Nama Om…
Hari Haraya Naama Krishna Yadavaya Namaha Gopal Govinda Ram Sri Madhusudhan
Mukham karoti vaachalam…

(Transmission started suddenly without the beginning)

And he kneeled down and started cutting the rice. This is how you do it? They said yes. Ha! All the devotees started cutting the rice. Then BSST said, I will do it! Then all the devotees got down and started doing that. When the workers saw that, they came back to work! So similarly, there is a festival called Govardhan puja and you all know that. In India, in Mayapur, in Bengal, they make a ountain of rice and then they serve that to the public. So a dog’s team and ate a portion of the rice. How can they eat the whole as it is huge! 2-3 tons of rice. So then they all went to the guru maharaj SBSSPT and asked, what to do? The dog has eaten the annakuta mountain of rice. He said, really? Show me! Then they went and showed him, here is the the place. He said, that is the place, the exact place? They said yes. Then he took from there and ate it. Ha! Ha! Srila BSST ki jai! One day he was walking along with a number of disciples and suddenly he stopped. He was gazing at the moon and everybody was looking at him and the moon. Then they wondered what he was looking at the moon for. And then he turned to the devotees and he said, in the moon the people have become bahirmukh, they have turned their faces away from Krishna, we must go and preach to them. Haribol! We have all heard from Srila Prabhupad that how people in the moon live in subtle dimensions. And it is considered one of the heavenly planets. So Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur had his vision that what was going on in the different planets of the universe. In some of the works about his life it is mentioned that he was a manjari from Goloka Vrndavan, He came down to serve Lord Krishna Caitanya. So sometimes he would go into the deity room, close the door behind him and talk to the deities. They would talk with him. So Prabhupad said that he was dedicated to following the instructions of his guru maharaj. Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur said to make a GBC and to run the society under a GBC and that all the sanyasis, brahmacharis and devotees should work together cooperatively. So they didn’t do this for very long and eventually split up. So Prabhupad he was determined that in Iskcon he would follow the instructions of BSST. That is why he established the GBC, he made book distribution so important because this was the instruction fo BSST. And many other things that he did, or all of them are basically carrying out the orders of his spiritual master. So I will give a class as usual on the compilation of the KCB but I would like to send a Bengali message to Mayapur. So if you can kindly bear with me for five minutes or so I will speak in Bengali.

Guru maharaj spoke in Bengali. (The transmission for us was stopped here)

(Again transmission started abruptly)

Therefore, they don’t consider us no better than a piece of grass or straw.

Please hear us dear Vishwambhar. Our bodies are always burning, nowhere to hear the glories of chanting the holy names of Krishna. So the desire less devotees had heard the most horrible, envious statements opposed to chanting of Krishna’s names. So they were both afflicted by the famine of Krishna kirtan and the formidable three fold miseries of life. Thus they passed their time in constant mental distress.

Now Krishna has exhibited His pleasure with everyone. So He has admitted you on this path of Krishna bhakti.

We are certain that all the atheists will be defeated by You.

Therefore, we pray that You live forever and chant the holy names of Krishna. From You will be revealed the qualities of Krishna to everyone.

The Lord accepted the blessings of the devotees on His head. For by the blessings of the devotees one gets pure devotion to Krishna.

This is the end of the chapter. Krishna Caitanya, the Supreme Personality of Godhead as a Devotee, in the matter of “the devotees bless Vishwambhar.” Hare Krishna!

Also in Melbourne, Australia, the day after Christmas, they observe the Snan Yatra every year. And there Jagannath Baladev Subhadra were bathed by all the devotees of the congregation. In addition to the offerings of sweet meats and other things. They prepared 13 flavors of chida and dahi, chida and condensed milk. So it is like a mini Panihati festival too. Plus, it was Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur Prabhupad’s thiro bhaav, so they fast till noon. And in the video I was seeing the auction, how people who had the pots, they are going out and giving the different devotees little sample of the flavor. So I am very happy to see how many people came and participated in this special festival.

Today I also had voice therapy. I have been given some additional consonants to practice, T and D, T and D, Kha and Gha. To name a few. So like this they are systematically training me how to use the tongue and the mouth and the vocal cords. Are there any questions?

Question: Shuvta Dey Babu: Could you please explain the reason of establishing ISKCON? Why our Prabhupad did not made a branch of Gaudiya Math?

GM: It is an interesting question. Prabhupad had joined or stayed with several Gaudiya matths. In each Gaudiya Matth they had one acharya. But Prabhupad was preaching so nice and many people would approach him and wanted to hear his instruction and may be some wanted initiation. And the acharya would tell him, why don’t you open your own? Because he did not want any competition. He would go to some other temple and the same thing would happen. So eventually he started his own society. Since he was preaching in the west, to have an English name made more sense. Nobody knew what Gaudiya Matth meant in the west. The International Society for Krishna Consciousness is something that people could relate with. When Prabhupad came back to Mayapur and bought some land, he called all the Gaudiya matth heads and invited them why don’t we work together, as Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur wanted. So he also told them you have this ashram which is not finished, you have these other things you have not finished, I will give you money, I will give you foreign devotees. So it will be very attractive in villages to have foreigners. But they were not interested. So it is not that there was one Gaudiya matth – Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Prabhupad Thakur had established 64 matths. But they divided up and two three took set number of branches. Others established their own temples, so like this, to whom do you be a branch? So in Iskcon Prabhupad made that there will be many gurus, and people can take initiation from whoever they want. But in Gaudiya Matth each institution had one guru and they had to take initiation from him or get lost! Or go somewhere else! So these were the differences in five points. Ok?

Transcribed by Jayaraseshwari devi dasi
26 December 2018