102 Sri Isopanisad

ask when Guru Maharaj would speak, then I’d sit down and go on
hearing. I would understand, or not understand; others would
disperse, I’d not disperse. So he remarked, ‘This boy is interested
to hear’. Because I was serious in hearing, therefore | am now
serious about kirtanam, which means speaking or preaching.
If one has heard nicely, then he will speak nicely.”

At Allahabad in 1933, Abhay Charan De was formally ini-
tiated, and in 1936, just days before Bhakti Siddhanta Sarasvati’s
departure from this mortal world, he was specifically ordered to
spread Krsna Consciousness in the English language to the West.

His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada has
told us that at first he did not take the mission given to
him by his spiritual master with the utmost seriousness. But
then he was reading a Bhagavad-gita commentary by Srila Bhakti-
vinode Thakur, who was the father of Bhakti Siddhanta Sarasvati
and the pioneer of the Krsna Consciousness movement in the
modern age. Srila Bhaktivinode has written that just as one
cannot separate the body from the soul while in this conditioned
state, so the disciple cannot separate the spiritual master’s order
from his very life. Srila Prabhupaida took these words seriously,
and gradually his whole life became dedicated to carrying out the
orders of his Guru Maharaj. In 1959 he took sannydsa, the re-
nounced order of spiritual life, and in 1965, at the advanced
age of 70, His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhu-
pada arrived in New York City to fulfill his master’s sacred
mission.

One must try to understand that Srila Prabhupada is neither
an Indian author nor Indian culturist nor Hindu sectarian. The
first teaching of the Bhagavad-gitd ix that no one is Indian, no
one is American—our real self is beyond this temporary bodily
designation; our permanent identity, clernal, blissful and full of
knowledge, is with the Supreme Personality of Godhead as His
eternal servant; and .our position is to be situated beyond the
material universes in the spiritual planets, within the spiritual
sky. This is the platform of Krsna Consciousness.
