Los Angeles
July 22, 1975

MORE THAN THREE weeks had passed since Prabhupāda had given the order for the BBT to produce seventeen books in two months. Now Rāmeśvara and Rādhāvallabha reported that work was going on around the clock in all departments and that devotees were determined to meet their deadlines. Most Press workers attended maṅgala-ārati at four-thirty A.M., chanted their prescribed rounds of japa, and worked all day until late at night, sometimes taking only one meal.

Additional editors, painters, photographers, indexers, typists, proofreaders, and layout men had been called in from other ISKCON departments. Everyone was cooperating to fulfill Śrīla Prabhupāda’s desire. It was as though nothing else existed except the task before them.

Kingsport Press, one of the largest printers in the country, had taken the job of printing, agreeing to push back all other assignments to free their presses and bindery for work twenty-four hours a day until all seventeen volumes were printed. A paper company in New York had agreed to supply paper at affordable terms to meet all the deadlines. The BBT’s top photographer was in India photographing places of caitanya-līlā, especially in Bengal and Orissa.

Śrīla Prabhupāda freely gave his time to the artists and the Bengali editors, answering their questions. Several times a day his disciples would come to him about the exact use of Sanskrit and Bengali words. This was not merely a matter of lingual scholarship, since each word had to be translated in light of the previous ācāryas’ explanations and Prabhupāda’s own Kṛṣṇa conscious realization. Prabhupāda had cautioned disciple editors not to change but to ask.

The artists had their usual questions about how things should look according to Śrīla Prabhupāda’s transcendental vision. In their desire to have the paintings completely accurate, they were greedy to ask him almost endless questions. Prabhupāda had said the transcendental paintings of his disciples were windows to the spiritual world; the artists didn’t want their imaginations to obscure the view.

One day, Rāmeśvara came into Śrīla Prabhupāda’s room carrying canvases by one of the artists whose proficiency the more experienced artists questioned. The artist in question, Gaurī-devī dāsī, was a book distributor with artistic talent, pressed into emergency service for the book production marathon. Rāmeśvara showed Śrīla Prabhupāda her painting of the Guṇḍicā temple. Prabhupāda’s verdict: “Oh, this is very nice.” One of the senior artists was present and pointed out several technical errors, but Prabhupāda replied, “A blind uncle is better than none.” Besides, he said, the painting showed a devotional spirit the readers of the book would appreciate.

Due to Śrīla Prabhupāda’s presence in Los Angeles, the book production marathon intensified. Even without attending Prabhupāda’s morning walks or classes or evening readings in the garden, the Press workers felt ecstasy. All day they worked at what Prabhupāda wanted most, and to take time off to go see him, they reasoned, would be selfish. Giving all their energy for Kṛṣṇa, they felt blissful.

The Press was busy day and night. To see devotees slumped over their desks or typewriters or lying beside their easels at two or three in the morning was not unusual. Proofreaders saw manuscripts come into and out of their hands so quickly they could hardly bear it. An artist might fall asleep before an uncompleted painting and awaken to find it being finished at another artist’s easel.

Rāmeśvara, running on very little sleep, orchestrated everything, including the photographer in India, the printer, and the paper company. Sometimes he would work directly with Rādhāvallabha on various aspects of the production.

Rādhāvallabha had set the deadlines, and he kept to them at all costs. To the Press workers, he seemed to be present everywhere – encouraging them, bringing them supplies, seeing to their needs, begging and coercing them to complete their quotas. But one night he took a break and entered Prabhupāda’s room during an informal gathering of devotees. Prabhupāda, his eyes closed, his head gently rocking, was listening to a tape of himself singing bhajanas. Opening his eyes and seeing Rādhāvallabha seated among the others, he said, “I am keeping you,” and again closed his eyes.

One of the devotees spoke up and said, “Oh, no, no, Prabhupāda. You’re not bothering us.” But another devotee turned to Rādhāvallabha and said, “I think Prabhupāda was talking to you.” Rādhāvallabha realized what Prabhupāda meant; he was telling him to go back to work. It was as if Prabhupāda were actually saying, “Why are you sitting here looking at me? Get back to work.”

