CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

San Francisco
July 5, 1970

ŚRĪLA PRABHUPĀDA WAS attending the 1970 Ratha-yātrā in San Francisco. The day was cold and windy, and about ten thousand people had joined in Lord Jagannātha’s procession through Golden Gate Park. Śrīla Prabhupāda had danced in the street with thousands of participants during the parade, addressed a large crowd in an auditorium by the beach, and looked on as his disciples had distributed a free vegetarian prasādam feast to thousands. But when a devotee arrived with a half-dozen advance copies of Volume One of Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Śrīla Prabhupāda appeared especially pleased.

Surrounded by devotees and curious festival-goers, Śrīla Prabhupāda held one of the books, admiring the front cover, with its full-color picture of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa. The volume was big, almost seven-and-a-half by ten-and-a-half inches, and its dust jacket shone, silver with large bright red letters: “KṚṢṆA.” It was a transcendental wonder in Śrīla Prabhupāda’s reverent hands.

Onlookers could barely restrain themselves from pressing in against Śrīla Prabhupāda to peer over his shoulders. And they didn’t restrain their exclamations when Prabhupāda smiled and opened the volume. He examined the illustrations, the print, the paper, and the binding. “Very nice,” he said. He fixed his attention on a page, reading. Then he looked up and announced that this greatly valuable book, Kṛṣṇa, had just arrived and that everyone should read it. Holding one book in his hand, with the other copies stacked before him, he said that anyone who so desired should come forward and buy a copy.

People began clamoring, and hands with ten-dollar bills thrust forward, while voices cried out, begging for a copy. And Prabhupāda promptly sold every book, not even keeping one for himself.

For the devotees, Śrīla Prabhupāda’s selling of the Kṛṣṇa book was the most spectacular event of the Ratha-yātrā festival. They pored over the purchased books in groups, discussing Kṛṣṇa’s pastimes and the effect they would have on the people of America.

Brahmānanda told how in 1967 Prabhupāda had given away his advance copy of Teachings of Lord Caitanya in his room at 26 Second Avenue in New York City. Just before that book had arrived, Śrīla Prabhupāda had been sitting and talking with Satyavrata, a disciple who had previously stopped coming to the temple due to petty quarreling with his Godbrothers. When the copy of Teachings of Lord Caitanya had arrived, Śrīla Prabhupāda had lovingly inspected it and had then offered it to Satyavrata as a gift.

Brahmānanda had been astounded to see Śrīla Prabhupāda give away his only copy of the book. Having helped publish the book, Brahmānanda knew how painstakingly Prabhupāda had written it and how he had anxiously waited one year for the book to finally see print. Yet once it had arrived, he had immediately given it away, and to a disciple who was not even in good standing. Satyavrata had taken the book, thanked Śrīla Prabhupāda, and left, never to be seen again.

Although Śrīla Prabhupāda wanted his disciples to be as eager to distribute Kṛṣṇa conscious literature as he was, none of them knew how to do it. Distributing a magazine and asking for a small donation was one thing – but a big, hardbound book? When the entire shipment of Teachings of Lord Caitanya had arrived in New York in April of 1967, the devotees had hired a truck, picked up the books at the dock, and unloaded them at 26 Second Avenue. They had then shipped them to ISKCON centers in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Montreal, and elsewhere. And there they remained.

Some devotees had tried placing ads in magazines and leaving books in bookstores on consignment. But the books didn’t sell. How to sell these big, hardbound books remained a mystery – until something significant happened, an accidental discovery.

Astonished at what had happened and inspired at their success, the two brahmacārīs went the next day with several Kṛṣṇa books and stood in front of a grocery store. And again it happened; this time they sold two books.

Keśava, the San Francisco temple president, phoned his G.B.C. supervisor (and brother), Karandhara, in Los Angeles to tell him what had happened. “It’s like a miracle!” Keśava exclaimed. Karandhara encouraged him to experiment further, and soon the San Francisco temple had half a dozen men going from door to door showing the books to people in their homes. When Buddhimanta began selling as many as five books in a day, the devotees in other temples, especially Los Angeles, San Diego, and Denver, wanted to follow his example. And whoever tried it and sold a book became caught up in a euphoric excitement.

The experience and testimonies of devotees selling Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books describe a special taste, distinct from the happiness young men might ordinarily experience by stumbling upon a sales technique and finding themselves on the verge of making a lot of money. The difference is that the devotees’ book distribution, being devotional service to Kṛṣṇa, produces an ecstasy that is transcendental, an ecstasy far beyond even the greatest material happiness.

Ordinary business and the business of selling Kṛṣṇa conscious literature are as different as material life from spiritual life. And anyone observing spiritual life from the material point of view will not understand it. Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī has compared such empirical attempts to understand the ecstasy of Kṛṣṇa consciousness with attempts to taste honey by licking the outside of the bottle.

The young men and women beginning to distribute books in America knew that Śrīla Prabhupāda, by giving them Kṛṣṇa consciousness, had saved them from hellish life, and they wanted to help him give Kṛṣṇa consciousness to others. And such preaching, by distributing his books, was ecstasy, spiritual ecstasy.

By mid-1971, the temples were selling hundreds of Kṛṣṇa books a week. Karandhara, Prabhupāda’s Book Fund manager, began sending saṅkīrtana newsletters to the North American temples and to Śrīla Prabhupāda. By listing the monthly results of each temple’s book distribution, the newsletters incited competition. Karandhara’s December 1971 newsletter summed up the mood of the year and urged the devotees to increase.

The crowning touch to end the year’s saṅkīrtana, however, came not from the newsletter but from Prabhupāda himself, who wrote to Keśava, the “king” of Kṛṣṇa book distribution,

Copies of this letter went out to every ISKCON center. Prabhupāda had always given his blessings to all the devotees, but never before could anyone recall his saying a devotee would get Kṛṣṇa’s blessings “a million times over”!

Although a letter from Prabhupāda usually instructed a specific devotee, the instruction often had universal application; and Śrīla Prabhupāda’s letters made clear his disciples’ top priority: book distribution.

Prabhupāda’s ambition was to replace mundane literature with transcendental. At least in every home there should be one piece of Kṛṣṇa conscious literature, he reasoned, because if a person read only one page, his life could be turned toward perfection. “If one percent of the readers become devotees,” he wrote, “that will change the world.” Whereas mail-order advertisers were satisfied with a five-percent response, Śrīla Prabhupāda spoke of an even smaller percentage – one percent – whom he thought could become pure devotees in response to receiving a book. Lord Kṛṣṇa also confirms this in Bhagavad-gītā: “Out of many thousands among men, one may endeavor for perfection, and of those who have achieved perfection, hardly one knows Me in truth.” To make the world Kṛṣṇa conscious, therefore, would require that millions of pieces of transcendental literature be distributed.

Śrīla Prabhupāda wanted his disciples to understand why they should distribute his books, and he instructed them through his letters.

He wrote to Jayādvaita,

To Jagadīśa he wrote,

Prabhupāda continued to insist that all major Kṛṣṇa conscious programs be maintained, including Deity worship, chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa in public, and holding outside lectures. All programs were important. But book distribution, whenever possible, should accompany the other programs. To a sannyāsī whose main program was public lecturing, Prabhupāda wrote,

And in a letter to Bhagavān dāsa in France, he stressed the same thing: “What will your three minutes preaching do? But if they buy one book, it may turn their life.”

During this period of increasing book distribution, one of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s newly initiated sannyāsīs concocted the idea that the devotees should spend much more time studying. While visiting the New York temple, this sannyāsī openly advocated that devotees read Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books five to eight hours daily. The temple was following a new schedule Śrīla Prabhupāda had set up, with devotees attending the morning program, going out all day for street chanting and book distribution, and returning in the evening for a class on Bhagavad-gītā. But now controversy arose, and an urgent phone call was placed to Śrīla Prabhupāda in Los Angeles. When Prabhupāda heard the details from his secretary, he immediately responded.

January 1972
  “You should always think of new outlets for distributing my books,” Śrīla Prabhupāda wrote to Jagadīśa. And new outlets the devotees found – shopping centers, malls, parking lots. They were meeting more people than ever before.

By entering the malls and shopping centers, the devotees plunged into the heart of American society, meeting pious and impious, rich and poor, black and white. Book-selling was still difficult, but the devotees persevered, carrying their heavy book bags and distributing the literature they knew could solve all problems.

The devotees saw the shoppers as so many walking victims of the material energy, people living for sensual and mental pleasure and therefore doomed to an inauspicious death. Any serious devotee could philosophically explain from Bhagavad-gītā the predicament of the materialist, but now they were directly witnessing this plight. And by Prabhupāda’s mercy, they were working hard to deliver the missing essence of transcendental knowledge to the bewildered souls.

Then came the discovery of traveling from town to town to sell books. Some of the brahmacārīs in Los Angeles had been feeling that by staying in the temple they were wasting time they could be using for book distribution. So they loaded a van with Kṛṣṇa books and went to areas where they could camp for a week, live a simpler life, and distribute books as many hours a day as they liked. This “traveling saṅkīrtana” produced another significant increase by creating an environment wherein the men could become fully absorbed in their work. The new program spread quickly throughout the ISKCON world, and Śrīla Prabhupāda liked it.

Śrīla Prabhupāda began saying that opening new centers was less important now that the traveling parties were combing the country. When he heard that the temple president in Vancouver had acquired a bus for traveling, he wrote,

Prabhupāda was glad to hear that temple presidents and zonal leaders were also going out with the traveling saṅkīrtana parties. The Vedic concept of the commander, he said, is that he must fight in the front lines, not sit behind the scenes, sheltered. Having already witnessed how some of his leading disciples had become bogged down by managing many things, he advised them all to travel and preach, distributing literature wherever they went.

When a devotee in California wrote Śrīla Prabhupāda for permission to give up married life and go on traveling saṅkīrtana, Prabhupāda replied that to give up family life was not necessary. Lord Caitanya had taught that being a sannyāsī or a gṛhastha did not matter as long as one fully served Kṛṣṇa. A householder could also sometimes travel and distribute books, with or without his wife.

Near the end of 1972, the BBT newsletter, now compiled by Karandhara’s assistant, Rāmeśvara, reported the ever-increasing results of book distribution.

Another breakthrough for book distribution came at the end of 1972. The previous year devotees had taken advantage of the Christmas season by selling the Kṛṣṇa book door to door, but no one had been aware just how significant the Christmas season could actually be.

Rāmeśvara: It was on December 22, 1972 that we accidentally discovered the Christmas marathon in Los Angeles. Of course, we noticed a great increase in the number of people going into the stores, and the stores were staying open sometimes until midnight. I was standing in front of a Burbank Zody’s. We were having an intense competition with prizes in Los Angeles, and it was building up to a feverish pitch.

So after distributing madly all day long, I had collected about $350 and had distributed 650 magazines. It was about ten o’clock at night. I was convinced this was the new world’s record in ISKCON and that nobody was possibly going to beat me this day. Even though the store was open until twelve, business had started slowing off; and I was thinking, “Maybe I should go back. Undoubtedly everyone is back already. No one has ever stayed out past eight o’clock. They’ll all be waiting up for me. I shouldn’t keep them waiting up.” So in this way my mind was convincing me to go back.

By eleven o’clock the store was completely dead. I got in the car and started driving back. On the way back I passed another Zody’s, called Hollywood Zody’s, on Sunset and Western. I was torn whether to stop or not, because that store was crowded and was going to be open until midnight. But I decided, “No, I’ll go back, because the other devotees will be waiting up to see how many books I distributed.” So I just kept driving.

I finally arrived at the temple at about ten minutes to twelve, and I burst into the saṅkīrtana room. But the only person there was the secretary, Madhukaṇṭha. I said, “Oh, no. Everyone went to bed?” He said, “No, nobody is back yet.” I was the first one back! That was the discovery of the first Christmas marathon. It was completely unplanned. No one had ever instructed anyone to stay out that late. We just did it spontaneously.

Finally, at about one-thirty in the morning, all the devotees had returned, and we were all sitting around looking at the saṅkīrtana map. We couldn’t sleep, we were so excited to go out. We were thinking, “Where can we find plenty of conditioned souls to distribute books to?” Our noise and raucous laughter was like a drunken party, and it woke up Karandhara, who was sleeping in his office in the next room. He came stumbling in, wiping the sleep from his eyes, but when he saw us and saw what was going on, he burst out laughing and sent us all to bed, saying, “Get ready for tomorrow.” So in this way we performed the three-day marathon – December 22, 23, and 24.

No one had ever distributed as many books before in the history of our movement. A big day had been considered to be somewhere between twenty-five and forty books. But we were distributing between five thousand and six thousand pieces of literature a day for a three-day period. One temple had distributed almost eighteen thousand pieces of literature in just three days.

When Prabhupāda received news of the book distribution in Los Angeles and elsewhere in the United States, he was very pleased and amazed. Although involved with many affairs from throughout the world, he put them aside and relished the overwhelming victory of book distribution in America. Immediately he called in his personal secretary and dictated letters.

The same day Prabhupāda dictated a letter to Karandhara.

Śrīla Prabhupāda’s letters acknowledging the Christmas marathon and assuring the devotees that they would go back to Godhead sent the book distribution movement flying into the new year with great momentum. Devotees continued to find new ways and places to distribute books. New records were constantly topping the old, and the devotees were making still higher projections for the future.

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

Rāmeśvara went on to beat the drum of saṅkīrtana.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the summer of 1973 the devotees found that at concerts they could distribute hundreds of Kṛṣṇa books in a few hours. The Kṛṣṇa book, available now as a paperback trilogy with a foreword by George Harrison, was especially attractive to young people. In July, Rāmeśvara wrote to Prabhupāda in London, telling him that the Los Angeles temple was distributing two thousand Kṛṣṇa books a week and that at one concert devotees had distributed six hundred books in two hours.

The devotees in Los Angeles decided that Tripurāri and a few other leading saṅkīrtana men should travel from temple to temple and share their experience. Rāmeśvara wrote to Prabhupāda, “This is the mercy of Sri Sri Rukmini-Dvarakadhisa [the Deities of the L.A. temple] that we can send out so many devotees to other centers. It is the real opulence of New Dvārakā.” Śrīla Prabhupāda replied on August 3.

A letter from a woman who had recently received some of Prabhupāda’s books appeared in the July BBT newsletter. The letter had been written on TWA in-flight stationery.

On her way back from London she had purchased another book, Rāja-vidyā, in the Chicago airport and now asked for more help. “It is beautiful,” she concluded.

One day in September 1973, during Śrīla Prabhupāda’s morning walk on Juhu Beach in Bombay, a few of his sannyāsī disciples brought the matter before him. Prabhupāda referred to the many gentlemen strolling along Juhu Beach who would always offer respects to the devotees by folding their hands and saying, “Hare Kṛṣṇa.” This was the sign of a real Vaiṣṇava, Śrīla Prabhupāda said: anyone who sees him immediately thinks of Kṛṣṇa. The devotees, therefore, should prominently display such Vaiṣṇava markings as tilaka, śikhā, and neck beads, so that people could know, “Here are Hare Kṛṣṇa people.”

One sannyāsī remarked that in America devotees were now wearing wigs and dressing like hippies to distribute books. He did not let his own men do this because he felt it self-defeating if people didn’t even know they were speaking to a devotee. If someone wanted to distribute books, he concluded, Kṛṣṇa would help that devotee find a place where he could do so without having to disguise himself.

Śrīla Prabhupāda turned to the others, asking their opinions. One devotee suggested that the reason the devotees in America wore “disguises” was because otherwise they would not be permitted to distribute books in certain places. Prabhupāda heard the opinions and then gave his decision: these disguises should be stopped immediately. “We shall not in any way sacrifice our standards,” he said. “We must maintain our principles strictly. This dressing with long hair and karmī clothes is the tendency to once again become hippies. Because you were hippies, that tendency is still there. So this should be stopped.”

