The genesis of my name —Akhilesvara das.

"Even though you have had no Gayatri mantra, still you are more than brahmana. I am enclosing herewith your sacred thread, duly chanted on by me. Gayatri mantra is as follows: [---] Ask your wife to chant this mantra and you hear it and if possible hold a fire ceremony as you have seen during your marriage and get this sacred thread on your body. Saradia, or any twice-initiated devotee, may perform the ceremony." — Srila Prabhupada 1971.

Recently, I found an old photograph of myself, among the devotees, in a park in Paris which was next to rue Lesueur, where the temple was located. My gaze is towards the photographer, while Bhagavan is addressing the sankirtana devotees (but looking in the same direction as me). He is dressed as a sannyasi, and Srila Prabhupada is no longer in this world.

I am trying to find out when we left rue Lesueur, because the temple was becoming too small. We then moved to the Marais district, into a large building. Internet resources have not been able to give me this information, and the ones they provide are incorrect. I must be 25 years old in the picture...

I joined rue Lesueur in the summer of 1975. I am certain of this. When one is serious —as I was— initiation is granted six months later. One and a half years after that, one receives brahminical initiation.

I realize that with age, the fog of time slowly descends upon history and erases even the most salient traces. My memory is no longer capable of serving as a library and reference point for me. A few years ago, when Maharaja Janananda Swami asked me for memories concerning the installation of the Gaura-Nitai Deities, I realized that I knew nothing anymore. A total blank. I was standing in front of the Deities, Maharaja had put his arm on my shoulder and was waiting for an answer. I couldn't remember anything.

To emphasize this deficiency, not long ago, a devotee pointed out to me that the date of my initiation that I was giving did not correspond to reality, because he himself had been initiated before me —during the summer of '75— and that if I joined Krishna Consciousness at that time, I could not already be bearing an initiated name. How sad old age is: I don't even remember the day I was initiated...

As I write these lines, vague reminiscences come back to me: Bhagavan, while he was a grihastha, gives me my name and my beads. I remember now, I think, that I struggled to mention the four regulative principles because I was so emotional. Evanescent memories.

But who chose my name—Akhilesvara? Bhagavan, who acted as ritvik during my initiation, or Prabhupada, by proxy? He told me, "Your name is Akhilesvara dasa," and he gave me beads that Srila Prabhupada would have chanted on. Or was it simply Bhagavan who did it? 

In my neophyte mind, I believed that chanting on a disciple’s beads created a kind of personal connection between the guru and the disciple. I placed — and still do — essential importance on the idea of “person” and everything that belongs to the realm of the “personal.”

Other questions: From when did Srila Prabhupada stop initiating his disciples personally? From when did he stop choosing the names because he was too ill?

Suddenly, a sense of discomfort washes over me. It is the feeling of having been duped, and that this story about the ritviks, the conspirators, and the usurpers, which has spread across the entire web in an outrageous manner, might sweep me away with it. By digging deep into the past, will I be forced to concede they were right somewhere, despite myself? I absolutely must definitively clarify the spiritual identity that was attributed to me by Srila Prabhupada, if there was such a one. I had never doubted it before. However, error is human, and so is illusion. Didn't I always give 1975 as the date of my initiation, when it was actually in February 1976? I have found now the official information. But I want to know for sure. It is becoming increasingly clear that details vanish with time, despite digital progress, so I might as well do it right now.

In the beginning, the candidate who wanted to be initiated would approach Prabhupada, who presided over the fire sacrifice ceremony, and would receive their name directly and spontaneously from his mouth. Several months later, he would orally transmit the gayatri mantra to them. That’s 'personalism', the philosophy he stressed over and over. 

So, when I saw Prabhupada in New Mayapur, where he spent three weeks during the summer, I was already initiated, but I hadn't yet served my time to receive the sacred thread. But who, in February 1976, chose my name: Bhagavan or Prabhupada?

I believe I wrote an initiation request addressed to Prabhupada. I also believe it was Bhagavan who gathered these requests and was responsible for transmitting them to him. I do not recall putting that note in an envelope or writing an address in India on it.

At that point, the relationship between Srila Prabhupada and the new disciples was no longer strictly personal, as in the beginning when the devotees wrote letters directly to him, and Prabhupada replied in his own hand. My research indicates that he proceeded in this manner until the summer of 1977, a few months before his departure in November 1977.