Śrīla Prabhupāda was pleased with the sincerity of his disciples. Seventeen books in two months he had asked them to produce, and they, rather than try to explain to him why this was impossible, had taken the order so seriously that they could not conceive of rejecting or changing or modifying it. Instead of modifying the order, they had modified their lives. They had gone beyond the realm of routine work into the realm of extraordinary effort. As a result, both they and Prabhupāda felt great satisfaction. As Prabhupāda said, it was all an arrangement for the satisfaction of Lord Caitanya and the previous ācāryas.

Śrīla Prabhupāda decided to continue his U.S. tour, visiting Laguna Beach and San Diego and then going on to Dallas. From there he would visit New Orleans and the nearby ISKCON farm in Mississippi. Then on to Detroit, Toronto, Boston, and New York, eventually traveling to Europe and India.

From Prabhupāda’s point of view, his touring was imperative for spreading Kṛṣṇa consciousness. As he had said in his arrival address at Berkeley, “I am traveling all over the world, twice, thrice in a year. My duty is to see that my disciples, who have accepted me as guru, may not fall down. That is my anxiety.”

Prabhupāda’s concern was for his disciples, but also for all people. Distressed by the fallen and ignorant state of humanity, especially in the West, he wanted to help the English-speaking world, as his spiritual master had ordered. This had been his spirit two years ago in Calcutta, when he had risen from his sickbed and flown to London to take part in the Ratha-yātrā. This was his great desire: to preach in the West, where people were so strongly under the grip of speculative philosophies, denying God and glorifying sense enjoyment. The mass of people would not easily change their ignorant ways, but if he could make only one person a pure devotee, he said, then his work would be successful.

Prabhupāda would work intensively with his important India projects for a few months, but then would always return to the West to again tour and preach. Both were required – developing his projects in India and touring the West. When Yogi Bhajan and company in Berkeley had expressed their amazement at how Prabhupāda was personally maintaining his disciples by traveling all over the world, Prabhupāda had admitted that it was difficult and that he was trying to train his G.B.C. secretaries to lead his movement. But so far, it seemed that as long as he had the power to do so, he would continue to travel.

Laguna Beach
July 25, 1975
Laguna Beach was about a two-hour drive south of Los Angeles. The temple, a house near the beach, was crowded with guests and visiting devotees. After Prabhupāda had taken his seat upon the newly upholstered vyāsāsana, some of the temple leaders came forward one at a time and bathed his feet.

In the course of his lecture, Prabhupāda spoke against taking intoxicating drugs: “Is there anyone here who can say, ‘I am the controller’? Is there anyone who will answer this? You may think that you are the controller, but you are controlled by drugs.” The city of Laguna Beach was notorious as an illicit drug center. Prabhupāda had come not to flatter anyone with sentimental spirituality but to cut through their illusion. Bathing the feet of the spiritual master was good, but to be a genuine devotee one had to strictly follow the regulations. One had to choose whether to be controlled by drugs or by Kṛṣṇa.

Prabhupāda stayed next door to the temple in a neighbor’s house. His first visitor was Ṛṣi dāsa, who had given up his initiation vows and fallen away from Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Sporting long, curly hair and a beard, he had casually dropped by to pay a little visit to his former spiritual master. Prabhupāda received Ṛṣi warmly, and they both exchanged smiles and laughed. Ṛṣi’s demeanor, however, was brazen, almost defiant, and he showed no contrition. Prabhupāda was not very happy to see the state of this boy to whom he had awarded the sannyāsa order a few years before.

In earlier years, Prabhupāda had cried when a dear disciple had left him. In those days, the fall of a disciple had been rare, almost unheard of. But over the years Prabhupāda had seen more casualties, even among his G.B.C. leaders and sannyāsīs. In 1967, when one of his first disciples, Kṛṣṇā-devī dāsī, had left her husband, Subala, and gone off with a boyfriend, Prabhupāda had consoled Subala by reminding him how rare it was that one could become a devotee of Kṛṣṇa. “The wonderful thing is not that Kṛṣṇā dāsī has left,” Śrīla Prabhupāda had said, “but that we can stay in Kṛṣṇa consciousness.”

