670228 - Letter to Rayarama written from San Francisco

INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR KRISHNA CONSCIOUSNESS, INC.
TWENTY-SIX SECOND AVENUE, NEW YORK, N.Y. 10003
TELEPHONE: 674-7428

Branch: 518 Frederick Street
San Francisco, California,
February 28, 1967

ACHARYA: SWAMI A. C. BHAKTIVEDANTA
TRUSTEES:
Larry Bogart
James S. Greene
Carl Yeargans
Raphael Balsam
Robert Lefkowitz
Raymond Marais
Stanley Mogkowitz
Michael Grant
Harvey Cohen

My Dear Rayrama,
Please accept my blessings and offer the same to all your Godbrothers for your doing the respective duties nicely. I am in due receipt of the copy of Back to Godhead dated 15th February 1967 and I am glad that it is nicely done. The only defect is that picture which is [handwritten] wrongly put there without asking me. There was no need of interpretation and why you have interpreted the picture as one has to be naked before the Lord to become perfect(?). We have no interpretation in any [handwritten] one of the verses in the Gita and Srimad Bhagavatam. They were not fictitious and therefore there is no need of interpretation. Krishna actually took away the dresses of the Gopis and actually He saw the girls naked. There is no [handwritten] interpretation there. The girls of Vrindaban of the same age like Krishna wanted Krishna as their husband. In India the girls are married earlier by ten years at least and thus the girls who were of the same age were married although they wished Krishna as their husband. Krishna fulfilled their wishes by this pastime. Nobody can ask any woman or girl to become naked except the husband. That is the moral etiquette of Vedic culture. Krishna is actually husband of every woman. There was no necessity of formal marriage. But still Krishna played like husband by asking them to become naked. In the spiritual world there is no cohabitation; simply by such emotion in transcendental ecstasy the desire is fulfilled.

These pictures of Krishna and the Gopis are not understandable by a layman who has no idea of Krishna. Therefore, this picture was wrongly put without asking me. Please, therefore, consult me before putting any such picture or interpretations. One must understand first Krishna from the Bhagawatam by reading the first nine chapters. Otherwise Krishna would be taken as ordinary man and His pastimes will be wrongly understood. Besides that a Brahmachary should not see [handwritten] any kind of naked picture. That is violation of [handwritten] Brahmachary law.

I am asking you therefore not to put the picture in the issue of Back to Godhead. I have asked here not to put this picture and so also I am asking you. I think all the pictures are not yet stapled and therefore it must not be put in there.

Last night we had very nice function at Stanford University. More than three hundred students gathered and all of them sang and danced with our Kirtan for full one hour. There was lecture for 15 to 20 minutes questions and answers about 25 minutes and the balance for Kirtan. So altogether there was two hours program and it was very successful.

On Sunday afternoon there was Kirtan in the Golden Gate Park and there was about 3 to 4 [handwritten] hundred audience and most of them danced in ecstasy. It reminded me of our activities in the Tompkins Park. I have asked them to arrange for loud speakers and microphones so that next week we [handwritten] may have greater audience to join us. It appears to me that people of this country will accept this movement nicely if we do [handwritten] it in accordance with prescribed directions. When we receive the Mridangas we shall have better chance to perform the Kirtan more nicely.

Please try to send the Mridanga and cymbals as early as possible as I have already instructed.

Hope you are all well,

Yours ever well wisher,

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami.