SpiritualThe media had a feast reporting on monks accused of fraud, kidnapping, and illegal weapons possession. For weeks and months after the raid, major newspapers and magazines and the national television stations featured stories on the Hare Kṛṣṇa devotees. They were generally depicted as criminals cheating housewives and sending immense sums of cash to their guru in America.
Three years would pass before the trial, in which all criminal charges would be dropped and the devotees only fined for violating the collection laws. But the propaganda, fueled by disgruntled parents and church leaders, aimed at stripping the Kṛṣṇa monks of their apparently harmless and peaceful veneer and painting a dark picture of destructive criminals. BHAKTI GAURAVANI GOSWAMI: We felt isolated. Harināma in Frankfurt could be dangerous. The public’s reaction was icy, if not openly hostile, and the police regularly arrested us and told us to stop the disturbance and go home. Chanting in the streets without permission violated the law. EKĀ DĀSA: I lived at the Berlin center. At 4:30 one morning, three shots rang out and smashed the storefront’s right window. I ran to the temple room, where Jayagoura lay on the floor—alive. The bullets had missed him by inches because at that very moment he had bowed down before the Pañca-tattva.
News of the attempted shooting in Berlin reached Hansadutta and Śrīla Prabhupāda in Honolulu. Hansadutta proposed a plan to counteract the propaganda and persecution, and Śrīla Prabhupāda confirmed it in a letter to all temple presidents: Recently in Germany the government, police and church have started heavy prosecution against our movement by arrests, investigation and blocking our money in the bank. By unfair and slanderous newspaper and television propaganda, they have ruined our reputation and turned the general public against our movement. We cannot sit idle. Even killing of our devotees has been attempted in Berlin by shooting. Hansadutta Prabhu has formulated a plan for protesting at all German embassies all over the world. This plan has my sanction. He will be contacting you in this connection. Please cooperate with him fully.
Brahmānanda Swami reached Schloss Rettershof on January 5, 1975. The devotees needed the encouragement and association of one of Prabhupāda’s leaders. Book distribution somehow continued, but the collection went down considerably. To convince someone to give a donation became a major struggle.
BHAKTI GAURAVANI GOSWAMI: To counteract the propaganda Pṛthu and I toured Germany to get the support of respected persons. We visited Graf Dürckheim, Father Jungclaussen, and other people interested in Kṛṣṇa consciousness who were in positions to help. But the tour produced meager results. Although most expressed sympathy, they hesitated to stand up for us in public.
* * * In early March, Prabhupāda expressed his desire that as many devotees as possible from all over the world come to India for the annual MāyāpurVṛndāvana festival and attend the opening of the Krishna-Balaram Mandir on April 20.
For the German devotees, to go on pilgrimage and visit the holy places of Lord Caitanya’s and Kṛṣṇa’s pastimes provided just the medicine they needed to lift their spirits.
JANMĀNALĀYA DĀSA: After the festival, I stayed on as a pūjārī at the Krishna-Balaram Mandir. I had been studying art in Vienna before joining the devotees, but after moving into the temple I had stopped painting. Now I felt the desire to take it up again, but I didn’t know how to begin after so many years without practice.
One morning, in 1976, I described my background to Śrīla Prabhupāda and my desire to engage my talent in Kṛṣṇa’s service. I showed him a drawing of him I had made. He was pleased and even signed it. His instruction to me was simple: “Just go on painting.” Glad to have his approval I began painting portraits of Prabhupāda while also doing my service as a pūjārī.
Later I went to Māyāpur, where one of my duties was to guard Prabhupāda’s quarters during his visits. One morning, I was sitting on the veranda not far from his door in front of an empty room in which the ceiling fan was going. Someone apparently had left the room and forgotten to switch off the fan. Śrīla Prabhupāda, chanting japa, came out of his room and walked up the veranda, turned around, and approached the spot where I was sitting. When he noticed the swirling fan he stopped and asked me, “Why is this ventilator going?” I sheepishly said, “I don’t know. Somebody must have left it on.”
“Then why didn’t you switch it off?” he asked.
When I gave the silly excuse that I had forgotten about it, Prabhupāda remarked, “You are good for nothing. Simply wasting Kṛṣṇa’s energy!” I lowered my head and tears welled up in my eyes.
Prabhupāda’s obvious displeasure with me made me feel like drowning myself in the Ganges. So I went to the temple president and told him what had happened. I asked him what I should do now, whether I should get my bags and leave or what? But he seemed not to give the incident much importance and encouraged me to continue my service. So I sat down again at Śrīla Prabhupāda’s door.
