October 28, 1968

ON RETURNING TO Los Angeles from Santa Fe, Prabhupāda found his followers in their new location on Hollywood Boulevard, in the tourist section, a block from Grauman’s Chinese Theater. The new temple, a former beauty parlor, occupied the large first floor of an elegant old six-story office building. The space – actually tri-level, with a ground floor, a mezzanine, and a basement, was filled with more than forty devotees. Prabhupāda stayed in the Lucky Seven Hotel across the street. In the early evening, before the devotees would go out again to chant, they would crowd into Prabhupāda’s room and sit with him.

Prabhupāda had ordered that in every center his disciples perform public kīrtana, and that order was sending the devotees in New York, Boston, and San Francisco to the parks. In L.A. the devotees were going out twelve hours a day chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa in Hollywood. Prabhupāda had simply asked that they go out and chant, but enthusiastic new leaders Tamāla Kṛṣṇa and Viṣṇujana were taking that order to the fullest extent.

One night Prabhupāda came out in a car and parked in front of the kīrtana party, watching the chanting and dancing with pleasure. Viṣṇujana, who had become especially expert on the mṛdaṅga, played and led the chanting. The boys wore clean, uniform saffron dhotīs, and the women saffron sārīs. Tamāla Kṛṣṇa had organized the devotees almost to the point of choreography, and Prabhupāda watched as devotees raised their hands and danced back and forth in the “Swami Step,” which he himself had taught.

Hundreds of tourists walked along Hollywood and Vine, going to the theaters, the wax museum, the seedy bars, and the nightclubs. And although sometimes they laughed or made fun of the chanters, they were more often astonished and, at least for a moment, as they stopped in their tracks, delighted. But to Prabhupāda, sitting quietly in the car, watching the devotees, the chanting was a benediction on the sleeping souls passing by. He was convinced that everyone on Hollywood Boulevard who heard the chanting was being purified of lifetimes of sinful activity – this was the power of the holy name. And the youthful disciples on the street, energetically singing to Viṣṇujana’s beat, were also aware of this. Seeing Śrīla Prabhupāda’s car and knowing that he was watching renewed their enthusiasm.

To Prabhupāda, this kīrtana party was only happening by Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī’s blessings. Surely he would be pleased to see this revolutionary phenomenon – the holy name resounding from young American Vaiṣṇavas in the late night of this sinful city. And as Prabhupāda was convinced of the blessings of Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī, so his young followers, knowing their spiritual master was watching them, were similarly convinced by him, and they transcended all fatigue and doubt.

The devotees’ residence on Hollywood Boulevard was short lived. Their public chanting had already made them a sensation, and the arrival of the Jagannātha deities was more than the landlord had bargained for. The other tenants of the building were also disturbed, especially whenever the air-conditioning system would pick up the aroma of the chili-spiced dāl and circulate the fumes throughout the building, causing office workers to gasp and cough. The landlord served an eviction notice; he would return the devotees’ $450 on the condition that they move themselves and all their belongings from the building that same day.

The devotees had no choice. They put everything – stove, furniture, rugs, pots and pans, soap, split peas, even Lord Jagannātha – out on the sidewalk. They had nowhere to go. While the women and children waited for hours amid the paraphernalia on the street, some other devotees managed to rent enough warehouse space for the furniture.

Gradually the devotees relocated in various places. An elderly English lady allowed a few devotees to stay at her house. The brahmacārīs found a small house in the Watts area, and a few women went to another place. Dayānanda, who had a job and his own apartment, took a few married couples at his place and found an apartment for Prabhupāda, Lord Jagannātha, and Kartā Mahāśaya on Hayworth Street. Thus the devotees of the Los Angeles temple became scattered.

Despite the odd circumstances, they still came together every day for chanting, either on Hollywood Boulevard or in some other Los Angeles area. Prabhupāda began visiting the brahmacārīs at their house, where he held regular Monday, Wednesday, and Friday lectures. He would lead kīrtana, often masterfully playing the mṛdaṅga, and his playing would make everyone dance.

