Western students unfazed

Visakha Devi Dasi: Each evening at the pandal, a prominent guest—the Canadian high commissioner, the magistrate of the Delhi High Court, the mayor of Delhi, the Indian defense minister—introduced and spoke a few words of appreciation about Prabhupada and his mission. And every evening, seated on the stage, Prabhupada lectured. The opening evening he told the audience how, before Krishna had explained the Bhagavad-gita to Arjuna, he had spoken it to the sun god, Vivasvan. Vivasvan had explained the same thing to his son, Manu, and Manu to his son, Ikshvaku. Krishna had told Arjuna that the system of knowledge described in the Gita came through disciplic succession—from spiritual master to disciple—but how in course of time it had been lost. Krishna was speaking the same knowledge to Arjuna because Arjuna was Krishna's devotee and friend.

“Oh, no!” I thought. This harked back to God lifting Govardhana hill with the pinkie of his left hand and a fetus learning of transcendence. Sun gods? Prabhupada unhesitatingly and unabashedly integrated the uplifting excitement of profound and sensible spiritual revelations with what was to me outlandish, bold contradictions of scientific knowledge and truths.

Yet what smacked of mythology to me left the Indian people—and Prabhupada's western students—unfazed. It made me question the line I drew between sweet transcendental vistas of reality and what I thought of as fanciful or mythological stories. Who was I to draw such a line? And how had Prabhupada developed such unflinching faith in an unseen order? How had his students crossed that line?

When I dismissed much of what Prabhupada said, at first I felt smug and superior in my understanding and reasoning abilities, as in “How could educated people to believe such phantasmagoria? I certainly couldn't believe such stories.” But on hearing Prabhupada present logical, profound understandings juxtaposed with those fantastic statements, and on seeing how Prabhupadas disciples and the Indian people accepted statements I summarily dismissed, I quickly felt growing and painful confusion. After a while, I was in a churning sea of doubt about my former convictions.