LIVING APART FROM HIS FAMILY freed Abhay to pursue support for his mission, and the frequency of his letter writing increased. To a prominent Kanpur industrialist he wrote, “The leaders of India in the name of secular government have engaged themselves in everything foreign. They have carefully set aside the treasure house of India’s spiritual assets and are imitating the Western material way of life. So my idea of preaching in the foreign countries means that they are rather fed up with material advancement of knowledge. They are seeking the guidance of the Vedanta Sutra and Bhagavad Gita in an authentic way. And I am sure India will again go back to spiritual life when the principle is accepted by the Europeans and Americans.” ⁴⁷

Abhay’s letters demanded much from their readers. What would a businessman in 1950s Calcutta make of such a petition, sent by a stranger, written in awkward English, arguing that Westerners were seeking guidance from ancient Sanskrit scriptures, and concluding that Hindus would revert to their spiritual roots if Westerners did so first? The whole idea was insane.

Then again, so were most revolutionary ideas, but the Kanpur industrialist did not reply.

January 1, 1957, was the twenty-first anniversary of Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati’s passing from this world. During the heyday of his mission, printing presses ran day and night in Gaudiya Math centers. Now the presses had been sold, and the institution had divided into many smaller efforts to continue Bhaktisiddhanta’s mission—all within India. Was this the end of prophesies of a worldwide movement, of a global spiritual renaissance rising from the ashes of Kali Yuga? If his guru, a monumental devotee, could not make it happen, who was Abhay to presume to do better? You sent your servants door to door, Abhay wrote in a memorial poem, and the preaching then was strong.

“Now, in your absence,” he wrote, “everything is darkness.”⁴⁸

IN THOSE EARLY DAYS before fame and an international institution, before millions of books and worldwide radio broadcasts of the Hare Krishna mantra, in the days when he was still called Abhay Babu and wore a white dhoti and a shopkeeper’s jacket, A.C. Bhaktivedanta was rebuffed and often reviled for his persistence.

“The history of the West,” he wrote Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on August 4, 1958, “beginning from the time of the Greeks and Romans down to the modern age of atomic war, is a continuous chain of sense-gratifying materialism. The result is that the Westerners were never at peace within 3,000 years of historical records. Therefore, India may not waste her time in imitating the Western way of life. Do you think that horseless carriages or telephones or radio communications or any other such ephemeral facilities of life can bring real prosperity? No, they cannot. It is spiritual knowledge which makes a man really rich, not radio sets and motor cars. If you can spare a little time, I am sure to convince you.”

Nehru did not reply.

If he could not get a reply to a letter sent inside India, how realistic was it to expect a better response in America? Would atheistic foreigners addicted to undignified habits ever accept the Gita’s proposal to restrain their senses and live a life of devotion? Still, Mahaprabhu had predicted that the Holy Names would be sung worldwide, so sensible minds must surely be there—but how to reach them? Discussing scriptures and chanting mantras were nothing new for Krishna’s devotees inside India: They had been doing so long before the tea-drinking sahibs arrived. But America was not India, and even if he did succeed in getting there, it would likely be a lonely visit.

In the fall of 1958, contemplating his poverty and isolation, Abhay wrote a poem.

I am sitting alone in Vrindavana-dhama.

In this mood I am getting many realizations.

I have my wife, sons, daughters, grandsons, everything,

But I have no money, so they are a fruitless glory.

Krishna has shown me the naked form of material nature;

By His strength it has all become tasteless to me today.

He had no idea what lay ahead, only that the past could no longer hold him and that some fundamental rip had occurred in the fabric of his life. His parents had died, his marriage had devolved into domestic nausea, and his commercial efforts had amounted to nil. He recalled the verse in Srimad Bhagavatam where Krishna described his way of reciprocating with the faithful, for those whom he would draw nearer to him, and Abhay added it to his poem:

“I gradually take away all the wealth of those upon whom I am merciful.”

How was I able to understand this mercy of the all-merciful?

Everyone has abandoned me, seeing me penniless—

Wife, relatives, friends, brothers, everyone.

This is misery, but it gives me a laugh. I sit alone and laugh.

In this maya-samsara [material world], whom do I really love?

Where have my loving father and mother gone now?

And where are all my elders, who were my own folk?

Who will give me news of them, tell me who?