Nandarāṇī had arranged for Prabhupāda to lecture at the Hollywood Vegetarian Society. “Do they want to hear about Bhagavad-gītā?” Prabhupāda asked.

“No,” Nandarāṇī replied. “They only want to hear about being vegetarian.”

“You tell them Swamiji doesn’t know anything about being vegetarian. Tell them I don’t know anything. But if they want to learn about Bhagavad-gītā, I know something.”

Nandarāṇī called the Vegetarian Society and asked if they wanted to hear about Bhagavad-gītā. They didn’t.

Prabhupāda said, “And we aren’t interested in lecturing at mundane programs. Even the pigeons are vegetarians. We don’t want to be pigeons. We don’t care for vegetarian or nonvegetarian. We only care if we can offer it to Kṛṣṇa, then we eat it.”

Weeks went by. No one was able to find a new temple. The meetings in the brahmacārī apartment were confined, and the neighbors complained about the kīrtanas and the mṛdaṅga playing. But often, while the devotees were out chanting downtown, they would meet someone who would allow them to use his garage for an evening, thus providing an opportunity for all the devotees to be together with Prabhupāda.

Śrīmatī dāsī: Tamāla Kṛṣṇa met a woman on saṅkīrtana who offered her garage for Śrīla Prabhupāda to lecture in. It was in a nice neighborhood with a clean double garage. We cleaned it even more. We put up madrases on the wall, pictures over that, a large altar on one side, and a vyāsāsana for Śrīla Prabhupāda in the back. It was cold out. We kept the large double doors closed so we could heat the place and filled the air with incense, expecting Śrīla Prabhupāda to arrive soon. Many neighbors and devotees filled the garage. Jaya Gopāla waited out front to give a blast on the conchshell as Śrīla Prabhupāda arrived. We heard the conchshell and opened the garage door. As it raised from the bottom and swung slowly up to the ceiling, Śrīla Prabhupāda stood there, small and dignified, waiting to enter. He walked in majestically, took his seat on his vyāsāsana, and began a kīrtana. His lecture struck the curiosity of many neighborhood guests. They all went home with magazines, prasādam, and a new experience to relate to their friends. Thus Śrīla Prabhupāda’s preaching was going on.

One night, while speaking at a garage meeting, Prabhupāda described explicitly Kṛṣṇa’s abode, where houses are made of cintāmaṇi stone and the trees are all desire trees. The inhabitants there as well as the land and trees all have spiritual forms and are full of bliss and knowledge. There everyone serves Kṛṣṇa, and Kṛṣṇa reciprocates.

On another night Prabhupāda spoke about the song “Hari Hari Viphale” by Narottama dāsa Ṭhākura. In this song, Prabhupāda explained, the author is lamenting his disqualifications and is begging for Kṛṣṇa’s mercy. Narottama dāsa Ṭhākura laments that instead of worshiping Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa, he has simply wasted his life in sense gratification. Prabhupāda would often speak about Lord Caitanya’s saṅkīrtana movement of chanting the holy names as the antidote for the ills of Kali-yuga.

The devotees always had questions. Madhudviṣa asked how a brahmacārī can channel his sex desire in serving Kṛṣṇa. Viṣṇujana asked whether the spiritual master’s mercy was the source of the bliss he was feeling. Tamāla Kṛṣṇa asked how Kṛṣṇa could be both the father of everyone and the son of His devotee. And there were questions about what it was like to be a cow or tree in Kṛṣṇaloka and whether the soul’s rasa, or serving relationship, with Kṛṣṇa could ever be changed. And Prabhupāda would answer these questions at length.

But rarely would Prabhupāda complain that there was no temple; rather he would say, “Never mind that we have no place, we have no temple. Kṛṣṇa has provided this garage, so we accept it.” Although homeless in Los Angeles, the devotees’ basic ingredient for devotional life remained intact. It was not uncommon by Indian standards, Prabhupāda explained, for one’s living situation to be unsettled. In India, he said, as many as twenty people might keep their belongings in a single room; they would come and go, taking whatever they needed from the room, while living outside, sleeping next to the road. But in America, of course, such a life was impossible. And garage meetings would attract few people.

