We should hear from pure devotees

“Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Kīrtana Standards,” installment 11

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As Śrīla Prabhupāda said in a talk on his original Hare Kṛṣṇa record album:

This chanting should be heard from the lips of a pure devotee of the Lord, so that immediate effects can be achieved. As far as possible, chanting from the lips of nondevotees should be avoided. Milk touched by the lips of a serpent has poisonous effects. ¹

In a purport in the Caitanya-caritāmṛta Śrīla Prabhupāda explained:

The conclusion is that whenever a kīrtana of pure devotees takes place, the Lord is immediately present. By chanting the holy names of the Lord, we associate with the Lord personally. ²

Though we cannot deny the special importance of devotees who are especially exalted, Śrīla Prabhupāda often used the term “pure devotee” broadly. In a letter to Haṁsadūta dated February 4, 1968, Śrīla Prabhupāda gave instructions about an envisioned kīrtana party. The party, Śrīla Prabhupāda wrote, should have two mṛdaṅga players, eight karatāla players, one playing harmonium, one tamboura. “But all the members of the party,” he wrote, “will be pure devotees.” (That is, he wrote, not “outsiders.” And by “will be” in this context he was speaking prescriptively: “should be.”)

In another letter, Śrīla Prabhupāda wrote:

Our Movement is being carried by spiritual strength from chanting of the Hare Krsna Mahamantra from the lips of pure devotees. Our disciples are pure and therefore the effect is that this movement is gaining in scope all over the world. ³

In 1968 a young woman in the Bahamas took to Kṛṣṇa consciousness and was spreading the chanting. But she had a doubt, which Śrīla Prabhupāda answered:

Yes, whoever you tell the chant to, it is effective. You have heard it from me and my disciples, similarly I have heard it from my Guru Maharaja, and so on, and on. Because you have heard it from a pure devotee of the Lord, therefore it is transmitted from you to another. Just as an aerial message, is transmitted from one place to another, similarly, this Guru parampara system is working. My disciples are my agents, my representatives, so by hearing it from them, you are receiving it from me. And because you are a sincere soul, those who are hearing the Mantra from you are receiving it in disciplic succession, from Lord Caitanya and from Lord Krishna. ⁴

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Notes

1. In The Science of Self-Realization and Kṛṣṇa Consciousness: The Topmost Yoga System this text has been edited slightly, as it has been here. Śrīla Prabhupāda said that chanting from the lips of nondevotees “should be avoided, as much as milk touched by the lips of a serpent has poisonous effects.” The file reference for the recording in the Bhaktivedanta Archives is CD 02-5.[↩]
2. Cc. Madhya 1.126, purport.[↩]
3. Letter to Murāri Dāsa, February 4, 1971. See also a letter from Śrīla Prabhupāda to Tuṣṭa Kṛṣṇa Dāsa, December 14, 1972.[↩]
4. Letter to Andrea Temple, March 6, 1968.[↩]