My Dancing White Elephants

Sudama Swami: Srila Prabhupada told me, "Sudama, you were Japanese in your previous life." In a year I had learned Japanese fluently and I was thinking and dreaming in Japanese. It was bizarre. In 1970 Srila Prabhupada arrived at the temple in Tokyo and was not pleased. I had a huge portrait of him in the anteroom where you take your shoes off. "Even you," Prabhupada said, "have become infected." I said, Srila Prabhupada? He said, "Yes, I can see it. I see so many discrepancies here." He chastised me for two hours. I was crushed. Then he said, "You have not made devotees." That was my worst nightmare because that's what I always heard from other GBCs. My peers would say, Come on, Sudama. What are you doing over there? The next day was Vyasa-puja. This was the initial Vyasa-puja that everyone follows in ISKCON today. We were taught this in Tokyo. Prior to that, we had it all wrong. Srila Prabhupada arrived at the temple. I was just improvising the ceremony. I didn't know. Srila Prabhupada sat on the vyasasana. Some guests were there. He was angry with all of us. "How dare you bring me here. How you insult the spiritual master." What could we say? You could have heard a pin drop. I was embarrassed. I left the room and cried. I had displeased him. I went back into the tiny temple room. He said, "All right, tomorrow we will observe Vyasa-puja the correct way. I will instruct you. Now take me home." Sure enough, that evening he told me what I had to get. The next day we did it just the way we have done it for years now. Then Prabhupada lectured on the spiritual master's mercy. That evening he got a phone call from Harikripa in New Vrindavan, stating that Vishnujana, Subal, Gargamuni, and Brahmananda had upset many devotees by preaching that Srila Prabhupada was the speaker of the Gita and that we Westerners were not qualified to worship Radha Krishna because we were mlecchas. Little did we know how insidious and power-hungry and envious some of Prabhupada's God-brothers were. Srila Prabhupada was relieved. He said, "Finally, the bubble has broken. I knew that my God-brothers were behind this." Srila Prabhupada was the person who began the fructification of Lord Chaitanya's prediction that in every town and village the Lord's name will be heard. His God-brothers couldn't even do it in London. They had to come back. Prabhupada sent eight white girls and boys to London to chant, and they turned on all of London, and all of Europe for that matter. Anyway, Prabhupada was glad that these devotees had done this because he wanted them to go and preach. They couldn't stay in temples, couldn't lecture, and had to go preaching. And that's what they did. They split up. Brahmananda and Gargamuni went to south Florida. That was their penance. Srila Prabhupada got ready to leave Tokyo to go to India. He said, "I have opened the West. Now I will take my dancing white elephants to India."