February 1972
During Prabhupāda’s absence from Vṛndāvana the devotees had been unable to persuade Mr. S. to grant legal permission for ISKCON to use the land. Prabhupāda had insistently directed one of his Indian-born disciples, Kṣīrodakaśāyī, to acquire from Mr. S. an actual deed. Kṣīrodakaśāyī had pleaded with Mr. S., and seeing Mr. S.’s indecision, he had spoken with Mrs. S. and then with the two of them together.

Mr. and Mrs. S. had agreed that since they could not decide, they would put the matter before Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī Herself. Mrs. S. had asked Kṣīrodakaśāyī to take two slips of paper and to write yes on one and no on the other. These she had folded and placed before the family Deity of Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa. She had then asked Kṣīrodakaśāyī to pick one of the papers. Kṣīrodakaśāyī had done so, and in the presence of Mr. and Mrs. S. and Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa, he had opened the piece of paper on which was written the word yes.

When Prabhupāda had heard the news, he had been joyous.

I am especially pleased upon you that you have secured the S. land for Kṛṣṇa. Now let us cooperate to build up a wonderful center there in Vrndavana.

In March 1972 Prabhupāda returned to Vṛndāvana to sign the deed with Mr. S. and to perform the ground-breaking ceremony. With permission from the gosvāmīs at the Rādhā-Dāmodara temple, he arranged for quarters for his disciples so they would have a place to reside while the temple at Ramaṇa-reti was under construction.

Yamunā: It just so happened that on the morning that the gosvāmīs were to sign an agreement with Prabhupāda for use of the rooms at Rādhā-Dāmodara, the electricity went out. Prabhupāda’s secretary had only an electric typewriter, so I reminded Prabhupāda that I was trained in writing calligraphy. I had my writing pens with me, so immediately Prabhupāda drafted the writing that he wanted, and I took it into another room, sat down, and hand-lettered a contract with gold embossing on all the capitals. Within fifteen minutes we presented it to Śrīla Prabhupāda.

Before the gosvāmīs, Prabhupāda held up the document with pleasure and said, “Just see, my disciples are expert in everything.” Now the devotees would be allowed to reside above his rooms at Rādhā-Dāmodara temple, and they would also have access to his rooms for cleaning. Prabhupāda felt it was a grand occasion that there was something in writing for the preservation of his rooms in the Rādhā-Dāmodara temple.

To close the transaction for the land in Ramaṇa-reti, Prabhupāda and Mr. S. met at the Magistrate’s Court in Mathurā. In the presence of lawyers they completed the formalities. Prabhupāda saw it as Kṛṣṇa’s grace that he had acquired a good plot of land in Vṛndāvana, and writing to his G.B.C. secretaries in America, he asked them to send as many men as possible to help in the new project. He described his intentions “for raising up a very excellent center, to revive the spiritual life for Vrndavana on behalf of Rupa and Jiva Goswamis.”

Prabhupāda told Kṣīrodakaśāyī, “I want on this occasion huge prasādam should be prepared, and every man in Vṛndāvana should be invited and take prasādam.” Two days later, with a hundred people attending, Prabhupāda held the cornerstone-laying ceremony at Ramaṇa-reti. Again he descended into the ceremonial pit and placed the Deity of Ananta, on whose head the temple would rest.

But late that night the land was attacked. An elderly Indian widow, with local fame as a sādhu, became angry that Mr. S. had not given her the land, which she had several times requested. During the night she sent guṇḍās to dismantle the brick foundation of the ceremonial cornerstone and to desecrate the pit, which had just that day been filled with flowers and religious objects. The guṇḍās dug open the hole, threw garbage into it, and stole the “Posted” sign announcing the land’s new ownership.

Prabhupāda was in his room at the Rādhā-Dāmodara temple when he heard what had happened. He became angry and told his disciples to show the deed to the police. That night several policemen guarded the land, and when the hired guṇḍās came again, the police accosted them and warned that if they caused any more trouble they would be arrested. And that was the end of that.