On November 28 Prabhupāda wrote in a letter, “So far as it goes in Los Angeles, everything is going very nicely with the sankirtan party, and soon we are expected to have a new temple location.”

When Prabhupāda met the devotees in the evening, he would ask them, “How many magazines did you distribute? How much money did you collect?” By their good results and Prabhupāda’s pleasure, a feeling of high spirits prevailed. But one night, when they came to visit him in his apartment, Prabhupāda’s mood was different. He seemed intolerant. A complacency had set in among the devotees.

“How long do you expect me to sit in this house?” he demanded of Dayānanda. And then he turned indignantly from one devotee to another. “What are you doing? The deities are in my apartment, and you are all here. What are you doing?” He looked at Nara-Nārāyaṇa. “What have you done today to find a temple?”

“Well, Prabhupāda, I was …”

But without fully hearing Nara-Nārāyaṇa’s reply or excuse, Prabhupāda turned to Tamāla Kṛṣṇa. “And you? Did you find a temple?” And one after another, he pinned down each devotee in the room. “And what did you do?” The devotees felt Prabhupāda’s anger. “I want a temple. Los Angeles must have a temple. There must be a place to worship the Deity.” That night he didn’t lecture.

Three days later, the devotees found a new temple – a one-story church with three large rooms – the first really nice piece of property the International Society for Krishna Consciousness had ever acquired. The church had been used by a Japanese Baptist congregation and was located on La Cienega Boulevard in the middle of Los Angeles. In a neighborhood of brick buildings, stores, factories, and businesses, the wooden church stood on a little patch of grass. The rent was high – five hundred dollars a month – more than Prabhupāda had ever paid for a piece of property. Although Prabhupāda had acted noncommittal when the landlord had shown him the place, afterwards he told the devotees he wanted the place and they should get it. Dayānanda questioned the high rent, but Prabhupāda said they had waited long enough. Here was a good place, so they should get it.

For Prabhupāda this new temple marked the beginning of a new era for the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement. He wrote Kīrtanānanda Swami on December 8,

You will be glad to know that we have signed a lease for the new temple for Los Angeles center. It is a very large fine chapel and now there is a program being organized here to set up everything very nicely and invite many new people to participate in our program. Krishna has been very kind to grant us such facilities, and now there are many efforts to be made to use it nicely … The rent is very high, but if we can maintain this establishment it will surely have great future prospects.

The devotees in New York had also acquired a new building, moving from 26 Second Avenue to a larger storefront two blocks up on Second Avenue. “I do not know how is your temple there,” Prabhupāda wrote Brahmānanda in New York. “I have heard that it is very nice, but I think that the temple here is probably nicer.” All devotees in other places, Prabhupāda said, should consider the new standard reached in Los Angeles. To Kṛṣṇadāsa in Germany Prabhupāda wrote,

You will be glad to learn that we are having very good success in improving our temples here and have acquired an excellent large chapel suitable for living quarters and kirtans.

And he wrote to Jadurāṇī in Boston that for his large meeting hall he would need large paintings to decorate the hall.

On moving into the temple, the devotees called a press conference. They cooked a feast for a hundred people, rented chairs, but only one reporter came. The lone reporter pointed out their mistake in holding a press conference in the evening, after normal working hours. Prabhupāda spoke and then encouraged the assembled devotees to take the feast themselves. “In Kṛṣṇa consciousness there is never any failure. If people come to the program we preach, and if not, we take prasāda.”

When a reporter from the Cosmic Star came, Prabhupāda talked frankly with him about bogus swamis and “avatāras” from India. A reporter from the Los Angeles Times interviewed Prabhupāda on whether he thought man could land on the moon. Prabhupāda told the reporter to note down that the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement has nothing to do with going to the moon. The reporter had his own angle, and he printed an article in the December 28 issue of the L.A. Times, “Swami Says People Are Living on Moon”:

If astronauts land on the moon, they probably will be opposed by highly intelligent beings who have been there for 10,000 years.

So says Swami A. C. Bhaktivedanta, spiritual leader of an attention-getting Indian cult that has grown from a few followers two and a half years ago to groups of initiates in 10 U.S. and Canadian cities.

