19830916-Arrival-Address-Atlanta-Literal-Version

The following is an arrival address given by His Holiness Jayapataka Swami on September 16, 1983 in Atlanta, Georgia.

Jayapataka Swami: I wanted to uh… One year ago we had a plan that I would come here for Radhastami, so I am sorry that I am just a couple of days late. Without asking me, my regional secretary from Malaysia changed the uh, days of a major function there… put me back a few days… put me back a week. How is everybody here?

Devotees: Jaya!

Jayapataka Swami: The… After I left New Panihati, we… from Miami, I had to race back to Calcutta for the Ratha Yatra festival. And although I had no reservation at any point and there was 178 people on the waiting list from London to Calcutta, somehow the computer appeared with my name on it! How it came only Jagannatha knows. (Devotees laughing) But I was able to get on that flight and I reached the 11th night, the 12th was the Ratha-yatra.

So I brought uh, some slides of the Calcutta Ratha-yatra festival, it was a wonderful festival. So this year it coincided with the Mohemmaden Eid festival, so all the offices were closed. So that means there were no… normally Calcutta has a population of 7 million, but during the day it increases to about 12 because there are 5 million commuters that go in and out every day in trains and buses that have the capacity of about half that. In fact there’s so many people just come in and out; most of them walk about 3 miles from downtown to the train stations, there’s not adequate…. So we normally would get that big crowd. So we were afraid that because all the offices are closed we would get less people but by Jagannath’s mercy there was full capacity. Over half a million people.

The difference was that every one that was there just to see that, Prabhupada’s festival the Ratha Yatra. So they were specially dressed in their best clothing and they came with a very devotional mood. So there was the nicest Ratha-yatra in terms of the mood of all the people, very orderly, very enthusiastic uh, devoted uh, people all came. Not that, we don’t mind the office crowd, we got them on the return route. Our festival is 9 days, first going, then 7 days we build a big temple and have a big top tent and whole fair grounds we make. Anyway you will see that in the slide show. And we come back on the ninth day. On the 9th day we got all the office crowd also.

So normally on the way back we don’t get half a million people but because all the office crowd had missed, so also on the way back it was equally huge crowds, if not even a little bigger. So that uh, is right here, so I was very fortunate that I could be present and next year we are trying to expand it to make it even bigger. Prabhupada had requested us to make Calcutta the biggest Ratha-yatra in the world. And by his mercy now, we had the 12th year Ratha Yatra there, since 1971. Now gradually that is actually taking shape.

Then I had to go Malaysia, it is a new part of my zone and uh, in a nutshell, the preaching there… a very big potential. It is the second largest, not largest, it is a small country, but second richest country in Asia, so there is no economic problem per se, but there is also a different kind of wealth. About 20% of the people there are Indians, from South India mainly, and uh, they are very receptive to Krsna consciousness. And many… and the Chinese are very receptive. It is a little touchy because the other 50% of the people are uh, Muslims who have a very strict law that you cannot preach to any of the Muslims.

In fact if any Muslim converts to uh, any other religion there they uh, are exiled from the country. But apart from them you can preach to anyone else. So we have to be very discreet, have to preach in indoor type preaching, or in uh, specific areas of the town where those, won’t be offended. There I gave sannyas to Brajendra Kumar, Bhakti Brajendra Nandana Swami on the order of the GBC, and he is preaching there along with Prabhavisnu Maharaja and many other devotees. And it looks… we have a new temple, looks very nice for preaching in the future. I have some disciples there already.

It is a place that Srila Prabhupada visited in 1971 on the invitation of one family there. That family is quite unusual because everyone in that family has a personal experience with Srila Prabhupada. I met three of the sisters. They’re… all three are barristers at law from England. The one who and her husband who brought Srila Prabhupada to… They had the only Krsna temple in Kuala Lumpur. They brought Srila Prabhupada there in 1971 and Prabhupada immediately said make a temple here, make a ISKCON center. But at that time his uh, desire could not be maintained more than a few months, the devotees didn’t stay on.

