Jailhouse Rock - November 7, 1971

Kaunteya prabhu sent me a description of an early prison-preaching event with HH Visnujana Maharaja, ISKCON's famous singer who disappeared mysteriously in 1976.

Information about HH Visnujana Maharaja, including audio files and devotees' memories of him, are available at www.vishnujana.com. Here is an excerpt:

Chaitanya dasi: What I always remembered most was he was very transcendental. He would lead for long periods of time. It seemed like he had endless energy. He would play mrdanga, and it looked as though his feet weren't even on the ground. It was so amazing to watch him play mrdanga and chant, and his eyes would always be closed. It was like he went into trance, into another world. And his feet, it was as if he was floating on the ground.

From the book: Radha-Damodara Vilasa - Vaiyasaki dasa

One day, Visnujana Maharaja receives an unusual invitation. He is asked to give a special program for the inmates of the Bexar County Jail outside San Antonio. Enthused by the preaching opportunity, Visnujana invites the temple regulars to accompany him. A carload of devotees also drive down from Austin. Everyone meets at the tiny apartment. The temple is jam-packed with guests and devotees all eager to chant for the prisoners.

Visnujana gets everybody into the mood with a warm-up kirtan in the apartment, and then takes the kirtan down to the street and onto the bus. Sitting on the bus and playing away on his harmonium like a mad man, Visnujana continues the intensity of the kirtana. Dwijahari starts up the engine and pulls away from the curb. As Dwijahari maneuvers the bus through the city streets, the kirtana continues unabated, with guests and devotees totally overcome with bliss. The prison guards have been notified that a Visnujana Swami will be coming to speak to the inmates about religious life. They are astonished to see the big red Bhakti-Yoga-Mobile, packed with forty guests, accompanying the Swami with an uproarious kirtana in full swing.

After procedural formalities are finished, they lead Maharaja and his flock into a sedate chapel where a microphone is set up on a table. Visnujana is briefed about the program, which will be broadcast like a radio show. Maharaja can address the inmates from the chapel, and his talk will be heard in every cell in the institution via the intercom system. As Parasara readies his tape recorder to record the broadcast, Visnujana sits down in front of the microphone and begins his talk.

Adi Deva: The prisoners were a captive audience. Visnujana Swami gave an incredible lecture. "You think you're in cells. You think you have walls with bars, but we all have bars. Our bars are our senses. You're actually in the jail of your body..." He talked about love, and the love of a tiger for its cub. He talked about different types of love; that love is within everybody's heart no matter where on the scale you are. Even if you're a convict and everybody else hated you and they were going to throw you in solitary confinement forever, there is still love in your heart.

And Krishna is the Supreme Lover. And maybe when you get out of here, you might want to go visit a church. Well, we don't visit a church, we live the church, you see? We are the church. So when you get out of here, you come and see us." And boy, I mean, they came! For months afterward, we would get these convicts coming out of jail. First thing they'd do is look up the Hare Krishnas. It was great.

Then he led this killer kirtan. He didn't have a mrdanga at that time, but somebody had gotten a tom-tom. I remember him playing the tom-tom and then switching to harmonium. They had an organ in the chapel too, and I remember he was playing around with that.

Sankarsana: Visnujana gave a lecture, and it was the sweetest program you could imagine. He sang a melody I had never heard before, but I fell in love with it immediately. I was watching him play the harmonium, and to me it was like poetry in motion, the way he would cross his fingers. I would just be mystified to see the way his hand moved on the keyboard. I crammed that melody into my brain, so much so that I actually sang it, for an hour and a half straight, the whole way back to Austin that evening.

Murti dasa: They had to broadcast his voice to four floors of the jail. He was on the bottom floor with his harmonium, singing away, and the whole jail went wild, because nobody loved them. Suddenly, here is this saint who's come in talking to them in his hoarse voice and just loving them, saying that it's okay and just sing along. They went wild, shaking their cell doors and screaming. The whole jail was starting to go crazy, and the guards got a little freaked out. Visnujana had tremendous potency.

Jagadananda Pandit: He got everybody chanting, and you could hear all these people singing. There was something special about him. He could bring out the love in your heart. Across the board directly, he would bring out the bhakti in every human being.

Adi Deva: At one point I went downstairs and out of the jail, just to see if we could hear it. Every speaker in the whole jail was turned up full blast. You could hear the kirtan out in the street. The prison authorities loved it, and the men loved it. They wanted the men to read Bhagavad-gita, and they were asking for it, too. Somebody followed up on it, and they were going in there and giving them japa beads.

The recording made by Parasara is copied and distributed. It quickly becomes famous in the Texas temples as the Jailhouse Rock. Devotees play it constantly in the kitchens and the asrams. The jail program was a tremendous success, and everybody had loved it, except for one person—the landlady. With so many people streaming in to the tiny temple to see Visnujana Swami, and the rocking kirtans that seem to shake the entire building, the landlady has reached her limit. She gives Maharaja notice to leave. She likes him, but the traffic is just too much for her.