1. Readers will find variations in titles such as Das, Dasa, das, dasa, etc. I have used whatever form the interviewee preferred.
2. There are differences of opinion among scholars concerning what constitutes “Vedic.” The prevailing attitude has been to include only the four original Vedas and their immediate supplements: the Brahmanas, Aranyakas, and Upanishads. Prabhupada’s use of the term “Vedic” included later scriptures, which he described as “in pursuit of the Vedic version,” including the Puranas, Itihasas, and commentaries. He based his understanding of “Vedic” on the writings of predecessor acharyas such as Jiva Goswami, who in Tattva Sandarbha argues that, particularly in the current Age of Kali, the Puranas rank higher in importance than the original Vedas.
3. For a thought-provoking exploration of Vaishnavism’s potential impact on world affairs, see Klaus K. Klostermaier, “Will India’s Past Be America’s Future? Reflections on the Caitanya Movement and Its Potentials,” Journal of Asian and African Studies 15, nos. 1–2 (Jan. and Apr. 1980): 94–103. Klostermaier argues that European religions have largely ignored the question of consciousness, which is central to the Krishna-conscious experience and thus “ahead not only of traditional Western religiosity but also of the modern sciences.”
4. British census figures from 1881 and 1901 concluded that one-fifth of Bengal were Chaitanya Vaishnavas, including most of Calcutta’s wealthy, influential families. Janardan Chakravarti describes Bengal Vaishnavism as “a mighty social force, released by [Chaitanya,] the greatest-ever humanist that India produced” (Bengal Vaishavism and Sri Chaitanya, The Asiatic Society, 1975, 29).
5. Tamal Krishna Goswami, A Living Theology of Krishna Bhakti: Essential Teachings of A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, ed. by Graham M. Schweig (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 90. From his mother, Prabhupada acquired a practical approach to problem solving, cooking skills, and faith in the traditional life of Vaishnavas. “If Gour Mohan is to be credited for encouraging Prabhupada’s early practice, solidified later through the doctrinal instruction of his guru,” writes Tamal Krishna Goswami, “it is Rajani who deserves recognition for much of his enculturation vital to both practice and belief.” Goswami concludes that both parents together instilled in their son “the ritual and experiential aspects of Krishna bhakti.”
6. In the Vedic era of India’s past, devoted King Indradyumna wished to worship deities of Krishna and his siblings. The king appointed renowned sculptor Vishwakarma to carve the deities from massive blocks of wood. Vishwakarma accepted on condition that no one interrupt him before the task was completed. He began his work behind closed doors. Two weeks later, no longer able to contain his eagerness, King Indradyumna opened the door to Vishwakarma’s workshop. The master craftsman stormed from the room in disgust, leaving the deities unfinished—rough-hewn massive blocks of wood with big round eyes and no hands or feet. Dismayed, the king prayed to cosmic architect, Brahma, for guidance. Within his heart, the king heard Brahma’s reply: the images would be accepted as they were, in their unfinished form, by all the world.
7. Alexander Duff, India and Indian Missions, Including Sketches of the Gigantic System of Hinduism, Both in Theory and Practice (Edinburgh: John Johnstone, 1839), 209–11. The anti-Krishna propaganda had been going on for nearly one hundred years. “The incarnations of Hinduism are the most extravagant caricatures of truth. . . . Take by far the happiest, fairest and most perfect of them; namely, Vishnu, in the form of Krishna. . . .What was the character of this incarnate divinity? In his youth, he selected sixteen thousand shepherdesses, with whom he ‘sported away his hours in the gay revelries of dance and song’, as well as in all the wantonness and levities of unhallowed pleasure. In a quarrel with a certain monarch respecting some point of precedency, he became so enraged that he cut off the head of his rival. He was in the habit of practicing all manner of roguish and deceitful tricks. With the most deliberate acts of falsehood and of theft he was more than once chargeable. And at his door must be laid the guilt of many abominations over which Christian purity must ever draw the veil. What a contrast to all this is the character of our incarnate Redeemer!”
