Memories of Aindra Prabhu

by Rāmarāya Dāsa

Hare Kṛṣṇa. My name is Rāmarāya Dāsa. We're going to attempt to speak some of our memories and thoughts, and realizations about Śrīpāda Aindra Prabhu.

This is the 6th of September, 2012. And we're at 26 2nd Avenue, the place where it all began, Śrīla Prabhupāda's original Kṛṣṇa conscious temple. And myself, over the past now into the sixth month, we've been performing for Aindra Prabhu's pleasure, a daily hari-nāma, seven days a week here in New York City, particularly in the Union Square Park for four hours every day.

Aindra Prabhu came to the New York temple in the spring of 1981. I had been a devotee for just three years. I was 22 years old. And that temple at the time, from March 1981 until October 1982, was 846 7th Avenue. One of the properties that was purchased from the selling and dissolution of the 340 West 55th Street temple.

It was a three-story building in a very good location, right at the top of the Times Square Theater District, but the building was extremely small and ridiculously inadequate for the needs of the New York yātrā. So it was a very much distressed and rather crisis-ridden environment and situation that Aindra came to. And he came with the single intention of performing daily hari-nāma-saṅkīrtana in New York City.

So at that time, he just had some posters mounted either on cardboard or light plywood, and he had them on a handcart that he would pull down the street. 846 7th Avenue, between 54th and 55th Street, was at the top of the hill. So he would kind of go down an incline, and he would be right in Times Square.

And devotees who would assist him at the time were one godbrother named Rasātala in particular. At that time, myself and some godbrothers, all initiated by Satsvarūpa Mahārāja, who was the appointed guru for the New York yātrā at the time, we had begun a Back to Godhead magazine collecting party, because at that time, Back to Godhead magazine was not so much favored by the managers of the BBT as a tool of mass street distribution, as it was during Śrīla Prabhupāda's time.

New books were being made, such as “Coming Back”, “Chant and Be Happy”, “Higher Taste”. It was an attempt to try to present Kṛṣṇa consciousness maybe in a different way. So Back to Godhead magazine was not being funded, and it was ultimately in danger of not being printed anymore.

So Satsvarūpa Mahārāja, who was the editor-in-chief, appealed to his disciples, ourselves in New York, who were very good collectors, to collect money to save BTG. So doing that in the New York temple, we made a very clear first recipient of all the free BTGs that we were responsible for paying for, to give to Aindra Prabhu to take out on his hari-nāma program.

In the spring of 1983, after we had been in the Schermerhorn Street temple, the present New York temple, Brooklyn, Aindra was given a $25,000 donation by the guru, GBC of the time, Bhavānanda, and he used that money to purchase a box truck, which is like a small truck that he converted into a North Indian-style festooned arched temple in the basement of the Brooklyn temple, which is now a bingo/prasādam hall.

At that time, it was just bare cement on the floor, and he would be in there for hours and hours through the late winter, early spring, fashioning the heavy polyurethane castings for the North Indian-style architectural festoons and arches he was going to affix to his truck. He did all the work himself, and in the spring of that year, he was ready to go, and he had a very wonderful program going out at 7, 7:30 in the morning and staying out till 8:30, 9 o'clock, 10 o'clock at night.

He got sound permits from the police, and he'd park in all different choice locations around the city, West 4th Street in the Greenwich Village, Bryant Park, 42nd Street, Times Square, Herald Square, 34th Street, 57th Street and 5th Avenue, many down in the financial district, Wall Street area where the World Trade Center was. And he'd also go to areas that had large concentrations of Indians or those of Indian descent, such as Trinidadian and Guyanese, Liberty Avenue, Ozone Park, Jackson Heights.

We would also give magazines to Bhakti Tīrtha Mahārāja, who at that time was just opening up the West African preaching. And myself and Godbrother Nāma-saṅkīrtana, we were visiting Bhakti Tīrtha Mahārāja in April and May of 2005, as he was departing the planet, back home, back to Godhead, and he remembered our hard work in giving him all those BTGs even then.

