Krsna will supply the research material

Satsvarupa Dasa Goswami: Last summer, 1976, Srila Prabhupada was visiting Devasadana Mandir (Detroit temple). I was the local GBC. I was staying in our sankirtana mobile home, parked in the temple yard. One night, Srila Prabhupada called for me. I went in and he asked whether I was writing a book.

At that time, Readings in Vedic Literature had been completed for at least a year, but I thought he was referring to it and I made some brief statement about it. I remember feeling guilty about being so presumptuous as to be writing a book, since that business should only be for Srila Prabhupada. (Of course, he didn't feel that way.)

My guilt over book-writing was unwarranted. Guilt is due to my rascaldom on so many accounts. For a disciple to write a book without trying to surpass his spiritual master, but as a preaching service, is not an offense.) Anyway, we established that the Vedic Reader book was finished. He said, "Now write another book".

What is that another book which Srila Prabhupada specifically called for me, to tell me to write? It is, 'How Anything Undertaken Without Krishna Fails.' He had been preaching on that point. We discussed it briefly. Different reformers and institutions, missions, planmakers, etc., have introduced to the world grand schemes for betterment, but they have all failed. We must show that they failed because Krishna was not in the center. This will show that Krishna is needed as the central element. Gandhi is one example. At the time of his demise, he was disgusted that his plans had failed.

Another example is the United Nations: they have failed to realize the goal of their charter. The best example, Prabhupada said, is that if you attempt to water a tree by watering its leaves and branches, it will fail. Water must be applied to the root. One cannot be said to be a success who was vanquished by time, and his plans along with him. This is in fact the history of empires, that they have risen and fallen, failed.

Now I have to demonstrate by very good argument how these things failed due to lack of Krishna consciousness (beginning with a lack of knowledge of the soul and transmigration in all their schemes, and lack of moral practice, lack of knowledge of God). My immediate response to this order was to talk of it excitedly with my Godbrothers, but to do nothing about it. It sat through summer and fall without my taking action. As I began thinking of it, I thought it would require a great deal of material research. He wanted a serious work that the nondevotees would have to accept as sound. (The Vedic Reader is sound because it is based on sastric reference and it argues that materialistic academicians cannot understand the Vedas a sound proposal, even though written out of religious conviction.)

It seemed if I started reviewing Gandhi's career, for example, and showing his faults as lack of Krishna consciousness, it would be taken as sectarian preaching and not appreciated as serious. One thing I have gained more recently is a callous disdain for what so-called objective atheists will think of our strong Krishna conscious presentation.

Let us preach in our own way and defy. This disdain, say in the preaching of Back to Godhead magazine, is a source of energy for the writers. We certainly want to present our philosophy against the godlessness of Kali-yuga, so we simply present it. Call a spade a spade.

I wrote to Srila Prabhupada saying if I were to do this book, it would require material research. He wrote back, Yes, go ahead and do it; it will be a great service to the world. So many people are making great schemes; he pointed out how the Indian government was trying to make some model city in Chandigarh and failed.

He said, Go ahead, Krishna will supply the research material. With that go-ahead, I began research. I read many books on the philosophy of history, Toynbee, this one, that one. I read and took notes and tried to conceive how I could do it. How could I show how different things in history had failed because of no Krishna consciousness?

Then how to show things that succeeded because of Krishna consciousness? For this, I wanted to show the Vedic society, but then I thought, They will never believe that such a society existed. When I looked into mundane Indian history, there was little to go on. My plan was to show in one section of the book an example of a success, and then the modern failure, say of Gandhi. I became discouraged when I saw that my material research was not going to provide me with a model of Krishna consciousness.

Then this was in Dallas in December and I was dedicating almost my whole concentration to it I began to think instead of doing this philosophical writing for which I was untrained and which would take me years and years before I could refute the material theories, and I thought, Let me instead turn to personal writing. I dropped the whole project of researching in history. (My idea had been to study theistic and atheistic ideas of the meaning of history, so I could refer to them as I gave the meaning of mundane events according to Krishna consciousness.)

I got very much involved in writing my autobiography in Krishna consciousness with fictional overtones, studied a few novels, thought to create a great literature, and then when I finally arrived in India at Srila Prabhupada's lotus feet I found I had gone rather astray in my hope to create my own literature and my own concentration in something aside from the direct ISKCON preaching. I abruptly dropped the autobiography, and then in Mayapur, I was given the editorship of BTG. That keeps me busy, but I have not done much writing. Maybe I can think again of the proper approach to this work, How Things Undertaken Without Krishna Fail. I think to be pure, I should not think so much whether the BBT will publish it or whether it will be accepted by persons of a certain academic, objective background; I should preach as truly and boldly as I am able to.