Last fall, Malati Manjari dd was asked by Srila Acharyadeva to transcribe relevant parts of his lectures and interviews and organize them into an anthology. Thus, for approximately one year, she has been transcribing his material and categorizing them into various topics. 

The following is an excerpt from the anthology, taken from the "On Srila Prabhupada" category:

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There is a broad philosophical sense of the term “incarnation”.  In a way, we are all, literally, incarnations of Krishna (we are His parts and parcels).  Prabhupada, of course, was an incarnation of Krishna’s potency in a special way.

(Evening darshan, May 2, 2008, in New Vrindavana)

What Srila Prabhupada did was completely Vedic, but not necessarily Hindu.  People’s criticism that he introduced new things is not justified.  There is a certain flexibility within Vedic culture, within boundaries.  Srila Prabhupada drew a boundary for us like Lakshman did for Sita.  People who go outside this boundary have trouble.  If we stay within the boundaries and are flexible, while doing everything within our power to engage people in Krishna Consciousness, in a relevant way, we are safe.

(Bhaktivinode Thakur’s Appearance Day, September 26, 2004, in Los Angeles)

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Question: Prabhupada is a pure devotee. There is a verse that says a pure devotee can see past, present and future.  The question that arises in my mind is about the abuse that happened in the Gurukulas, while Prabhupada was present on the planet.  Since they say that Prabhupada knew past, present and future, how come he could not understand, and stop, what was going on in the Gurukulas?

Answer: The verse you are referring to is in the first Canto, where Vyasadeva is said to be “parävara-jïaù”.1  The term “para-avara” means high and low, cause and effect or past and future. The context is that Vyasa could see the Kali-yuga coming. It doesn’t mean that Vyasadeva could foresee that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama would be locked in a struggle for their nominations.  What this verse means is that he knew what planetary seasons are coming, he knew that Kali-yuga was coming.

Q: So Prabhupada didn’t know what happened?

A: Prabhupada never claimed to have the gift of material prophecy.  He also said that if the guru asks for water, don’t bring milk. It may seem that the more we glorify Srila Prabhupada, the better, but our glorification of him can become inaccurate.  

Q: Sometimes we hear these sincere stories that, “He read my mind and he could tell exactly what I was thinking …”

A: I am obviously vastly inferior to Prabhupada but I have also had people say that to me.  Srila Prabhupada did have extraordinary penetration into people’s minds.  He was a pure devotee and a very experienced human being, but that’s not the same thing as knowing everything that would happen in the future.  Some people are very intuitive and psychic and Krishna can speak through them but that is not the same as seeing the future.  That’s not a power automatically attributed to a pure devotee. Even yourself, if you are raising children, you understand where a child will end up if he continues on a certain path. 

For Prabhupada, there was no pattern for an international spiritual movement.  It was the first time in Prabhupada’s life that he had managed a spiritual movement.  When he opened the gurukula, he had never done that before.  If you look at Prabhupada’s preaching in terms of his practical wisdom, apart from pure theology, a lot came through from his life experience. 

He had no experience of taking on Western disciples and he adjusted after he gained experiences.  He was learning about this world.  He, himself said that it is absurd to think that because someone is a pure devotee, they are materially omniscient.  Prabhupada is a pure devotee and he came from the spiritual word.  I think we should be satisfied with that.  He gave us a perfect path and saved our souls and saved others—that’s not bad. 

What often happens is that devotees create a “Prabhupada” that they need psychologically.  Some devotees, in order to fix their faith, need a material superhero who knows everything.  But that’s not [the description of the guru] in sastra.  If you look at Prabhupada’s dealings with elder Indian people of his generation, it was all give and take on material things.  Prabhupada was a great person, but in terms of his personality, he was not some kind of mystical person.  He was very practical, down-to-earth, and, without any pretensions, a lovable and intelligent person.  He was willing to negotiate.  If you had a good idea, he would listen to you and, if something didn’t work out, he would try something else. 

I personally studied the early history of Christianity, on an academic level, and you can see this dramatic process where Jesus kept being bumped up.  It started with the historical Jesus who was a great guy, a very fascinating, lovable, saintly person, and through time he got bumped up [to the position of God-incarnate]. If you look at the demographics of the Jesus movement even before it was called Christianity, which took a few generations, in the first generation all the followers of Jesus were Jews and Jesus was addressed as “rabbi” in the New Testament. At that level, the people who lived with Jesus never said that he was God. When Jesus was accused before Pontius Pilate, no one ever said he claimed to be God, because that would have been the juiciest accusation of all. What happened is, there was a dramatic demographic shift.  It became very difficult for the followers of Jesus to make new converts among Jews, for various political and theological reasons. There was a Jewish Diaspora around the Roman world, and the Jews had a lot of admirers among monotheists because they had this book they were very serious about. However, it was very rigorous to formally convert. For one, it was a patriarchal society back then. If the father didn’t convert, nobody converted, and if the father converted, he had to make a little “cosmetic surgery” on his body. So there were few takers, plus all the dietary rules. So basically all around the synagogues there were “Friends of Lord Yahweh.” Then Paul made a “breakthrough” by allowing people to become Jews without having to follow certain rules, dietary restrictions and circumcision.  As a result, suddenly, one generation after Jesus, instead of having a Jesus movement led by and composed of Jews, it became a movement of former Pagans, who now controlled and constituted the Jesus movement.  