So doing that forged a very good friendship with Aindra. Unfortunately, at that time, my service as a collector kept me travelling a lot out of New York, and not so much able to go out with Aindra on his hari-nāma program, although I did on several occasions, as much as I could. I wasn't really aware of how much Aindra was struggling in those years to get a hari-nāma party together. Sometimes he'd only go out with two, three, or four devotees.

So it came as a surprise to me in December of 1985, one cold day in Columbus Circle, Aindra had his truck set up there. Even in the cold weather, he would go out. He said that, "I'm moving to Vṛndāvana, and I'm not coming back." And I felt like, wow, why? You have such a nice thing going here. And he related to me his frustrations, and he left.

And that was going in January 1986. Of course, that was the glorious 500th anniversary of Lord Caitanya's appearance year, 1986. And Aindra went to take part in that special celebration in Māyāpura, and his actual intention was, in his mind, to start a similar type of program that he had in New York with a mobile preaching yātrā.

But circumstances were such that when he went to Vṛndāvana and he saw there was no 24-hour kīrtana going there, and he was inspired by one elder friend and associate of Śrīla Prabhupāda, Kapurjī. He was the accountant. And he had a dream where Śrīla Prabhupāda appeared to him and said, "Why is there no 24-hour kīrtana in my temple?" And he came to Aindra all upset, fresh from having this dream, with tears in his eyes.

And Aindra took it as prophetic that out of all the people he could be telling about this dream, "He came to me to tell me about this. And I got so much caught up in his emotion," that Aindra, in saying this, also started to cry. And he took it as a sign that Śrīla Prabhupāda wanted him to start the 24-hour kīrtana.

So, myself, that visit in 1986 was very profound for me, and I made it a very solid determination that I would return to India, particularly Vṛndāvana, every year. And as a collector, there was no problem with having money. It's just a question of exerting my intention and desire to my authorities of the time.

And also by then, the movement, at least in North America, had entered into a serious crisis with zonal guru reform and various other situations. So my intention was, I would visit Vṛndāvana, and I would spend time with Aindra every year. I was very much impressed with Aindra's determination in those years, the mid and late 80s.

There was hardly anyone in Vṛndāvana, and it was very, very austere. There wasn't proper drinking water. There was no such thing as air conditioning. There weren't even air coolers, the machines that work on the principle of blowing cold water vapor. Aindra didn't even have that. He would regularly get prickly heat. His body was light-skinned, so he would get heat rashes and prickly heat. And many times he would chant himself, having to be chanting eight, ten, twelve hours a day.

I remember perhaps one of the most glorious years of that time was I spent four months with him in the winter and spring of 1990, and he was the dressing pūjārī for Rādhā-Śyāmasundara every day. We would dress Rādhā-Śyāmasundara every day, and he would take a team of us.

I remember there was me, there was Nitāi, who was one of the early members of the 24-hour kīrtana department. He's famous for, on Vrindavan Mellows 1, singing the tune "Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare, Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare." It's become a very popular tune all throughout ISKCON, but that's actually, in Aindra's words, credited to Nitāi. He even called it Nitāi's tune.

And one devotee named Gopīnātha, who now lives in Bali, Indonesia, he was in the New York temple when Aindra was there, and myself, we would all go and assist Aindra in dressing Rādhā-Śyāmasundara. I was dressing the gopīs, Lalitā and Viśākhā. So I was combining doing pūjārī service with Aindra, and also chanting with him in the temple, and also spending the whole afternoon with him. He would be doing his deity worship.

I remember he would have me read to him different books, and at that time, there were very few duly translated by ISKCON or friends of ISKCON books of the Gosvāmīs. So we were mostly reading Gauḍīya Maṭha translations. And particularly, I remember we were reading Bṛhad-bhāgavatāmṛta, and Aindra was very much ecstatic to hear that book, and he was very much desirous of understanding his eternal identity with Kṛṣṇa.

And he would express his feelings and determinations, and I remember he would cry. It was very, very powerful. That became a service that I did for Aindra over the years, reading to him physically, in his presence while he was doing his deity worship.

And also he commissioned me to read and record many of the epic Gosvāmī literatures, particularly Govinda-līlāmṛta, Kṛṣṇa-bhāvanāmṛta by Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja Gosvāmī and Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura, in particular, the aṣṭa-kālīya-līlā books. These are the two most important.

