ALTHOUGH ŚRĪLA PRABHUPĀDA had said he would stay in Los Angeles, he soon decided to follow his original travel plans. Feeling compelled to see to the welfare of his disciples around the country, he left on a tour of thirteen ISKCON centers in the U.S. and Canada. About half a dozen of his sannyāsī disciples traveled with him.

Denver
June 27, 1975
Śrīla Prabhupāda was pleasantly surprised to see the brick church building that was now a Kṛṣṇa temple. The temple hall was spacious, and afternoon sunshine streamed into the room. He beheld the small golden forms of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa on the altar and then walked to the rear of the hall, where he sat on the vyāsāsana, allowing the devotees to bathe his feet. These devotees, unaccustomed to being with their spiritual master, were awkward in performing the standard formalities. But they were enthusiastic and happy.

Sitting on the floor before Śrīla Prabhupāda, Daśaratha began singing Ohe Vaiṣṇava Ṭhākura, accompanying himself on the harmonium. Śrīla Prabhupāda liked his singing and, when the song was finished, asked, “You know the meaning?”

Daśaratha replied, “ ‘O venerable Vaiṣṇava, O ocean of mercy, please be merciful unto your servant.’ ”

Another devotee added, “ ‘I pray for the shade of your lotus feet.’ ”

“Yes,” Prabhupāda acknowledged, and he began to speak about the song’s author, Narottama dāsa Ṭhākura. He then quoted another song by Narottama dāsa, chādiyā vaiṣṇava-sevā nistāra pāyeche kebā. This Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement is for nistāra, he said. “Nistāra means to be liberated from the capture of māyā. When we hear songs by the Vaiṣṇavas, that is called liberation.”

Although the devotees had heard before of Narottama dāsa Ṭhākura and of liberation, they listened especially attentively now. Here was the Vaiṣṇava Ṭhākura in person, come to teach them to control their passions, to impart to them the strength to carry out the saṅkīrtana movement, and to bless them, as Narottama dāsa Ṭhākura described, “with one drop of faith with which to attain the great treasure of the holy name.”

“So I am very glad to see this temple,” Śrīla Prabhupāda said to the group of about forty devotees. “You have purchased it? That’s nice. Very good space. And the devotees here are very nice. So, our process is very simple – that we dedicate our life to the service of the Vaiṣṇava, and according to his direction, we engage in śravaṇaṁ kīrtanam, hearing and chanting of Viṣṇu. And refrain from the sinful activities. Then life is successful. We do not require to be very learned or very rich man or to take birth in very high family.”

For driving Śrīla Prabhupāda to the park, a friend of the Denver temple had lent his Lincoln Continental, formerly Richard Nixon’s presidential limousine. Brahmānanda Swami pointed out the car’s luxurious features to Prabhupāda, including bulletproof glass windows.

“So bullet is expected also?” Prabhupāda laughed.

Brahmānanda remarked that the world leaders were always in anxiety. Prabhupāda agreed – in the material world there was danger at every step.

He began talking of Indian politics: Indira Gandhi and Jayaprakash Narayan in bitter disagreement. “Both of them are in distressed position,” Prabhupāda said. “I am thinking of writing them on the basis of our Bhagavad-gītā. Do you think it is advised?” When Śrīla Prabhupāda mentioned that Indira Gandhi occasionally went to see her guru, Ānandamayī, Brahmānanda remarked that her guru had commented favorably about the chanting of Hare Kṛṣṇa.

“So, what do you think?” Prabhupāda asked his sannyāsīs, Tamāla Kṛṣṇa, Bhavānanda, and Satsvarūpa. “Shall I write? Hmmm? I have made a draft of a letter this night. So you come and see. Let us take a chance. We want good for everyone, and this is the only medicine, Hare Kṛṣṇa, for all wrongs. Para-duḥkha-duḥkhī. People are suffering.”

The devotees agreed the letters would be a good idea, although they doubted whether the politicians would take the advice or even read such letters.

Prabhupāda then asked about the public’s response to Kṛṣṇa consciousness in Denver.

“They get nice attendance on Sundays,” Satsvarūpa answered. “Many people come.”

“There is good hope,” Prabhupāda affirmed.

“Good book distribution here, too.”

Prabhupāda nodded. “That is the most successful. Wherever book distribution is going on nicely, that is successful. Because people are in gross ignorance, they are taking this temporary life as everything. Very horrible condition. We are trying to explain what is the actual life.”

