Māyāpur
June 1, 1973

ALTHOUGH THE MĀYĀPUR building was not yet completed, Prabhupāda had come there to reside. He took two adjoining rooms, one as his study and one as his bedroom, on the second floor. Meanwhile, construction work continued in the temple room and in other parts of the building. On Prabhupāda’s first day there, a storm struck, with massive black clouds and high winds. The storm was brief, however, and damage was minimal.

I have just now come to Mayapur and am very hopeful to regain my strength and health on account of being in this transcendental atmosphere. Every moment we are passing here in great delight.

In the evening the temple pūjārī, Jananivāsa, would come to Prabhupāda’s room with a clay pot of red coals and frankincense and fan the frankincense until the room was filled with smoke. This was to drive out insects, but Prabhupāda also considered it purifying.

Although he was sometimes disturbed by the workers’ hammering, he found the atmosphere otherwise peaceful. Only a few devotees were staying there, and Prabhupāda gave his attention to translating or to speaking with guests and to the devotees in charge of developing his Māyāpur center. He would express his desires especially to Bhavānanda Mahārāja and Jayapatāka Mahārāja and worked his will through them.

The devotees living in the building with Prabhupāda considered themselves menial servants in Prabhupāda’s personal house. Of course, all the buildings in ISKCON belonged to Prabhupāda, yet in Māyāpur that sense was intensified. Generally the devotees in each particular center would raise money to support their center, but Prabhupāda personally took charge of getting funds for Māyāpur. He had begun a Māyāpur-Vṛndāvana Trust Fund of donations from his disciples and interest from bonds and security deposits. If money was misspent, energy misused, or the building damaged in any way, Prabhupāda would become very concerned. Now that he was personally on the scene, he often walked about, giving detailed instructions and demanding that discrepancies be corrected. The pink and reddish building was like a huge transcendental ship, and Śrīla Prabhupāda, as captain, would walk the wide verandas, giving strict orders to all mates for keeping everything shipshape.

One day Prabhupāda was walking on the veranda near his room. The other rooms were locked, and as Prabhupāda walked alone, he would open the window shutters and look in. Suddenly he turned to Śatadhanya, who waited on call nearby. “The fan is going on inside, and this room is empty and locked,” Prabhupāda said. “Who has done this?” Śatadhanya didn’t know. “Whoever has done this,” Prabhupāda said, “is a rascal! He should know he is a rascal!” For two days after, Prabhupāda continued to refer to the incident with disgust.

One day, after a huge wind and rainstorm, water covered the twelve-foot-wide marble veranda outside Prabhupāda’s room. Bhavānanda Goswami, taking a large squeegee a devotee had made, began cleaning the marble floor, and Śrīla Prabhupāda came to his door to watch. “This is the way to clean marble,” Prabhupāda said. “Don’t polish it with wax, but just keep plenty of fresh water and every day in the morning wipe it off. In this way the marble will become naturally polished and will shine like glass.”

Prabhupāda felt affection and deep gratitude for those devotees dedicating their lives to the Māyāpur project. One night he called Bhavānanda to his room and began asking him about the devotees. Suddenly Prabhupāda began crying. “I know it is difficult for all you Western boys and girls,” he said. “You are so dedicated, serving here in my mission. I know you cannot even get prasādam. When I think that you cannot even get milk and that you have given up your opulent life to come here and you do not complain, I am very much indebted to all of you.”

Bhavānanda: The marble workers lived in some chāṭāi houses right near the construction site. There was a hand pump just outside the building, and that’s where we took our bath and where the workers got the water for the cement. Some distance off were two toilets – one for the men, one for the women. It was just two holes in the ground, and each hole surrounded by a chāṭāi wall. The storms and the rain would come, and we would have to sludge through the mud in the fields to go to the toilets. There were snakes all over the place. It was wild! It was a construction site. No one lives on a construction site, but we did. Śrīla Prabhupāda made us move in there. It was good for us. No bathrooms, nothing – just open floors with concrete.

Although the devotees endured the austerities of living at the Māyāpur center construction site, they sometimes felt it was too difficult. But Śrīla Prabhupāda never considered it difficult, and he would encourage the devotees: “Māyāpur is so wonderful. You can live on the air and water alone.”

