The magical Caitanya Caritamrita publishing marathon (video)

So all of us we have participants here i can see from around the world some from malaysia others are tuning in from africa and we have all over north america and other countries we welcome you thank you very much for your interest in the vaishnav scriptures in the BBT and carrying on shiloh Prabhupadaa’s mission and we hope today’s program will edify those desires you have to be connected to the parampara through this process so before we begin dear Srila Prabhupadaa dear Caitanya Mahaprabhu if you so desire please empower our global team to continue expanding and spreading the glories of the Sri chaitanya chart tom so we’ll we have some slides available today at any time monisha can show them and you know the speakers don’t have to do anything special you just have to request and we’ll put it up and we have sort of a free-flowing program today where i’ll be asking some questions and there’ll be interaction probably between Ramesvar and driti prabhus who will be speaking spontaneously from their hearts so first of all i’ll introduce to you each of them they can just say hello and then we can start from there could you just make yourself known Ramesvar prabhu and then through t you’re on mute thank you for having me okay so that was and respectively and Ramesvar prabhu why don’t we just start off by you giving us a little context to what’s the big deal about the the chaitanya charter heritage marathon you were there you saw it unfold and how it unfolded and why it unfolded why don’t you tell us so that we can enter into that mood ourselves thank you I bye my prabhu i think the first thing I wanted to say is that devotional service never depends on your qualifications materially speaking has nothing to do with that there’s a famous verse that when one is fully surrendered to Krishna and their guru it is possible for a lay man to walk a blind man to see a dumb man to speak and a deaf man to hear and the inconceivable potencies of Krishna are always behind bhakti and devotional service and they will certainly intensely manifest during the marathon inconceivable potencies and just to give you a simple example i attended college for one year nothing practical in terms of the material job market or anything like that I was studying religion and philosophy and at the end of one year I moved into the temple and then when I was 20 years old kurandar who was the BBT trustee in la brought me to be his assistant and when coronder stepped down I was 22. he had taught me what he did and probably asked me a 22 year old who never had held a job or had any training to become in charge of publishing his books i had no ability it came from being like a puppet and probably moving strings inconceivable potencies one year later the only other trustee in america bali mardan who was in brooklyn running the press operations he stepped down so now is 23 and I have never been involved in the equipment or the computer production or the layout or photography or any part of the production of the books I did the publishing end so when bali margan stepped down schiller probably asked me if since he knew me and was training me as the publisher manager could I also run the press and I said no that’s not not possible i tended to say that a lot to probably but then I said probably it’s a full-time task it’s a full-time service and if i’m I can’t be in two places at once and this was a conversation that sherlock robert and I were having in los angeles in february and he said okay then let’s have it all in one place and he had me fly with him to Brooklyn to present the idea to all the press devotees in february of 75 and I was the ripe age of 23 and when Prabhupada asked the press devotees would they agree it was his amazing beauty and humility that he even asked he was our guru he could just order us to do anything and we would have done it but that was Prabhupadaa’s style to ask so when you’re asked something by your spiritual master your heart just opens yes of course guru maharaj of course feeling probably i’ll do it so then Prabhupada said to the press devotees okay let’s wait until the mayapore festival in march of 75 and we’ll ask the gbc and if they agree again Prabhupada asking the gbc something they’re going to do whatever he asks but that was philip one of his qualities so just before the mayapur festival the we moved the four artists in the press art department to l.a and just before the mayapur festival we were negotiating and we were hoping to that the gbc would say yes so we were negotiating to sign a five-year lease for this office building which was sandwiched between the apartment houses that were part of new dorca and so we while that was going on we went to mike we went we’re at the maya poor festival in late march of 75 then opening Krishna balor on mandir in april 75. and then Prabhupada began his tour australia and hawaii and i rushed back to new dwarka to er to complete the move of the iskan press to la which happened in april of 75 and everything was being set up we were buying new equipment we were building offices and studios and dark rooms and arranging for housing for about 40 or 50 devotees and somehow that was all set up by the end of may of 75 so it was during those months that I had learned that Srila Prabhupada had done the impossible between 73 and 74 he paused from his translating and writing of purports to the Srimad-bhagavatam and he wrote he wrote 17 volumes of the Sri chaitanya chartered tom rita in 18 months today they’re not 17 volumes they’re little I think they’re maybe nine volumes but originally there was 17 stream I bought with size volumes and powerpoint wrote 17 books in 18 months so by the time the president moved to new dwarka exactly two of those books had been published audi leela volume two came out first adila volume one had just come out and then the press moved so there were 15 volumes unpublished of the street chet and the cherry tom rita and while Prabhupada was traveling and by the time he got to hawaii in june he had also completed the translation of the fifth canto of the Srimad-bhagavatam we did that in two volumes so 15 unpublished Caitanya tamrita two volumes of the fifth canto makes the seventeen book marathon that’s how it was calculated ramaswag I just wanna circle back to this point about how consolidation took place there was some of the devotees might not know that some of the operations of the BBT were going on in new york and then there was the los angeles operation and prophet centralized it just so all this could take place could you comment on that and how prophet thought about that okay he originally wanted everything centralized but it worked out that book distribution mass book distribution really began on the west coast and the production was always in the east coast so when Prabhupada formed the BBT officially in 1972 there were three trustees and one secretary in the original BBT Prabhupada karan dar in the west coast bali mardan in the east coast they were the trustees and I was appointed as the BBT secretary at that time in 72. so the west coast was in charge of ordering the paper ordering the printing having the printers shipped the books to a warehouse system that we were creating and then from the warehouse shipping them to all the temples of the world so marketing and publishing were in the la BBT offices but the production of the books which originally began with actual equipment press binder photographic equipment gradually book distribution became so voluminous and wonderful we couldn’t keep up on our own small press and so Prabhupada flew to japan negotiated an amazing amazing deal with a printer called nippon and what that left on the east coast was the art department the editing well the transcriptions the editing the type setting the