Topic: Arcana

Devotees throng by the tens and hundreds of thousands every year, and especially during the month of Karttika, to have darsana of Sri Sri Radha-Damodara and to circumambulate the temple. The Deity of Damodara with Sri Radha to His left and Sri Lalita to His right is the eternal blackish form of Sri Krsna appearing in Vraja to satisfy the desires of His pure devotees. But much to the amazement of the observant devotee, Sri Damodara has changed His blackish colour to that of an effulgent brown! Not only has Damodara changed His colour, but all the original Deities of Sri Krsna in Vraja, and those that have gone elsewhere such as Govindadeva and Gopinatha in Jaipur, are changing their colour to brown as well! This is indeed a mystery.

The main drift of this article is to recall to memory the establishing of the Deities of Sri Sri Gaura Radha-Madhava at Mayapura by His Divine Grace Srila Prabhupada during his manifest lila, and to draw attention to how the present institution of ISCON has unfortunately gone astray from the proper Gaudiya conception.

In a recent Krsna Talk you mentioned that we should appreciate prasadam more deeply, but I have also heard you say that everything called 'prasadam' may not actually be prasadam. This seems to be inconsistent, so can you please explain this more clearly?

Salagrama-silas are sacred black stones that come from the Gandaki River valley of the Himalayas. Sila means stone. The qualities and characteristics of the Salagrama-silas are not found on stones anywhere on earth except in the Gandaki region.

The Sanskrit word arati literally means "before night." Ratri (night) when prefaced with the letter a indicates dusk. The waving of the lamp before the Deity thus implies the dispelling of the night of our material sojourn with the light of devotion through which God is revealed.