|
|
Interview with
Aindra Prabhu about his life
Steven Rosen (Satyaraja Dasa, ACBSP) had traveled to Vraja in
spring 2010 for pilgrimage and to do research for an upcoming
book. But while he was there he decided to visit his old friend
Aindra Prabhu, to see if he would like to be interviewed for
Yoga of Kirtan, Part Two, a volume that as it turns out may or
may not actually be published. To his delight, Aindra Prabhu was
enthusiastic about the project and invited Steven Rosen up to
his room for an intimate conversation, which he taped. What
follows is a transcription of that tape.
Steven Rosen (SR): Western name, date of birth, etc.
Aindra Dasa (AD): Well, I renounced my Western name. It doesn’t
exist anymore. I threw it in the Yamuna.
SR: [laughter]
AD: So my legal name is now actually Aindra Dasa. All legal or
formal things are done in the name of Aindra Dasa. But if you
must know my previous ungodly name -- well, it’s a Christian
name, actually. Still, I consider it to be relatively ungodly.
[laughter] My name was Edward Franklin Striker.
SR: Sounds like a dignified name…
AD: I was born in Arlington, Virginia in 1953 … March 12 … and
that was in the Arlington Hospital. But I spent most of my life
growing up in the, as we call it, “sticks of Ole Virginny” -- at
the foot of the Bull Run mountain range. There was a battle of
Bull Run during the Civil War. It was one of the deciding
battles, evidently.
SR: So you were a backwoods boy …
AD: Yes, I was more or less backwoods, out in the countryside,
rural area… the nearest neighbor was maybe three-quarters of a
mile away.
SR: Brothers and sisters?
AD: I had brothers and sisters … one older brother, a younger
sister, and two younger brothers. We were the first in our
school to be expelled for wearing long hair during the hippie
days.
SR: Would that be the late sixties or early seventies?
AD: Late sixties. My father was rather, kind of, well, he was a
musician. My mother was an artist. So because my father was a
musician he put a five-string banjo in my hand when I was five
years old, and he taught me how to play claw hammer style. And
then I graduated to the git-fiddle as we called it, or the
guitar, and started learning how to play bluegrass, and that
sort of thing, when I was seven. My father and mother moved in
hipper types of circles; they were doing marijuana and LSD and
stuff like that before I was. [laughter] I kind of grew up in an
atmosphere that was relatively liberal, even though we were out
in the countryside.
SR: Did they have some semblance of religion? Were they
Christian?
AD: My father was a Lutheran … he did take us to church. For the
first few years of my life we would go to church. My mother was
a Roman Catholic … but she didn’t appreciate very much at all
that it was hard to get answers to her questions -- like when
she would try to ask the nuns questions, and they would say
things like, “Don’t ask these kinds of questions, or you’ll go
to hell.” So she more or less defected from the Catholic
[church].
SR: They sound like they were thoughtful people, your parents …
AD: Yes, they were philosophically inclined. Anyway, so then we
went through the sex, drugs and rock-and-roll metamorphosis, so
to speak. This was in my youth, in my father’s house. We used to
have huge grass parties and what not, out in the country. So
many people would come every weekend … it was like a big scene.
And so I ended up with an electric guitar, and I was playing
lead guitar in a group.
SR: You got into rock music…
AD: I got into rock music. I was kind of like a hellish, not
hellish, but hellacious, guitar player. I was into people like
Hendrix…
SR: My hero. [laughter] He had something special.
AD: Yeah, I liked to play that kind of stuff … it was fun. But
then we started going to the Vietnam War moratoriums, and more
or less doing free gigs at colleges, and what not. And we played
at the Washington Monument during those moratorium days.
SR: Did the bluegrass thing fade away when you got into rock?
AD: Yeah, but those were my roots. Early influences.
SR: And then you met the devotees around the time you got into
rock music?
AD: Well, sort of. At the war moratoriums I would see the
devotees doing kirtan, chanting and dancing, distributing
prasad, distributing Back to Godhead magazines, and
distributing tons of incense. Strawberry incense was filling the
air in those moratorium events. So naturally I bought incense
from them and they gave me a Back to Godhead magazine … which I
didn’t read, I just looked at the pictures. I was too dumbed
down, so to speak, to get into reading much.
SR: Were you a reader at all during that period.
AD: Well, I started reading books like “Be Here Now,” and other
types of spiritually oriented books. I was searching for truth.
But that came a little later.… So after a few encounters with
the devotees I got a book called, “Beyond Birth and Death.” I
was taken aback when I read the first paragraph, where it says
that we are not these bodies … and Prabhupada further says that
it’s “easier said than done,” that it’s harder to realize than
it sounds. Something like that. Easy to say, difficult to
realize. So after reading the first paragraph, I guess that was
the beginning of my good fortune. I shelved it and didn’t read
any more in that book, because it was just too heavy for me to
deal with at the time. And I’d moved from my father’s farm
because I was looking for work.
SR: You say your “father’s farm” … did your mom and dad split
up?
AD: Yeah, after a while they did. Before I joined the movement
they did. I stayed in kind of like a crash pad in Washington,
D.C., and I was out of work at that particular time.
SR: This would be the early 70s?
AD: Yeah, it was 1973 … it was when I joined the movement.
Actually joined it was late ’72, ’73…
SR: Same with me. I joined around the same time.
AD: So, my so-called wife came home …
SR: You were married?
AD: I was, married for about four years
SR: You mean, it was just like a relationship …
AD: We considered ourselves married … and we were together for
about four years until she came home one fine afternoon from
work, and said, “Hey, you’re into spiritual things, right? Get a
load of this,” and she threw an Isopanisad in my lap. Well, I
picked up the Isopanisad and started reading it, and little did
she know that that was the beginning of the end of our ongoing
relationship. So then at a certain point – well, my wife and I
and my friends, we would pile into our vehicle -- we went down
near the Dupont Circle area. There was a music workshop that was
very near the Q Street temple (in Washington, D.C). I was just
above Georgetown, near where Georgetown University is.
Georgetown and Dupont Circle were the hip areas of town. I was
looking for work, so I went to check out the bulletin board to
see if there were any musicians required. Of course, there
wasn’t anything at that point, but as I was coming back from the
music workshop I popped into an Indian spice store, and I saw
they had a rack of Spiritual Sky incense there, the kind the
devotees made back then, which I noticed because I needed some
incense for home. As I was looking through the rack I remembered
that, at the war moratoriums, I would buy their lotus flower
incense. That sparked thought of going to the Hare Krishna
temple -- I had never been to a Hare Krishna temple and I had
already read Isopanisad – because I was kind of looking for the
Bhagavad-gita. I had heard of it and wanted to read it, because
in reading Prabhupada’s Isopanisad, in his commentaries, he
would refer to Bhagavad-gita again and again. Some friends had
given me the popular Penguin Bhagavad-gita, but it wasn’t clear.