Prabhupāda had several times said that by becoming a devotee, one gains many enemies. The incident also served to confirm Prabhupāda’s conviction that ISKCON’s taking possession of the land should be followed as quickly as possible by construction of a temple. They should at least encircle the land with a fence, build small huts, and live on the land while preparing for temple construction.

Tejās: “This will be the Kṛṣṇa-Balarāma temple,” Prabhupāda said. We didn’t really know what was going on. We all thought it was so far away. It was really the boondocks, Ramaṇa-reti. Nobody was out there. It was such an isolated place, and there were lots of dacoits living out there. We thought, “If we’re going to have a temple out here, no one will ever come.” But Prabhupāda said, “Wherever there is Kṛṣṇa, everyone will come.”

Prabhupāda’s secretary, Śyāmasundara, wrote to a Godbrother about the newly acquired Vṛndāvana property.

Earlier in the day, before breakfast, Prabhupada sewed up the 4,800 sq. yd. gift plot in Raman Reti where Krishna used to sport with friends in the forest, about 10 minutes walk from Radha-Damodara. Prabhupada surveyed the land (with the rope from his mosquito-net), bargained-for, drew plans for, drew up the deed for, went to Mathura magistrate’s court for and signed, sealed, and delivered in an instant. Prabhupada has asked me to request you that AT LEAST FIFTY (50) MEN FROM THE U.S. MUST COME TO INDIA IMMEDIATELY!!! At last we have got a solid programme in India: Huge projects at Mayapur, Vrindaban and Bombay. All the lands are acquired, arrangements made, and everything by Prabhupada. But only a few of us men are here to struggle with an immense task – the biggest by far within the Society, of developing these three places, and believe me these three projects are more dear to Prabhupada than any yet contemplated.

In the month while Prabhupāda was away from Bombay (he had left on February 10) the payment of fifty thousand rupees was duly made. Slowly at first, a few devotees moved to the Juhu land, living in a tent. At night the rats and mosquitoes would disturb the devotees’ sleep. While attempting to clear the overgrown weeds, they came upon empty liquor bottles and overflowing sewage. Without Prabhupāda present, their resolution grew weak.

But then Brahmānanda Swami returned from Calcutta, where he had been with Śrīla Prabhupāda. Brahmānanda Swami was inspired, and he gave the Bombay devotees new impetus. They would have to clear the land and raise a paṇḍāl right away. Brahmānanda Swami had never put on a paṇḍāl program before, but he hired a contractor to build several chaṭāī (palm frond) houses for the devotees and a festival tent. Even before the construction could begin, however, the devotees would have to thoroughly clear the land.

Mr. Sethi, a neighbor and life member, hired a work crew to cut down the weeds and vegetation, and several life members and friends in Bombay also came forward to assist. Mr. N. offered to help by sending one of his assistants, Mr. Matar, to organize the hired laborers in clearing the fields. The devotees also worked in preparation for Prabhupāda’s return.

Śrī Śrī Rādhā-Rāsavihārī arrived at Hare Krishna Land in a taxi, riding across the laps of several devotees. They had moved before, and this time Their residence was a tent. They had first come to be with the devotees of Bombay during the paṇḍāl program at Cross Maidan in downtown Bombay. On that occasion there had been a procession to Chowpatti Beach, and when the devotees had arrived, Rādhā-Rāsavihārī, beautifully dressed and decorated and installed in an ornate palanquin, had been awaiting them. Kṛṣṇa was white marble and held a silver flute; Rādhārāṇī’s right hand, palm forward, extended a benediction. They were beautiful.

After Their first appearance at Chowpatti, Rādhā-Rāsavihārī had moved to the Akash Ganga Building, where gradually the devotees had established a decent standard of Deity worship. When Prabhupāda had left orders that Rādhā-Rāsavihārī should move to Juhu as soon as the down payment was made, some of the devotees had questioned him: Why should the Deity move before the facilities were proper? Shouldn’t they wait until the temple was built?