The Pagan religion in the Mediterranean world, around the time of Jesus, was very comfortable with Polytheism. They grew up with it, so suddenly there were three Gods, or three aspect of God. So you get the Trinity doctrine. Even Augustine admits, it is not in the Bible and it’s not logical, but, [the Christians claimed], it is true.

The Roman World was like a non-stop New Age festival. It was very much like the modern New Age stuff, which is very pagan. There were all kinds of gods, who were worshiped in different ways. In order to be a contender, you had to have a man who became a god. A human being becoming a god was the entry level to be taken serious as a human being. Julius Caesar, when he died, became a god and there were little “Julius Caesar” deities on altars around the Roman world. Augustus Caesar also became a god when he died, not to speak of religious leaders, so when the Jesus movement became a Pagan movement, the Pagans started making themselves comfortable with it and suddenly one God became three Gods, and Jesus was not a prophet any more.  He became a God as,“fully God and fully man,” and all these adjustments started taking place. 

Augustine admitted that these new doctrines were not in the Bible. By the end of the 1st century, everyone in the Jesus movement knew that these things could not be traced to the historical Jesus and that they were not confirmed in the Old Testament.  There was no formal New Testament at that time, so there was a need for a third authority, The Book of John, which is the latest biography of Jesus and, even in its time, was not considered accurate and was believed to be written by some guy, in Western Turkey, a few generations after Jesus. It is the only book which says “I am the only way.” So in the Book of John, the “Greek-speaking Jesus” is quoted as saying, “The Holy Spirit will come in my name and teach you all kinds of amazing new doctrines.” So the Holy Spirit was elevated as a justification for all these new doctrines. This gave the Church a blank check.

The first century was very important in Christian history because the Christian movement was divided between the Trinitarians, who saw Jesus as fully God, fully man, and the Arians, named after a priest called Arius, who basically got it right, who believed that Jesus was an exalted figure, but not God. He was the Son of God. 

It was also in the 4th Century that the Roman powers adopted Christianity. There were four variables in that time that kept colliding in different ways and producing different alignments.  The Roman Empire was divided into the Eastern Empire in Constantinople and the Western Empire in Rome, and then there were the Arians and the Trinitarians. Both Christian groups were trying to get the advantage with the two Roman powers. It led to all kinds of theological and physical wars for power. When religion and government lie in bed together they can produce very strange offspring. So from those wars the Trinitarians emerged victorious. The bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius, who, according to all contemporary, historical accounts was a violent thug, is now a saint, and was considered a great hero.  As a result of this, by the end of the 4th century, it became a major crime to explain Jesus by quoting his own words from the Bible, in which he himself always explained his inferiority to God, in opposition to later doctrines formulated by Church leaders. We can learn from history or repeat history.

So, I am concerned that we not misunderstand Srila Prabhupada.  He encouraged me to use my intelligence for Krishna. I think I am faithful, in the sense that I accept Krishna as everything, I accept that Prabhupada is a pure devotee of Krishna and I accept myself as an eternal servant of both of them trying to serve their mission. In terms of the details, I want to get it right.

(Evening darshan, May 2, 2008, in New Vrindavana)

Question:

We see Prabupada’s murti form next to the Deity form of Radha and Krishna in the temple.  Often visitors ask me if this is a personality cult.  What quality is it, in him, that no one else has (to justify the worship that we offer him)? 

Answer:

First of all, the word puja does not exactly mean worship, in the English language, in the Biblical sense.  We can also see from the VedaBase that Srila Prabhupada often translated it as, to honor.  For example, in India, if you want to say, to honor the father and mother, you would use the word, puja.

It’s very interesting because, if you look into the history of Judeo-Christianity, you can see that they had this big, knock-down, drag-out fight over what is to be considered divine.  In Judaism, to say that something is divine is to say that it’s as good as God.  It’s a very heavy dualistic ontology (the nature of existence and of being).  For them, God is a very different type of being.  In some of the Judaic traditions you can’t even say the name of God.  It’s considered offensive because He is too holy.  However, in the Krishna consciousness movement, we have an Indo-European ontology.  

If you look at Indo-European culture—India and pre-Christian Europe—it’s actually this culture that developed philosophy.  The real problem here is that Middle Eastern culture never developed an independent, systematic, comprehensive, philosophical tradition.  Christianity became philosophical and theological only after being introduced into Europe, and not when it was in Palestine, among the tax-collectors and fishermen.