Walking back toward the temple, Prabhupāda saw a poor man evacuating by the roadside in public view. “He is not changing his standard, despite public opinion,” Prabhupāda said. “Can we not maintain our standards as strictly as they are maintaining theirs?”

A letter was drafted and signed by Tamāla Kṛṣṇa Goswami, Prabhupāda’s secretary, and Prabhupāda signed also, on a line marked “approved.” The letter stated that all saṅkīrtana devotees should always wear tilaka, dhotīs, neck beads, and śikhā, and should depend on Kṛṣṇa rather than disguises to help distribute books. At the bottom of the letter, however, was a P.S. – “Śrīla Prabhupāda, upon checking the above, added, ‘If they like, they may wear coat and pants… But tilak, sikha, beads – these things should be there.’ ” Previously Śrīla Prabhupāda had addressed this subject in various letters. To Jagadīśa in Canada Prabhupāda had replied that there was no objection to wearing Western clothes, including a wig or hat. “We have to take whatever is favorable position for executing Kṛṣṇa consciousness,” Prabhupāda had written. “Sometimes we may adopt such means in order to help distribute books.” But in February 1973 he had written to Rūpānuga that he did not want devotees dressing as hippies.

Śrīla Prabhupāda preferred to be spared such detailed management. His G.B.C. men should consult among themselves and then present their conclusions to him for a final decision. “In this way,” Prabhupāda had written, “I will be free to concentrate on my translation of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam.”

The letter from India reached Karandhara in Los Angeles, but before announcing that all saṅkīrtana in Western clothes must be stopped, he wanted Prabhupāda to hear his side of the story. He gave an elaborate report on the benefits of devotees’ wearing ordinary Western dress while selling books. The main thing Prabhupāda seemed to be objecting to, he concluded, was a disreputable appearance – devotees looking like hippies. He now informed Prabhupāda that the distributors were actually clean, well groomed, and presentable. If the book distributors were restricted to appearing in public with shaved head and dhotī, he said, then the distribution would decline by about two thirds. “If extremes and misapplications have occurred,” he wrote, “they should be worked out rather than giving up the whole program.”

This time Śrīla Prabhupāda replied in favor of Western dress.

The book distributors were protective of Prabhupāda’s order that as many books as possible be distributed. Just because a few people had complained, they argued, was no reason to cool down book distribution. They quoted Śrīla Prabhupāda’s statements that opposition to saṅkīrtana indicates its purity and genuineness.

Śrīla Prabhupāda had explained this point in his books in discussing the historical incident of Lord Caitanya’s saṅkīrtana parties’ being stopped by the Muslim government. Prabhupāda had written,

People in America had also objected to public chanting, to the devotees’ dress, to the Kṛṣṇa consciousness philosophy, to the food. Someone would always oppose. The main thing, the book distributors said, was to save the conditioned souls, who were heading for a hellish next life. If a person got a book and read just one page, his life could be changed.

Other devotees, however, including temple presidents, were disturbed by the complaints. Someone recalled that Prabhupāda had already addressed this point in 1970.

Śrīla Prabhupāda wanted the book distributors to execute his order, but he was not giving them a license to do anything and everything and claim it was for Kṛṣṇa. Preaching required expertise, not only in getting people to take a book but in giving them the right impression.

The book distributors maintained that they were doing the best they could but that they would try to improve. If other devotees thought they could do better, then they should demonstrate how to distribute books without disturbing anyone. Distributing books all day, day after day, was hard. People were already agitated by their minds and senses and harassed by their occupations, governments, and personal relationships. No wonder even an innocent devotee sometimes disturbed them.

The tactics in question were mostly the book distributors’ lines. The distributors would say that they were students, that they were helping get young people off drugs, or that the books were about how to solve modern day crises. None of these things were untrue, but the emphasis was sometimes excessive.

A mature devotee could speak more directly. Tripurāri would tell how the books described an ancient civilization in which people knew how life should be lived. He would present himself as a representative of an organization that had communities all over the world where people could benefit from the example of an alternative life-style. Tripurāri and others were able to be both personal and, in a casual way, philosophical, as they spoke about spiritual life. They made quick friends with strangers and convinced them to take books. But more and more devotees were taking up book distribution and many were inexperienced.

Śrīla Prabhupāda’s philosophy was clear, but different interpretations persisted. Without referring to specific techniques, Prabhupāda simply stressed the purity of book distribution and encouraged the book distributors to continue without interruption; the main thing was to distribute books.

Devotees continued to press Śrīla Prabhupāda for further clarification. The book distributors were concerned that the urgency of book distribution not be minimized, whereas other responsible ISKCON leaders were concerned that loose practices might hamper the Society’s progress. Prabhupāda replied to questions by Bali-mardana of New York with a letter that became particularly influential.

Prabhupāda’s position was clear: the books should be sold, but expertly. And lest there be any doubt, Prabhupāda reiterated that the book distribution was the best preaching. “The success of your preaching will be substantiated by how many books are sold.” Prabhupāda also wrote, “The art is to sell many, many books and not to irritate the public.”

As books continued to go out by the millions, many people expressed their thanks on receiving a book. Only occasionally would someone complain. But within ISKCON, the dialogue regarding book distribution techniques continued. When Śrī Govinda, the president of ISKCON Chicago, wrote Prabhupāda, Prabhupāda encouraged him in his attempt to reform the devotees engaged in excessive practices.

November 1973
  Scores of men and women were going out every day to distribute books. One November day the devotees of the New York City temple broke the ISKCON world record by distributing 13,200 pieces of literature. On the same day they also distributed 15,000 pieces of prasādam. The ISKCON total for 1973 was 4,169,000 books sold. When Śrīla Prabhupāda received these figures, he replied to Rāmeśvara,

The year 1974 began with what appeared to be a serious setback. The Supreme Court ruled against Vietnamese war protestors’ distributing political leaflets in private malls. Citizens of nonprofit groups – religious included – could solicit on private property only with permission from the proprietor. The malls that the book distributors had frequented were suddenly off limits.

The same constitution that barred the devotees from private property, however, gave them access to public property, and when ISKCON devotees filed a lawsuit against the city-owned Las Vegas airport, they won an immediate injunction on the basis that the airport was denying them their right to free speech. This ruling promised to open a new era in book distribution, with possibilities of legalizing saṅkīrtana in all major airports.

Devotees saw this as proof that Kṛṣṇa was working through Prabhupāda to increase book distribution. No previous spiritual master had ever distributed Vedic literature on so great a scale. This was another sign that Śrīla Prabhupāda was Kṛṣṇa’s empowered representative. And by the devotees’ efforts to follow Prabhupāda’s order, Kṛṣṇa was empowering them also. But only if they were willing to go through the trials of surrender and renunciation.

Praghoṣa: I went out one day to the airport, and I walked up to one black man and said, “Excuse me, sir.” And BAM! He punched me right in the face and knocked me down. At that moment so many thoughts went through my mind. I could just hear Tripurāri’s words ringing in my ears from the class that morning: “We must be determined. …” So I just said to myself, “Well, I’ll just stand right back up and keep trying.” I stood up, and I got the inspiration to just turn around and try to hand the next person one of Prabhupāda’s books.

Another time a husband and wife approached me, but the husband didn’t want anything to do with me. When the woman saw that the book was spiritual, she stopped and said, “What’s this book about?” I said very bluntly, “This book explains birth and death and what’s beyond.” She said, “Oh.” Then she turned to her husband and said, “Please buy it.” But he said, “I don’t want it. Come on, let’s go.” She said, “Please!” But her husband said, “You buy it.” And he walked off.