I wanted the Bhagavad-gita that Prabhupada was referring to, his
own edition -- As It Is.
SR: Nothing quite like it. Prabhupada’s Gita captures the
essence.
AD: I knew that, or I sensed it. So I went over to the temple,
everyone else was too afraid to come in with me, because they
were afraid they would have to surrender to something. Nobody
wanted that. [laughter] But I went in and asked for some incense
… I was greeted at the door by Varutapa Prabhu (I think he’s no
longer with us).
SR: Accha. So that’s the first devotee you remember …
AD: Yeah. And I asked him if they had any incense … so he goes
away to get some and comes back telling me that they didn’t have
any incense, but that he had something that maybe I’d be
interested in … and he hands me Bhagavad gita As It Is. I was
really happy to get it, but I needed some money for gas to get
back up to where I was staying, and I only had $2.00. I had
$1.00 left in my pocket after giving him $2.00 for the Gita.
What to do?
Also, he gave me some japa mala and he showed me how to
chant japa while I was there. He didn’t demonstrate how
it was to be done, but only verbally explained it, so I had a
completely different conception when I started. He said we had
to very carefully absorb ourselves in the transcendental sound
of the mantra. I was used to chanting “Om” in relationship to
other spiritual groups. So I was thinking that this mantra was
also similarly chanted. Imagine: I would chant Hhhhhaaaarrreeee
Kkkkkrrrrriiiishshshshshnnnnaaa … long and drawn out, like they
chant OM in some circles. Of course, I was stoned also, so it
was a pretty outrageous experience chanting like that. But I
would fall asleep after about 16 mantras, what to speak of 16
rounds.
SR: [laughs]
AD: They were telling me that I should finish 1 round and try to
go for 16. I was thinking, “How do they do it?”
SR: Tell me more about this first visit … the surroundings, your
demeanor, the devotees.
AD: Well, I had hair down to my knees. I could sit on my hair,
because it was so long. I had real old jeans, and what not, the
hippie look. Anyway, I invited myself into the kitchen where a
female devotee was cooking. There was a little window well
there, because it was like a semi-basement, and little chipmunks
and squirrels and birds were all assembled there waiting for her
to give them something to eat. So she would open the window, and
they weren’t disturbed … they would stay there, trusting her …
and she said, “Haribol, spirit souls… you want some prasadam?”
And she would toss out some little crumbs of this and that
prasad. Leftovers or whatever. And I was amazed. I was
thinking, “Wow, she’s actually seeing them as spirit souls.” It
really moved me when she said, “Haribol, spirit souls.” It
sounded so cool, so realized.
Then I asked her if it was “possible,” if “perchance, maybe, I
could stay with you guys, for a few days just to see whether
you’re actually living this philosophy. And if I could learn how
to, too.” So then she said, “Sure, why not! Why don’t you make a
definite plan? Why not tomorrow?” When she suggested I do it the
very next day, I was tsunamied with the realization of how
attached I was, of how much of my attachments I’d have to give
up in order to actually accomplish her suggestion of coming and
staying in the temple the next day. So then I went out to the
car, drove my car back, and started like a madman giving away my
amplifiers to anyone and everyone … my guitars, my amplifiers.
Whatever I had, I started just giving away – everything. And
then my wife saw this. We had discussed this philosophy many
times. But now she saw I was serious. So she was just hanging
onto my ankles, crying and crying, saying, “Eddie, please don’t
go back home, back to Godhead -- not yet! I’m not ready to go
back to Godhead! Please!! I haven’t finished enjoying you yet!”
It was actually quite enlightening for me. When she said, “I
haven’t finished enjoying you yet,” I felt like a slab of meat
on a tigress’s dinner table, and I started realizing that the
statements in Srila Prabhupada’s purports – because I had read
Isopanisad -- about the influence of maya, illusion, it’s all
true. I saw the personification of Krishna’s illusory energy
trying to keep me in the material world. So I folded my hands,
pranams style, and told her that, “Look, if you’re not
ready to go with me, then I’m going to have to go without you.”
And I left.
So then I just packed my bags, grabbed my pregnant cat and took
her out to my father’s farm. Because I had asked the girl at the
temple, “Well, what do I do with my pregnant cat?” and she said,
“You don’t have to worry about her … just chant the Hare Krishna
mantra over some milk and offer that to her … because
she’ll get Krishna prasad she’ll get a human birth in her
next life, so you don’t have to worry about her.” So I did that.
I took her out to my father’s farm, but, while I was there, I
decided that I would stay at his farm for a while, and I started
reading Bhagavad-gita …
SR: Wait, wait, wait. She invited you to move into the temple,
but you’re staying … ?
AD: I was trying to figure out how I would get there in one
day’s time, and I couldn’t do it. But I wanted to move in that
direction.
SR: Right, right. Okay.
AD: I didn’t want to just dump my cat and leave her in the
material world. Besides, at that time, I was for months
habituated to eating only three figs a day because I was afraid
of getting bad karma. You see, I had some strange ideas.
I understood that eating could be sinful. I didn’t know about
prasad. I didn’t understand how by offering food to Krishna
it becomes akarmic – free from karma -- and all
these things. So I was trying to minimize my eating to avoid
karma -- and I’d become extremely thin and very gaunt.
Eating only three figs a day for months, you can’t expect to be
robust. [laughter]
Anyway, it was about a week after I’d started reading
Bhagavad-gita … and of course, I was still stoned out of my
gourd constantly, basically. My father was growing marijuana on
his farm, and he was legally protected because he was being
engaged by certain intelligence agencies, for the purpose of
possible legalization of marijuana … so he was developing it by
experimenting with various types of plant foods and what not. He
was developing a strain of consistent THC, the content of
marijuana. High-grade marijuana for legalization purposes. Of
course, it never got legalized, but he was working on that kind
of project.
SR: The irony! You’re eating three figs a day because you
thought food might be sinful, you’re reading the Bhagavad-gita
with the thought of giving your life over to God, but you’re
doing it all while you’re stoned … now that’s pretty funny.
AD: Well, you know, it was hippiedom. Anyway, so I was stoned
and I was reading Bhagavad-gita. Contradiction or not, it was
all having a very serious impact on me. And the importance of
chanting was emerging too, because in the Bhagavad-gita
Prabhupada would refer again and again to the Hare Krishna
maha-mantra. And then there was the instruction that I
should try to increase to 16 rounds. This all left an impact on
me.