“Once the Deity is installed on a piece of property,” Prabhupāda had replied, “no one will remove Them.”

More than anyone else, Prabhupāda was aware of the proper worship to be offered to Rādhā-Rāsavihārī, but his emphasis now was on securing the land. How else, he reasoned, could he eventually give Rādhā-Rāsavihārī a royal throne and temple unless They Themselves first established Their right of proprietorship by taking up residence at Hare Krishna Land? The arrival of Rādhā-Rāsavihārī at Juhu also meant increased difficulties for the devotees, who now had to struggle to maintain the morning pūjā and cook six daily offerings in the meager kitchen. Even Rādhā-Rāsavihārī’s tent was insubstantial and swayed in the wind.

Śrīla Prabhupāda, however, saw the move as a necessary, transcendental tactic. He felt certain that everyone involved – himself, the owners of the land, the Bombay municipality – would accept that the land belonged to Kṛṣṇa, since Kṛṣṇa was already residing there. And because he was asking Lord Kṛṣṇa Himself to accept these inconveniences, he prayed to the Deity, “My dear Sir, please remain here, and I shall build a beautiful temple for You.”

By the time Prabhupāda returned to Bombay, Rādhā-Rāsavihārī were installed on the stage of the festival paṇḍāl. Attendance at the festival was not as great as it would have been in downtown Bombay – no more than five hundred people came a night – but Prabhupāda was satisfied. This festival was on their own property, and this was only the beginning.

Every evening Prabhupāda lectured at the paṇḍāl and attended the kīrtana and ārati before Rādhā-Rāsavihārī. Pañcadraviḍa Swami had collected donations of five tons of dāl, rice, and flour, and the devotees were regularly cooking enough kicharī to serve 125 people free prasādam daily. In the evening Prabhupāda himself would give out halavā from the Deities’ plate, and the crowd, including well-to-do businessmen and their wives, would press forward to receive the prasādam. Prabhupāda liked the festival so much that he told the devotees to arrange to keep the tent for a perpetual festival.

Prabhupāda lived on the land in a tent, just like the other devotees, until a Mr. Acharya, one of the more favorable tenants living in the back of the property, invited him to stay at his home.

Within a few days of his arrival at Juhu, Prabhupāda was ready to hold the ground-breaking and cornerstone-laying ceremony – another tactic for securing possession of the land. But it was more than a tactic, as he wanted a temple constructed as soon as possible. Rādhā-Rāsavihārī should not remain standing in a tent but should be protected by a silver and teakwood siṁhāsana on a marble altar. They should be surrounded by deities of the two gopīs Lalitā and Viśākhā, and Their temple should have marble domes more than a hundred feet high. Thousands should come daily for darśana and prasādam.

One morning, in the midst of the festival activities, the devotees of Hare Krishna Land joined Prabhupāda in a simple cornerstone-laying ceremony. They had dug a deep ceremonial pit and surrounded it with bricks. Prabhupāda descended and placed the Deity of Śeṣa. Then, sitting on a simple platform, Prabhupāda accompanied the kīrtana by playing a brass gong, while one by one the devotees came before him and threw dirt into the pit, filling it, while smoke rose from the sacrificial fire.

Prabhupāda was outraged that Brahmānanda Swami had agreed to pay the contractors forty thousand rupees for the paṇḍāl construction. It was the same old thing – the foolish Western disciples getting cheated. Prabhupāda refused to pay; four thousand rupees should be more than enough. When the contractors came to see him, he told them that he had little money and that they would have to be satisfied with four thousand rupees. They protested, but Prabhupāda became angry and insisted, “Accept it. You are making five hundred percent profit!”

“As soon as they see us,” Prabhupāda said later, “they say, ‘These Americans, they have got money!’ Our work is going on in India, but as soon as money is being spent, fifty percent is being spoiled because you Americans are inexperienced. What can be done? The Indians want your money, and they cheat like anything.”

