Festival Season Arrives

For this year’s festival, almost five hundred devotees from around the world had gathered, and Prabhupada – while taking his morning walk in the nearby fields, while entering the temple of Radha-Madhava, or while lecturing from the Caitanya-caritamrta – was the central attractive feature. Each morning after giving the class, he would circumambulate the temple room, followed by his disciples. A brass bell hung from the ceiling on either side of the Deities’ altar, and Prabhupada, while circumambulating the Deities, would go up to one of the bells and ring it several times, pulling the rope while kirtana continued wildly. Then with cane in hand, he would walk around the back of the Deity altar and emerge on the other side to ring the other bell.

The devotees would jump up and down close around him, singing Hare Krsna, Hare Krsna, Krsna Krsna, Hare Hare / Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare. Smiling with great pleasure, Prabhupada would continue the length of the temple room to the first bell again and strongly ring it. After half a dozen such blissful circumambulations, he would leave the temple, while the kirtana continued to roar. Coming out into the bright morning sunshine, he would walk up the broad staircase to his room.

Prabhupada again supervised the annual meeting of his Governing Body Commission and personally approved or modified all their decisions. ISKCON was indeed growing, but as Prabhupada had told his friend, the aged Gopala Acarya, in Madres,

Krsna and Krsna’s institution are non-different. If the devotees are thinking of Krsna’s institution, they will not forget Krsna.

By insisting on the devotees’ participation in the annual Indian pilgrimage, Prabhupada was solidifying the spiritual basis of ISKCON, his transcendental institution. To gather his devotees like this was the reason he had prayed and struggled to erect centers in the dhamas. He wanted to extend the purifying shelter of Mayapur and Vrndavana to all his followers, now and in the future. Bit by bit, the plan was coming together; the whole world was being saved by Lord Caitanya’s movement.

– Mayapur, March 23, 1975