After a few minutes, Prabhupāda called me into his room and asked me to fetch the water jug from his bedroom and fill the loṭā on his desk. As I set down the jug and replaced its small clay cover, Prabhupāda put his hand on mine and moved his head in an apologetic way, as if he wanted to say, “What can I do? It is my duty to correct you.” I immediately felt like embracing him. The very incident that had caused me so much grief miraculously turned into the most wonderful experience. Prabhupāda radiated the warmth and love of a true father and well-wisher.
There were lots of insects in Māyāpur, especially brown, cockroachlike, winged bugs. Each evening, thousands of them swirled around the lamps in the temple room, and in the morning, they all lay dead on the floor. It was my service to sweep the temple room and dispose of the insects. There was a bucketful of them. In one of his lectures, Prabhupāda referred to the insects by comparing our situation in this world to theirs. Just as they were attracted by the glaring lamplight only to die by the next morning, so we were attracted by the dazzling material energy only to meet with death.
SARVABHĀVANA DĀSA: A friend of mine (who later became Bhakti Chāru Swami) and I went from Calcutta to Hamburg in 1970. There we met the devotees for the first time and accepted an invitation to the Sunday feast. Unfortunately, our visit to the Bartelsstrasse temple turned out to be quite unpleasant. We got into an argument with Kṛṣṇadāsa, who made derogatory remarks about Indians coming to the West. After leaving the temple we didn’t want to have anything more to do with the devotees. Our idea of a devotee was an introspective sage living in the mountains. Occasionally I saw devotees chanting in front of Dammtor, but I never approached them.
I married a German girl, who later became initiated as Śubhāṅgī Dāsī, and in 1974 my wife and I moved to Berlin. There on the street, we met Śāntimātī Dāsī, who gave me a German Back to Godhead magazine. On the front and back covers were photos of Schloss Rettershof and devotees engaged in various activities. Later, I met Indira Dāsī, who gave me Lord Caitanya in Five Features—an excerpt from Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta in English—and an illustrated pamphlet explaining how to make chanting beads. I bought the book mainly because it contained Bengali verses, but once I began reading it, what really touched me were Śrīla Prabhupāda’s purports.
My wife and I practiced yoga; we spent an hour every morning doing āsanas. But after reading about bhakti-yoga and chanting, I suggested we try that. So we chanted for some time while standing on our heads, and we felt that the chanting had a special effect on our consciousness. We continued this practice and even bought wooden beads in a toyshop to string into japa-mālās.
After reading Lord Caitanya in Five Features, I began visiting the temple in Berlin. A painting of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa on a lotus flower especially attracted me. During ārati I looked at the painting again and again, and I felt as if Kṛṣṇa were pulling me.
I also used to visit a tea house in the same building, and one evening I was sitting there sipping tea and munching biscuits when someone put on Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Kṛṣṇa Meditation album. I liked classical music— especially church music and operas—but when I heard Śrīla Prabhupāda singing, I felt he sang with genuine devotional feelings, unlike classical singers, who usually displayed only sentiments in their interpretations. When a doctor advised my pregnant wife to have an abortion I thought, “What a demonic society. I don’t want to be part of it anymore.” I seriously contemplated what I had to offer my child once he was born. What were my plans for the future? It became clear that I had to make a decision. For the next few days, I thought deeply about what to do, and when the pictures of the devotees I’d seen in the magazine flashed through my mind’s eye, I knew: That’s what I want to do.
By the end of March 1975, I called Schloss Rettershof. Ātmavidyā answered the phone, and I said, “I want to come and join.” He replied, “You will have to wait. There is nobody here. All the devotees have gone to India for a festival.” I was a little disappointed, but I resigned myself and waited. A week later I called again. I was eager to act on my decision. But I was again told I should wait because the devotees hadn’t returned yet. I thought, “That’s ridiculous. I want to become a member right away.” So my wife and I packed our bags and took trains to Frankfurt and KÎnigstein. The next evening we moved into the temple.”
AṢṬARATHA DĀSA: After the Māyāpur festival, Hansadutta asked me to remain in India for another week and buy paraphernalia for the marble Deities he had taken from Paris in the summer of 1972. He wanted to install Them as soon as possible. I was surprised. Whenever Hansadutta had asked Prabhupāda for permission to install Them—in a letter sent from Heidelberg in 1973 and during Prabhupāda’s visit to Schloss Rettershof in 1974—he had been told to wait.
