My Dear Jayananda,Please accept my blessings I am feeling intensely your separation

[krsna]

My Dear Jayananda,

Please accept my blessings.

I am feeling very intensely your separation. In 1967 you joined me in San Francisco. You were driving my car and chanting Hare Krsna. You were the first man to give me some contribution ($5000) for printing my Bhagavad-gita. After that, you have rendered very favorable service to Krsna in different ways. I so hope at the time of your death you were remembering Krsna and as such, you have been promoted to the eternal association of Krsna. If not, if you had any tinge of material desire, you have gone to the celestial kingdom to live with the demigods for many thousands of years and enjoy the most opulent life of material existence. From there you can promote yourself to the spiritual world. But even if one fails to promote himself to the spiritual world, at that time he comes down again on the surface of this globe and takes birth in a big family like a yogis' or a brahmanas' or an aristocratic family, where there is again chance of reviving Krsna Consciousness. But as you were hearing Krsna-kirtana, I am sure that you were directly promoted to Krsna-loka.

 

janma karma ca me divyam

evam yo vetti tattvatah

tyaktva deham punar janma

naiti man eti so' rjuna [bg. 4.9]

 

Krsna has done a great favor to you, not to continue your diseased body, and has given you a suitable place for your service. Thank you very much.

 

Your ever well-wisher,

 

A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami

 

Jayananda Rememberances:

A devotee was approached by a rather down-and-out fellow in the streets of New York. The man inquired about Jayananda and wanted to know if the devotee knew him. When he was told of Jayananda’s departure he began to weep profusely. “He was the only person I ever felt ever cared about me,” said the derelict. He had worked on the Ratha-yatra carts with Jayananda Prabhu.

 

“So, of course, that’s our good fortune that we’ve been able to contact, by Krishna’s mercy, we’ve contacted a bona fide spiritual master or a pure devotee. Because in order to advance in Krishna consciousness, the principle is that one has to accept a spiritual master. … Just like Krishna revealed Bhagavad-Gita, spoke Bhagavad-Gita to Arjuna because he is a devotee as well as His friend, that is the qualification of a devotee. Because Srila Prabhupada is a pure devotee, therefore, he becomes qualified to also speak Bhagavad-Gita, to instruct according to time and circumstance. Otherwise, how is it possible? How is it possible that we could take instruction from anybody else who wasn’t a pure devotee? It’s not possible because Krishna can only be known through devotion.”

 

(From Jayananda’s Bhagavad-gita class)