Hare Krishna Gurudeva 

PAMHO - AGTSP

I have a question:

How should our relationship be with practitioners of other religions such as Christians, Jews, etc?

If they invite us to their ceremonies, how should our behavior be?

Thank you very much 

Your servant 

Piyari Mohan das 

HpS/ASA -- HK/HR.... thank you for your letter. these are very nice questions. we had, have, these questions.

First, i would say that in the conclusion, i never met a better christian than srila prabhupada. remember listening to his voice coming over the loudspeaker in the kitchen as we cooked the 6.45am offering for radha gokulanands.

he said, 'lord jesus christ, prophet muhammad, they did such good preaching work'.

by that time i had associated with srila prabhupada a great deal by very intensely studying his KRSNA book. i had seen the standard that he required from his disciples, managers.

i had a pretty good basis in direct investigation of christ through my church, churches, personal experiences.

I knew that srila prabhupada was not concerned with trying to get cheap followers, that he spoke his mind about different religions even if it was not popular.

so, our attitude towards christ and christians and islam is respectful to the point of life and death and beyond.

bh v. th says that if we are i the place of worship of some other faith, church, at the time of worship, we should think, 'the same God that I worship is being worshipped here, now. by seeing the adoration of these devotees of my Lord, i can learn things to improve my worship, yet because i do not belong to this tradition formally, i may not be participating in all of the details of this ritual'.

i think that Vatican II has basically the same perspective, so that the pope and cardinals and others my visit a hare krsna temple. they may sing and clap, but not dance. 🙂

maybe someone comes to ISKCON and participates, but does not take Harinama Diksa, 1st Initiation, and then feels that ISKCON, Srila Prabhupada, will always be in His heart, and in the heart of Krist, but this person should return to or formally become baptised in another tradition, islam, jehovah's witnesses, LDS...

maybe they have come to realize srila prabhupada as a vartmana pradarshika guru. guru who shows the way. always venerable. expect jesus to enhance their relationship with ISKCON and Srila Prabhupada, but become and remain matriculated in their Jesus Christ university and get their PhD.

O.K.?

After 1st or 2nd or 3rd [sannyasa] initiation, is it o.k. to leave and take diksa, be baptised in another line?

i don't know. lord caitanya took initiation from isvara puri, a vaisnava, but then took sannyasa from kesava bharati.

i think that the answer to this question would need to be taken directly from srila prabhupada. we might only be able to guide a student, our student, in the process of talking about it directly with srila prabhupada.

9.54PM

good night!!

see you in Mangala arati.

if anyone else asks this question i will tell them to ask you and you can show them this essay etc.