composition photographing the composed page pages and shipping them to the printer along with beautiful transparencies of the completed artwork so all that production was being done on the east coast the publishing was being done on the west coast and when different trustees stepped down proud but consolidated it all in la he felt that it was a better environment because we had more housing we owned a lot of buildings as part of the temple community and as I said I couldn’t be in two places at once and he wanted me to help organize and manage it both and that’s that was how the two parts of the BBT became one so can you set up for us set the scene of how the chaitanya charter rita marathon began what were the circumstances in los angeles and what was the what was the seed of that how did it all get started well after the two parts became one as I said by the end of april and set up in may excuse me we have been getting calls from shiloh Prabhupadaa’s traveling secretary in hawaii the secretary was calling me and telling me you had better be ready for Prabhupadaa’s visit in june because he’s very angry very angry with you and I was a little stunned and what did i do why is prophet angry with me and the secretary kept saying there are 17 books that he wrote that have not been sent to printers have not published he’s very angry in fact he has me calling leaders from all around north america to fly into la and to meet him when he arrives in june just to have them there when he confronts you so these were the phone calls that I was getting from our hawaii temple between june 15th and june 20th of 75 when shilla Prabhupadaa arrived and who arrived with him from different places this new john murray substitutes different leaders like that rupa nugga juggernaut I mean all these great senior leaders of our movement were all there when schiller Prabhupada arrived he gave the most famous wondrous arrival address if you want to hear the best arrival address in my humble opinion june 20 1975 the los angeles arrival address where Prabhupadaa describes the essence of his mission from Srila bhakti siddhanta saraswati and then orders us where are books where are books so I am begging you help me whenever you can you print as many books in as many languages as possible and distribute throughout the whole world and that is Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s mission that is the hari Krishna mission and so this amazing arrival address that was mesmerizing us that’s june 20 1975. so the next morning the morning probably always had a morning walk so all these leaders they’re all on the morning walk and radar bolivar and I were there and the walk was going on about halfway through the walk proper turned to radhabala who was our press manager myself and said so what is the plan for printing these books radar bolivar and I have been feverishly planning to go from one book every four months that was the pace when it was in brooklyn one book every four months to one book every two months we were going to double it then we had this idea to create a second assembly line and if we did that it would be instead of one book every two months two books every two months which equals to one book a month so on the morning walk we told Prabhupadaa we can increase four times from one book of every four months to one book a month we were so foolishly proud of this plan so paused and and thought and you could see how he was calculating so one book a month 17 months so that would take more than one year you know he’s writing all these other books so he he rejected the whole plan he’s not going to wait a year more than a year for 17 books that’s like a year and a half so so when we described how it was going to be a book every two months and then two books every two months and number two was there so probably said I won all 17 books in two months all 17 in two months now from what I understood of how the whole process worked there there was no possibility that we could perform all the steps that are involved in producing a book painting for a book arranging for the printing of a book edit and I just as was my tendency blurted out to proud but that’s impossible i I couldn’t believe he was actually asking that it just it was just it was simply impossible and I thought I would have a conversation with Prabhupadaa explaining why but that’s not what happened Prabhupadaa planted his cane in the sand of venice beach stopped walking and and looked at me so gravely and so intensely not with anger but with just pure Krishna bhakti and Krishna’s inconceivable potencies and just looking right at every part of what I am and said these famous words impossible is a word in a fool’s dictionary and then there was this long pause while he continued to look at me and stare into my go into my heart and soul just impressed that upon me and it was a very long for me I can’t even calculate how long that pause was but it must have only been a few step moments or seconds i looked up I saw like a semi-circle of all these great sannyasis and leaders of our movement standing right behind Prabhupada staring at me like now what are you gonna do young brahmachar I was a brahmacharya 23 years old i’ve never done anything like this before I was a person that helps book distribution that was it had been my role anyways then probably started walking on and about and I couldn’t move we were frozen we’re just looking at each other like we couldn’t we just couldn’t believe what it just happened and in that instant for me I i I can’t explain what rudder bolivar was going through but in that instant for me i remembered instantly vividly deeply how prophet is not a mortal human Prabhupadaa is a shakhtar avatar he is a personality that speaks for god himself from the spiritual world he has come down into this plane to spread the sound kirtan hare Krishna movement all over the world maybe all over the universe and so in that moment when I just remembered who Prabhupada was and how he said it’s a nothing is impossible I started thinking of just I just had instant flashes like the planets all over the universe they’re floating without crashing out look at these inconceivable potencies of god so here’s the person who knows god an associate directly of god telling me god has inconceivable potencies and if you think it’s impossible then you’re a full idiot i just I just in that instant I realized without having any idea how this can be done yes god has inconceivable potencies and they and they can enter this world to into us through Prabhupadaa and that was my realization on that morning walk and so we caught up to Prabhupadaa I told ronavale that we can do this we hadn’t figured out how yet but we just both agreed there’s inconceivable potencies at work here and we were already feeling such ecstasy thinking about it so we caught up to shilla Prabhupadaa and we said we think we can do it and I said can we ask you at least three three things can we beg of you three things and he said all right you can ask i said the first thing is we have been doing sanskrit books stream on bhagavatam and we had a sanskrit department with some sanskrit scholars for june and the other devotees in that department they did not know bengali one of the reasons this chieftain the charity tom readers were coming out so slowly is you had to know bengali you have to do bengali editing on the texts and so on and so I said Prabhupadaa men need to learn bengali kid you stay in l.a long enough so that they could ask you their questions and you could teach them and probably said yes I will stay as long as as needed he stayed for three weeks from that morning walk until he left and every morning the whole sanskrit department was in his quarters and his room becoming a bengali department and Prabhupada was teaching them bengali and they they had it down