During the paṇḍāl festival the tenement neighbors had become disturbed by kīrtanas over the loudspeaker. They were already disturbed that their landlord, Mr. N., was slow to repair the buildings and would sometimes let them go a full week without water before fixing the plumbing. Being suddenly forced to live with more than twenty American devotees only exacerbated their dissatisfaction. Some of the neighbors were converted Christians and unsympathetic to Vaiṣṇavism; they even feared their children might again be converted to Hinduism. Some tenants claimed the devotees were infringing on their privacy, some criticized the devotees for arguing among themselves, and others criticized that the unmarried men and women were living in close proximity – even though in separate quarters.

A few of the neighbors, however, could see that the Western Vaiṣṇavas were struggling to sincerely worship Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa. None of the tenants criticized Prabhupāda, however, so when he was present, he was able to pacify them and resolve any disagreements. But Prabhupāda knew that after he left, the situation could easily become volatile.

Prabhupāda was planning an extensive world tour, traveling eastward to Australia, Japan, Hawaii, the U.S., and perhaps Mexico and Europe. It might be as long as half a year before he would return to India, and he wanted things to progress smoothly in Bombay without him.

A few days before Prabhupāda’s departure, Madhudviṣa Swami complained, “I’m not feeling very enthusiastic here. I think I need a change.” Prabhupāda asked him where he wanted to go, and Madhudviṣa replied that he was thinking of Australia. Prabhupāda said, “Yes, I am going there. You also come.” Brahmānanda Swami told Prabhupāda that the preaching was deteriorating in Nairobi in his absence, and Prabhupāda agreed that he should return to his duties there.

Again, Prabhupāda had to choose a new Bombay manager, and this time he chose Girirāja, a young brahmacārī and leading preacher in making ISKCON life members. Prabhupāda reasoned that since the essence of management was to collect donations and make life members, and since Girirāja was expert at that, then even though he was young and otherwise inexperienced, he had the most important qualifications. Prabhupāda had already found Girirāja to be simple and submissively dedicated to helping him develop Hare Krishna Land.

Girirāja: Śrīla Prabhupāda said, “You will do, Girirāja?” So I said, “Yes, Śrīla Prabhupāda, whatever you say.” I wasn’t actually very happy about it, but I understood that one should be surrendered to the spiritual master, and whatever he said, one should do. So I accepted. Prabhupāda said that good management meant that whatever needs doing, you do it – that’s all. Later I went in to see Śrīla Prabhupāda, and he was sitting behind his desk. He said, “Now the full responsibility is on you.” I winced when he said that, because I wasn’t used to taking responsibility.

During Prabhupāda’s stay in Bombay, Hans Kielman, a young architect from Holland, had come to hear the lectures and had become interested in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Prabhupāda convinced Hans to become a devotee and to help build the Hare Kṛṣṇa city in Bombay. Under Prabhupāda’s direction, Hans at once began to make architectural drawings for the buildings.

Hans: Prabhupāda said, “Now you listen carefully. Lord Kṛṣṇa has sent you here. You must design these temples for Him. You must do these very sincerely and not be afraid.” I was completely surrendered. That moment was really ecstasy for me. He had a pile of photographs on his desk, and he gave them to me and said, “Look at this.” I looked at the pictures, and they were photographs of the new Govindajī temple in Vṛndāvana. He said, “I want you to make a design like this.” So I asked him, “How big, Śrīla Prabhupāda?” He gave me a piece of typing paper and said I should draw on this paper. Then he gave me the photographs and a pencil and a ruler. He took me to the next room and told me to sit down at the table. Pradyumna was there with all his Sanskrit books, Śyāmasundara was there typing the letters, and suddenly I was in between, making the drawings.

Prabhupāda said Girirāja and the others would have to collect sixty-four lakhs of rupees for the construction. The devotees had no idea how they would raise even a fraction of that amount, but Prabhupāda gave them some ideas. He talked to them about enlisting the support of influential men by using the bheṅt-nāma system, whereby a person purchases the use of a guest room for life. And there were other ways.