So she stayed with me and said, “Could you tell me a little more about this?” I started to explain the book, and then I said, “Where are you coming from?” She said, “I’m coming from Rochester.” Then she revealed to me that she was coming from the Mayo Clinic and that she had terminal cancer and was going to die. She said, “I desperately want to read this book.” She gave me ten dollars and said, “Thank you very much.” Then she took the book and ran off.

A little later she came back and found me and shook my hand and thanked me. These kind of experiences that devotees would have day in and day out gave us the feeling of being like emissaries or representatives of something very special. By this we became more attached to Śrīla Prabhupāda and to executing his work. We would see these miracles take place.

Keśava Bhāratī: I used to distribute books in the San Francisco airport. I thought that this airport was particularly difficult and that if I could be in L.A. I could probably distribute as many books as Tripurāri. I was a little proud. Then I got the chance to distribute with him.

I am very outgoing and gregarious, so I don’t have any problem stopping people or anything like that. But half an hour and then an hour went by, and Tripurāri had distributed five and then ten books. But I couldn’t get anybody to stop and shake my hand even. It was incredible! But I knew it was because I was too proud. Another hour went by, and still no one would stop and shake my hand. I was bewildered, because I wanted to pass out Prabhupāda’s books. Finally I just sat down out of frustration. I was nearly crying.

Tripurāri came up and preached to me. He told me I should pray to Lord Caitanya and Nityānanda in times like this and not to worry about it, that this happens. So I got it together, and then about ten to fifteen people in a row came and talked with me, and some of them took books. So when we discussed it afterward, we could understand that we were just instruments in Lord Caitanya’s hands. This is how we developed the saṅkīrtana philosophy. Through the book distribution we came to realize who Prabhupāda was and to appreciate him more.

Lavaṅga-latikā: All day I would stand at the top of the stairs, and thousands and thousands of people would come by. And we would distribute hundreds and hundreds of books. We used to take lines from Prabhupāda’s books. Tripurāri used to talk about the swans’ taking milk from water. So we used to use that a lot in approaching someone. We’d say how these great sages used to know how to separate milk from water, separate the essence. He also said the pictures were windows to the spiritual world. We’d say, “This book is like the brilliant sun that will drive away the darkness of ignorance in this Age of Kali.”

I found the best way to distribute the books was to use Prabhupāda’s own words. Prabhupāda said if we read one line to someone, that person can make one hundred times spiritual advancement. One time a devotee complained to Prabhupāda that people were throwing some of the books away. But then we could understand that Prabhupāda wanted them distributed on a large scale. Not that you kept the book for a special person you thought might be intelligent enough to read it. Because Prabhupāda said that if they read only one line they would be very much affected. So we could understand that Prabhupāda wanted mass distribution, not that we just keep them for the special, right person.

Sura: Vaiśeṣika was selling books in the airport with me. He would walk up to people and say, “Well, how are you doing, sir? All glories to the Śrī Kṛṣṇa saṅkīrtana movement, the prime benediction for humanity at large, which cleanses the heart.” He was repeating the Śikṣāṣṭaka prayers of Lord Caitanya right out of the book, and yet he was selling books. The books had pictures of Kṛṣṇa and devotional scenes on the cover, and sometimes some devotees couldn’t understand how people could relate to these books. But Prabhupāda wanted them distributed. And he was saying that we should preach on the merit of the book. When a devotee asked Prabhupāda what we should say to distribute the books, Prabhupāda replied kṛṣṇe sva-dhāmopagate, which is the verse that says the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam is as brilliant as the sun and it has arisen just to give people religion in this age of darkness. So we were also repeating that verse and distributing books on faith.

We would go out and see the people actually becoming struck by Kṛṣṇa consciousness. They would see that the devotees were very sincere and serious, and they would become impressed. Daily on saṅkīrtana we would see people appreciating Prabhupāda’s books. There was also harassment, but Prabhupāda had talked about it, that there was always difficulty. So everything was there from Prabhupāda to confirm whatever realizations we had. Śrīla Prabhupāda said a book salesman would sometimes have difficulty because he’ll be sometimes accepted and sometimes rejected. But he tolerates.

In the airport we met professors, lawyers, all kinds of people who would stop and talk. They would challenge, and we would constantly have to defend Prabhupāda’s books and his movement and speak up on behalf of Prabhupāda, more so than when we were just kids out on the parking lots talking to women and begging fifty cents for a pack of incense. We were presenting Prabhupāda’s books to the scholars, coming into contact with Māyāvādīs, scientists, businessmen, people who were very sharp, in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and San Diego. People there were very sharp and hard. And just by having to spiritually combat them and defend the movement, we became more mature in our understanding of Prabhupāda’s books and how to present them in such a way that we could convince even people who didn’t want to be convinced. We had to study Prabhupāda’s books.

“Your entire program is approved by me,” Prabhupāda wrote to Tripurāri. When Tripurāri asked if he could take sannyāsa, Prabhupāda replied that he was already doing more than any sannyāsī. In one letter Prabhupāda called him “the incarnation of book distribution.”

Book distribution took another great stride forward when Tamāla Kṛṣṇa Goswami, Śrīla Prabhupāda’s zonal secretary in India for four years, returned to the U.S. Joining with his friend Viṣṇujana Swami, he helped form the Rādhā-Dāmodara saṅkīrtana party, traveling in a bus with Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa Deities to distribute books and hold festivals all over the U.S.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa Goswami: When we first began the Rādhā-Dāmodara party our idea was to make as many devotees as possible by holding festivals at which we chanted Hare Kṛṣṇa and distributed prasādam. After Kṛṣṇa sent so many nice young men it was difficult to keep them always engaged. Then suddenly a letter arrived from Śrīla Prabhupāda in which he said that the kīrtana of book distribution was better than the kīrtana of public chanting. This transcendental instruction changed the course of our Rādhā-Dāmodara party. From then on I concentrated more and more on book distribution, and this gave Prabhupāda greater and greater pleasure. I had been in India for four years, but our main program had been enrolling life members. But now that I was in America Śrīla Prabhupāda was reminding me that preaching meant to distribute his books. So I became inspired that our party should distribute so many books that it equal all of the other book distribution of the rest of ISKCON worldwide. Day and night I was thinking of how to get out more and more books and thus overflood America with transcendental literature. Śrīla Prabhupāda wrote me that this was his real ambition, to turn all of America into Vaiṣṇavas.

Until we formed our Rādhā-Dāmodara party, the method of distributing books had been that an individual would be given either a large, medium, or small book, according to the size of the donation. But Prabhupāda told me that of all types of book distribution, to distribute his large books was most important. So I was always considering how to increase the number of large books. The problem was that people were willing to give small donations, but rarely would they give us large enough contributions to award giving them a large book. Then Kṛṣṇa gave me the idea that by adding together a few small donations from a number of persons, at least one of them could be given a large book, while the others could be given a Back to Godhead magazine or a small book. By this method we were able to increase the distribution of big books tremendously. Prabhupāda fully approved of this idea. As long as the Book Fund received payment for the books, Śrīla Prabhupāda allowed us to pass them out as quickly as we could, irrespective of the size of donation. Thus our Rādhā-Dāmodara party was able to distribute as many as fifty thousand big books in a single month.

Śrīla Prabhupāda showed special interest in the Rādhā-Dāmodara party and approved loans from the BBT for the purchase of more buses, thus creating a saṅkīrtana army traveling in renovated Greyhound buses. By the end of 1974 the Rādhā-Dāmodara party had three buses, vans, and numerous men. Prabhupāda called the buses “moving temples,” and he urged the Rādhā-Dāmodara devotees to continue their program, with certainty that they were pleasing Lord Caitanya. “I am glad that you have understood the importance of my books,” Prabhupāda wrote, “therefore I am stressing it so much. Let everyone take these books.”

Śrīla Prabhupāda encouraged the Rādhā-Dāmodara party to expand to hundreds of buses and thus fulfill the mission of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu to bring Kṛṣṇa consciousness to every town and village. When a tight transcendental competition arose between the Los Angeles temple, Tripurāri’s BBT party, and the Rādhā-Dāmodara party, Prabhupāda watched and approved it with pleasure.

