Rāmeśvara published in his February 1973 newsletter a letter from a college student who had read one of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books. ISKCON’S mail-order office was receiving hundreds of such letters a month.

Sir:
A couple of weeks ago, devotees of Krishna (from Denver, I understand) were here at the University of Arkansas distributing literature. One young man approached me with a “hard pitch” for my purchasing a copy of the Prabhupāda translation of the Bhagavad-gita; I was initially quite skeptical (so many people are getting rich from selling their versions of “the answer”) and told him to not bother me. He insisted, though, and I finally gave in.

I have been reading the Gita, having not finished it yet, and have found it quite rewarding; my mind, shaped in logic and empiricism, seems to find itself barely tasting the transcendental material in the book; I discuss it with others; I find myself remembering certain passages. …

It has genuinely stimulated my interest, to say the least, in a way that my quite extensive readings in Christianity, Zen Buddhism, the “lower” forms of yoga, etc. have never succeeded in doing.

In short, I think I have finally found the beginning.

Rāmeśvara went on to beat the drum of saṅkīrtana.

Actually no one can properly measure the effect of our book distribution. If it was known how many books we distribute each month we would be listed on every best-seller list in the country! For example, as many of you know, already the new GITA has outsold any other edition of the GITA ever printed. The Macmillan Company has already sold tens of thousands of copies, while we have sold over 27,000 copies ourselves since they first appeared last August.

With increased monies coming into the Book Fund, Śrīla Prabhupāda had approved his trustees’ plans to print larger quantities of books and store them in a warehouse, making them available to the temples for distribution throughout the year. Yet keeping up with the temples’ demand for books was still difficult, even with a warehouse.

Small,easy-to-sell books like Beyond Birth and Death, On the Way to Kṛṣṇa, Rāja-vidyā, and The Perfection of Yoga were printed in the tens of thousands. Distributors would go out, carrying in their book bags a variety of books: Śrī Īśopaniṣad, Bhagavad-gītā, Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, and Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, as well as an assortment of small books, Back to Godhead magazines, and some inexpensive booklets like Kṛṣṇa, the Reservoir of Pleasure and On Chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa.

Tom Beaudry was living with his wife in Santa Cruz, California. After attending a festival in Berkeley celebrating Lord Caitanya’s appearance, where he chanted all day, and after reading Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Bhagavad-gītā, he felt he should become Śrīla Prabhupāda’s disciple. He began chanting and trying to interest his wife and friends in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. When a traveling party of brahmacārīs arrived to start a center in Santa Cruz, he told them he wanted to join. But they were skeptical. Then one day he showed up with a shaved head and dhotī.

Tom Beaudry: I began going out every day with the chanting party. Then gradually I began to break away from the kīrtana party to sell small books in shopping centers. One day I came back and one of the brahmacārīs, Sarvabhauma, criticized me. He asked me how many big books I had sold. I said, “I didn’t sell any.” He said, “How many did you bring with you?” I said, “I didn’t have any to bring with me.” “Then you’re in māyā,” he said. “You didn’t bring any big books? How do you expect to sell them? Prabhupāda wants these big books sold.” So I thought to myself, “Gee, I must be in māyā.” I said, “How do you sell these books?” He said, “You pray to Prabhupāda. Prabhupāda gives you the mercy.” So I thought, “Well, that makes sense. That’s how everything works in Kṛṣṇa consciousness.”

I went to my house. I thought about it and prayed to Prabhupāda that I could sell these big books. I prayed all evening and then took rest. In the morning I got up, and it was on my mind. So I put out one big book, Teachings of Lord Caitanya, in my bag of small books. But in the course of selling the small books, I forgot about the big book.

Suddenly a lady came up to me and said, “What is that big book you have there?” Then I remembered Prabhupāda and my prayers, and I said, “This is the Teachings of Lord Caitanya.” I gave her the book, and she gave me three dollars. When I got back to the temple, I told the devotees how Prabhupāda had sold a book.

Praghoṣa: I was coming regularly to the Detroit temple for classes in the evening, and I was doing some odd work to help the devotees prepare the temple. Every night I would be painting, and I would watch the devotees coming back from saṅkīrtana. They seemed very ecstatic and enlivened, and I was always a little curious about what they did out there that made them come back like this. I would be up on my ladder, painting and listening to them talk as they sat on the floor drinking hot milk. They would talk about how they had knocked on one man’s door and this had happened and then that had happened – it was very attractive to me.