In fact ISKCON only has reestablished its center recently within four-five years. The other sister is the wife of the police chief for the whole state, the Inspector General of Police. And she met Prabhupada at the Kumbha Mela. And another sister was… when she was going to law school in England, met Prabhupada in Amsterdam and England three times. And even their grandchildren, all have autographed Krsna books and Bhagavad-gitas from Srila Prabhupada. So somehow this whole family has got some, in different places they have all had some kind of a relation with Srila Prabhupada and he has encouraged them. And they are actually helping us a lot in expanding the preaching there, in Malaysia. So I hope I won’t have to spend so much time there. I… I had to spend quite a bit of time as a result of which my normal tour of India had to be compacted. I had to visit uh, the 18 temples that I have in India in a period of 24 days. So it was… you can… doesn’t have to say any more than that. It is what was quite a busy tour.

So I went to Nepal and there in the Tribhuvan University, the government university in Kathmandu, we had big program which was published in all the papers. There also, the curator of the New York museum happened to be a Nepali when Prabhupada had the temple in Brooklyn and he used to go and take Prasadam at the temple and he witnessed Prabhupada perform a wedding ceremony. And now he has gone back and he is the head of the department of Zoology there. So he came forward and he is helping our movement there.

So apparently they… mo… the program had such a strong effect of the students, the faculty and the media that uh, the next day, I had to cut my stay short and leave for other places. But an hour after I left, the queen of the country, one of the only Hindu ruling queen in the world sent her car to pick me up to ask if I would come and have audience. She wanted to discuss some things about Krsna consciousness, just after I left. So, anyway next time I go there they said she definitely wants to meet. She recently went uh, to our temple in London. Her son uh, had to go for an operation, the Crown Prince and they uh, feel that Krsna has blessed their son, or something, he uh, recovered very quickly.

Prabhupada wanted, he said to make Nepal a stronghold of Krsna consciousness. It is the only Hindu kingdom in the world. They have a complete ban on all types of cow slaughter, bull or cow. And they don’t allow any conversion… forceful conversion to any other faith. Of course there are some voluntary ones to take any faith that is another thing. But many ways they have a very…, and the whole country chants Hare Krsna from centuries. So just requires a little bit of divine dispensation it could be actually made into a stronghold of Krsna consciousness.

Then from Nepal I went to uh, I went to uh Gaohati. Gaohati is in the troubles torn state in India called Assam, I think everyone probably read in the newspaper. There were riots there, over hundreds and thousands of people were killed in the last few years. In the midst of that Bhavabhuti Das Adhikari and uh, his assistants, they have been working very hard in the midst of all these riots and built a beautiful temple, bigger or about the same size as our Vrindavan Krsna-Balarama temple. And I moved the Deities Rukmini Krsna, Vaidharbhi Krsna because Rukmini is said to come from that valley of Gauhati. In the Vedas it is described as Pragjyotispur and Krsna personally visited Pragjyotishpur and that is where he took the 16108 uh, queens ; I believe were taken from there or nearby there, the 16000 he rescued from that area. Banasura… or Narakasura, Narakasura comes from that area. Narakasura, was it Bhaumasura or Narakasura, one of those asuras (laughing) had his, maybe that Bhaumasura is slightly north of there, but one of those asuras had his capital there and Krsna defeated him and then went on to the other.

Anyway Krsna’s lotus feet, when He raced to get to that valley. There is a big rock on one side of the Brahmaputra river. And there it is called Aslaklesa… Asvaklesa. ‘Ashva’ means horse and ‘klesh’ means tired. So the hooves of the horse were so hot from running that when they stood on the rock they left hoof prints all over the rock and those hoof prints are still there. And there is also a footprint of Lord Krsna’s lotus feet so people go there and do puja on that rock, do worship.

