Rajasthan. In Karoli they met reporters, writers, temple guards, temple managers, and local people, but no one had a close-up image or measurements of the deities, as no photography is allowed inside the temple. Finally, the temple manager appointed Sriman Anup Chakravarti, the chief priest of the temple, as a point of contact for the team. With his kind help they got an idea of the original forms of Rādhā–Madana-mohanajī and Lalitā Devī. Thus after a few trials and rejections, a black marble deity of Lord Madana-mohana was carved in Mahabalipuram, Tamil Nadu, and brass deities of Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī and Śrīmatī Lalitā Devī were made in Kumbakonam, also in Tamil Nadu. The magnificent temple was inaugurated on January 25, 2019. It sits between the Rādhā-Vṛndāvana-Behārī temple and the Vrindavan Forest, on a grass-covered hill that resembles Dvādaśāditya Ṭilā in Vrindavan, the site of the original temple. From there one gets a wonderful view of Mount Kohoj to the east. Amid fields, forests, and a village ambience, the temple charms the hearts of devotees and visitors alike. Anup Chakravati, the chief priest of Madana-mohana in Karoli, told Rādhānāth Swami, “The Madana-mohana deities are in Karoli, and the Madana-mohana temple is in Vrindavan. In GEV you have brought them together.” *Unity of Hearts and Hands* GEV is a loving offering to Śrīla Prabhupāda by Rādhānāth Swami and his devoted disciples. The project wouldn’t have developed to the extent it has in a short time without the kind wishes and blessings of Vaiṣṇavas and the generous contributions of many devotees in the congregation of ISKCON Chowpatty. And the progress wouldn’t have been possible without the selfless background support of GEV’s resident devotees. Sitting in the lap of mother nature, surrounded by mountains, with the Vaitarna River flowing nearby, Govardhan Ecovillage offers an ideal setting to experience the sweetness of *bhakti-yoga*. GEV has received dozens of awards, hosted hundreds of events, and attracted thousands of visitors every year. *Gaurāṅga Darśana Dāsa, a disciple of His Holiness Rādhānāth Swami, is dean of the Bhaktivedānta Vidyāpīṭha (www.vidyapitha.in) at Govardhan Ecovillage. He has written the Subodhinī series of study guides and two other books, Disapproved but not Disowned and Bhāgavata Pravāha. He teaches śāstric courses at several places in India and oversees the deity worship at GEV.* A Spiritual Retreat Center by Gaurāṅga Dāsa *Director of Strategy and Communications* In 2003, after a three-year search, we found twenty-five acres of land in Galtare, the village where GEV is now situated. We started organic farming and cow care, and the project developed in other areas as well. In 2009 Rādhānāth Swami mentioned his desire to add a retreat center, but no one was enthusiastic about the idea. I mentioned this to Rādhānāth Swami in a private conversation. He replied, “It was Śrīla Prabhupāda’s desire that these kinds of farm communities develop and flourish. And it was his desire in West Virginia that there should be organic farming, cow protection, a center for education, a replica of Vrindavan, and a retreat center. With these initiatives, we will be able to fulfill those desires of Śrīla Prabhupāda. And by Kṛṣṇa’s grace, in our Chowpatty community we have enough devotees, resources, manpower, and finances to do this. Therefore, it is our responsibility.” “But it begins,” he added, “when you move out of your comfort zone. If we try something as a matter of sacrifice, then Kṛṣṇa will empower us.” *City-Village Cross-Pollination* India has around 1.2 billion people, two thirds of them living in villages. Hardly anyone from the city wants to move to the village because they are afraid of the lack of comfort and facilities. The GEV retreat center creates city comfort in a village, so that people feel inspired to come, stay, and get transformed through yoga, wellness, spirituality, and a Vedic education. Visitors help the villagers as well. When people come here, they come with ideas, contacts, resources, and technologies that can improve life in the rural places. It really takes things to the next level faster than would happen if the locals tried to develop on their own. We set up the spiritual retreat center right in the middle of a cluster of fifty villages. When people started visiting us from around the world, the cross-pollination between the city and the village catalyzed the rural development here. Recognizing this in 2017, the United Nations gave us an award for sustainable development and world tourism. *Sandy Parikramā Paths* An interesting aspect of GEV’s Vrindavan Forest is its paths. To give a real Vrindavan experience to the devotees doing parikramā barefoot (the traditional way), Rādhānāth Swami wanted soft white sand to be put on the paths. But in Maharashtra it is very difficult to get white sand. Śrī Gaura Caraṇa Dāsa, who was overseeing the procurement of the construction material, recalls, “Coincidentally, at our cast-iron vendor’s place we saw heaps of white sand. He said they use it to heat the cast iron, and he procures it from Ratnagiri. We immediately ordered a sample from Ratnagiri. But it wasn’t white sand. It was powdered laterite stone that resembled sand. The sample was presented to Rādhānāth Swami. He walked on it to check if it hurts the feet. And he also didn’t want dust to rise and discomfort people. The sample satisfied both criteria, and Rādhānāth Swami happily approved it. So we spread this powdered stone all over the Vrindavan paths.” *The Story of the Stones* Getting stones for GEV’s Govardhan Hill was a huge challenge. We wanted the stones to resemble those at the original Govardhan. Despite searching in several neighboring villages, we couldn’t get the exact ones. One day a vendor informed us about a village seven kilometers away from GEV where a landlord owned land on both sides of a hill. He wanted to break the hill to combine the two pieces of land. Using heavy equipment, he broke the hill and piled up heaps and heaps of stones without knowing what to do with them. They were a mix of brown and black, not easy to break, and not usable for any construction. He wanted to get rid of them as soon as possible. When our devotees saw the stones, they said, “These stones are perfect for our Govardhan Hill.” When we approached the landlord, he agreed to sell them at a very low price. We were convinced that this happened due to the deep desire of Rādhānāth Swami and the blessings of Girirāja Govardhan. About three hundred truckloads of the stones were brought to GEV and assembled to make the Govardhan Hill resembling the original Govardhan. Ways of Progressing in Spirituality *A close look at the three yoga processes of śravaṇa, manana, and nididhyāsana reveals that they’re included in the nine processes of bhakti.* By Viśākhā Devī Dāsī Correlations between the three processes of yoga and the nine processes of *bhakti*. *Bhakti-yogīs* practice nine processes of devotion: hearing about the Lord, chanting about Him, remembering Him, worshiping Him, serving Him, making friendship with Him, praying to Him, offering everything to Him, and serving His lotus feet. Followers of other types of *yoga*, on the other hand, often practice three processes, known as *śravaṇa*, *manana*, and *nididhyāsana*. A close look at these three processes reveals that they’re included in the nine processes of *bhakti*. And when those three processes are centered on Kṛṣṇa and concluded with prayer, by the mercy of guru and God one can get the same result as following the nine processes of *bhakti*. *Stage One: Hearing (Śravaṇa)* Our senses—the eyes, skin, nose, tongue, and ears—enable us to learn about the world we’re in through our ability to see, touch, smell, taste, and hear. According to the preeminent Sanskrit text *Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam*, of these five senses it’s our sense of hearing that’s most important because by hearing from a worthwhile source—a transcendent source—we can understand what’s beyond our senses. Ironically, only by investigating what’s beyond our senses can we truly understand the world we’re in, what its purpose is, and how we can live in it in a fulfilling and peaceful way and attain the goal of knowledge. One of the Bhāgavatam’s early verses declares, > śṛṇvatāṁ sva-kathāḥ kṛṣṇaḥ > puṇya-śravaṇa-kīrtanaḥ > hṛdy antaḥ stho hy abhadrāṇi > vidhunoti suhṛt satām “To hear about Kṛṣṇa from Vedic literatures, or to hear from Him directly through the *Bhagavad-gītā*, is itself righteous activity. And for one who hears about Kṛṣṇa, Lord Kṛṣṇa, who is dwelling in everyone’s heart, acts as a best-wishing friend and purifies the devotee who constantly engages in hearing of Him. In this way, a devotee naturally develops his dormant transcendental knowledge.” (*Bhāgavatam* 1.2.17, translation from Śrīla Prabhupāda’s purport to *Bhagavad-gītā* 7.1) When we talk about the importance of hearing, we’re also talking about the importance of hearing from the right source, specifically from a person who has heard from the scriptures and