Bhavānanda: We were able to face up to so many difficulties because we just took it as our order from Śrīla Prabhupāda. There was no conception of ever leaving. What else would I do? This was my order: “Take Māyāpur. I am giving you Māyāpur. Take it, develop it, and enjoy it.” There was no question in our minds of going somewhere else.

The surrounding grounds were rice fields, and to get to the temple building from the entrance of the property – a distance of more than two hundred yards – devotees would have to walk on paths made by ridges of earth that separated one rice field from another. The kitchen, which was made of tarpaulin and bamboo, was located near the entrance to the property.

The devotees had to live without electricity much of the time, since the power supply was often cut off. They would use kerosene lamps at night, and Prabhupāda said the lamps should be taken apart every day, the wicks trimmed, and the glass washed. “In the future,” he said, “you should grow castor plants and crush the seeds and take the oil for burning.”

Prabhupāda told the devotees how to build simple dwellings. He also wanted them to build a wall with a gate along the front of the property. They should build small rooms – hutments, he called them – against the wall. Devotees could stay in these simple cottages. They should plant coconut and banana trees.

Raising the money, buying the land, arranging for workers and materials – it had been an arduous struggle, replete with bureaucratic delays, forms, fees, supply shortages, and the like. Prabhupāda would not tolerate any carelessness or waste. The building, which was turning out to be so artistic, substantial, and useful, was actually a gift from Lord Kṛṣṇa. So to live here in Kṛṣṇa’s building was to reciprocate lovingly with the Lord. The devotees should think of serving Kṛṣṇa, not of becoming comfortable and forgetting the purpose of both the building and of life. The slamming of doors, although seemingly a minor fault, greatly disturbed Śrīla Prabhupāda. It symptomized carelessness and misuse, and Prabhupāda said the sound cracked his heart. One time Prabhupāda came out of his room and called out, “Who is that slamming the doors? No one knows from where this building has come. You take it for granted that it is here. But no one cares.”

More often, however, Śrīla Prabhupāda displayed a roselike softness, an intimate, informal, and affectionate nature. The holy dhāma of Māyāpur was the spiritual world, Goloka Vṛndāvana; so the devotees there were living with Prabhupāda in the spiritual world. More than most any other place in the world, the devotees living in Māyāpur knew they could walk into Prabhupāda’s room and see him. He sometimes even walked into their rooms. While they were working, reading, or talking, he might suddenly walk in and speak with them, asking how they felt and how they were adjusting to living in India. “It is difficult living here?” he would ask. “I think India is too hot. What do you think?”

Even with the building incomplete, many guests were coming, especially to talk with Prabhupāda, who patiently spent many hours each day speaking about Kṛṣṇa consciousness with guests who came to inquire about his movement or who came only to talk about themselves and their own philosophy. Sometimes he would remark that an individual had wasted his time, but he never stopped anyone from seeing him. One wealthy Hindu man, Mr. Brijratan Mohatta, and his wife, a daughter of multimillionaire R. D. Birla, visited Prabhupāda from Calcutta. Śrīla Prabhupāda took care in properly hosting his guests, and he personally reviewed the menu and briefed his disciples on serving Mr. Mohatta and his wife. Offering prasādam was an important part of the Vaiṣṇava’s etiquette, and Śrīla Prabhupāda always stressed that the devotees immediately offer prasādam to visitors.

“You should always be able to offer water, hot purīs and eggplant bhājī (fried eggplant), and sweets,” Prabhupāda said. Even when guests appeared shy, Prabhupāda would insist they take a full meal. Mrs. Mohatta, even though a member of one of the wealthiest families in India, was satisfied with the simple hospitality Śrīla Prabhupāda and his disciples offered. The room she and her husband stayed in was unfinished – the slate floors hadn’t been polished, and construction work was going on all around – and the devotees could only offer them a mattress on the floor with a pillow, yet they appeared to be quite satisfied and appreciative.

Bhavānanda: Śrīla Prabhupāda introduced us to many of the details of Indian culture at Māyāpur. He had us put down mattresses covered with sheets in his room. In 1970, in Los Angeles, he had asked me to sew sheets together to make a covering for the rug in his room. And then he had gotten down on his hands and knees right next to me, and we had smoothed out the wrinkles in the sheet.

So he had us do that same thing in Māyāpur, where we put mattresses from one end of the room to the other with bolster pillows against the wall. “Now you have white sheet covers,” he said, “and you change these every day.” When Bengali gentlemen visited Śrīla Prabhupāda in his room, they would sit on these mattresses around the edge of the room, their backs against the bolster pillows.