8. Sardella and Ghosh, “Modern Reception and Text Migration of the Bhagavata Purana.” Chap. 12 in The Bagavata Purana: Sacred Text and Living Tradition. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013). The statement is excerpted from an 1862 judgment against the Vaishnava community known as the Vallabhaites.
9. James Kennedy, Christianity and the Religions of India (Mirzapore: Orphan Schools Press, 1874).
10. Letter to Gopal Krishna, May 11, 1972.
11. Letter to Gargamuni, May 5, 1968.
12. Mundaka Upanishad, 1.2.12.
13. Mahaprabhu: “Great Master,” an honorific title referring to Chaitanya. The preeminent work on his life and teachings is the seventeenth-century Bengali biography Chaitanya Charitamrita by Krishnadas Kaviraj Goswami. Prabhupada’s multivolume edition was first published in the mid-1970s.
14. Condemning Chaitanya Vaishnavism with faint praise, Vivekananda told the Chicago gathering, “Is it a sin if a man can realize his divine nature with the help of an image—would it be right to call that a sin? No, nor even when he has passed that stage should he call it an error. Man passes from truth to truth, from lower to higher truth . . . Images, crosses and crescents are simply so many symbols to hang spiritual ideas on. Those that do not need it have no right to say it is wrong . . . Idolatry in India does not mean anything horrible. It is the attempt of undeveloped minds to grasp high spiritual truths . . .”
15. Eric Sharpe, “Hindu-Christian Dialogue in Europe,” in Hindu-Christian Dialogue: Perspectives and Encounters, ed. Harold Coward (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1993). Sharpe offers insightful comments about the anti-Hindu history of America and Europe.
16. Antipathy toward Hindus would grow more pronounced with publication in 1927 of Katherine Mayo’s notorious best seller Mother India, which sensationalized wife burnings and other anomalies of Indian culture. In 1929, when poet Rabindranath Tagore arrived in Los Angeles, immigration officials treated him with such disdain that he canceled his tour. “Jesus could not get into America,” he remarked, “because he would be [branded] an Asiatic.”
17. Abhay Charan to Narayan Maharaj, 28 September 1966, in Letters from America, 17.
18. In 1896, Bhaktivinode published Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, His Life and Precepts, a small book that portrayed Chaitanya Mahaprabhu as a champion of “universal brotherhood and intellectual freedom.” He sent the book to scholars and universities in England and North America. Copies were included in the libraries of McGill University in Montreal, the University of Sydney in Australia, and the Royal Asiatic Society of London. The book also made its way to prominent scholars, including Oxford Sanskrit scholar Monier Monier-Williams, and earned a favorable review in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.
19. Bhakti Vikasa Swami, Sri Bhaktisiddhanta Vaibhava: The Grandeur and Glory of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura, vol. 1, 349–359.
20. Rupa Goswami, Bhakti-rasamrita-sindhu 1.2.255. “When one is not attached to anything, but at the same time accepts everything in relation to Krishna, one is rightly situated above possessiveness.”
21. Examples of women leaders frequently cited from Chaitanya’s period include Jahnavi Devi, Basudha Devi, and Sita Devi, all of whom became respected preceptors and organizers of the movement. Also noted are Madhavi Dasi, author of the Sanskrit commentary Purushottamadevanataka; Subhadra Dasi, author of the Bengali text Anangakadambavali; Vrindavati Dasi, an Oriyan Vaishnavi who composed the Purnatmachandrodaya; and Hemlata Dasi, daughter of Shrinivasa Acharya and an eminent scholar of the Bhagavata Purana. The community also raised no objections to widows remarrying nor was their choice of partners limited by caste restrictions.
