Very happy to know about African-American ISKCON Guru Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950 - 2005); Very interesting interview and discourse videos of his

Last updated on 7th Feb. 2021

Firstly, who is Bhakti Tirtha Swami?

His wikipedia page, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhakti_Tirtha_Swami, tells us that he was born in 1950 in Cleveland, Ohio, USA in a Christian family and was named John Edwin Favors. He appeared on TV as a child to preach Christianity. In 1968 he studied in Princeton University (a prestigious US university) earning a B.A. in Psychology and African American Studies in 1972. While studying in Princeton University, he got associated with Martin Luther King Jr.'s civil rights movement and was at the forefront of political activism on campus.

After he finished his studies in Princeton, he made a big turn from his academic studies and political activism life to join Hare Krishna movement (ISKCON) in 1973! He eventually became a guru and preacher in ISKCON and a governing body commissioner! He met leaders like Nelson Mandela and Kenneth Kaunda, had many media interviews, and wrote 17 books on religious topics. He founded an Institute for Applied Spiritual Technology in Washington DC. He passed away in 2005.

Pages 38 & 39 of https://web.archive.org/web/20160304073133/http://dcregisterarchives.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/OS/release_content/attachments/13468/03-03-06_4-5.pdf have the text of the Council of the District of Columbia's (Washington DC, USA) ceremonial resolution on 7th February 2006 honouring Bhakti Tirtha Swami! Washington D.C. is the capital of USA. My understanding of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,_D.C. page is that while Washington D.C. is informally referred to as a city, formally it is a federal district called the District of Columbia. The wiki page states, "A locally elected mayor and a 13-member council have governed the district since 1973." with the district referring to Washington D.C. It adds, "Congress maintains supreme authority over the city and may overturn local laws." Info. about the Council of the District of Columbia is available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_the_District_of_Columbia and https://dccouncil.us/about-the-council/ .

I have given below a large extract from the ceremonial resolution of Council of the District of Columbia (almost whole of the resolution):

To recognize His Holiness Bhakti Tirtha Swami Krishnapada for dedication to social change that has impacted civil and human rights for residents in the District of Columbia.

WHEREAS, His Holiness Bhakti Tirtha Swami Krishnapada was born John Edwin Favors on February 25, 1950 into a poor family living in Cleveland, Ohio, where his parents instilled in him the values of self-confidence, religious belief and a spirit of generosity demonstrated by giving to persons less fortunate than others;

WHEREAS, His Holiness Bhakti Tirtha Swami Krishnapada excelled in his academic achievements while attending East Technical High School in Cleveland, Ohio and received a scholarship to attend the prestigious preparatory school known as Hawken Academy;

WHEREAS, His Holiness Bhakti Tirtha Swami Krishnapada in 1968 earned a scholarship to Princeton University and majored in Psychology and Afro-American Studies:

WHEREAS, His Holiness Bhakti Tirtha Swami Krishnapada founded the Institute for Applied Spiritual Technology (IFAST) in Washington, DC, a nonprofit, nondenominational organization whose membership represents a variety of spiritual paths and professional backgrounds;

WHEREAS, His Holiness Bhakti Tirtha Swami Krishnapada was the first person of African descent to become an initiating Spiritual Master in the Disciplic Succession of the ancient Brahma-Madhava-Gaudiya Vaishnava Sampradaya and was an intimate disciple of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada;

WHEREAS, His Holiness Bhakti Tirtha Swami Krishnapada was coronated High Chief in Warri, Nigeria, West Africa in recognition of his reputable work performed there;

WHEREAS, His Holiness Bhakti Tirtha Swami Krishnapada was a Spiritual consultant, specializing in international relations and conflict resolution to high ranking members of the United Nations and world leaders, including former President Nelson Mandela;

WHEREAS, His Holiness Bhakti Tirtha Swami Krishnapada was an esteemed graduate of Princeton University, author of 16 books published in 17 different languages and currently has 3 books ready for publication;

WHEREAS, His Holiness Bhakti Tirtha Swami Krishnapada demonstrated a penchant for social activism as a child evangelist and youth leader in the civil rights movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; and

WHEREAS, His Holiness Bhakti Tirtha Swami Krishnapada as president of the Princeton Student Body fought diligently for positive social change and equality for all people.

