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Meeting The Great Man

Meeting The Great Man

Author: Kasia Yoko
Date: 2014-02-28
"Now you all together make this Vedic Planetarium very nice, so that people will come and see. From the description in the Srimad-Bhagavatam you prepare this Vedic Planetarium. My idea is to attract people of the whole world to Mayapur."

Srila Prabhpada 1979

Srila Prabhpada, the founder of international Society of Krishna Consciousness (ISKON) had a clear vision for temple of the Vedic Planitarium, one he often expressed. He wanted a unique Vedic planetarium to present the Vedic perspective of life, including the gigantic display of the material and spiritual worlds that visitors could view from different levels as they travelled through the planetarium. He wanted something startling and state of the art to attract people from around the world to Mayapur.

This month The Bugle had the pleasure to interview Ambarish Das (or as he was called in his previous life Alfred Ford) Who is interviewing who? An interesting manAlfred Ford - Ambarish Das. Ambarish Das or Alfred is traveling around the globe speaking to the business community about the "Square Foot Campaign" for constructing the Chandrodaya temple.

"The project does not belong to any community or individual, but rather to the entire human race. So every individual should participate in the campaign," he said. "For as little as $150 (R1661) you can buy a square foot. Ford invested over $38million or (R420million) of his own money after a personal request by Srila Prabhpada for Ambarish to make this temple his life's mission.

Ambarish das is fulfilling a lifelong dream of A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. Ambarish das has undertaken to see the construction of the Temple of the Vedic Planetarium in Mayapur, West Bengal, India to its fruition. 

The Mayapur Chandrodaya temple "will be a complex dedicated to education and culture," he said.

On its completion, the temple will rise to over 100m. Covering a total area of 4.25 thousand sq.ft. accommodating 10,000 devotes.

"My great grandfather Henry Ford had always wondered how he had acquired the ability toknow so much about mechanics. He had very little formal training, and yet, at the age of nine he could take a watch apart and put it back together. One explanation was that he had acquired this in some other lifetime. 

Though not very religious, he was very interested in spirituality. He believed in reincarnation. A Sufi mystic came to visit him from India, and he was pretty much of a vegetarian."