In Māyāpur, Hansadutta decided to take matters into his own hands. He said to me, “I am just going to install Them now; otherwise, it will never happen.”
When I returned to Germany at the beginning of May the preparations for the installation were in full swing. On Sunday, May 11, 1975, Hansadutta performed the installation ceremony in the simple style common in ISKCON in those days, and he gave the Deities Their names: Śrī Śrī Rādhā-Madana-mohana. He told me he would write to Śrīla Prabhupāda about the installation».
To install Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa Deities without Śrīla Prabhupāda’s sanction was undoubtedly presumptuous, and Hansadutta pondered how to break the news to his spiritual master. Only eight months earlier Śrīla Prabhupāda had chastised him for closing a temple without permission. Now he was again risking Śrīla Prabhupāda’s anger.
Hansadutta thought the best course of action might be to simply obtain Śrīla Prabhupāda’s permission without telling him that the Deities were already installed. Thus on May 15, Hansadutta wrote again a letter to Prabhupāda asking his permission. Only ten days later he received the short, unmistakable answer: “There is no need of establishing a Deity for the time being. Simply make a nice preaching center.”
This baffled Hansadutta. Why did Śrīla Prabhupāda react negatively to installing these Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa Deities in Germany? Didn’t he trust him? In London and Paris, he had not only sanctioned installations of RādhāKṛṣṇa Deities but also conducted personally the ceremonies. In a few weeks, he would install another set of large Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa Deities on the new farm in France. Prabhupāda had always spoken about Germany as one of the most important countries in Europe, if not the most important one. Were these merely words of encouragement? After years of pushing hard to establish Kṛṣṇa consciousness, Hansadutta had found a prestigious place, a majestic castle, and Prabhupāda had liked it. Wasn’t it obvious that having only small brass Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa Deities on the altar of such a large building was almost out of proportion?
Śrīla Prabhupāda’s reply didn’t seem to chasten Hansadutta. And once Śrī Śrī Rādhā-Madana-mohana were installed, it became evident that They were rather small—only about twelve inches high—a far cry from the almost life-sized mūrtis worshiped in many other ISKCON temples. Hansadutta wasn’t satisfied.
AṢṬARATHA DĀSA: A couple of months after the installation Hansadutta sent Sucandra, Alanātha, and I to Jaipur. He told us to buy the biggest Deities we could find. We went from one mūrti-wala to the next until we found what we were looking for. Kṛṣṇa measured almost two meters high; He was taller than me. It took twelve men to lift Him and put Him in a wooden box. A few months later the Deities arrived in Germany. But Hansadutta eventually shipped Them to California, where he later installed and worshiped Them.».
In the middle of September Hansadutta made another attempt to get Prabhupāda’s permission to install Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa Deities at Schloss Rettershof. He expected the newly purchased Deities to arrive soon from Jaipur, and he thought that if Prabhupāda sanctioned Their installation, the earlier installation of Rādhā-Madana-mohana could be “officially” included. But Prabhupāda didn’t approve of Hansadutta’s plan: Regarding the Frankfurt temple and the Deity program, unless we have got our own building, this proposal of installing Deity should be postponed. Do not install the large Deities, unless we have got our own building.
BHAKTI GAURAVANI GOSWAMI: The police raid and the subsequent freezing of our bank accounts brought book publishing to a halt. Śacīnandana went out preaching, Vaidyanātha transferred to the Copenhagen temple, and Nikhilānanda, being still underage, was again taken into custody by his mother. I continued the translation work alone. I had begun to translate the First Canto of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, and in the process, it occurred to me to compare the new edition with the old Delhi Bhāgavatam that Prabhupāda had published in 1964 and brought with him when he came to the West. To my surprise, I discovered changes I deemed unnecessary, including sentences and paragraphs that had been eliminated. I informed Hansadutta who, besides being the GBC, was also the BBT Trustee for German books, and asked him to explain the situation to Prabhupāda and request his permission to use the original Bhāgavatam for my translation work. The reply was short and clear: “If you like to use the original manuscript, then, if it is possible, you can use it.” A year later, Śrīla Prabhupāda extended this permission to all translators. In a letter dated September 18, 1976, he instructed Rameśvara, the Trustee in charge of the American BBT: “In general, if any translator of my books requires the original manuscripts for his work, he should be supplied them by you.” This is an important instruction because it shows that Prabhupāda did not consider the original manuscripts only drafts, as some devotees have suggested, and the edited and published books as the only authorized versions. In fact, the edited and published books are not supposed to differ much from the manuscripts because Prabhupāda’s guidelines for editing were very restrictive, as evident from a letter to Rūpānuga in 1970: “Our editing is to correct grammatical and spelling errors only, without interpolation of style or philosophy».