So it is a uh, very spiritually uh, historically valley, blessed. And on all sides there are hills, the biggest hill being the Kamyakya hill, the ancient temple of Kamakya Devi who’s is mentioned in the Mahabharata, whose devotee married uh, was it Bhaumasura or Narakasura? I am quite sure that it was Narakasura, that one. Narakasura had…The demons you see, their mood is quite different.

Although they are devoted to demigods, he worshipped Kamakya Devi according to the puranic evidences that are revealed by the devotees there, he worshipped Kamakya Devi and finally she said, “Alright what do you want? You can have your wish.” And then he said, “I want to uh, have sex with you. She says, you know, “I am married to Lord Siva and all.” And he said “This is my desire.” The demon you know their idea is completely different. And she said, “Alright since this is your desire, but then uh, how do I know you are worthy? So you have to build up to the temple… you have to in one night, from the sunset to the sunrise, if you can build a stone path so wide…” and gave a measurement about 10 feet wide, “…and if you finish before daybreak, then you can have what you want.”

So then this demon, the whole night, as soon as sun set he was lifting these big boulders and building. And it’s a huge mountain, I mean it is maybe 2000 feet high, I mean a big hill. And even today you can still see the… I don’t remember if it was Bhauma or Narakasura, I thought it was Narakasura… the huge… there is this big path going straight up the side of the hill. Of course just before day break he had one big rock to lift and his strength failed, because of course she’s the mother of all the living entities in the universe and he couldn’t get it there in time, the cock crowed and “Thank you for the nice road.” (devotees laugh).

So now all the devotees can come up there, and now they built the motorable road, but anyway, we can talk so many things about Kamakya Devi. She told her devotees to worship Krsna, she has a special dispensation. So on… that’s on the far western side of the valley, and there’s mountains… there are hills all around. And on one side come the Brahmaputra river where Krsna’s louts feet are there. And our temple is on a small hill right in the middle of this Brahmaputra valley, and on the top of that is our temple. So it is an incredible situation.

You can see the Kamakya temple, you can see Krsna’s uh, rock, you can see the whole city on all sides, about have a million people, small city. And the beautiful Brahmaputra, the largest river in the world I believe, or one of the largest, the only male river in the Vedas. It is not a nadi. It’s not a fe… Rivers are normally female, like Jamuna, Ganga. But uh, Brahmaputra, putra means son, son of Brahma, it is a male river, one of the few male rivers, if not the only one in the world.

So then uh, we finished moving our Deity from the old temple to… the temporary place, to the new temple. Then that very night…. that e… afternoon I took a flight to Mayapur, to Calcutta, then drove out to Mayapur and for Janmastami, that was on Janmastami, two ministers from the communist coalition government of West Bengal, they came out and were guest speakers at the Janmastami festival. The whole guest house was completely packed and uh, people from all over the villages came. And, I got there just as one of the ministers was speaking at six or seven at night, and of course… one of the ministers was saying that how Srila Prabhupada had actually uh, shown the way and that no political system in the world, including communism… even though he was in that government, he was including communism, can ever succeed without God consciousness.

And with God consciousness, Prabhupada has shown that the whole world can actually be united. Very fiery speech, was very… shocked everyone. They couldn’t expect that this person would say something like this. I don’t know. Apparently he has made his own little party which is part of the coalition, but uh, then the other minister who is the Public Works Department Minister, he also spoke very highly of Krsna and Krsna consciousness, and thanked everyone, the temple, said he was completely overwhelmed by the Mayapur Candrodaya Mandir, and unofficially he’s… said he would try his best as the Public Works Department Minister, which was in charge of all roads, building of bridges, building of any government structures, to try to improve the infrastructure of roads and other things out to Mayapur, including bridges across the rivers to Mayapur etc. And as a sign of his you know, sincerity, already, in the short time he has put every ten miles signboards, on the way to Mayapur. When it says so many miles to Darjeeling or to Bombay or whatever, it says so many… underneath that or over it depending on the sign, it says Mayapur, so many miles, 10, 20, 30, 40 whatever. And he is giving us permission to put three big hoardings on the way to Mayapur.

