720220 - Letter to Rudra and Radhika written from Calcutta

Letters by Date, 1972

Letter to Rudra das and Radhika devi dasi (Page 1 of ?) (Page Missing)

Date:   February 20, 1972
Camp:  ISKCON Calcutta

My dear Rudra das and Radhika devi dasi,

Please accept my blessings. I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letters of January 7, 1972, and I am very much pleased that you have opened a very nice center in Madison, Wisconsin. Thank you very much. Now develop it very nicely, and especially make certain that the daily routine programme is held nicely and to the regular highest ISKCON standard, that is, you should see that our rising early, holding mongal arotik, chanting 16 rounds, reading books, having classes, street sankirtan, etc., go on just to the highest standard and are never for any reason neglected. In this way your success is assured, but if we neglect even for a moment our routine, work, if we allow the regular programme to become slack then everything else we may try will fail. I think you have understood these things and you are doing things very nicely, and because your "number one concern" is distributing my books and preaching, I think Krishna will give you all facility to increase more and more and make advancement in Krishna Consciousness.

I am very glad to hear that Louise Bourassa has joined us. Thank her for understanding our philosophy. She is PhD., so she may translate all of my books into French language in cooperation with Yogeswara at ISKCON Press in New York, who is in charge of the foreign languages printing of my books. She may also write articles for BTG why she came to KC and comparing our philosophy to others.

You have described how you once fell down because you saw discrepancies in our philosophy. Actually, our philosophy is perfect, but because there were discrepancies in your mind at that time you may have thought something wrongly about our philosophy--that is one of Maya's favourite tricks for convincing us to stop our Spiritual life and enjoy her. So if ever you have questions or serious doubts about philosophy you may ask the GBC or myself. And so far your telling me that some other devotees discouraged you in the past, I also had trouble with some of my Godbrothers, but I never let it affect my service, because when one becomes fixed-up in devotional service he never allows anyone else or any condition at all to hamper his service to Krishna or discourage him in any way. So you must become convinced like this too, by preaching constantly and having Sankirtan, and you will very quickly attain the supreme perfection of life. As for your question about celibacy, if you want to remain celibate for life, I have no objection.

Also, I have no objection if you purchase cars for serving Krishna, as they appear to be required for distributing books and incense, so why not have them? And when you are more developed, you may install deities and worship them very opulently. My only point is that simultaneously we must increase our literature production and build Mayapur Temple, But it is not that we have to stop everything else for one thing. The art of managing is to do all things at once in a nice manner, and the guiding principle is to do whatever is practical for preaching KC and at the same time maintaining our high standards of routine KC practices for making ourselves progress on the Spiritual path. Regarding the teacher Miss Wilson, you may engage her in translating, if she can read Bengali type. She can try Jiva Goswamis "Sandarvas"--that will be a great contribution. So far Radhika's work, I am very pleased you are continuing translating into Russian language my books and essays. This book business is the most important of all, so kindly continue giving it your full attention. Work in Russia is going on slowly, and we have got a plan to send French devotee girl there to marry our Russian boy devotee in Moscow, and then the work will go much faster. I shall inform you when we are ready for BTG in Russian language, meanwhile go on with the work. Krishna das is in Europe, you may write him c/o Hamburg center. If you have honey, why not use instead of sugar but I think it is too expensive to be practical.

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