Although devotees left Kṛṣṇa consciousness for various reasons, Śrīla Prabhupāda saw them all as having been tricked by illusion. The result was almost always the same, whether the defector left on the plea of a new religion, or new economic opportunities, or whatever; usually he or she would take up a life of sense gratification, abandoning the strict path of self-realization.

This was certainly true of Ṛṣi. When Prabhupāda asked him what he was doing with his life, he laughed and said he was playing saxophone. There was no need to ask him whether he was chanting sixteen rounds or following the four rules. But Ṛṣi wanted to assure Śrīla Prabhupāda that he was doing fine. “I think I have more freedom now,” said Ṛṣi.

“Do you think you have freedom?” Prabhupāda challenged.

“Some,” Ṛṣi replied. “By studying and working.”

“What is your age?” Prabhupāda asked.

“Twenty-nine.”

“Are you free not to become older?” Śrīla Prabhupāda persisted.

“No.”

“Then what is your freedom?”

Ṛṣi gave a short laugh. “I don’t care.”

“That’s all right,” Prabhupāda replied, “but I am researching. I am now seventy-eight. I don’t wish to die, but I am forced. But you too are forced to become old. No one wants to be old.”

Recalling some of the Kṛṣṇa conscious philosophy, Ṛṣi tried to argue against Prabhupāda, saying that although he was forced to grow old, according to transmigration of the soul he would be free after death. And anyway, there were other freedoms.

Prabhupāda stuck to his original point and said, “Death is inevitable. Old age, no one wants. Everyone wants youth. Even an old man goes to the beach for health. I want youth, but I cannot have it. So where is the freedom?”

Prabhupāda then spoke at length, for Ṛṣi’s benefit as well as for the benefit of the other devotees in the room. Persons under the influence of māyā, he said, declare that they are free. The drug addict or the drunkard thinks he is free – to lie down on the street. Yet his actions involve him in the strict laws of material nature. The outlaw declares himself free from the laws of the state, but he is put into jail. What is the use of his saying he is free? “Therefore Kṛṣṇa says,” Prabhupāda explained, “that ‘Whatever little freedom you have got, just surrender that freedom to Me.’ ”

Prabhupāda’s comments on false freedom were to the point. Within two hours of his arrival, he had already exposed the Laguna Beach mystique. Ṛṣi continued to smile and argue, but before Prabhupāda he was just another youth with no real answers. Prabhupāda was not interested in debating; he wanted to help his disciple. Ṛṣi, however, was using whatever freedom he had to defy Kṛṣṇa’s representative, trusting instead in his youth, his intoxication, and his music.

The door opened. “These are some professors, Śrīla Prabhupāda,” announced a devotee, “who form part of our congregation.” Prabhupāda greeted the new guests and asked that they sit up front on cushions.

“I was talking with this boy about freedom,” said Prabhupāda. “So I say there is no freedom for us. We are always dependent. What is your opinion about it?” One of the professors said he agreed, and Prabhupāda continued speaking. He talked with the professors for more than an hour.

Near the end, Upendra’s three-year-old son, Saumya, walked up to Prabhupāda from the back of the room. Prabhupāda gave him some money that was on the desk, and the boy ran back to his mother and gave her the money. “Yes. When I was young,” Prabhupāda reminisced, “if I got money I would take it to my mother. But then when I would become angry at her, I would demand it back. Sometimes I would steal money from my mother’s purse and go watch Charlie Chaplin movies.” His favorite scene was in a film called Hard Times, he said, when Charlie Chaplin sat down at a table with a knife and fork to eat a boot.

San Diego
July 27, 1975
Śrīla Prabhupāda rode down the San Diego Freeway in the predawn darkness, on his way to San Diego to attend a festival in Balboa Park. On the way he passed through San Clemente, where former president Richard Nixon was staying. Prabhupāda had followed Nixon’s exposure and resignation and had often mentioned it in his lectures, sometimes as an example of how even the most powerful men are subject to anxiety and loss, sometimes to illustrate the need for proper training in the four natural social orders.

