PRABHUPĀDA TRAVELED WITH three disciples: Śyāmasundara as his secretary, Pradyumna as his servant and Sanskrit editor, and Nanda-kumāra as his cook. The first stop was Singapore, where, without explanation, immigration authorities refused Prabhupāda entry into the country. Sympathetic Indians in Singapore had arranged for Prabhupāda to lecture and had even mailed hundreds of invitations, but Śrīla Prabhupāda, disappointed and feeling ill, had to continue the twelve-hour flight to Sydney.

April 1, 1972
Prabhupāda planned to stay a few days in Sydney before going on to Melbourne. Although the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement was young in Australia, Prabhupāda saw positive signs: devotees to initiate, TV and radio appearances, and an interested crowd at his morning lectures in the temple.

This was only his second visit to Australia. On his first visit, almost a year ago, he had installed the Deities Rādhā-Gopīnātha and had prayed to Them, “Now I am leaving You in the hands of the mlecchas. I cannot take the responsibility. You please guide these boys and girls and give them the intelligence to worship You very nicely.” Now, on returning and seeing the Deities beautifully dressed and well cared for, he felt happy. After five busy days of preaching he flew on to Melbourne.

Upananda: In Melbourne Prabhupāda spoke at the Town Hall, and all the Melbourne hippies came. There was a man there called the Wizard. He used to be a professor at the university, but he resigned his post so he could carry out his shenanigans. He was very intellectual. He was dressed in a black cape and leotard, and he got up as soon as Śrīla Prabhupāda asked for questions. He had a group of his own followers. First he spoke very respectfully. “Excuse me, Your Divine Grace. I’ve been listening to your lecture, but I have one thing I would like to say in this regard. I believe that I am God. I am the center of the universe. And I will prove sometime next year that I am the center of the universe.”

Prabhupāda said, “That’s all right. Everybody is thinking like that. What makes you different?” Actually, the Wizard’s whole game was that he wanted to be different – his dress, everything. So Prabhupāda exposed this, exposed him as just another materialistic fool. Everybody started laughing and clapping.

Auckland
April 14, 1972
The devotees had just opened a temple in New Zealand a few weeks before Prabhupāda’s arrival. Prabhupāda stayed a couple of days and installed Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa Deities.

Bhūrijana: Prabhupāda installed large marble Deities, but there was only one girl to take care of Them. Prabhupāda was insisting that the Deities should be installed anyway and that They should be taken care of properly. He demanded that They should have many sets of clothes immediately. So some devotees built a temporary wooden altar and put up a curtain for the Deities. The curtains fell down. Everything was going wrong. It was confusing, and everyone was upset.

So Śrīla Prabhupāda just took over. He said, “Put this here. Put that back up there. Do this. Do that.” He completely took command of the whole situation. The devotees put the curtains back, and Prabhupāda said, “Get rid of this vyāsāsana.” And they took the vyāsāsana out, because it was so big and the room was so small that there was no room for the people. Prabhupāda just put a mat on the floor and sat down on that.

Prabhupāda visited for one night in Hong Kong, where he lectured at a program arranged by Bhūrijana and his wife, Jagattāriṇī.

Bhūrijana: We had taught the Indian children to sing the prayers to the spiritual master. So we had them sing for Prabhupāda. He looked at me, and he was really pleased. Then he said, “Your wife said there are no interested people, but you have so many students here.” I said, “You have so many students, Prabhupāda.”

At the end of the lecture Prabhupāda asked if there were any questions, and a little Indian boy raised his hand and asked, “Who started the forest fire?” The boy was thinking of a forest fire mentioned in the Kṛṣṇa book in Kṛṣṇa’s pastime, but all he said was, “Who started the forest fire?” But Prabhupāda took the question in a different way – that this material world is like a blazing forest fire, just like the prayers to the spiritual master had described. So Prabhupāda said, “No one started the forest fire. It starts automatically – just like in the forest, by the rubbing of two bamboos a fire may start. But by chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa we can get out of this forest fire of material life.”

In Japan the devotees lived in an old farmhouse in the hill country outside Tokyo. Śrīla Prabhupāda stayed in a nearby hotel, installed Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa Deities in the temple, and awarded sannyāsa to ISKCON Tokyo’s leader, Sudāmā.

