730720 - Letter to Govinda dasi written from Bhaktivedanta Manor, UK

Letters by Date, 1973

Tridandi Goswami
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami
Founder-Acharya:
International Society for Krishna Consciousness
CENTER:Bhaktivedanta Manor,
Letchmore Heath,
Herts, England

DATE ................July..20........19..73

Dear Govinda dasi,
Please accept my blessings. I beg to acknowledge receipt of your undated letter. I am concerned that you write describing that you are bewildered by the dictates of your material mind.
Of course we have to control the mind, and I have already instructed you and all my students that the restless fickle mind can only be controlled by putting the mind to the lotus feet of Krsna, and that can best be done by chanting Hare Krsna mantra, and there is no alternative in this age. By chanting without offenses, the devotee cries to Radharani and Krsna to please lift him out of the material energy and put him into the spiritual energy, which is devotional service.
And because we are not at the stage where we can chant and do nothing else all day, there are so many other engagements. So you have sufficient engagement there? Because if we are not fulltime engaged then the mind is free to do its fickle business of rejection and acceptance for sense gratification. Maya will immediately enter--we do not even have to call her--the moment we are not absorbed in Krsna's devotional service.
But if there is something further which is specifically causing you so much difficulty then please disclose it to me.
While writing this letter, your package has just arrived with various dried fruit and vegetable; so I have turned it over to my servant, Sruta Kirti and he shall be using it very soon in some of my preparations; thank you very much; How is Goursundar? [handwritten]

Your ever well-wisher,

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami

Srimati Govinda devi dasi
ISKCON Hawaii

ACBS/sdg