After a while, I would hitchhike daily into the city and join
the harinama-sankirtan party, from my father’s farm about
60 miles out from the city. And then I attended a Sunday feast
where I saw the devotees in the temple room chanting japa,
and they were muttering, “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna
Krishna, Hare Hare …” and I said to myself, “Oh, so that’s how
they do it! Without the crazy pseudo-mystical emphasis of that
OM chanting.
SR and AD: [hearty laughter]
AD: So then I adopted that methodology. And it came to this
pivotal point again … the eve before Easter Sunday, I decided
that I would try to chant 16 rounds. Now before I’d made that
decision, I was sitting there at the kitchen table … it was in a
log cabin (my father had a log cabin that me and my brother
helped him build) out in the woods. It was a very peaceful
atmosphere. I was sitting there at the kitchen table reading
Bhagavad-gita, and I was calling my father over, “Daddy, you
gotta come over here and read this … this is incredible … you
have to read this!” And he came over and put his hand on my
shoulder and said, “Son, don’t give me that swami stuff. … You
don’t know, but I read Bhagavad-gita before you were even born.”
It was Vivekananda’s Bhagavad-gita when he was in college, which
didn’t do much good for him, because he was still into every
sinful activity imaginable.
SR: Ah, so the value of Prabhupada’s Gita became tangible for
you when witnessing your father. He had read another edition,
but what effect did it have? The potency of Prabhupada’s version
is that it can transform hearts, allowing people to become
devotees. And you saw this …
AD: Yeah, right. I think on an unconscious level, I realized
that. Anyway, that night, when we discussed the Gita, my father
soon went to bed. And I just started chanting on my japa beads …
and I closed my eyes; it was like maybe 10:00 at night and I
started chanting, and when I finally finished 16 rounds, I
opened my eyes. I didn’t sleep the whole time; I was just
completely mesmerized. I was really impressed, amazed, because
when I opened my eyes there was already daylight. Time passed
without my knowing it. It was a dramatic experience for me …
SR: You had lost your sense of time because of absorption in the
maha-mantra.
AD: Right. So, at that point, I felt like I’d gained a profound
experience of what it meant to surrender to the instructions of
the spiritual master, to complete the minimum of 16 rounds. It
was the first time in this lifetime that I’d chanted 16 rounds.
I liked it. So, at that point, I made my decision that it was
time for me to join the temple.
I woke my father up -- and here it was Easter Sunday, remember,
my father was a Lutheran of sorts -- and I told him, “Look, I’ve
made my decision. I’m going to join the temple.” So then, after
a little back and forth, he very kindly drove me 60 miles to the
Sunday feast. And he ate the Sunday feast, too, which was great.
Along the way, going there, I remember our conversation: He
asked me if entering into a monastic life might not be limiting
myself. I answered him in a way that he actually very much
appreciated. I said, “Well, externally, it appears that I am
limiting myself, but actually by entering into monastic life I
am opening a door to the unlimited.”
SR: Hmm. Very good. Deep answer.
AD: And he was satisfied. When we arrived, he took the feast and
joined the kirtan with us and left me there. That’s the
story, more or less, of how I joined the Krishna Consciousness
movement.
SR: What devotees do you remember from that period when you
joined? Anybody stand out who inspired you or encouraged you?
AD: Well, there was Damodar, the temple president. I always
appreciated his intellectual approach to the philosophy. I don’t
think he’s with us anymore either, but he did have an
intellectual approach. And then Lakshmivan was there, and
Dharmaraja, and there were a few matajis also.
SR: Did you stay?
AD: I stayed and never left. You see, I had an experience and
that’s what did it. Let me tell you, the first day that I
decided to stay, that Easter Sunday, the first night I took rest
up in the brahmachari ashram, which was on the third
floor, I have a memory from that time. It was a four-storey
townhouse on Q St., and when I took rest, as I entered into that
twilight zone between waking and dreaming state – it happened.
You see, I used to be able to do these things like astral
traveling, and what not, in my subtle body. At will I could
leave my body and see it down below. It was odd, but I had those
abilities …
SR: But you were getting high all the time, so how do you know
if you could really do that or if it was the drugs …
AD: No … there was often objective proof, verifiable with other
people. I could experience coming back into my body and so on,
and I would know things that I couldn’t possibly know, so it was
verifiable. I wasn’t just hallucinating. I used to play with
ghosts and stuff like that…
SR: Play with ghosts?
AD: Yeah. Invite them to enter my body, and then mentally beat
them out, getting them to leave …
SR: O-o-k-k-ay [incredulous] …
AD: I could understand the skepticism, really, but you had to be
there. Anyway, I would play these kinds of subtle games. We
would see ghosts out at my father’s farm; we would see Civil War
soldiers, along with horses and even cannons.
SR: Hmm. Your whole family saw it or just you?
AD: We would stand at the back of the house, and the kitchen
window was overlooking into the woods, and we would see these
ghostly creatures passing by in the woods…
SR: Okay, well, we’ll not get to the bottom of this right now,
I’m sure, so why not return to the experience that first night,
when you committed to staying at the temple?
AD: Right. So that first night, as I was entering into that
twilight zone, and beginning to enter into the dream state,
suddenly I was surrounded by very, very angelic, or even godly,
living entities. You know, I couldn’t understand who they were,
but they were very brilliant, effulgent and godly beings, and
they were pressuring me by their arguments. They were basically
telling me again and again that this is my chance in this
lifetime – my chance to enter the spiritual world. They were
saying, “you must stay, you must stay.” They were surrounding
me, and all of them were kind of telling me in unison, “You must
stay, you must stay, you must stay, and never leave.”
SR: Like guardian angels … reflecting your own certainty that
this was important, that staying in the temple was your one shot
in this life for entering the spiritual world
AD: Yeah, they were like that, like guardian angels of some
sort. It wasn’t an illusion … it wasn’t just a dream. It was
more real than overt reality. These things happen. They were
actually there, and they more or less philosophically convinced
me that this was my golden opportunity for making spiritual
progress in this life.
SR: Do you remember some of the arguments they used?
AD: I can’t … I can’t remember the details of that dream. But it
was palpable. Very real.
SR: It was vivid … and you, at least, were sure it happened,
and, on some level, I guess, it clearly did, since it convinced
you to stay in the association of devotees.