Prabhupāda said he knew “the pulse of his disciples.” Thus he had recently sensed a tendency in his leading managers to be too absorbed in management and not enough in preaching. He had been telling his secretary that G.B.C. men should not simply sit behind their desks and try to centralize power but should become detached, take sannyāsa, and travel and preach. With this in mind he had awarded the sannyāsa order to two of his G.B.C. secretaries, Tamāla Kṛṣṇa and Sudāmā. Now he advised that they not give up their managerial burden but follow his example of preaching and managing their G.B.C. zones in a renounced spirit.

Śyāmasundara: Prabhupāda’s hotel room had rice paper walls and was very cold. It was like coming back into the northern climate, but without central heating. One day I came to Prabhupāda’s room for maṅgala-ārati and I had a blanket wrapped around me. I said, “Are you cold, Prabhupāda?” I could see he didn’t like the cold, but he wasn’t going to let that stop him from serving Kṛṣṇa.

Nanda-kumāra: At the Sunday feast there were about thirty Japanese people, mostly young, and every single one brought Prabhupāda a flower, put it at his feet, and paid full daṇḍavats. They were so respectful. Prabhupāda said that it was a good sign that “these boys and girls are able to honor a saintly person.”

Bhūrijana: We had arranged a program in Kobe. Many Indians and Sindhis lived there. It was a long journey out of Tokyo. They put Prabhupāda on the third floor of the house, and there was no elevator. Prabhupāda just put his chin out and walked right up, even though it was a tremendous effort for him.

The engagement was arranged in such a poor way that on the same speaking program with Prabhupāda was a Māyāvādī sannyāsī. Prabhupāda wanted to speak first, so he spoke in English. There were quite a few Indians there – about a hundred. Prabhupāda explained very clearly and strongly that Kṛṣṇa is God.

Then the other sannyāsī began speaking in Hindi. Prabhupāda was just sitting there with his eyes closed, chanting japa. Suddenly he looked at us and said, “Start kīrtana immediately.” So we got up in the middle of the sannyāsī’s speaking and started kīrtana. Prabhupāda left quickly after the kīrtana.

When we got back to the room with Prabhupāda, he explained what had happened. He said, “First he was preaching nicely. And then he started explaining pañcopāsana, about the five different features of the Absolute. And then when he said that the Supreme is ultimately impersonal, I could not tolerate it.” Prabhupāda said, “I am like a lion when I am out and a lamb when I am home.”

Prabhupāda had business in Tokyo with his printer, Dai Nippon. He was greatly pleased with the faith Dai Nippon Printing Company placed in him, giving him hundreds of thousands of dollars credit just on his word. One of the Dai Nippon executives even approached him submissively, inquiring about whether his son who had died a year and a half ago had gone to the Buddha.

A young Japanese executive, who translated the older man’s questions and Prabhupāda’s answers, explained to Prabhupāda, “Since then he has been very religious.”

“He was the eldest son?” Prabhupāda asked.

“Twenty years. Youngest son.”

The two executives spoke briefly.

“He is asking how he can be relieved from such sadness when his son has died.”

“Oh, yes,” Prabhupāda said. “The point is that the success of everything depends on how Kṛṣṇa is satisfied. That I have explained.” He related the example of Sāndīpani Muni, the spiritual master of Kṛṣṇa and Balarāma. Sāndīpani Muni’s son had died, and he requested his two students, “My dear boys, I lost my child very young. If You kindly bring him, then I will be very much pleased.” So Kṛṣṇa went to the planet of Yamarāja and brought his son back.

“So you try to satisfy Kṛṣṇa, and you will be blessed. Your son will be blessed. You pray to Kṛṣṇa – wherever your son may be, he will be happy. You believe in reincarnation, next birth?”

The young man spoke to the elder executive in Japanese. The older man nodded.

Prabhupāda continued, “Yes. So your son, he must have taken a body somewhere. So if you pray to Kṛṣṇa, your son will be happy. He will benefit.”

When Prabhupāda’s G.B.C. secretary for the western United States, Karandhara, arrived in Tokyo to assist in dealing with the Dai Nippon Printing Company, Prabhupāda talked with him about his new project in Bombay. He also wrote two letters to Girirāja, urging him to begin constructing the Bombay buildings as soon as possible. He wanted Girirāja to model the temple after Jaipur’s famous Govindajī temple and erect beside it a modern high-rise hotel. “And then you shall have the perfect Juhu plan.” Prabhupāda said Hans (now Surabhi) should finish the drawings and get the city council’s approval by June so that they could begin the foundation before the monsoon. “I do not think that it is possible,” Prabhupāda wrote, “but if you can try for it that will be nice.”

