The Oral History Project

By Prishni Devi Dasi

The Richard L Thompson Archives: The Oral History Project

The Richard L Thompson Archives (RLTA) was created by a group of friends of Sadaputa dasa (1947–2008), who wanted to preserve with his works and keep his books in print.

RLTA is also conducting an oral history project focusing on Sadaputa’s biographical material as a founding member of Srila Prabhupada’s Bhaktivedanta Institute. This interview with Yamaraja dasa, who worked closely with Sadaputa over the years designing the layout and covers for his numerous books and BTG articles, highlights how much he is missed by his many admirers. This interview took place October 8, 2014 at the offices of Back to Godhead magazine:

Prishni: Let’s begin by telling us a little about yourself.

Yamaraja: I was born in Portland, Oregon and grew up there. I attended two years at Portland State University majoring in Art, then two years at the University of Oregon, Eugene, and finally dropped out, returning to Portland. I became involved in counter-cultural activities and investigating Eastern philosophy at that time. All I really cared about was understanding reality.

Prishni: How did you first meet devotees?

Yamaraja: When I was going to college in Eugene, there was one history of art textbook with a quote from Bhagavad-gita, one verse. And I thought, “This is something really profound . . . I should get a Gita.” So I went to the bookstore after that class, and there was a little section of Gitas. Prabhupada’s was there, the purple one. So I read through the foreword by Allen Ginsberg, then figured, out of all of these, if Ginsberg wrote a foreword to this book, then this one must be the right one to get.

Prishni: He was the man in those days.

Yamaraja: So in a sense Ginsberg sold me Prabhupada’s Gita . . . So I went on like that for months trying to figure it out, and then I met the devotees in Portland on the street. I hadn’t made a connection between Prabhupada’s Gita and that there was a movement involved with it. And so then when I saw them on the street and they were carrying the book, I immediately went up and asked “So who is Krsna exactly?” Then they explained to me and I said, “Ok, I know that from reading the book that He’s supposed to be God, but literally?” and they would go on and on “yes, yes.”

And this is the first time I really met people who were so involved, living this lifestyle that the Gita was describing . . . I felt I have to go and spend more time with them.

Prishni: What years are we talking now?

Yamaraja: 1969, ’70, and part of ’71. I’d go out on harinam with them in front of Meier & Frank. I saw Prabhupada first at the San Francisco Ratha-yatra. It was early 1971, maybe June. I would chant with one initiated devotee in particular, so he and I became good friends. Then one Sunday feast I came and he wasn’t there. I found out that . . . on his way to the temple to join his wife and kid . . . he had this head-on collision, a big horrible wreck, and he died instantly. And I thought, “He surrendered everything and here I am still hanging around. What’s my excuse?” So I figured I’d join in New Vrndavana because I wanted to be on a farm. . .

So I was initiated in New Vrindavana in 1972, then joined the BBT in New York in ’73. I learned to do the layout there. . . . Then the whole Press moved to LA in ‘75, and I stayed there with them until ‘79. During that time . . . the BI was formed. So articles started coming in from Sadaputa. The first one we ran in the BTG was an excerpt from lectures by Sadaputa and Madhava das. It was a good article and it was the first time I had been exposed to scientific preaching like that. It was my first encounter with devotees who had that ability. I was thinking, “This is the most amazing article I ever read.” The devotees were . . . appreciating the importance of the intellectual aspect of our movement and how rare . . . people inclined toward that were. . . . Whenever these people are discovered they need to be given a lot of space and assistance. So I know that Madhava and devotees like that, they had been previously washing pots for years.

Prishni: And Sadaputa also.

Yamaraja: There wasn’t any place for them anywhere else. They just were so humble. . . . To be an intellectual and a devotee is a very rare and exceptional thing. They had to be really a unique person to put up with so much and with people not recognizing what they could do. And they didn’t really know what they could contribute either. It took Prabhupada to encourage them.

When they started doing it and realized what the potential was and had Prabhupada behind them all the way telling them how to go about it . . . they just took off and they started writing. And of course the most prolific was Sadaputa. They all had their contributions and they all had a lot to offer and they did their parts and they’re still doing it. But Sadaputa was writing and he figured out how to really connect with the scientific establishment. . . . And this was Sadaputa’s main drive.