They arrived at the park, which was filled with tall old pines, maples, and oaks. Getting out of the car, Prabhupāda stood facing a pond. In the distance he could see the Denver skyline and the Rocky Mountains. He could hear the quacking of ducks and geese from the pond.

A second carload of devotees arrived, and Prabhupāda and his followers began walking along a paved path beside the lake. “Very nice park,” Prabhupāda remarked, “and not far away.”

They soon came upon a large modern building, the Museum of Natural History. “That means Darwin’s theory, that’s all,” said Prabhupāda. “Their whole civilization is based on this Darwin’s theory. How long you shall keep history? Do you know what is the history of the sun, when it was created, when it came into appearance? Can Darwin give us the history of the sun, or the moon, or the sky? Where is the history? There is history, but where is your history? You simply imagine, ‘There was a chunk, and it became manifested as the sun, moon. And I am also this.’ What do you actually know? How has this cosmic manifestation come into existence?”

The sun rose with dazzling, golden rays and quickly warmed the air. The devotees offered Prabhupāda information about Denver, “the mile-high city.” It was good for health, they said. Prabhupāda said the climate was as in Punjab, the upcountry in India. He also heard how Colorado was known as “cow country” because its main industry was slaughter.

Prabhupāda walked past a zoo and down a hill. He passed a Civil War cannon and saw many colorful flower beds, expansive lawns, and everywhere the tall pines. Although the air seemed chilly for July, the brightness of the rising sun was unusual, and the natural scenery of the park stood out sharply. Śrīla Prabhupāda also appeared bathed in golden light as he walked briskly, wrapped in his gray cādara, talking from time to time with his disciples.

Prabhupāda mentioned Gopal Agarwal, the man at whose home he had first stayed after arriving in America in 1965. Gopal’s father, he said, was a very rich man in Mathurā, and Gopal had come to America to be an electrical engineer. He was not doing as well as he would have by staying in India, Prabhupāda said. Gopal’s wife, Sally, used to say, “My husband is a lost child of his parents.”

“People are working so hard day and night for these temporary years,” Prabhupāda said, “although by laboring less than that, they can go back to Godhead. Just to get a nice car, a nice wife and a few children by working so hard. And by the same labor, if he devotes himself to Kṛṣṇa consciousness then he goes back home, back to Godhead. And what is wrong there? We have got so many Kṛṣṇa conscious devotees. What is wrong there, compared to these ordinary karmīs? Hmm? Are you unhappy? What do you think? All their efforts will be finished, and after death they will become a cat or a dog or a tree.”

Devotee: “Sometimes, Śrīla Prabhupāda, even if we explain this and the people seem to understand, still they won’t do anything about it.”

Prabhupāda: “So you have to constantly poke them. Just like when a man is sleeping, you have to call him constantly, ‘Mr. John! Mr. John! Wake up, you rascal! Why are you sleeping? You have got this opportunity of human form of life. Now get up! Take to Kṛṣṇa consciousness and solve all your problems.’ ”

Devotee: “Some people say that if we want to do this it’s all right, but we shouldn’t preach and insist to them. Everyone has his own way.”

Śrīla Prabhupāda: “But you are a human being. You rascal, you are sleeping! And we are just trying to awaken you. Suppose a child was going off to one side where there is danger. We are human beings, so we shall say, ‘No, no, go to the right.’ We shall try to save him. That is our business, to do good to others. That is the mission of Caitanya Mahāprabhu. Not that, ‘This man is going to hell, so let him go to hell. But at least I am happy.’ That isnot humane.”

Devotee: “A lot of times, Śrīla Prabhupāda, they feel we’re just escaping material life. They say we don’t have jobs and that we should work for a living.”

Prabhupāda (addressing an imaginary challenger): “You rascal! You have no money – you work. But we are rich men. We are Kṛṣṇa’s sons. So why shall I work like you, an ass? An ass will work unnecessarily. We are not asses.”

Bhagavad-gītā, Prabhupāda said, establishes Lord Kṛṣṇa as the proprietor of everything. The servants of Kṛṣṇa, therefore, should not be expected to work hard like asses. Asses work hard, not human beings. This was also the instruction of Ṛṣabhadeva in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. Ṛṣabhadeva told His sons that human life is not meant for working hard simply for food and sex enjoyment. That was the business of hogs.

Prabhupāda: “Tell them they are working like hogs, and we are living like human beings. That is the difference. If somebody does not work hard like a hog, does that mean he is escaping?”

Śrīla Prabhupāda continued to vigorously develop his theme. He argued very seriously and yet in a delightful way, showing the fortune of one who becomes a servant of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. The devotees could not refrain from smiling and laughing as they hurried to keep up with his pace and with his Kṛṣṇa conscious logic.

