I thank you Bhakti Caru Swami Maharaj for the eloquent, brilliant presentation of the genuine love of your heart for our beloved guru maharaja His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada . Your words were overflowing with realizations born out of deep affection and total surrender. I was thinking that Srila Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur, and Bhakti Vinod Thakur were personally from within your heart speaking through you to glorify Srila Prabhupada. Thank you very much.
SRILA PRABHUPADA’S TAKING OF SANYAS THE CULMINATION OF HIS FIRST MEETING WITH BHAKTI SIDDHANTA SARASWATI THAKUR

I thank you Bhakti Caru Swami Maharaj for the eloquent, brilliant presentation of the genuine love of your heart for our beloved guru maharaja His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada . Your words were overflowing with realizations born out of deep affection and total surrender. I was thinking that Srila Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur, and Bhakti Vinod Thakur were personally from within your heart speaking through you to glorify Srila Prabhupada. Thank you very much.
SRILA PRABHUPADA’S TAKING OF SANYAS THE CULMINATION OF HIS FIRST MEETING WITH BHAKTI SIDDHANTA SARASWATI THAKUR
Yesterday, was the 50th anniversary of Srila Prabhupada’s pastime of entering into the sanyas order of life. In 1959, Viswaroop mahotsav in the Keshav Gaudiya Math in Mathura, Srila Prabhupada took these vows. And often times he would tell the story, how over many years, while he was in the grihasta and later the vanaprastha ashram, his guru maharaj, Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur was appeaing to him in his dreams. And in those dreams his gurudev would be appealing to him to leave everything else behind and become a sanyasi. And Srila Prabhupada said that “I was thinking this is horrible. To leave my children, my family and everything else and become a mendicant”. He had so many responsibilities.
SRILA PRABHUPADA’S FIRST MEETING WITH BHAKTI SIDDHANTA SARASWATI THAKUR
Bhakti Caru Swami Maharaj explained the history of the relationship between Srila Prabhupada and his gurudev. 1922 on that rooftop, Ultadanga junction road. The very first Gaudiya math preaching center of Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur, he received that order “You are intelligent young man, you should take the message of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu to the whole world, in the English language.” In response Srila Prabhupada in a very respectful but very serious way challenged Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur, “Who will listen to us?” Srila Prabhupada was in the attire of one who follows Gandhi for independence from Britain. He said “Until we get swaraj, independence, who is going to listen to us.” Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur said “Politics is always changing. Who is in charge of a country is always changing. But Krishna Consciousness that we are the eternal soul, our eternal love for Krishna is the eternal truth. We have no time to wait for political adjustments. This is always the first and foremost, duty of all living beings”.
BHAKTI SIDDHANTA SARASWATI THAKUR’S INSTRUCTIONS TO SRILA PRABHUPADA
Now Srila Prabhupada was a serious follower of Gandhi. And just for Gandhi’s sake he gave up getting his degree. He had no evidence that he even went there even, taking the courses. He gave up so much. But yet, when he heard this sadhu speaking the truth on that roof top, Srila Prabhupada told us,”I accepted him in my heart as my Guru Maharaj.” He surrendered his life. And how he did this is very instructive for all the devotees. Because there were no external formalities, as His Holiness has already explained, Srila Prabhupada didn’t even take even Harinaam Initiation, till over 10 years later. But in his heart he had surrendered his body, mind, words, life and soul to his Gurudev. And he was pondering on this instruction. Externally he carried on with his duties to take care of his family, but in his heart he was a surrendered disciple. He was not getting any honour or prestige, but he had that burning passion to serve and he was just waiting for the time. He took 1st and 2nd initiation at the same time in Allahabad, at Rupa Goswami, Prayag Gaudiya Math. Before that, he went to Koshi and listened to Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur for many hours speaking and everybody else was going out to different holy places but he just sat at Gurudev’s feet and listened. And when it came time for his initiation nobody really knew him that well. But Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur said, “Yes, I will accept him, he likes to hear. He does not go away.” He met his Guru Maharaj at Radha Kund where his Guru Maharaj said, “If you get money, print and distribute books.” He started a temple here in Mumbai, along with two of his God Brothers. He was still a grihastha, His Gurudev came for the installation. His God Brother said, “Guru Maharaj, Abhay Babu should be the president of this temple.” And Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur he responded, “Let him be as he is, He will do everything in time.” He understood if what was in the heart of Srila Prabhupada. We don’t know of so many more meetings. Perhaps Prabhupada talked about a few other meetings. But there weren’t that many. In Gaudiya Math Prabhupada was very highly respected because of his devotion, his scholarship, his beautiful Mridanga playing and his kirtan. But he was never considered a leader. Srila Prabhupada took the order of his Gurudev so deeply into his heart. And then years later, Prabhupada said, “So many of your sannyasi and Grihastha disciples are doing so much service with you, they are always with you. I am a grihastha with wife and all these children, how can I serve you? And not much time before Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur left this world for Goloka, he wrote back the same instruction he gave him the first day they met. You are an intelligent young man, spread this mission of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu to the western world. This was his last instruction to Prabhupada. Now what happened between that!