I was also in contact with a retired German professor of linguistics living in Los Angeles, Dr. Wolf-Rottkay, who had become a friend of Svarūpa Dāmodara’s. On several occasions, he had met Śrīla Prabhupāda and offered to help with the German translations. Thus on Prabhupāda’s request, we were sending him manuscripts for revision.
In the course of our correspondence, Dr. Wolf suggested that I come to California. The recently opened BBT offices there offered excellent facilities for book production, and at the same time, we would be able to work together closely and be more efficient.
The prospect of traveling to ISKCON’s Western World Headquarters and leaving the depressing atmosphere of Schloss Rettershof was tempting. But I doubted Hansadutta would agree. So I wrote directly to Prabhupāda for advice.
In the same letter, I asked him to clear up two questions I had about statements in the third chapter of the Madhya-līlā. In the purport to text 98 I had read, “...prasādam is never polluted even if it is touched by the mouth of a caṇḍāla. Indeed, it retains its spiritual value. Therefore by eating or touching such mahā-prasādam, a brāhmaṇa is not degraded. There is no question of being polluted by touching the remnants of such food.” I was confused. Why then did we throw out the prasādam that guests left on their plates? It was surely an offense, and maybe it was better that the devotees took those remnants.
My other question concerned text 70 of the same chapter. In his purport, Prabhupāda writes, “Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu did not encourage sannyāsīs to eat very palatable dishes, for the whole vaiṣṇava cult is vairāgya-vidyā, as renounced as possible. Caitanya Mahāprabhu also advised Raghunātha Dāsa Gosvāmī not to eat very palatable dishes, wear very nice garments, or talk on mundane subjects. These things are all prohibited for those in the renounced order. A devotee does not accept anything to eat that is not first offered to Kṛṣṇa. All the rich foodstuffs offered to Kṛṣṇa are given to the gṛhasthas, the householders.” I wondered why, then, in our temples, it was common practice to offer visiting sannyāsīs huge plates of rich mahā-prasādaam.
On August 4, 1975, Prabhupāda replied: Regarding your going to Los Angeles, if Dr. Wolf suggests that you come, you should do it. At least you can come as tourist, so there should be no difficulty. So you should consult with Dr. Wolf.
Regarding your questions, you may not be so advanced that you will take the karmi remnants as prasadam. The karmis should not be given so much that there is waste. You can give them a little, and then, if they like, you can give them more. This system should be introduced everywhere. I have seen myself that so much prasadam is being left. This is not good.
Regarding the attitude for taking prasadam, if you think it is something palatable, so let me take more and more, then that is sense gratification. But still it is prasadam, so it will act. Prasadam is transcendental, but one should not take too much. Sannyasis may take the maha-prasadam, but not to overeat. Caitanya Mahaprabhu was taking, but on principle he was avoiding.
On September 9, Aśoka-kumāra and I arrived in Los Angeles. Aśokakumāra came along to transcribe and compose the translations, but unfortunately, he could not use the BBT typesetting equipment immediately. Special fonts for German, with diacritic marks for the Sanskrit transliteration, had to be ordered, and that took a couple of months.
Dr. Wolf, a friendly gentleman in his late sixties, was glad to have us there. He was fluent in six languages, and he was eager to help us to bring the translation of Prabhupāda’s books up to a more academically acceptable level. But his involvement turned out to be a double-edged sword. He had many valuable suggestions to improve the style, but his vision was flawed by mundane considerations. He found many of Prabhupāda’s original English expressions objectionable and wanted to change them in the German edition. For example, he felt it was simply unacceptable to compare Kṛṣṇa’s legs to elephant trunks.
In the weeks that followed, we had several heated discussions, and when Dr. Wolf saw that I was not prepared to change Prabhupāda’s words just because a description didn’t fit his conception, he began to question Prabhupāda’s position. Having fled Nazi Germany, he felt that our vision of Prabhupāda’s authority was dangerously similar to the inflated image of Hitler in the 1930s.