Prabhupāda: “I was a student of economics. There we learned Marshall’s theory. He says that human nature is such that unless a person has obligation, he will not work. That is the beginning of economics. If one already has something sufficient to eat, then he will not work. So if we have sufficient to eat, why shall we work? What is the answer? This is not escaping, it is coming to the light. To not work and yet get our necessities is comfort. But to work hard just to get the bare necessities of life, that is for the hogs and dogs.”

Devotee: “They have no faith or trust that this can be done.”

Prabhupāda: “See us, you rascal! See! Open your eyes! See that we have no business. We have no food stock. Still we are not worried. We do not know what we shall eat in the evening, but still we are not worried. I came to your country without any subsistence.” Prabhupāda argued that man’s economic necessities could be easily settled by keeping cows and land. He said that men have made an unnecessary, complex arrangement just for maintaining the body, thereby forgetting the purpose of human life. When a devotee contended that not everyone had the opportunity to get land, Prabhupāda said that this was simply mismanagement. There was plenty of land in America.

Devotee: “Śrīla Prabhupāda, they accuse us of being parasites.”

Śrīla Prabhupāda: “No. A parasite means if he takes others’ property and tries to enjoy it. But we are not enjoying others’ property. We are enjoying our father’s property. Īśāvāsyam idaṁ sarvam. Kṛṣṇa is the proprietor. Why do you say parasite? We are good children of Kṛṣṇa, and Kṛṣṇa says, ‘Don’t work. I shall give you everything.’ Actually Kṛṣṇa says that: ‘Why are you working so hard? Just surrender to Me and I will give you protection – whatever you want.’ So we are giving everything. Why say parasite?”

The devotees were well aware that Śrīla Prabhupāda did work, traveling constantly, managing his worldwide Kṛṣṇa conscious society, rising in the middle of the night to translate Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. And his disciples also worked hard. But they did not work like animals and animal-like persons for things that would be destroyed in time, and they did not work at horrible enterprises that ruined the best part of human nature. They did not work like asses and claim they had no time left in the day to chant the holy name of God.

Prabhupāda: “Now this is a nice park, but nobody is coming here. We Kṛṣṇa conscious people, we are taking advantage. So they are escaping or we are escaping? Just see how foolish they are. They work so hard, but they are not taking advantage. But we are taking. So our policy is that you work hard, and we go and take from you. This is not escaping, this is intelligence.”

Śrīla Prabhupāda’s example was a delightful revelation to the devotees, and they laughed at the obvious truth. Here they were, walking so pleasantly with their spiritual master, and yet no one else was coming to enjoy the park.

Prabhupāda: “But as soon as we ask, ‘You also come and join,’ they will not. They say, ‘No, we shall work like this.’ We are asking everyone, ‘Come here,’ but they will not come. That is their enviousness. Therefore they say we are escaping and living at the cost of others. They see that we have got so many cars and the devotees’ faces are bright. We are eating nicely and have no problems. But if we ask them to come, then it is very difficult. If we ask them to chant Hare Kṛṣṇa and dance, oh, it is a very big, heavy task for them. As soon as they will come, they will know that there is no tea, no liquor, no meat, no cigarette. So you can say that we are escaping these things. But we are not escaping happiness. They are escaping happiness.”

When Śrīla Prabhupāda did not have a specific engagement in Denver, a few of his men sometimes gathered in his room. Occasionally he would provoke some of them into a mock debate with him.

Śrīla Prabhupāda: “Everything must come from something. No one can deny that. Now we give our challenge: Do you know what that Absolute Truth is?”

Brahmānanda: “We know there is an Absolute Truth, but at this time we cannot directly say what it is.”

Prabhupāda immediately replied that if a person admits not knowing the Absolute Truth, then that person has no grounds for rejecting the Vedic explanation of the Absolute. That person cannot deny Kṛṣṇa is the Absolute Truth. “If you don’t know the philosophy,” Prabhupāda said, “then you must agree to hear from an authority who does.”

Satsvarūpa: “Yes, that argument is logical, and we should at least listen to you. But we have heard so many versions of the truth. Why should we accept your version?”

Prabhupāda: “That is like saying, ‘I have come across so many counterfeit coins. Why should I think there are real coins?’ There are counterfeit coins, and there must also be genuine coins. It is our misfortune if we are unable to distinguish the real coins from the counterfeit coins.”

