a.c. bhaktivedanta swami
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| Prabhupada Letters :: 1966 a.c. bhaktivedanta swami |
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16 July 2004 Saturday, July 16, 1966 New York, New York My dear Brahmacari Mangalaniloy, I thank you for your letter of the 8th instant and have noted the contents. Please note my change of address as above mentioned. I have further risked in the matter of rent of the house. I was paying Mr. Murray $100.00 but I was not independent there. Here the rent is $200.00 per month but I am completely independent and that I have taken a telephonic connection. My lecture hall is on the ground floor and my apartment is on the first floor. This Second Avenue is one of the ten longest roads of the New York city. Regarding the temple project I have just received the reply from the Embassy of India in America as follows: (D.July 11, 1966) "Please refer to your application regarding release of foreign Exchange from the Ministry of Finance, Government of India. Due to existing conditions of foreign exchange stringency, it is not possible for the Government of India to accede to your request for release of foreign exchange. You may perhaps you like to raise necessary funds from residents in America" So the controversy is now closed and there is no need of help from any one else. We are not always successful in our attempts in preaching work but such failures are not certainly ludicrous. In the Absolute field both success and failures are glorious. Even Lord Nityananda pretended to be a failure to convert Jagai and Madhai in the first attempt, rather he was personally injured in such attempt but that was certainly not ludicrous. The whole thing was transcendental and it was glorious for all the parties concerned. It is however very difficult to raise funds from the Indian residents in America. My followers here are 99% Americans. But Indian Government has taken written declaration from me that I shall not collect any fund from the Americans. So unless I do get such permission I think I will have to return to India disappointed to live at Vrindaban peacefully for the remaining days of my life. Regarding the Jhansi incidence referred to by your Guru maharaj I may inform you that the donor of the house did not like to hand over the estate to any individual person. I therefore registered a society (The League of Devotees) and I invited your Guru maharaj to join it as the head man. But he, as he was with the then Kunjada desired to have the property in the joint name of him and Kunjada. So I became silent and I left the whole scheme. Let us now forget all these past incidences and go forward with present responsibility. My future activities will now depend on the reply of the Indian Embassy whom I have asked for permission to raise funds from the American people. On hearing from them I shall let you know the result. Hope you are well. When you are coming back to Calcutta? Yours affectionately, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami letters | 11:04 | July 16, 1966 New York, New York Mr. Prakash Shah Second Secretary Embassy of India Washington D.C. Dear Mr. Shah, I thank you for your letter No.Con63 (1)66 of the 11th instant and it is understood that I may raise the necessary funds from the residents of America. Would you please send me a list of the Indian residents in America and oblige. I may also inform you that my followers here, who come regularly and enjoy my Kirtana and discourses on the Bhagavad-gita,--are all citizens of America. Whether I may also raise funds from them. Kindly reply this letter per return of post so that I may do the needful. Also note my change of address as above mentioned. Yours sincerely, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami letters | 11:00 | 11 July 2004 July 11, 1966 "In New York, in the spring of 1966, shortly after Srila Prabhupada had coined the acronym 'ISKCON' and had laughed playfully with the new word, he initiated the legal work of incorporating the society. Stephen Goldsmith, a young Jewish lawyer, fascinated by the idea of setting up a religious corporation for an Indian svami, began to help. "On 11 July 1966, Mr Goldsmith came to Prabhupada's lecture and kirtana at 26 Second Avenue to get signatures from the trustees for the new society. To the surprise of the people gathered, after Srila Prabhupada's lecture, Mr Goldsmith stood up and made a short announcement asking for signers on an incorporation document for the Svami's new religious movement. "The first trustees - those sympathisers with enough reverence towards the Svami to want to help him - were Michael Grant, his girlfriend Jan Marie Campanella, and James Greene. "Two months later, on Srila Prabhupada's Vyasa-puja day - 9 September 1966 - Srila Prabhupada held the first initiations in ISKCON. Michael Grant became Mukunda Dasa and Jan became Janaki Dasi, Srila Prabhupada's first woman initiate and one of three ISKCON trustees." Vishankha dasi and Sudharma Dasi, Women in ISKCON letters | 00:24 | CONSTITUTION OF ASSOCIATION 1. The name of the society is The International Society for Krishna Consciousness. 