AD: It was very vivid, yeah, and I remember that I was solidly
convinced. You see, I was just going to come and stay for a week
at the temple, just to check it out, you know, to see what
living this philosophy would actually be like…
SR: Right. So you joined ISKCON, and you were convinced to stay
by these angelic beings, and you continued to read Prabhupada’s
books …
AD: Yeah. So I continued to read Prabhupada’s books, and I
continued to study and chant every day. The program at that time
was every day in the morning – we didn’t have Deities in the
temple yet; we only had a Pancha Tattva picture -- we would get
up and do mangala-arotika for Pancha Tattva, and we would
chant our 16 rounds. Then, we would have Bhagavatam class. Then,
after Bhagavatam class -- there were about 19 or 20 of us in the
temple at that time -- everyone except for about 1 or 2
matajis would go out right after Bhagavatam class, around 8
in the morning, and we would walk from Q St. in Dupont Circle
down to K Street which was the business district, and by that
time people were coming into the city to their jobs and what
not, so we would catch that morning influx into the city…
SR: And you would give out prasadam and incense and
magazines?
AD: That’s what we did, and we were chanting, too. Practically
from the first day after joining the movement, they put a
mridanga in my hand, and I said, “Well, how do you play it?”
So they just showed me one beat, you know: bing, bing, bung,
bung, bing, bing, bung, bung, bing, bing, bung, bung, like that,
simple beat, very simple beat, and that’s the only beat that I
knew when I started. So the very first day they had me playing
the mridanga and leading the kirtan.
SR: Leading, really?
AD: Leading the kirtan. Yeah, oddly.
SR: Wow!
AD: Because remember I was coming in joining their kirtan,
hitchhiking in every day for about a week, before I joined. So I
picked up some tunes …
SR: And you were a musician anyway…
AD: I was a musician anyway, right, and they knew that. And
there were so few devotees …
SR: Who was the kirtan leader when you joined, anybody we
would know?
AD: Well, Damodar was leading kirtan most of the time,
and Hasyagrami, too. And a few months later, Shrutadev showed up
on the scene. He was a great inspiration to me, especially his
Sunday feast kirtans; they were quite fired up, and I
appreciated that.
SR: He had a Vishnujana Swami quality …
AD: Yeah, that’s true. And he was together, at least in terms of
kirtan. At that time he started his Sankirtan
newsletter. That’s when I started going out daily. We would go
out for like an hour at about 8:00AM, and then around 9 or 9:30,
or so, we would come back and have breakfast prasad -- it
would have been cooked and offered and ready. We would take
prasad and by 10:00 we would go out again on
harinama-sankirtan. We would do side-by-side Back to Godhead
distribution, taking turns selling magazines and chanting.
SR: Did you like sankirtan?
AD: Oh yeah. I loved it. It was great. I liked it all, the whole
nine yards. I remember the first Sunday feast that I attended,
the week before my father drove me to the temple to stay, or
maybe it was two weeks before … I ate up to the neck actually,
five plates of the most incredible strawberry halavah …
SR: After an austere life of only eating a few figs a day?
AD: Well, they convinced me about prasad, and I was
delighted. They convinced me that with prasadam there was
no karma, and that I would be liberated by eating this
food because it was spiritualized, offered to Krishna. That
first devotee convinced me, the woman who explained that if I
feed my cat offered food then it was no longer sinful. So I
gradually went from austere eating, to eating a little brown
rice at my father’s place – and then feasting at the temple. I
remember at the first Sunday feast I was eating 20 poppers, big
poppers fried in ghee, after eating five plates of prasadam.
[laughter]
Then they came over and asked me if I would be willing to do a
little “devotional service,” and I said, “Well, sure, why not.”
We were taking prasad in the temple room, so they asked
me if I could help clean the room after everyone was done
eating. So we cleaned the temple room, and then we started a big
kirtan, and we did two hours of heavy-duty kirtan.
It was great. My eyes were closed the whole time. I was so
absorbed in the kirtan that I was practically out of my
body. I was totally out of bodily consciousness, so much so that
when the kirtan finally finished, and I more or less
became aware of my body again, I realized that my feet were
blistered on the bottom from so much dancing …
SR: Hmm. You were obviously ready for this, picking up from
where you left off in a previous life.
AD: Right. That’s what we would say, yes. In any case, it was a
great kirtan experience. In fact, one of my most
memorable kirtan experiences was that first Sunday feast
kirtan after the prasadam. It has stayed with me
all these years.
SR: Was it hard to give up getting high and your addictions from
your previous life, or, I should say, from your life prior to
becoming a devotee?
AD: No. No. I was amazed. Totally amazed. It all came quite
naturally. I don’t know… I guess I can divulge this story also,
but it’s a bit of an esoteric kind of story. I should tell it to
you, though. It’s really why I stayed. Okay, to begin,
Prabhupada had just sent a letter to us, to Damodar Prabhu,
expressing his great pleasure with our 14-hour sankirtan
days.
SR: Fourteen hours?!
AD: Oh, yes. We were going out for 14 hours a day, one hour in
the morning before breakfast, as I mentioned, and then from
10:00AM, because when we would do sankirtan, we weren’t
jumping in vehicles and then going somewhere. We would just
leave the temple doing sankirtan all the way down to
Georgetown. Sometimes we would go down to the Washington Mall
between the monument and the Capitol building area. Kirtan
there was great. And distributing Back to Godhead magazines
there also, and take prasad out there also. Packing
lunches. It was a full day thing.
SR: So that was like total absorption. Okay, and the esoteric
story?
AD: Yes. So after a week or so of going out for like 14 hours a
day, we would come back and read KRSNA Book while taking hot
milk prasad and then we’d crash out. It was blissful but
exhausting as well.
SR: Sure.
AD: Now, here’s where the esoteric story comes in: I remember
Prabhupada saying that if you read KRSNA Book about fifteen
minutes before taking rest, you would dream about Krishna. Well,
I had an amazing experience that, at that time, I didn’t share
with anyone because I was afraid -- I didn’t think people would
believe my experience, anyway. Even now, I think it’s maybe too
subtle for some devotees to grasp. But I had an incredible
experience.
SR: Tell me.
AD: We all lie down to take rest, everyone had fallen asleep,
and I was starting to drift off. But I was still in that
in-between state, not quite dreaming. In fact, my eyes were
still open, and suddenly I hear an amazing sound. I couldn’t
understand what the sound was. It was really incredible,
otherworldly, and it was coming from a distance. It was some
other-dimensional sound, not from here, unlike anything I had
ever heard. It was completely transcendental. But I couldn’t
understand what it was. Still, it was clear that it was getting
closer and closer. Then, I started seeing another dimension, a
subtle existence, which was above me. I was lying down on the
floor, as all the other brahmacharis were, and I started
seeing a sort of multi-dimensional reality; it was like looking
at a beautiful painting of some sort – coming to life, moving
right in front of me!
SR: What was its content?
