“Maharaja, we’ve arranged a program for you at Yale University,” the brahmacaris, the monks, at the Bhakti Center in Manhattan, New York City, happily informed me. My heart went thud. I hadn’t been back to my alma mater since graduation, May ’72.
One month after that ceremony of cap and gown, I discovered Srila Prabhupada’s books, and after pouring over them four hours a day, through six continuous months, in December I made my first visit to the New York temple. I became a fulltime resident there in March of ’73.
What did Mother Yale, as its flock call the institution, mean to me? I remember the rooms of conservative, straight-laced students, their walls draped with huge school banners that said,” For God, For Country, For Yale.” I never hung out with those types.
The social activists and the fancy-free were my crowd. To me, then, Yale was four years of frustration in my search for the highest knowledge, and depressing disappointment with mundane political and economic solutions to the world’s problems.
It also meant the lifestyle of a Kali-yuga student. Upon coming to Krishna consciousness, I so regretted the deep and vile ignorance of my previous years that I never wanted to see the distinctive architecture of the Yale campus again.
Now, thirty seven years later, devotees are asking me to go there, to tactfully present Lord Chaitanya’s mercy. They don’t know that to do so, I have to confront a vast lagoon of deeply buried emotional intensity: “My wasted life--why did I willfully forget Krishna and toil uselessly in material existence!”
Since beginning my bhakti endeavor, I’ve always blamed Mother Yale for the regretful nondevotee years spent on her lap and for all the illusions fed me. She certainly can obscure real knowledge and drown her nescient children in pools of sophisticated decadence. On the other hand, I do now agree that her tabernacles and citadels have the potential for truly higher education, leading to significant individual and societal transformation.
The night of the outreach program, the Manhattan devotees gleefully drove me around the campus. “Maharaja, do you remember? What dormitory did you live in? How has the campus changed?”
Yes, Mother is guilty as charged, but that night, as I reconnected, for Krishna’s service, I fully faced up to my own foul play: I had sought to enjoy and control, voluntarily embracing the endless network of maya.
Let the next chapter begin: the King of all knowledge and confidential wisdom marries Mum. Or at least they can date.