{"id":33325,"date":"2016-11-12T14:11:37","date_gmt":"2016-11-12T13:11:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dandavats.tumblr.com\/post\/153079350716"},"modified":"2017-01-26T14:39:10","modified_gmt":"2017-01-26T13:39:10","slug":"prabhupada-said-you-failed-to-present-me-with-a-superior","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/?p=33325","title":{"rendered":"Prabhupada said: \u201cYou failed to present me with a superior…"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Prabhupada said: \u201cYou failed to present me with a superior description of God. I have His picture right here. You have not even a word to say. So you please accept Him as God right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Caru das: In a letter to all temple presidents Karandhar wrote, \u201cThe etiquette is to invite the guru to your temple. It\u2019s not likely that he\u2019ll come, but invite him.\u201d<\/p>\n

As I was president in Sydney, I duly wrote a letter saying, \u201cPlease come and visit Australia,\u201d and I was shocked when Prabhupada responded, \u201cI\u2019m coming, send two tickets.\u201d<\/p>\n

We had no money whatsoever. We sold Back to Godheads and made fifty dollars on a big day. Paying the rent was a major achievement.<\/p>\n

Our temple was a storefront with a big window at a bus stop in Paddington, which was a trendy area. We held evening arati at six o’clock where 30 or 40 commuters, who were waiting to go home, could see it.<\/p>\n

The temple was wonderful, but it wasn\u2019t clean. We hadn\u2019t changed the carpet from when it had been a store and we didn\u2019t even know that carpets were dirty. We really didn\u2019t know anything about devotional service.<\/p>\n

The first two devotees in Australia were Bali Mardan and Upendra. Then Upananda joined and shortly thereafter Vaibhavi and I joined, and two weeks later the others left.<\/p>\n

Upendra went to Fiji and Bali Mardan went to Hong Kong. While I was driving them to the airport I said, \u201cWho\u2019s going to be in charge?\u201d They said, \u201cYou are.\u201d<\/p>\n

And a few months later Prabhupada came. At this time there were virtually no books. There was just that old blue Bhagavad-gita As It Is, and, to be honest, I couldn\u2019t understand it.<\/p>\n

Later, by listening to cassettes and taking notes, I understood the philosophy, but reading Bhagavad-gita was over my head.<\/p>\n

When Prabhupada agreed to come, we let it be known that we needed three thousand dollars for two tickets, and a Baha’i guest, who later was initiated as Raghunatha, donated the money.<\/p>\n

So, after the big Cross Maidan pandal in Bombay, Prabhupada arrived in Sydney with the Deities of Radha-Gopinatha.<\/p>\n

Prabhupada was understandably appalled at our lack of knowledge but he said, \u201cThey are sincere boys and girls,\u201d and he held an initiation ceremony.<\/p>\n

I have always been good with the media and at my invitation three or four television stations crowded into our small storefront with their big cameras and lights, and a hundred people were in a room that could comfortably only fit forty or fifty.<\/p>\n

Prabhupada installed the Deities and we got our brahman initiation. We didn\u2019t know what a brahman thread was.<\/p>\n

Prabhupada said, \u201cWhere are the brahman threads?\u201d and we said, \u201cWhat are brahman threads?\u201d<\/p>\n

So Vaibhavi went downstairs and got a ball of string, tied the threads together, brought them up, and we had our brahman initiation.<\/p>\n

Prabhupada later said that he left the Deities in mleccha-desh.<\/p>\n

During Srila Prabhupada\u2019s visit in 1971, I booked him on a number of national television shows but we\u2019d have to travel quite a distance to get to the studios and then they\u2019d ask superficial questions for five or ten minutes.<\/p>\n

After one interview Prabhupada looked at me, shook his head and said, \u201cThey do not know how to question.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another time Prabhupada and I were sitting in the waiting room to go onto a national TV show, and on a little TV we saw a graphic scene of a woman being violated in the woods.<\/p>\n

Prabhupada was astounded\u2014 incredulous\u2014that these kinds of things were displayed on a public medium.<\/p>\n

He looked at the whole thing and then turned to me and said, \u201cThe world is going to hell,\u201d and shook his head.<\/p>\n

Once, Prabhupada was on the Mike Willesee Show. Mike Willesee was a famous, cynical, acerbic interviewer who would always verbally damage his guests.<\/p>\n

Almost no one went away from the Mike Willesee Show without bleeding from several wounds.<\/p>\n

Prabhupada sat between Mike Willesee and a picture of Krishna. Mike Willesee said, \u201cThis is your Hindu God?\u201d<\/p>\n

Prabhupada said, \u201cNo, this is God. Tell me whatever you\u2019d like to about God as He\u2019s described in your scriptures\u2014His name, fame, qualities, and pastimes. If you\u2019re saying that this is a Hindu God, then tell me about your Christian God, as much information as you\u2019d like to share with me and the audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Willesee said, \u201cThere isn\u2019t much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prabhupada said, \u201cWe have all the information in our scriptures and if you\u2019re interested, we\u2019ll show you that Krishna is not a Hindu God, He\u2019s God, He fits all the qualifications, and you have to accept Him. You failed to present me with a superior description of God. I have His picture right here. You have not even a word to say. So you please accept Him as God right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mike Willesee was devastated. No one had turned him upside down like that before.<\/p>\n

Sometime later, Prabhupada asked me not to book him more television engagements. Even though he was reaching a million people, the questions weren\u2019t deep and the time was too short.<\/p>\n

I canceled a couple of national shows because Prabhupada wanted to give Krishna consciousness in depth, even if to a smaller audience.<\/p>\n

\u2014Caru
\nExcerpt from \u201cMemories-Anecdotes of a Modern-Day Saint\u201d
\nby Siddhanta das<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Prabhupada said: “You failed to present me with a superior description of God. I have His picture right here. You have not even a word to say. So you please accept Him as God right now.”<\/p>\n

Caru das: In a letter to all temple presidents Karandhar wrote, “The etiquette is to invite the guru to your temple. It’s not likely that he’ll come, but invite him.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10650,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recent-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10650"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33325"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36719,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33325\/revisions\/36719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}