After I moved into the temple and had been a devotee about a week, someone asked me if I would like to go out and try distributing books. So I went out, wearing a dhotī and tilaka and using a straightforward presentation, walking up to people, giving them a card and a book, telling them about the contents of the book, showing them Prabhupāda’s picture, and asking for a donation. The exhilaration I got from that was just incredible. It became extremely blissful to go out and do this. None of us could actually put a finger on why it was so ecstatic.

We used to lie awake at night. All the brahmacārīs stayed in one big room, and we would lie there on the floor in our sleeping bags, whispering to each other: “What did you say to the people out there?” There would be all these different conversations going on in the room at night, with the lights out and everyone talking, trying to relate how we were presenting Prabhupāda’s books.

Jagaddhātrī-devī dasī: My first service was cleaning the temple. I was cleaning the whole temple. I would be looking out the window at the men piling into the vans getting ready for saṅkīrtana, and I would always think that I would really like to be doing that. Finally our temple formed two traveling parties, one of men and one of women, and we went for the summer to distribute books in the fairs of Washington state. The men and the ladies used to have competition to see who could distribute the most.

Sura: I joined Kṛṣṇa consciousness in Seattle in 1973, and they sent me out on book distribution my first day. We would always hear from Los Angeles about the letters Prabhupāda was sending. Everything we heard was centered on Prabhupāda’s desire for his books to be distributed. It was by hearing this that newer devotees wanted to go out and be part of the saṅkīrtana party. We wanted to be soldiers for Prabhupāda’s book distribution army.

We went to the Spokane Fair, and the leader of the Spokane temple wrote a letter to Śrīla Prabhupāda requesting him to come and telling him the results of our book distribution. Then we received a reply from Prabhupāda saying that he couldn’t make it but that the devotees should go to the fair and preach on his behalf. “Fulfill my mission,” Prabhupāda said, “that every man and woman in the United States gets a book.” That was just what we were waiting for – to get an order directly from Śrīla Prabhupāda that this was what pleases him. Our book distribution kept increasing, and we just thought we’d never had so much fun before. It wasn’t like austerity. Some of the devotees were thinking, “Well, it’s really hard to go on saṅkīrtana.” We were thinking, “You must be nuts! It’s the most fun thing you can do to go on saṅkīrtana and sell books.” It was fun, not for sense gratification but for the soul, because of our being linked in service to our spiritual master and Kṛṣṇa. I appreciated it in that way. And when I first met Praghoṣa, I could see he was really dedicated and a true lover of Prabhupāda, because he was so dedicated to pleasing Prabhupāda by distributing books.

Praghoṣa: We were distributing in Santa Barbara, California. The area had been worked many times before, and the people were really puffed up. I went there with a couple of brahmacārīs. One day, after trying to distribute for about seven hours, I had only sold one book. I had never before had anything like that happen to me in my whole time as a devotee. I was really working. I never stopped. At one particular point I just couldn’t take it any more. I tried to give a book to someone, and they just cracked off to me in a really obnoxious way. I had so much desire, I was trying so hard, that when he did this it just devastated me. I just wanted to punch the guy in the nose. All my intensity came out, and I erupted into tears. I just sat down on an old telephone pole that was lying by the street and started to cry.

Then this devotee walked up and found me sitting there like I had just lost my best friend. He said, “Prabhu, what’s the matter?” I said, “I don’t know what’s the matter. I just can’t distribute books. Not one person will take a book. I’ve been out here for seven hours. Do you know how many books I’ve distributed? One book.” Then he sat down and preached to me and put me back together.

The next day I was really trying to have a better day, and I took my book bag and just ran from one person to another all morning. Then I was showing a book to a girl, and she said she couldn’t pay me with money but that she would gladly pay me. I was young and naive, and I didn’t know exactly what she was talking about for a minute. Then finally when I realized, I called, “Hare Kṛṣṇa!” and took the book back from her, took off my wig and just bolted to another parking lot. I ran from person to person all day, praying real hard to Kṛṣṇa. By the end of the day I had distributed a large number of books.

Lavaṅga-latikā-devī dāsī: When I first came to Los Angeles, Śrīmatī told me that Śrīla Prabhupāda had said that being in the temple all the time was māyā. Prabhupāda wanted us to go out and distribute BTGs door to door. I learned from the other devotees how to distribute books. There were so many experienced devotees who knew how, so I just followed in their footsteps. I would say what they’d say and do what they’d do. Then it became easy. When a person took a book and gave a donation, I could see it was Lord Caitanya acting. I could see that everything was working under the direction of Kṛṣṇa’s internal energy.

Tom Beaudry had moved from Santa Cruz to Los Angeles, and by associating with devotees like Rāmeśvara and other book distributors, he soon became a leader. He was initiated in June 1972 and received the name Tripurāri dāsa. Every day he would go to a supermarket parking lot near the temple and sell a couple hundred copies of Easy Journey to Other Planets. One evening at the University of California at Long Beach, he and a few other book distributors dropped in on a lecture given by a popular yoga leader.

Rāmeśvara: I remember when they came back. It was the middle of Bhagavad-gītā class, and I was giving the class in the temple room. All of a sudden the door burst open, and they were standing there. Tripurāri was in his street clothes, and the girls were in their sārīs. They just ran into the temple. You could see that something very special had taken place, because their faces were glowing. They couldn’t even speak. They were dazed or stunned. The whole temple was anxious to hear the news, so I quickly finished the class. Then Tripurāri told us that he had just distributed seventeen Bhagavad-gītās – the full, hardbound, unabridged Bhagavad-gītās – in two hours. Līlāśakti had distributed thirteen, Vṛndāvana had distributed eleven, Tilaka had distributed eleven, and Makhana Lāl had distributed nine. Nothing like this had ever been done before. We were all completely astonished that anyone could sell so many big books like that.

One morning a few days later, Tripurāri was driving down the San Diego Freeway to go on traveling saṅkīrtana when he saw the sign for the Los Angeles airport and spontaneously decided to try it. After selling a dozen big books that day, he realized the airport was wonderful for book distribution. He started going out regularly to the airport and was soon distributing thirty to forty books a day, sometimes giving individuals as many as six volumes of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam at once.

April 11, 1973
Śrīla Prabhupāda flew from New York to Los Angeles, and a crowd of loving devotees greeted him.

Tripurāri: Prabhupāda was arriving at two in the afternoon, and all the devotees were going to meet him. But it was also Easter weekend and a big day for book distribution at the airport. At that time I was the only one working the airport. I was doing rather well and had sold about thirty books by one-thirty. Then I changed into my dhotī and walked over to the arrivals area to meet His Divine Grace. When he entered the terminal building, he looked at me and smiled, and I melted in ecstasy.

We had kīrtana all the way down the stairs, and when we got outside, all the devotees were going back to the temple. Then I thought, “What business do I have going back to the temple and chanting with all the devotees? My business is to stay out and distribute the books. That is my service to Prabhupāda.” So I was the only one who didn’t return to the temple. I stayed and distributed sixty-seven books. When I got back, I found that Karandhara had told Prabhupāda about me and how I had been distributing books. When I heard that, I became very enthusiastic and continued to distribute books every day that week.

In Los Angeles Śrīla Prabhupāda took his morning walks either at the shore of the Pacific Ocean or in Cheviot Hills Park. Every morning a few disciples would join him, as well as Thoudam Singh, a Ph.D. candidate in organic chemistry at the University of California. Śrīla Prabhupāda would regularly discuss with Dr. Singh the scientific theory of life’s originating from matter. Day after day, Prabhupāda would expose Darwin’s theory as foolish and unscientific.

The sun would just be appearing on the horizon as Prabhupāda and a small group of disciples walked. The air would be chilly, and Śrīla Prabhupāda would wear his hooded saffron overcoat, while his disciples, wearing sweaters or wool cādaras, followed him, listening and asking questions.

Most of the conversation, however, would be between Prabhupāda and Dr. Singh, who played the role of a materialistic scientist. Dr. Singh would present atheistic arguments, and Śrīla Prabhupāda would defeat them with scripture and logic. “I say to the scientists,” Prabhupāda said, “if life originated from chemicals, and if your science is so advanced, then why can’t you create life biochemically in your laboratories?”