in three weeks so that was the first question we asked peralpa the second we asked him was we don’t have enough devotees right now to do this we can do it but could we reach out to other temples and ask them to lend us any devotees that have any skills at all just for this two-month marathon and he said yes we immediately sent out letters to everybody making phone calls the word was traveling and so many amazing devotees with amazing skills started coming to l.a from all over the world to be part of this they just were being sent I mean famous amazing devotees that were doing composing typesetting other artists were coming high agreement had already come to la to be the second production line editor and probably liked that idea I was very fast at editing so we gave him the nine volumes of modula we gave jaya dwight the five volumes of the angelila so in this way we we divided it up and and the third question that we asked the problem is can we have access to you and when you’re not here by phone which probably never liked to ask you questions that the artists have in the past the artist would read the bhagavatam transcripts they would decide what scenes lended themselves best to be painted and they would have so many questions what does this personality look like what clothing does he wear does he have a beard this so many things that you know bhagavatam describes life on other worlds we had the artist always had millions of questions so they would write the questions out in a letter so often Prabhupada was in another country so it would take maybe 10 days for the letter to arrive the secretary would write down the answers and mail back the answers by the time the letter came back with the answers you already gone to to between two and three weeks just waiting for vital information that the artists needed to complete their paintings so we had to end that we couldn’t have a three week delay we need we the second they had artists I had to be able to go right into Prabhupadaa’s room or call him on the phone if he wasn’t in la and get the answer instantly and Prabhupada agreed to be bothered in that way to be interrupted so that would help the marathon Ramesvar prabhu we have the clip just lined up of Prabhupadaa in the temple room just the the last few points this is just going back to your reference of Srila Prabhupadaa coming inviting leaders from all over the movement to come there just so he could say this to you and radha balabha prabhu on venice beach and let’s look at what he said monisha will put it up on the screen and we’ll just listen to prophet’s talk at this point that he’s very fond of books and he told me personally that if you get some money print books therefore I am stressing on this point where is book where is book where is book so kindly help me this is my request print as many books in as many languages and distribute throughout the whole world then Krishna consciousness movement will automatically increase now the educated learned scholar they are appreciating our movement by reading books by taking practical results doctor still sends you judah he has written one book perhaps you know Krishna hari krsna and counter culture a very nice book about our movement and he is giving importance and he has admitted that you have done wonderful thing because you have turned the drug addicted hippies into devotees of Krishna and they are prepared for the service of humanity so now we have this scene in los angeles all set up by Ramesvar prabhu and I want to hear briefly from driti who was who i’ll let her explain what her circumstances were because it’s quite unusual what she walked into an eyewitness report of of what happened to udriti walking into the scene at that time can you tell us a little bit about that what you felt what you saw well I had been visiting the brooklyn temple because I was under age I was still in high school so i i started visiting the temple when I was 16 and so I was visiting I wasn’t you know an official moved in devotee and because I went to art school my you know they immediately connected me with jadarani and the press you know the in the in the brooklyn in tiffany place so you know i’d visit there and watch chad ronnie paint or you know just be in that atmosphere and then at one point she said well the press is moving so you should come join us we’re going to california we’re going to los angeles you should come so you know I was a child and I said okay so I promised my my parents that I would graduate high school and then okay i bought my ticket and flew out to la and somehow i got picked up by the sanctum van or something and they dropped me off the jotaroni’s studio and she said you know welcome and are you hungry and I said no no I was so excited and she said good and she get handed me a paintbrush i didn’t even put my bags down i just that was it it was the beginning because it was in the midst of the marathon so I just started so I just you know the I was asked you know what did I think of i I thought this was the way it was you just you dove in you know into the into the ocean of this is devotional service and this is you know devotee life although I did think that because you know this is was my first experience moving into the temple i thought oh finally I can participate in festivals and harinama and all that nectar for those first months there was none of that there was it was really just mongol artique japa painting and very very brief prashanam there was no other existence really briefly means that you told us yesterday that that the head of the art department would stand there with a stopwatch and give you like 10 minutes to take preschool yeah 10 minutes 10 minutes come on let’s go and I don’t know that was it it was very exciting but it was quite intense it was very very intense there was and and then you know it was 24 hours so there were different you know times you know you’d have this period so this period of time and someone else would take over and it was just non-stop production and I just I don’t know I just figured it out i watched and okay this is how it goes amazing it goes along with what Ramesvar prabhu is saying when there’s a order coming from the spiritual world if you just take it up then you get the intelligence how to do it right in in that vein just to set that that picture i had just graduated school let’s take a look at this monisha put up the slide deck we want to see a few pictures of what dritty looked like at this time bhakti miriam just walked in that’s there’s another one that’s before that there’s a I think a younger picture there yeah yeah there she is walking in off the street go ahead and set us up here gertie what is this that’s a picture of a child you know a teenager I was probably you know that’s what you did here we’re sharing you know we had to finish complete paintings so if whatever needed to be done is what we did so if there was an area that didn’t that was you know one artist did and wasn’t quite complete someone else would step in and the other arm is jadharani’s and my forte you know when in these group paintings were often the hands hands feet and jewelry was my specialty besides whatever painting i was working on so this is a scene from that i want to bring in a historical fact bring us back to the zoom room for a minute when he said so in our discussing yesterday the the process of creating the artwork an amazing process ramashore you mentioned a miracle that happened where you just happened to run into somebody who was instrumental in the in the art department can you just tell that give that vignette and then i I will but I have to just preface it in one by saying some one thing that led up to all of this after that morning walk when we came back to the temple papa did the rest of the morning program and then we called an emergency meeting of