Rtadhvaja Swami, Jayadvaita Swami, Giriraj Swami, and other devotees and guests were present at this ceremony, in which Giriraj Swami awarded second initiation to Krishna Kirtan Das, from Ventura, and first initiation to Brent Pyeatt, from Bellingham, WA, who received the name Balabhadra Das, and to Nick Pritchard, from LA, who received the name Narottam Das.
“Srila Prabhupada had a press conference during the pandal program in Calcutta. A lot of the reporters were in that atheist-communist mood. One of the reporters asked, ‘What is the use of spending all this money on this big elaborate arrangement? What are you going to achieve by this?’ The implication was that we could have used the money to feed poor people or do some charitable work. Srila Prabhupada replied, ‘What will it achieve? It will achieve hearing. This whole elaborate arrangement that you are seeing has come from hearing. Some young men and women heard from me, and because they heard they have been inspired to make this arrangement.’ And that is a fact—everything begins from hearing. And then, as Srila Prabhupada would say, following his Guru Maharaja, ‘One who hears nicely can speak nicely.’ So, we are not manufacturing anything new, we are simply repeating what we have heard from Srila Prabhupada and our predecessors.”
—Giriraj Swami