On one of these morning walks, the older devotees introduced Rāmeśvara to Prabhupāda, and at the devotees’ request, Rāmeśvara began telling Śrīla Prabhupāda about book distribution. He mentioned that sometimes the distributors would meet impersonalists and convince them to buy a copy of Bhagavad-gītā As It Is.

Śrīla Prabhupāda stopped and turned gravely to Rāmeśvara. “What do you say to them?” he asked.

Rāmeśvara told Prabhupāda some of his techniques for selling a book.

After a few moments Prabhupāda said, “Our men need to study our books also.”

On the morning Tripurāri accompanied Prabhupāda on his walk, Prabhupāda said little as they walked up and down the beach. Only when they were walking back toward the car did one of the devotees mention, “Prabhupāda, Tripurāri is here.”

Prabhupāda turned and smiled. “Ah. How is the book distribution going?” he asked.

This was Tripurāri’s first time to speak directly with his spiritual master, and he wanted to say many things at once. In nervous enthusiasm he began blurting out his realizations. Prabhupāda interrupted, “This is the best service for humanity.” And he quoted from the Bhagavad-gītā, “There will never be a devotee more dear to Me than he who preaches this message.”

With the exception of Rāmeśvara’s and Tripurāri’s brief encounters with Prabhupāda, none of the book distributors in Los Angeles had any personal exchanges or meetings with their spiritual master. But the closeness of their relationship with him was not dependent on physical proximity.

Tripurāri: My association with Śrīla Prabhupāda was always more or less in separation and in the field. While many of the older devotees were trained personally by Prabhupāda, I never got that training. I was trained by Śrīla Prabhupāda more from within my own heart. I think that’s the case with all of our book distributors. They have a very intimate sense of feeling for Prabhupāda, but they never had much personal contact. Their intimacy and real sense of knowing Prabhupāda very closely was because of that service which Prabhupāda said was his life and soul – seeing that the books went out.

Śrīla Prabhupāda liked to sit in his garden, with its roses, jasmine, azaleas, honeysuckle, mint, silver lace vine, marigolds, and banana trees, and he liked the sound of the fountain. The small compound, with its lawn, flowers, bushes, and seat for Śrīla Prabhupāda, was surrounded by high cinder-block walls. When Prabhupāda received special guests, the devotees would bring chairs for them, but Prabhupāda’s disciples would always sit on thin mats on the lawn and look up at Śrīla Prabhupāda on his elevated seat. The neighborhood was quieter and more peaceful in the evening, and Prabhupāda could hear the kīrtana in the temple and the cars passing along Venice Boulevard. Men’s shouts from the nearby karate school were a disturbance Prabhupāda had come to tolerate.

For an hour or more Prabhupāda would sit, listening to a reading from Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, while around him on the grass, sharing the transcendental moment, sat his disciples. Prabhupāda was fully satisfied to hear kṛṣṇa-līlā, and he would sit erect, head held high, in a meditative mood. It was only an informal group, but his presence made the occasion very special, momentous. From time to time he would interrupt the reader to comment. Night would fall, and he would end the reading and leave the garden, walking on the gravel path past the main temple building and up to his second floor suite.

Śrīla Prabhupāda so much liked his Los Angeles garden that he decided he wanted one like it at his Māyāpur headquarters.

With regard to the Māyāpur house, I may suggest you make one roof garden. On the top of the house you can put soil of six inches and then plant so many tulasi plants and nice bushes. I like the garden very much. Just like here in Los Angeles temple they have made one very nice garden for me and I sit there every evening. So you please also make a first-class Māyāpur garden.

At about ten in the evening Śrīla Prabhupāda would usually go into his bedroom and lie down. His servant, Śrutakīrti, would massage his legs, and Prabhupāda would then close his eyes. Meanwhile, Rāmeśvara would be waiting at the bottom of the stairs, hoping that the secretary or servant would come down with a message from Prabhupāda.