spiritual master, who has understood what was heard, and is living by it. Hearing from such a source creates faith in what’s been heard. Hearing, in Sanskrit, is *śravaṇa* (mentioned in the above verse), what is heard is śabda, transcendental sound, and what this evokes is *śraddhā*, faith in the message. Faith begins with hearing transcendental sound. Then, if we take interest in what we’re hearing—we pay attention to it—it will remove our confusion and doubts, and knowledge will awaken in our heart. After that, something incredible will happen. We will discover the true significance of the identities of the individual self and the Supreme Self. The perennial question “Who am I?” will be answered with the conviction “I am an *ātmā*, a spiritual being, a soul.” As we steadily continue to hear, gradually our faith is fortified, our mind is calmed and clarified, and we come to a place known in the *aṣṭāṅga-yoga* system as *pratyāhāra*. Śrīla Prabhupāda explains: “The process by which we give up our thoughts of material things is called *pratyāhāra*, which entails being freed from all material thoughts and engagements.” (*Bhāgavatam* 4.8.44, Purport) We withdraw our senses from worldly beauty and concentrate on perceiving the beauty within ourselves—our spiritual identity as *ātmā*—and Kṛṣṇa’s presence in our heart as Supersoul. So through *śravaṇa* we gain a little knowledge about Kṛṣṇa and feel encouraged to use our senses and body in His service. Our mind may not yet be fully controlled—we may still find ourselves thinking irrelevant, unhelpful thoughts—but we repeatedly apply ourselves to hearing Kṛṣṇa’s message and serving Him in whatever ways we can while patiently bringing the mind back to the realm of Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Sravaṇa means acquiring knowledge by hearing, learning, and study and is compared to igniting a flame. After practicing śravaṇa for some time, we come to the stage of manana, or thoughtful meditation and reflection, in which, from all angles of vision, we think of the instructions and teachings we’ve heard. *Stage Two: Remembering and Reflecting (Manana)* At this point we reflect on what we’ve learned and try to understand it intellectually. Through logic, reasoning, analysis, and contemplation, we raise and clear our lingering uncertainties. We begin to firm our spiritual intellect by learning to discern reality from illusion, the permanent from the impermanent, the sun from the clouds. We know that “I” ultimately does not refer to the body or mind but to the self, the spiritual being (*ātmā*) present in each living entity. Meditating on this aspect of reality, we control our mind and senses and always remember our identity and purpose. The result of sincere hearing and chanting (*śravaṇa* and *kīrtana*) is a spiritualized memory, called *smaraṇa*, or remembrance and recollection. This becomes the ability for mental concentration, manana, known in the *aṣṭāṅga-yoga* system as *dhāraṇā*, or firmness and steadfastness, and it is followed by *dhyāna*, meditation, thought, and reflection on the personal attributes of the Supreme Deity. In this stage, we have put a wind screen in place to protect our flame of *śravaṇa* (hearing) and *sraddhā* (faith) from the disturbances of mundane thought. The *Bhāgavatam* (1.2.18–19) explains it this way: > naṣṭa-prāyeṣv abhadreṣu > nityaṁ bhāgavata-sevayā > bhagavaty uttama-śloke > bhaktir bhavati naiṣṭhikī > tadā rajas-tamo-bhāvāḥ > kāma-lobhādayaś ca ye > ceta etair anāviddhaṁ > sthitaṁ sattve prasīdati “As one hears more about Kṛṣṇa from the *Bhāgavatam* and from the devotees, one becomes fixed in the devotional service of the Lord. By development of devotional service one becomes freed from the modes of passion and ignorance, and thus material lusts and avarice are diminished. When these impurities are wiped away, the candidate remains steady in his position of pure goodness.” (Translation from Śrīla Prabhupāda’s purport to *Bhagavad-gītā* 7.1) We all would like to be absorbed in something so deeply that it takes us out of ourselves to the extent that we forget our petty problems, our insecurities, our past disappointments, even our age, gender, economic status, and embarrassments. Devotional service, especially devotional service suited to our propensities, can do that for us. Kṛṣṇa’s mercy is that as we completely absorb our attention in serving Him, He can relieve us from the dreadful burden of thinking that we’re our body and mind. More, we can gradually be free of useless worry and unhelpful desires, of distractions and diversions that leach our precious energy and time. *Stage Three: Deeper Meditation, Steady Contemplation (Nididhyāsana)* Nididhyāsana is profound and repeated meditation that results in realization and complete application of that realization in all aspects of one’s life. In the eightfold *aṣṭāṅga-yoga* system, this stage is known as *samādhi*, or intense and profound contemplation on the Supreme. The *yogi* sits motionless, mind fixed on the Supreme, thoughts concentrated there. The bhakti-*yogi* at this stage has assimilated the knowledge gained through hearing, reflecting, contemplating, and meditating. One identifies as a spiritual being and is unwaveringly established as Kṛṣṇa’s devotee, serving Him not only in meditation, but actively, with the body and words as well as the mind. We come to this stage gradually and progressively by first patiently going through the previous stages of self-inquiry, self-investigation, self-scrutiny, and self-attentiveness. Finally, lost in delight and gratitude, we come to *nididhyāsana*. At this point the flame ignited by *śravaṇa* and protected by *manana* now burns brightly and perpetually as one practically applies oneself, the *ātmā*, in Kṛṣṇa’s service while remaining absorbed in thoughts of Him. One has made spiritual knowledge one’s own and personally experienced it. This is a deep, uninterrupted meditation and a rational, cognitive process in which one lives and breathes the truth of bhakti, devotional service to the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Such is the outcome of authentic hearing, solid contemplation, and devotional action. It is also known as *ātmā*-nivedanam—fully devoting oneself to and completely taking shelter of Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead. > evaṁ prasanna-manaso > bhagavad-bhakti-yogataḥ > bhagavat-tattva-vijñānaṁ > mukta-saṅgasya jāyate > bhidyate hṛdaya-granthiś > chidyante sarva-saṁśayāḥ > kṣīyante cāsya karmāṇi > dṛṣṭa evātmanīśvare “The candidate becomes enlivened by devotional service and understands the science of God perfectly. Thus *bhakti-yoga* severs the hard knot of material affection and enables one to come at once to the stage of *asaṁśayaṁ-samagram* [completely without doubt], understanding of the Supreme Absolute Truth Personality of Godhead.” (*Bhāgavatam* 1.2.20–21, translation from Śrīla Prabhupāda’s purport to *Bhagavad-gītā* 7.1) *Stage Four: Prayer (Vandana)* We cannot understand Kṛṣṇa or come closer to Him without His kindly agreeing to this. Kṛṣṇa has to allow us to approach Him, just as, if we want to see the Prime Minister or President or a big CEO, he or she has to give us permission. If we demand entrance or try to barge in, we will surely be thwarted and frustrated in our attempt. We evoke Kṛṣṇa’s kindness and receptivity to us through heartfelt prayer. We may feel (as I do) that there’s a huge gulf between where our consciousness is at present and where we would like it to be, that between us and *samādhi*, or *nididhyāsana*, there’s an unfathomable ocean. Prayer will help bridge that gulf because it can evoke Kṛṣṇa’s causeless mercy. Throughout history, people all over the world have prayed. Life’s hardships and uncertainties naturally evoke our prayers, as does our ardent desire for spiritual attainment. It’s not unusual that, when entering a temple or church or synagogue, we sense the upraising currents of years of prayer curling around us and cheering us as they linger within those sacred spaces. Prayer is instinctive for most of us, but what should we pray for? To pray for good health and success in my endeavors, a happy family, and financial ease is to pray for goals as fleeting as the warm days of summer. We can evaluate this kind of prayer in light of *Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam* (4.22.32): “There is no stronger obstruction to one’s self-interest than thinking other subject matters to be more pleasing than one’s self-realization.” Asking God for something transient is like a pauper’s asking an emperor for a penny. Why not ask for something lasting—something worthy of who I am? Why not ask to make solid spiritual progress? My prayers reflect my desires and, as much as I understand that I’m an ātmā temporarily residing in a body composed of matter, I can leave mundane aspirations aside and simply pray, “God, please engage me in Your service.” I can pray to act with devotion to God; I can pray for *bhakti*. Transcending my body, mind, and intelligence, this prayer offers me access to an intangible focal point of grace. It