Augustine, who was such an important figure from Late Antiquity into the Middle Age, was born a Christian.  He was born in the Bible belt of the Roman Empire, in North Africa, but he had rejected it because Christianity in North Africa was fanatical, whereas he himself was philosophical.  He came back to Christianity after he went to Italy and met Christian Platonists—followers of Plato.  It’s really interesting because today we have this born-again stuff—Only the Bible!—but back then, the church leaders in Italy were followers of Plato, they accepted Plato’s philosophy.  And then, later on, in the high Middle Age, you have Thomas Aquinas baptizing Aristotle.  The whole doctrine in the Christian church came from Christianizing Aristotle.  So, they actually recognized Plato and Aristotle’s philosophy as spiritual wisdom and adopted their teachings.

 

The Renaissance (lit. rebirth), was a rebirth of the Greco-Roman civilization, because people came to believe that Greeks had a great civilization.  Later, there was the backlash against The Renaissance by Northern Europe, The Protestant Reformation.  A typical animosity between the North and South.  One of the Protestant ideas was, We don’t want Plato.  We don’t want Aristotle.  We don’t want any logic.  We just want the Bible, so it was Indo-European culture which created a systematic philosophy.  The attitude they have in Christianity against Deity worship came from Protestant Northern Europe as a reaction to the Renaissance in the 16th century.

The reason we honor Prabhupada is because we have a philosophical understanding that the soul is qualitatively non-different from God.  Those who don’t have that philosophical understanding get so spooked about that worship, or honor.  Just think about what the guru-puja is.  For God’s sake, it’s just incense!  What are you so spooked about?

As far as Srila Prabhupada, I would say that we don’t worship him as God.  We honor him.  In the Srimad Bhagavatam it is stated that one should honor every living being.  Concerning what Srila Prabhupada said about honoring him as God, he said that if a policeman pulls you over, you won’t say, “Who are you?  You are not the governor or the president!”  Even though he is just a simple policeman, the weight and power of the whole government is behind him, and if you do not comply with his order, the power of the government will be employed against you, even though he is just a simple guy who may be making only $25000 a year.

So, all Srila Prabhupada is really saying is that, if someone is a legitimate representative of an authority, you’ve got to “pull over” when they ask you to.  Even my mother taught me that.  When I went to school, she told me to listen to the teacher.  It was not like nowadays, where if the teacher chastises you, the father goes to school and gives it to the teacher.  If I came home complaining about the teacher, my mother didn’t want to hear it, unless the teacher did something outside of the boundaries.

That’s all Prabhupada was saying.  He tried to teach us some etiquette.  He didn’t claim to be God, he didn’t claim to be a perfect linguist.  The fact that he is a pure devotee doesn’t mean that he spoke English perfectly.  When he spoke on sastra, topics from the revealed scriptures, then he was an absolute authority, but if he spoke on some mundane topic, then he was not acting as an absolute authority.  He never said that he was an absolute authority for everything.  That is something we created out of our own psychological and cultural needs.  I think that we just have to have maturity and accept that Srila Prabhupada is a pure devotee, who perfectly taught the science of Krishna, who saved us and whom we should serve, but who sometimes acted as a human being.

 

Even in my own life, I have experienced devotees creating exaggerated stories about myself and others.  Once, when I was in Vrindavana, a devotee there, who was famous for telling those kinds of stories, related a story in which one of the great devotees of Lord Caitanya was in some kind of religious debate, and one of the “Brand X” religious leaders responded by creating a boundary wall.  The devotee of Lord Caitanya “flew” over that wall, and, by demonstrating a superior mystic power, he proved that we had the true religion.  Interestingly enough, I happened to read an identical story in a textbook about Sufism, that one of their religious leaders proved the superiority of their religion by flying over a boundary wall.

And even myself.  I had these ecstatic memories of Srila Prabhupada and would tell them over and over again, I said this, and Srila Prabhupada said that, and only years later, when someone handed me the actual transcription of that conversation, I thought, Oops! Is that what Prabhupada said?  I have to admit it.  Our memory is imperfect.

I believe that we have a God-given right to come to a reasonable understanding of things.  Srila Prabhupada once wrote to me that we can attempt to understand how Krishna is the taste of water—that’s philosophical speculation and that we are allowed to do.  But to debate whether, or not, He is the taste of water, would be mental speculation, and that we are not allowed to do.

(Evening darshan, May 2, 2008, in New Vrindavana)

Srila Prabhupada’s legacy is a theologically immovable object.  It is incorruptible because he said the same things, in so many places, and with different perspectives.  He also said so many different things on the same topic.  Probably, he is the most highly documented religious leader in history.

(Evening darshan, May 2, 2008 in New Vrindavana)

When Prabhupada said to his disciples, “I created your good fortune,” we have to understand it not in every sense as literal truth, but according to scripture, that Krishna reciprocates with us according to how we approach Him.  It reveals the mood of a Vaishnava, and also Prabhupada may have wanted to correct some disciples who had some vanity.

(Lord Nityananda—The Nature of God, Bhaktivedanta Manor, England 2007)