April 22

On his early-morning walk, with three sannyasis [disciples in the renounced order] present, Srila Prabhupada took the role of a pious religionist and challenged us, saying we had nothing to teach him, since he already loved God. "But you don't know what God is," one of us said. "That's all right," he said. "Whatever idea I have, I am praying. If I didn't love God, I wouldn't go to church." We gave argument after argument, but he rejected them all, saying he was as good in his religion as we were in ours; he had his own love of God and scripture and world religion, and he was as good as we were. We couldn't catch him. Finally he revealed to us what we should have said: "If you love God, why do you disobey Him?"

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A sympathetic Endowments Officer from the government was talking with Srila Prabhupada. He said that the government policy is that everyone should be God conscious, and it seems they have a branch that dispenses money to different temples for the propagation of Hindu culture. He said that "orthodox brahmanas" [religious intellectuals] object to ISKCON because we recruit men from the mleccha and yavana classes [meat-eaters, outcastes] and make them brahmanas. Srila Prabhupada opened his Sanskrit Bhagavatam and turned to a passage where Narada is talking to King Yudhisthira about the four orders of society [intellectuals, administrators, merchants and laborers]. Narada said that if you find in another country a person working as a brahmana, with the qualities of a brahmana, he must be accepted as a brahmana. Srila Prabhupada then read Sridhara Svami's comment on the verse also. If one gets a degree as an engineer but sits home and doesn't work, he's not an engineer. Krsna created the four social orders on the basis of guna and karma, one's qualities and his work. It's very scientific. One must acquire the qualities, and he must work. And the role of a secular government is to see that brahmanas are actually working as brahmanas. So the four castes must be maintained. This is called varnasrama. Prabhupada said that if the Indian government would finance him, he could rid India of godlessness in a year. "People are fed up with materialism and cheating yoga. Why not support this movement? Immediately we could open one hundred Varnasrama Colleges and start training. We wouldn't just rubber stamp a man 'brahmana' because he happens to be born in a brahmana family. That religion of the body won't do. One must actually become qualified."

That is just one sample of the practical discussions about Krsna and practical proposals that Srila Prabhupada talks about with respectable men hour after hour, day after day, untiringly, with 100% conviction and fresh enthusiasm.

Srila Prabhupada said that someone wanted to write a book about him, just like the big books people write about their gurus to call the gurus God. But he said, "No, write books about Krsna-hundreds of volumes about Krsna."