Another sannyāsī challenged that the Kṛṣṇa conscious version was dogmatic, since there were many truths and many gods. But the Absolute Truth is one, Śrīla Prabhupāda replied, because God is one. God has no competitors. If a person does not accept Kṛṣṇa as God, then he has to present someone who is more fully God than Kṛṣṇa. But if someone does not know who is God, then that person cannot deny Kṛṣṇa.

“If you speak that way,” Prabhupāda continued, “then you are being dogmatic. You do not know what God is, yet dogmatically you are saying that Kṛṣṇa is not God.”

Prabhupāda compared those who deny the supremacy of Kṛṣṇa to owls who do not open their eyes to see the sunlight. Such persons demand to see God, but when God comes before them personally or when He sends His pure representative, they will not see.

On another morning walk in Denver, Tamāla Kṛṣṇa Goswami told Prabhupāda that some of the devotees were reading books about health diets and were avoiding the prasādam offered to the Deity in the temple. Śrīla Prabhupāda immediately replied that this was not good. Fasting, he acknowledged, was good for health, but the devotees should not become weak. They should take prasādam and do their work.

When one of the devotees told Prabhupāda he got drowsy after eating heavily of grains and therefore preferred fruit, Prabhupāda said that was all right; fruit was offered to the Deity. When Yadubara said that in Los Angeles the families often cooked in their own homes instead of taking the prasādam of the Deity, Bhavānanda Goswami testified how wonderful it was at the Māyāpur festival when hundreds of devotees sat down and took prasādam together.

Prabhupāda: “Yes, what is the difficulty? Capātīs, rice, they are innocent foods. What is the difficulty?”

Harikeśa: “A lot of devotees are quoting you. They say there is no need to eat grains and that you said that grains were for the animals.”

Prabhupāda: “But I am eating grains.”

Harikeśa: “I tell them that.”

Prabhupāda: “They say, ‘Prabhupāda says.’ Then you believe that.”

Prabhupāda said that devotees should not listen to health advice if it resulted in their refusing to honor the Lord’s prasādam.

Prabhupāda: “Therefore, follow taking prasādam. Let whatever may happen.”

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: “Let us die eating prasādam.”

Prabhupāda: “Yes. [Laughter.] That is devotee. But we must prepare very first-class foodstuffs. And then, where is the complaint, if it is first class?”

Returning from the walk, Śrīla Prabhupāda continued to discuss the topic in Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam class: “I was hearing that we are not taking prasādam – especially the gṛhasthas. No. That is not good. You should take prasādam.” Prabhupāda described how bhakti-yoga begins with controlling the tongue – by chanting and by eating kṛṣṇa-prasādam.

“So in our branches,” he continued, “all the devotees take prasādam together. That is nice. Why we should not be liking to take prasādam in the temple? What is the fault? No, this is not good. Everyone should take prasādam. … It is called prasāda-sevā [service], not prasādam enjoyment. Prasādam means giving service. Prasādam is as good as Kṛṣṇa and should be respected as good as Kṛṣṇa. So one must have faith that it is not material. Those who are attached to the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement and are attached to the service, they should take prasādam – first-class prasādam. Everyone likes the taste of prasādam.”

July 2, 1975
On the plane from Denver to Chicago, Prabhupāda scanned a Time magazine essay on crime, a cover story entitled, “Crime: Why and What To Do?” Landing at O’Hare Airport, he was greeted by hundreds of cheering devotees and the press.

“Your Divine Grace,” Śrī Govinda, the Chicago temple president, said, pushing forward, “this is Ms. Jones from NBC television.”

“How do you do?” smiled Ms. Jones, and several other reporters held microphones before Prabhupāda. “I would like to know what the occasion is. Why are you visiting Chicago?”

“Just now I have seen one article in Time magazine,” Śrīla Prabhupāda replied. He raised his right hand in an instructing gesture and leaned against the cane he held in his left hand. “It was four or five pages,” he continued – “ ‘Crime: Why and How to Solve It?’ If you are serious, then you can take our method and suggestions. Then you can stop this crime.”

“You have a way to stop the crime?”

“Oh, yes, I have.”

“Can you explain a little bit more how you do it?”

Śrīla Prabhupāda nodded. “That we have to suggest. The social, political, educational, cultural – everything has to be changed. So if you come, we can give you in details how it can be done.”

Ms. Jones dropped the issue and asked Prabhupāda how he felt about his welcome. She seemed unnerved by the devotees crowding around to see and hear Śrīla Prabhupāda.

“By God’s grace,” Śrīla Prabhupāda said, “wherever I go they welcome me like that.”