all the press devotees and this is right out of like lord Caitanya’s travels where he would go to a village in south india and invest his potencies in a soul to feel great love from chanting and then tell that soul now whoever you meet you continue to share this and invest them with the same ecstatic loving potencies so that’s exactly what happened we came back from that morning walk and had this emergency meeting with the press devotees who didn’t know anything about a two-month marathon and we started sharing this inconceivable potency that probably just injected into us and we started explaining we’re gonna do 17 books in two months and it was a magical moment because every devotee in the press felt as if they were right there with Prabhupadaa on that walk it just passed right into all of them and they became so spiritually enthused and dedicated and attached to broadband and so that’s actually the next step in the marathon that everyone in the press had to agree and they did and at that point we were brainstorming we knew we were going to have two assembly lines what we didn’t know is that they were going to run each 24 hours a day with different shifts those who couldn’t stay up for the 24 hours we’d bring in others late at night to start that but it would nothing would shut down there were certain devotees that literally did not sleep amazing devotees regard like a bullet just this yamaraj they didn’t sleep and radibald and I tended not to sleep so the the next thing that happened in the marathon and this will lead into the art the next thing that happened is radabalov and I locked ourselves in my little office and we read all 15 remaining volumes of the chapter the cherry tom reader in about a day a day and a half because we had asked Prabhupada we didn’t think we could paint seven paintings for each book so we had this idea this idea that this is historical this is a time where we could send a photographer to india and actually photograph these historical sites from lord Caitanya’s leela and that would reduce as color plates going from seven paintings to maybe four or five so Prabhupada agreed so we read the whole chapter cherry tom rita we figured out all the places we wanted bhargava to photograph we bought him a ticket and we just sent him to india and we we devised with him this I had no idea when he sends back the film what is it is it a bajan couture is a samadhi i wouldn’t have known so I said you just include when you air freight the foot the film back notes and he did that and we developed the system we told them if we can’t understand it we’ll label it according to the best we can from your writing and then we’ll send it back to you one last time for your final approval one time actually we had two books that had already gone into the press to the printer the photographs were labeled wrong bottom of a caught it because we had shipped it to him he called us frantically from india and while the book was still at the printer we corrected the captions it was that kind of intensity so that that was the photography part of the chapter and charity teacher so right after we finished reading and setting up that ryder volleyball and I read it again the whole chapter cherry time read it one more time to pick what paintings we wanted and again it just happened in like a day and a half we had all the paintings identified these are the these are the hundred paintings that we want in two months and we turned that over to the artists and you know 100 paintings in two months is 50 paintings a month how many days are there in a month i mean you think about how fast these paintings had to be completed and come out it was it’s again an inconceivable potency could only could this ever happen I mean sometimes the artists were accustomed in brooklyn to taking three months to to really paint a beautiful amazing window into the spiritual sky and how they were given two to three days so what happened is one of our hiring on parties at venice beach was chanting when a middle-aged man to me was middle anybody over 25 or 30 was a middle-aged man anyway this gentleman who was walking in the sands of the beach so he was holding his shoes he was barefoot came up to the harinan party and was obviously attracted his name was hector they brought him back to the temple with them in the van as soon as they got back to the temple one of the devotees ran and to get me and said we’ve been talking to this person we just met he says he’s an artist so I came running out of the press and started talking to hector who had an amazing skill as an artist he could paint in background landscapes so quickly that and like an entire background painting landscape with hills and trees and and leaves on trees and flowers and shrubs all of that he could do in a few in maybe one or two days per painting when we realized he had this amazing skill it dawned on us where did this person come from it’s like we’re at the beach it’s like somebody came up from the ocean christian had just manifested him it was a miracle he was just there sent by Krishna because Krishna would do anything to fulfill Prabhupadaa’s desire that is the intense amazing love between Prabhupadaa and Krishna that reciprocation this is just one of many examples so he just showed up magically and we created an assembly line for all the artists and practically all the backgrounds and landscapes and all the paintings hector did and that was part of the art department’s marathon and these and how proud was empowering them hold the brush would join the art department in those days we went from four to 13 artists there’s a description in the Srimad-bhagavatam of devahuti who had performed austerities serving her husband for so long and then in the in the deck we have here there’s a sketch that driti had made just walking past a doorway and noticing that the lead painter john irani could we see that for a second and maybe dritty could talk about that’s not it there’s another sketch could you talk about this the mood of this and you know when you painted it right that was a not an uncommon theme exhaustion i’ll call this exhaustion you know just that was what you know was you wouldn’t move she wouldn’t move from from the studio every you know so she’s channing her japa and taking you know just exhaustion from painting probably all night you know and I was telling you that you know we didn’t have cameras and iphones and stuff you know it was just a moment that I i had to capture because it kind of represented the whole what it looked like you know just really complete surrender you know it’s sort of this is iconic of the mood there and and the ways the devotees were working in in all the different departments right tritty right I mean if you look she’s sitting on a on a studio chair you know in front of her easel her hand in her bead bag you know just completely exhausted her hair everything is you know surrendered to the to the moment you know there’s nothing left and then she’ll wake up you know it was just a moment it was just a probably a five-minute nap and then she’d start again you know that’s how that was the that was the standard lisa that was what I was thrown into so like I said I thought that was how he was done and and and one thing that I want to add you know that there was the marathon but that pace not didn’t really end you know sort of like powerplay could see wow look what they can you know how it could be done and it sort of con continued like that for the next many many years until his books were completed you know that similar pace of just constant no dawdling you know no not too much ego and pondering and the artist’s way you know to really take their time and and reflect it was just you you prayed and you hoped that Krishna would would would provide that ability and and skill and intelligence immediately you