For scientific preaching he was able to . . . focus in a really sophisticated way of presenting it to the scientific community. He wasn’t writing just for them either. He was trying to develop a popular way of presenting it, too. When he wrote his so-called popular articles for us there was long sections of mathematical formulas and references to quantum physics and things that I just couldn’t understand. I asked him a couple of times, “Can’t you make this a little easier to understand?” He’d say, “This is the way I write it. I can’t make it simple. This is the way it is. It’s the way it’s described.” His specialty was higher mathematics. So that’s how he approached everything.

Prishni: At what point did you meet Sadaputa personally?

Yamaraja: In late 1979 the BBT moved to New York,then we were in Philadelphia for a long time, from 1981 till ’89. Well, Sadaputa showed up one time in Philadelphia and stayed in the house with us. That was really amazing. That’s the first time I had actually met him personally. Not the first time. I met him once before in India when they had that first meeting there with all the BI members in Vrndavana, kind of an orientation meeting with all the devotees to try and explain what they were doing and what their plans were. I remember when he finished talking he came outside and I cornered him and asked him – you know that famous question everybody asks – “Why is it described that the moon is further away from the earth than the sun?” I forget how he was explaining it to me . . . something to do with the plane of the ecliptic. . . .

That whole book that he published much later, Mystery of the Sacred Universe, is filled with things like that, . . . reconciling apparent contradictions. He evaluated all of them and explained them, . . . plus that whole thing about the 5th Canto is basically showing all these different perspectives. He had four or five different perspectives. Nobody ever thought of that before. But he did so much research and mathematics. . . . The details were all there, and illustrations. So he was unique in that respect.

Those books are time bombs. Just like Prabhupada’s books are time bombs in one way, his are time bombs in another way. The scientific people, they get these books and some day they’re gonna look at them and somebody’s going to say, “Look, there’s something here,” and it’s going to all come out. . . .

When Sadaputa arrived in Philadelphia he remembered me. He had a room for himself on the upper floor. Mechanistic and Nonmechanistic was the first book I worked on him with. I don’t know if he asked me or how it happened, but I was delegated to help him design the book. So I felt really privileged to be able to do that. I remember when it got printed and we received the first copies and I brought one over to show it to Ravindra Svarupa Prabhu, he thought it was great. He said this is really sweet because he was always a big fan of Sadaputa.

Sadaputa wanted to make sure it got done right. So he liked it and everybody was happy with it and this was the first book he’d done. Basically it was . . . articles from BTG that he’d compiled.

Prishni: How was he interacting with the devotees?

Yamaraja: I never saw Sadaputa really talking emotionally with anyone. He was very matter of fact. . . . Philosophy he wouldn’t mind talking about, he liked the Bhagavatam, but he was a very private person most of the time. He was not concerned about where his next meal was going to come from. He was just sitting there at a desk writing, writing, writing. When he felt a little hungry he’d go to the temple. He didn’t care; he wasn’t into making sure everything was perfect materially, that the food was all organic or whatever. He’d eat whatever was there and didn’t question it, just so his hunger was alleviated and that he honored the prasadam. That was it, then he went back to work. . . .

So then later we moved again to San Diego in 1989, and Sadaputa was also there.

Prishni: Sadaputa had been there for some time?

Yamaraja: I don’t know when he left Philadelphia, but I guess he went to San Diego after that. So it was Sadaputa, Krishna-krpa, Madhavendra Puri and Drutakarma doing research. Those were the main ones. They were working together real closely on Forbidden Archeology.

. . . Sadaputa was also starting to develop ideas about how to break into the alternative research community. . . . Sadaputa saw something there. He realized that there was so much anecdotal information and personal experiences that people were cataloging from all different walks of life. So I thought, “This is great. He’s the only one getting into this.” So I felt drawn more to his way of looking at how to do that. I knew Prabhupada thought it was important. So I felt: since Sadaputa was a writer, he was trying to get his stuff published, I was into publishing, and I was there where he was . . .

So my relationship with Sadaputa was I would design his covers, design his books, do his layout and help him with any research he wanted to do. So while he was doing Alien Identities: Ancient Insights into Modern UFO Phenomena, he came up with this cover idea, which I thought was pretty good, . . . the cover that’s there now. And we had Srinivas do it because he was doing illustrations for us . . . there in San Diego. Whenever I was distributing, people would always react to it, “Wow!”

That book became very influential at the time. . . After Sadaputa published it, he went on a circuit. He would go to different UFO conferences. I remember there was one in Gulf Breeze, which was a big UFO sighting place. They had their local MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) chapter. They were asking him stuff. He had written this one book that everybody had read. But then he put a break on it. He felt that too much of his energy was going into this.

