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EDITORIAL April 15, 1999 VNN3601 SP Disciple Database: Unknown Devotees #1 BY AGRAHYA DAS EDITORIAL, Apr 15 (VNN) — Dear Mahamaya, Dandavat pranams. All glories to Srila Prabhupada. I am sorry I could not respond to you directly. I did in fact try to respond but my email was rejected with the message "COM does not accept any email from hgsoft.com" I am sending this to VNN in hopes that someone who is able to get in touch with you will read it, and also because I would like to make a small point here. "[Text 2138997 from COM] Dear Maharajas and Prabhus, Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada! The Srila Prabhupada Disciple Database is an on-going project of Uniting Srila Prabhuapda's Family. We are trying to preserve for posterity the names of Srila Prabhupada's diksa-initiated disciples. A space is reserved in Srila Prabhupada's Puspa Samadhi in Mayapur to display these names engraved in brass. In order to complete this project quickly, we need the help of all devotees, especially to the senior devotees, to please help identify the "unknown" devotees--those whose names appear in the initiation name book or in the Letters book (sometimes along with the legal name) but no one has remembered them. Below you will find the first installment of names. If you remember anyone on this list, please write and tell me whatever you know about them--the complete month/year of initiation, their legal name, current address, e-mail address, name of spouse. Please keep in mind that Srila Prabhupada gave many names more than once, so use the place and date of initiation as aids to identification. Thank you very much. All glories to Srila Prabhupada! Your servant, Mahamaya dasi Compiler, SP disciple databse INIT. NAMESUFFIXPLACEMONTHYEARLEGALNAME AjnayaDDetroit676Henry" (end quote) This would be me - I did receive harinama initiation in June 1976 in Detroit, and my legal first name is Henry, but my initiated name is written incorrectly in the book. My name is Agrahya das, with a macron on the second a. I am quite certain of this - I checked with Pradyumna at the time. You can contact me at agrahya@hgsoft.com from a non-blocked e-mail account and I can provide you more information. The point I would like to make is this. You are trying to bring together disciples of Srila Prabhupada who have become separated over the years, and I think this is a wonderful thing. But it seems that unless there is a radical change in the thinking of certain people, such unification will have to take place within the context of the greater ISKCON that is not bounded by the current management. You will find many disciples and followers of Srila Prabhupada who, like myself, have become branded as pariahs for the crime of sadhu-sanga, which Mahaprabhu enumerated as first of five limbs of bhakti (those five being foremost amongst 64). I am certainly not the only one blocked from COM, and although there are ways to get around that impolite wall I have better things to do. I am also welcome to visit the local ISKCON temple as long as I only dance, eat, keep my mouth shut, and don't mind being watched with suspicion and possibly treated rudely. But I would rather go to any place where I can preach, even if it is not such a grand facility, and even if there are one or two people or even four walls. Preaching is my life, and I will not be separated from it. Therefore I do not visit the ISKCON temple because it is not a place where I can preach Mahaprabhu's message. My humble suggestion if you would like to collect such information is to get a Hotmail account or some other e-mail address which is not within the com.bbt.se domain. Otherwise your position is like the person who calls others to a party in a house behind locked gates where the phone lines are censored and interfered with. It is sadly ironic that one problem you have in trying to unify Srila Prabhupada's disciples is that you have a com.bbt.se email address. If your goal is to contact only those persons who have not become expelled from the institution now called ISKCON, I apologize for making a noise about this. But if you would like to contact all disciples of Srila Prabhupada, you have a problem. I have no quarrel with those who call themselves leaders of ISKCON, nor with the leaders of any other church, sect or institution, but I feel obligated to point out that what they have made cannot be considered following in the footsteps of Srila Prabhupada. Many others who are also actively pursuing devotional life and preaching also feel this way, and most if not all of us have no interest in trying to force ourselves upon those who wish to remain isolated. Our emphasis is to remain within the association of unalloyed devotees, not to be in this institution or that institution. Quite arguably that was also Srila Prabhupada's emphasis, both in his preaching to us and in his personal life. I hope you are able to eventually read this unaltered and look forward to hearing from you. Vaishnava dasanudas, Agrahya das http://hgsoft.com/agrahya/ Comment on this Story | Contact VNN regarding this Story
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