know which was great because it just you were on you were you were kind of tuned into another dimension almost i I don’t I don’t mean to sound you know exalt this but it’s sort of like you you connect to something else to another energy and and almost it seemed like Krishna could work through you a little bit if you didn’t get in the way what a beautiful description dritty and that that painting was I have to tell you one thing that I left out very important really important la community was feeling this inconceivable ecstatic energy of this marathon they weren’t directly working on the production but their service was invaluable to making this marathon a reality they were bringing prasada to the press devotees in their gallery rooms and offices and dark rooms they were doing laundry for the press devotees they were buying toothpaste for the president whatever they needed the entire l.a community of devotees was doing the support work without which there would have been too many interruptions and distractions and they made it possible for this marathon to be completely like samadhi no distraction they have to give them all the credit we organized the la temple to be the support for the marathon devotees and they themselves became marathon devotees in that way and I have to tell you one other thing this marathon it had so many effects on us but one of them before we talk about the ultimate effect of the Caitanya charitable one of them was just the relationship we were feeling with Srila Prabhupadaa no one in the material world knows what love is they just have perverted reflections of what love is but when you have unconditional desire to please the person that you love unconditional surrender of with no thought of oneself that level of love is what we read about sometimes in the christian world I mean that’s what Prabhupadaa brought to this movement he brought the love of the spiritual world that and we could feel that for him and that was not a perverted reflection that was a genuine realization of total inconceivable surrender and desire to please prabha he awakened that in us we became so fanatical lovers of Prabhupadaa that’s one of the effects that this marathon had not just in us but on the whole movement i want to ask you about why the chaitanya charitamrita why is this so special can you shed a little light from what Prabhupada said or wrote and that the idea that was inherent in this desire to get them all out so quickly why the chaitanya charter why is it so important to us well okay later i’m gonna go back to the other parts of the miracles but on this specific question that you asked Prabhupadaa is always described as the vaishnav literatures that he is giving the world in different stages there’s there’s the beginning of education and spiritual life which is bhagavad-gita then there’s college level spiritual life which is the Srimad bhagavatam and then there’s post college as if you’re getting a phd in spiritual knowledge in life and that’s sweet and a cherry tom is always describing these works in that using that as an example why do we chant the panchayat for maha mantra before chanting the hari Krishna mantra because we can’t approach Krishna we’re too impure but through lord Caitanya lord nityananda and the panchataka we can approach Krishna so we always pray to them first they lord Caitanya appeared in the world to enable us to become devotees without first having to be totally pure and surrendered as Krishna asked in the bhagavad-gita lord Caitanya said i’m not going to wait for you to be totally pure and totally surrendered i’m going to give you this ecstatic experience and this full knowledge and realization even if you’re not pure not surrendered and thus you’ll become you’ll have this taste and you won’t be able to give it up that’s what lord Caitanya is that’s what the chieftain the cherry tom rita that’s his that’s him doing this for the world and without that we cannot approach christian as much as we want to just think we can just go right to goloka it doesn’t work like that we have to go through lord Caitanya lord nityananda we have to go through the panchayat and their representatives in order to approach Krishna in this age and that’s what the Caitanya chariots and rita does right now the world even if they’ve heard of Krishna they haven’t really heard yet about lord Caitanya the way we need them to that lord Caitanya is Krishna who’s come to give you the way to go to Krishna it’s just so divine that Krishna would do this and we have to we have to popularize lord Caitanya to make the world know of him so when we were first starting this marathon I asked schiller probably thinking this is so esoteric i mean is this are we printing these books just for the devotees in our movement which means I would print maybe at most 5 000 copies per volume and probably said no i’m thinking like that i was so fortunate that prophet always corrected me and chastised me i was blessed with with him always smashing me correcting me so he said no this is for everyone and i said probably in the middle of a module or a nonchalant volume let’s just give it out and sell it on the streets and he said oh yes the transcendental mercy of the whole poncho is in every word it’s in every volume and so this is for the masses they don’t have to understand it you give this to them and so by that explanation we had to negotiate with printer paper mills we had to negotiate 20 000 hardbound volumes of each of the 17 books now for those who have never worked with printers especially in the pre-digital age they had presses they had book schedules with publishers and authors and here we are needing a printer to drop everything and free up their presses for just for us the hari Krishna movement now it’s kind of inconceivable when you think of the great publishers of the world and authors of the world that they would push them aside and delay them for two months while they took us on the biggest hardbound printer in america at that time we couldn’t work with dine upon anymore the delays with shipping it was just impossible so we had found a printer in tennessee called kingsport press they were the largest printer of hardbound books in north america we met with the president of that company he knew that we had just printed 350 thousand hardbound bible-by-pieces of bridge with danny pond so he’s looking at these incredible volumes of books that potentially could be given to his company and so we’re meeting with him and he made the decision to free up all the presses that kingsport press push back every publishing company and every author and take on the hari Krishna movements sweet chains and the cherry tomato marathon he just saw this is great it’s going to be a future of our printing company we want to work with this hari christian movement so that was one miracle that happened because that’s not normal that the ma their main business in these publishing companies now all of a sudden they’re taking us as their main business and they’re sticking with paper mills we have to get them to push us ahead of every other order truckloads train loads of paper had to be shipped to kingsport press for this and the paper we were negotiating and we found a paper mill that would agree to do this so those behind the scene activities with part of what we were organizing as we were going through this marathon but it was all about bringing lord Caitanya to the world not just for the devotees to to be able to approach Krishna without which we can’t we cannot approach Krishna directly in the pure way but for the whole world to be able to approach radha and Krishna they have to go through lord Caitanya that’s what it means for us to read and distribute to Caitanya tom reader to the world radha mohan prabhu has put up 20 000 times 17 equals 340 000 books 340 000 books and to reiterate