2. The headquarters of the Society are located at Radhakrishna Temple, 26 Second Avenue, New York City, 10003, USA. 3. The objectives for which the Society is being established are: (A) To educate the greater human society in the techniques of spiritual life as the basis for a balanced psychic and biological development, and thereby achieve for the first time in human society a real peace and unity among the contending forces in the world today. (B) To propagate the Sense of Godhead, the all attractive Personality of primal and eternal Form, as He Himself revealed in His own words in the Bhagavad Gita, the Holy Scripture of the Lord Sri Krishna, the Godhead. (C) To bring together individuals in a Society, regardless of nationality and irrespective of creed or caste, in order to develop a nearness to the Godhead and thereby the idea that within the members and humanity-at-large there is an infinitesimal soul-spirit that is part and parcel in quality with the Godhead, and that all life is meant for the satisfaction of said Godhead, the Supreme Soul. (D) To encourage the teachings of Lord Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu who demonstrated practically the transcendental process of approaching the absolute Personality of Godhead by His acts of congregational chanting of the holy name of God, a process known as Samkirtan. (E) To prove by active work and preaching that Lord Sri Krishna is the only enjoyer of all the outcomes of individual and collective sacrifice, penance, meditation, arts, culture, science, because He is the Supreme Proprietor of the whole universe, eternally apart of Him everyone knows Him as a friend. Real peace can be attained when this is realized, in fact. (F) To assist whenever and wherever possible in the building of a social structure on the real foundation of spiritual progress and establishment of peace and unity between men throughout the world. (G) To attempt to save men individually from the chain of victimization the ongoing trend in modern civilization operates by, in the name of ideologies of false sentiment, so that Man may again be a free soul, to act and live freely with spiritual vision. This is possible by individual spiritual initiation, Diksha, when a man can see everything in Godhead and Godhead in everything. (H) To further toward realization this highest truth as revealed by Lord Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and the six Goswamins headed by Srila Rupa and Sanatana Goswamins. (I) To have for its objectives amongst the others four principles which the Goswamins had in view. They are the following: 1. To erect a holy place of transcendental pastimes as well as a place where members of the Lord Sri Krishna can flourish. 2. To propagate all over the world in the form of missionaries the process of devotion, the transcendental service to the Godhead, and to make known that this devotional service is the main function of the human being. 3. In order to accomplish this, to adopt proselytizing methods of peaceful means and to establish a broader society of association for all members, including scholars and admirers, to engage in this service as put forth in the Srimad Bhagwatam. 4. To install, wherever it is possible, the worship and temple of Radhakrishna and that of Sri Chaitanya, and to give facility to everyone to become trained in the modes of Archan or preparatory principles of devotional service. (J) To introduce to the members of the Society and humanity-at-large a simpler and more natural purpose in life by means suitable to the particular place and time, and as enjoined in the Bhagavad Gita. (K) To organize educational programs, such as classes and lecture tours, and to institute services, such as mailing, for the benefit of the members of the Society and humanity-at-large. (L) To publish periodicals, books and/or pamphlets in all important languages in order to reach human society and give an opportunity to same to communicate with the Society. (M) To invoke the quality of goodness particularly in every member of the Society, individually by the process of Diksha and by establishing one in the status of a Brahmin (good and intelligent man) on the basis of truthfulness, knowledge and faith in the transcendental service of the Lord. (N) Among the secondary objectives of the Society, it shall undertake the following activities: 1. To revive the scientific system of social orders of classification based on intelligence, martial spirit, productivity and common assistance, generally known as the four castes with reference to quality and worth for the common cause of world society. 2. To discharge as a matter of course the vitiated system of supremacy of one man over another by false prestige of birthright or vested interests. 3. To popularize the vegetable-grain diet under approved methods in order that full value of protein, carbohydrate, fat and vitamin benefit may be derived therefrom. 4. To discourage intoxicating or addicting habits of all descriptions and dimensions and to expose such persons thus afflicted to approved methods of spiritual realization. A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, Acharya James S. Greene Michael A. Grant Jan Marie Campanella Raymond Marais Robert Lefkowitz letters | 00:08 | |
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