But the immediate step was to get the land. They had possession of the land, but before building they should have the deed. Since Mr. N. was already overdue in delivering the deed, Prabhupāda told Girirāja to press him to comply with the written agreement and deliver the deed at once.

In Prabhupāda’s last lecture in Bombay, he spoke about the six Gosvāmīs of Vṛndāvana and the bittersweet ecstasy of their hankering to be with Kṛṣṇa. Some of Prabhupāda’s disciples took it that Prabhupāda was speaking about this because he was himself going to be leaving for a long time.

At the airport the next day there was a joyful farewell, as Prabhupāda waited for his flight to Australia. Sitting in the VIP lounge surrounded by devotees, Prabhupāda watched Madhudviṣa Swami lead an ecstatic kīrtana. “If you go on having kīrtanas like this,” Prabhupāda told the devotees, “our Bombay project will be successful.” When Prabhupāda saw Mrs. N. had come, he exclaimed, “Oh, Mrs. N., you are also here! You are becoming one of us.”

Prabhupāda had the extraordinary ability to bring a spiritual vision into physical reality, to change a part of the material world into spiritual energy so that even a common man could perceive the spiritual reality. This was Prabhupāda’s constant effort. Often a transcendentalist hesitates to deal with the material world, fearing he may become spiritually weakened. The Vedic injunctions, therefore, warn the transcendentalist to avoid associating with money and materialistic persons. But Prabhupāda, following the principles taught by Śrīla Rūpa Gosvāmī, saw that everything material had the potential of being used in the service of Kṛṣṇa and thus of regaining its spiritual nature. Following this principle, an expert devotee, although apparently acting within the material sphere, could remain always in touch with the spiritual energy. For such a devotee, nothing was material.

In the Vedic scriptures the great devotee Nārada Muni, because of his ability to convert materialistic men into devotees, is referred to as cintāmaṇi, touchstone. Just as cintāmaṇi is said to convert iron into gold, so Nārada could transform a beastlike hunter into a pure Vaiṣṇava. And as Nārada is glorified in the Vedas for accomplishing such feats in bygone ages, so Śrīla Prabhupāda is a similarly potent touchstone in the present age. Again and again he showed by his straightforward application of Kṛṣṇa consciousness that he could change a materialist into a completely renounced, active devotee of the Lord. And now, after recruiting a number of devotees from māyā’s camp, he wanted to engage them in transforming as much as possible of the material world into living spirit. By his transcendental, visionary words, he was attempting to convert stone and human energy into glorious, spiritual temples.

While ambitious materialists sometimes criticize transcendentalists as unproductive, Prabhupāda, because of his constant activity, could never be so accused. Rather, people would criticize him as being a capitalist in the dress of a sannyāsī. But such criticism never deterred Prabhupāda; he was carrying out the desires of the previous ācāryas. He had written this conclusion in his Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam even before coming to America in 1965.

Therefore, all the sages and devotees of the Lord have recommended that the subject matter of art, science, philosophy, physics, chemistry, psychology and all other branches of knowledge should be wholely and solely applied in the service of the Lord.

Prabhupāda wanted to convert significant portions of the material world into the spiritual world. In attempting to construct a spiritual city in Juhu, he realized he was launching a major attack against māyā. Within a few months so many complications and headaches had already disturbed his plans, and more would come; the battle was just beginning.

Sometimes Prabhupāda’s disciples found the work to be draining and stressful; they would become bewildered. They had come to spiritual life for bliss, not for anxiety. Prabhupāda’s presence and his constant encouragement helped them remain steadfast. He knew that once they tasted the nectar of selfless dedication to Kṛṣṇa, they would never accept anything lesser. He would encourage them, reminding them of the words of spiritual predecessors like Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura, who had said, “Difficulties undertaken in the course of Your devotional service I will consider the greatest happiness.”