The 72-year-old guru, interviewed Friday at the Los Angeles temple of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, 1975 La Cienega Blvd., believes first of all that there is only a remote chance that man could land on the “moon planet.”

Claiming that his statements were based on Vedic literature, specifically the Srimad Bhagwatam, Swami Bhaktivedanta said present spacesuits would have to be improved.

Matter of Body

“To land there you must have the specific body,” he said. “With this body you cannot go there; you have to change it scientifically, spiritually or otherwise.”

Granting that an astronaut’s spacesuit might provide the right “body,” the swami nevertheless maintained that the present spacesuits used by the astronauts are “not adequate.”

The Bhagavad Gita, another holy Vedic book, describes lower, middle and upper planetary systems, he said. The earth is in the middle and has beings of average intelligence. The moon is in the upper category and contains highly intelligent beings, mainly because they’ve been living so many years.

“With this body neither can you land there nor can you interfere in their business,” said the swami.

But if astronauts were successful in landing on the moon, he said he expects the moon beings to oppose the earthlings.

Citing an analogy in the Srimad Bhagwatam, he said, “One king wanted to enter the heavenly kingdom and was opposed by the demi-gods.”

The guru also indicated that any advanced civilization would not take kindly to dumb visitors from another planet.

Would astronauts (or cosmonauts) be able to see the moon beings?

‘Almost Invisible’

“They would be almost invisible,” he replied.

Howard Wheeler, an Ohio State instructor of English and a disciple who sat in for the interview, helped the swami here by suggesting that the moon beings might have “subtle” forms which would not be perceived by earth residents.

The swami saw no difficulties arising in the Krishna Consciousness movement if astronauts make a successful landing and return with nothing untoward happening.

The movement – sometimes called the Hare Krishna movement because of the importance of the chant using the words Hare, Krishna and Ram – has drawn its early growth from the recent interest in transcendental meditation.

The devotees made plans for big Sunday festivals with puppet shows and theater performances. Bhavānanda, a new devotee and former New York textile designer, decorated and painted the temple with bright colors – pinks, purples, reds, blues, greens, and bright yellows. From their kīrtanas on the street the saṅkīrtana devotees began regularly bringing guests to visit the new temple. The devotees planted 108 rose bushes, on Prabhupāda’s request, throughout the temple grounds. Within a short time an altar was ready, and the devotees brought Lord Jagannātha and Kartā Mahāśaya.

“Now we will begin full-scale Deity worship,” Prabhupāda said to some of the women. He talked of beginning something new in ISKCON – the daily offerings of prasādam to the Deity and daily āratis.

As the Los Angeles devotee community grew and prospered in its new setting, Prabhupāda gradually relinquished the management to his leading disciples. Even for outside speaking engagements, which were often late, disrupting Prabhupāda’s normal schedule, he sent his disciples in his stead. He wanted to spend his time writing books at his apartment. He said he would go to the temple three nights a week and to the festival on Sundays, but otherwise he would be inaccessible. Only his servants and Tamāla Kṛṣṇa, with his daily reports on the saṅkīrtana party, would see him in his apartment.

By December 1968 Prabhupāda was producing his books at double his normal rate. He was writing two books – Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead and The Nectar of Devotion – and both he considered essential to the foundation of the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement. Kṛṣṇa was a translation and commentary of the Tenth Canto of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam containing the stories of Kṛṣṇa’s pastimes. Wanting colorful illustrations, Prabhupāda turned to the two or three artists among his disciples and challenged them. As fast as they would paint, he would write.

As far as possible, I will require some artist who will paint pictures from the Bhagwatam as I give hints on what to paint. But the artist must be very quick. Two or three pictures must be done every week. These pictures will be used for my new book, “Krishna,” which I will begin as soon as I get the assistance of a quick painter … The Tenth Canto contains forty chapters about Krishna in Vrindaban, and fifty chapters of Krishna in Dwaraka. So our books will most likely have the first volume of the forty chapters of Krishna in Vrindaban, with one picture for each chapter.