22. The five primary rasas of love for God receive detailed treatment in Prabhupada’s Nectar of Devotion, 23, 271–357.
23. Literally “the ocean of ambrosial rasa.” Prabhupada titled his translation of this work Nectar of Devotion.
24. Bhakti Vikasa Swami, Sri Bhaktisiddhanta Vaibhava, vol. 1, 142.
25. Ibid, 218.
26. Ibid, 215.
27. F.S. Growse, Mathura: A District Memoir, part 1, 123. Cited in Chatterjee, Srikrsna Caitanya: A Historical Study on Gaudiya Vaisnavism
(New Delhi: Associated Publishing Company, 1983), 96.
28. Quoted by Sivarama Swami: http://www.sivaramaswami.com/en/2007/03/29/prabhupada-in-vrindavan-2/.
29. Visvanath Chakravarti Thakur: Vraja-ritti-chintamani, cited in Mahanidhi Swami, Vidaghda Madhava (Vrindavan: Rasbihari Lal & Sons, 2006), 11.
30. Mahanidhi Swami, Vidaghda Madhava (Vrindavan: Rasbihari Lal & Sons, 2006), 37.
31. A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Srimad Bhagavatam, 12 vols. (Los Angeles: The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1972), 3.2.29.
32. Mulaprakrti Devi Dasi, Our Srila Prabhupada: A Friend to All—Early Contemporaries Remember Him (New Delhi: Brij Books, 2004), 49–50.
33. Raghunath Das Goswami, Sri Vilapa-Kusumanjali, verse 6.
34. A name for Krishna, meaning one who takes away all material desire and gives himself in return.
35. Rupa Goswami, Sri Vidagdha Madhava, Kusakratha dasa, trans. (Vrindavan: Rasbihari Lal & Sons, 2006).
36. Mulaprakrti Devi Dasi, Our Srila Prabhupada, 31–32.
37. Krishna’s feet are described as aravinda (lotus-like) because they are elegantly tapered like a lotus leaf.
38. Mulaprakrti Devi Dasi, Our Srila Prabhupada, 33–34.
39. His Holiness Swami B.P. Puri Maharaja, Of Love and Separation: Meditations on My Divine Master (San Rafael: Mandala Publishing Group, 2001), 12, 44. The phrase “humbler than a blade of grass, more tolerant than a tree” comes from the Sikshastaka prayers of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu.
40. “The Bombing of Calcutta by the Japanese,” BBC, accessed October 8, 2015, http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/50/a5756150.shtml.
41. Nathuram Godse’s brother and co-conspirator in the assassination, Gopal Godse, claimed that, contrary to popular belief, Gandhi never called out “Hey Ram!” (“O my dear Lord Rama”) as he was dying. This was a rumor, he said, begun by the Indian government to reinforce the image of Gandhi as a staunch Hindu who deserved to be elevated to sainthood. In an interview with Time magazine, he said, “Someone asked me whether Gandhi said, Hey Ram. I said Kingsley did say it”—referring to actor Ben Kingsley who played Gandhi in the Academy Award–winning movie of 1982—“but Gandhi did not. Because that [the real assassination] was not a drama.”
42. Satsavarupa Das Goswami, Srila Prabhupada Lilamrita (Los Angeles: Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1980–83), vol. 1, 142.
43. A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Srimad Bhagavatam, 10.88.8.
44. Satsavarupa Das Goswami, Srila Prabhupada Lilamrita, vol. 1, 151.
45. Gaudiya 20.319, cited in Bhakti Vikasa Swami, Sri Bhaktisiddhanta Vaibhava, vol. 1, 277.
46. Thakura Bhaktivinoda, The Bhagavata: Its Philosophy, Its Ethics, and Its Theology (San Jose, CA: Guardian of Devotion Press, 1985), 8.
47. Satsavarupa Das Goswami, Srila Prabhupada Lilamrita, vol. 1, 212–13.
48. Poem published in Gaudiya Patrika.
49. Mulaprakrti Devi Dasi, Our Srila Prabhupada, 119.
50. “Chant the names of Hari (Krishna)!” Among Krishna devotees, this is both a greeting and an expression of joy.