AD: It was a stampede coming from a distance, unclear at first
but definitely a stampede. I couldn’t recognize exactly what it
was, and I couldn’t recognize what I was hearing, which was
happening simultaneously, until it started getting closer and
closer. When it did get closer, I started hearing the trampling
of feet and hoofs, and ankle-bells, and laughing, and
incredible, blissful merriment, and buffalo horn bugles were
blowing, too, and flute playing. That was the sound. Boys and
cows and all kinds of beings were running and playing. It was
intense. And then, as they were getting closer, I could see
clearly that they were all running, joyfully running, as if they
were running back to Nandagram! And there was Krishna and
Balaram – there They were, in the midst of it all.
But they were all running on glass, about maybe four feet above
me. This is hard to explain. There was like a plate of glass,
see-through, and I was able to watch it through the glass, as
they ran above me. I was seeing it clearly as they were coming
closer and closer. Then, when they were above me, I was actually
seeing the bottoms of their feet, as if they were running on
glass. And as they are coming closer and closer, I notice
Krishna is playing His flute, and I’m hearing this. Mind you, I
was listening to what He was playing, because prior to joining
the movement, I also played flute from my earlier days. I
learned flute in the high school orchestra and I’d become kind
of like a Jethro Tull sort of flautist …
SR: Your vision sounds a bit like a premonition of
sakhya-bhava, with the cowherd boys.
AD: Hmm. Well, it wasn’t sakhya-bhava exactly, although,
yeah, they were cowherd boys and it was with Krishna …
SR: You had played flute when you were younger …
AD: Yeah, I played kind of a jazzy Jethro Tull style of flute,
so when I would come in to join the kirtan parties, I
would sometimes be playing my flute. So then, Damodar, one time,
as temple president, he kind of pulled me to the side and said,
“Bhakta Ed, it might be better if you play karatalas and
just engage in chanting, because that will qualify you to hear
Krishna’s flute. First hear Krishna’s flute, and then you’ll
know what spiritual flute playing is really all about.
[laughter]
SR: He was just trying to get you to give up your attachment to
playing flute …
AD: Yeah. Because maybe it was a little too jazzy for them, and
I would admit that if I was playing that stuff now in my
kirtans the way I played back then, I would be like, “Slow
down, boy!” [laughs] Damodar also said, “Besides, you can’t play
the flute and chant Hare Krishna at the same time,” which is
true. And that made good enough sense to me. [laughs]
Anyway, after a week’s time, I’m lying down to take rest, and
here I am: I was actually seeing Krishna with my eyes wide open.
Krishna, after only a week of performing nama-sankirtan
with the devotees – it was Krishna and Balaram in a stampede of
cowherd boys and cows. They were running, and so happy, and the
sound was incredibly blissful. That’s how potent
nama-sankirtan is.
SR: Anything more about that vision? I realize that it was a
long time ago, but it was obviously a special vision, a gift to
keep you in devotional service …
AD: It was indescribably blissful, the sight, the sound
vibration. I was hearing Krishna playing His flute, and He was
glancing down from that dimension, down, through the glass to
me. He was making eye contact with me, with an incredibly,
incredibly compassionate expression on His face. And He was just
overwhelming me with attraction…
SR: Alluring, to say the least…
AD: Alluring me, yeah, as if He was saying, “Don’t you just want
to be with Me? Does anything else even come close?” And as He
was glancing, He was inviting me to join them to come back home,
back to Godhead. The sound was so incredible, and my hair was
standing on end. I actually experienced these symptoms,
practically from that first day…
SR: I see it as being like the story of Narada, who, early on,
was given a taste to keep him in devotional service, to whet his
appetite.
AD: Yes.
SR: You remember the story: The Lord Himself appeared before
Narada and then suddenly disappeared. He told Narada, “O
virtuous one, you have only once seen My person, and this is
just to increase your desire for Me, because the more you hanker
for Me, the more you will become free from material desires.”
[Srimad Bhagavatam 1.6.22 ]
AD: Yes, and it was an isolated instance, so, I agree, I see
what you’re saying. You could say that it was like a shadow, a
hint of things to come. I must say, though, that, from my point
of view, Krishna was inundating me with shuddha sattva
– it was totally spiritual. Let’s say He was sending shakti
from His side, that’s what it felt like.
And as they stampeded over me, I experienced the intensity of
the ananda – the pure bliss -- that I was experiencing from
their presence, and from the incredible beatitude of the
otherworldly vibration they were generating. And then I woke up
the next morning fully remembering the experience. From that day
on, from that experience, I realized that this Krishna
Consciousness movement is very, very powerful. It was so real,
more real than anything I had ever experienced in the external
world. I realized then and there that Srila Prabhupada is very,
very powerful. And, I must say, that that one experience alone
made me dedicate my heart and soul to the lotus feet of Krishna.
And it made me resolve that I would never, ever, ever leave the
lotus feet of Krishna, because I realized that there really is a
Krishna, because I actually saw Him face-to-face, and
eye-to-eye, just in that first week. I was 100% convinced that
it wasn’t a hallucination based on the previous accumulation of
THC content in my bloodstream. [Both laugh loudly]
SR: Okay. I have a question for you: Why you? I mean there are
so many devotees who join. Some stay, some leave, but very few
have that kind of experience.
AD: Well, in my estimation, just in retrospect, I have another
story to tell that might answer that question, but it relates to
the Vrindavan situation when my father was leaving his body. I
don’t know whether we should get into this story now…
SR: Alright, maybe we can do it later, but keep this in mind
because it’s an important question. The reader is naturally
going to ask: “Does this happen to everyone who joins ISKCON --
within one week they actually see Krishna?”
AD: Yeah, so I can only explain it briefly in this way, we can
elaborate later. It must be due to samskaras from a
previous lifetime of engagement in devotional service, previous
lifetime of involvement with Bhakti-yoga.
SR: Philosophically, that would have to be the case.
AD: Yes. That experience that I had in Vrindavan relating to my
father’s passing away, that was maybe six years or so ago…
SR: If we can get to that later then maybe I can insert it here,
if it seems to fit.
AD: Yeah.
SR: So where do we go from here?
AD: Anyway, all of this is from very first days as a devotee.
This was before members of the Hare Krishna movement were
donning secular dress for “undercover book distribution,” or
what we used to call, “guerrilla warfare work.”
SR: Did you get into that? Going out in western dress and
selling books?
AD: Yeah, I ended up spending more time doing book distribution.
I would go out, because we were no longer distributing books by
the side of the nama-sankirtan party, with the chanting
party. As the book distribution push increased, I was involved
less with doing nama-sankirtan, but I would always go out
and do it whenever I could. I would go out for the
maha-harinama-sankirtans on the weekends. Frankly, I would
live from maha-harinama and Sunday feast to the next one,
basically. And then Vishnujana Maharaja came through with his
Radha-Damodara bus, changing my life.
