Stay where you are, don't be restless

Dinatarine Dasi: Yamuna Devi Dasi and myself had moved to Southern Oregon on our own. At that time, it was a difficult time for women in ISKCON in general. But we felt that we had to take this step. From the moment we got there despite the fact that we felt nice, the service mood was going on. As I said our Deities were installed in December. We were peacefully prosecuting Krishna consciousness. At that time, people would call or come and say, "Srila Prabhupada is very displeased with you. You won't ever get his mercy because you're living here unauthorized. You have to come back and you do whatever Srila Prabhupada tells you to do to get his mercy." So, we were thinking that, "Yes, this was absolutely correct." We were prepared to go wherever Srila Prabhupada wanted. So, when we saw him for the first time in 1975, I remember standing outside of his rooms and just feeling great sadness that of my precarious situation at that time. We had the great blessing of having a dear godbrother of ours who was in a leadership position arranged for us to have private darshanas with Srila Prabhupada every morning at 3:30 in the morning. 

We would just walk up, and they were so wonderful, so intimate, and usually just the three of us in the room. Sometimes Rameshwar Swami would be there as well, and sometimes Jayatirtha would be there as well. It was a wonderful time. So, this morning, Yamuna told Srila Prabhupada that we understood the necessity of having his mercy and were prepared to go wherever he wanted us to go. Srila Prabhupada immediately said, “Why are you so restless? You westerners are so restless. Why can't you stay in the same place.” So, at that time in my recollection that conversation was taken up again in the form of letters afterward when we had been requested by Jayatirtha to start a woman's program in Oregon. He suggested that we asked the BBT for initial funds to do that, and that caused some problems. So, at that time there were letters, one letter where Srila Prabhupada tells Jayatirtha that what can he do with us, we want to be independent. The same day a letter is written to us saying, “Stay where you are, don't be restless. I've told you how to live.” So, in this way, it was a very interesting progression to 1976 where we went again to Los Angeles under the same circumstances.