51. Mulaprakrti Devi Dasi, Our Srila Prabhupada, 75.
52. Charles R. Brooks, The Hare Krishnas in India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 77.
53. Mulaprakrti Devi Dasi, Our Srila Prabhupada, 111.
54. Letters from Srila Prabhupada, 5 vols. (Culver City, CA: The Vaisnava Institute, 1987), vol. 1, 71. In the mid-1980s, several of Prabhupada’s disciples established the ISKCON Prison Ministry, which continues to operate.
55. Quoted on http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Sumati_Morarjee.
56. Mulaprakrti Devi Dasi, Our Srila Prabhupada, 235.
57. Ibid, 205.
58. Sankirtan—“complete” kirtan—refers to congregational chanting of the Hare Krishna mantra, for the benefit of the general public.
59. “Do not stay in illusion; go to the eternal reality. Do not stay in darkness; go to the light. Do not keep taking material bodies; become immortal!” Brihad-aranyaka Upanishad, 1.3.28.
60. Mahaprabhu and his followers chanted and danced in the streets of sixteenth-century Bengal. When the Muslim government insisted they cease, Mahaprabhu continued his public chanting in defiance of the interdictions. Some commentators suggest these civil disobedience marches were the original model for Gandhi’s campaigns. (S.C. Chakravarti, Philosophical Foundations of Bengal Vaishnavism: A Critical Exposition (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1985) 35. Cited in Journal of Vaishnava Studies, vol. 6, no. 2, 9.
61. Letters from Srila Prabhupada, vol. 1, 79.
62. Mulaprakrti Devi Dasi, Our Srila Prabhupada, 276.
63. Brooks, Hare Krishnas, 76. Prabhupada had spoken with similar conviction before leaving India. Anthropologist Charles R. Brooks recounts a conversation between a Vrindavan merchant and his family who remembered Bhaktivedanta Swami saying, in the early 1960s, “I have temples already in America, and many people worship Krishna there. Only time now hides them from vision.”
64. Sikha, the tuft of hair left on top or at the back of a shaven head, traditionally worn by Vaishnava brahmacharis and sannyasis as a sign of their renunciation and to distinguish them from monists who shave their heads completely.
65. Dating the Bhagavatam has always been problematic for scholars, many of whom generalize to sometime in the past two thousand years while agreeing that the Bhagavatam likely reflects much more ancient teachings. Nineteenth-century Indologist Max Muller dated the Bhagavatam to three thousand years ago. “Since the . . . Puranas represent an oral tradition that was constantly revised over a period of several thousand years,” writes Indologist Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, “a passage actually composed in the twelfth century A.D. may represent a surprisingly accurate preservation of a myth handed down since the twelfth century B.C.—or a completely original retelling of that myth.” Going by its own internal references, the Bhagavatam dates in written form to the dawn of Kali Yuga or about 3100 B.C. Whatever the actual date of its codification, most everyone agrees the Bhagavatam opens a window through which we are allowed to share an ancient way of seeing the world.
66. Indradyumna Swami, Diary of a Traveling Preacher (Imperial Beach, CA: Torchlight Publishing, 2012), vol. 3.
67. Kees W. Bolle, “The Bhagavadgita Within the Study of Mysticism,” Journal of South Asian Literature 23 no. 2 (July 1988): 1–19. For a modernist such as Radhakrishnan, the advaitic position was a foregone conclusion, and the Gita’s mysticism lay not in the specificity of knowing Krishna as the supreme lovable object but in a general oneness of all mystical experience. Radhakrishnan’s philosophical assumptions imposed an arbitrary value on all mystical phenomena. Bolle has done a worthy job of exposing the risks of such generalizations.
68. Prabhupada had previously dealt with Radhakrishnan’s commentary on Gita 9.34 in an essay, “Scholars Deluded,” which ran in two 1958 issues of Back to Godhead.