Rāmeśvara: I was too afraid to go into Śrīla Prabhupāda’s room, so I would be waiting at the bottom of the stairs, just hanging there, just waiting for one word. Śrīla Prabhupāda would often say something, and it would be passed to me. Then every morning the saṅkīrtana devotees would just surround me and ask, “What did he say?” They would be begging for some nectar. It was an intense experience. We felt that we were all having a special direct connection with Prabhupāda.

While waiting outside Prabhupāda’s door, I would be in transcendental bliss just thinking how we were distributing books as an offering of pure love for our spiritual master. This was the first time that devotees were going to the airports. No one else in the movement was going to an airport except the devotees in Los Angeles, so it was something very special. No one was doing big books in the quantity that we were.

At one point, when Śrīla Prabhupāda saw one of my daily saṅkīrtana reports, he commented, “Who is Rāmeśvara?”

Day after day, Śrīla Prabhupāda was seeing these ecstatic reports, sprinkled with nectarean quotes from his Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Ādi-līlā chapter that had just been published. He realized that these disciples were in ecstasy, and so he asked, “Who are they?” He could see we loved saṅkīrtana. It was not an artificial burden or that we were struggling. He could see that there didn’t seem to be any struggle. It was like fun, bliss, ecstasy. And the whole philosophy was there. We were completely tuning in to the Caitanya-caritāmṛta philosophy that Lord Caitanya descends with His confidential associates to spread love of God but doesn’t discriminate who is a fit candidate and who is not. These were the verses we were putting into the daily letter. This was our mood, and Prabhupāda loved it.

From Śrutakīrti’s point of view, the evening massage was a very special time, because Śrīla Prabhupāda seemed free of the pressure of the day’s management. Śrutakīrti would bring several night-blooming jasmine flowers from the garden, and Prabhupāda would place the fragrant blossoms near his nose during the massage. He would be even quieter and more relaxed than during the Kṛṣṇa book reading. There was no business to attend to; he had done a hard day’s work. Although he would be rising after only three hours’ rest, he now lay back, enrapt in thought or chanting softly.

Some evenings Śrīla Prabhupāda would delay the massage and slowly walk back and forth in his bedroom, chanting on his beads, or he would sit on his bed and chant. But on most nights he would lie on his back, while Śrutakīrti massaged his legs. If he conversed with his servant at all, it wouldn’t be about ISKCON management. He might look at a picture on the wall and say, “How beautiful Kṛṣṇa is! How could they not be attracted to Kṛṣṇa?” Or sometimes he would talk about his childhood and other informal topics. But even at this relaxed time, he relished hearing the saṅkīrtana results, and so he would sometimes read Rāmeśvara’s daily report or simply say something about preaching Kṛṣṇa consciousness.

One night, after reading Rāmeśvara’s ecstatic daily saṅkīrtana report, Prabhupāda felt moved to write a message on the back of the report. Dating the paper April 20, 1973, he wrote,

My dear boys and girls, you are working so hard for broadcasting the glories of Lord Krishna’s lotus feet and thus my Guru Maharaj will be so pleased upon you. Certainly my Guru Maharaj will bestow His blessings thousand times more than me and that is my satisfaction. All Glories to the assembled devotees.

A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami

N.B. Everyone should go with the Sankirtan Party as soon as possible.

Rāmeśvara may have been shy while quietly waiting at the bottom of the stairs for the slightest recognition from Śrīla Prabhupāda, but when he received the prize jewel of this handwritten note, he ran off, shouting to share the good fortune with any devotee who was still awake.

Tripurāri: Every morning after maṅgala-ārati there was always a little group clustered around the door of the temple, because you weren’t supposed to talk in the temple while chanting japa early in the morning. So Rāmeśvara was standing at the doorway chanting, and he called us over, until a little cluster of devotees were there at the doorway. He showed us Prabhupāda’s note. Some of the other devotees got frustrated, seeing that we were talking during the japa period. They felt we were a distraction or that we weren’t absorbed in our service or in japa. But actually we were really intensely absorbed in thinking of saṅkīrtana, and when we returned to our japa, we began chanting with the desire to be able to go out and please Prabhupāda.

In a few days Prabhupāda’s words – “Everyone should go with the Sankirtan Party as soon as possible” – reached the other temples. And although Śrīla Prabhupāda soon left Los Angeles, returning to India, his message stayed and deepened the devotees’ convictions.