is passage into that mysterious sphere where I, my family, and my community can live in happiness and harmony and together progress spiritually. To sincerely and purely pray is natural; it’s my causeless resistance to prayer that’s foreign. My distracted and dry prayers are those of a weary, shortsighted person who has lost her bearings and is struggling to regain them. But, anyway, I—and all of us—can pray daily: in the morning when we first awake, during our ride to work or stints in the gym or lunch breaks or long walks through lonely forests, alone or with our family, in a sacred space, or simply wherever we find ourselves. Let us pray to engage in God’s service, and pray that we will slough off our lethargy and dullness enough to feelingly chant God’s names, which are the life of transcendental knowledge. Let us pray to serve Him without ulterior motives. Śrī Caitanya, the avatar of God who appeared in this difficult age, prays to Kṛṣṇa: “You have invested all Your potencies in Your holy names, and there are no hard and fast rules for chanting them. Out of kindness You enable us to easily approach You by chanting Your holy names, but I am so unfortunate that I have no attraction for them.” (*Śikṣāṣṭaka* 2) God’s transcendental names are not ordinary words but, whether spoken softly (*japa*) or sung joyfully in chorus (*kīrtana*), are a prayer that has the power to uplift and transform the heart. Even an inattentive person can feel peaceful and properly situated while praying alone or with prayerful singers. During both *japa* and *kīrtana* we may discover how inconsequential our thoughts are and may let them go. Simply by hearing the words of the prayerful chanting, we may experience enthusiasm alongside patience, confidence in the face of obstacles, and hope despite a serious lack of qualifications. Something inside us that wants to take flight becomes a little less fettered. Prayerful chanting in private or in public, removed from the clocks and calendars of ordinary life, isn’t a performance but is a meditation in which everyone who participates is bathed by sacred sound. Chanting Kṛṣṇa’s names strengthens our relationship with Him; He, in the form of His name, becomes our ongoing guide and companion. *And by His grace and mercy we progress spiritually.* In prayer, the principal thing is to stand before God with the mind in the heart, and to go on standing before him unceasingly day and night until the end of life. —Bishop Theophan (nineteenth century) We are all situated in relative positions according to our own karma. Yet every one of us can offer prayers with heart and soul as far as we can appreciate God’s glories. That is our perfection. —Śrīla Prabhupāda One must learn to call upon the name of God, more even than breathing—at all times, in all places, in every kind of occupation. —St. Peter the Damascene *What Does It All Mean?* Practitioners of different spiritual paths often look for commonality between them, for although the paths to reach God may be many, He is one. When speaking of the paths of *Sāṅkhya* and *bhakti*, for example, Kṛṣṇa points out their commonality: “One who knows that the position reached by means of analytical study [*Sāṅkhya*] can also be attained by devotional service [*bhakti*], and who therefore sees analytical study and devotional service to be on the same level, sees things as they are.” (*Gītā* 5.5) Śrīla Prabhupāda comments: “The real purpose of philosophical research is to find the ultimate goal of life. Since the ultimate goal of life is self-realization, there is no difference between the conclusions reached by the two processes.” Similarly, the practices of *śravaṇa*, *manana*, and *nididhyāsana* directly correspond to the practice of *bhakti-yoga*, and one who follows them will know success. *Viśākhā Devī Dāsī has been writing for BTG since 1973. Visit her website at OurSpiritualJourney.com.* Cleanliness: Why It’s Important and How to Attain It *A disciple of Śrīla Prabhupāda recalls some cleanliness practices that Prabhupāda prescribed for a life in Kṛṣṇa consciousness.* By Kṛṣṇānandinī Devī Dāsī Cleanliness is next to godliness—and an essential part of our spiritual practice. Śrīla Prabhupāda, the founder-*ācārya* of ISKCON, repeatedly emphasized the importance of cleanliness in serving the Lord and others. And he made sure we understood that cleanliness refers to both internal and external cleanliness. In the scriptures this is called *bahyābhyantara-suci*: “clean within and without.” In this article I’ll examine the significance of the principle of cleanliness. In Kali-yuga, the current iron age of increasing arguments, cheating, and deceit, cleanliness is a huge challenge because the age itself is a time of contamination and impurity. Pollution of both the environment and of people’s minds and hearts is an unfortunate reality for much of the world. Lusty, greedy, petty, vindictive, envious, lazy, and fearful thoughts are all symptoms of internal dirt, or *anarthas*—unwanted, troublesome things. But we can have internal cleanliness if we keep our mind full of purifying thoughts by regularly and steadily calling the sweet names of the Lord. He is supremely pure and purifying, and because His names are identical with Him, chanting His holy names sincerely and regularly washes away impurities and unclean thoughts gradually but permanently. According to the *Bhagavad-gītā* (2.64), by practicing “the regulative principles of freedom” we can speed up our spiritual progress. The fundamental religious principles are truthfulness, austerity, compassion, and cleanliness. Adhering firmly to these four basic principles or pillars of religion is liberating. I became a devotee when I was a teenager and received many instructions about cleanliness from Śrīla Prabhupāda via his books, lectures, and disciples. In the early days of the Hare Kṛṣṇa movement, Śrīla Prabhupāda instructed us to clean the cooking pots immediately after cooking, and our plates immediately after eating (or, as we say, “honoring *prasādam*”). He informed us that the outside of Krsna’s cooking pots should be just as clean (*suci*) as the inside, that paraphernalia used in worshiping or serving the Lord should be cleaned daily, and that the temple and kitchen should always demonstrate first-class cleanliness. The word *muci*, or “contamination,” was used often. It means being unclean, and we were to carefully avoid being *muci*, especially in the temple and the kitchen. In the kitchen, where food is prepared for offering to the temple deities, devotees were instructed not to eat or drink and not to speak idly or about topics not related to Krsna consciousness. We learned to use the right hand for touching sacred things and for eating. (In general, the right hand is considered the cleaner hand, the left hand being used for washing one’s private parts.) Our clean eating habits included prohibitions against garlic and onions, which are never offered to the deities and thus not eaten by the Lord’s devotees. These foods are said to excite the baser emotions and do not elevate the consciousness like foods in the mode of goodness. Śrīla Prabhupāda’s instructions on cleanliness covered a wide range of things. In a letter to his disciple Ṛṣi Kumāra Dāsa in 1971, Prabhupāda wrote, “Krsna consciousness means a clean bead bag.” Our practice was to bathe if we napped for more than an hour during the day. We were taught to wear fresh, clean clothing to the temple every morning, to wash our mouth, face, feet, and hands after honoring *prasādam*, and to wash our hands often—thus establishing some simple but very important rituals and hygienic practices that served us well in the endeavor to be clean and healthy. Having grown up in a serious Christian home, I was already in the habit of bathing at least once a day, routinely cleaning our house, and washing my hands and mouth after eating. But Śrīla Prabhupāda added washing our face and feet after eating, and this and other instructions took cleanliness to higher level. I could immediately feel the benefits. *The Importance of Cleanliness* Why is it important to keep everything—body, mind, house, car, temple—clean? Every morning in every ISKCON temple, devotees sing a song glorifying the spiritual master that includes the phrase *mandira-mārjanādau*: “cleansing the temple, and so on.” The spiritual master, along with his disciples, is always engaged in serving the deities in the temple, and that service includes cleaning the temple. If cleanliness is neglected, it is a sure sign of laziness. If one is lazy—“Just let me sleep”—one doesn’t keep his environment clean. This is the mode of ignorance, *tamo-guṇa*. We have to overcome *tamo-guṇa*. Śrīla Prabhupāda taught us that our heart has to be pure if we want to receive Kṛṣṇa and allow Him to pleasantly reside there. He taught us that when we are clean we are in the spiritual world and when we are dirty we are in the material world. Cleanliness, inside and out, takes us to the spiritual world. The more we clean the temple or our devotee homes, which should also be temples, the more our hearts become