PRABHUPADA’S FAITH IN HOLYNAME
Sent the most scholarly empowered and best of his sanyasis to the west to spread Krishna Consciousness and some of the very powerful brahmacharis also and they went ans they really tried and they couldn’t do much, it was very difficult and Srila Bhakti Siddhantha Sarasvati a major amount of money of the whole the gaudia math was going to them. The majority of all money collected was being sent to help them establish something.  Still they tried with their hearts and souls but it just wasn’t possible to do much and Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur was very saddened and for years he was sending people. So here the biggest best sanyasis, scholars, preachers were sent and they couldn’t establish much. And Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur after all that writes a letter to Prabhupada to spread Krishna Consciousness in the western world in the English language. He knew that Prabhupada had the capacity and the potency, because prabhupda had such deep faith and such deep surrender in his guru the holy name…and perhaps no one else even the close associates could recognize that.
PRABHUPADA “PULLED” INTO SANYAAS
And then some years later Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur is appearing repeatedly in the dreams of Srila Prabhupada. “Take sanyaas!” He hadn’t got all his children married yet, Prabhupada was very traditional, very responsible. We read from all those years of his grihastha life that he was extremely responsible towards his family and extremely committed to his guru’s mission at the same time. Take Sanyaas at that time, Prabhupada said, “Horrible!” But he kept coming.  And in one beautiful lecture, it was taped, Prabhupada cried. You could hear his voice chocked, weeping as he was speaking. Practically my Guru Maharaj pulled me out of house hold life. He pulled me into Sanyaas. And Prabhupada when would say pulled he was crying, appreciating the mercy of his Guru maharaj. And when he was living at Radha Damodar, doing his writing of Srimad Bhagavatam,1959, he was doing Back To Godhead, his godbrother said “Bhaktivedanta babu, you must take Sanyaas” and Prabhupada said I heard my Guru Maharaj speak through him and he forced me to take sanyaas. 50th anniversary why did he do it? Only to be an instrument of compassion of our parampara!
PRABUPADA FULFILLS THE MISSION
An interesting thing on that day, the temple room was filled with Indian Bengali speaking people. He was asked to speak by Bhakti Pragyan Goswami Maharaj and Prabhupada spoke in English and only may be 3 or 4 people in room could understand English, nobody else did, and there was nobody translating for him. .Srila Prabhupada speaks Hindi, fluent Bengali, he spoke English because it was symbolic, it was personification. He was taking Sanyaas only for this purpose, to carry out the order of his Gurudev. And in the August of 1965 he went to his Gurudev’s Samadhi and spent the day there praying and crying, went to Advaita bhavan praying for mercy. And then he boarded on Friday the 13th of August 1965, he boarded the Jaladuta. And the amazing thing is none of his Godbrothers or any important people came to see him off, because nobody really believed he could do it. Just his youngest son, not even his other family members bothered to come, his youngest son Vrindavan Candra and a few people who just worked for the shipping company, that’s all. One was a Muslim, 5 people. 70 years old, fourty rupees, how Srila Prabhupada had such deep substance of love and compassion and faith in his Gurudev.
