On uniting the divine families of His Divine Grace Srila Prabhupada

A message from His Holiness Bhakti Caru Swami Maharaj 

on HH Bhakti Tirtha Swami Maharaj

Columbus, 28/5/13.

I recently attended the “Uniting Prabhupada’s Family” festival in Cleveland, Ohio, from 24^th to 26^th May. The festival was organised in honour of Bhakti Tirtha Maharaja by his disciples. Cleveland is the place where Maharaja was born and raised. It was a very nice festival: Many of Maharaja’s disciples came from different parts of the world and Radhanath Maharaja, Bhakti-marga Maharaja, Bhakti Vasudeva Maharaja and Malati Mataji also attended.

Bhakti Tirtha Swami Maharaj, South Africa

The festival began with the reading of a beautiful poem that was written by Bhakti Tirtha Maharaja expressing his gratitude to Srila Prabhupada, and then we had a panel discussion about the feeling of gratitude. That morning Radhanath Maharaja gave the Srimad Bhagatavam class and, as usual, it was a brilliant class.

Radhanath Maharaja and Bhakti Tirtha Maharaja were very close friends and in many areas they served together which intensified their bond of friendship even deeper. A few weeks before leaving the planet, Bhakti Tirtha Maharaja expressed his desire to spend time with Radhanath Maharaj, who most graciously dropped everything and went to Gita Nagari to be with him. Radhanath Maharaja was there by Bhakti Tirtha Maharaja’s side when he left this planet. It was during that time that Bhakti Tirtha Maharaja requested Radhanath Maharaja to write his autobiography in a book, which resulted in the publication of The Journey Home, which created such a sensation all over the world.

Many wonderful revelations were also expressed by various devotees during the festival. Bhakti Tirtha Maharaja’s whole life was discussed: What a brilliant personality he was and how he grew up in a rather underprivileged environment but nonetheless shone forth with brilliance in his academics and other spheres. It was also discussed that, when Maharaja got to know that he had cancer, he simply smiled and broke the news to the devotees who came with him to the hospital, saying that the doctors said that he has cancer and may have to amputate his leg. Seeing Maharaja smiling like that, those devotees could not believe what he was saying, they first thought that it was a joke. But when they realised that it was true, they broke down into tears whilst Maharaja just kept on laughing.

Mother Vraja-Lila, Maharaja’s secretary and very close disciple, was the MC of the festival. She, along with her husband Ekavira Prabhu, took care of Maharaja for many years, especially at the time of his sickness. She mentioned that, when Maharaja was convalescing in Hawaii, every day he used to watch “Abhay Charan”, the biographical video of Srila Prabhupada that I produced.

Bhakti Tirtha Maharaja was an ideal example of surrender to his spiritual master. After graduating from one of the most prestigious universities of America – Princeton – he was about to embark on a very successful career, when he came across Srila Prabhupada and his whole life changed. A very charismatic and dynamic individual who became an extremely humble devotee. When Maharaja joined the temple and the temple authorities asked him what kind of services he would like to render, he just said “Give me the service that is the most menial.” And when he found out that it was cleaning the toilets, he took up the service without hesitation. The devotees that knew him at that time admitted that he rendered even that service with such earnestness and dedication.

Later on, Maharaja became one of the greatest heroes of book distribution. He used to go to different universities and colleges, taking “standing orders” – orders for Srila Prabhupada’s books that have already been published, and also the ones that were expected to be published in future. In that field Maharaja was the best and planted Srila Prabhupada’s books in many university and college libraries.

Then Maharaja went to the East European countries that were behind the Iron Curtain – the communist countries – where such activity as distributing Srila Prabhupada’s books could have been considered to be spying, the sentence for which could have been life imprisonment or even death. But Maharaja boldly accepted that risk and planted Srila Prabhupada’s books even in the universities of those countries. Srila Prabhupada was naturally very fond of him. Maharaja often used to write to Srila Prabhupada about how he was distributing Srila Prabhupada’s books in those dangerous countries, and Srila Prabhupada used to listen to those reports with tears in his eyes, as his secretary Tamal Krishna Maharaja, read them to him.

Undoubtedly Bhakti Tirtha Maharaja is one of the greatest heroes of ISKCON, and he must have been rewarded by Sri Krishna and Srimati Radharani in the most wonderful way.

Yours in the service of Srila Prabhupada,

Bhakti Charu Swami

Source: www.facebook.com/bhakticharuswami.