Hawaii
May 6, 1972
During Prabhupāda’s week-long stay in Honolulu, he installed the five Deities of the Pañca-tattva: Lord Caitanya, Lord Nityānanda, Śrī Advaita, Śrī Gadādhara, and Śrī Śrīvāsa. He also lectured on yoga at a local yoga-meditation center. During his morning walks on the beach, he spoke about the fallacies of Darwinism. Waikiki Beach, he commented, was not as beautiful as Juhu.

Nanda-kumāra: At that time all the devotees in Hawaii were wearing sleeveless T-shirts and bright colors, and they had really big śikhās hanging down very long. Prabhupāda said, “Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava śikhā is an inch and a half across – no bigger. Bigger śikhās means another sampradāya. And they have to be knotted.” So I told everyone that, and they came back all bright and shiny with saffron shirts and proper śikhās.

Govinda dāsī: Prabhupāda stayed at a big house on the Makapu side of Oahu, right on the ocean – a very pleasant place. In the morning Prabhupāda would walk on the beach, and when he would return from his walk, he would sit down on a wooden bench on a little rock patio. We would all sit around, and he would give a little morning lecture. Later he would walk around and around in his room, chanting.

One evening I went in while he was chanting, and he said, “Sixteen rounds finished today?” and I said, “Yes, Śrīla Prabhupāda, I am on my sixteenth round now.” He said, “That is good.”

Prabhupāda was also thinking a lot about his Bombay center, and he asked me to do an architectural rendering of his idea for the Bombay buildings. Fortunately, an architect friend drew it up very nicely, and Prabhupāda was pleased with it.

Prabhupāda had received a letter from a French disciple, Mandakinī-devī dāsī, who was going to join a Russian boy in the Soviet Union. She was going there to marry him and assist him in propagating Kṛṣṇa consciousness. When Prabhupāda read this letter, he smiled in ecstasy. The thought of the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement increasing in Russia gave him great joy.

Then he turned to Govinda dāsī and said, “Preach while you are young. When you are old, retire to Vṛndāvana and chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. Therefore, these centers in India are being built. But you cannot retire unless you have preached sufficiently. The mind will agitate. If you have preached, you can retire and chant Hare Kṛṣṇa – so preach as much as possible.”

Although sometimes Prabhupāda could spend only a day or even only a moment with an individual devotee, that brief association would leave a permanent inspiration. The devotees would realize that although Prabhupāda had touched them and given them guidance in a way that made these the most important moments in their lives, Prabhupāda was also beyond the moment and the place that he shared with them and was contemplating deeper issues and praying to Kṛṣṇa with an intensity that they could not yet understand.

Prabhupāda received a letter in Hawaii from Girirāja that made him doubt his Bombay manager’s abilities to deal with the clever Mr. N. Girirāja had reported matter-of-factly that he had just paid 7,500 rupees to Mr. N., and Prabhupāda wrote back, “On what account is that paid?” Girirāja had intended it to be an installment toward the agreed two lakhs per year that they were supposed to pay Mr. N. – after they had received the deed. But why should they be unnecessarily paying Mr. N., since they still had no deed? Prabhupāda began to worry about his Hare Krishna Land.

Time and time again his thinking turned to Bombay, Vṛndāvana, and Māyāpur, but he did not talk much about the problems. Rather, the devotees and nondevotees in each place he visited got the full blessings of his attention. While lecturing on >Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, he was in full concentration, and when he spoke privately, cultivating a guest or guiding an individual disciple, he fully gave himself. That he took responsibility for many persons and worldwide matters and did it all so graciously, always appearing before his devotees each morning on a walk or in the temple as fresh as a morning-blooming lotus flower, was the expert nature of his devotional service to Kṛṣṇa. He was open and simple, with a motive so pure that anyone could see it, and yet he was also grave beyond anyone’s vision. He served Kṛṣṇa simply in each time and place, whether riding the hotel elevator with his two disciples in Hong Kong, or curiously noting the details of Japanese culture, or walking on the beach beneath a Hawaiian sky.

Los Angeles
May 18, 1972
Word had spread that Śrīla Prabhupāda wanted G.B.C. secretaries to get out from behind their desks and preach, and four American G.B.C. men, eager to become sannyāsīs, were waiting when Śrīla Prabhupāda arrived in Los Angeles.

Satsvarūpa: Prabhupāda said that because we were taking sannyāsa in the prime of youth, we had ample opportunity to do much more than he. He said he had taken sannyāsa at the fag end of life but that “a little is better than nothing.” Everyone laughed at the thought that we could do more than Prabhupāda. One by one we went to the vyāsāsana, and Prabhupāda gave us our tridaṇḍas and said, “Now preach, preach, preach.”