Another party forming in 1974 was the BBT library party. It began with Hṛdayānanda Goswami’s sending some brahmacārīs from his traveling party to visit prestigious universities in New England. The men attempted to sell entire sets of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books to the professors, and even in their first attempts they met with great success.

Śrīla Prabhupāda had long cherished this idea, and even before coming to America he had gone to libraries in India with copies of his Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam First Canto. By his efforts in New Delhi, the United States Library of Congress had obtained copies of those early volumes. Now his desire to see his books placed in all the U.S. libraries and universities was becoming a reality. Within a few months professors began writing favorable reviews, and some even ordered Prabhupāda’s books for their college courses. “I very much like this program of the standing orders,” Prabhupāda wrote. “Try to increase it up to fifty thousand such orders from the libraries.”

Another party that formed in 1974 was Nāma-haṭṭa, a group of brahmacārīs led by two sannyāsīs. The Nāma-haṭṭa party would travel and distribute books, donating their profits toward Śrīla Prabhupāda’s projects in Bombay, Māyāpur, and Vṛndāvana.

Śrīla Prabhupāda recovered his health, and by the end of 1974 his BBT was also in extraordinary health, with the temples again competing in a furious Christmas marathon. In America, the BBT reported to Prabhupāda that approximately 387,000 hardbound books had been sold during the year, a 67% increase over the previous year. And almost 4,000,000 Back to Godheads had been sold, an 89% increase. The American BBT sold the individual temples a total of 6,668,000 pieces of literature, a 60% increase.

Such news made Śrīla Prabhupāda “become energetic like a young man,” and Prabhupāda and his book distribution movement headed into 1975 with all signs of increasing – doubling and tripling – the already astounding figures of 1974.

Śrīla Prabhupāda had created his Bhaktivedanta Book Trust in 1972 as an independent entity to insure that his books could continue being produced and distributed. The BBT would operate exclusively for the benefit of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, and yet it would exist independently.

The trust document stated that the trustees should divide the money from the sale of the books to ISKCON temples into two funds: one for printing books and one for purchasing ISKCON properties and building temples. Prabhupāda believed that if this fifty-fifty formula were followed, Kṛṣṇa would assure the success of ISKCON. Repeatedly he would refer to this formula in conversations and letters, even in his purports on Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam.

Śrīla Prabhupāda gave his BBT trustees authority to make printing plans, and the trustees would then consult him for approval. He would set the standards and guidelines for his BBT trustees to follow. Only after consulting him could they institute changes.

And to changes Prabhupāda was particularly averse. He would choose the book size, determine the artwork, and make suggestions about the size of a particular printing, about shipping policies, about sales to temples – about almost every aspect of the BBT’s publishing activities. Even when certain temples did not remit their payments to the BBT, Prabhupāda would become involved.

He was a strict manager. “According to Vedic instruction,” he said, “fire, debt, and disease should never be neglected. They must be extinguished by all means.”

Śrīla Prabhupāda saw book distribution as (among other things) the basis for an economically sound ISKCON. Other businesses could also operate, but book-selling was the best, for it combined preaching with a good source of income. As he wrote to one of his temple presidents,

And on another occasion,

Śrīla Prabhupāda also oversaw all BBT loans to temples; any G.B.C. secretary or temple president requesting a loan would have to approach him. In 1973 and 1974 he granted sizable loans for building, purchasing, or improving temples in Dallas, Hawaii, Sydney, Chicago, and Vancouver. He also granted a loan to the Rādhā-Dāmodara party for buying “traveling temples,” or buses, and one to South America for printing books. Kīrtanānanda Mahārāja automatically received a fifty-thousand-dollar loan each year for New Vrindaban. But Prabhupāda would deny money requests for projects he considered inconsistent with the purposes of the BBT. On November 6 he wrote to Rāmeśvara,

Beginning in 1974, Śrīla Prabhupāda utilized the BBT profits for constructing his main temples in India – Vṛndāvana, Māyāpur, and especially Bombay. Rāmeśvara informed the devotees of this special function of the BBT.

“These places in India,” Prabhupāda wrote, “are spiritually potent. By establishing temples in Māyāpur and Vṛndāvana we assure that the purity of our movement will be kept intact.”

When in early 1973 a German edition of Bhagavad-gītā had been printed, Śrīla Prabhupāda had written Haṁsadūta, “You have done the right thing by printing Bhagavad-gītā in German language, and I very much appreciate that you have done this great service.” By the summer, saṅkīrtana parties had been traveling throughout Germany, distributing several hundred copies of Bhagavad-gītā a week. Haṁsadūta had promised that he would translate one book a month into German, and when in the fall of 1974 Prabhupāda heard of six recently printed German translations, he replied, “This is very happy news for me. Thank you. Overflood Europe with German books.”

Śrīla Prabhupāda said that whenever he published a book he felt that he had conquered an empire. His books were the basis of the spiritual revolution that would eventually change humanity and save it from the pernicious effects of the Age of Kali.

“Produce voluminously Spanish language literature,” Śrīla Prabhupāda requested. When Hṛdayānanda Goswami had become the zonal leader for South America, Śrīla Prabhupāda had instructed him to emphasize printing and distributing books above opening temples. “I also was printing even before I had big temples in the U.S.,” Prabhupāda had written. “So you may follow the footsteps of the previous ācāryas.”

Hṛdayānanda Goswami had organized a Spanish BBT in Mexico and had made book distribution his priority. Early in 1974, when the Spanish BBT was ready to print translations of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam’s first volume, Bhagavad-gītā, and Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Prabhupāda wrote,

When one hundred thousand copies of a Spanish Back to Godhead were printed, Śrīla Prabhupāda wrote, “Now give them to everyone.” Spanish book distribution became the second largest in the world, next to American.

Bhagavān, Śrīla Prabhupāda’s representative in southern Europe, had been printing in French and Italian, and as early as December 1972 he had printed Prabhupāda’s Easy Journey to Other Planets in French. By the beginning of 1974, three parties in France were distributing daily one thousand books, including a French Bhagavad-gītā As It Is. Already Bhagavān had printed the first Italian Back to Godhead, and a French Śrī Īśopaniṣad was forthcoming.

Wherever devotees went, they knew their program was to chant Hare Kṛṣṇa, follow the regulative principles, and arrange for printing and distributing Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books. When the first devotees had reached South Africa, they had proceeded just according to Śrīla Prabhupāda’s desire, and he had replied to them, “Your report is very encouraging to me, that you distributed 110 Gītās in two days in Capetown.”

Śrīla Prabhupāda often thought of having his books printed in Russian, and he wrote to the minister of education and culture in the U.S.S.R., suggesting they publish “a translation of the ancient classical Vedic literature, namely, Bhagavad-gītā” as already published by “the famous London publishing house of M.S.S. Macmillan Company.” He also talked with his disciples about printing Russian translations in America.

Whenever Śrīla Prabhupāda met an interested person proficient in any foreign language, he would request that person to translate his books. In 1972 he had written,

Similarly, Śrīla Prabhupāda had written to an American devotee in Indonesia,

Later, when Prabhupāda heard that the Chinese boy, Yaśomatī-suta, had finished translating three chapters of Bhagavad-gītā into Chinese, he wrote that they should immediately print those three chapters as a small book.

ISKCON Australia rose to prominence in the book distribution competition and, by 1974, was competing with Los Angeles ISKCON and the Rādhā-Dāmodara party for world leadership. By the fall of 1974 about a dozen top Australian and New Zealand distributors were selling daily more than twenty big books each. The centers in Australia, like those in America, more than doubled their book distribution between 1973 and 1974.

When book distribution had been just beginning in America in 1970, no books had been available in England. But within a year, Kṛṣṇa book distribution had begun there, and Śrīla Prabhupāda had written, “All of my disciples in London center are very intelligent, and they should unite around this single task of selling Krishna book widely throughout Britain.” By 1974 the devotees in Britain were valiantly distributing books. During one busy six-day period, they distributed six hundred volumes of Teachings of Lord Caitanya, four hundred of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, and one thousand Back to Godhead magazines.

