As an exemplar to his disciples, Prabhupāda was concerned with two tasks: conveying the teachings of the scriptures, and, second, demonstrating what has come to be known as “lived religion.” On the first point, he gave the example of harvesting mangoes. Just as ripe mangoes in a tree are handed down carefully from one person to another, so are the spiritual teachings preserved by his tradition. There can be no question of their authenticity, he claimed, because the teachings arrived there through a genealogy of people who “handled” the ripe teachings gingerly. Prabhupāda taught that the method for determining the veracity of any teaching is then further resolved by an ongoing exchange between the guru, other holy persons, and scripture. If they all agree, the teaching is authentic. To any skeptical objections to such a circular dialectic, Prabhupāda held up himself as an exemplar and charismatic resolution with the simple statement, “As I am doing, you must also do.”
To evince the utility of this lived religion, Prabhupāda again turned to the Caitanya tradition. In this tradition there are two sources of knowledge of Krishna: the “book Bhagavata” and the “person Bhagavata.” Prabhupāda exemplified the person Bhagavata by rising at 3:30 am, bathing, meditating, worshiping, and lecturing. Then he spent the entire day in activities dedicated to the spreading of the mission. In the evening, he repeated his morning routine. The point of this behavior—which he expected his disciples to emulate—was to control the senses in a practical manner and prepare the soul for association with Krishna in one of the five relationships in the spiritual world. According to his followers, Prabhupāda’s calm and humble manner as he described this spiritual world made it all the more attractive and believable.
In this world, Prabhupāda taught, there are three levels of Krishna devotees according to their consciousness. Beginners may follow the rules out of duty to take instruction from authoritative sources, but they will not be able to distinguish between exalted souls that they should serve and those souls who are equals. Nor will they be able to identify inimical souls who should be avoided entirely. At the middle level, a devotee understands the necessary distinctions between souls and lives accordingly. At the highest level, the devotee has no need for rules, but follows them to set the proper example, descending from the exalted consciousness of seeing everyone equally to the more worldly consciousness of the second class for the purpose of preaching. Beginners tend to regard only a temple or a sacred river as a holy place, and they may have faith in scriptures they do not understand. Middling devotees have more understanding by seeing Krishna within the heart of everyone. Those at the highest level actually experience the five relationships with Krishna.
Devotees of the Caitanya tradition need a guru at the same time that they must strive to fulfill Caitanya’s order to become gurus themselves. Practitioners of this tradition must always see their guru as a devotee of the highest sort—a “pure devotee”. Accordingly, Prabhupāda’s disciples refer to him as “His Divine Grace.” As he saw it, there was no choice but to teach the new devotees—with no background information of Hindu culture—the proper etiquette in relating to a guru. Yet he also wanted there to be a reciprocal relationship between himself and his followers. To accomplish this, he performed a careful humility. In the beginning he would get on his hands and knees to show the proper way of washing a floor, or stand in line for the bathroom in the morning. In a very short time, his disciples were bowing to him with heads touching the floor, reciting a Sanskrit formula in praise of him that, he, being the only one who knew Sanskrit, had to compose.
Prabhupāda negotiated these innovations with considerable aplomb. For instance, in his Preface to his Bhagavad Gītā translation, he writes, “If I have any credit in this connection, it does not belong to me personally, but it is due to my eternal spiritual master…Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati…” With this statement, early in the history of his institution, Prabhupāda introduced the concept of a spiritual family. His guru Sarasvati was his spiritual father, who also had a spiritual father, etc., all the way back to Krishna.
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