Daily Meditation on my Gurudeva - Day 7: "Spiritual Espionage"

This is what I call my Gurudeva’s “preaching-vesa”. “Vesa” is the appearance or dress of someone. I think some devotees (and even sometimes disciples) were confused by my Guru Maharaja’s preaching style. They didn’t understand why he was circulating through the New Age circles and writing books about UFOs, pyramids, psychic phenomenon and the like. He wasn’t attached to those things. He was simply dovetailing everything into Krishna Consciousness and preaching to those particular people that had those particular interests.

I think my Gurudeva unfairly became labeled as being outside of the parampara and introducing speculation into the process of bhakti as it had been given by Srila Prabhupada. Of course not everyone thought this about him, but it was easy to come to this conclusion based on the external appearances. But no matter whom he was preaching to his focus was on pleasing Srila Prabhupada and serving his mission of spreading Krishna Consciousness around the planet.

I’ll never forget the one time during a darshan where he asked the assembled devotees, (paraphrasing) “Who is the more important preacher? The one on the front line distributing books or the undercover preacher performing spiritual espionage?” Someone up front, like four feet away from him, responded without hesitating, “The frontline preacher!” My Guru Maharaja leapt from his chair, pointed at the disciple and shouted, “That’s your NONSENSE, you nonsense!” The disciple quickly scurried backwards. He then said, “It’s the espionage soldier!”

His point was that it’s one thing to go out on the street and give a random stranger a book compared to infiltrating groups of people that have far-reaching influence and power. In terms of preaching, it would be far more effective to turn Oprah Winfrey into a Krishna bhakta than some Joe Shmo at a Vans Warped concert.

This isn’t to say that one way of preaching is better than another or to criticize the book distributors who are out there serving Srila Prabhupada. It’s just the point that’s coming up from seeing my Gurudeva dressed in his Neru jacket and hat. It was easy to misunderstand his purpose and to only perceive what he was doing externally, rather than understanding the essence. It didn’t matter what he was wearing. It mattered that he was doing whatever it took to try and reach the most jivas possible. He truly embodied the spirit of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, whose mission was to preach to the upper echelons of society. My Guru Maharaja was going for the “big fish”: the leaders of movements, executives, doctors, lawyers, etc. If it meant he had to dress like an African king or a New Age psychic it didn’t matter to him. The thing that mattered most was pleasing Srila Prabhupada.