PRABHUPADA ARRIVES IN THE WEST
Came off the Jaladuta in New York after having heart attacks and sea sickness. When he first came off there was nobody there to greet him, he just started walking. Where is he going to go, what is he going to do, seventy year old Bengali man! And where the boats are, it’s a very rough place and Prabupada said he’d looked right, he’d looked left and he was thinking. And were the boats are is a very rough place. Srila Prabhupada said I looked right, looked left. He was thinking, he had the holy name, the order of guru and his boxes of books. So he had great faith, in the Bhagvatam, mercy of Guru and we know how in the beginning stages, people were threathning to kill him, people robbed him, it was cold. But Srila Prabhupada had that faith, his determination, his compassion was relentless. And he established our movement.
THE PREACHING EXPLOSION IN THE WESTERN WORLD
And what happened next was historically remarkable. How he empowered and inspired people. We talked about how very empowered sannyasis who were vaishnavas by birth. Who knew Sanskrit, Bengali, meticulous English. Who were trained, were trained in the highest principles of preaching, etiquettes, everything, they were going to these western countries. And no matter how hard they tried, it was not very successful. Srila Prabhupada was taking people. That famous story Srila Prabhupada says, sometimes a person picks up a stick, then picks up a gourd, a pumpkin, a wire and puts them all together and makes an instrument. He said that how I started the movement. I picked up you and you and you and put you all together and asked you to preach. Srila Prabhupada what did he had to work with. They were not people from Brahmin families. He just took people who were meat eaters, who were having illicit sex, who were taking so many intoxications, who is gambling their life away, who were confused. And Srila Prabhupada transformed them in to vaishnavas. And within couple of years, by his example, by his compassion and by his purity he gave them the power to go out to other countries and start centers and all of them were flourishing.  How is that possible. Sivananda went to Germany. Which was very rough place in those days, he started a center. Mukunda maharaj and Janaki, sent them to San Fransisco, they started a center. Another went to a new country, Montreal and Canada, they started a temple. Malati, Yamuna, Janaki, Mukunda, Shyamsunder Prabhu, Gurudas, sent them to London, another center. They were all very successful centers. Then sent someone to Paris and they started a temple. And these are some of the hardest places to preach in the planet. And the surprising thing was that these devotees were not so advanced, they were not scholarly, and they didn’t even have books to read. They had only the first three volumes of the first canto of Srimad Bhagvatam and the abridged edition of Bhagavad Gita to read.
SRILA PRABHUPADA EMPOWERING HIS DISCIPLES
And they were listening to Prabhupada’s lectures not very long. They had been devotees for a year or two, with no samskaras of the past. And yet they were able to successfully establish Krishna Conciousness in a very profound and big way. And the amazing thing is that all of these devotees who went to all of these foreign lands, none of them had any money when they went. They all went with nothing. Gaudiya Math sannyasis were getting lots of money to start centres and here a just some new devotees, some foreign hippies became devotees who are just struggling to follow the principles and chant their rounds and they don’t have any money, all they have is inspiration and example of Prabhupada and they are starting centres and there are hundereds and hundereds of people coming everywhere. Transforming their lives, becoming devotees, how is that possible? Some of these people did not even last in their own Krishna Conciousness. Of course, their service was an eternal glory. Some of them fell away, but Prabhupada on Jaladuta prayed to be a puppet and because he won so much affection, so much faith and so much love from these people that they were willing to be his puppets. And even without any qualifications at all, they were able to do, what the greatest sannyasis could not. What the greatest scholars could not. Srila Prabupada was asked,”What is our qualification to do all these things and to have all these things?” Prabhupada said very humbly, “You have not qualifications. I have made your qualifications.” And he was giving the qualification. His desire to preach Krishna Consciousness was manifesting in a big way in all of these cities and he sent people to Africa, He sent people to the middleeast, to Iran, to Muslim countries, to Turkey. He sent people to South America, he sent people to Australia. Eventually he sent someone to China. He personally went to Russia. He sent a girl there saying, “Go there, marry a person in Russia, so you could stay there and preach.” Factually it was Prabupada’s love for his spiritual master that was empowering them to fulfill Prabhupada’s mission. It is really a miracle how it happened. Prabhupada was traveling all over the world and during Prabhupda’s lifetime all of his temples were flourishing. They were over flowing with devotees and millions of books being printed and going out. And how was it done? Because these devotees that Prabhupada inspired were willing to risk their lives without expecting anything in return to go to some of the most dangerous and difficult places on the planet to teach Lord Caitanya’s message. Prabhupad’s love for humanity and his love for Krsna has that power. And those devotees of Prabhupad who really took his instructions as their lives and souls, and stuck to those teachings – like Srila Bhakti Caru Swami Maharaj, mature – representing Srila Prabhupad.