Starting in July 1977, due to his declining health, he appointed several representatives (ritviks) to act on his behalf: they received recommendations from the temple presidents, approuved them and sent them to Prabhupada, then transmitted the spiritual name chosen and given by him to the new disciples, and sent the initiation report to Prabhupada. These representatives did not become the gurus of the initiates, but served solely as official priests for his initiations.

At that time, it was clear to everyone that as long as Prabhupada was with us on earth, all new candidates were considered his disciples, even those who only received the first initiation (Harinama) during his lifetime. The second initiation (brahminical) after his departure from this world, however, had to be conferred by the eleven disciples whom the GBC had designated for the succession. For those devotees, it was more difficult to determine who the predominant spiritual master was, especially since these disciples, for the most part, completely dedicated themselves to the ritvik who had become a guru in the flesh and with whom they had a personal and privileged relationship, unlike Srila Prabhupada, whom they had virtually not known. Nowadays, most of them consider themselves Srila Prabhupada’s disciples, especially when their guru has fallen from his position.

They’ve pushed things even further. Some —those who believe that the ritvik system was what Srila Prabhupada actually had in mind for how the movement should function after his departure —are firmly convinced of it and campaign vigorously to make it happen. According to them, anyone who joins the movement and wishes to be initiated could do so by approaching Srila Prabhupada virtually, since the gurus —often his own disciples— are, in their view, not qualified to bear such a high responsibility.

Thus, there would be no longer any difference between Prabhupada’s direct disciples and those initiated through the ritviks.

That’s a bit much! That’s why I wrote earlier that I felt uneasy, uncomfortable, at the thought that perhaps it wasn’t Srila Prabhupada who gave me my name —because he was too sick at the time— but rather Bhagavan das, who later became an exalted guru, only to crash spectacularly and never recover. (Hence, perhaps, the popularity of the ritvik idea —if we can call it that way.)

I remember that we had to write a short note to Srila Prabhupada to request initiation. The letter was not sent to him directly. In fact, it was not recommended to write to him personally, unless it was for something truly intimate or important —such as a formal request for initiation. I perfectly understood that. We gave the letter to Bhagavan, who collected them and passed them on to Prabhupada in one way or another.

And then? How did it all happen? How did Prabhupada choose the name?

Among ourselves, we imagined —piecing together bits of information gathered here and there— that Bhagavan or the temple president would hand the letter to Prabhupada’s personal secretary, perhaps Tamal Krishna Goswami, Harikesa Swami, or someone else. They would read the names to him, one by one, along with a few details: our age, our service, and confirmation that we followed the four regulative principles and chanted sixteen rounds. Prabhupada would listen attentively to this short summary, then spontaneously assign a name, usually based on the first letter of the person’s legal name.

In my case, it must have been Aziz —or perhaps Ahmed— my real name, the one on my identity card. But none of the devotees knew that. Aziz was a familiar name used within my family circle, and it was under that name that I introduced myself when I joined the movement.

It is interesting to note that the new spiritual name was determined by the civil one —thus, in a sense, by my material identity. It did not come from a purely spiritual source. Starting from the given name, Prabhupada would assign a name of Krishna, Vishnu, or one of their associates. Looking back, I can see that he followed a simple rule in this naming process —one somehow related to this world, as if the first impulse came from our earthly identity, with the spiritual name following afterward. It was as though we did not yet exist in the world of Vaikuntha,* or that Prabhupada did not yet have access to that higher identity. The choice of name, therefore, was conditioned by the one we already bore in this world. In that sense, initiation did not bring about a total rebirth, but rather a continuation of what we already were —with, of course, the karma gradually lightening through time and by Prabhupada’s mercy.

The secretary would write down the chosen name and later send an official reply, as if written by Prabhupada himself:

“Your spiritual name is Akhilesvara dasa,” or something similar.

I imagine he must have reread the letter and briefly explained the meaning of the names, since every disciple naturally wanted to know it as soon as he received his initiation's name . One thing is certain: this process was not bureaucratic. In some cases, Prabhupada even corrected a name that had been misspelled. In other words, it was a very personal and inspired act: he gave the name on the spot, like a blessing —often without prior preparation, sometimes after a short pause for reflection, but never out of mere routine.

* Which is absurd, since the soul is eternal. Unless, of course, I’m missing something. I must have been created somewhere between two worlds — belonging to a region called tatastha. In fact, even today, I still know nothing about my origin. I can only repeat with assurance Srila Prabhupada on this matter: yato va imani bhutani jayate, from Taitttirrya Upanishad —All created beings emanate from the Absolute Truth, the Supreme Personality of Godhead.