India was special. There Śrīla Prabhupāda had introduced book distribution through the ISKCON life membership program. Wealthy Indians were more inclined to accept the books as part of an ISKCON membership package, which included such benefits as free accommodations in ISKCON temples throughout the world. But in India, as elsewhere, Śrīla Prabhupāda wanted his books distributed to colleges, to libraries, to prominent citizens, and to the masses.

By the end of 1974 Prabhupāda’s disciples were ready to print Hindi and Bengali editions of Back to Godhead. When Śrīla Prabhupāda heard that Western devotees in India were complaining of insufficient engagement, he replied, “I am pleased you are selling many Krishna Books daily. All our men should go out with books. There is sufficient engagement.” To his G.B.C. secretary in India he wrote, “Engage all of them in book distribution specifically, and take with you some sankirtan party.”

“Without books we will make no progress in India,” Śrīla Prabhupāda had written to Tejās, his temple president in Delhi. Prabhupāda had also trained his leaders in India in the strict policy of “fifty-fifty.” “Proceeds from life membership or any other collections should go fifty percent to the BBT and fifty percent for construction and other projects.” On his order the American BBT had been making donations of books to India and by 1974 had donated three hundred thousand dollars’ worth of literature. Although America was the leading pioneer in book printing and distribution, Prabhupāda foresaw worldwide printing and distribution of his books – eventually to surpass that in the U.S.

Śrīla Prabhupāda had created transcendental competition among his disciples. In 1971 he had observed with pleasure Keśava in San Francisco leading the society in Kṛṣṇa book distribution. Prabhupāda had promised that he would leave Los Angeles and stay in San Francisco if Keśava outdistributed his brother, Karandhara. And over the years he had continued to instigate such competition, fanning the fires of book distribution. He would encourage the leaders to send him reports, and then he would respond with letters, raising the book distribution fever even higher.

The whole of ISKCON waited to hear the latest quote from Prabhupāda, inspiring them to go on and on. When Śrīla Prabhupāda had given the lecture in January 1974 stressing, “Distribute books, distribute books, distribute books,” several devotees in the audience had vowed on the spot to dedicate their lives to that instruction. And when Prabhupāda had sent the handwritten note down from his room in Los Angeles – “Everyone should go with the Sankirtan Party as soon as possible” – that one line had created a spirit of sacrifice and dedication in the hearts of many disciples, who felt themselves destined to take up that order as their life and soul.

Although Rāmeśvara had been caught up by the waves of the saṅkīrtana ocean from the beginning, Śrīla Prabhupāda cast Rāmeśvara’s service when he wrote,

When devotees in London reported to Śrīla Prabhupāda their increase in book and magazine sales, he responded by inviting them to compete.

When writing to a sannyāsī disciple preaching in Scotland, where the devotees were perhaps not fully aware of the scope of book distribution in the U.S., Śrīla Prabhupāda mentioned the latest book scores from New York and commented, “New York is leading the list.”

Śrīla Prabhupāda also inspired the Society as a whole to compete with its previous years’ efforts: “Somehow the book distribution must be doubled and tripled as far as possible. Do it.” As soon as the BBT library party had been formed, Prabhupāda had told the members to get fifty thousand orders. And he had asked the Rādhā-Dāmodara party to expand to one hundred buses. The competition was particularly high between Los Angeles, the Rādhā-Dāmodara party, and Australia, and Śrīla Prabhupāda encouraged them all, like a maestro calling for a fortissimo from the orchestra.

Śrīla Prabhupāda was not giving careless, boastful instructions. The determination and sacrifice required to achieve these seemingly unattainable goals he knew well, and he wanted his devotees to work as he worked, with total dedication. He wanted them to try their utmost. His was the logic of “hunting for the rhinoceros,” he said. If a man attempting to shoot a rhinoceros failed, no one would criticize him. But if he succeeded, it would be considered wonderful. Prabhupāda wrote to Rūpānuga,

When a traveling saṅkīrtana party from one temple intensively distributed books in another city, the authorities at the local temple would often be disturbed. This problem came before Śrīla Prabhupāda, who was inevitably called in to judge and to cool down the fires of competition. Prabhupāda wrote to Keśava and Bhūtātmā, who had traveled all the way from San Francisco to London to distribute books but had disturbed the devotees there by their fervor.

Seeing the mighty efforts of the top book distributors, some devotees became envious, or at least dispirited, thinking themselves useless and unable to please Śrīla Prabhupāda. This problem also came before Śrīla Prabhupāda, who replied, “There must always be competition. That gives life. That cannot be separated from life. … The perfect society does not eliminate competition, but it eliminates envy, because everyone is weak before Kṛṣṇa.”

But competition had its limit, as Prabhupāda explained to a doubting brahmacārī in Florida.

Competition might have been a catalyst, but by steadfastly distributing Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books, the members of the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement were experiencing the essence of loving service to Kṛṣṇa in separation, which is the highest spiritual ecstasy. “Don’t try to see God,” Śrīla Prabhupāda’s spiritual master had often said, “but act in such a way that God sees you.” In other words, by submissively acting on the order of the servant of the servant of the servant of Kṛṣṇa, Prabhupāda’s disciples were sure to attract Kṛṣṇa’s loving attention.

The quickest way to catch Kṛṣṇa’s attention, Śrīla Prabhupāda said, was to direct another person to Kṛṣṇa consciousness. The book distributors, therefore, felt a special reciprocation with their spiritual master, and this impelled them to go on serving and distributing.

Sañjaya: Philosophically we saw that going out and distributing books was what our spiritual master wanted us to do. We knew that. That was clear to us.We also had a real sense of idealism – that these books and magazines would change the world. Once you come to Kṛṣṇa consciousness, you actually see how crummy the world really is, how really contaminated things are, how envious people are, and how horrible material life is. You can see that. You don’t feel that you yourself can change it, but you feel that whoever gets one of Prabhupāda’s books and looks at it will be changed in a spiritual way. There was no question about it. We also felt a big change would come in the world in the future as Kṛṣṇa consciousness spread. Prabhupāda also said that if people just touch one of these books their lives will change. Our faith was in the books and Śrīla Prabhupāda.

Keśava Bhāratī: When you pass out a book, there is a certain reciprocation from Prabhupāda. There was a dramatic difference in our internal experience when a person would take a book compared to just taking some incense or something. We would actually experience Prabhupāda’s association all day by distributing those books. We didn’t feel left out just because certain devotees were physically closer to Prabhupāda. Book distributors always got strong enlivenment. We would read about Haridāsa Ṭhākura going out and rolling on the ground and begging people to chant. That kind of thing would inspire us.

Vaiśeṣika: We had Prabhupāda’s books and different letters from him. And we also knew that if we distributed lots of books, we could get our name in the newsletter, and we could think of how Prabhupāda would read it. But I was just trying to keep up with the others. Sometimes I would go a couple of hours without giving anyone a book. Everyone else would just be passing them out like crazy. I would try, and people would all but spit in my face. They were pushing me around. It was very heavy for me. I would sometimes just walk off and start crying, it was so heavy. But I knew this book distribution was pleasing to Prabhupāda, and I just wanted to be part of it.

We used to think how Prabhupāda was spending so much time behind a dictating machine just writing these books. We would meditate on how he would sleep just a few hours a day and minimize everything else to write these books. So we were also trying to cut down our other activities and just go out and distribute books. Prabhupāda said a devotee should live in the mood of the six Gosvāmīs, so we were singing those prayers every day. We felt a real connection. Even in the beginning a devotee told me, “Where is Prabhupāda, do you know?” And then he said, “He’s in his books.” That mood was always there. We always felt that connection.

