“SURRENDER-LOKA” IN DALLAS

In the early 1980s at Radha-Kalachandji dhama in Dallas, Goswami Maharaja spoke every morning for about a month about surrender from the Sixth Canto of Srimad Bhagavatam, the story of Ajamila. Many young, exuberant devotees were joining at that time, fusing with a powerful group that included remnants of the Radha Damodara party and senior book distributors like Praghosa dasa and Tripurari Maharaja, who were attracted to serve in the Texas preaching field under the strong leadership of Tamal Krishna Goswami.

Goswami Maharaja kept asking the devotees, “If you were the only devotee left alive in the world and you didn’t even have Prabhupada’s books, because they were all destroyed, could you spread Krishna consciousness all on your own, based on your knowledge, faith, and realization?” He kept drilling into the devotees how important it was to know Srila Prabhupada’s books, to distribute the books, preach, and recruit new devotees. The mood of surrender was extremely intense during that entire time.

Every evening during that month, everyone would gather in Goswami’s darsana room for wonderful kirtanas in a sweet, early evening Bengali melody. Goswami Maharaja played the mrdanga and traded leading the kirtanas with Dhrstadyumna Maharaja. Every night for a month the devotees would come together and chant this same melody for nearly an hour. Krishna Kripa remembered, “No one ever got tired of that melody. All morning we would hear about surrender to Krishna from Srila Gurudeva and during the day we would surrender on sankirtana. Then, in the evening Gurudeva led that beautiful melody, which continued the theme of surrender. At that time he called his Texas preaching field Surrender-loka. We were all surrendered, simply trying to please Srila Gurudeva and Srila Prabhupada, just trying to contact the fallen souls to bring them in. In later years those ecstatic kirtanas came to be widely known as the Surrender-loka kirtanas.”