69. Bhagavad Gita As It Is (Bhagavad Gita), 9.11. “Fools deride me when I descend in human form. They do not know my transcendental nature as the Supreme Lord of all creation.”
70. Ravindra Svarupa Dasa, “Religion and Religions,” ISKCON Communications Journal, 1 no. 1 (Jan.–June, 1993): 35–36. “The Western youth who joined ISKCON,” writes Ravindra Svarupa Dasa, “never thought of themselves as ‘converting’ to something called Hinduism. . . . [T]hey did not think that in adopting ISKCON’s practices they were plunging into the historically conditioned forms of a particular religious sect. Indeed, they usually did not think of themselves as practicing something called a ‘religion’ at all. Prabhupada managed quite compellingly to convey an altogether different vision.”
71. The late Indologist A.L. Basham noted that Bhaktivedanta was not one of the self-appointed swamis who glutted the market with “a streamlined kind of Hindu mysticism designed to appeal to modern, jet-age disciples: levitation . . . moksa in a few easy lessons—a Hinduism without class, without worship, without rigid taboos.” Subhananda Das, “A Theology with Heart: An Interview with Prof A. L. Basham,” Back to Godhead (November 7, 2013).
72. From a historic perspective, bhakti yoga appears in the earliest of Vedic texts, which describe yajna or sacrifice: a personal offering meant for the pleasure of God and the stability of the world. Chaitanya took the principle of yajna and gave it contemporary relevance and popular form in chanting. From an ahistoric perspective, bhakti (loving devotional service) is the eternal nature of the soul and does not depend on historical textual reference for its relevance in social organization.
73. Bhagavad Gita, 15.7
74. J. Frank Kenney, “The Manifestation of A.C. Bhaktivedanta as Swami, Guru and Avatar” (paper presented at the American Academy of Religions, Little Rock, AR, 1976). Given that his classes in those early days covered the ABCs of Krishna consciousness, the Swami occasionally called the storefront “a kindergarten of spiritual life.” See Satsavarupa Das Goswami, Srila Prabhupada Lilamrita, vol. 2, 147.
75. To honor the chanting as an event of importance in the history of New York, in 1999 the City’s Parks Department installed a plaque at the base of the American elm tree where Prabhupada held his weekly gatherings.
76. Satsavarupa Das Goswami, Srila Prabhupada Lilamrita, vol. 1, 214.
77. David Pichaske, A Generation in Motion: Popular Music and Culture in the Sixties (New York: Schirmer Books, 1979), xvi.
78. Satsavarupa Das Goswami, Srila Prabhupada Lilamrita, vol. 2, 208.
79. Bhagavad Gita, 9.26. “If one offers me with love and devotion a leaf, a flower, fruit or water, I will accept it.”
80. Letters dated April 8 and 13, 1968.
81. Satsavarupa Das Goswami, Srila Prabhupada Lilamrita, vol. 2, 238. The visit had some impact on the music group. The Fugs recorded “Hare Krishna” with Allen Ginsberg on their 1968 album Tenderness Junction.
82. Satyaraja Dasa, “A Spiritual Happening on the Lower East Side,” Back to Godhead (Mar.–Apr. 2011).
83. Achyutananda Das, Blazing Sadhus or Never Trust a Holy Man Who Can’t Dance (Alachua, FL: CMB Books, 2012), 226.
84. Morning walk with Srila Prabhupada, Mayapur, India, April 8, 1975.
85. “To understand spiritual truths, one must humbly approach, with firewood in hand, a spiritual master who is learned in the Vedas and firmly devoted to the Absolute Truth.” Mundaka Upanishad 1.2.12. The word srotryam in this verse signifies “learned in the Vedas” and also implies the disciplic succession: a teacher who has heard from a predecessor in the tradition’s lineage.
86. Bhagavad Gita, 4.16–17. Krishna himself advises against attempting to understand the history of one’s karma. “Even the intelligent are bewildered in determining what karma is,” He tells Arjuna. “The intricacies of karma are very hard to understand.”