Aindra was very, very fond of hearing Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa's aṣṭa-kālīya-līlā, also books describing the intricacies of the mādhurya-rasa, most especially Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi by Śrīla Rūpa Gosvāmī, Ānanda-vṛndāvana-campū, of course, the plays by Rūpa Gosvāmī, Vidagdha-mādhava, Lalitā-mādhava. I read for Aindra the complete 17 Śataka Vṛndāvana-mahimāmṛta by Prabodhānanda Sarasvatī. Also, Aindra was very fond of Muktā-carita, the Story of the Pearls by Raghunātha Dāsa Gosvāmī, Prema-sampuṭa, the Love Locket, Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura.

Aindra would say about his own desire to worship so many deities. At the final count, he had, I believe the number is 2,900 Śālagrāma-śilās, and 28 other deities, Govardhana-śilās, his Nitāi-Śacī-suta, his deity of Rādhārāṇī, his original deities of little Gaura-Nitāi. And then later he made a deity of Jāhnavā and Śrīla Prabhupāda and Bhaktisiddhānta.

Actually, Śrīla Prabhupāda and Bhaktisiddhānta and his small Gaura-Nitāi deities were with him on his preaching yātrā in New York City. And they came with him also. Those were his original deities. So he was saying that, "My desire, because I worship my deities for minimum three to four hours every day, so this gives me a chance to hear about Kṛṣṇa's pastimes."

And indeed, of course, his own realization and spontaneous awareness of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa's aṣṭa-kālīya-līlā, that certainly was there in his perfected consciousness. But in terms of hearing the Gosvāmī literatures again and again, repeatedly and repeatedly, he practically memorized them.

And this is interesting, because I would say himself, his ability to memorize was very poor. He was not good at Sanskrit. He would have someone else read the verse if he gave class. During the time, 1999, 2000, 2001, under the administration of Mahā-māna Dāsa as the temple president of Vṛndāvana, and also the natural place in the daily Bhāgavatam reading in the temple room was the Tenth Canto. Aindra gave many wonderful classes on the rāsa-līlā chapters, chapters 29 through 33 of the Tenth Canto. There's some very treasured recordings of those classes.

Aindra's kīrtanas were always increasing and becoming more deep and more profound with spiritual potency, spiritual beauty. Aindra was always increasing his vernacular or vocabulary of rāgas or melodies. And if you look at the tunes that Aindra was singing over the years, there were always new ones being brought forward.

Aindra would either discover a tune or compose a tune or a combination of both of a particular tune. And he would relish the bhāva of that tune for some period, usually months or part of a year. And then when he felt sufficiently that he had utilized or worshipped that tune properly, then he would chant another one, another one would come. That all within the ever-increasing standard vocabulary of the tunes that Aindra had at his command.

Being in kīrtana with Aindra was very much like being on an adventure. The heart of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa and their emotions and feelings in a given līlā, that was being manifest in Aindra's kīrtana. And especially enjoyable was when Aindra would do kīrtana at a time when there was no time limit.

His standard time to do kīrtana was prior to the Gaura-āratika in the temple, which in the wintertime would stop at 6:30 for the ārati, or in the summertime at Śivarātri to the first day of Kārtika, that summer schedule. And from Kārtika to Śivarātri, basically mid-October until late February is the winter schedule.

So he would ideally like to come for an hour, but invariably he'd be late. Sometimes he'd have to reform himself. If it got down to 20 or 25 minutes, he'd have to snap out, right like that. But on times when, like Ekādaśī, chanting for Ekādaśī in the evening, that is something that he started doing more and more in later years. And solar eclipses, he could chant as long as he could, which would be three and a half, four hours.

It would be a very much progressive adventure where Aindra would take us in his kīrtana. It's because Aindra was chanting on the prema-śuddha-nāma platform. You were telling me that Aindra revealed to you that Lalitā Devī had instructed him how to sing for the pleasure of the Lord.

So, we all knew that Aindra had very much accessed the mercy of Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī in a very profound, powerful way and I, myself, witnessed the transformation from his New York days to here, to Vṛndāvana. Two of my godbrothers who were with me on the Back to Godhead magazine collecting party, giving the BTGs to Aindra in the early and mid-80s, they had not seen Aindra since he left New York for the first time 20 years later in 1986 and they were dumbfounded and awestruck to see his transformation. They were simply amazed.