Then of course we had the Vyasa puja of Srila Prabhupada the next day, they offered one thousand preparations…

Devotee: Jaya!

Jayapataka Swami: …of Prasadam.

And I heard here there was very nice Janmastami. In Madras I wasn’t there, they had a very nice Janmastami I heard. They had Vaijayanti Mala who was a guest speaker there and they had about 5000 people there. 3000 in Bangalore, they went to the big hall and everyone came. Heard in New Orleans they had nice festival, they had nice festival in Malaysia and Kathmandu they had complete, packed. Everywhere, very nice Janmastami festivals. Calcutta there were so many people, the people were lined down the street, took 20 minutes to get up to see the Deities.

So at Mayapur when we did the abhisek, the television that had come up from Calcutta, the All-India television, they just have one government television authority, and they uh, televised the Janmastami festival, including fire yajna, bathing of the Deities, worshipping of Prabhupada and everything, nationwide next day at 7:45 in the evening. So even in Madras some life members said they saw the video of me doing the abhisek of Radha-Madhava, they saw Radha-Madhava. So Prabhupada was very kind.

So then I went on a South Indian tour. Our Hyderabad farm now is uh, 600 acre farm that Prabhupada had uh, wanted to show practically Krsna consciousness in India, how to do uh, simple living high thinking in the… in the real practical sense. So that place was like a desert. It was all thorn bushes, barren land, and Prabhupada said if you just do chanting here you will get enough rain. So what… I had been there before. I had been there many times, but during my Vyasa puja celebration I told everyone you just do kirtan and Prabhupada will certainly have his mercy on us, and when I said that, we were discussing, suddenly over the land a big black cloud came.

You could see all sides it was blue sky, that time it was in April. It was the middle of the drought season. But a big black rain cloud started pouring rain on the land. So we were all dancing in the rain. It was, you see… that was like a very nice sign. But then I came back. Now it is the rainy season. Normally you get little rain there, enough, you can grow some corn, cactus or something, I mean… (Devotees laugh). …but uh, maybe a few small plots of rice you can grow, but this year was a flood of rain.

They had done for one and a half months before uh, I was there, the… before the raining, they’d done non-stop sankirtana in the villages every night. And there was so much rain they said there had never been in the history that much rain in that area. This flooded…. Now we are thinking to build dams. There’s so much. There was a little pond in the back that has become a huge lake over miles and miles. In fact, uh, it’s just everywhere there is green now. It is incredible. I… we… it’s uh, rain-showers of mercy. So we were trying to spend so much money for irrigation. It seems we should just spent more for sankirtan! Krsna will do the rest… Prabhupada.

This is the basic principle, guru-parampara, that we try to… we worship the guru of course only as uh… he’s the representative of the previous acaryas, of Krsna. Not that guru is God. But he is respected as a representative of God, as a… and by following the disciplic succession, the previous acarya’s instructions, then we’re… know, we have the faith and understanding that this is the desire of Krsna, and factually we we’re seeing immediately, just by following the blueprints as Srila Prabhupada has given us, in every respect, that things are just coming true, that things are developing very nicely, so…

There the problem, they had grown all these dry crops and… like corn and all that, there was too much rain, they got water logged. So they had to plough the land up again, they grew all rice, which is good for making kichidi. So that program is going on nicely. There they’re are giving about 250kilos of milk every day and uh, delivering it to the city there. People that are… we also give the Deities and the devotees as much as they need, and then they deliver the rest to the city, and they have regular people who get the milk from our farm on a you know, contract basis.

Individual people, you know, families they sign up because they know that our milk is pure and it’s reliable. In India milk usually has a little water in it. They never lie. If you ask the milkman did you put water in it? He says, “No, I never put any.” You say, “But there is water in the milk. You must have put water.” He says “No, I will swear on the Bhagavad-gita I did not put any water in the milk.” Maybe his brother did or his wife (Devotees laugh). Maybe he put the… the… the water in first, put the milk in the water (devotees laugh). They don’t lie, but somehow there is water there. You know it. So up to now we have been able to keep the water out of our milk so people like it very much.