It was very aristocratic. The whole mood was that he was the mahant, the master of the house, the ācārya, but also the aristocratic Bengali gentlemen saw that he was reestablishing the old aristocratic mood from the early 1900’s or 1920’s. It was from Prabhupāda’s old days with the Mullik family and it was rapidly dwindling. At that time you couldn’t find a semblance of the old culture anywhere, because all those families had become degraded, and their wealth gone.

When the evening’s multitude of varieties of insects gathered around Prabhupāda’s light, he would sometimes comment on how they were such wonderful creations of God. “This little insect,” he said one evening, “is both pilot and flying machine in one. Here there are hundreds of insects flying together, and yet there are no collisions. That is God’s arrangement. They never crash, because the Supersoul is present – one in every heart. Let the material scientists manufacture such a wonderful machine with a built-in pilot that will not crash. When one man flies and then there are two planes, they have to be very careful.”

While a few devotees sat on the sheet-covered mattresses in his room, Prabhupāda sat on his slightly raised āsana, leaning back against a white bolster pillow. Both spiritual master and disciple enjoyed bliss in speaking and hearing Kṛṣṇa consciousness. The devotees wanted to hear Prabhupāda’s words and follow his will, and he wanted to instruct them.

“But these insects,” Prabhupāda continued, “are not perfect. They are flying to the light. That also means they are attracted to death. So they are just like the materialists. The materialists are building skyscrapers, yet they don’t know what will happen at death. Henry Ford and other big capitalists had to die. But so many others are trying to become just like them. They do not know it means their death also. They are like these small insects. In the morning we simply find heaps of them, all dead.”

Often while Prabhupāda was talking in his room the lights would suddenly go out, and devotees would bring in kerosene lamps. And each night, while Prabhupāda was speaking, the pūjārī would come, filling the room with frankincense smoke. Ghee lamps faintly illuminated the large teakwood bas-relief carving of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa on the wall opposite Prabhupāda’s desk.

During this summer visit, Prabhupāda further revealed his vision for ISKCON’s Māyāpur development. The devotees were already aware that the plan was vast and would cost millions of dollars. They now had one building, but this was only the beginning. In the total plan, this building was almost insignificant. Prabhupāda spoke about a colossal temple, its great dome rising above a transcendental city. This Mayapur Chandrodaya Mandir would house the greatest planetarium in the world, depicting the universe as it is described in the Vedic literature.

To execute such a project, Prabhupāda wanted to train his disciples in the Vedic arts, now dying in Bengal. Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī had been greatly interested in using dioramas to depict the līlā of Kṛṣṇa and Lord Caitanya, and now Prabhupāda wanted his own disciples to learn the art by studying under local Māyāpur artists.

In June Baradrāja, Ādideva, Mūrti, and Īśāna arrived to begin learning the art of doll-making. Prabhupāda also wanted a disciple to learn to make mṛdaṅgas, and a potter began coming every day to teach Īśāna how to mold and fire the clay shells. The devotees converted Prabhupāda’s original straw cottage into a workshop, and Prabhupāda began inviting other disciples to come to Māyāpur.

Mayapur is already wonderful, being the transcendental birthplace of Lord Krishna. By utilizing Western talents to develop this place, certainly it will become unique in the world.

The Māyāpur city, Prabhupāda said, would be the fulfillment of the desires of the previous ācāryas. The city would grow to a population of fifty thousand and would become the spiritual capital of the world. With its gigantic temple in the center and separate quarters for brāhmaṇas, kṣatriyas, vaiśyas, and śūdras, the city would be a model for all other cities. The day would come when the world’s cities would be ruined, and humanity would take refuge in cities modeled after Māyāpur. The development of Māyāpur would mark the beginning of a Kṛṣṇa conscious world. Thus the influence of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu would increase, and His prediction would manifest: “In every town and village My name will be chanted.”

Prabhupāda said that Māyāpur should eventually become more easily accessible – by bridge from Navadvīpa, by motor launch up the Ganges from Calcutta, and from all parts by air. In Bengal millions were by birth followers of Lord Caitanya, and they would recognize and take up Kṛṣṇa consciousness as the pure form of their own culture. There is a saying: What Bengal does, the rest of India follows. So if Bengal became reformed and purified by the Kṛṣṇa conscious example of American Vaiṣṇavas, then all India would follow. And when all India became Kṛṣṇa conscious, the whole world would follow. “I have given you the kingdom of God,” Prabhupāda said to his Māyāpur managers. “Now take it, develop it, and enjoy it.”