Immediately afterward, Prabhupāda had us up in his room. We asked him if there were any special instructions. He said there were two restrictions in sannyāsa life. One was that when meeting a rich man and seeing his opulent wealth we must not think, “Oh, I have given up everything, but I wish I could enjoy these things.” And the other restriction was that when we see a beautiful woman we must not think, “I had a beautiful wife, and now this beautiful woman is here. I could enjoy her.” In other words, do not have any regrets about having taken sannyāsa.

Jagadīśa: Prabhupāda had all the G.B.C. men come to Los Angeles, where some of them took sannyāsa, and we discussed reapportioning preaching zones. We had one special meeting with Prabhupāda. All the G.B.C men were sitting there in the room, and Prabhupāda looked us all over. He said, “Are you all convinced?” We just sat there. Nobody said anything for about two minutes. It was one of the heaviest moments of my life – Prabhupāda challenging us: “Are you convinced? Are you sincere?”

As Prabhupāda spoke, his G.B.C. disciples listened intently. “As far as I am concerned,” he said, “I am convinced. Therefore I am pushing on. It is a fact. I am pushing on because it is fact, not fiction. That much I am personally convinced. Whenever someone says, ‘You believe,’ I say, ‘No, I do not believe. It is fact.’ So youmust spread your conviction by your literature, arguments, preaching, facing opposing elements. But are you convinced? If you are not convinced, then it is not good for me. The first thing is enthusiasm. Don’t be dead. You have to work more than me. Anyone who has life, he can preach.

“So the local president and treasurer of the temple will manage. The G.B.C. can supervise that things are going on. But the first management is that each and every member is chanting sixteen rounds and following the regulations. Otherwise, that is our spiritual strength.

“Now it is in your hands. That was my plan – to give it to the Americans. But you have to be spiritually strong. If superficially you want to be managers, it won’t be good. And simply touring is not required. By traveling you have to do something substantial to increase the society. At the time of Lenin, he had just a few men, and he took over the entire country. It is up to you to spread God consciousness. Don’t be stagnant. Go and preach. Your duty is to inform them, ‘My dear American brothers, you have so much wealth and pleasure. Use it for Kṛṣṇa. If not, it will be degradation.’ ”

Śrīla Prabhupāda met with many U.S. ISKCON leaders in Los Angeles and saw the wide array of Kṛṣṇa conscious activities in his Western world headquarters. He heard a new recording of Kṛṣṇa bhajanas, performed with guitars and other Western instruments, produced at the devotees’ own Golden Avatar studio, and he approved it, saying, “This is better than George Harrison.” He visited the art studio, where the devotees were painting illustrations for his books, and he made suggestions.

Anaṅga-mañjarī: Prabhupāda was going around looking at all the different temple offices. In one office Karandhara was showing Prabhupāda a new computer. “Prabhupāda,” he said, “all we have to do is type the words Rūpa Gosvāmī, and then it will automatically write everything you have ever said or written about Rūpa Gosvāmī.” Prabhupāda had been looking at the computer without showing much interest. But when Karandhara said the name Rūpa Gosvāmī, Prabhupāda raised his eyebrows and said, “Oh? Yes, everything can be used in Kṛṣṇa’s service.”

Then we walked out of that office and went to the telex machine. Prabhupāda sat before it in the chair, and everyone stood around him while Karandhara explained what the machine did. “It can write a message all the way to New York, and they can send a message back immediately, Śrīla Prabhupāda.” So Karandhara typed on the telex machine, “Hare Kṛṣṇa. All glories to Śrīla Prabhupāda. Please respond.”

There was no answer, so he typed it out again, and again there was no answer. So he typed it out again, and this time he typed out, “All glories to Śrīla Prabhupāda. Śrīla Prabhupāda is sitting right next to the telex machine. Please respond.”

All of a sudden the machine started typing out a reply, and Prabhupāda was sitting there watching it. The type read, “Dear Śrīla Prabhupāda, please accept our most humble obeisances at your lotus feet. We will be very eager to see Your Divine Grace in three days in New York.” Śrīla Prabhupāda spoke out, “Jaya! Haribol!” The message from New York was signed by many devotees, and Prabhupāda just smiled and said, “This is very nice.”

At this time, distribution of Prabhupāda’s books by his disciples was taking on a new dimension in America, and Prabhupāda heard the latest reports. From the beginning of his preaching in the West he had stressed printing and distributing his books as the most important method of preaching Kṛṣṇa consciousness. He said his spiritual master had told him to print and distribute books and that he was following “blindly.” Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī had been pleased if a disciple distributed even only a few copies of his magazine.