There's a very nice video that they made which is available. It was an interview in Aindra's room and they expressed their astonishment. So, Aindra was always very, very progressive.

Certainly, his one-pointed determination and practically unmatched and unseen and unprecedented niṣṭhā, fixity, determination to achieve the ultimate goal of life and go back home, back to Godhead in one lifetime through, and he would stress again and again, "I'm not anyone special. I'm just as sinful as everyone else but enough su-medhasaḥ has entered my brain to realize that there's a yuga-dharma and that I'm one of the Kali-yuga creatures meant to take advantage of the yuga-dharma."

And he would say, "I have the experience of 12, 13, 14 hour days, you do that and see what happens to you," and he would say, "I always remember a letter that was sent by Śrīla Prabhupāda to our Q Street DC temple president in 1974 at the time, Dāmodara Prabhu, saying I'm so much pleased with your 14 hour a day saṅkīrtana days."

So Aindra had very firm faith and total realization as to the supreme power of the mahā-mantra, and it always disturbed him and made him upset that the hari-nāma-saṅkīrtana wasn't being kept up as he thought, as he knew that it should be. There's the famous address he made in Varṣāṇā in 2009, "Please remember and I beseech you again and please remember, grassroots hari-nāma-saṅkīrtana revolution, revolution means revolution, we have to turn this movement inside out, upside down, to do what it takes to bring hari-nāma-saṅkīrtana back into its rightful place of dignity in the forefront of this Hare Kṛṣṇa movement, it's so essential for the proper growth of this movement."

So myself having performed, trying to serve Aindra by doing a daily hari-nāma here in New York City, every day in the same place, we just see how many people are being transformed by the Hare Kṛṣṇa mahā-mantra.

When Aindra would speak the philosophy, time would stand still, and you felt that you were entering into a very special dimension, Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa's sacred space, and he could speak unlimitedly, in great detail, but you never felt it was unnecessary, or too much, but it was just one thing after the other, just holding you spellbound, all very important, and all essentially correct, everything that he would say.

Aindra says that, "My room is non-different than Nitya Navadvīpa," because of his Nitāi-Śacī-suta. Aindra's deity's Nitāi-Śacī-suta, he told the story many times, people would ask him, but I have a recording, he was at a home program at Madhu Rādhāpati's house on the 30th of March, 2010, and they asked, how did you acquire Nitāi-Śacī-suta, and he said, "I stole them, fair and square."

So the story is that Dīnabandhu and Puṇḍarīka Vidyānidhi, a Śrīla Prabhupāda disciple, who was there at the time, they had Nitāi-Śacī-suta made, to put on a Vṛndāvana preaching bus, that would travel around North India. So, preaching buses in India have a glass enclosure in the back, with the deities there, so people can see them in view.

So, I believe on its maiden voyage, the bus had gotten into an accident, and was left in an unmovable condition on the side of an Indian road, in the summertime, for five days, while a repair had attempted to be made. So, the deities were in that glass enclosure, not being attended to, or taken care of on the side of a road.

So, when the bus finally came back, and Aindra had come to know of their mistreatment, he promptly went down, and took the deities out of the bus, and brought them up to his room. And Aindra's, so to speak, chastisement, or even just his demeanor of, and his taking so seriously the aparādha to the deities, he was just seeing Them, who They were, what They were, who They really were. Lord Caitanya and Lord Nityānanda, personally being neglected like that, he was taking all care for them, that when it came time for the bus to go out again, nobody even attempted to go to Aindra, and say return the deities.

So, on that very first voyage away from the temple, after the bus had been repaired, it got into a very bad accident, falling over an incline, and rolling over, and over, and completely destroying. So, everyone at that point knew that Aindra had done the right thing, because if the deities had been on the bus, they wouldn't have made it.

He would say, "I always beg you, to Nitāi-Śacī-suta, please never leave me." He also, for him, Śālagrāma-śilā was Śyāmasundara Kṛṣṇa. He would say, in answer to the question, why you have so many, he said, "There's no limit to how much blackishness I can have in my life."