SR: Jai!
AD: And I love Vishnujana Maharaja. He was one of my greatest
heroes.
SR: Me too. He and I traveled together, all over the States. We
actually became quite close.
AD: He came through DC during my second initiation.
SR: First mention your hari-nama initiation.
AD: My first initiation was at the time of installing Sri Sri
Radha Madan-Mohan.
SR: Was Prabhupada there?
AD: No. But that’s when I got my name and my beads. And my
second initiation was at the time of installing the Gaur-Nitai
Deities in the temple.
SR: Do you know the dates for that?
AD: 1974. Right after the Christmas marathon was my first
initiation. I was distributing between 250 and 400 Back to
Godhead magazines daily at that time. After my second
initiation, which was six months later, still in ‘74, Vishnujana
Maharaja came through. At the time, part of my service was
dressing the Gaur-Nitai Deities, and then I would go out on book
distribution. It might have been ’75 by the time he asked me the
following question -- because he came through a few times. So,
he knew that I was a pujari, and he told me that he
needed someone to be a pujari for Radha-Damodar on the bus. He
wondered if I could somehow or other steal away and join him to
be Radha-Damodara’s pujari.
SD: Did you?
AD: Well, the answer I gave him was this -- and he gave a very
interesting reply, which I’ve treasured for my whole life,
because it was such a great response. I told him: “Well,
Maharaja, I want to, but …” And the reason why there was a but –
because “but” means “no,” as Prabhupada said -- was because I
was attached to the vanity of being one of Prabhupada’s
front-line book distributors. And I knew from some of the guys
on the Radha-Damodar party that being Radha-Damodar’s pujari
meant waking the Deities, dressing the Deities, doing seven
arotikas a day, preparing offerings, changing the Deities’
dress, and putting Them to rest at night. Where would be the
time for my book distribution? So I told Vishnujana Maharaja,
“Yeah, I want to, but what’s going to happen to my book
distribution? I’m on a pretty good roll with that, so I don’t
want to stop it now.” And that’s when he told me: “Aindra
Prabhu, never say you want to do something if you don’t mean it.
Because if you say you want to do something, and you’re not
actually doing it, it means you really don’t want to do it.
Because if you really wanted to do it, you’d be doing it!” I
thought that was a pretty good answer.
SR: So what did you do?
AD: Well, soon after that, a new temple president came on the
scene, and, for some reason, he was interested in seeing most of
the devotees get married. I remember he called me into his
office and said, “Aindra, I think you really need a wife.” And,
of course, my mind riveted to my life prior to joining the
Krishna Consciousness movement, when my wife was hanging onto my
ankles, crying, “Please don’t go back to Godhead; I’m not ready
to go.” That was a really distasteful episode for me, and so, at
that time, I resolved that I would never again enter into that
kind of relationship. In other words, when I joined the
movement, I had already understood the importance of sannyasa;
I already valued the principle of renunciation, seeing it as
more advantageous for making rapid spiritual progress. So I more
or less vowed, from that point, not to ever marry again. I told
this to the new temple president, who just ignored me and
repeated, “Aindra, I think you need a wife.” So I basically told
him where to go. [laughter] “I already have eleven wives,” I
told him, “and I can’t even control them, so what am I going to
do with another one?”
SR: Eleven wives?
AD: Eleven wives refer to my five working senses, my five
knowledge-acquiring senses, and the queen of them all -- my
mind. [Laughs heartily] I told him, “Look, I know what you’re
up to -- you’re trying to get all the brahmacharis married.
But I’m not grihasta material. Period. So back off. In fact,
because you’re pushing so much, you can just say good-bye -- I’m
joining the Radha-Damodar party!” He saw my determination and
asked me to just stay and take care of the Deities until they
all came back from the Mayapur Festival in India. That’s where
everyone was going at that time.
So I contacted Vishnujana Maharaja and told him that I would
join the Radha-Damodar party after the devotees at the temple
came back from Mayapur. Unfortunately, news came back from the
Mayapur Festival that Vishnujana Maharaja had left us – long
story, as you know -- and I was so disappointed. For many
reasons. But Vishnujana Maharaja leaving meant that his
harinama- sankirtan program would more or less collapse. And
it did -- the Radha-Damodar Sankirtan party came under the
direction of Tamal Krishna Maharaja and Tripurari Maharaj, and
the focus shifted to book distribution.
SR: Oh, and you wanted to do harinama-sankirtan. So what
did you do?
AD: Right, so I was uncertain where to go and what to do. But
because I was into book distribution, too, and I appreciated
Tripurari Maharaja’s enthusiasm in that regard, I decided to
join his Radha-Damodar bus.
SR: This was an ambitious program to sell books. Hardly the more
sattvik atmosphere of harinama-sankirtan.
AD: Exactly. And then there was the push for doubling and
redoubling book distribution in ’76 and ’77. It was intense. It
has its spiritual virtues, sharing knowledge, pleasing to
Prabhupada. It’s all true. So I joined Tripurari’s bus and I was
regularly doing book distribution, and then they started
propagating a philosophy just to keep people involved with the
book distribution push, which they called brihat kirtan,
and I also accepted that, at least in principle.
But then
Srutadev started the sankirtan newsletter. And after the
nineteenth issue came out, Srutadev called me into his office
and he said, “Aindra, you’ve gotta see this,” and he shows me a
letter that he received from Srila Prabhupada, where Prabhupada
says “I’ve received and read your letter, your nineteenth
newsletter, and I am pleased to hear about your sankirtan
and book distribution results.” Then he goes on to explain how
sankirtan is the basis of our Krishna Consciousness
movement, and, to paraphrase, he says, “Therefore I want that
this sankirtan and book distribution must go on side by
side.” So I was always under the impression that Prabhupada
never wanted to push book distribution to the exclusion of holy
name sankirtan, which is basically what started
happening.
SR: Where was this happening?
AD: It was all over the movement, but I was down south. I was
distributing at least 300 to 400 Back to Godhead magazines
daily, and 20 big books daily, out on the road, in Richmond,
Virginia. So we came back to see Srila Prabhupada when he had
come to Washington in ’76. It was around July 4th, and he
attended the fireworks display. Devotees were going out on book
distribution and sankirtan chanting on the Monument
grounds. Our van leader had us going out to the parking lots in
the area, and there was a maha-harinama-sankirtan party
going out on Saturday night to Georgetown, and for old time’s
sake I wanted to join, just for inspiration’s sake -- and my van
leader started telling me that if I stopped my book distribution
and went out on harinama-sankirtan, then I would be
engaged in vikarma --action that was against authority.