what you just said about Prabhupadaa’s desire for the distribution of the chaitanya turtamrita he said that people have to have this mercy and just get it out there he wasn’t considering that it was postgraduate or esoteric of esoteric nature but he wanted that it to be available in human society for the benefit of everyone it’s is that correct is more than correct okay and what the printer had to do you know setting it’s not like 340 000 of just one title that would be easier than 20 000 of 17 titles because each time you have a different title the whole setup for the printer the plates the trend everything is different you have to take it away from that press that print that printer and bring in the next setup so this was a very complicated coordinated effort between the BBT and and the printer to be able to move 17 different titles all up practically all at once let’s bring up a few slides for a minute monisha sorry Ramesvar I didn’t mean to interrupt you please go ahead no whatever you want okay let’s look at some slides you can continue this thread and I just give you a little visual of what was going on in the ground you’ll see some pictures of Prabhupada looking over the operations in new dwarka go to the top and let’s go down from there to so we don’t miss anything is that the top of the deck no keep going higher that’s where it starts that’s our production board every title of the 17 books is in the column and the up and down up and down columns for each book is an each different stage of production so that rada bolivar and i could figure out day or night what stage every book production was at so we created this nice production board and it was just how did we do this where did these ideas come from give us the next slide that’s probably looking at some of the transparencies for the paintings proper walking through every room of the new iskcon press BBT building these are now photographs of the actual pages of the book that had to be photographed in order to become plates in order to be printed by the printer these are sketches and just every every aspect of the production line we were showing probably as he walked through the press and different devotees were explaining to pro about what they did there’s a nice picture of Ramesvar prabhu with Prabhupadaa you can see the eagerness in his face that from these photographs the excitement is palpable the spiritual energy flowing through the through the room keep going manisha there’s a let me just tell you the next book okay that’s here we’re showing proud but we’re walking on the veranda or the press building in that photograph and you can see all the devotees down on the ground just wanting a glimpse of prophet Prabhupadaa was the censor of our eyes he was the sun and the moon he was the true representative almost like a personification of gordon and I especially lord nitin the mercy of lord nicholande is in is visible through the spiritual mass the pure devotee so we couldn’t take our eyes off a pro but what was so wonderful about this marathon is as we got caught up in doing this zoom room we truly stopped caring about bodily necessities we had this amazing and very rare opportunity to be to enter into the world of Prabhupadaa of the of the six goswami’s of what’s light of Krishna’s kabiraj what it’s like to not care about eating or sleeping to only care about those distractions to our service we got to we got glimpses of that and we got to live it literally and if you allow me I have notes and diaries from this era and one of in anyway one day i’ll try to publish this but i just want to read to you because this will lead right into what trudy was saying my one little description of the art department during the marathon if I may sure one second again I just want to ask drifty one question you had described this goes along with the the this goes in the thread you’re just you put before us ramashwara prabhu and then you told us about how what possessions did you bring with you what did you keep actually I i oh we all we had or that’s what I wrote today was I didn’t even have a sleeping bag I was provided a sleeping bag so you owned a sleeping bag a bean bag and a change of clothes was pretty much and paint brushes was pretty much your possessions so you didn’t have anything to worry about or concern yourself with it was just you know you did it you know good arty you can’t go to paint there was that was life and it was it was very you were absorbed you were completely absorbed there was no other distraction and you it was a wonderful for me personally because this was my beginning I was a perfect immersion you know i just got into it and that was great and that was that was how i how it got trained you know there was no other other way this was the way you know what’s your sketch from the balcony you pull that up and ramashwara just mentioned how probably the sinister of of everyone’s life and just set this up and you know about this sketch and what your life was when so I came when I came a a few days later Prabhupada also came so this is he’s giving the bhagavatam class and it was an amazing moment because from the balcony I could see him and that’s what I how I was trained in art school to paint and and draw and everything from life so this was an amazing opportunity to you know have him present before me and there’s something about a direct relationship you know a direct you know when you’re drawing or painting you get into a different mind mindset so it’s it there’s no it’s such a intense focus so to have him he’s speaking his work you know I hear his words but to be you know focused on his presence was you know I feel just so thrilled that that I was able to capture that and on a lighter note you had mentioned nowadays we have smart phones you can snap a picture anywhere that was the phone back then are you drawing that was the smartphone that’s right we really we really had not much you know and and that was fine that was you know a devotional life a monastic life you know ashram life and it was again it was fine you didn’t you didn’t mind because there was some there was something going on there was some taste some sweetness some happiness that was derived and I have to mention something about dreddy’s unique position not only did she come having never been living in a temple before and just get thrown into this amazing ocean of bhakti-rasamrta but there were differences between the senior artists that had been painting for Prabhupadaa’s books before and the artists that had joined just for the marathon and then stayed on to continue over the years after the christian book art marathon the artists we had stopped doing assembly line painting each artist was responsible for their own work and naturally they had a vision and they had desire spiritual desires to make it as perfect as they could be with their vision so it was very hard for the more experienced senior artists to go back to being on an assembly line that was really very hard for them and that’s what I just was going to read you from my diary just one little section yes would you like to see that on the screen is that part of the slot are those in the slide okay i’ve never read this to anyone before all right I have hundreds of pages of notes and diary notes that i I read this out loud to anyone before so from the chat box here christian priya had written why we waited so long to distribute cc it is not even printed in dutch and so you know it’s an eternal process but why we’re having this be a gardener campaign is to bring attention to the Caitanya charter media its glory its importance it it’s vitally important to Srila Prabhupadaa and therefore anyone who takes up this process of reading the Caitanya charter media and distributing it is connected what to speak of the the languages that are still there in the world where