Finally, he stopped coming. But he sent me a letter explaining his stand on the way our books should be presented, and he mailed a copy to Śrīla Prabhupāda, who replied to him as follows: I beg to acknowledge receipt of a copy of a letter sent to Sriman Vedavyas dated January 14, 1976.
Mundane books are written by imperfect persons. Everyone has his own theory, which means he is imperfect. The Srimad-Bhagavatam says if there is a real presentation of spiritual understanding, then, even if it is presented in broken language, it is accepted by high, saintly persons, because it glorifies the Supreme Person. On the other hand, if literature is highly metaphorically, composed if it does not glorify the Lord, it is compared to a place inhabited by the crows.
Actually, if some literature doesn’t carry any real knowledge, what is the use of ornamental language? We are not interested in presenting ornamental language.
In India the system is that people go to see the Jagannatha Deity. The Deity is not very beautiful from the artistic point of view, but still people attend by the thousands. That sentiment is required. Similarly with our kirtana we are only using drums and karatalas but people come to the point of ecstasy.
It is not the ornamentation, it is the ecstasy. This ecstasy is awakened by sravanam kirtanam by devotees. I hope this makes everything clear. At the end of September 1975, Alanātha Dāsa, one of the top German book distributors who had taken charge of the Stockholm temple, complained to Prabhupāda about Hansadutta’s eccentricities, which had confused the devotees in Sweden.
Prabhupāda took the matter very seriously. He had created the GBC to relieve him from management, and he expected their behavior to be exemplary. The GBC was supposed to inspire the devotees in a concerted effort to fulfill the mission of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu. Dissension, fueled by personal ambition, was a great danger. Prabhupāda’s reply to Alanātha on November 10 was unusually candid: I know that Hansadutta is very expert in selling books, but books are not only for selling but also for reading. Now has the GBC become more than Guru Mahārāja? As if GBC is simply meant for looking after pounds, shilling, pence. The GBC does not look after spiritual life, that is the defect. All of our students will have to become guru, but they are not qualified. This is the difficulty.
A year before, devotees had complained about Hansadutta’s behavior, and now he was again the subject of controversy. In an earlier letter written to Śrīla Prabhupāda, Hansadutta had sounded depressed and had deprecated himself as useless and guilty of many mistakes. To lift his spirits, Prabhupāda had assured him that he didn’t think he had acted wrongly, and he reminded his disciple that we living entities are limited and actually unworthy to serve the Unlimited; it was only Kṛṣṇa’s kindness that He accepted our insignificant service.
In the same letter, Hansadutta had also again expressed his desire to take sannyāsa, but Prabhupāda had not encouraged him: Regarding your wanting to leave your family and take sannyasa, what is your family? You live aside from your wife, and you have no children, so you are already sannyasa. Anyway, we can consider later on. First we have to push this movement. That is most important thing. Grihastha or sannyasa, it doesn’t matter. First we have to know the science of Krishna consciousness. Caitanya Mahaprabhu never said that everyone had to take sannyasa. We should just be after becoming the pure servant of Krishna. Now, at the end of November 1975, Hansadutta flew to Delhi to become Prabhupāda’s secretary for the month of December. It was a welcome break for him from the past tension-filled weeks and months. The quarrels with his godbrothers had left a bad taste in his mouth. He felt himself the victim of unfounded rumors. Again he approached Śrīla Prabhupāda for sannyāsa.
RAMBHORŪ DĀSĪ: When Himavatī heard about Hansadutta’s intentions she almost had a fit. She immediately made arrangements to fly to India and asked me to accompany her. In Vṛndāvana, Hansadutta tried to get her to agree to his taking sannyāsa, but she didn’t want to hear of it. Every day she went to see Prabhupāda to discuss it with him. He would tell her, “Hansadutta cannot take sannyāsa unless you agree.” And she would say, “I don’t agree that we are ready for sannyāsa. I certainly don’t think that we are advanced enough, but if you give him sannyāsa I will accept that.” But Prabhupāda would insist, “No, no, you have to agree.” For days and days they went on like this, and finally, Prabhupāda just dropped the subject».
HARI-ŚAURI DĀSA: When Prabhupāda saw how adamantly opposed Himavatī was to her husband’s taking sannyāsa, he didn’t encourage Hansadutta to do so. Hansadutta was confused about what to do and wanted Prabhupāda to decide his fate, but Prabhupāda didn’t want to interfere and so refused to give him a direct instruction. He left it up to Hansadutta to make the decision. And it seemed that it would be just a matter of time before he decided to do it.