I think the "actual" (unrecorded) Srila Prabhupada quote to HH Narayan Maharaja is said to be more like this:

"I have caught so many monkeys in my net. Now please look after them after my departure."

I feel Prabhupada could indeed have said something like that to HH Narayana Maharaja but in an affectionate way. After all before Srila Prabhupada trained us were very much like monkeys with monkey wives in every tree. Even today we are prone to relapse to monkeydom. Let's face it, we have a long way to go through anartha nivrtti to nistha, to ruci ,to asakti, bhava and eventually to Krishna prema or unalloyed devotional service. But don't you think being Srila Prabhupada's monkey is actually great?

Sometimes we call our children "monkeys" too. But Prabhupada always felt so much gratitude and affection for his disciples even though we were his monkeys caught in his net. Many times he gave us credit for spreading Krishna consciousness worldwide. Of course Srila Prabhupada's net was a net of love. He loved all living beings but he especially loved the monkeys whom he had caught in his loving samkirtan net. Who knows what unlimited mercy Srila Prabhupada can give us monkeys if we make his ISKCON movement a success? Krishna is even feeding the monkeys in Vrindavan. By Srila Prabhupada's mercy Krishna may one day be feeding us!

Srila Prabhupada said in his Lecture on Srimad-Bhagavatam 1.8.32 -- in Mayapura on October 12, 1974

"Even Krsna is afraid of mother Yasoda. Why? Why mother Yasoda was trying to bind Krsna? Because He disrupted the process of service of mother Yasoda to Krsna. That is... Mother Yasoda tried that "You have broken the butter, and You have distributed to the monkeys, You rascal. Then how You will live? I kept the butter for You so that You will eat and You'll become fatty. And You have broken that, and You have distributed the butter to the monkeys, so You must be punished." So the aim is to serve Krsna, not that Yasoda is thinking, "My butter is spoiled by this child. Therefore He should be punished." He (she) is anxious to see that "Krsna may not starve for want of butter. He's child. He does not know. He has distributed the butter to the monkeys." But Krsna knows that "These monkeys are not ordinary monkeys." Those monkeys, they have taken birth in Vrndavana and come to Krsna. Do you think they're ordinary monkeys? They're devotees. They're devotees. They're playing as monkey for Krsna's satisfaction. These are the intricate meanings of understanding Krsna's lila.

Therefore Krsna says, janma karma me divyam yo janati tattvatah [Bg. 4.9]."


HH Narayan Maharaja must be sincerely trying to be guided by Srila Prabhupada's request. Therefore he is purposely attracting ISKCON members from Prabhupada's monkey net to his net for their better advancement in spiritual life. Maybe some might even argue that HH Narayan Maharaja is even more merciful than Srila Prabhupada because he is allowing to come to his feet very restless ISKCON monkeys who are ready to jump out from Prabhupada's net .

But personally I, Mahamonkey Swami still delight in being Srila Prabhupada's monkey and never want to jump to any other net but his. Because though I am certainly a monkey Prabhupada has saved me with his maha monkey mantra for Kali Yuga monkeys. "Hare Krishna!" This committment is what Prabhupada says in CC Adi 7.95-96 is the secret of success in a monkey's spiritual life:-

yasya deve para bhaktir yatha deve tatha gurau
tasyaite kathita hy arthah prakasante mahatmanah [SU 6.23]

"Only unto those great souls who have implicit faith in both the Lord and the spiritual master are all the imports of Vedic knowledge automatically revealed." This Vedic injunction is very important, and Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu supported it by His personal behavior. Believing in the words of His spiritual master, He introduced the sankirtana movement, just as the present Krsna consciousness movement was started with belief in the words of our spiritual master. He wanted to preach, we believed in his words and tried somehow or other to fulfill them, and now this movement has become successful all over the world. Therefore faith in the words of the spiritual master and in the Supreme Personality of Godhead is the secret of success. Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu never disobeyed the orders of His spiritual master and stopped propagating the sankirtana movement.