Throughout the month of June Prabhupāda continued to live happily and peacefully in the not-yet-completed building of the Mayapur Chandrodaya Mandir. Although he had been ill with a cough since Los Angeles – a cough he had been unable to cure while traveling in the West – on coming to Māyāpur his health had recovered.

In Mayapur I am much improved from how I was in Los Angeles. The great advantage here is that there is always open air and a good breeze which is naturally very good for any breathing difficulties. … Certainly Mayapur is by far a better place than Los Angeles because you can enjoy the free air here. The climate is not too hot, but a little moist with humidity but on the whole it is very pleasing. Our building is most superexcellently situated, and it is the experience of many respectable outsiders that while the outer atmosphere is unbearably hot, in our building it is pleasing.

Prabhupāda praised the constant pleasurable breezes that passed through the building – he called them “Vaikuṇṭha breezes.” Sometimes, however, a violent storm would suddenly appear. Although severe, these storms were also beautiful, with continuous lightning like neon lights filling the sky. One day a storm arose, and the winds began to howl through the building. Noticing that Prabhupāda’s doors and windows were open, Śatadhanya rushed into the room and began frantically closing them. But Prabhupāda, seated at his desk, said, “Stop, leave all the windows open.”

“Prabhupāda,” Śatadhanya protested, “the storm is here.”

“Just leave them open,” Prabhupāda said, as the wind rushed through his room at more than fifty miles an hour. Prabhupāda smiled. “There is no place in the world like this!” he said, his saffron robes billowing.

Prabhupāda stood on the roof of his Māyāpur building, looking over to the birthplace of Caitanya Mahāprabhu less than a mile away. “Actually,” he said to Bhavānanda Mahārāja, “their claim to the birthplace of Caitanya Mahāprabhu is not very important. Is Kṛṣṇa famous for having been born in Mathurā? No. He is famous for His activities. Similarly, Caitanya Mahāprabhu is not famous for having been born in Māyāpur. He is famous for His activities, for His saṅkīrtana preaching. This Mayapur Chandrodaya Mandir is the preaching of Caitanya Mahāprabhu. Therefore I want a place that is so attractive because of the activities of Caitanya Mahāprabhu that everyone will come here!”

While in Calcutta, before coming to Māyāpur, Prabhupāda had called several senior disciples into his room. “I have had many requests,” he had said to them, “to translate Caitanya-bhāgavata. But I am going to translate the entire Caitanya-caritāmṛta. Is that all right?”

“Oh, yes, Prabhupāda,” Bhavānanda Goswami had replied, “that’s wonderful.”

Decades ago Prabhupāda had written essays based on the Caitanya-caritāmṛta, and over the years he had translated some of the verses and written purports to them. Then in America in 1968 he had completed Teachings of Lord Caitanya, a summary study based on certain important passages of Caitanya-caritāmṛta. During his stay in Māyāpur, however, he began anew a translation and commentary of Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja’s Caitanya-caritāmṛta, beginning with the Seventh Chapter. As he progressed, he found a wonderful momentum and said he would publish a volume, starting with Chapter Seven, for Lord Caitanya’s appearance day in March. Deciding to complete the entire Caitanya-caritāmṛta, he suspended his work on Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam.

In one of the first verses of the Seventh Chapter, Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja states, “Let me offer my obeisances to Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa, who has manifested Himself in five, as a devotee, expansion of a devotee, incarnation of a devotee, pure devotee, and devotional energy.” Prabhupāda wrote that the only way for people to be elevated in love of Kṛṣṇa in the Age of Kali is by the mercy of the Pañca-tattva, or Lord Caitanya in His form of five personalities. One should offer obeisances to Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu by chanting the Pañca-tattva mantra, śrī-kṛṣṇa-caitanya prabhu-nityānanda śrī-advaita gadādhara śrīvāsādi-gaura-bhakta-vṛnda. This mantra should be recited before one chants the mahā-mantra, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare/ Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare. “There are ten offenses in the chanting of the Hare Kṛṣṇa mahā-mantra,” Prabhupāda wrote, “but these are not considered in the chanting of the Pañca-tattva mahā-mantra… One must first take shelter of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, learn the Pañca-tattva mahā-mantra, and then chant the Hare Kṛṣṇa mahā-mantra.”