RESOLVED, BY THE COUNCIL OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, That this resolution may be cited as the "His Holiness Bhakti Tirtha Swami Krishnapada Ceremonial Recognition Resolution of 2006".

Sec. 2. The Council of the District of Columbia recognizes and honors His Holiness Bhakti Tirtha Swami Krishnapada for commitment to equality and human rights to help improve the quality of life for residents in the District of Columbia. 

---- end extracts from Council of the District of Columbia ceremonial resolution ---

Wow! I am so happy to read about an African-American who took to a Hindu religious path, rose to such great heights within his religious group, and contributed so much to the Washington DC, USA community.

I saw some videos of his - interviews and discourses - on youtube and have listed them below. I fully viewed the short videos and partly viewed the longer ones.

1) Amazing speech of HH Bhakti Tirtha Swami, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkfVf_RRafI, 3 min. 38 secs. Auto-generated transcript which seems to be reasonably but not fully accurate is available.

The video shows that the audience is from black, brown and white races! As a Hindu, I find it quite impressive to see such a variegated audience with a black Hindu spiritual teacher addressing them!

Bhakti Tirtha Swami's (BTS) English diction is excellent. He seems to be very comfortable as a public speaker and seems to engage well with his audience, smiling quite often. 

BTS says at the beginning of the video: "So Krishna consciousness is somewhat different and that it gives mankind the oldest spiritual scriptures on the entire planet. This can be historically, linguistically (and) philosophically proven. The Vedic scriptures are the oldest scriptures and so therefore they help to make a person a better Christian, a better Muslim, a better Hindu and when one becomes better - perfect - he no longer considers himself of any specific demarcated distinction. But he considers himself as a servant of God."

He then quotes from Islamic, Christian and Buddhist scripture/literature (referring to them as "great scriptures of the world") about calling upon God with his name(s). BTS goes on to say, "So this calling on God's name has tremendous effect in invoking the presence of the Lord, in invoking the mercy and the benediction of God. So we encourage you to come closer to find out how one can become (be) in a state of consciousness where he is meditating, feeling the Lord's presence every day, where one is able to understand that this body is simply a garment just as we change clothes from day to day; that the body is simply being used by the soul. If we develop that genuine understanding then there is no difficulty in you having a white coat or he having a red coat or me having a black coat. These distinctions no longer become such a dominant factor in one's life."

2) Bhakti Tirtha Swami on Common Ground, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkczTuOCbqY, 15 min. 46 secs. Auto-generated transcript which seems to be reasonably but not fully accurate is available.

In response to a question BTS says (around 2 mins 35 secs.): "At this time we have a few who are interested in joining. Now we are more interested in just giving them a chance to study ours (us) because this is a very scientific process and it demands very much from an individual. For instance we (one sub-group not all) are celibate and .. it's called brahmachari life (where) one takes to the life of celibacy. My colleague with me, Garuda - he is a householder or a family member. But we do not engage in illicit sex and drugs, intoxication or meat-eating. So we like people to join us who are very serious about trying to understand more about the human condition and people who want to have a very direct and personal realization of God and those who want to be able to see themselves as servant(s) of mankind."

I found the above to be very interesting. Essentially BTS and his community were offering one of the traditional Hindu lifestyles to Americans but saying upfront that the lifestyle is demanding of the individual and so only those who are serious about such matters should consider joining them. 