As if the Vedic authority was coming through the chain of
command to him, and he was not ordaining my joining the
harinama-sankirtan party.
Well, it was at that point that I
started to think that this is all a lot of BS. This is when I
began having differences with certain managerial points of view.
That was in 1976 and then Prabhupada left in 1977. I started
seeing discrepancies in Minnesota, and soon we ended up in
Chicago. And that’s kind of where our bus party collapsed. Mind
you, I continued to respect all of these people as devotees, but
my point of view started to change, drastically. We had a
difference of opinion. Big time.
SR: So where did all of this lead?
AD: Well, I started going out on nama-sankirtan regularly
in Chicago. I began to recognize, again, as I did in the early
days, that Krishna Consciousness is all about the congregational
chanting. It is Lord Chaitanya’s mission, His divine
dispensation for Kali-yuga. It’s the essence.
But then
they started pushing us to go out on painting or karmi
record distribution as a way to make money for the temples. And
then I said, “This is just crap.” After doing six months of
that, I said, “Never again.” So then I started exclusively going
out on harinama-sankirtan, with a little book
distribution on the side of the Harinam party. I did this every
day for eight hours a day.
SR: Soon after that you moved to New York?
AD: No. First I was asked to go with Ganapati Maharaja to a
college-preaching program in Madison, Wisconsin. I had my little
Gaur-Nitai Deities with me, and I had a disagreement with him
over some philosophical point, and it bothered me. After that, I
just said, “You know what? I just have to stand by my own
beliefs, and act according to my own realizations, with
integrity.” And so Maharaja and I parted ways. I literally got
my Deities, stuck out my thumb, and hitchhiked back to Chicago,
where I was not-so-warmly greeted. In fact, I was told that my
presence would undermine the temple authorities. I was simply
asked to leave.
SR: Wow. Your cherished shelter – ISKCON -- wouldn’t shelter
you, it seems.
AD: That’s what I was realizing. The holy name is our real
shelter. Finally, finally, after eight or nine years -- I get to
go to Vrindavan. For one reason or another -- either because I
didn’t do my book distribution quota, or because I had to take
care of the Deities – I was never able to go. But finally there
was nothing stopping me. So I went. This was in 1981. I
hitchhiked across the country -- I got a bus ticket from
Detroit, I think to Washington, and then I went to New York, and
I collected for my flight to Vrindavan.
SR: So that’s when I first met you. It was in the early to
mid-1980s.
AD: We actually met after this, when I returned to New York.
What happened is this: I went to Vrindavan, staying for three
months or more doing pujari service, and coming out and
just sitting in the temple doing like eight hours of kirtan.
Alone. No help. No fixed help. I just grabbed any baba who came
in the door, whomever, and started doing kirtan. And then
at a certain point I didn’t get along very well with Omkara, the
temple president at the time, and so I decided to go back to
America – “I’ll start a traveling harinama-sankirtan
program.”
I had an idea of doing the county circuits, traveling to all the
state and county fairs where there are huge crowds of people.
During my hippie days I would travel with carnivals also to make
a little scratch when I was out of work as a musician. I knew
about how they constructed the sideshows. They’d pack them into
a tractor-trailer, and then they would open the side of the
tractor-trailer, and then the false front would come out. They
would set it up like that to make a horror house, or some kind
of glass house, or whatever.
SR: So you came back to the States …
AD: Yes. That’s when I came back to America, and my first stop
was New York. Seeing the situation in New York – the huge
potential -- I realized, “What’s the need to travel anywhere --
it’s like New York never sleeps. It’s like a fair 24 hours, 7
days a week, 52 weeks a year. No need to go anywhere else.” So I
made a little portable stage and started going out to various
spots …
SR: I remember you in Central Park.
AD: Yeah. I took it all over the city. Then I learned that you
could get sound permits from the Police Department, so I started
playing ball with the Police instead of trying to hide from
them. I used to always be on the look out for them. Every time a
police car went by I’d switch off my little mouth amplifier that
I had. But I started befriending them, and they actually liked
me, and the kirtan – they liked that too. After that, I
got my temple truck going in ’83…
SR: Hmm. Trying to place this historically. October ’82 was when
the temple moved to Schermerhorn Street, in Brooklyn ...
AD: Yeah, that’s right. Anyway, this was in ’83, and for the
movable kirtan truck project I came back to India and
went to Vrindavan, Mayapur, Bubaneshwar, Jagannath Puri, far and
wide -- and I got many different, colorful cloths or canopies
and elaborate festival umbrellas, and all kinds of
paraphernalia. I went all out to make it beautifully decorative
– this was for my stage at 7th Avenue – so it was a little
before Schermerhorn Street. I came back for that. Like you say,
though, we soon moved to Brooklyn. No matter -- I constructed
this box van that opened into a temple, and at that time I was
getting sound permits because I had befriended the police. It
all worked out, like Krishna was orchestrating the whole thing,
which of course He was.
And I was going out every day for 8, 10, 12 hours, no less. On
Saturdays, every Saturday, I would be doing nama-sankirtan
for 15 hours. We would go to Queens for 6 hours, and then we
would pack up our program and go to West 4th Street in the West
Village, and we would stay there all night long until around
3:30 in the morning. It would take me 20 minutes to pack up, and
then we would roll in for mangala-arotika.
SR: Whew! What a program! Now that is the spiritual platform!
AD: I tell you: It was great! It was full-on kirtan in
New York City for years. I was doing that for no less than 8
hours a day for five years.
SR: So then what happens? Because after all this, you started to
make CDs and you went to Vrindavan, to carry on the 24-hour
kirtan there.
AD: Well, long story short: I wasn’t getting the cooperation
that I needed, and I ended up butting heads with the management
to have my space, to do my thing. And at a certain point, ISKCON
began having its most serious difficulties, with gurus falling
down and stuff like that. By 1986, Lord Chaitanya’s 500th
anniversary, I decided that it’s time for me to make my move,
and I just kind of dumped my program in New York. It was a good
program -- we made a few devotees, many devotees, attracting
people to come and join the movement. But after they joined they
would be siphoned off from my program – the chanting that
attracted them -- and be put out on the pick, or anything else,
and so I could never reinforce my program. It was unfortunate.
For this and many other reasons, in 1986 I decided to shift
permanently to Vrindavan. So, here’s the thing: in ’81, ’83 and
’85, when I visited Vrindavan, I noticed that there was no
24-hour kirtan going on, and I knew that Srila Prabhupada wanted
24-hour kirtan in Vrindavan. So when I came in March of ’86, I
realized that my way of doing 24-hour kirtan was perfectly in
accord with Prabhupada’s system. Fact is, he was trying to get
them to do it that way, but they refused to surrender to it,
which was why the thing fell apart shortly after Prabhupada
left.
