Dancing White Elephants: Traveling with Srila Prabhupada in India (August 1970-March 1972)

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Baba Balmukund, one of the sadhus who attended the Gita Jayanti, summarized Srila Prabhupada's contribution: "I've seen many sadhus and great saints in this Gita Bhavan. I saw Srila Prabhupada also in the same place. I was very much impressed by Srila Prabhupada and his preaching, because Prabhupada had revealed the reality about bhakti. Because he was a pure bhakta, he could change the people of the West and give them another dress, he could give them another diet, and he could entirely change their culture and give them true bhakti. And this was the greatest thing Prabhupada has done. Let the world say as it likes, but he has done a marvelous thing regarding Lord Krishna's bhakti. What others could not do, Srila Prabhupada has done. It is a marvelous thing." (Indore, December 1970) "The people in my village were much impressed by the presence of Prabhupada," Mr. Patel recounted. "They used to say that he has done miracles by chanting. 'He is a miracle saint, no doubt,' people were saying. 'So many Western people have become devotees, just by chanting the name of the Lord.' The people were very much impressed by Prabhupada's practical way of bhakti. In his lecture Srila Prabhupada created such a good impression, not only on Vaishnavas but on so many Christians and Parsis, and even some Muhammadan friends started believing in Lord Krishna as the universal Godhead.

"With regards to all the saints, nobody has been able to spread this philosophy like this in the past. In our village we are already Vaishnavas, of course, but we used to believe in Suryaji, Durga, Thakuraji, and all these things.... After Prabhupada conducted his discourse here in the village, the people were so impressed that even in his absence they chant the maha-mantra loudly and they greet people with the words 'Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna." (Surat, December 1970)

Giriraj Swami is a spiritual leader and ini- tiating guru in the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). After years of traveling, speaking, and developing projects, he is focusing on Srila Prabhupada's direct instruction to him to write.

When requested by His Holiness Giriraj Swami to write the foreword for his latest book, Dancing White Elephants: Traveling with Srila Prabhupada in India, August 1970-March 1972, I felt both honored and intimidated, as Maharaja is one of my guiding heroes. Although we come from the same era in the Hare Krishna movement, myself having joined a bit earlier, I am nowhere near-not even close-to his spiritual stature, his academic footing, or his all-encompassing sta- tus as a truly good human being. He is an extraordinary individual whose particular destiny was likely not foreseen at his birth into a high-class educated American family in which one would be expected to achieve elevated goals in material life.

Shortly before graduating cum laude from Brandeis University, upon meeting His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, an internationally renowned spiritual leader, author, and public speaker, as well as the founder-acharya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), Giriraj-Glenn Teton-considered that he had learned more from Srila Prabhupada in one meeting than he had in his twenty years of academic education. After graduating from Brandeis, in 1969 he took formal initiation from Srila Prabhupada, beginning a life of immaculate dedication to his teacher and the teachings of Gaud- iya Vaishnavism, and thus began his hero's journey, including authoring several important books, having been instructed by Srila Prabhupada to take up writing as "his first business."

It was during a stopover in Brussels en route to that great mysterious land of India, the beginning of a new era in the Krishna consciousness movement, that I first saw Giriraj, then a youthful, simple, bespectacled, thin monk (brahmachari). We boarded a rather dubious propeller air- plane that had to land here and there to refuel, and one of those stops was Cairo, Egypt, which was in the midst of a military crisis. When we deplaned into overpowering heat under relentless sun, we were wide- eyed in amazement to find military men with machine guns surrounding us.