670505 - Letter to Kirtanananda written from New York

Letters by Date, 1967

INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR KRISHNA CONSCIOUSNESS, INC.
TWENTY SIX-SECOND AVENUE NEW YORK N.Y.10003
Telephone:674-7428

ACHARYA:SWAMI A.C. BHAKTIVEDANTA
TRUSTEES:
Larry Bogart
James S. Greene
Carl Yeargans
Raphael Balsam
Robert Lefkowitz
Raymond Marais
Stanley Mogkowitz
Michael Grant
Harvey Cohen
May 5, 1967

Kirtanananda das Brahmachary
c/o International Society for Krishna Consciousness
3720 Park Avenue,
Montreal, Quebec Canada

My dear Kirtanananda,
I am in due receipt of your letter dated May 1st 1967 and I am very pleased to go through it. Please accept my blessings. You are doing very nice alone, and Krishna will help you more and more. As you are managing our Montreal center, similarly, Mukunda and Haridasa and Shyamsundar are also very nicely managing the center in San Francisco. I have received also one letter from Mukunda of the same date, May 1st, 1967 and he writes as follows: "I am happy to report that many more people are attending kirtan. Someone has made a beautiful technicolor movie (our first in Golden Gate Park) called "Hare Krishna". It has sound, our voices." I am sorry that you have no good mridunga, but if you send me a hundred dollars as I have already written to Pradyumna I can get a mridunga and good harmonium for you so that you can have your kirtan very nicely. I am very much pleased to learn that our comments on the Bhagavad Gita are being appreciated by the audience in Montreal. Regarding printing, if I print the Bhagavad Gita in your country, it will cost not less than 12,000 dollars, out of this I have already secured about 5,000 dollars from one of my students at San Francisco and still I require 6 to 7,000 dollars. I do not know how to secure it, but the only hope is that I have my books. If you can organise the sales of my books, either you or Pradyumna, then there is no question of scarcity of money. I can go on printing so many books. But because the books are not selling nicely, neither there is sufficient money, so I am handicapped. Anyway, let us depend on Krishna and when He will desire, everything will be very nice. Perhaps you have heard that I have recovered out of that 6,000 dollars which had undergone in the belly of Sir Con Fraud. I have realized about 4700 dollars--the pleaders have taken about 1200 dollars, including Mr. Hill's lawyer, our lawyer Herzog and I have paid also something to Goldsmith. Anyway, that affair is closed. Now we are searching after a bigger place. So far we have not been able to find out a suitable place. We found out a very nice suitable place at 6th Street on Grand, but the difficulty is just on the side there is a butcher and the smell is obnoxious, so we could not do it. Now there is a bank building on Houston Street, so, that is very nice, but we do not know how to secure it; we are trying for it.
I have already written to Janardan about his studies and I have requested him to have his M.A. degree by all means. You will be pleased to know that appreciation of our Back To Godhead and records has come from London and our disciple Dwarakadhis, Donald Dougherty is arranging to send 100 records, 3 sets of books and Back To Godhead to London. This time they have made a very nice cover of Back To Godhead and the articles and poetry are very nice. I think they will dispatch to you, and you will enjoy them. Think over how to popularise our samkirtan. If we can popularise our publication then it will be very nice propaganda.
You will be pleased to learn that yesterday we had a nice meeting in the City College, 138th St. There were about 200 students attending and the program began at 12 noon and ended at 1:30. First of all we chanted and prayed for 45 minutes, then I lectured for another 30 minutes then there were questions and answers for 20 minutes then again, there was chanting and kirtan and dancing for 15 minutes and at the end all the students danced and sang with me. They appreciated the meeting. If we can arrange such meetings in the schools and colleges it will be a very nice thing, because my purpose of coming here to enthuse the younger generation and it is very pleasing to me that Krishna is sending me younger generation and sincere souls like you. I think some of you like yourself, Sat-svarupa, Brahmananda and Mukunda and Gargamuni, Achyutananda and all of you had already cultivated this Krishna Consciousness in your past lives, now Lord Chaitanya wants that this movement should be spread in the western countries, so most probably in your previous births you were all Indians and cultivated this Krishna Consciousness. Now Lord Chaitanya has placed you in the western part of the world so that you can now combine together and broadcast the holy message all over the world. Your detailed account of the receipt and expenditure is very nice, do your duty and Krishna will help you. I have got all approval of your activities and I am thanking you very much.

Your ever well-wisher,

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami

NOTE: If you want to come here for 2 or 3 days it will be a very welcome suggestion. So we can talk together about our future programs, and it will be very nice. Hayagriva wants to hear from you. He wants that you should join his Editorial Department but he will only use you for Iskcon [unclear] of which he is very fond of. [handwritten]