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Harrison told a press conference convened by Apple that the Hare Krishna mantra was not a pop song but an ancient mantra that awakened spiritual bliss in the hearts of people listening to and repeating it. In 1968, Prabhupada asked three married couples among his disciples to open a temple in London, England. This “Mantra Rock Dance”, held at the popular Avalon Ballroom, attracted some three thousand people and brought attention to the local Hare Krishna temple.

Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead

Indeed, he even quotes from other texts in the canon (whether written before the Gita or after) to indicate the intention of the Gita, “as though they have the same authority as the Gita itself”. Baird takes upon himself the task of not merely seeing Prabhupada as “an authentic proponent of Vaishnavism” but of examining as an academic scholar the way Prabhupada reads the Bhagavad-gita. Eric Sharpe, scholar of religion, considers Prabhupada’s reading of Bhagavad-gita single-minded and fundamentalist.

Prabhupada comes in the Brahma-Madhva-Gaudiya lineage, which traces back to Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and Madhvacharya, and further back, its teachings say, to the beginnings of creation. Within Eastern systems, spiritual lineages are integral to each tradition, and a teacher is mandated to maintain theological fidelity by transmitting knowledge as given in the lineage. Nonetheless, by 2023 nearly one hundred disciples and grand-disciples in succession from Prabhupada were serving as initiating gurus in his branch of the Gaudiya Vaishnava lineage. Despite the measures Prabhupada took to organize the management of his movement, his death caused a crisis of authority in ISKCON that destabilized the organization and became a turning point in its development. In 1970, Prabhupada established a Governing Body Commission (GBC), then consisting of twelve leading disciples, to oversee ISKCON’s activities around the world and to serve as ISKCON’s ultimate managing authority. On 14 November 1977, at the age of 81, after a long illness,g Prabhupada died in his room at the Krishna Balaram Mandir, the temple he had established in Vrindavan, India.

• Over the next three years, whenever Abhay was able to visit Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati in Calcutta or Vrindavan, he would carefully listen to his spiritual master.
• In accordance with the teachings of the Srimad-Bhagavatam, Prabhupada taught that the supreme truth, or Absolute Truth, is the one unlimited, undivided spiritual entity that is the source of all.
• Although the disciples he had sent there had settled into doing spiritual programs for the local Indian people, Prabhupada insisted on doing programs meant for Africans.
• He would later establish this annual festival in major cities around the world, with big vehicles —”chariots” — and thousands of people taking part.
• Prabhupada taught that eating only prasadam purifies one’s existence and helps one develop in bhakti.

Translations with commentary

Begun in 1968, The Nectar of Devotion is a summary study of Rupa Goswami’s Bhakti-rasamrita-sindhu, his “famous exposition of the principles of devotion”. Prabhupada himself inspired artists among his disciples to provide the text with profuse full-color illustrations. He worked on translating the Srimad-Bhagavatam into English for the rest of his life. In contrast, Prabhupada saw his task in presenting what Krishna wanted to say, and so he claimed to present the Bhagavad-gita “as it is”. In 1966–67, Prabhupada wrote a translation and commentary on the Bhagavad-gita he entitled Bhagavad-gita As It Is. Hopkins says, “What few English translations there were of the Bhagavata Purana and Caitanya-caritamrta were barely adequate and very hard to get hold of”.i Prabhupada, Hopkins says, “made these and other texts available in a way that they never were before” and “made the tradition itself accessible to the West”.

The four ashramas are student life, married life, retired life, and renounced life. In this way, he stood opposed to the teachings of Shankara (AD 788–820), who held that everything except Brahman is illusory, including the soul, the world, and God. As a spiritual practice, bhakti is a powerful, transformative process that purifies the soul and enables it to see God directly.

He had to sort out difficulties faced by individual disciples, ensure a proper understanding of his teachings, and, more broadly, transplant an entire cultural movement. Further, he says, “The significance of making these texts available is not merely academic or cultural; it is spiritual. Jñāna, knowledge, is spread, proper doctrines are made known, people come closer to reality”. Prabhupada taught that society should ideally be organized in such a way that people have specific duties according to their occupation (varna) and stage of life (ashrama). One can begin practicing bhakti, Prabhupada taught, even while in the earliest stages of spiritual life. In accordance with the teachings of the Srimad-Bhagavatam, Prabhupada taught that the supreme truth, or Absolute Truth, is the one unlimited, undivided spiritual entity that is the source of all. Although the disciples he had sent there had settled into doing spiritual programs for the local Indian people, Prabhupada insisted on doing programs meant for Africans.

Prabhupada taught that because Krishna is personally present as the Deity (the term Prabhupada used for such a form), worshiping the Deity helps one develop loving exchanges with Krishna. Kirtan in the sense of public chanting is traditionally accompanied by kartals (hand cymbals) and mridangas (drums), and Prabhupada’s spiritual master and grand spiritual master had said that distribution of Krishna literature was the “great mridanga” because such distribution spreads Krishna consciousness still further. When Prabhupada began his efforts to spread Krishna consciousness in the United States, he held kirtans in a Bowery loft, in his early storefront temples, in Tompkins Square Park in New York and Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, and wherever else he went. Because the names of Krishna are “transcendental sounds”, identical with Krishna Himself, the chanting is spiritually uplifting.

Because of Hare Krishna kirtan, Prabhupada’s movement itself came to be known simply as “Hare Krishna” and its followers as “Hare Krishnas”.h Following Prabhupada, his disciples soon began holding kirtans regularly in streets, parks, temples, and other venues in major cities in North America and Europe and then in Latin America, Australia, Africa, and Asia. In accordance with the Bhagavad-gita and in opposition to the modern Hindu caste system, Prabhupada taught that one’s varna, or occupational standing, should be understood in terms of one’s qualities and the work one actually does, not by one’s birth.

Knott emphasizes that, according to Prabhupada, women devotees, regardless of their gender, possess equal potential for spiritual advancement and service to Krishna. Scholars have commented, however, on the contrast between such controversial pronouncements and the full picture of what Prabhupada actually taught and did. In a recorded room conversation with disciples in 1977, he calls African Americans “uncultured and drunkards”, further stating that after being given prabhu365-nepal.com/bonuses freedom and equal rights, they caused a disturbance in the society. “In a traditional Hindu vein”, Prabhupada spoke favorably of the myth of Aryan bloodlines and compared darker races to shudras people of low caste, thus implying them being inferior to the lighter-complexioned humans. The temples, the team argued, were led by presidents who were grihasthas (married men), and grihasthas had a propensity for enjoyment that undermined what should be an austere temple atmosphere.