711115 - Letter to Lalita Kumar written from Delhi

Letters by Date, 1971

Date: November 15, 1971
Camp: 7-D Kamala Nagar,
Delhi-7, India.

My Dear Lalit Kumar,

Please accept my blessings. I am in due receipt of your letter (undated), and I am very encouraged by the progress you are making to lead the citizens of your community, Wilmington, on the transcendental path back to Home, back to Godhead. Because you are very sincere and enthusiastic boy, and very intelligent also, Krishna has give you this position of leadership in His army, to win the war with Maya and establish Krishna Consciousness as the perfect way of life for every living entity. If you simply push on this one activity of distributing my books, your all success will be there. I have hatched this "transcendental plot" for getting money by selling my books, and if we stick only to this plan, and use our brain for selling books, there will easily be sufficient money. I have recently informed the GBC to allow each temple to keep 25% of the money they collect from direct book and magazine sales for temple maintenance, 75% to be sent to Book Fund. Supposing you can sell 800 dollars a week worth of literature (retail price). Will not 200 dollars weekly be sufficient for food and rent? If not, increase book sales, or, until things are adjusted in this way, supplement in other ways, but try to avoid too much business as this distracts us from our real mission. If Krishna sees that we are very active to spread information about Him, He is Master of the Goddess of Fortune, He will give everything!
I note that you have got a nice van--why not have some travelling Sankirtan parties in the surrounding countryside, distributing our literature in new places?
Your approaching schools and colleges is very tactful because these students are the most eligible candidates for receiving this transcendental knowledge of Krishna philosophy. Simply by repeating what I have said--first you must yourself become fully convinced of this philosophy--your preaching will meet with all success. Our philosophy has the full potency to deliver anyone from the darkest realms of ignorance to the enlightened realm of complete cognizance. The potential is there, simply you have to master the words and deliver them purely, and this will please me very much. You will be happy to know that I am preparing a book on commentaries on your Western philosophers, so that all of my students may defeat these nonsense rascals who are simply speculating this and that and misleading the people. If we sincerely try to present our philosophy at every opportunity, eventually it will be heard and appreciated. So plan your school program in this way.
As for your questions, do the fallen should leave the spiritual world all at once or gradually, we can answer, do all the prisoners in the [text missing] prisonhouse free at once—no, some are coming, some are going. Our presentation of Krishna Consciousness must be always very bold-if we are king, we must act like king. The idea is if we speak the truth [text missing], those will hear who are intended to hear by being qualified or prepared. It is not that we should compromise to attract the mass—we are after the class. Still, it was my method to make Krishna Consciousness palatable to you Western boys and girls, how else could I attract you to give up your habits of sense gratification? Krishna philosophy can be approached from every angle because it is the Complete Whole, purnam. So if your scientific explanation, beginning from the point that sound vibration is the root cause of everything, and leading to the understanding that Krishna is the Cause of the sound vibration is having good effect, why not continue in this way. Only thing is to remain true to the authorities--Krishna, the great saints and acharyas--and everything you say will come out nicely. People are of different natures so we have to use our talents how to convince people in different circumstances, that's all.
I hope this meets you and your good wife Jambuvati in good health and cheerful mood.

Your ever well-wisher,

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami