K A The Supreme Personality Of Godhead

Some 25 years ago, I had been struggling to receive spiritual initiation from a would-be diksha-guru for over three years, but he kept repeating that I was not ready yet. Just about that time (April 1994), I suffered what turned out to be a near-fatal heart attack during a lunch break at my FDA office. They rushed me into the emergency where I underwent triple heart bypass surgery. Three major arteries in my heart had ~98-100% blockages. One of these is the one commonly referred to by cardiologists as a “widow-maker!” Suffices to say that I could have suffered a massive heart attack, but for some divine intervention, I probably received another life. That incident alarmed me to seek spiritual initiation from my spiritual master, but I did not have much hope for that possibility. Based on my meagre scriptural knowledge at the time (Ante Narayana Smiti), I took refuge in whatever intelligence the Lord had endowed me. How do I attract Guru Maharaja’s attention to my cause? My intense greediness/eagerness [referred to as laulyam in sanskrit] initiated prompted me to study his mood using my intelligence. Through Krsna, we get introduced to our prospective guru, and thru Guru only, we attain Krsna. Thereby I figured out how he served his guru. His pranama-mantra happens to be “prabhup?dasya s?hitya? yat prak???ya vitirya?ca” Prabhupada ordered him to renounce this lucrative job of being a general manager of the Pepsi cola company, get married to a devotee woman even though he did not want to marry, return to India, and translate his books into several regional languages, and then distribute in India and abroad. All these he did in the prime of his youth when he was in Canada. That is when the idea flashed in my mind to write this essay on Absolute Knowledge despite my limited knowledge of Bhagavad-Gita at the time. I gathered enough courage to submit that essay with a degree of apprehension at his lotus feet. My would-be spiritual master was so pleased with it that not only did he invest the time out of his preaching schedule to read this synopsis written by an absolute novice like me, but he also initiated me within a month in our Potomac Temple in the suburb of Maryland, USA, on Lord Nrsimhadeva’s Appearance Day (May 25, 1997). Moreover, he gave me an order at my initiation, which was even more significant. I paraphrase it here: “Carucandra, I want you to learn the Gaudiya scriptures and then teach others.” This year, I would celebrate a silver jubilee to that fateful occasion in my spiritual life. And to this day, the divine couple has mercifully allowed me to keep my word to my Guru. Carrying out his order remains the very mission of my life balance.

A summary study of Ṡrīla Vyāsadeva's Ṡrīmad-Bhāgavatam, Tenth canto.

Since time immemorial, yogis, sages, and mystics have forsaken the pleasures of the ordinary world and gone to secluded places to meditate, eager to attain even a momentary vision of Sri Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Fifty centuries ago that same Krishna descended from the transcendental world to reveal on earth His eternal spiritual pastimes, and the great sage Vyasa carefully recorded them in the Bhagavata Purana. This book is a summary study of the Tenth Canto of that Purana, written by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the foremost teacher of bhakti-yoga in the modern age. The accounts in this book will fascinate you with their descriptions of spiritual adventure and romance. And they will reveal to you the secret of how to embark on a journey to a transcendental realm beyond space and time.

This book offers a new account for the emergence of the Hare Krishna movement from the perspective of cognitive science of religion. It focuses especially on the charisma of its founder guru, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda (1896-1997) through the writings of his disciples.