it hasn’t been translated this is a service so this is a warm-up year we’re just warming up put your safety belts on because next year it’s going to be big we’re going to go for it they didn’t even have enough Caitanya charter meetings to accommodate us so they that some of the trustees warned me they said don’t get this too big because we can’t bring all the books but I said you better get ready for next year so this is what we’re doing right now we’re gardeners this is the beer gardener campaign we’re planting seeds Krishna leela about this and get ready to go because it’s an eternal order we can take it up at any time and that’s why we brought in these two today to remind us of why this is important Ramesvar prabhu please go ahead with your diary this is vital information for the world well this is just one of I have a section on each department but this is for the art department the artists especially were actually going crazy late at night like about two o’clock in the morning when one artist would fall asleep i would take their canvas secretly out of their room and bring it to whichever artist was still awake just so that at no time was there ever a moment when the painting was not being worked on we had four artists when the art department was in new york now we had 13. we built up the art department we’ve tripled it actually we had glory these are these are the names of artists that you may not know you know everyone’s heard of driti everyone’s heard of jotarani merlidor and parikha and pushkar we had a jairam ramanas oh a girl named judy had just joined so my notes ramdas had joined just a little later and so on sorry saradia so back and bar drivers we got him to do something so the artists were literally livid when when I took their painting gave it to someone else and then brought it back to their easel so when they woke up the whatever they were working on the face of a great personality it was somehow a different mood or different a different expression they will live it fondue the artists were all threatening to kill me they couldn’t take that I was doing this and one i’m just gonna tell one quick story one morning prickett had woken up and a beautiful face that he had been working on had been painted over by john irani because I had moved his painting at around two in the morning to her easel for another two hours of work and then i stuck it back onto his easel so that when he would wake up it would be there i don’t know what I was thinking like he’s not going to notice the difference well he noticed he was so angry they were all so angry but this one morning he couldn’t contain himself so he’s he’s like a red like a book like a transcendental bull ready to gourmet or strangle me he’s running all over the press looking for me and he finds me in my office at this point it was like the fifth sixth week into the marathon and somehow probably had blessed us we literally were not sleeping unless we fell asleep where we were we were not we didn’t even need it we’re i’m proud by time i’d call it for those who few devotees that ever traveled with Prabhupadaa we called it probably time it wasn’t time in the material world of the material body we’re on his schedule so anyway brickett found me and he’s standing at the door and now the object of his anger is right there the desire to kill me is manifest that he start charging me and i’m just watching this and midway in his charge the super soul in his heart enlightens him and gives him this great knowledge and feeling of what we’re all doing together for Prabhupadaa and for lord Caitanya and for the conditioned souls he had all these realizations in a matter of like one or two seconds so as he’s running full speed over a distance of 10 feet his charge for my neck ends up being a full prostrated dunder month holding onto my feet crying and begging forgiveness this is a true these are like some of the internal pastimes that were going on in the press so he stood up I stood up we were both crying like babies we hugged each other we didn’t have to say a word we both understood what we were doing and what we were feeling and then he just walked back to his easel to continue his service so very intense emotions were going on during this matter you have some documents that are very important to look at before we look at them as a closing of this because we’re running down on the hour and a half we have I want to show the current campaign that’s going on right now just for two minutes so everyone can understand what this is why we’re doing it i’m so appreciative of Krishna priya for bringing this up the importance of it we conceived of this marathon that would start at the beginning of february and go all the way to gor purnima and we’ll continue this each year emphasizing the Sri tetoniuchardamrita there’s a lot we can do within that period of time it’s called be a gardener sow the seeds of bhakti and the goals of this campaign were rather simple we kept them we kept them kind of benign because we had such big marathons during last year the read and share at least one verse from chaitanya chair tom rita means keeping the bar low just at least one verse so you touch the book listen to at least one of shula Prabhupadaa’s lectures on Sri Caitanya church and we had recommended this one that is as you can see here from the audiolilla 1.4 and a couple more take an inventory of your chaitanya charter meet the sets how many do you have because if you don’t have them how are you going to read them or distribute them and make at least one set of Sri Caitanya tamirita visible means take it out of the box put it somewhere where devotees can see it put it online I saw that some devotees were putting them on on their facebook pages and they were selling sets of chaitanya charter medias so it’s this is again a warm up this campaign the be a gardener and lastly inaugurate at least 10 additional monthly sanctum festivals globally so that we can increase the congregational book distribution so one more I have to tell you one more leela here yes yes europe now I just wanted to get this out of the way i’m we’re coming back to this zoom room okay and so about the fifth week into the marathon ronald oliver and I jump in a car and they go to the la airport to pick up this box that had been shipped to us from kingsport press it was like two in the morning we we get it through the airport we rushed back to the temple room now by the time we got to the temple it was around 3 30 or 4 o’clock in those boxes that we had picked up were the first three volumes of the mudja lila and the first two volumes of the angel leela five new books we’re trembling we we can’t contain our ecstasy the bujaris allowed us we hadn’t bathed or anything it was very unusual the pujaris allowed us to go on to the altars and put one of each of these five books on each altar at the feet of sushi gordon’s thai Sri Sri rukh meaning dwarkadeesh and Sri juggernaut baladeva and supadra in time so that when the doors open for 4 30 montgomery and there’s like about three four hundred devotees in the temple community at this time in l.a the doors opened no one knew this was coming and there are five new books on the altar the devotees are stunned in that room that mongol arctic they’re crying screaming they’re laughing they’re chanting with all their heart and soul at the top of their lung no one could they realize they’re watching a miracle take place it was the most ecstatic mongol arctic of my lifetime it was so intense nobody’s feet were touching the ground that’s how it felt and it just went on and on as the devotees it was just hitting them probably bringing these inconceivable potencies of the spiritual world of the lord into our plane of existence and here’s the proof nothing for a devotee nothing is impossible that was the message that went throughout the