cleansed. Caitanya Mahāprabhu exemplified the cleanliness principle when He showed how to cleanse the Guṇḍicā temple in Jagannath Puri in preparation for its annual Rathayātrā festival. The deities of Jagannātha, Baladeva, and Subhadrā ride on huge chariots from the Jagannātha temple to the Guṇḍicā temple, where they stay for seven days. Caitanya Mahāprabhu cleaned the Guṇḍicā temple several times in one day, finding more and more subtle evidence of dirt with each thorough cleaning. The cleansing of the Guṇḍicā temple is a metaphor for cleansing the heart of gross and hidden dirt, or *anarthas*. An important way to have internal cleanliness is to resist being a “garbage can” by refusing to let others gossip or put negative, materialistic conversations in our head. By being selective about what we hear and the conversations we choose to take part in, we can keep our minds clean and protect ourselves. Śrīla Prabhupāda wanted his students to develop brahminical standards of cleanliness and to understand that cleanliness is one of the primary qualities of a pure devotee. In his purport to *Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam* 4.2.14–15, he writes, “Those who do not regularly bathe are supposed to be in association with ghosts and crazy creatures.” Regular bathing is essential to physical and mental health. For the aspiring devotee, bathing in the morning and evening and after defacating is a necessary part of the cleanliness regimen. *Cleanliness in the Kitchen* In a 1971 letter, Śrīla Prabhupāda wrote: In India it is the custom that the kitchen is not even in the same building where the living rooms are because living rooms are contaminated. After cooking, all the [unbaked clay] pots are thrown away. This is not possible in your country. Therefore you have to keep the utmost cleanliness. Krsna does not require opulent offerings. He appreciates the sincere endeavor. A clean kitchen is more important than an opulent offering. If the kitchen is neat and clean, then the offering will be good. If the offering is a so-called “opulent offering” but the kitchen is not clean, Krsna will not like it. To further show how serious this principle is, Śrīla Prabhupāda once wrote to a devotee in London, “Each room should be clean as a mirror, otherwise you invite the rats.” In other words, cleanliness is powerful pest-prevention. Also, the state of cleanliness of our surroundings reflects our general internal cleanliness. Besides, we naturally feel better in a neat, clean, orderly space than one that’s cluttered and dirty. A clean place or a clean vehicle is welcoming and refreshing. *Clean with Enthusiasm* Knowing that there are so many exquisite, empowering benefits to committing to a spiritually clean life, an aspiring servant of the Lord will learn how to be clean at home, in the temple, and outside and then endeavor to clean with enthusiasm. One of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s disciples who seriously took his instructions on cleanliness to heart was Yamunā Devī, who passed away in 2011. In an article about her, Girirāja Swami recalls: Around the time of the first Bombay pandal [1970], when we were staying in Akash Ganga, a high-rise apartment building in an affluent part of central Bombay, Yamunā would stay back and clean. She would clean the whole place for hours. And while cleaning, she would sing in a very ecstatic mood. The rest of us were going here and there . . . and she was staying back and cleaning; she put her whole heart into it. “In Bombay,” he continues, “she told me, ‘I learned to take joy in that cleaning. Whether you are serving the spiritual master or the *arcā-vigraha* [the deity of the Lord], the cleaning is external and internal. It is a very spiritual engagement—as powerful as distributing books.” Girirāja Swami concluded his sharing by saying that thirty years after being trained in first-class cleanliness by no less than the founder-*ācārya* of ISKCON himself, Yamunā told him, “I can honestly say that I engage in cleaning joyously. In our ashram [in Saranagati, Canada] we sometimes sing and clean for hours and hours. Our place is very primitive—we have a dirt floor and walls, and a lot of earth outside—very simple, but we like to clean a lot. We enjoy cleaning for Śrīla Prabhupāda and the deities.” *Don’t Be Intimidated, Start Somewhere* A new devotee, an interested spiritual seeker, or even an older devotional practitioner who has gotten slack in cleanliness shouldn’t be intimidated by the extensive list of things we are instructed to do to be clean and which are a part of our sādhana, or devotional practices. With some sober thinking we can appreciate that spiritual life is a science and to progress in it there are practices that are scientifically beneficial. Just becoming aware of the advantages of having a clean body and mind and acknowledging its great importance are the first steps. Gradually add more clean practices and don’t be too hard on yourself if you are not able to observe all of them right away. Once you adopt a practice, try to keep going forward and don’t go backwards. Be patient with yourself; give yourself time to make each item in your cleanliness practice a habit. Because of your sincere efforts, Krsna will help you from within and without: > teṣāṁ satata-yuktānāṁ > bhajatāṁ prīti-pūrvakam > dadāmi buddhi-yogaṁ taṁ > yena mām upayānti te “To those who are constantly devoted to serving Me with love, I give the understanding by which they can come to Me.” (*Gītā* 10.10) *Kṛṣṇānandinī Devī Dāsī, a disciple of Śrīla Prabhupāda, is a Certified Family Life Educator, a licensed minister, president of ISKCON’s Grihastha Vision Team, and co-director, along with her husband, Tariq Saleem Ziyad, of the Dasi-Ziyad Family Institute in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. At the time of writing this article, she is in Vrindavan, undergoing a purification vow.* Book Excerpt: The Living Name: A Guide to Chanting With Absorption *Chanting in a Devotional Relationship* *Sambandha (“relationship”) is an inner orientation for chanting Kṛṣṇa’s name that brings us into His presence.* By Śacīnandana Swami If we don’t chant in awareness of our relationship with Kṛṣṇa, we will only ever obtain a shadow of the Holy Name, not the real Name. [On the first page: Excerpted from The Living Name: A Guide to Chanting With Absorption. Copyright 2018 Śaraṇāgati Publishing. This section is from chapter two. It begins with a mention of *yojana* (“connecting”), which the author elaborates in chapter one, titled “*Yojana:* Aligning the Body, Mind and Heart in Chanting.” This excerpt retains the book’s typographical and grammatical styles.] *BOUND TOGETHER IN A RELATIONSHIP* After yojana, the next practice represents the most important element in my view: chanting with a sense of relationship. If you learn how to do this, there will be a vast improvement in your chanting. The Sanskrit word *sam**bandha* indicates ‘relationship’ but literally it means ‘bound together’ (*sam*: together; *bandha*: bound). Sam*bandha* is that understanding which binds you to Kṛṣṇa. It is an inner orientation for chanting the Holy Name that brings you into the presence of the Lord. *Sambandha* begins with a general sense that ‘I am a part of Kṛṣṇa.’ Later, when you chant the Holy Name free from offences, your relationship with Kṛṣṇa becomes clearer. At the last stage, the Holy Name reveals your unique spiritual identity, including your spiritual body, character traits, and the particular service you have for Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa in the spiritual world. Śrīla Prabhupāda writes in this connection: By the practice of devotional service, beginning with hearing and chanting, the impure heart of a conditioned soul is purified, and thus he can understand his eternal relationship with the Supreme Personality of Godhead. That eternal relationship is described by Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu: *jīvera ‘svarūpa’ haya kṛṣṇera ‘nitya-dāsa*.’ The living entity is an eternal servitor of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. When one is convinced about this relationship, which is called *sambandha*, he then acts accordingly. (*Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Ādi* 7.142, purport) The greatest problem of material life is that we forget that we have a completely different identity to the one we have temporarily assumed right now. Our true identity is covered as we become bound by Māyā’s illusions. When the self is lost—all is lost. The purpose of any yoga system, particularly bhakti-yoga, must therefore be to again connect the disconnected soul to the Lord. In a well-known analogy, this means that the spark returns to the fire where it can sparkle and dance again. *CHAIN AROUND THE NECK* Śrīla Prabhupāda describes how we are bound by *māyā* in the material world: It is a fact that every living entity is eternally a servant of Kṛṣṇa. This is forgotten due to the influence of *māyā*, which induces one to believe in material happiness. Being illusioned by *māyā*, one thinks that material happiness is the only desirable object. This material consciousness is like a chain around the neck of the conditioned soul. As long as he is bound to that conception, he cannot get out of *māyā*’s clutches. However, if by Kṛṣṇa’s mercy he gets in touch with a bona fide spiritual master, abides by his order and serves him, engaging other conditioned souls in the Lord’s service, he then attains liberation and Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa’s shelter. (*Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Madhya* 22.25, purport) We conditioned souls can be released from Māyā’s tight bond around our necks only by the mercy of guru and Kṛṣṇa. Only when that chain is broken are we free to enter a loving sambandha with Kṛṣṇa. Here is an anecdote that expresses this beautifully. There was once a circus in India that burned to the ground. All the animals escaped with the exception of one elephant. The tigers broke free; the monkeys scurried away. Every animal managed to find freedom in spite of being behind prison bars—all except for this one robust elephant. Much to everyone’s surprise, it was discovered later that the elephant was tied to a pole with nothing more than a thin, flimsy rope. That elephant was stronger than all the other animals! His obstacle to freedom—a flimsy rope… how could it be? A deeper study brought to light that when this elephant was young, it had been captured from the jungle and tied with an iron chain to a tree. For one week the calf tried to escape. It pulled on the chain until its leg was covered with blood and pus. The wound got infected and flies feasted. The young elephant continued trying frantically to break the chain but finally surrendered to its fate and stopped pulling. From that time onward his guards removed the chain and replaced it with a flimsy rope. The elephant never tried to escape. They then sold him to the circus. *What was going on?* This elephant always remembered how it was bound when it was young and could not escape. The iron chain still existed in its mind, even after being physically removed. For the elephant, the chain forever bonded him to the sentiment: ‘I can’t change my fate.’ Each of us is also bound by an iron chain in our minds. It is covered with the rust of impressions and desires hardened over many lifetimes! You cannot see it with these eyes though you can know its presence by behaviours stemming from your conditioned nature. The chain keeps us under indenture: we are tightly tied to our present condition, to our present identity and to the material world. Every time we feel impelled to advance spiritually, it tugs at us doing its best to halt our progress. Worse still, our problems deepen because this chain feels like a part of us. We are so accustomed to being in māyā that we have never known anything else. Who would you be without the chain? It’s frightening to glimpse into the unknown. Can we break free from this chain? Virtually impossible. The chain is far stronger than any actual iron chain. We can escape a physical chain if we crack it with heavy tongs, but in this world there are no tongs to destroy the chain in the mind. *FREED BY KṚṢṆA* But there is hope! Kṛṣṇa lives in the inner mind which is called the *citta* in Sanskrit and the subconsciousness by modern psychologists. As the Deity of the *citta*, Kṛṣṇa is known as Citta Hari because he is the enchanter of the inner mind. He can easily break the chain and free us from the clutches of past conditioning—if we seriously turn to Him. And that is the whole point of chanting in *sambandha*: to become aware that we have a relationship with the Lord and need to turn to Him. In *Śrī* *Caitanya-caritāmṛta* (*Madhya* 22.33) it is said: > ‘kṛṣṇa, tomāra haṅa’ yadi bale eka-bāra > māyā-bandha haite kṛṣṇa tāre kare pāra One is immediately freed from the clutches of māyā if he seriously and sincerely says: ‘My dear Lord Kṛṣṇa, although I have forgotten You for so many long years in the material world, today, I am surrendering unto You. I am Your sincere and serious servant. Please engage me in Your service.’ This powerful prayer brings us into divine connection, or at least into the awareness that we have a divine relationship with Kṛṣṇa. Thus, it brings us closer to Kṛṣṇa’s saving grace. We can see this in action during the amazing pastime where Kṛṣṇa delivers the snake Kāliya from its demoniac mentality. After the dramatic moments when Kṛṣṇa crushes Kāliya’s hundreds of hoods while dancing on them, Kāliya, wearied and barely breathing, says: O my Lord, it is so difficult to give up one’s conditioned nature, though it causes us to identify with that which is unreal. We serpents are bitter, envious and angry by nature. How can we possibly give this up on our own? Thankfully, you are the omniscient Lord of the universe and can free us from our illusion. (*Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam* 10.16.56–59, paraphrased) *MEDITATING ON THE MEANING OF THE MANTRA* In the *Hari-bhakti-vilāsa*, Śrīla Sanātana Goswami encourages us to practice mantrārtha-cintanam, that is, we must meditate on the meaning of the *mantra*. Only then is the full power of the *mantra* released. If we’re absentminded and not aware of the meaning, we remain unfocused. In the aforementioned verse from *Śrī* *Caitanya-caritāmṛta* (*Madhya* 22.33) we learn the secret: proper inner orientation incorporates the meaning of the mantra in the mind: ‘Please engage me in your service.’ By this, *sambandha-jñāna* is established and thus we understand that we have a relationship with Kṛṣṇa. The whole idea of chanting the Holy Name is to attract the presence of the Lord by glorifying Him. We call Him with affection because He possesses all the best qualities of beauty, strength, kindness, knowledge and is capable of the supermost form of action . . . and because we really need Him! All the *ācāryas* (great teachers), such as Jīva and Raghunātha Goswamis, Gopal Guru Goswami and Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura, have left us lists of meanings of the *mahā-mantra*. Śrīla Prabhupāda compacts all of these into the prayer: ‘My dear Rādhā, my dear Kṛṣṇa, please engage me in Your service.’ In this connection, Śrīla Prabhupāda gave an instruction that guides *kīrtana* leaders when they sing: Your business is not to satisfy the crowd. Your business is to satisfy Kṛṣṇa, and then the crowd will be automatically satisfied. We are not going to please the crowd. We are going to give them Kṛṣṇa. So you should be very much careful whether you are delivering Kṛṣṇa in the right way. Then they’ll be satisfied. Your only business should be to satisfy Kṛṣṇa.* Kīrtana is not primarily about music, rhythms, fancy *mṛdaṅga*-beats, *karatāla* playing, attractive voices or melodies. The Lord is not really attracted to our music; He has *gopīs* in the spiritual world who are expert musicians far beyond our capabilities. They are served by thirty-three thousand *ragas* and Kṛṣṇa Himself plays His flute all day in a style that transforms hearts, making even rocks melt! That is real music. He really doesn’t need our music. He only needs our hearts. Kīrtana is about a relationship; this cannot be emphasised enough. If we don’t become aware of our relationship with Kṛṣṇa and don’t begin to meditate on where we are right now in that relationship, we will sing more or less like folk singers and never enter the mysteries of the *mantra*. Thus, Kṛṣṇa will not be present in our *kīrtana* because we are not present in our relationship with Him. The relationship is all He looks for. If we overlook this, we will never enter the world of *kīrtana* but remain in the world of mundane music. Śrīla Haridāsa Ṭhākura, the great teacher of the Holy Name, also explains this: If a person by a saintly Vaiṣṇava’s mercy understands his relationship with Lord Kṛṣṇa and chants Lord Kṛṣṇa’s Holy Name, he then attains a great treasure of spiritual love. (*Śri Harināma Cintāmaṇi* 3.26) The word *kīrtana* itself is derived from the root kṛt, to glorify. Thus, ask yourself before you begin to sing: ‘Whom do I glorify now?’ You can actually visualise yourself standing before your Lord and addressing Him through His Holy Name, ‘O Rādhā, O Kṛṣṇa . . .’ After we have connected with Kṛṣṇa and start to address Him in a mood of servitorship, then if we are able, it’s wonderful to add violin, sitar, flute, etc., to produce a concert worthy of pleasing Kṛṣṇa. But first things first: the relationship should always be the focal point. With that in our hearts, we can furnish further ornaments. If, however, you are not present in the relationship, you miss the point of *kīrtana* and will always practice shadow *kīrtana*, which will not nourish you spiritually. *THE REAL NAME VERSUS THE SHADOW NAME* Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura has written two books on chanting: *Śrī Harināma Cintāmaṇi* and the sequel *Bhajana Rahasya*. He says in the third chapter of *Śrī Harināma Cintāmaṇi* that we need to chant in the awareness of our relationship with Kṛṣṇa. If we don’t do this then we will only ever obtain a shadow of the Holy Name, not the real Name. yāvat sambandha jñāna sthira nāhi haya tāvat anarthe nāmābhāsera āśraya As long as someone does not understand his relationship with Kṛṣṇa, the individual soul will take shelter of *nāmābhāsa*—the shadow of the Holy Name. (*Śrī Harināma Cintāmaṇi* 3.27) There is a difference between the real Name and its shadow, just as there is a difference between an actual tasty meal on a plate and a projected image of one. We can’t actually eat from the latter. It is a shadow of the real thing leaving us hungry, and as a result, forcing us to go elsewhere to eat something real. It is the same with chanting. If we chant the shadow of the Holy Name, that is to chant without any conscious awareness of our relationship with Kṛṣṇa, we also remain spiritually hungry, and as a result, we are drawn to taste the pleasures of the material world. Without the spirit of the Name, we are forced to seek out material satisfaction and make unconscious compromises to our Kṛṣṇa consciousness. The tragedy is that this is often done unconsciously and we don’t even know what we’re really doing or what we’re really missing! You might ask: Why can’t we just remain neutral and go on chanting the Name of Kṛṣṇa distractedly without becoming materially motivated? The constitutional nature of the soul is to constantly gravitate towards enjoyment. We need enjoyment like we need water. Therefore, if we don’t get spiritual enjoyment, we have no other choice but to look for short term illusory material enjoyment. Hence, it is absolutely essential to get spiritually nourished! If we don’t, our hearts will feel immediately spiritually weak. This is an important signal we often miss and must urgently pay attention to. Therefore, as long as one does not learn from a bona fide spiritual master about the true relationship that exists between oneself and the Supreme Lord, he or she remains consigned to the *anartha* of ignorance. At a certain point in my life, I stopped all I was doing to look back on the years behind me. I was deeply disappointed because I could see that I had not made full use of the teachings of Kṛṣṇa consciousness. I still had most of the symptoms of material consciousness. I needed to change something or felt I would die of frustration! It was then that I began a sincere inquiry into why my spiritual progress had come to a halt and how I could truly advance from where I was. I asked the question: What is missing in my life? After arduous soul-searching for maybe three to four years, one dear Vaiṣṇava who was very close to Śrīla Prabhupāda reminded me in a moving conversation of the importance of chanting the Holy Name properly. He challenged me, ‘Is that not what your spiritual master had told you? Why have you forgotten?’ These words came from the mouth of a man who chanted 64 rounds a day—there was tremendous force behind them. I thought to myself, ‘He really does know what he’s talking about!’ so I received his words deeply and felt a new awakening to the teachings of my spiritual master. Then I knew what I had to do! I began anew my journey with the Holy Name and discovered many things I had only heard of before. Perhaps the most important realisation was that we have to chant the real Name and not the shadow of the Name. Let me ask you now: Have you achieved what you most deeply desire in your spiritual life? What is your plan to get there? How long can you go on tasting shadow spiritual experiences—one more year? Two more years? Three more years? It’s a serious issue. Personally, I have spent a lot of my life in shadow chanting and I am still falling into that trap. When I look around I see many devotees who are not yet spiritually satisfied because they too are experiencing only the shadow of spiritual life. They attain a semblance, a look-alike, but not the real thing . . . It is for this reason we are not as spiritually strong as we would wish to be. *LOST RELATIONSHIP* Do you have strong friendships? By this I mean people close to your heart, who are with you through good and bad times, people with whom your life is tightly bound. Will these relationships endure at your deathbed and beyond? There is only one person who is tightly bound to us beyond the barrier of death. He has always been with us, even before this life. He is a friend who knows the contents of our heart… and yet we have somehow managed to forget Him. We have inconceivably lost our most important relationship . . . Of course, in the ultimate sense this relationship can never be lost; we only lose our consciousness of it. We are always a part of Kṛṣṇa for we are souls and the soul is part of God. But we have to awaken from our forgetfulness to fully benefit from that one relationship. In the Second World War, family members from countries like Poland and Romania were torn apart. Years after the war they again found each other. Imagine the moving scene when a son was reunited with his old parents. How must he have felt? In some cases, people were infants when they were separated from their families but nevertheless they felt a deep bond when they met as adults. Their natural relationships started to blossom as soon as they were active in those relationships—talking to each other, eating and working together as a family. Just as these inactive relationships were revived instantaneously, our relationship with Kṛṣṇa can be reactivated the moment we turn to Him—for example when we go on pilgrimage to a holy place such as Vṛndāvana, the home of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa. Transcendental feelings of love awaken just by visiting Them ‘at home.’ In Vṛndāvana or Māyāpur, the latter is home of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, one can engage in chanting or other devotional practices and especially feel, ‘Kṛṣṇa is here and I have a substantial relationship with Him.’ No one has to tell you about it. It comes naturally. Śrīla Prabhupāda writes in The Nectar of Devotion: ‘The places in the eighty-four-square-mile district of Mathurā are so beautifully situated on the banks of the Yamunā that anyone who goes there will never want to return to this material world.’* *ŚRĪLA BHAKTIVINODA ṬHĀKURA’S RECOMMENDATION* For a divine relationship to manifest, we need three elements: **Bhakta*: the devotee **Bhagavān*: the Supreme Lord Kṛṣṇa **Bhakti*: the process of devotional service (chanting is a limb of *bhakti*). When these three come together, the Holy Name dances on the tongue of the devotee as described by Śrīla Rūpa Goswami, ‘Love (*bhakti*) makes Kṛṣṇa dance. It makes the devotee dance. It dances itself. The three dance together.’ (*Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta*, *Antya* 18.18) For this kind of magical chanting to take place, Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura recommends the following three-step process that renews our understanding and establishes our position in relation to Kṛṣṇa. The steps respectively address the questions: 1) Who am I? 2) To whom do I relate? 3) Where does this relationship take place? Step 1 Connect to your spiritual essence and identity I am an atomic particle of consciousness and the eternal servant of Kṛṣṇa. Step 2 Connect to the other person in the relationship Kṛṣṇa is the infinite conscious entity and my only master. Step 3 Inhabit the space of the relationship The material world is a prison house meant to reform my adverse tendencies and teach me to be present in my relationship with Kṛṣṇa in the sacred space of *kīrtana* and *japa*. By deliberately creating this space of spiritual consciousness within, you can actually chant with devotion. *Sambandha* is established the moment a devotee sincerely turns to Kṛṣṇa and thinks ‘I don’t wish to be a slave of Māyā anymore. It is enough! I don’t want to be chained to an ordinary material existence in a world of birth and death, slapped by Māyā at every opportunity she gets! It’s now time to turn to my relationship with You.’ *Śrīla Prabhupāda, lecture on *Bhagavad-gītā* 7.1, Los Angeles, December 2, 1968. **The Nectar of Devotion*, p. 111. *Śacīnandana Swami has published seven books and released two CDs. He offers an array of retreats, seminars, and workshops on Kṛṣṇa consciousness. To learn more, visit sacinandanaswami.com.* How I Came to Kṛṣṇa Consciousness *From Cornfields to Kṛṣṇa* “I hope they don’t come up to me,” I thought on seeing devotees for the first time. “It would be so embarrassing.” By Christopher Booth *After a twenty-year interval, the Hare Kṛṣṇas get a second look.