Robert Nelson and Srila Prabhupada made an odd combination. Srila Prabhupada was elderly and dignified and was a deep scholar of the Bhagavatam and the Sanskrit language, whereas Robert was artless in both Eastern and Western culture and inept in worldly ways.
In recent years thousands of religious figures have taken up faith healing. They use all kinds of approaches, but basically they claim that through their charismatic prayer and laying on of hands, God acts: He cures everything from cavities to brain tumors, releases sexual inhibitions, and even increases earning capacity.
Prabhupada was convinced if he could start a place where people could come and associate with a pure devotee, the genuine God conscious culture of India could begin in America. But because his plans depended on obtaining a building in Manhattan, his goal seemed unreachable.
I read with much dismay your reflections (“Healer, Heal Thyself”) in Vol. 13, No. 9. What gives you the right to criticize faith healers and charismatics? Most of them that I know have never killed anything in their life….
Old age means a bit more than having to cut out baseball and tennis. It means we’re going to die. So before we get too far along in years, we have to start a spiritual fitness program. We have to exert ourselves strenuously for self-realization.
The incarnation for Kali-yuga is Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, who is also called Gauranga or Gaurasundara because of His golden hue. His complexion is golden, and His activities engage everyone in chanting Hare Krishna.
Gurukul students will be the best educated children in society. Not only will they have knowledge of math and English and history, but they’ll also know their relationship with God. They won’t need material things to keep them happy. They’ll be very strong.
According to the 1973 United States Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, only in the last twelve weeks of pregnancy does the growing fetus have a right to live despite the mother’s wish to abort him.
The precious Bhagavatam has been handed down in disciplic succession, from guru to disciple, in an unbroken chain, and today Srila Prabhupada, spiritual master of ISKCON, is delivering it in turn to his disciples.
It’s difficult to understand how someone on the path of spiritual realization can reject the things most people find enjoyable. Renunciation of worldly pleasure is possible only if one experiences a higher satisfaction.
Srila Prabhupada has been extensively traveling. Satsvarupa dasa Gosvami traveled with him and kept a personal diary. These are excerpts from that diary.
For a typical initiation, about one hundred devotees gather in the temple. The devotees to be initiated—perhaps a dozen of them—sit in two rows, facing the devotee designated to be the priest of the ceremony.
The universal form is the form of the Supreme Lord in which one can see everything in the universe, all at once. In the universal form, one can see past, present and future. One can see all the demigods of the material creation, and all other living beings.
Gurukula, a school for children ages five to fifteen, was founded by ISKCON in 1971. It is the only school teaching one how to be eternal, blissful and full of knowledge.
We should not be surprised if Krishna had married sixteen million wives, for Krishna, as the Supreme Personality of Godhead, is unlimited. Indeed, we may note with wonder that Krishna married only 16,108 wives.
Kamsa heard the cries of the newborn child as his death knell, and he rushed in to kill him. But the baby flew up into the air and assumed the form of the demigoddess Maya. “You rascal,” she said to Kamsa. “The child who will kill you has already been born elsewhere. You cannot kill Him.”
Krishna’s pastimes go on as a kind of road show, visiting one planet after another. Not only does Krishna travel; He brings with Him His mother, His father, His cowherd friends, the gopis, the cows and the land of Vrndavana.
Many of us feel that this divorcing of the personal or devotional from learning, from wisdom, is a bad thing. And so I think we have a great deal to learn about the religions of India from people who have taken a direct, more involved and, I think, more complete and total approach to the things we read about in books.
Human education must not merely instruct us how to prepare for a job or how to speculate upon the imperfect views of great thinkers. Rather, it must enable us to solve the problems of life.
This beautiful Bhagavatam is sufficient in itself for God realization. As soon as one attentively and submissively hears the message of Bhagavatam, he becomes attached to the Supreme Lord.