He could do the dressing of Rādhā-Śyāmasundara, and then in recent years, most of the years, he was only dressing on Saturday and Sunday. So, he very much missed having that aṅga-saṅga, that bodily association, the contact with the limbs, the bodily limbs of Śyāmasundara. So, Śālagrāma-śilā, for him, was a way of pacifying that feeling of separation, and he gave a promise to all, any Śālagrāma-śilā that would come to him, because Śālagrāma-śilā is from Kālī Gaṇḍakī, up in the Himalayan mountains in Nepal, that, "They've come to be with me in Vṛndāvana, and I promise, any śilā that comes to me, will always stay with me."

Devotees would come, even very high-ranking devotees, begging for Śālagrāma-śilās, from Aindra, and Aindra would just refuse on that basis. He would never give away his deities. So now, the determination of those caring for Aindra's deities on his behalf, are also where that policy is adopted, that no śilās will be dispatched or given away to anyone, for any reason, because these are Aindra's deities.

That became a very regular, steady feature, from the late 90s onward, that I remember, that after Aindra's kīrtana time, after the Gaura-ārati, Aindra would return to his room, his kīrtana would end, he would stay midway through the ārati, he would say, "At least till the ghī lamp is passed around," and he'd go to his room.

Of course, there was, especially in the later years, the high likelihood of him, using the word, getting snagged, between the corridor between the Rādhā-Śyāmasundara's side of the temple and the Gurukula building, he would go upstairs and he would chant his Gāyatrī mantras, he would chant extra mantras, usually it would take him a good 20 minutes or more to chant his Gāyatrī, and there would usually be devotees wishing to take his counsel, have his darśana, and Aindra was very, very generous in speaking to them at length.

I have one conversation, one devotee. He came at 7:30 in the morning, 7:30 in the evening, and Aindra would speak to him continuously all the way till midnight, for three and a half hours. It's not, say, sometimes you want to get the association or darśana of an advanced devotee or a senior devotee, but they have very little time for you, but with Aindra it was the opposite, you'd get so much that it was so far beyond your expectation, and your capacity to take it in was, and some devotees would say, "I have to go now," and he'd say, "Okay, you can go, but first I got to—" and then another 40 minutes goes by. "But I really have to go now." "That's all right, but then—" and talk again, and another hour goes by. So Aindra was like, if God wants to give you with his ten hands, what can you take with your two?

Aindra would always inspire devotees to aim high, to get to the ultimate goal of their life, Kṛṣṇa-prema, big topic would always be a guru issue, who's the proper spiritual master, and how to be a proper disciple, and he would usually be in the midst of doing his deity worship, or preparing bhoga for his deities, conversations would go on, or sometimes in the evening, we would just go and read, I would read some nice book out loud, and Aindra would be doing his deity worship, and other devotees would come, and sometimes Aindra would speak his some realization, or probe more deeply into the subject matter that he was hearing, created a very wonderful atmosphere of, he felt completely sheltered, and completely safe in Aindra's room, and the extraordinary thing about Aindra was that he's on the topmost level of Kṛṣṇa consciousness, yet at the same time he was very much giving his friendship to you on a very seemingly equal level. Aindra very much respected, and highly regarded his friends, those who chose to associate with him, and he was always very loyal, and always concerned for them.

Well, of course, Aindra, he created a department in the temple, the 24-hour kīrtana department, and in the Gurukula building, it was just a bare cement floor to sleep on, so Aindra himself, he created bunk beds to utilize the space in those rooms to the maximum, and give devotees a kind of comfortable living area, that you, on the bunk, he installed private individual electric fan, and caṭāi straw shades that could be pulled up and down, so you could have your privacy inside a little shelf desk with your own private lamp, he was very much looking out for those men who would assist him.

He would make statements like, "I'm so much thankful for those of you men and women, anybody who would come and assist me," and perhaps most notably, was the Śarat-pūrṇimā, the first day of Kārtika, 2008, where he said that, "I'm going to join Kṛṣṇa and dance with him in the rāsa dance, and anyone who has assisted me in this lifetime will also go with me."