—The truth, my friend, is that the world desperately needs this Krishna consciousness or there will no future at all for mankind. Without the maha mantra and sankirtan yagna as introduced by Shrila Prabhupada, the world is doomed to become a horrible place from which all pious persons must escape by taking shelter of remote mountain caves. --Patita Pavana dasa.

To be frank, I didn't like my name at the time. It wasn't easy to pronounce, a bit long, and I had never heard it before. When Bhagavan gave it to me during the fire sacrifice, he explained its meaning, but I hadn't managed to grasp it right away. Truthfully, I was expecting to receive a different name: something more beautiful, more familiar, more likeable, like for example Haridas, the servant of Hari, Narayana or Govinda.

It must be said that I was the first Muslim to join the Krishna Consciousness movement, or so I believed*, and in France, the devotees were proud of this "spiritual victory." Muslims were known for being impossible to convert; they were considered more iconoclastic than anyone else, worse still—paradoxically—than the Jews. And there were already Jews in the movement! All my friends therefore thought that for this reason, Prabhupada would perhaps give me the name of Haridas Thakur, the great Bengali devotee and close associate of Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu. They must have mentioned this particular detail about me in the letter. It's no small thing, after all, to be introduced to Prabhupada with such an exceptional quality; or so I imagined.

* Be that as it may, it was true for the French-speaking community. I learned later that two other Muslims had preceded me. The first was an Iranian, a businessman who became a GBC. His initiated name was Atreya Rishi. It was said of him that he was a Sufi. The other was a Palestinian Arab named Ravanari. He passed away not long ago. He had even translated the Bhagavad-gita into Arabic and had presented the manuscript to Prabhupada. He had eventually emigrated to Canada, and I visited him there. He had nothing Muslim about him anymore. But to tell the truth, I wasn't much different: my personality did not betray my Muslim upbringing.

Over time, I have come to see more clearly how destiny —that destiny in which Srila Prabhupada took part when he gave me the name Akhilesvara dasa rather than Haridas Thakur— ultimately worked in my favor, unfolding a wisdom far broader than the small mental territory where I used to wander, following the winding paths of my neophyte desires.

To bear the name Haridas Thakur would have been a tremendous weight on my conscience, for I have now lost the enthusiasm to chant the holy Names. I always strove to complete my sixteen rounds each day, but I went no further —whereas this close associate of Caitanya Mahaprabhu used to recite one hundred and twenty!

Of course, this is not a topic one can easily discuss with them, since it touches the very foundation of their spiritual life —knowing their limited philosophical inclination and reluctance in answering serious questions.

As the years passed, I also noticed that chanting the maha-mantra did not produce in me the effects that Srila Prabhupada promised to one who gives himself to it wholeheartedly. The more I reflected on this enigma, the more I realized that the maha-mantra seemed to bring about no tangible effect —neither physical nor psychological— on others or on society at large. Gradually, I also came to see that it did not appear to produce these effects even around me.

After chanting my sixteen rounds day after day, with determination and sincerity, I eventually came to doubt the extraordinary virtues so often attributed to it. (Though in fact, I had sensed this conclusion long before, noticing that many of the senior devotees —who were sannyasis or gurus— did not chant their rounds regularly and seemed themselves to have lost the taste for this spiritual practice.)

In the end, Srila Prabhupada chose for me a name which, in retrospect, fits me perfectly: Akhilesvara dasa. Let me explain why.

It goes without saying that I did not receive directly or personally initiation from Srila Prabhupada during his lifetime, but through the ritvik system. A rational mind would not fail to wonder: was he aware of my existence as his disciple?

The devotee who renounces the exercise of his own judgment evades such questions; he strives never to succumb to the provocations of doubt. To him, Krishna — adorned with his flute and peacock feather — accompanies him everywhere. He need only withdraw to engage in a dialogue with Paramatma, without, for that matter, distinguishing the latter from Krishna, following in this regard the practical example of Prabhupada.

For my part, I do not offer my food to the ritvik priest, but to Srila Prabhupada. Admittedly, I too happen to speak to Krishna during my moments of reverie, when reason gives way to emotion. In this wandering of the mind, I find myself believing, as well, that Krishna watches over my every step.

Yet, the act of writing invariably brings my thoughts back to rationality. Prabhupada did not name me Haridas Thakur, but Akhilesvara. Few are the devotees who received this name from him. While I know not how it is for others, this name resonates with my deepest psychology: I have become a convinced pantheist, perceiving henceforth the presence of Krishna everywhere in all things.

Read more here:  part 2