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Lecture at Marsh Chapel

The Boston University engagement in spacious Marsh Chapel was poorly attended. Despite thousands of students riding the trolleys and going in and out of the luncheonettes and big gray buildings that lined both sides of Commonwealth Avenue for blocks, only half a dozen came to Marsh Chapel to hear Swamiji. The devotees, pained and embarrassed, criticized Satsvarupa for the turnout. Even the onstage arrangements were poor, with Prabhupada seated on a too-high, rickety table.

Yet without hesitation, Prabhupada held a full program, beginning with a kirtana that lasted almost an hour. He requested Brahmananda, visiting from New York, to give an introductory speech. Then Prabhupada spoke, his voice reverberating over the sound system throughout the cavernous empty chapel.

After the lecture, Prabhupada called for questions. A boy, standing at his seat and shouting to make himself heard, asked, "Is this advaita philosophy?" A challenge. The devotees could tell that this student had come with his own ideas about yoga and "advaita."

"Do you know what is advaita philosophy?" Prabhupada asked.

"All is One," the boy replied. "Just as the rivers enter into the ocean, so we all enter into the Ultimate Oneness."

Srila Prabhupada replied that although the river goes to the ocean, its place in the ocean is not permanent. Again that water evaporates into the sky, forms clouds, and falls back onto the land. To argue that spiritually everything becomes one as the rivers go to the ocean, then the boy would have to accept the actual conclusion: the water again falls back onto the land. Similarly, those spirit souls who try to merge into the Absolute must again fall back into the material world. Prabhupada thoroughly defeated the impersonal notion of oneness. The boy sat down silent. There were no other questions.

Talking with his disciples afterwards, Prabhupada said sarcastically, "People today do not even know how to ask a good question. These impersonalists always ask the same hackneyed question about the river going into the ocean."

On the way back to the temple, some of the devotees continued to grumble about Swamiji's having to go to an engagement with such a poor turnout. Brahmananda warned Satsvarupa that the next engagement had better not be like this one.


- From "Prabhupada-lila" by HH Satsvarupa dasa Goswami

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