So that was Aindra's love, that was his offer of eternal camaraderie and friendship, which many devotees took that invitation, and it's very clear that when someone like him, Aindra, making such a statement, you fully believe it to be true, that the power of his words definitely would have carried the authority and the ability to make it true, that's the ultimate caring that Aindra wanted you to go back home, back to Godhead with him.

Well, I mean, even the reason he left New York was because, even he had a fabulous program, like we're doing hari-nāma-saṅkīrtana here in New York City now, and we see how wonderful it is, it's just a perfect situation, but even today, we're still having trouble getting the greater community of devotees in the New York area to in a big way cooperate together to make it, make this hari-nāma-saṅkīrtana as powerful and as beautiful as it could be, or should be.

So when Aindra was doing it in New York, the movement had more or less wholesale gone off track from doing hari-nāma-saṅkīrtana, and at least in North America, even book distribution, and Aindra was very much disappointed in getting proper participation, that's the reason that he left the program and went to Vṛndāvana, and there's recordings of Aindra himself telling the story of how he started up, it was very difficult, the authorities wouldn't even give him money to buy a mṛdaṅga to begin with, and he had no assistance.

He went down into the temple room, it wasn't a 24-hour kīrtana, and he was just trying to have a daytime kīrtana, he'd bring a basket of instruments, harmonium, and mṛdaṅga just himself, and if anybody just was walked by or happened by some visitor to the temple of Pilgrim, an old bābā, "Hey, hey you, come over here, sit down, play that instrument," I don't know how to play it, "Well play it anyway," and in Aindra's words, just to show everybody that there was some type of happening going on every day.

And also Vṛndāvana back in the mid-80s was very lightly visited, it was still very much the pristine kind of almost forgotten place, so the book and mahā-prasādam stalls in the back of the temple room would play cassettes over amplified speakers, and I would have to get into arguments with them to tell them to turn it off, because we're trying to do kīrtana here, and they would say, well, what kind of kīrtana is that, you want to play some nice thing that attracts people.

But anyway, slowly but surely, different devotees joined, tried to help Aindra, and so much so that fairly quickly, within six months, from March 1986 to September-October of that year, they established the 24-hour kīrtana as an actual functional entity that would keep kīrtana going 24 hours a day, and so many struggles were there from the physical elements, it's very hot, Aindra had a light-skinned body, he would get heat rash, prickly heat, and there wasn't air conditioning, or even air coolers, there wasn't proper generators for dealing with the cut-off of the electricity.

And Aindra was living on the third floor of the Gurukula building, and his words, "Turning on the fan, blowing that hot air from the ceiling of the third floor in the summertime was like having a fire-breathing dragon blowing on you," and devotees coming and going, also for foreign devotees, non-Indian devotees, there's always visa problems, Aindra himself, he had to leave India in 1994 to go to Nepal to get a new visa after being there for eight years, and that was actually the only time that he had to leave Vṛndāvana.

That's when he started his Śālagrāma expansion, he brought back 30 or 40 Śālagrāmas at that time, and actually, Aindra's desire to get citizenship was based on a very strong desire to never have to ever leave Vṛndāvana, and of course, that was one of the main reasons for not wanting to leave Vṛndāvana beyond his own personal attachment to Rādhā-Śyāmasundara, was that he could protect the hari-nāma program.

We saw many devotees, as Vṛndāvana expanded, and different buildings and housing projects and land was acquired and built to get their own places, but Aindra, practically speaking, was the only Śrīla Prabhupāda disciple that remained living in that Gurukula building, and one of the main reasons, he said, was, "I have to be right here so I could hear the kīrtana," before there was radio, they have a radio, you can hear the live broadcast from the temple and what to speak of, they even have the webcam, you can turn on your computer and you can hear the kīrtana right now, wherever you are in the world.

So he wanted to hear it, the only way he could know what was going on was to hear it through his window when he was in his room, and many times if the kīrtana stopped or if there was something unauthorizedly happening, he'd just race right down the stairs and just be right there, Johnny on the spot to correct it or to make it happen right.