* I vividly recall seeing the Hare Kṛṣṇas as they chanted down the brick street of the Gaslamp District in downtown San Diego one week after I got out of the military. Happily singing that famous *mantra*, they slowly approached me where I stood outside some random bar. “I hope they don’t come up to me,” I thought. “It would be so embarrassing.” I put on a condescending smirk, and they went by on their merry way. Little did I realize at the time that I would become a devotee, finding myself inside the doors of New Dwaraka Dhama in Los Angeles almost two decades later. Growing up in a small rural town in Iowa, I was exposed only to Christianity, like most people who have grown up in the U.S. since its founding. I was often told that Eastern religions are weird and cultish, that they worship strange idols, and that the adults gather to do nothing but chant meaningless mantras all day to avoid doing real work. And I took it in, hook, line, and sinker. As with so many youthful beliefs, I was wrong. I have been wrong about a great many things over the years, too many to count to be sure, but the biggest mistake has been depriving myself of any meaningful connection to spirituality. Growing up in the conservative Midwest certainly limited me to being exposed to only a few forms of Christianity, but I nonetheless never felt a connection to Christianity, or any of the Abrahamic religions for that matter. I do not recall ever meeting a Hindu or a Buddhist in any town or city near where I grew up. The lack of spirituality continued for many years until about a year ago when I read Forbidden Archeology, by Michael A. Cremo (Drutakarmā Dāsa) and Richard L. Thompson (Sadāpūta Dāsa). Then everything changed. A connection was made. I was so moved by the authors’ words that I wrote to Drutakarmā. He kindly replied, and he continued to reply to my inquiries. Since I lived nearby, he suggested I attend a *Bhagavad-gītā* class at the Los Angeles temple, where he resides, and so I took him up on that suggestion and went on a Tuesday evening. When I got there early and was browsing in Govinda’s Gift Shop, I was mildly annoyed to learn there was no class on Tuesdays, just a *kīrtana*, but I decided to go anyway. Best decision of my life. *A Transformative Evening* Twenty years after encountering the Kṛṣṇas in San Diego, I walked into the Los Angeles temple and was immediately greeted in the most warm way by a friendly person manning a book table. I asked him his name, and he pointed to his eye and replied “Āiṭoṭā” (pronounce eye-tota). As I stood there not knowing what to do, he grabbed a chair for me and told me to sit. “Listen, and feel the vibration of the mantra being chanted,” he instructed. I did just that, and for the next hour I sat completely still listening to the kīrtana, the emotions I experienced ranging from sorrow to joy to weeping tears of happiness. It was a life-changing event for me, as similar events have been for many hundreds of thousands of devotees since 1965 when Prabhupāda landed in New York Harbor. It felt like a curtain dropped to reveal the divine truth behind it. I began to attend regular classes and morning sessions, though it hasn’t been the smoothest entry into Kṛṣṇa consciousness for me, especially regarding temple etiquette. As many readers know, there is a fairly lengthy list of do’s and don’ts. The same morning I attended my first *Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam* class, given by the visiting Rādhānāth Swami, I held my cupped hand way too high above the rinsing bowl after drinking caraṇāmṛta, and water splashed all over the beautiful marble floor. Next, rather than sitting on the floor like most of the devotees, I sat in one of the chairs along the back wall generally reserved for senior devotees. My demerits were quickly piling up. Continuing my laundry list of missteps, when I first started counting *japa*, I held the mālā in my left hand without a bead bag, a no-no double whammy. And last but not least, when I first heard that one should count sixteen rounds every day of the holy mantra, I thought it meant reciting the mantra sixteen times. By my faulty logic, I was short 1,712 *mantras*. I would not be surprised if Kṛṣṇa got a chuckle out of that one. I have since corrected my math and dutifully do *japa* correctly every morning. It is the very least I can do for Lord Kṛṣṇa, for He has shown me the divine path to Vaikuṇṭha, a path I humbly and faithfully follow with all my heart. *A Course Correction* Those tears I shed when I first heard the Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra inside the temple were like a desperately needed rain on a parched land devoid of nutrients where very little was growing. And believe me, nothing was growing inside me besides despair and hopelessness. *Bhakti-yoga* has been a course correction in my life. Through the clear lens of truth, I perceive the world much differently now. I now look back on that ignorant person who watched the Kṛṣṇas in San Diego twenty years ago and think so much lost time has elapsed. On the other hand, better late than never. To never have had Kṛṣṇa in my life would now be unthinkable. It has been a shock to my system, to be sure, and it caused some morose feelings the first few weeks, mainly over the regret of time lost and the realization of such emptiness inside, but that has since passed, replaced by ever-increasing joy in finding Kṛṣṇa. He was always there; I just wasn’t looking. Śrīla Prabhupāda writes, “When we speak of hearing and chanting, it means that not only should one chant and hear the holy name of the Lord as Rāma or Kṛṣṇa (or systematically as the sixteen names Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare / Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare), but one should also read and hear the *Bhagavad-gītā* and *Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam* in the association of devotees. This primary practice of *bhakti-yoga* will cause the seed already sowed in the heart to sprout, and by a regular watering process, as mentioned above, the *bhakti-yoga* creeper will begin to grow.” (*Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam* 2.2.30, Purport). Of course, just one short quote from one purport of Prabhupāda’s sums it up better than I ever could encapsulate in an entire book, let alone this short essay. Kṛṣṇa consciousness encourages you to dive deeply into the ocean of nectar straight down to the bottom, where it is most blissfully still. The ultimate requirement for any devotee is simple: devotion and service to Kṛṣṇa. That’s it. No more is needed to go back home, back to Godhead. Letters *Kṛṣṇa’s Indian Look* My wife likes the information in the *Bhagavad-gītā* and Śrīla Prabhupāda’s other books but struggles with believing God to be the visual image we see in the paintings. “He looks too Indian.” I say that the spiritual knowledge we read is relevant for everyone, but I can’t help agreeing with her a bit about the image of God as Kṛṣṇa looking Indian. I say, “If he wore a shirt and tie, would that be better?” But she just looks at me funny. What’s your advice? Nik Via the Internet *Reply:* Some people say they would like to picture Kṛṣṇa in different ways, and that’s okay. But Lord Brahmā describes Him in a specific way in his *Brahma-saṁhitā* and elsewhere. He is very beautiful, and our pictures surely don’t do Him justice. Though the scriptures describe Him, it is hard for us to imagine how the supreme beautiful person looks, because He is spiritual and we are in material consciousness. When we are purified, then He will reveal His form to us. Prabhupāda often said that we can “see” God by hearing about Him. He is in your heart, so try to take your meditation—your chanting and “seeing”—there, deep within your heart, and see what happens. The artists’ eyes are conditioned by what they have experienced, and that influences their art. But don’t let the pictures mislead you or disappoint you. Become self-realized and let the soul enjoy His beauty when the real you sees Him face to face. *The Problem of Envy* How to overcome envy? Kishor Via the Internet *Reply:* We envy God and want to take His place. That’s the source of all of our problems. Now we have to learn our lesson. The best process to overcome envy is to serve the person we envy, especially when that person is Kṛṣṇa. Service is humbling and purifying. To help us serve Him, Kṛṣṇa offers us the process of *bhakti*, devotional service, performed under the instructions of His representative, the spiritual master. By surrendering to the guru, one learns submissiveness and respect for others. This will wear away some of our contamination, and we can then realize that we are not “number one” under any terms. We are all subservient to Kṛṣṇa. In fact, we are servants of His servants. Acting according to our natural position as servants makes us happy. We can joyfully serve the Lord and reciprocate in loving exchanges with Him. We can learn the art of pleasing someone besides ourselves. As it is said, “Giving is better than receiving.” Many people find this to be true in ordinary life. That’s because by nature we are eternal loving servants of the Lord. *Increasing Faith* How can we make our faith in God stronger and more steady day by day? Ummed Via the Internet *Reply:* The more we know about Kṛṣṇa, the more our faith in Him will increase. Just as with any other relationship, one has to regularly hear about, associate with, and serve the other person. *Bhakti-yoga* is that kind of process. It begins with hearing Kṛṣṇa’s instructions, studying His character and glories, chanting His holy names, and serving Him. It is a joyful process that anyone can do. Hear from someone who really knows Kṛṣṇa, like His