In the beginning years of ISKCON Śrīla Prabhupāda had also been pleased when his disciples had distributed a few hundred copies of Back to Godhead each month. Gradually his will for increasing the distribution of transcendental literature had manifested through certain devotees. In Los Angeles in 1968, Tamāla Kṛṣṇa had daily taken a large kīrtana party downtown. The party, in addition to chanting and dancing, had circulated among the crowd and distributed Back to Godhead magazines, as many as a hundred in a single day. When Prabhupāda had heard these reports, he had felt encouraged and had asked for the devotees to increase.

Prabhupāda saw book distribution not only as the best method of preaching but also as a fair means of income. In India the brahmacārīs in the traditional gurukula system would beg from door to door, but in the West such a practice would not be respected. “But every gentleman will give a quarter for Back to Godhead,”Prabhupāda had said.

Even as Prabhupāda turned more toward India and his projects there, he continued to encourage his disciples, especially in the West, to distribute his books: “Please increase your program of distribution to the public as well as trying to place our books and magazines in the libraries. I am simply interested in the book distribution.”

To the devotees in New York he had written in 1971,

I’m especially pleased to hear that your distribution of books and magazines has increased. Go on in this way, increasing more and more. Each time someone reads some solid information about Krishna his life becomes changed in some way. These literatures are the solid ground upon which our preaching stands, so I want that they should be available to everyone, as many as possible. So please try for this.

To the devotees in Australia he wrote,

The best news is that you are increasing nicely the distribution of my books and literature. This is the best activity, to distribute solid information about Krishna. Our preaching stands solid on these books. No other movement has such vast background of authority.

And to the devotees of Africa Prabhupāda wrote,

Distribution of books and magazines is our most important activity. Without books, our preaching has no solid basis. Especially the Africans want our books.

Śrīla Prabhupāda said that if there were ample books, then everything else in ISKCON would succeed.

Practically, our Society is built on books. One book is not very impressive. Still, a blind uncle is better than no uncle at all, so it is very nice that one book has appeared, and that BTG is appearing at least several issues in other languages. But now try to produce at least four or five new books per year in several languages, plus regularly BTG every month … apply yourself fully to this very great responsibility of producing numerous books in foreign languages.

Back in 1968, when ten thousand copies of Teachings of Lord Caitanya had arrived at the temple in New York, Brahmānanda Swami had wondered how they would ever distribute so many hardbound books on the lofty philosophy of Lord Caitanya. But in 1970, with the publication of another book, Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, some of the devotees in San Francisco had begun to go door to door, person to person, and sell the books. And not only one or two books, but twenty, thirty, even forty a day. The enthusiasm had spread as devotees in other temples had begun to sell increasing numbers of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books. Next, the young men had begun traveling in vans, going out all day, day after day, to discover the greatest ecstasy of distributing Prabhupāda’s books.

Then a competition had started. Keśava’s boasts that the devotees in San Francisco were the best had drawn challenges from the devotees in Los Angeles, New York, Denver, and Dallas. A “saṅkīrtana fever” had begun. And at the center was Śrīla Prabhupāda, assuring that unquestionably book distribution had the topmost priority of all his missionary activities.

Prabhupāda also stressed that all the devotees should regularly study his books. The books were not only for the public; the devotees must read them and know them. Or else how could they preach? In the Los Angeles temple room Prabhupāda would have the devotees take part in pronouncing and chanting responsively the daily Sanskrit verse from Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. Then individual devotees would take turns chanting the verse alone, while the other devotees would again respond collectively.

Hṛdayānanda Goswami: When Prabhupāda came to Los Angeles in 1972, he started the Bhāgavatam class where everyone chanted the Sanskrit. One effect was that devotees became more grave, a little more civilized. Just at that time things were a little wild in America. The saṅkīrtana parties were doing so many wild things, staying out all hours of the night, sleeping anywhere, eating anything. Previously the temples had been a little sedate, and actually, even a little dry, because the devotees weren’t giving out many books. And then, when the saṅkīrtana got a little heavy, it was almost like a rodeo consciousness, this wild saṅkīrtana – like bronco busting. But Prabhupāda came and introduced the chanting of Sanskrit mantras word for word, and the devotees submitted to a more grave and formal program.

On the first of June Śrīla Prabhupāda left Los Angeles for Mexico City. He said he would return in a few weeks.