Then, from there I went to Bangalore, and uh, just made a one… one-day visit there. And one whole family… one son had taken initiation from me was going to the MIT of India, so then he came back and his whole family was wan… was chanting sixteen rounds so then they all requested initiation, which I gave them later, about… later on in the visit.

Then from there I went to Madras, we have a new temple president there, and the temple was uh, before having a little financial difficulty, but he picked it right up and uh, the devote… there was about 10 or 12 devotees before, there’s now 28 devotees there. There was zero devotees in Hyderabad farm. They have about 40. So things are looking up very nicely, there.

A lot of devotees are grihasta devotees in Madras who are doing their businesses and very active in the temple. And there was like a miracle that happened in Madras. There, Krsna came on His own to Madras. We had been worshipping Jagannatha there… little Jagannatha that I had on the traveling bullock cart party, at one point, and uh, there was a very ancient temple of Krsna in one of the districts in uh, South India, and this temple, the pujari, the old father had passed away. The son was a materialist, so he didn't see the value of worshiping the Deity, everything. So he took the Deity and he was trying to sell it off somewhere. They were 400 year old worshiped Deities. Krsna, Rukmini and Satyabhama… they say, I mean, I haven’t, as far as, you know that’s uh there. I mean it’s Krsna with the flute and either it’s Satyabham… Rukmini, I believe.

So they happened to go to the person right behind their house, who’s chanting eight rounds and is a life member giving us some land, and they said “You… You please buy these Deities.” He said… “How can you sell these worshipable Deities? You can’t sell Krsna like that.”

So he said “But, I need money, this, that. Just, you know I am a materialistic person.”

“Alright listen, you take some… you take uh… you take this uh, dona… as a donation, whatever and you give the Deities here.” So he had those Deities, and the devotees saw the Deities and then by Krsna’s arrangement, he gave those Deities to the devotees, and on Janmastami Their worship was restarted again.

Devotees: Jaya.

Jayapataka Swami: They are made of a special mix of five metals, of gold, silver, brass. Beautiful deities, about this big, and uh, just uh, exquisite uh, Deities. They don’t… they don’t make… of course Krsna is not made. They were worshiped for so long. The Deities have Krsna’s special presence. It is very hard to find that type of Deity anyway. But this is Krsna… this is just on His own, we wouldn't have installed Krsna, because we just… we were renting a… a big house there but uh, we didn’t own a house, so we wouldn’t install, but Krsna is already installed and He walked in the door, then what can you do? (devotees laugh) You have to worship Him.

So then from Madras I flew down to Kerala, to Trivandrum. Just one day, one day stops, just you know as I said was a very quick tour. And I didn’t know it, but this happened to be the national biggest holiday, what’s omparible to Christmas here, the Christmas here is the Onam festival. All the Keralites consider themselves to be the descendants or the praja of or the citizens of Bali Maharaja, and this was the time…

After Bali was sent to Sutala loka he had a boon or some permission to visit his old citizens once in a year. So he would come at that time, and then, all the citizens would wear fresh cloth and give the children good cloth. There would be gifts for everyone and they would be greeting… greeting, you know the king is coming and they would be greeting Bali Maharaja. So it was the Onam day, they light lights in front of the house and so many different festivities.

So I happened to be arriving that day at 11 in the morning. I didn’t even know, unless you are there you wouldn’t. And the Mayor and the deputy Mayor of the town along with the aldermen, they were all waiting at the airport with a big red umbrella and the band, the shehnai band and then they received me, garlanded me, put me in the VIP lounge, the newspapers all took photographs and everything.

Devotee: Jaya!

