HH Gopal Krishna Goswami: Hare Krishna.

Prabhupada after establishing (audio break) importance of Krishna consciousness and in 1971 the first piece of land was purchased in Mayapur. Prab hupada purchased 5 acres of land that he got with great difficulty. In 1972 the first Gaura Purnima festival was held in which about 50 devotees took part. Prabhupada had this great desire to fulfill Nityananda s prediction. We just heard , Nityananda Prabhu had told Jiva Goswami, that very soon there will be an outst anding temple which will appear and it will engage the entire world in the etern al service of Lord Caitanya. And our acaryas endeavored to realise this predicti on. As you just heard Thakura Bhaktivinoda had predicted a day will come when de votees from different countries, and he named the countries, will come to Mayapu r and Bhaktisiddhantaji also had this great desire that this adbhuta temple shou ld be created in Mayapur. Prabhupada opened many temples around the world but only Mayapur that he address ed as the world headquarters. The spiritual capital of ISKCON or the Vatican of ISKCON. And Prabhupada in many of his letters highlighted the importance of Maya pur. I collected three extracts from Prabhupada s innumerable quotes that I would like to share with all of you. In one of those Prabhupada s letter he says, the Krishna consciousness movement has established a center in Mayapur, the birth site of Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu, to give everyone a great opportunity to go there and perform a constant festival, sankirtana yajna and to distribute prasadam to millions of people and for the sp iritual emancipation. This is the mission of the Krishna consciousness movement. So Prabhupada talks about Mayapur center and what its goal should be, to attract everyone to spiritual life. Then he talks about the Vedic Planetarium. Sivarama Swami very nicely described the purpose of what the planetarium is going to reveal. Now we all together make this Vedic planetarium very nice so that people will come and see. From the desc ription in the Srimad Bhagavatam we will prepare this Vedic planetarium. My idea is to attract people of the whole world to Mayapur. So Prabhupada wanted Mayapur to be an international center where people from the whole world would come to g ain understanding of the Srimad Bhagavatam. And Prabhupada also wanted that this project be built with the efforts of the wh ole world. So Mayapur as we know is very unique. Mayapur is the place where Cait anya Mahaprabhu, the most merciful of all incarnations appeared. So based on the desire of the acaryas, Prabhupada had this great desire that a very unique outs tanding temple be built in Mayapur. Giriraj Swami revealed that once Prabhupada was having d he approached Prabhupada and said, Prabhupada, what you? and then he offered two suggestions. He said, I and help build the Vedic planetarium, you will be very And Prabhupada smiled and said, a massage in Calcutta, an do we have to do to please think if we distribute books happy.

thank you very much. You ve understood my mind

So Prabhupada had this great desire. This was one of Prabhupada s anxiety, how to build this Vedic Planetarium. And in another lecture Prabhupada said, if you help build this Vedic planetarium, then Bhaktivinoda Thakura will come and take you, where? Back to Godhead. [Hari Bol! applause] So, we know through innumerable lectures, letters, darshan that Prabhupada gave, the importance of building this Vedic planetarium. And this is going to be the biggest temple built in the last several hundred years.

So as you can see, the project has made some good progress, we ve been talking abo ut the Vedic planetarium for a long time, the adbhuta temple for a long time. Pr abhupada when he was on the planet he even laid the foundation stone. Then due t o several problems (audio break) on the project, is almost complete. And as you know we came this far due to the magnanimous donation help given by A mbarish. He knew this was Prabhupada s desire. He took Prabhupada s instruction to h im very seriously and he made a big sacrifice in contributing generously to brin g the project to this point. As we can see the project is not finished, is it fi nished Bhavananda? (laughter) No! I think it was a good idea to have the class h ere, this was Praghosa Prabhu s idea. So all of you can see the condition of the p roject. As you can see we still have to do a lot of work. We still have to make efforts to complete this project. And one of the instructions that Prabhupada gave was, one of the comments he mad e regarding this project was, that this project will be built from the donations from the whole world. So, we have a lot of work to do. I think we should endeav or to increase the awareness of the Mayapur project, Mayapur city to the whole w orld. We should all become ambassadors of Mayapur and increase the awareness aro und the globe. So there are several schemes that the fund raising department of the Mayapur pro ject has started and I thought that if you got involved in fund raising, ultimat ely fund raising is necessary to complete this project. If we all endeavor and r ealise that in India we have a big responsibility, if we all endeavor globally t hen I think it should become possible. How many of you think that we should ende avor globally to make this complete? So there are various schemes, Vrajvilasa Prabhu is in charge of fund raising, he can explain the various schemes to all of you, my main purpose was to request e veryone to take this responsibility, to try and complete this project. The build ing the way it stands doesn t look very impressive, once it is complete, it will l ook very very impressive. So if we all try, maybe Vrajvilasa Prabhu can, is Vrajvilasa here? He can give y ou all some explanation, forms etc, various schemes, they have a golden brick sc heme, they have a square foot scheme, they have see these notes, if you cant aff ord much you can sponsor these different bricks, each brick is only 10rs. If you sponsor 5 bricks you have to give 50rs. If you sponsor 100 bricks you give 500. There are various schemes and my request is if all of you can familiarise yourse lves with these schemes and try and help complete this project. This project has to be completed and Krishna is giving all of us a chance to engage in His servi ce, to be an instrument in completing this project. You all have been hearing the glories of Mayapur dhama and once this project is completed it will attract thousands and thousands of people to Krishna conscious ness. As it is the Mayapur project is attracting so many people to Mayapur. Ever yone that comes to Mayapur walks away with a very very favorable impression and you can imagine what the response is going to be once the whole project is compl ete. So let us all try to work together to complete this project. We should all think that this is our responsibility to help complete this project and I think if we a ll sincerely try Krishna will help and from our side we will try our best in Ind ia to also increase the awareness and the help that temples can give. One of the things we can do is to invite dignitaries to come and see this projec t also and we are going to try and bring foreign dignitaries. Last year, our Poo na temple was inaugurated by the President of India, who hails from Bengal and w

hile we were having prasada we spoke about his coming to Mayapur and he promised me he would come. I think we should follow up and bring him here on a suitable occasion and let us all work together to complete this project. Hare Krishna!