Is the Desire to Hear All Srila Prabhupada’s Audio a “Misleading Campaign”?

In the Bhaktivedanta Archives’ most recent post they have criticized one of my personal emails that I sent to many devotees announcing the petition, but they have not addressed the desire of the now more than 2,000 devotees to hear all the audio of Srila Prabhupada.

In my personal email there was a discrepancy I overlooked in the wording. I originally wrote: “These recordings are not transcribed in the Vedabase or published in any other way.” Instead, I should have said: “Many of these recordings are not…” Later, on my own accord, I corrected this mistake once I noticed it and then I sent it out to others. The new letter read: “Many of these recordings are not…”

The Bhaktivedanta Archives seem to base their opposition about this so-called “misleading campaign” on my personal email, which I have already corrected. They are still, at best, giving a post-dated check on releasing the audio. I don’t think Srila Prabhupada would be pleased by this – we all know what Srila Prabhupada said about post-dated checks. I hope that the Bhaktivedanta Archives are not calling the desire of thousands of devotees to hear all Srila Prabhupada’s audio a “misleading campaign”.

I am not an expert in writing articles, diplomacy or politics nor have I ever read the book “The Prince” like many ISKCON leaders have. I am a simple devotee of Srila Prabhupada that simply distributes Srila Prabhupada’s books, and in my free time I listen to and read Srila Prabhupada’s words. I would much rather not have anything to do with this difficult issue any more than, at most, have my name be just one of the thousands on the petition. Unfortunately nothing was being done at the time and Ekanatha Prabhu had Srila Prabhupada under lock and key and refused to let him out! So I did the needful, the best I could.

Before I ever even thought about doing anything online, I had meetings with Ekanatha Prabhu where I begged him for copies of Srila Prabhupada’s audio and offered to pay him whatever he wanted for it. Both me and him know very well what he said in those meetings. So as far as Ekanatha Prabhu’s lying to the world in his reply to some legal questions from Pratyatosa Prabhu by saying that he never said to me it’s “too controversial”, all I can say is that he and I both know the truth.

As far as what he meant when he said that the audio is “too controversial”, only he knows that. Until the audio is released no one but the people that have it locked up will ever know what that audio has on it.

As far as the Bhaktivedanta Archives accusing me of “motivated speculations”, I will again clearly state for the record what my motivations are. It’s this simple – I love Srila Prabhupada more than anything, and as a result I want to hear all his recorded audio. Every morning I sing/pray “guru-mukha-padma-vakya, cittete koriya aikya, ar na koriho mane asa – My only wish is to have my consciousness purified by the words emanating from his lotus mouth”. I mean these words! No conspiracy theories, politics or anything else, no, just love for Srila Prabhupada.

Also, not just my, but the world’s only hope is the transcendental words of Srila Prabhupada. This is why I have dedicated my life to distributing them in the form of his books, and want to listen to the recorded audio of them myself. I am sorry if this was misunderstood.

Again I remind everyone of the Bhaktivedanta Archives’ own promise: “At the Bhaktivedanta Archives we want to prevent something like this happening by making copies of everything we have, available to as many people as possible, in as many places as possible, around the world.”
So I ask the Bhaktivedanta Archives to stand behind their own statements and release srila Prabhupada’s words – not another post-dated check.

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/vani/petition.html

Hare Krishna!
Your servant,
Bhakta Philip

One devotee has emailed Ekanatha Prabhu the below letter addressing some important points:

“Dear Ekanatha Prabhu,

Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.

You have failed to understand that archiving means distributing. You still have so many priceless Prabhupada recordings that you have not even transferred off the original tapes that could be over 40 years old now in some cases. This is not responsible Prabhu. You have had the technology to transfer these tapes for almost 20 years now. And how many letters have you written to me saying “Yes, Prabhu, we are going to release these tapes, we are working on it every day.” It is all lies Prabhu. If you were working on it the first thing to do would be to at least transfer the tapes to digital as the analogue tapes are deteriorating every day. Every day you don’t transfer them the quality is getting worse and you know that. It is destroying the Prabhupada vani by neglect.

You do not seem to even understand this. Bhakta Philip wrote to you that the tapes were deteriorating and you wrote back that basically we have them in an air conditioned room so they are not? You said they can only get demagnitized if there is a magnet. The earth is a magnet Prabhu and those tapes are sitting in the earth’s magnetic field and that is constantly randomly rearranging the oxide particles on those tapes, increasing the background noise and reducing the signal level, every day. And gradually the hiss will come up and the recording will disappear into it. Forty years is a very long time to keep magnetic tape Prabhu.

As I said please do not take this personally. I am concerned about the Prabhupada recordings, that they are not lost for the future generations. At least we owe it to Srila Prabhupada to preserve what he has given us and pass it on to the future generations.

You know I have been requesting you to release these tapes for more than five years now and you promised me five years ago that you would release them within the next two years. But you haven’t released anything at all in five years! And you write a letter to Bhakta Philip that says you will never release anything unless you reach completion goals that you yourself say in the same letter are very unlikely that you will ever achieve. You say you will not release anything until you have translated and proof-read all the Hindi and Bengali for example. You have not even translated the Hindi and Bengali on the tapes you have already published! How do you expect to ever do this for the rest of the tapes without releasing them?”

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