This was unexpected. And they were very happy I was coming on that festival day. We did initiation ceremony the next day, many that was also televised… uh, televised and also put in the newspapers. Then from there I flew from Kerala, which is near the far southern tip of India, back to Calcutta and next morning to Bangladesh, which is north east. In Bangladesh all the Hindus, leaders were waiting for me and uh, they wanted a special discussion. They said they’ve traced out the history of their country, which got about 15 million Hindus, out of the 85 million people. The rest are converted Muslims, they are converted by Aurangazeb and other rulers uh, in ancient India. Even within the last hundred years many are converted by force. Convert or die, type of… by the sword they were converting people on those days, most of them.

So now, in that country the Hindus are the second… the big minority of the country. But they have lost a lot of their morale. When I came there they said that because ISKCON had been present in Bangladesh, that they got a great inspiration and actually that, because of the presence of Prabhupada’s movement there even though we are not so many there it had uh, rejuvenated the whole Krsna consciousness.

They had been told that when after Mohammed Ali was made the, you might have heard that the son of Mohammed Ali was made the Consulate General of Bangladesh. That was like a stunt. They brought him there and said everyone in America has become Mohammedan. And they told the Hindus, you should also, because the whole America and England they are all Mohammedan, the whole world has become Mohammedan, so what is the use, yours is a dying religion or something, so you should become Mohammedan. Of course we are not concerned with Hindu, Mohammedan or something, the sectarian viewpoint, but these are the type of things that go on in these countries. So they had actually become very demoralized that maybe it is true that actually the whole world is uh, become Mohammedan and our belief in Krsna in Hindu culture, Vedic culture is uh, in fact misplaced.

Some of the people there are very isolated there they are very much economically depressed and prejudiced. So when we came there and showed our Hare Krsna people film and World of Hare Krsna and so on, how everyone all over the world, people are taking up Krsna consciousness, it is accepted by scientific people- Vedic culture, reincarnation, it is not a matter of uh, any kind of… some blind belief and it is very scientific, systematic understanding and people are accepting all over the world. When they saw that these leaders said “This actually was like… gave us a new life.” And as a result now practically speaking, there is a tremendous revival of Krsna consciousness.

I mean 15 million people got a complete rejuvenation just by these movies and the preaching there. So they said they wanted to arrange a program after the Mayapur festival. So if they could get devotees, say hundred to come to Bangladesh or even 50 or 20 or whatever for a big festival, they said they could get about uh, 500,000 people to attend it and maybe get the president of the country to inaugurate it as a... Because the position of the Hindus there has increased a lot in the past few years. So they claim that they see the whole thing as being the preaching of Krsna consciousness.

Then I went to the Pundarika temple, the ancient temple where the birth place of the guru of Gadhadhar, the Panca Tattva is situated and we have constructed a temple for uh, Radha-Krsna there, Varshabhanavi Murari Deities. And there, there is a complete flood. Everywhere, all around our temple is all water. Just our temple alone is above the water and some few village houses.

So we had to go three miles by boat and the boat had holes in it. So while we were going, it just kept filling up with water and just we were simultaneously taking the water out. Sometimes it became a little bit an… precarious. So we were telling them to pail out little faster (devotees laugh). Somehow we made it and the hundreds of villagers came. In spite of all the floods we had a nice program on the veranda of our temple. It was completely packed. There was little initiation ceremony there. The deities worship, everything is going alright. It happens sometimes like this there is a flood. Prabhupada mentions in the Caitanya Caritamrita that sometimes Mayapur also floods and he said that the significance is that when the holy dham floods that means from that place the flood of love for Krsna should be uh, expanded everywhere. So we took it that from Bangladesh, from that Pundarik dham, this is a sign that Krsna wants a flood of Krsna consciousness to come from there, so we had some nice… Inspite of the poor… the bad situation with the rain water, we had some very nice program.

So like this we had our tour. In Bangkok, many people were chanting Japa, Chinese, and uh, Thai and Siamese people. They have fixed up the temple very nicely. They got about 50 people on uh,Sundays to come for the feast. To preach to Buddhists is completely different. In uh, every place they have a completely different mentality. The Buddhists have a completely, don’t have any concept for God, as do the… Their idea is you become nothing.