All that is left of this family life is a list of names

DONATIONS FOR PRINTING TRICKLED IN, and he hoarded every penny until there was enough money to print another issue of Back to Godhead, the first in two years. In October 1958, 1,000 copies rolled off the grimy letterset press at Kumar Jain’s print shop, and Abhay took once more to the streets, a sixty-four-year-old missionary with pointy white rubber shoes and a stack of magazines.

At night, more dreams came of his spiritual master urging him to accept the sannyasa staff, dreams too frequent to ignore. Despite his hesitations, he wrote to Bhaktivilas Tirtha Maharaj, leader of the Chaitanya Math in Calcutta, requesting his blessings to become a sannyasi and travel to America. Tirtha Maharaj responded: Come here and work under me, then we will decide about your going abroad.

Abhay knew Tirtha Maharaj barely had enough money to maintain his math, let alone print books or finance a mission to America. Shortly after receiving Tirtha Maharaj’s reply in the mail, Abhay met with him in person. “The discussion was loud,” Dr. Verma, Tirtha Maharaj’s secretary recalled.

The day after speaking with Tirtha Maharaj, Abhay called a meeting. Since his guru Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati’s movement had now splintered into a number of independent institutions, Abhay decided to confer with his trusted godbrother B.R. Sridhar Maharaj and his disciple B.S. Govinda. Also in attendance were Abhay’s son, Vrindavan Chandra, and Abhay’s sister, Bhavatarini, whose marriage had not been going well, and who spent a fair amount of time with Abhay’s family. The group heard him out and gave their opinions and support.

“Yes, it would be better if you become a sannyasi,” Bhavatarini said. “Don’t worry about your family. I will take care of them. I have five sons who each have an income. In any case, in your house they do not want that spiritual way of life.”

“Because of my close relationship with your family,” Sridhar Maharaj said, “it would be better if I did not perform the ceremony. Best approach Keshava Maharaj in Mathura. I can then continue to support them in your absence.” Abhay took the recommendation to heart and traveled quickly to Mathura.

“YOU MUST DO IT,” Keshava Maharaj said. “Without accepting the renounced order of life, nobody can become a preacher.”

“I don’t know if I have the strength,” Abhay confessed.

“That strength will come from above,” Keshava Maharaj said, “from your Gurudev acting on you. He will give you strength to carry out his order. You just be the instrument.”⁴⁹

To spread Krishna’s teaching abroad required someone who was an exemplar of the bhakti tradition yet flexible enough to adapt its teachings to a world governed by science and technology. Abhay had that balance. He was a devotee raised in strict Vaishnava fashion yet also educated in chemistry and economics, a person with his feet on the ground and his heart surrendered to God. He had no pretenses about being an emissary sent by Krishna, but his determination to do what his guru had asked was unshakeable, and he agreed with Keshava Maharaj: The strength to do the impossible would come from above. He just had to agree to become the instrument. Entering the sannyasa order was the first step.

On September 17, 1959, in a 50- by 25-foot room on the second floor of the Keshavaji Math, B.V. Narayan Maharaj—a disciple of Keshava Maharaj—prepared the sacrificial fire. Abhay’s head was shaved, his tilak formed impeccable double lines on his nose and forehead, and he was dressed in saffron, the color of those who no longer belonged to the material world. Another disciple of the late Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati, Akinchana Krishna Das, sang prayers. A handful of math residents were in attendance at the sannyasa ceremony, which began at 8 a.m. and continued until 3 p.m., and when it ended there were embraces and tears of congratulations.

He walked out into the heat of summer and took a boat to one of the islands in the middle of the Yamuna River. There, he dragged the boat up onto the sandy shore and walked for a while. Renunciation, it seemed, was worse in the contemplating of it than in the actual doing. “Have the trees forgotten to create fruits for you to eat?” sage Sukadev declared in the Srimad Bhagavatam. “If you are tired, are there no open fields for your bed? And if you are thirsty, are there no rivers to quench your thirst?”

He paused to push sand into the shape of a small hill and stuck his bamboo sannyasa staff in the middle of the mound, like the American flag at Iwo Jima or young King Arthur’s sword, Excalibur, set in its stone. He raised his arms to the sky and shouted, “Haribol! Haribol!”⁵⁰ Then he retrieved his staff and made his way back to shore.

In Vrindavan, no one called him Abhay Babu anymore. He was Swami Maharaj, or Swamiji for short.