When asked about his formative years BTS says (around 5:28), "This is always a question of interest really. In one sense, it would seem as if my lifestyle now is a diametrical opposite of how I was living in the late 60s because I was very much involved in revolutionary politics. I was involved in the Pantherism [Ravi: seems to be related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_Party ] and the cultural nationalistic movement. [Ravi: From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_nationalism "Revolutionary Black nationalism is an ideology that combines cultural nationalism with scientific socialism in order to achieve Black self-determination."] I was chairman Third World Coalition for some of the Ivy League schools and I was president of the Black Coalition for Students at Princeton. But then and even now, my real interest is that I wanted to understand more about the human condition and I wanted to understand what is necessary in producing a more just and peaceful world order and I wanted to be a part of a program, of a process, that allowed men or allowed one to be able to relate more and more in it on a humanistic platform. So in my last years at Princeton I sort of started backing away from some of the revolutionary activities." 

BTS also says that most of the revolutionary circles he was involved with were Marxist.

[Around 07:01 BTS says:] "So I started seeing that the real change was not a change of one political arena versus another but it was actually a change of understanding more about man himself. Because if you put a certain kind of person in a particular environment, still he will act and go in that given way. But .. if you can change an individual's consciousness this is much more significant. This is more profound. So I started investigating so many different epistemologies [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology ]. I wanted to know more about the African worldview, about the Indian worldview.

In between I took a job at the public defender's office in New Jersey working in penal reform. And then from that I started studying so many books on yoga and meditation. And I finished my thesis at Princeton with an experiment in hypnosis and by this particular kind of scrutiny I started looking more at concepts about peak experiences [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_experience ], about dreams, about life after death. And so from those experiments in hypnosis I started realizing that man is not actually a material being. I would take sometimes my subjects to know - what is called regression - I would take them back to age 15, to age 5, back to the womb and even back farther."

[Interviewer asks:] "You could do this through hypnosis?"

[BTS responds:] "Yes through hypnosis. And from that I could see - and there are ways to test to see if actually one was speculating, conjecturing or whether that was actually fact. And so I wanted to attach myself to a cosmology and to a group that had this kind of information under its belt and so I studied and I visited this center, that center and then I had the opportunity to visit the Hare Krishna center. And at first I (never?) wanted to join. But I started reading the books more and more and I found the information that was there in the Veda(s), in the Purana(s), was far superior to any of the studies that I had at Princeton, and to any of the other groups that I had visited. And so I became more and more involved. And (now) I'm one of the chief priests and I travel literally all around the world, helping to institute certain programs."

Hmm. What an extraordinary turn-around from revolutionary politics as a student to a spiritual seeker in a Hindu path eventually becoming a Guru in that tradition!

[Around 09:06, Interviewer asks:] "So what is your mission in life Swami at this point."

[BTS responds:] "I mentioned it (is) to continue doing what I'm doing now but much more of it. This is now - we are helping with these sort of social welfare projects and it's a way to give people more contact with our movement and there's somebody to present them with a positive alternative. Now we see in the world order there is such - we're actually experiencing - we'll find ourselves in an endangered planet where there is resource depletion, overpopulation, threat of nuclear war and so we're interested in showing people that there is actually a positive alternative. That there (are) so many experiences to be had. There is so much more to the conscious and subconscious mind. If one has ability to purify his senses then he can understand more (that he?) is a spiritual entity and he can have more direct perception of his relationship to God, to Krishna."

The companion of BTS in this video is Graham Schweig with Hindu name of Garuda Das. I was pleasantly surprised to see that he has a wiki page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Schweig - which informs us that he is currently a Professor of Religion in a US university. About his academic qualifications, the wiki page states: "Schweig earned his B.A. in Religion and Interdisciplinary Studies from American University, an M.A. in South Asian Studies from the University of Chicago, an M.T.S. (Master of Theological Studies) and a Th.M. (Master of Theology) from Harvard University, and his doctorate in Comparative Religion is from Harvard University."