Jagaddhātrī-devī dāsī: When I was distributing Prabhupāda’s books, I understood that that was the most pleasing thing I could do for him. I was helping him to fulfill his spiritual master’s instructions, and so he was pleased. And he was even more pleased if I did it nicely. I always used to hear the story about how Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī would be happy if someone went out and distributed even one magazine, because it’s actually the mood of saṅkīrtana, of going out and trying to give mercy to the conditioned souls, that counts.

I always wanted to do welfare work. I like the feeling of doing something for people. So this is the summum bonum of helping people. You are helping them to go back to Godhead. So that was my motivation. And we automatically become purified by bringing other living entities to Kṛṣṇa.

Tripurāri: I got inspired mostly by Prabhupāda’s greatness – how he was staunchly following his Guru Mahārāja. It was his Guru Mahārāja’s order, and therefore he was doing it. I was never very scholarly or intelligent. I never thought that I had much brains or talent. I was never trained practically in any kind of skill, and I didn’t have much education. I took it like that – that I was talking to the most fallen people and that I was the most fallen myself. I was just doing what Prabhupāda wanted, because he wanted. I would pray to Prabhupāda to help me realize why he wanted book distribution. Then within I would get inspiration, and it would come out in all of my talks about book distribution.

That time that I stayed out at the airport when all the devotees went back with Prabhupāda to the temple very much affected my whole spiritual life. I was very much intimately connected with Prabhupāda. But my closest association with him was by following his instructions and just getting down to work and not trying to enjoy the spiritual master but serve him.

Vṛndāvana-vilāsinī-devī dāsī: When Prabhupāda gave that famous lecture in Los Angeles, “Distribute books, distribute books, distribute books,” right then I wanted to take it up. Whenever he wrote to Rāmeśvara, it was really to “Rāmeśvara and Company.” We all felt included. We are all eternal book distributors – a team together. And I wanted to be part of it. It was Lord Caitanya’s eternal saṅkīrtana party, and we all wanted to be part of it. It’s going on in every planet, in every universe. I know it is pleasing to Śrīla Prabhupāda.

I would relate to book distribution like the battle of Kurukṣetra. It’s a battle, but Kṛṣṇa is right there. It’s like Kurukṣetra Number Two. I’m sure all book distributors feel like that. You feel like Kṛṣṇa is right there, and He’s going to win. You just have to take shelter of Him. You may not win this battle, but you win the overall war. So I always felt connected with Prabhupāda, because he’s telling us in his books about the great devotees that we can take shelter of. It’s all by his mercy. He’s giving us these books, and he’s in these books.

Sura: We were so much addicted to selling Prabhupāda’s books that we didn’t want to do anything else. We would just go straight to the airport and start distributing and not stop, except for maybe a twenty minute lunch break and maybe some reading for twenty minutes – otherwise nonstop until 7:30 or 8:00 at night. We really felt that Śrīla Prabhupāda was protecting us.

One time out at the airport I was given a BBT newsletter. Maybe it was due to the exhaustion or maybe it was due to some false sentimentality or whatever, but I was reading Prabhupāda’s remarks about book distribution, and I became very moved. I was by myself at the airport, and I just started crying, because I thought of how devotees all over the world are so beautiful, so wonderful-hearted, distributing books and working so hard. I was just really appreciating Prabhupāda and the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement. Prabhupāda had said something in the newsletter about book distribution, and it just touched me. We were so absorbed in books, books, books, that whenever Prabhupāda would say anything about book distribution, we would go nuts. That meant it was our connection to Prabhupāda. We weren’t big guns who could sit at a meeting with Prabhupāda or get personal attention so much. Maybe during some morning walks at the Māyāpur festival we got to sneak in with the sannyāsīs, but otherwise our book distribution was our connection with Prabhupāda. When he would mention something about book distribution, it would be our life and soul.

Lavaṅga-latikā-devī dāsī: Having heard Śrīla Prabhupāda speak and knowing that he was always reading from these books, the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, and that he was preaching that you have to distribute this knowledge to others made it all very simple. That is, you just knew that this was Śrīla Prabhupāda’s desire. He was always telling us that he was giving us this knowledge and that once you have this knowledge, you have to distribute it to others. Śrīla Prabhupāda came to America to preach with his disciples. So we must do it, because it’s Prabhupāda’s desire. He spent so much time translating these books to be distributed. You just want to distribute to others, and you want people to have these books in their homes.

Vṛndāvana, India
April 20, 1975
  Śrīla Prabhupāda installed the Deities for the grand opening of the Krishna-Balaram Mandir. Almost a thousand disciples were present, and the governor of Uttar Pradesh was the guest of honor. After years of hard endeavor, the grand opening was a climactic triumph for Śrīla Prabhupāda and his movement. While still standing at the altar after having offered the first ārati to Kṛṣṇa and Balarāma, Prabhupāda addressed the crowd, explaining that this was an international temple, where people from all over the world could come to worship and take shelter of Gaura-Nitāi, Kṛṣṇa-Balarāma, and Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa.

Later that evening, Śrīla Prabhupāda sat in his room with a few G.B.C. men. The buttons on his kurtā open because of the heat, his legs and bare feet extended under the low table, he relaxed, and his men sat close around him in the dim light of the desk lamp. It was a milestone, he said, but still they had to go forward, not merely savor their success. Many things were still required to make the temple and guesthouse operative.

Śrīla Prabhupāda was thinking beyond Vṛndāvana. “This temple construction is so important,” he said, “that I’m willing to spend many lakhs to open a temple like this. And yet as important as it is, the book production is even more important.” This was a significant reaffirmation of the priority of book production; even while in the midst of this splendid temple opening, he was stressing that book production was more important.

Śrīla Prabhupāda seemed displeased, however, because for months his Caitanya-caritāmṛta had been delayed by his Sanskrit editor. He said with a scowl that although he had finished the Caitanya-caritāmṛta, it remained unpublished. He had also completed all four volumes of the Fourth Canto of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam and was beginning the Fifth, yet only one volume of the Fourth Canto had been published.

One of the devotees present, not understanding Prabhupāda’s point, remarked that since Prabhupāda was going next to Hawaii he would be able to write there in peace and quiet. Prabhupāda replied that he was not encouraged to write when his manuscripts were not being published.

The BBT Press, after several years in New York, was about to relocate to Los Angeles, where Rāmeśvara would become the new BBT Press supervisor. Rāmeśvara, unaware of the delay in publishing the Caitanya-caritāmṛta manuscript, learned of it now, in Vṛndāvana. He promised Prabhupāda that he would immediately get the Press set up in Los Angeles and begin producing Caitanya-caritāmṛta.

That Śrīla Prabhupāda had completed the entire Caitanya-caritāmṛta manuscript in eighteen months during 1973 and 1974 was a remarkable feat. In those same months he had been intensely engaged in many affairs of management while constantly traveling. He had confronted major problems with leaders who had left their posts, he had personally attended to G.B.C. duties in India, and he had dealt with other ISKCON managerial affairs. He had authorized many large BBT loans and had approved the expansion and development of ISKCON in all areas of the world, in addition to responding regularly to large volumes of mail, speaking daily to guests, and giving Bhāgavatam lectures wherever he went. His only time for writing had been on arising at one in the morning, and he had persistently worked two or three hours each day.

While Śrīla Prabhupāda traveled from Vṛndāvana to Australia, Rāmeśvara and Rādhāvallabha worked in Los Angeles to establish the new BBT offices. Prabhupāda was still meditating on his completed Caitanya-caritāmṛta manuscript waiting to be published. From Australia he wrote,

In Los Angeles Rāmeśvara had only completed the lease arrangements for the new building for the Press. The BBT artists had just arrived, and editors, proofreaders, and other production workers would soon be coming. The Press had purchased a computer typesetter, and the devotees were being trained to use it. Carpenters knocked down walls to build a photo lab and darkroom. Additional plumbing had to be installed, and the entire Press had to be set up within one month. Śrīla Prabhupāda was coming in June, and everything would have to be ready and running.