A devotee mentioned that Mr. Nixon lived here with no position, scorned by his countrymen. “Then you should go and preach to him,” Śrīla Prabhupāda said. Since the man had lost everything and was lamenting, he said, he might be receptive to hearing about the Absolute Truth. Prabhupāda had attempted a similar approach to Mahatma Gandhi.

At Balboa Park Prabhupāda was pleased with the devotees’ booths and colorful tents and the stage they had erected in the meadow. He had just begun addressing the large crowd when a man in the audience began shouting. Prabhupāda asked what he was saying, and a devotee explained, “Śrīla Prabhupāda, the man says he wants to have sex more than once a month.”

“He is creating disturbance,” said Prabhupāda into the microphone.

After a tense moment, Prabhupāda continued his lecture. “So, as this man is talking about sex, so this whole material world is enchanted by sex.” Taking the shouted protest as a new focus for his speech, Śrīla Prabhupāda quoted Prahlāda Mahārāja’s statement that all material entanglement begins from sexual enjoyment, which in comparison to transcendental pleasure is paltry and abominable. “But real happiness,” Prabhupāda asserted, “is above the senses. Whatever we enjoy with the gross senses is temporary, but permanent enjoyment is transcendental.

“So this man,” he continued, “was suggesting he wants sex at least once in a month. Yes, that is allowed. Five days after the wife’s menstrual period the husband and wife can have sex for begetting rightful children.” Prabhupāda used the Vedic technical term, garbhādhāna-saṁskāra, to describe the process of purifying sex within marriage. The devotees were astonished that before a crowd of sexually liberated Southern Californians Prabhupāda was espousing responsible, legitimate sex. Usually he discussed such matters, if at all, in letters to householders. But if the Americans were intent on sex, then Prabhupāda would let them have it. But he stressed responsible, restricted sex. Otherwise, by irresponsible sex, one has to suffer.

“Sex life is not denied,” Prabhupāda said, “but one must take responsibility for sex life. Otherwise he becomes entangled in so many sinful activities. You can have sex life once in a month. That is prescribed. Because a woman has once in a month menstrual period. So sex life is meant for simply begetting nice children, not for sense gratification. If it is in regulative form, the world may not become hell. If it is in irregulative form, then the whole world will be hell. Sex life is not denied. Sex life is not denied, but in a regulated form, so that you can get nice population and live very happily.

“Especially at the present moment, if you can produce children to become Kṛṣṇa conscious, that would be a great service to the Lord, because we want a Kṛṣṇa conscious population. Otherwise this world is going to hell. There were great empires like the Roman, Greek, and later on the Mogul empire, the British empire. Then there was Napoleon, Hitler, Mussolini. So all these powerful empires and men have come and gone. Only a name is there now. Nothing is remaining. So I came to your country, America. I decided to come here because I heard your country is very nice, and when I came here I saw actually that your country is very nice – your cities, your buildings. Your men also – because mostly my students are Americans, and they help me very kindly to push on this movement.

“So I have studied the American life very nicely. They have a good heart. The only thing that is wanting is Kṛṣṇa consciousness. For want of this Kṛṣṇa consciousness, despite all your opulences, you are becoming confused and frustrated. I hear that out of three, one man is a patient of a psychiatrist. Why? Why are you unhappy? Why should you be unhappy? You have got everything – enough food, land, money, intelligence. Why should you be unhappy? The cause of this you should try to find out. The cause is that without Kṛṣṇa consciousness, without God consciousness, nobody can be happy.”

The outdoor audience was now quiet and attentive. Prabhupāda spoke for about forty minutes, ranging over different areas of Kṛṣṇa conscious philosophy, and concluded with a request to the American men and women to seriously cooperate in Kṛṣṇa consciousness and thereby find happiness. His talk was greeted with cheers, and the devotees continued to host the crowd throughout the afternoon, chanting and dancing and distributing prasādam.