direct representative in the form of the spiritual master. Kṛṣṇa’s teachings are there in the *Bhagavad-gītā*, and His glories are expounded elaborately in *Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam*. In our temples we have daily classes about Kṛṣṇa’s teachings and activities, and everyone is invited to attend. Classes can be seen and heard on temple live webcams too. Adopt a sacred place and time in your life to connect with Kṛṣṇa. You can get beads and chant a set amount of *japa* every day, read some verses, listen to classes (many are available on ISKCONdesiretree.com), and begin some regular service to Him. It is important to be regular, as this will increase your strength. It is best to do these activities in the association of advanced devotees. Adopt these good spiritual habits, and you will find yourself coming closer to your old friend, Śrī Kṛṣṇa. He is waiting for you. A Pause for Prayer My dear Lord of the Vaikuṇṭha planets, where there is no anxiety, my mind is extremely sinful and lusty, being sometimes so-called happy and sometimes so-called distressed. My mind is full of lamentation and fear, and it always seeks more and more money. Thus it has become most polluted and is never satisfied in topics concerning You. I am therefore most fallen and poor. In such a status of life, how shall I be able to discuss Your activities? My dear Lord, You are always transcendentally situated on the other side of the river of death, but because of the reactions of our own activities, we are suffering on this side. Indeed, we have fallen into this river and are repeatedly suffering the pains of birth and death and eating horrible things. Now kindly look upon us—not only upon me but also upon all others who are suffering—and by Your causeless mercy and compassion, deliver us and maintain us. O my Lord, O Supreme Personality of Godhead, original spiritual master of the entire world, what is the difficulty for You, who manage the affairs of the universe, in delivering the fallen souls engaged in Your devotional service? You are the friend of all suffering humanity, and for great personalities it is necessary to show mercy to the foolish. Therefore I think that You will show Your causeless mercy to persons like us, who engage in Your service. Prahlāda Mahārāja to Lord Nṛsiṁha *Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam* 7.9.39, 41–42 From the Editor *Lord Kṛṣṇa’s Avatars* Every year, the May/June issue of Back to Godhead coincides with the celebration of the appearance of Lord Nṛsiṁha, Kṛṣṇa’s ferocious incarnation as half man, half lion. To protect His five-year-old devotee Prahlāda from Prahlāda’s evil father, Lord Nṛsiṁha burst forth from a palace pillar at dusk on the fourteenth day of the waxing moon of the month of Madhusūdana, corresponding to May 6 on the modern calendar this year. Honoring the Lord’s avatars is an important part of Vaiṣṇava life. Anyone devoted to Lord Kṛṣṇa naturally wants to hear all about Him, including His incarnations. The most important source of information about Kṛṣṇa is *Śrīmad-*Bhāgavatam**, which begins with a gathering of sages fifty centuries ago. In the first chapter, the leader of these sages, Śaunaka Ṛṣi, asks the chosen speaker, Sūta Gosvāmī, six questions, one of which, phrased as a request, is “His transcendental acts are magnificent and gracious, and great learned sages like Nārada sing of them. Please, therefore, speak to us, who are eager to hear, about the adventures He performs in His various incarnations.” (*Bhāgavatam* 1.1.17) “His” here refers to Lord Kṛṣṇa, whom Śaunaka Ṛṣi has already mentioned (1.1.12): “All blessings upon you, O Sūta Gosvāmī. You know for what purpose the Personality of Godhead appeared in the womb of Devakī as the son of Vasudeva.” While *Śrīmad-*Bhāgavatam** describes the activities of many *avatars*, the overall focus of the book is clearly Lord Kṛṣṇa, the original Personality of Godhead. As Vaiṣṇava commentators have pointed out, when the various inquirers throughout the *Bhāgavatam* ask to hear about particular *avatars* of the Lord, they are clearly asking to hear about how Kṛṣṇa appeared as those *avatars*. In essence the devotees are saying, “Kṛṣṇa has appeared in many amazing forms. Please tell me about this one.” They know that Nṛsiṁha, for example, is Kṛṣṇa appearing as half man, half lion to reciprocate the love of His pure devotee Prahlāda. They know that Lord Rāmacandra is Kṛṣṇa playing the role of an ideal king. Lord Kṛṣṇa’s avatars and expansions display varying degrees of opulence, and the Vedic scriptures categorize them accordingly. For example, the two forms of the Lord just mentioned—Nṛsiṁha and Rāmacandra—are listed, along with Kṛṣṇa Himself, in the top category, called para-avastha. Śrīla Rūpa Gosvāmī, in his *Śrī Laghu-bhāgavatāmṛta*, proves with scriptural evidence that Lord Kṛṣṇa is the leader of this category. He is *svayaṁ bhagavān*, or “the Lord Himself.” All others are considered *aṁśas*, or parts, of Him. The Vedic scriptures reveal a vast amount of information about God. By reading *Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam* we can learn about the Lord’s activities when He descends to this world in various forms, and we can learn why He descends. We can know God’s motivations, His inner life. God, Kṛṣṇa, acts only by His own sweet will. No one and nothing can compel Him to do anything; all His activities are *līlā*—“pastimes” or “play.” Kṛṣṇa does what He wants to do. And what He wants to do most of all is favor His devotees. Being God, Kṛṣṇa is greater than everyone else in every way. His devotees feel eternally indebted to Him because with His unlimited opulence He serves them better than they can ever serve Him. His *avatars* demonstrate this dynamic. To please His devotees, Kṛṣṇa appears before them in whatever form of His they find the most endearing. Though Lord Nṛsiṁha terrifies the wicked, for Prahlāda there’s no one more beautiful or affectionate, and he wants nothing other than the privilege of serving Him eternally. Hare Kṛṣṇa. —*Nāgarāja Dāsa, Editor* Vedic Thoughts The Lord is not . . . an ingrate to anyone who renders Him some sort of service. The devotees of the Lord who always engage in His loving service are never to be disappointed in the progressive march of devotional service. His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda *Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam* 3.3.2, Purport The Supreme Lord is far away from the vision of the idolaters, but He is very near to the spiritual vision of devotees. Vaiṣṇava *dharma* alone is the authorized Vedic *dharma*. Only the Vaiṣṇavas can understand the actual purport of the Vedas. Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura *Uncommon Dialogues*, Discourse 1 By worship of the Lord, who is the source of all beings and who is all-pervading, a man can attain perfection through performing his own work. Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa *Bhagavad-gītā* 18.46 Pure devotional service is so sublime that one can very easily forget the happiness derived from material enjoyment, material liberation and mystic or *yogic* perfection. Thus the devotee is bound by Kṛṣṇa’s mercy and His uncommon power and qualities. Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu *Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Madhya-līla* 24.39 Devotional service is the process of worshiping the Supreme Lord. It consists of fixing one's mind upon Him by becoming uninterested in all material designations, both in this life and the next. This indeed is true renunciation. Lord Brahmā *Gopāla-tāpanī Upaniṣad, Pūrva* 15 Although the Lord is always invisible, He can be seen by His own power. Without that power, who could ever see the immortal Supreme Lord, who is the Supreme Self of all beings? Nārāyaṇādhyātma Quoted in *Śrī Bhagavat-sandarbha*, *Anuccheda* 46 The living being caught in the cycle of birth and death does not know how he can be delivered from the material body, which brings him so much trouble. But You, the Supreme Lord, descend to this world in various personal forms, and by performing Your pastimes You illumine the soul's path with the blazing torch of Your fame. Therefore I surrender unto You. Nāradā Muni to Lord Kṛṣṇa *Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam* 10.70.39 One may give up a family member to save the family, and abandon a family for the sake of the village. One can renounce a village for the sake of the nation, but one must be prepared to sacrifice the entire earth for the sake of the self (*ātmā*). Śrī Vidura *Mahābhārata, Udyoga-parva* 5.37.17 Worship of the Lord continues up to the point of liberation, and indeed goes on in the liberated state also, as the Vedas reveal. Śrīla Vyāsadeva *Vedānta-sūtra* 4.1.12 The residents of Vaikuṇṭha transcend everything material. For persons within the material creation, the manifold glories of those residents and the glories of the Vaikuṇṭha world and its master are beyond analogy and beyond the power of words to describe. Śrī Gopa-kumāra *Śrī Bṛhad-bhāgavatāmṛta* 2.4.40-41 BTG54-04, 2020