By the time Śrīla Prabhupāda reached Hawaii in May, the Press in Los Angeles was preparing for operation. Śrīla Prabhupāda’s secretary phoned Los Angeles often: “Prabhupāda is angry. He keeps talking about the unpublished books. You’d better be prepared when he arrives.”

Rāmeśvara and Rādhāvallabha had investigated the necessities and the difficulties in printing the Caitanya-caritāmṛta manuscript, which they concluded would come to seventeen volumes. One of the main problems they discovered was the lack of an expert Bengali editor.

Most of the Caitanya-caritāmṛta was in Bengali. Although the BBT editors were experienced in Sanskrit, because they were not proficient in Bengali, the work was progressing slowly. Also Śrīla Prabhupāda wanted many paintings in his books, and the art department would need many months to meet his requests.

Never before had the BBT lagged so far behind Śrīla Prabhupāda. Rāmeśvara and Rādhāvallabha, straining their brains to produce books quickly and efficiently, devised a stepped-up production schedule. By the old schedule they could publish a book every three or four months, but on the new schedule they decided they could produce a book a month. In that way, they would eventually catch up with Śrīla Prabhupāda. Rāmeśvara was eager to present Prabhupāda with this plan when he came to Los Angeles.

More phone calls came from Prabhupāda’s secretary. Prabhupāda had heard about the preparation of the Press buildings, but he had also heard that his name had not been displayed on the front of the BBT building. He was always insistent to preserve ISKCON’s disciplic succession, foreseeing that unless ISKCON stressed A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami as the founder-ācārya, in the future persons might claim their rights of ISKCON leadership or of ownership of ISKCON properties. In the rush for completing the buildings, the BBT managers had overlooked this important detail.

June 20, 1975
  On arriving in Los Angeles, Śrīla Prabhupāda received a joyous welcome. He was accompanied by leading sannyāsīs and G.B.C. secretaries, including Kīrtanānanda Swami, Viṣṇujana Swami, Brahmānanda Swami, Tamāla Kṛṣṇa Goswami, and others. Later, sitting in his room – one of his favorites in all of ISKCON – he spoke only briefly about the backlog of unprinted books. He seemed mildly disturbed but said little. He was very pleased, however, to see the temple and the Deities of Rukmiṇī-Dvārakādhīśa.

In his short arrival speech he had explained why he was so urgently pressing his disciples to produce his books. “I have no personal qualification,” he had said from the plushly upholstered vyāsāsana, “but I simply try to satisfy my guru, that’s all. My Guru Mahārāja asked me that, ‘If you get some money, you print books.’ So there was a private meeting, talking. Some of my important Godbrothers also were there – it was in Rādhā-kuṇḍa. So Guru Mahārāja was speaking to me that, ‘Since we have got this Baghbazar marble temple, there has been so much dissension. And everyone thinking who will occupy this room or that room. I wish therefore to sell this temple and the marble and print some books.’ Yes, so I took up this from his mouth, that he is very fond of books. And he told me personally, ‘If you get some money, print books.’ Therefore I am stressing on this point – Where is book? Where is book? So kindly help me. That is my request. Print as many books as possible in as many languages as possible, and distribute throughout the whole world. Then the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement will automatically increase.”

“Yes, Prabhupāda,” Rāmeśvara responded, attentive and concerned. The other devotees also nodded, commiserating. Something must be done.

“Yes,” Prabhupāda continued, “they must be published immediately.”

“Yes, Prabhupāda,” Rāmeśvara replied obediently.

“So I think they can be printed in two months,” Śrīla Prabhupāda said conclusively.

Rāmeśvara wasn’t sure he had heard correctly. The Press had only just opened. The artists didn’t even have the lights in their room. Two months was illogical, impossible. Now was the moment to tell Śrīla Prabhupāda the plan for increased production. Rāmeśvara stepped closer.

“Śrīla Prabhupāda,” he began, “we’ve been meeting about this, and now that the Press is finally here and established, I think we can increase production four times. We think that now we can go from producing one book every four months to producing one of your books every month.” Now both Rāmeśvara and Rādhāvallabha were walking together beside Śrīla Prabhupāda, with Tamāla Kṛṣṇa Goswami and Brahmānanda Swami walking on his other side.

“One book every month,” Śrīla Prabhupāda said, as if thinking out loud and considering it. “That means over one year. It is not fast enough.” The other devotees looked over at Rāmeśvara and Rādhāvallabha, who glanced at each other.

“You have to do all the books in two months’ time,” Śrīla Prabhupāda said again. They had clearly heard it this time, and the two managers were stunned in disbelief.

“Śrīla Prabhupāda,” Rāmeśvara said, “I think that’s impossible. Maybe we can go faster…“

Śrīla Prabhupāda suddenly stopped walking. Planting his cane firmly in the sand, he turned to Rāmeśvara and said, without anger but very gravely, “Impossible is a word found in the fool’s dictionary.”

Suddenly Rāmeśvara realized his spiritual life was on the line. To say “impossible” now would mean he had no faith in Kṛṣṇa’s representative, no faith in the power of God. He must throw away his material estimations and rational common sense.

While Rāmeśvara and Rādhāvallabha stood speechless, Śrīla Prabhupāda resumed walking, accompanied by the others. The two devotees hurried to catch up, but now everyone looked at them as if to say, “Come on. Stop doubting. You have to do it.” Rāmeśvara asked Śrīla Prabhupāda if he could discuss this with the other devotees at the Press and then report back. “Oh, yes,” Prabhupāda replied, “whatever is required.” Rāmeśvara and Rādhāvallabha dropped back, while Śrīla Prabhupāda and the others continued down the beach.

Śrīla Prabhupāda returned to the temple and toured the new Press facilities – a graphic arts building and an editorial building. While walking outside on a second-floor veranda, he noticed below a two-foot strip of bare earth running between the two buildings. He seemed annoyed and said that they should plant grass there.

In the layout room a transparency of baby Kṛṣṇa carrying Nanda Mahārāja’s shoes was on the light table, and Śrīla Prabhupāda began laughing when he saw it. He approved of the new typesetting equipment, which worked faster than the previous equipment, and when the devotees demonstrated it for him, he remarked that in India he had dreamed of having such a Press.

In Rādhāvallabha’s office Prabhupāda sat in the production manager’s chair and looked up at the large bulletin board that displayed all the steps in the production of a book. He laughed and said, “For someone like me, this makes it even more complicated.”

Śrīla Prabhupāda walked into every room in the two buildings and saw all the equipment. This modern technology was fine, he concluded, as long as they could use it to meet the deadline of seventeen books in two months; otherwise, their equipment was like the technology of the material scientists who tried to go to the moon – useless.

All through the morning program in the temple, Rāmeśvara and Rādhāvallabha tried to concentrate on chanting their japa and on Prabhupāda’s class, but all they could think of was arranging for the production of seventeen volumes in two months. And by the time they met with the Press workers, they had become convinced it could be done. It was as if some mystical power was going to descend. Somehow or other it could be done. So they presented the plan and convinced the other workers.

“It can be done,” Rāmeśvara said later, talking with Śrīla Prabhupāda. “Hmmm,” Śrīla Prabhupāda replied.

But there were some conditions, Rāmeśvara said. For the Bengali editing to go smoothly, the editors would have to be able to regularly consult Śrīla Prabhupāda. Immediately Prabhupāda agreed, adding that he was prepared to stay in Los Angeles as long as necessary to insure that they met the two-month deadline. Another condition Rāmeśvara raised was that the artists would be working as quickly as humanly possible, but the paintings might not be of the best quality. “A blind uncle is better than no uncle,” Śrīla Prabhupāda said. When Rāmeśvara mentioned that the artists would have many technical questions, Prabhupāda agreed to make time to answer them. He also agreed that photographs of Indian holy places connected with caitanya-līlā could be used to supplement the paintings.

After their meeting with Śrīla Prabhupāda, Rāmeśvara and Rādhāvallabha felt that they had a chance. They left Śrīla Prabhupāda’s room, running down the stairs. The marathon was on.