SRILA PRABHUPADA’S GRATITUDE
Srila Prabhupada was especially so proud and so grateful for every single effort that any devotee did to help him. And when a person who is so pure, so surrendered and so divine as Srila Prabhupada, who is so ultimately dear to Krishna, is grateful to someone, you know, that Krishna’s mercy is so specially showered on that person. Anyway, anyone in any form assisted Prabhupada, he was so… and he is so deeply grateful. And that is one of the reasons why we hold such profound value in the society that Prabhupada established.
SRILA PRABHUPADA’S CONTRIBUTION TO PARAMPARA
The International Society for Krishna Consciousness is Prabhupada’s personal contribution to our parampara. The institution that is, as Srila Bhakti caru Maharaj said, the institution is created by him to fulfill prophecy of Mahaprabhu and Nityananda Prabhu, the vision of Bhakti Vinod takur, the mission of Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Takur. To spread this mercy of the rarest, highest nectar of love of God like water all over the world, not considering who is fit or who is unfit. And understanding it from this perspective that anyone who is trying to help in this movement that Prabhupad created, is going to be so specially and dearly blessed by Lord Krsna. Why? Because, Prabhupad is so grateful to anyone who helps.
PRABHUPADA WAS BEGGING
Srila Prabhupad signed on that prayer on Jaladuta – “Your insignificant beggar, A C Bhakti Vedanta Swami. He was feeling that way. That was how he was presenting himself to Krsna. He came with nothing. And anyone that time and anyone today who helps him. Beggars are really grateful. Beggars are grateful for anything. Prabhupad was begging us to assist him in his mission. On Srila Bhakti Siddhanta Sarasvati Takur’s disappearance day, on several occasions, Prabhupad was crying and begging us – he knew he didn’t have long. He was begging us to carry this on. He started at 70. Even a couple of years later, he would say, “I don’t know how much longer I have to live”. Prabhupad had so much faith. I think it was about 69 he got really sick and he went to India, he just had a temple in San Francisco
THE TEST OF LOSING SRILA PRABHUPADA
He just had a temple in San Fransisco and New York and they are very new devotees. Everyone was just one or two or three years at the most. And he was very very sick and he was going to Vrindavan. And when I go to Vrindavan, Krishna will decide, whether I leave this world, because that’s the best place to leave or the best place to regain my health.
So when he was leaving, they really didn’t know if they would ever see their Gurumaharaj again. But yet Srila Prabhupada had great faith that they were going to spread this movement all over the world and carry on. And they were only a few people. Yes, Prabhupada would literally beg us, “Please carry on the mission of my spiritual master. Because I may leave at anytime.”
And in 1977, when he did leave us, it was absolutely devastating. But still, his disciples, because he begged us, and empowered us, it kept going. And because they were young and taking on such serious responsibilities many mistakes were made. Those mistakes had quite serious repercussions. But still by Prabhupada’s love, faith, dedication to Bhakti Siddhanta Sarasvati’s order, the mission remained intact and came through those obstacles. And we see all over the world, some places it is really growing. Some places the potential is fantastic, just waiting. But for all of you, 1st generation, second generation, third generation and all other generations, anyone who simply remains faithful to this mission whatever difficulties may be and endeavours to assist Srila Prabhupada in this mission, Srila Prabhupada heart is flooding over with such gratitude. And we have faith that there is no greater way to reciprocate with Lord Caitanya, Radha Gopinath’s mercy, then pleasing Srila Prabhupada.
Prabhupada just wanted us to chant the holy names, to show our love by how we cooperate with each other and follow these regulative principles and do what we can to give the example to the world of true vaisnavas. When  we represent Prabhupada sincerely, his potency can manifest through even the least of us to manifest the miracle of Prabhupada’s love.
On this day, from my heart of hearts, I thank Srila Bhakti Caru Swami Maharaj for being with us and giving that brilliant presentation. I thank all of you. You are all Prabhupada’s beloved, beloved, beloved children. Please be grateful and show our gratitude by our willingness to follow and our willingness to serve.
Thank you very much.
Srila Prabhupad ki Jai.