Ms. Jones: “Are you used to anything a bit more serene?”

“Serene?” Prabhupāda thoughtfully considered the word as they all stood together in the midst of the noisy, heavily trafficked airport. “Of course, our whole propaganda is serene,” he said. “Yes. We are distributing God consciousness. It is the most serene movement. People have to learn it very nicely.”

“Thank you,” said Ms. Jones. She had gotten enough.

But Prabhupāda added a last word. “My message is to stop the crimes of your country. This is my sum and substance. You have read the article in Time magazine, ‘Crime and How to Stop It’? So if you take my advice, that can be stopped.”

“The world is simply full of criminals,” Prabhupāda continued, seated in the back seat of the car as they pulled away from the airport’s entrance. “Crime means pāpī, sinful.” To Śrīla Prabhupāda it seemed to make no difference that he was sitting in a car with a few disciples and not speaking with the press. “If simply by law you want to suppress them, it will not be successful. Deliver them. Then you also come along with them. Not that these criminals only should be delivered, and you will go on continuing with criminal activities, slaughterhouse and killing the child in the womb. You are criminal yourself. The whole state.”

Śrīla Prabhupāda sat waiting for his massage to begin. His regular daily schedule was to take a massage at 11:30 A.M., before bathing and taking prasādam. But today, because of his plane travel, his routine was interrupted. Nevertheless, he wanted to follow his general program as far as possible. Upendra was getting mustard oil and the mat for Śrīla Prabhupāda to sit on.

“So we can solve this,” Prabhupāda said to the few disciples with him. “Why not invite them to hear us, how we can solve? We can arrange big, big meetings on this point. ‘Crime: Why and What To Do?’ A very suitable headline it is.”

Prabhupāda continued to develop a Kṛṣṇa conscious analysis of crime. As long as society violates the laws of nature, he said, there must be crime. He thought it significant that, according to the Time article, the leaders of the country were actually wondering what to do about the increasing crime rate and that they were admitting they didn’t know the solution. “Now,” he said, “our business is to give the solution to these leaders, if they actually want the welfare of the country.”

All the problems could be solved by Kṛṣṇa consciousness, Śrīla Prabhupāda had often said, and now he was eager to tackle the particular problem of crime. America’s leaders were admitting their bewilderment, and if they were actually sincere, then they might accept the Kṛṣṇa conscious solution. Prabhupāda was keen to preach to the government leaders; Kṛṣṇa consciousness was meant especially for them. Bhagavad-gītā stated that the rājarṣis, or saintly kings, should disseminate the teachings of the Gītā to the citizens. But were the leaders actually serious? Śrīla Prabhupāda wondered. He was serious, and he anticipated the special opportunity that might arise here in Chicago to preach to the leaders about ending crime.

While sitting with a group of disciples in his room, Śrīla Prabhupāda asked for a particular Bhāgavatam verse to be read, and he gave the opening Sanskrit, kāmasya nendriya-prītiḥ.

Harikeśa read, “A completely bewildered material civilization is wrongly directed toward the fulfillment of desires in sense gratification. In such civilization, in all spheres of life, the ultimate end is sense gratification. In politics, social service, altruism, philanthropy and, ultimately in religion or even in salvation, the very same tint of sense gratification is ever-increasingly predominant. In the political field leaders of men fight with one another to fulfill their personal sense gratification.”

Śrīla Prabhupāda interrupted, “Now in India this is happening. All these things are foreseen. I have already discussed all this in the purport. Then?”

Harikeśa continued reading: “The voters adore the so-called leaders only when they promise sense gratification. As soon as the voters are dissatisfied in their own sense satisfaction, they dethrone the leaders. The leaders must always dissatisfy the voters by not satisfying their senses.”

Again Prabhupāda interrupted. “There are protest meetings and processions, but nobody will be able to satisfy them, because they do not know how to keep the mass of people satisfied. These rascals, they do not know. I have always said they are rascals. Now they ask, ‘What to do?’ They will face so many problems. ‘What to do?’ – this is the beginning. The whole world will be in chaos if they do not take to Kṛṣṇa consciousness. So many ‘What to do?’ will come. Just tell them that here is the remedy. Now it is the time for preaching. They are thinking. They are sleeping, but now they are thinking what to do. They are blindly following sense gratification, and now it has come to the stage of what to do.

“This is the opportunity for preaching. We are the only persons who can give solution. There is no other group or any man in the world. We are only. So let them take advantage of our knowledge and apply. Now all the sannyāsīs have got the good opportunity to preach.”