87. The spelling changed in subsequent editions to the more familiar Srimad Bhagavatam or Bhagavata Purana.
88. Thomas Hopkins, interviewed in Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna: Five Distinguished Scholars on the Krishna Movement in the West, ed. Stephen J. Gelberg (New York: Grove Press, 1983), 101–161, quoted in Tamal Krishna, A Living Theology, 36.
89. Bhaktisiddhantha Saraswati Goswami, Brahma Samhita (Los Angeles: Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1985), 5.35. See also Bhagavad Gita, 18.61.
90. Bhagavad Gita, 2.69.
91. Chaitanya Charitamrita, Madhya 22.31.
92. David G. Bromley and Larry D. Shinn, eds., Krishna Consciousness in the West (New Jersey: Associated University Presses, 1989), 106.
93. Bhagavad Gita, 9.26.
94. Conversation with Bhakti Cohen, recounted to the author.
95. Letters from Srila Prabhupada, vol. 4, 2187.
96. Richard H. Davis, The Bhagavad Gita: A Biography (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 8.
97. “Can water quaff itself?” asked seventeenth-century bhakti poet Tukaram. “Can trees taste of the fruit they bear? He who worships God must stand distinct from Him, so only shall he know the joyful love of God. For if he says that God and he are one, that joy, that love, shall vanish instantly away. Pray no more for utter oneness with God.”
98. A more detailed description of Macmillan’s edition of the Bhagavad Gita As It Is appears in Steven Rosen’s Mentor Sublime: A Collection of Essays on the Life and Teachings of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (Vrindavan: Rasbihari Lal & Sons, 2006), 83–89.
99. Steven J. Rosen, Swamiji: An Early Disciple, Brahmananda Dasa, Remembers His Guru (Badger, CA: Torchlight Publishing, 2014), 89. According to his passport, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami was 5’3” tall.
100. For an insightful introduction to string theory, see Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999).
101. Conversations with Srila Prabhupada, 37 vols. (Los Angeles: The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1988), vol. 1, 217–218.
102. Bhagavad Gita, 3.4 and 3.8.
103. Ibid, 3.6–7 and 3.19. “One who restrains the senses of action but whose mind dwells on sense objects certainly deludes himself and is called a pretender. On the other hand, if a sincere person tries to control the active senses by the mind and begins karma-yoga without attachment, he is by far superior. . . . Therefore, without being attached to the fruits of activities, one should act as a matter of duty, for by working without attachment one attains the Supreme.”
104. A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Srimad Bhagavatam, 1.5.18.
105. Conversations with Srila Prabhupada, vol. 2, 200–01. The verse in question is Bhagavad Gita, 9.22: “Those who always worship me with exclusive devotion, meditating on my transcendental form—to them I carry what they lack, and I preserve what they have.” A similar assurance is offered in the Bible: “So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” Matthew 6:28–29.
106. Chaitanya Charitamrita, Madhya, 13.33–55.
107. Compiled from 1968 radio interviews in San Francisco, March 9 and 12, and Seattle, September 24.
108. Bhagavad Gita, 2.13.
109. Kenney, “Manifestation.” The paper was read to Prabhupada, who commented favorably on its content.
110. Shik-shastaka prayers of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu.
111. Letters from Srila Prabhupada, vol. 3, 215.
112. This brief explanation of the rasa dance summarizes five chapters from the tenth canto of Srimad Bhagavatam. For an eloquent analysis of the full text, see Graham Schweig, Dance of Divine Love: India’s Classic Sacred Love Story: The Rasa Lila of Krishna (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).
113. Conversations with Srila Prabhupada, vol. 1, 250–53.
114. Steven J. Gelberg, ed., Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna: Five Distinguished Scholars on the Krishna Movement in the West (New York: Grove Press, 1983), 181–82.