Verse after verse of the Seventh Chapter confirmed the essential principles of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s mission and attested that he was teaching exactly after the method advised by Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu.

The characteristics of Kṛṣṇa are understood to be a storehouse of transcendental love. Although that storehouse of love certainly came with Kṛṣṇa when He was present, it was sealed. But when Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu came with His other associates, the Pañca-tattva, they broke the seal and plundered the storehouse to taste transcendental love of Kṛṣṇa. The more they tasted it, the more their thirst for it grew.

Śrī Pañca-tattva themselves danced again and again and thus made it easier to drink nectarean love of Godhead. They danced, cried, laughed and chanted like madmen, and in this way they distributed love of Godhead.

In commenting on these verses Prabhupāda wrote,

The present Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement follows the same principle, and therefore simply by chanting and dancing we have received good responses all over the world. It is to be understood, however, that this chanting and dancing do not belong to this material world. They are actually transcendental activities, for the more one engages in chanting and dancing, the more he can taste the nectar of transcendental love of Godhead.

By the phrase “Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement,” Prabhupāda spoke not only of his own disciples and his Kṛṣṇa consciousness society but also of the movement inaugurated by Lord Caitanya. Just as the original Personality of Godhead and the Deity of Kṛṣṇa in the temple were the same, so the movement of Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu and Prabhupāda’s Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement were identical.

In distributing love of Godhead, Caitanya Mahāprabhu and His associates did not consider who was a fit candidate and who was not, nor where such distribution should or should not take place. They made no conditions. Wherever they got the opportunity the members of the Pañca-tattva distributed love of Godhead.

For Śrīla Prabhupāda, this verse directly confirmed the instruction he had received from his spiritual master, Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī, that people of all births could become Vaiṣṇavas, brāhmaṇas, and sannyāsīs. Here was direct evidence from the scripture, yet Prabhupāda, like his own spiritual master, had often received criticism from the caste-conscious brāhmaṇas of India. With the proof in hand, Prabhupāda now challenged his envious critics.

There are some rascals who dare to speak against the mission of Lord Caitanya by criticizing the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement for accepting Europeans and Americans as brāhmaṇas and offering them sannyāsa. But here is an authoritative statement that in distributing love of Godhead one should not consider whether the recipients are Europeans, Americans, Hindus, Muslims, etc. The Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement should be spread wherever possible, and one should accept those who thus become Vaiṣṇavas as being greater than brāhmaṇas, Hindus or Indians. And Caitanya Mahāprabhu desired that His name be spread in each and every town and village on the surface of the globe. Therefore, when the cult of Caitanya Mahāprabhu is spread all over the world, should those who embrace it not be accepted as Vaiṣṇavas, brāhmaṇas and sannyāsīs? These foolish arguments are sometimes raised by envious rascals, but Kṛṣṇa conscious devotees do not care about them. We strictly follow the principles set down by the Pañca-tattva.

Another criticism Śrīla Prabhupāda encountered was that his emphasis on proselytizing was actually alien to Indian spirituality. Even Prabhupāda’s Godbrothers had occasionally made such remarks. More often, however, this sentiment came from the impersonalists, who argued that people should be left to conceive of religion in their own ways; religion, being an internal, spiritual affair, should not be propagated by zealous evangelism. Preaching and conversion, they said, were for the Christians, not for followers of Indian religion. In the Seventh Chapter of Caitanya-caritāmṛta’s Ādi-līlā, however, Śrī Kṛṣṇa Caitanya, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, reveals His heart and emotion as the ideal preacher.

Although the members of the Pañca-tattva plundered the storehouse of love of Godhead and ate and distributed the contents, there was no scarcity, for this wonderful storehouse is so complete that as the love is distributed, the supply increases hundreds of times.

The flood of love of Godhead swelled in all directions, and thus young men, old men, women and children were all immersed in that inundation.

The Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement will inundate the entire world and drown everyone, whether one be a gentleman, a rogue or even lame, invalid or blind.

When the first five members of the Pañca-tattva saw the entire world drowned in love of Godhead and the seed of material enjoyment in the living entities completely destroyed, they all became exceedingly happy.

The more the five members of the Pañca-tattva caused the rains of love of Godhead to fall, the more the inundation increased and spread all over the world.