whole movement throughout the whole world devotees realized never again will we ever say anything is impossible that’s what that was like that mongol article so lakshmi von wrote in he said I have heard about this for the last 45 years but never like this i can’t move from my seat Ramesvara prabhu if you would since we have about eight minutes left which is a travesty perhaps you could read from the the texts that we have set up on the screen if that’s like to do please yes this is at the end of the marathon this letter Prabhupada has gone back to india so the final volumes of the Caitanya chair tamritta and it was in august that he received these so with with our accompanying letter and Prabhupadaa wrote dear ramosa and company to be clear this was for all of us this is not just for me i’m in receipt of your letter of august 31 and the new six volumes the last six volumes of the cherry tomato so the books have increased they’re all very nicely done i think they may stop all touring and just sit down here for translating i just have to pause and tell you what was in my letter of august 31. i was writing on behalf of all the devotees telling bone i’m begging you bro but begging you we don’t we can’t live without doing this for you being disconnected to you being this in love with you and surrendered to you please give us the rest of the bhagavatam and any other books you want to we we can’t imagine living unless we’re doing this service for you of publishing and distributing your books please engage us in this way that was our fervent prayer to brow but at the end of this marathon that don’t let it stop do not let this marathon stop so there’s one line of this letter which is very important wait one second ramshaw progre you told us something yesterday about the experience of you and some of your god sisters you know there was crying and things at the end of the marathon can you just repeat that short big night well actually it was it was later you know we’d been you know this was this was my experience this was how life was you just you painted for for pearl pod you worked for the BBT you were a team you were you were on praguepod’s team it wasn’t even just a team it was because the books were so dear to him and we were part of you know like i said you know we his words were the jewel we were creating the setting and it was essential and he was so pleased within the and the pain all of it was all mixed up in in our existence you know of our identity and then when when Prabhupada passed and and the announcement was made in the morning it was of course traumatic for the whole movement to us and but the thing that someone told me later you know I was crying sobbing was what what did that mean did that mean my service was over that the press the BBT would be finished and that was the devastating part because that was the connection that was our link to Prabhupada through this service and you know we understood that so much in the in the art department because we had this back and forth you know directly and to to conceive that that would end was the end of felt like the end of our life so what would happen priceless thank you so much thank you cultural conquest he said this movement is here to create cultural conquest of the whole planet that will never stop being a need for authorized bona fide transcendental art as a windowed to the spiritual world they will never stop being that need until the whole world is drowning in the images we have it in every room of our homes and public buildings and you can see this is judy and ron’s painting over my this is where I live let’s finish your let’s see okay so you have taken seriously all right the publishing and the distribution of these books that is the success of our mission you have taken seriously this work and I know my guru maharaj is pleased with you he once said thousand times more than me these are the feelings of probably passing on to us because he wanted this and so here’s the key line so by this your endeavor printing and distributing his books you will all go back home back to godhead we used to call this letter our ticket to the spiritual world probably saying to everyone you do this you will surely go back home back to godhead it’s assured you have a ticket that’s how we took this letter at the end of the marathon but as I said earlier we couldn’t live without this we never wanted it to stop we still don’t ever want it to stop and for all of those listening I will tell you that the personification of never stopping is right here on your screen in the persona of Sri never stopping to give this love of god to the fallen souls ever he lives for it up until his last breath that’s why we love him so much zoom right please Ramesvara prabhu as everybody knows and as you well know i’m only following your footsteps taking the remnant the senior devotees who were so fortunately situated at the lotus feeder show probably getting direct instruction you passed it on to us very kindly as if as one would pass on the sacrifice you made and the way that you walked in is obviously something extraordinary and it’s an example for all of us the way that you lived your life and simply gave yourself in complete focus on on serving shiloh prop but it’s so touching to hear about the way you wept when prophet left and and you your question was how will this service go on and I think the answer Ramesvar prabhu gave all of us is so hopeful that it’s still here one of our devotees and under murari prabhu after he finished university recently I said so how was it he said my realization is that education is what you make of it it’s what you put into it prophets prophet’s instruction is eternal the sankirtana movement is eternal Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s order to spread this to every town and village is eternal and it’s still right here a live wire for anyone to grab and that’s why we have this global team this is why there’s an urgent call and it’s it’s for our benefit to hold on to it together as Ramesvara prabhu so aptly repeated it’s rahm ashore and company we’re all in that company together and we can we can still grab that by mustering the sense of cooperation to distribute books all over the world let’s do it let’s make this chaitanya charter mita the most famous spiritual book in the world no one can stop us if we work together no one so I thank all Ramesvar can I hear just one thought about what happens when you distribute the chieftain of cherry tom rita please please if you distribute these chetan the cherry tomatoes what will happen to that book distributor he will be given in deep deep realizations of lord shaitania deep feelings and emotions for lord Caitanya the more you distribute him to others the more your consciousness your spiritual awareness of him and your ecstatic emotion for loving him will awaken that’s the benefit for the book distributor the more you distribute the more the supply and ecstasy increases in you the more the realizations increase in you that’s really the secret of book distribution dear shilla prophet dear shigorni tai shishi panchatva if you so desire please empower our global team to follow in the footsteps of ramashwar prabhu driti prabhu and all the great devotees who set the pace for us and the example for embracing the lotus feet of shilla prophet as an instruction if you so desire please let us increase book distribution ways that the world has never seen before let us fill up train cars again with Caitanya charter mita and all of Srila prophet’s books and shower that mercy on the people of the world at this time when they’re so confused and disjointed it’s our only hope thank you very much for considering our request everyone who agrees with this prayer in part or in whole please unmute and say hare Krishna hi Krishna unmute let everybody unmuted.