115. Swami Vivekananda, Jnana Yoga (New York: Ramakrishna-Vedanta Center, 1955), 216.
116. J. Krishnamurti, Commentaries on Living, vol. 1, 11th ed. (Wheaton, IL: Quest Books, 2001), 207.
117. The five yamas or guidelines to social behavior as listed in Yoga Sutra are ahimsa (doing no harm to any living creature), satya (truthfulness), asteya (not stealing), brahmacharya (celibacy, sometimes also translated as faithfulness to one’s partner), and aparigraha (non-possessiveness). The five niyamas or virtuous habits include saucha (purity of mind, speech, and body), santosha (contentment, acceptance of one’s circumstances), tapas (perseverance, austerity), svadhyaya (sober reflection in thought, speech, and action), and ishvarapranidhana (contemplation of God). See Edwin F. Bryant, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, A New Edition Translation, and Commentary (New York: North Point Press, 2009).
118. Yoga-sutra, 2.32.
119. Bhagavad Gita, 2.59.
120. Some of the temples from Dvapara Yuga remain intact to this day. See, for instance, http://www.stephen-knapp.com/antiquity_of_deity_worship_in_vedic_tradition.htm.
121. Purport to A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Srimad Bhagavatam, 4.8.36.
122. Bhagavad Gita, 7.19.
123. Conversations with Srila Prabhupada, vol. 1, 132–34.
124. Bhagavad Gita, 7.16.
125. Conversation with the author in Paris, 1974.
126. Svetasvarara Upanishad, 5.9.
127. Bhagavad Gita 8.6.
128. Adyatmik, adibautik, and adidaivic: “miseries” provoked by one’s own body or mind, by others, and by external conditions.
129. Conversations with Srila Prabhupada, vol. 3, 326–363.
130. Bhagavad Gita, 2.20.
131. Ibid, 2.13.
132. Times of India, October 10, 1970.
133. Satsavarupa Das Goswami, Srila Prabhupada Lilamrita, vol. 4, 130–31.
134. Ibid, 132.
135. Letters from Srila Prabhupada, vol. 2, 805.
136. Conversations with Srila Prabhupada, vol. 2, 133–34.
137. For more information about these food relief efforts, visit www.annamrita.org and www.akshayapatra.org.
138. Satsavarupa Das Goswami, Srila Prabhupada Lilamrita, vol. 5, 20.
139. Brooks, Hare Krishna, 180–81.
140. Ibid, 201.
141. Bhagavad Gita, 2.14.
142. Vyasa-puja offering, 1999.
143. Prabhupada had conducted a similar conversation the previous year with Alfred Ford, great-grandson of automobile scion, Henry Ford. “So,” Prabhupada said, “you are Henry Ford’s great-grandson. Where is he now?” Alfred was initiated soon afterward and received the name Ambarish Das.
144. Jean Daniélou, The Advent of Salvation (Mills River, NC: Deus Publications, 1962).
145. Bhagavad Gita, 9.26.
146. Bhagavad Gita, 14.4. Prabhupada’s use of the phrase “our Krishna” echoed the Passover service, in which the doubting son says, “What did you do in Egypt,” removing himself from the family circle. The Passover Hagaddah advises the father to reply, “Our God led us out of slavery,” suggesting the son is still slave to his doubts, as was Daniélou to his doubts about the presence of souls in other than human forms of life.
147. Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858–1937) was a Bengali physicist, biologist, botanist, and archaeologist who pioneered the investigation of radio and microwave optics and made significant contributions to experimental science. In 1926, he lectured at the Sorbonne in Paris on the nervous system of plants.
148. Conversations with Srila Prabhupada, vol. 5, 155–178.
149. Sri Isopanisad, verse 1.
150. William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence,” The Pickering Manuscript, originally published in 1807 (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2004), 18.
151. Tamal Krishna, Living Theology, 47. See also Anthony Wallace, “Revitalization Movements,” American Anthropologist 58 (1956): 264–81.