An Indian visitor was explaining to Prabhupāda why India had to build up nuclear weapons and armed forces, but Prabhupāda disagreed. The reason, he said, was the dearth of genuine kṣatriyas. There were no more men of courage; therefore a woman was now in charge.

In the newspapers also had been much coverage of a U.S. merchant ship, the Mayaquez, which, when sailing within the twelve-mile limit of Cambodia, had been seized without warning. President Ford had taken a strong stand, sending in the U.S. Marines. Fifteen Marines had been killed and fifty wounded in recovering the vessel, and the U.S. had bombed Cambodia. It was proper, Prabhupāda said, for the U.S. to take a strong stand in defending its citizens abroad. “Yes, America should be strong,” he asserted. “But first of all they should become Kṛṣṇa conscious. If they were actually a Kṛṣṇa conscious nation, they should declare, ‘If you touch the hair of one of our men, there will be a fight.’ ”

Śrīla Prabhupāda spoke strongly, giving the devotees a vision of a powerful America leading the world in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. And this stirred within them hopes for a pure patriotism, such as in the ancient Vedic culture, when the world had been ruled by God conscious leaders.

The next morning, before going to the airport, Śrīla Prabhupāda took a walk in Balboa Park. Hearing the sweet singing of birds, he said they were happy. “They just take the fruits, and they are singing in the morning,” he said.

Rāmeśvara: “But when we tell people that they may take their next birth as an animal or bird, they say that’s all right, because these creatures are happier than the humans.”

Prabhupāda: “But because you are rascal, you do not know that you can become more happy – go back home, back to Godhead. That you do not know.”

Devotees liked to bring before Śrīla Prabhupāda all kinds of topics for his comment. Conversations would jump from one thing to another as devotees sometimes brought up horrendous examples of contemporary degradation or sometimes tested their own doubts by posing as agnostics. Or sometimes they would simply bring to Prabhupāda’s attention ordinary sights and sounds. Whatever the topic, Prabhupāda showed the devotees how to see things from the transcendental perspective. And thus he also showed to them his own purity and humanness. When a devotee told Prabhupāda that Balboa was the first man to see the Pacific, Prabhupāda at first seemed impressed, but a moment later he scoffed, “Everyone was already there. That they do not know. The Pacific and Atlantic oceans are mentioned in Kalidāsa Kavi’s book Kumāra-sambhava. They are all mentioned – Pacific, Atlantic oceans. These fools do not know anything. They say, ‘I am the first man to come,’ as if before him there was no man. Just see!”

Prabhupāda complimented the devotees on the previous day’s festival in the park and advised them to hold such festivals every day. “You are so rich,” he said laughingly, “you can do it. Continual festival. Tell them, ‘Come on. Take prasādam. Chant Hare Kṛṣṇa.’ Just like – what is that? Who told me? – continual massage.”

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa Goswami: “Yes, they have twenty-four-hour massage parlors.”

“Twenty-four hours,” Prabhupāda said, laughing. “Similarly, twenty-four-hours free prasādam – come on. But they are not hungry. Not for that.”

While walking to a meadow, they came upon a man standing on his head. “Is this our man?” Prabhupāda asked.

The devotees laughed and replied, “No, yoga.”

“He wants to be immortal,” said Rāmeśvara.

“No,” said Prabhupāda. “This keeps them healthy.”

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: “It’s good for the body?”

Prabhupāda: “Yes, śīrṣāsana it is called, sitting on the head. Śīrṣāsana, padmāsana, yogāsana – there are so many āsanas.”

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: “We don’t practice those.”

“Yes, we have no time from sleeping,” said Prabhupāda sarcastically. The devotees laughed at his cutting remark. “Otherwise,” Prabhupāda continued, “this is not bad. This is not bad. It keeps good health, this yoga-āsana.”

Hearing Prabhupāda’s surprising praise of haṭha-yoga, a devotee asked the inevitable – “So if we have time, can we do that?”

By now they had finished their walk and had arrived back at the cars. Śrīla Prabhupāda chuckled, as if aware that he was being baited with a controversial question. “Hare Kṛṣṇa,” he said. On getting into the car, he added, “Not required.”