And then the ever-changing management of ISKCON Vṛndāvana, different policies were there, every department should pay rent for the rooms and the 24-hour kīrtana department was not a money-making department, what to do, and Aindra was faced with having to accumulate money to pay rent and pay for prasādam and so many things, and all the austerity he underwent to make Vrindavan Mellows Cintāmaṇi Nāma, practically speaking, all the anxiety and austerity that he took was on behalf of making the 24-hour kīrtana department as a complete success.

Unless we're fully self-realized, we're invariably materially attached, which makes us disqualified or unfit to truly value the association of a pure devotee when they're present, so a large part of serving and trying to associate with the departed spiritual master, vaiṣṇava, pure devotee, when they leave, is a very powerful process of purification, transformation, it's a very, for one who's sincere and accepts and wants to continue their Kṛṣṇa consciousness, they have to accept the powerful anartha-nivṛtti process that that fire of separation will put them through.

So in the case of someone like Aindra, who was so amazing and advanced that, practically speaking, it was beyond belief, the position that he had attained or the level that he was on to most devotees, oftentimes, pure devotees are misunderstood, neglected or even offended. Ultimately, Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura said, "This material world is not a fit place for a gentleman." Why? Because somebody who's actually a gentleman, a paramahaṁsa, they're not meant to be in this world.

So Aindra very strongly desired to go back home, back to Godhead, to be with Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa, to serve them eternally. He always was very keen to recognize the compromised position of having a material body and being in the material world. He wanted to rectify the condition of himself, in his own words, having a rotting stool-bag-like body of an Aindra Dāsa as soon as possible. He would even say, "Back home, back to Godhead, kī, the sooner the better, kī, as soon as possible, kī."

So, we always have to remember, we're talking about loving devotional service with Kṛṣṇa, that means a reciprocation. Samo 'haṁ sarva-bhūteṣu, Kṛṣṇa in the Bhagavad-gītā, 29th verse, the 3rd chapter, Śrīla Prabhupāda says, in the impersonalist philosophy, there is no reciprocal relationship, but in the personal philosophy, there is. So, Kṛṣṇa, from his side, wants someone like Aindra back home, back to Godhead, also as soon as possible.

We want to have a proper crew here, we want to have properly qualified devotees here to conduct the mission of Śrīla Rūpa Gosvāmī, who was established within the material world, the Order to fulfill the desire of Lord Caitanya. We wish to have such devotees here. But Kṛṣṇa wants qualified devotees with him. So, we can temper our feelings of separation from Aindra by knowing that Kṛṣṇa is very pleased and satisfied having Aindra with him at long last.

There are many lessons to be learned, that ultimately, I think, is the main way to look at it. But on a lower level of looking, we should be very, very careful not to offend pure devotees and to be able to honor them when they're in our midst, and we have to do our level best individually and as a society to heed their instructions, their warnings, and accept their chastisements, knowing that they're for our betterment.

Aindra, you were saying, "I've said it so many times, I could shout it so loud till your ears pop off, and I'll probably keep telling you to the day, saying it till the day I die, hari-nāma-saṅkīrtana. We have to place hari-nāma-saṅkīrtana back into its rightful place of dignity in the forefront of this Hare Kṛṣṇa movement. It's so essential for the proper growth of this movement. Otherwise, we get a deformed child. We don't get the desired result."

Aindra would say, "I'm just as sinful as everybody else, I'm nobody special, but I have the experience of doing 10, 12, 14-hour saṅkīrtana days for years and years. You gain that experience and see what happens to you."

So, Aindra's most powerful and important lasting legacy for everyone is to take up hari-nāma-saṅkīrtana. It's not Aindra's idea alone. It's not even just Śrīla Prabhupāda's idea alone. It is the conclusion of all the ācāryas and Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu himself. This is the way to do it.

So, if we want to remember Aindra, we want to hope to gain his association again and be with him in the Nitya Navadvīpa and Nitya Nikuñja of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa eternally. Then, while we're in this world, we should perform as much hari-nāma-saṅkīrtana as possible. It's a very easy thing to understand. We just have to do it. We're not meant to become jñānīs, we're not meant to become yogīs, and we're certainly not meant to become karmīs. We're meant to become śuddha, prema-nāma, bhaktas.

Hare Kṛṣṇa. Śrīpāda Aindra Prabhu kī jaya. Nitāi-Gaura premānande Hari Hari bol.