That is impressive. And so are his publications as mentioned in the wiki page: "Schweig has over one hundred publications, such as journal articles, encyclopedia articles, reviews, book chapters, along with several books in the field. His book, Dance of Divine Love: India's Classic Sacred Love Story: The Rasa Lila of Krishna [2] (Princeton University Press, 2005) presents an introduction to, comprehensive treatment and translation of the Bhagavata Purana's five chapters on the Rasa Dance of Krishna with the cowherd maidens of Vraja. Another of his works is an introduction to, translation and interpretation of the Bhagavad-gita, entitled Bhagavad Gita: The Beloved Lord's Secret Love Song (Harper One / Harper Collins Publishers, 2010). His most recent work is A Living Theology of Krishna Bhakti: Essential Teachings of A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, by Tamal Krishna Goswami, edited with an introduction and conclusion by Graham M. Schweig (Oxford University Press, New York, 2012). He is currently working on a translation and interpretation of the Yoga Sūtra (forthcoming from Yale University Press) as well as several other volumes." [Ref 2: (Broken link:) http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/titles/7974.html ]

This is a website on Garuda Das created by a disciple of his: https://garudadas.com/ . Note that Garuda Das is a householder devotee. From https://garudadas.com/bio/ we gather that in 1976 Garuda Das completed his Bachelor's degree and that he then went on to University of Chicago to pursue his master's degree in South Asian Studies. In the above interview, he is referred to as a student in the University of Chicago. So one can guess that most probably the interview happened in late 1970s.

3) HH Bhakti Tirtha Swami Last Kirtan, 2005, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0B8vOZJ3WY, 16 min. 50 secs.

It seems as if he is pouring his heart into the bhajan. Deeply moving bhajan rendition! I guess he was quite ill at this time.

4) Bhakti Tirtha Swami (Swami Krishnapada) - Transforming Lust into Love, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRxF9bIYMEY, 58 min. 30 secs. Auto-generated transcript which seems to be reasonably but not fully accurate is available. One need not agree with the views espoused here but it is interesting to note that BTS was willing to speak publicly on such sensitive topics.

5) The Power Of Authentic Compassion | Gita Nagari USA | 2002 | Bhakti Tirtha Swami, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3sQ063ZHX8, 54 min. 30 secs. Auto-generated transcript which seems to be reasonably but not fully accurate is available.

6) Bhakti Tirtha Swami Inviting the Panca Tattva Means Upgrading Ourselves, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wpSij-U68w, 1 hr. 6 mins.

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Given below are some of my comments (slightly edited) from my associated Facebook post: https://www.facebook.com/ravi.s.iyer.7/posts/3058462807703609 :

In response to a Namaste-icon comment from a person who is based in USA, I wrote: Sairam sister --name-snipped-- . I am curious to know whether you had known about this African-American ISKCON Swami prior to reading my post.

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She responded that she did not know about him. I thanked her for letting me know.

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In response to another person based in USA who informed me that he did not know about BTS prior to reading my post, I wrote: Thanks --name-snipped-- for sharing that you had not known of him earlier. I am happy that my post contributed to you coming to know of a fellow American who took to the Hindu spiritual path, was respectful towards other religious traditions including his earlier Christian faith as well as Islam, and contributed significantly to social and spiritual uplift of some of his fellow Americans and others across the world. Jai Sai Ram!

I have to add that him taking to the Hindu spiritual path and becoming a Hindu religious tradition Guru, seems to not have come in the way of his reverence for many parts of Christian scripture as he quoted from it in the above video. I would not be surprised if he viewed Lord Jesus Christ as a very powerful divine figure, even after becoming a Hindu Guru.

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[I thank dcregisterarchives.dc.gov, Wikipedia and HH Bhakti Tirtha Swami (and his heirs), and have presumed that they will not have any objections to me sharing the above extract(s)/youtube video quotes from their websites/videos on this post which is freely viewable by all, and does not have any financial profit motive whatsoever.]