SR: You followed your guru’s order; you were doing it
according to his mood.
AD: Well, at the time, I didn’t know it was my guru’s
order; it was just a common sense thing -- you needed a core of
people to do it, and to take shifts. So I had nine devotees or
so by the time Kartik began. And we grew from there. With
the encouragement of many devotees, I decided that we would
again attempt to commence Prabhupada’s 24-hour kirtan.
And we’ve been doing 24-hour kirtan there ever since.
SR: It started consistently in the ‘90s?
AD: No. Right from when we started, in 1986, and from then on. I
was doing 8 hours kirtan minimum daily, personally,
without any help, when I first came in ’86. I would call over
any baba. First I went to Mayapur, then I went to the Maha
Kumbha Mela in Hardwar. I would go out for a minimum of 8 hours
daily. I had a harmonium, dolak, karatals, whompers,
shakers, a couple mouth amplifiers, all packed into a box that I
took along on a little truck with big wheels so that I could go
over rough terrain. Anyway, I would set up all my paraphernalia
around me and just invite people over when they came into the
temple. And that was how it started. I would do that for 8 hours
a day. And then pretty soon we got a group together -- people
started taking an interest -- and I was encouraged to start
24-hour kirtan.
SR: The rest is history.
AD: Yeah.
SR: And now you’re a legend, Aindra Prabhu.
AD: There’s that story: In KRSNA Book, Prabhupada describes how
the gopis gave up everything, and how Krishna was
praising the gopis, saying, “I know what kind of devotees
you are -- that you’ve left your families, you’ve left
everything, not considering anything other than searching for
Me. So I cannot give you up.” This was when Krishna disappeared
from the gopis and He returned to them before commencing
the rasa-lila. So I understood the lesson here -- that
following in the footsteps of the gopis meant to renounce
everything to search for Krishna, to satisfy Krishna. So when I
came to Vrindavan in ’86, I decided that I would not turn back.
I left my family; I left everything. Maybe He reciprocated with
me. Maybe that’s what happened.
But there’s an interesting story here, it’s the one I started to
mention earlier about my father, when you asked, “Why you?”:
Some 15 years later or so, my younger brother tracked me down,
not physically, but he tracked me down to the New York temple,
where Ramabhadra told him that he knew where I was, that I was
in Vrindavan, and that he would forward the message to me. And
so through him I came to know that my father was on his
deathbed, ready to leave his body. What to do? I said, well,
anyway, what’s the use of getting involved? I’m doing whatever I
can to become a pure devotee -- I’m living in Vrindavan, after
all. My father will be benefited by that. In fact, my whole
family will be benefited. So why should I divert my focus?
Feeling like this, I threw the letter in the wastebasket.
That night, I took rest, and in the morning, just before
mangala-arotik, I had a very, very interesting dream. A
strangely effulgent, angelic person, I didn’t know who he was,
but he was a male figure, spoke to me, “Why are you thinking
that you won’t contact your father?” He said, “You don’t know
it, but your father in his previous life was a fallen disciple
of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati …
SR: Oh, man.
AD: Yes. And he continued: “And the reason you took birth in
this family was simply for the purpose of delivering him,
liberating him.” He went on: “Now, please, don’t think the way
you’ve been thinking -- you go and contact your family and do
the needful to deliver your father.” And then the dream startled
me awake. I was amazed. Just then, I remembered something I had
read in Tulasi Mahatmya: “If there is a single piece of tulasi
wood in the fire of a cremated soul, then that soul, regardless
of how sinful he or she may have been, immediately attains the
spiritual world.” So then I thought to send my kanti-mala,
my Tulasi neck-beads, to my father. I wear quite a few
kanti-malas, so I took one off, and Dhanurdhar Maharaja
happened to be going that way, to the States, so I thought I’d
send it with him.
I also wrote a letter to my brother asking that he give the
beads to our father as a token of my gratitude for his putting
up with me in my childhood. And I wanted him to ask dad to wear
it as an expression of my love. I explained to him about the
importance of Tulasi being in the fire during cremation, though
I wasn’t sure why I was saying this to him, because in my
younger years our dad used to take us to our family’s cemetery
plot, being Christian and all. It was unlikely he would choose
cremation. Somehow, I knew my brother would properly communicate
these thoughts to our father.
After a little time, I decided that I would call my younger
brother to find out what happened, whether or not he buried our
dad or whether he was cremated – and, somehow, as it turns out,
they decided to cremate. So I said, “Accha.” He also told me
that dad wore the Tulasi when he was leaving his body and
demanded that the Tulasi wood be on his body when he was
cremated. It all worked out. So I did the needful.
SR: Very nice. Wonderful, in fact.
AD: Yeah. So that goes along with the question, “Why me?,” which
you posed earlier. The angelic presence said that my father was
a fallen disciple of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur, and that
it was prearranged that I should take my birth in that family to
deliver him. I needed to be convinced and so Krishna appeared to
me in that vision. That’s why I received that special
revelation, so I could aid in saving this fallen disciple of my
param-guru, Srila Sarasvati Thakur. It makes sense.
SR: Indeed it does. And that’s a nice ending. One final
question. Can you share a few brief words on the philosophy
behind kirtan?
AD: Harinama-sankirtan is ideally loud chanting of the
Holy Name for three purposes – to develop love of God, to
glorify Him, and for the benefit of others. It is selfless, for
celebrating God and to help anyone within earshot.
Unfortunately, a semblance or a lesser form of kirtan is
becoming prevalent today – it is materially motivated, or let us
say, it does not have love of God as the goal. It has mundane
motives. Real sankirtan is pure, giving, without any
holding back. The heart is at the center of real glorification,
real kirtan, but it’s a science too, handed down by the
sages. One should learn this science with full dedication.
There are various kinds of chanting – the lowest kind involves
the desire for material gain; people want things in this world
and they chant to get them. A little higher is shadow chanting,
which is about liberation from the material world. This seems to
be a spiritual goal, but for Vaishnavas it’s just the beginning,
and it is distasteful – it’s not about love of God but about
wanting to get out of material misery. That’s still a material
motivation. And then there is the kind of chanting that results
in prema-bhakti, or pure love. This is what our lineage
teaches. This is real kirtan.
Lord Chaitanya’s movement is meant to give the world
prema-nama-sankirtan. This is why Prabhupada came West – to
offer the highest benefit, pure love of God, to one and all. We
must learn to chant purely, under those who have genuine love,
and in this way we can awaken pure devotion, especially for
Radha and Krishna. This is what kirtan is really all
about.
|