Buddhism. So, to preach to them, you have to uh, adopt a whole different technique, at least in the initial stages to bring them up to at least to understand, but they seem to be uh, some college students were coming there and they actually were convinced that there was a God by the preaching and that uh, one boy was chanting 16 rounds, so, it’s a difficult… a very orthodox, but they respect Krishna consciousness and they all know that the whole of India at one point for some few centuries, be… had become Buddhist, but they all became again followers of Vedic culture, so in the back of the mind, it’s always there, that “Why did they all become… give up Buddhism?”, you see.

So, that’s good for… some people are therefore envious of us, that “You’ve… Why have you driven off Buddhism from your country, India?”, but then some people, more intellectual, they think, “Well there must be… Why did all the people again accepted Vedic culture?” They want to understand, and when they understand, they also accept. So, this was the basic uh, there are a lot more that things that happened but, these are the basic things that happened in the period when I was uh, overseas in India.

Mayapura, the samdadhi temple is uh, slowly progressing. Bhavananda Maharaja send off to buy another small elephant, making the second elephant in Mayapura, and uh, Sundara Kali, she has our first elephant which we’ve been feeding her very nicely, apparently. She grew one foot. She’s 9 feet now.

Devotee: Jaya.

Jayapataka Swami: At the shoulder they measured her. And she’s become very big. I mean, elephants are big anyway, but she’s become really big, (devotees laughing) and they say she’s still growing. She may get up to be 10 feet, which for a female elephant is quite big… an Indian elephant. Very good disposition. When em… when the ministers came, she was greeting them.

Devotee: Jaya.

Jayapataka Swami: She salutes. So, this is uh… of course uh, in ancient uh… even now, in South India there are… some temples have 50 elephants, and these elephants are used in processions, to take the Deity. Prabhupada said when we were in Kumbha-mela, at that time this Man… Sankaracarya Mayavadi impersonalist guru, he came into the fair, wearing a loincloth with a big golden helmet, and a big golden sepul… sepulture… seputure… scepter I think, riding an elephant and in front of him there were all naked naga sadhus dancing. So, Prabhupada heard about this… was a big thing. All the people would go to see this. Prabhupada said, “These are the Mayavadis. Mayavadi means that they think they’re God.” Prabhupada says, “We take the Deity on the elephant. Not that… We don’t do these type of things.” So… and they had elephants which are trained to fan the Deities, and to bow down. In fact, there’s some elephants that uh, have uhm, whole pastimes with the Deities where they fan the whole life and then when… the day that they’re going to die, the one elephant is there and the… wouldn’t eat, just stood by the temple, and then when the door opened, he paid his obeisances and died like that.

Devotees: Jaya!

Jayapataka Swami: So, it’s not… elephants, they have intelligence also, though it might be limited. But some of these elephants, you don’t know who they are, what devotee they were in their past life. There are many… not that everyone is like that… That was a very renowned elephant in the temp... I believe it was in the temple of… in Kerala, that famous temple...

Devotee: Guruvayor

Jayapataka Swami: Guruvayor temple. So our elephant’s a little bit too old to teach to fan. She does obeisances and can do other salutes, and carry the Diety, so they want to get a baby one that can be taught how to fan the Deity in procession with the trunk, with the camara they fan. So, Mayapura is, we have about 45 bhaktas right now. 45 new devotees. Mostly college graduates, very nice. Whole crew of them, big white squad. In India, they all wear white before…

In Calcutta they have about 5 bhaktins, 5 or 7. And in Bangladesh, a lot of bhaktins also. Everywhere, a lot of devotees are coming. Preaching seems to be going on very nicely. Now, we’re trying to organize… in Bhubaneshwar the temple is nearing completion. We’re printing a lot of books. The sankirtana party’s been very active. But, of course um, we have a lot of plans and so this is just preparatory for the actual bigger things that we actually want to achieve for Srila Prabhupada.

Anyway, I’m reporting here to Prabhupada, Nitai Gauracanda and all of you.

[end of recording]

Transcribed by Adithya Venugopal