Sri Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Gosvami, at the time of his passing away, ordered all his disciples to work conjointly to preach the mission of Caitanya Mahaprabhu all over the world. Later, however, some self-interested, foolish disciples disobeyed his orders. Each one of them wanted to become head of the mission, and they fought in the courts, neglecting the order of the spiritual master, and the entire mission was defeated. We are not proud of this; however, the truth must be explained. We believed in the words of our spiritual master and started in a humble way -- in a helpless way -- but due to the spiritual force of the order of the
supreme authority, this movement has become successful." CC Adi 7.95-96

Prabhupada also reiterates the same thing to his monkey readers in more detail later in CC Adi 12.9:-

"The words daivera karana indicate that by dint of providence, or by God's will, the followers of Advaita Acarya divided into two parties. Such disagreement among the disciples of one acarya is also found among the members of the Gaudiya Matha. In the beginning, during the presence of Om Visnupada Paramahamsa Parivrajakacarya Astottara-sata Sri Srimad Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura Prabhupada, all the disciples worked in agreement; but just after his disappearance, they disagreed. One party strictly followed the instructions of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura, but another group created their own concoction about executing his desires. Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura, at the time of his departure, requested all his disciples to form a governing body and conduct missionary activities cooperatively. He did not instruct a particular man to become the next acarya. But just after his passing away, his leading secretaries made plans, without authority, to occupy the post of acarya, and they split into two factions over who the next acarya would be. Consequently, both factions were asara, or useless, because they had no authority, having disobeyed the order of the spiritual master. Despite the spiritual master's order to form a governing body and execute the missionary activities of the Gaudiya Matha, the two unauthorized factions began litigation that is still going on after forty years with no decision.

Therefore, we do not belong to any faction. But because the two parties, busy dividing the material assets of the Gaudiya Matha institution, stopped the preaching work, we took up the mission of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura and Bhaktivinoda Thakura to preach the cult of Caitanya Mahaprabhu all over the world, under the protection of all the predecessor acaryas, and we find that our humble attempt has been successful. We followed the principles especially explained by Srila Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura in his commentary on the Bhagavad-gita verse beginning:

vyavasayatmika buddhir ekeha kuru-nandana [Bg. 2.41].

According to this instruction of Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura, it is the duty of a disciple to follow strictly the orders of his spiritual master. The secret of success in advancement in spiritual life is the firm faith of the disciple in the orders of his spiritual master. The Vedas confirm this:

yasya deve para bhaktir yatha deve tatha gurau
tasyaite kathita hy arthah prakasante mahatmanah
[SU 6.23]

"To one who has staunch faith in the words of the spiritual master and the words of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the secret of success in Vedic knowledge is revealed."

The Krsna consciousness movement is being propagated according to this principle, and therefore our preaching work is going on successfully, in spite of the many impediments offered by antagonistic demons, because we are getting positive help from our previous acaryas. One must judge every action by its result. The members of the self-appointed acarya's party who occupied the property of the Gaudiya Matha are satisfied, but they could make no progress in preaching. Therefore by the result of their actions one should know that they are asara, or useless, whereas the success of the ISKCON party, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, which strictly follows guru and Gauranga, is increasing daily all over the world. Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura wanted to print as many books as possible and distribute them all over the world. We have tried our best in this connection, and we are getting results beyond our expectations." CC Adi 12.9

---------------------

So my monkey question is very simple.If HH Narayana Maharaja is sincerely trying to help us ISKCON monkeys, why does he want us to be unfaithful to Srila Prabhupada by getting us to jump from Srila Prabhupada's net to his net? If HH Narayan Maharaja really understands Srila Prabhupada's mission and the verse "yasya deve para bhaktir yatha deve tatha gurau" quoted by Srila Prabhupada above, then in order to help us fidgety monkeys get fixed up in faithfulness to our preminent siksa guru and Founder Acharya Srila Prabhupada he should be very happy to work with the "governing" (monkey) "body" set up by Srila Prabhupada and " conduct "(monkey)" missionary activities cooperatively". If HH Narayan Maharaja has understood Srila Prabhupada's dying request to him (to look after his "monkeys"), then he should just be trying to increase our monkey's faith in Srila Prabhupada's orders because "the secret of success in advancement in spiritual life is the firm faith of the "(monkey)" disciple in the orders of his spiritual master".

If it is true that HH Narayana Maharaja wants us Prabhupada's monkeys to jump to his own net then he would be deliberately undermining our monkeys' faith in Srila Prabhupada and encouraging us to become "asara" or useless monkeys in the eyes of Srila Prabhupada. Would any self respecting Vaishnava saint ever want to do that and make such a breach of etiquette towards a recognised pure devotee spiritual uncle like Srila Prabhupada who has spread Krishna consciousness all over the world? My monkey brain just cannot imagine how someone could possibly act like that.