152. Tamal Krishna, Living Theology, 50.
153. Bromley and Shinn, Krishna Consciousness in the West, 42.
154. Agehananda Bharati, “Fictitious Tibet: The Origin and Persistence of Rampaism,” Tibet Society Bulletin, vol. 17 (1974). http://www.serendipity.li/baba/rampa.html.
155. A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Srimad Bhagavatam, 12.3.51. For example, “Although Kali Yuga is an ocean of faults, there is still one good quality about this age. Simply by chanting the Hare Krsna maha-mantra, one can become free from material bondage and be promoted to the transcendental kingdom.”
156. George Chryssides, Exploring New Religions (London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 1999), 346–348.
157. The People of the State of New York v. Angus Murphy and ISKCON, Inc.
158. Tamal Krishna, Living Theology, 53.
159. For an insightful article on representation of ISKCON in the press, see James A. Beckford, “The Mass Media and New Religious Movements,” ISKCON Communications Journal 2, no. 2 (Dec. 1994).
160. Bhagavad Gita, 14.4.
161. Conversations with Srila Prabhupada, vol. 30, 69.
162. This date relates to the codification of Krishna’s teachings from oral to written form.
163. Hari-sauri Dasa, A Transcendental Diary: Travels with His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (Murwillumbah: Lotus Imprints, 2005), vol. 5, 280.
164. Brihad-aranyaka Upanishad, 1.3.28.
165. After the disappearance of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in 1533, the Vaishnava community confronted misrepresentation by sahajiyas, who promoted sexual promiscuity in the name of lila or “divine play.”
166. The Chicago Seven were seven defendants—Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, and Lee Weiner—charged with conspiracy, inciting to riot, and other charges related to protests that took place in Chicago on the occasion of the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
167. Victor S. Navasky, “Right On! With Lawyer William Kunstler,” New York Times, April 19, 1970. “William Kunstler is without doubt the country’s most controversial and, perhaps, its best-known lawyer period.”
168. Bhagavad Gita, 7.5.
169. “Beings in this world carry conceptions of who they are from one body to another as the air carries aromas.” (Bhagavad Gita, 8.15).
170. Conversations with Srila Prabhupada, vol. 27, 235.
171. Ibid, vol. 30, 338.
172. Interview with the author in Mumbai, April 2015.
173. Douglas Johnston and Cynthia Sampson, eds., Religion, the Missing Dimension of Statecraft (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).
174. “The humble sage, by virtue of true knowledge, sees with equal vision a learned and gentle Brahmin, a cow, an elephant, a dog and one who eats dog.” Bhagavad Gita, 5.18. For information about the TIGERS Preserve, a private wildlife preserve based on yogic principles, visit www.tigerfriends.com.
175. For ISKCON’s position on the interfaith dialogue, see “ISKCON and Interfaith” at www.iskcon.org/wp-content/documents/Interfaith-Brochure.pdf.
176. Bhagavad Gita, 9.2
177. “ISKCON report,” accessed October 12, 2015, http://www.radha.name/news/general-news/iskcon-report.
178. Sardella, Ferdinando, “Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati (1874–1937): Vaishnava Identity in Modern Dress,” Journal of Vaisnava Studies, spring 2007, 95.
179. Chaitanya Bhagavata, Antya, 4:126. The prophesy connects to an older prediction in the Srimad Bhagavatam: “Whatever result was obtained in Satya Yuga by meditating on Vishnu, in Treta Yuga by performing sacrifices, and in Dwapara Yuga by serving the Lord’s deity can be obtained in Kali Yuga simply by chanting the names of Hari.” (A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Srimad Bhagavatam, 12.3.52).
180. Demigod of learning. Throughout his later life, Bhaktisiddhanta was known as Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati.
181. Bhaktisiddhanta’s success also contradicts Max Weber’s assertion that “caste is the fundamental institution of Hinduism. Before everything else, without caste, there is no Hindu.” From Max Weber, The Religion of India (New York: The Free Press, 1958), 29.