By Krishna-Kripa das
Last spring Vishnu Priya Devi Dasi of Jacksonville gave me a copy of Visakha Dasi’s Five Years and Eleven Months and a Lifetime of Unexpected Love. Between the harinamas I do, the temple programs I attend, the journal I write, the Prabhupada books I read, and the books I proofread, I do not have time to read other books, and so I never read it. My mother likes to read and has read Radhanath Swami’s books, The Journey Home and The Journey Within, and I thought she might like to read the book of a Hare Krishna lady. Thus I decided to give Visakha’s book to her as a Christmas present. I talked to a couple devotees who spoke highly of the book but with a doubt that Visakha’s honest description of some of the insensitivity toward women by men in the movement might not be so good for one learning about Krishna consciousness to read. I planned to read it anyway, the week before Christmas, so I could see for myself. Because I spontaneously decided to do two extra hours of harinama each day that week, I had no time to read the book. I was running out of time. In the twenty-four hours before Christmas Eve, I spent five hours in reading two-thirds of the book, and I found it very absorbing. Fortunately after I gave it to my mother, I found a copy at the Yuga Dharma Ashram so I could finish reading. In the front of that copy Visakha had written to the harinama devotees, “Thank you over and over to your dedication to the glorious holy names of Krishna! All success to you in pure chanting of the holy names.”
Unlike Radhanath Swami, Visakha was not on a search to find God, although she had no faith that the materialistic lifestyle of those surrounding her in her youth would satisfy her. Assisting her boyfriend, and would-be-husband, in doing photographic stories on Hare Krishnas in Brooklyn and in India, she got the association of Srila Prabhupada and his followers. Though she was very skeptical, the transcendental association of Srila Prabhupada and the more saintly among his followers attracted her soul and gradually dissolved her doubts.
I found the book more emotionally stirring than any I have read recently. Part of that may be from reading so much of it in such a short time. Mostly I think it was because she addressed a lot of themes that come up in the life of a Westerner who has decided to embrace the path of Krishna consciousness. I appreciated her distain for the value Americans place on pointless conformity in dress and behavior and her observation that those who were materially successful around her had degraded habits and lacked the satisfaction with life they were aspiring for. In becoming a devotee she had to contend with devotees who had some attachment for Srila Prabhupada but at the same time still had arrogant and disrespectful attitudes not appropriate for a devotee and who made her life and the lives of others difficult.
Returning to the US after a couple of years with Srila Prabhupada and the devotees in India, she wrote, “After two and a half years in India, Yadubara and I had returned to our homeland with two suitcases that contained all our possessions. We had no employment or prospects for employment, no income, no home, no car or no other assets, and no medical or life insurance. Yet none of that bothered me. I felt not only secure but verifiable rich from all we had: Prabhupada, Krishna, a family of devotees, a path to follow, a cause to live for, a goal to attain.”
About meeting relatives and acquaintances on her return, she wrote “If I hadn’t met Srila Prabhupada and spent time in magical Vrindavan, I’d have been thinking the same thing that he [a former employer] and my parents were. I’d experienced far more than I could convey to them or to anyone. That I couldn’t begin to convey it saddened me.”
That is a very important point. In practicing Krishna consciousness we encounter so much transcendental knowledge and have so many joyful transcendental experiences it is difficult to communicate them to others. Acquaintances who are also on some kind of spiritual path may be able to relate to it, but it is mystifying for others. For others to completely understand, they would have to read the literature and engage in the practice and gain their own experience, but few are enthusiastic enough to understand our situation that they are willing to do that.
Visakha Dasi beautifully captured Srila Prabhupada’s nonsection spirit in this excerpt from her book:
“Reporter: Do you feel that in getting truths from various places like the Bible, the Koran, and so forth – don’t you run into conflicts at all, or contradictions in those particular philosophies.
Prabhupada: No, I don’t find any conflict, because the ultimate goal is God. You have understand God and try to love him. So you can go through any religious process. If the goal is attained, that you understand what is God and you try to love him, then your life is perfect.
“I loved the broad inclusiveness of Krishna consciousness, the equitableness of it. Prabhupada wasn’t saying that any group or religion was better or worse than any other. He was saying that I was meant to understand who I am – a spiritual being – and to progress toward where I was meant to go – back to God. I realized that as soon as I felt myself superior or inferior to any other person or group, I’d misunderstood what Prabhupada was teaching. Prabhupada’s words, based on Krishna’s, snapped me out of my habitual retreat into parochial thinking. I felt opened up, expanded, released from some suffocating and sticking box that I didn’t fit in and was never supposed to be in anyway. What Prabhupada was saying was true and beautiful and something I needed to make my own.”
By reading some statements from Srila Prabhupada’s books, some people conclude he minimized women, but that was not Visakha’s experience:
“From the moment I’d met him, all I’d experienced – and was still experiencing – was his encouragement. He aroused in me a spirit of voluntary, enthusiastic service. He generated an atmosphere of fresh challenge and I enthusiastically agreed to rise and meet it. He drew out my spontaneous loving spirit of sacrificing my energy for Krishna. He appreciated my efforts. He wanted me to be all I could be for Krishna. I never sensed a smidgen of male chauvinism or misogyny, superiority or self-righteousness, hubris, or haughtiness in him. Neither a whiff of desire to exploit, oppress, or repress women or anyone else.”
Visakha shares her experience of Srila Prabhupada as being the personification of encouragement in the devotional service of the Lord and reveals many of his appealing transcendental qualities through her writing.
I only hope that hearing Visakha’s personal story encourages many skeptics to open their eyes to the possibility of faith and love for God and move in that direction, being inspired by this transcendental narration about Srila Prabhupada by his pure devotee.