So, monkey nightmares apart, it appears to me, Vamsisimian Prabhu (and fellow ISKCON monkeys and monkey descendants in monkey ISKCON), that HH Narayana Maharaja could certainly please Srila Prabhupada much much more by trying to follow more closely Srila Prabhupada's indications how to cooperate with us naughty little ISKCON monkeys. Simply put, we can all just happily be working monkeyly together under a " monkey "governing body and conduct" (monkey) "missionary activities cooperatively".*

As one monkey to another, Vamsi, (O true descendant of Hanuman!) what do you think? Should we be careful to hold on to our peanuts and bananas if it turns out that HH Narayan Maharaja's teachings are actually different from Srila Prabhupada's? Some monkeys say they are. But I have to check again because my monkey memory fails me at the moment.

If it turns out that HH Narayana Maharaja's teachings are different from Srila Prabhupada's there is a relevant funny monkey story which Srila Prabhupada told us about how we monkeys must learn to associate with him and his followers.We must keep our hearts intact.

It is from Narada Bhakti Sutra 45.

"Once a crocodile invited a monkey in a tree to come and ride on his back.
The foolish monkey jumped down from the tree and soon found himself clinging
to the crocodile's back in the middle of the river.
The monkey asked the crocodile, "Where are we going?"
The crocodile replied, "I'm going to take you home, where my wife will cut
out your heart and we will eat you for lunch!"
The monkey replied, "But I left my heart back on shore in the tree. Will you
please let me get it?"
The crocodile thought this was a good proposal and allowed the monkey to
touch shore. But the monkey jumped into his tree and refused to accept
further invitations from the crocodile.

Thank you

Hoping that this finds your good monkey self well in Krishna consciousness,

Your humble monkey servant,

Mahavishnu Swami

(spiritual cousin monkey brother of HH Narayan Maharaja in the line of Srila Bhaktissidhanta Sarasvati Maharaja)

*PS

Of course it is often said that competition is healthy and that taking the dead wood from a tree makes it even stronger. It is also said that good fences make good neighbours (even amongst monkey tribe territories). But if (as one monkey told me) HH Narayan Maharaja's followers really believe and advertise that HH Narayan Maharaj is the leader of the "real ISKCON" and that ISKCON (present GBC monkey version) is now " asara" (useless) then there is nothing left for us true Srila Prabhupada's monkeys to do but simply discover if there are really any differences between Srila Prabhupada's teachings to his monkeys and HH Narayan Maharaja's teachings to his own recruited ?????????'s.

If HH Narayan Maharaja's teachings are actually different from Srila Prabhupada's then it will be clear that HH Narayan Maharaja does not know how to help us Srila Prabhupada monkeys. Why? Because by giving different teachings to us poor monkeys he would be creating doubts about our spiritual master. It would be against all Vaishnava etiquette for him to do so even to us mere monkeys who Srila Prabhupada has saved with gallons of his blood. He would then be encouraging us faithful Prabhupada monkeys to deviate from the monkeyworthy instructions of Srila Prabhupada. We monkeys would then be in dire danger of loosing the secret of success in our monkey spiritual lives which is for even monkey disciples to always remain faithful to their spiritual master and then get his blessings to go back to godhead.

So in that case , Vamsisimian das, fellow monkey caught in Srila Prabhupada's loving net, if HH Narayana Maharaja's teachings are different from Srila Prabhupada's, we monkeys have to be very careful not to associate intimately with the followers of HH Narayan Maharaja for they really do not know how to help us monkeys.

*PPS.

Even though HH Narayan Maharaja is not Srila Prabhupada's godbrother but a spiritual cousin brother of us Srila Prabhupada's monkey disciples, Srila Prabhupada's similar warning about his godbrothers could still be valuable instruction for our mischievous monkey brains. He wrote to his monkey disciple Rupanuga from Tirupati 28 April, 1974:-

"So it is better not to mix with my Godbrothers very intimately because instead of inspiring our students and disciples they may sometimes pollute them. This attempt was made previously by them, especially Madhava Maharaja and Tirtha Maharaja and Bon Maharaja but somehow or other I saved the situation. This is going on. We shall be very careful about them and not mix with them. This is my instruction to you all. They cannot help us in our movement, but they are very competent to harm our natural progress. So we must be very careful about them."