Then we moved from San Diego to Alachua in 1993. Sadaputa didn’t come until later. I thought, “Oh no. We’re leaving. Now we have to leave again and I won’t be working with him and what’s he gonna do?” I didn’t know how he was gonna get his covers designed. Heaven forbid they get a crummy design.

So we came here and shortly after all of a sudden he shows up. Great! Then he started immediately working on Mysteries of the Sacred Universe because that took a long time putting all that material together. That was when Sthita-dhi-muni and Tamraparni joined them, . . . and Bhakta Eddy (Indupati dasa). They were just working, running from room to room. I’d go over there and they were constantly, constantly working with each other. It was a really tight crew and they just worked and worked until they got it down, and I designed the cover. I did the layout. Bhakta Eddy did these great computer design illustrations in it. I was amazed. Then they did the DVD with the animations of Mount Meru, zeroing in.

Prishni: Yes, that really helps . . . to visualize it. And what was your next project with him?

Yamaraja: I did Maya: The World as Virtual Reality, the whole book, with him. We went on stock sites on the internet to try to find an image that worked. When he saw it he immediately said, “This is the cover! This is it!” We wanted a unique cover to only associate with his book. So we got an extended license. Maya‘s a perfect example of his struggle with making it approachable by scientists or people from the academic disciplines, and also the general public. He would talk a lot about that book.

We used to have regular meetings over at his home, maybe once a month. Those were great because a lot of people would come that wouldn’t ordinarily. Everyone he knew that was at all interested in his works he would invite, and we’d have a big pizza dinner and just talk about a lot of scientific stuff. He was funny you know. Sadaputa could be really funny. He saw the irony of the material scientists and in a good-natured way he’d poke fun of them all the time. And once he’d made some joke he would just keep thinking of new angles to that joke and he’d go on, and we were just in stitches, and everybody was laughing and he was laughing. . . . He just understood them so well, where they were coming from psychologically and philosophically. . . . So he had a good handle on how to present the material, really exceptionally, more than anyone else I knew that was doing this kind of preaching. He seemed to have a real feel for it. And he was prolific. . .

In addition to these meetings we had once a month, Tamraparni and I started going to his office every Wednesday. Sthita-dhi-muni also began coming after he earned his master’s degree. Sadaputa had a little shack there for an office in back, and that was where he spent all his time writing and thinking. We’d just meet and talk. The last book we did was God and Science, and then his next project was going to be something to do with really, really concentrating on . . . how to make . . . connections between the scientific community and religion, how they could be mutually beneficial to each other. . . . So just weeks before his sudden departure, he said, “That’s my next project.” He wanted to do that. He had a plan; he was starting it. I think he even wrote some things. So then I thought, “Oh man, this is great!” Another masterpiece is going to come out!”

Prishni: There was some other book he was working on at the time; was it concerning Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory?

Yamaraja: Yes, yes. That was it! So that was his next project.

Prishni: So, what happened next?

Yamaraja: All I know is when I first heard about his leaving I was just kind of numb. And then after a few days passed I remember I was out here and it just hit me all of a sudden . . .what we’ve lost, you know, and I just started balling, balling. I couldn’t stop crying. It wasn’t so much . . . I didn’t have a personal relationship with him; I hardly ever saw him; we’d just meet now and then. But what he represented and what his potential contribution could have been if he’d lasted longer . . . I’m thinking, “Who else could do that? He’s an irreplaceable person.” So it just struck me – what a hole now. I was saying over and over, “What are we going to do? What are we going to do now?” Because there’s nobody else who can fill that.

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Sadaputa’s impact on the devotional community remains in the hearts of those who knew him. When asked to summarize his contribution to scientific preaching, Kardama Muni Prabhu concisely replied, “He set very high standards of how to do the kind of work he does.” His long-time assistant Krishna-kripa dasa similarly described Sadaputa as “a saint among scientists; a scientist among saints.” With this in mind, the Richard L Thompson Archives is trying to preserve and document Sadaputa’s work to help maintain his rigorous level of scientific research and presentation. To this end, a Richard L Thompson Memorial Library website with a scholarly theme is on its way, and we hope to develop the oral history into a biography. In another project executed in cooperation with the archives, Sunadana Prabhu launched the Sadaputa Digital Channel on YouTube. It presently enjoys 1700 subscribers, with one of Sadaputa’s radio interviews concerning his book, Mysteries of the Sacred Universe, approaching 100,000 hits: https://www.youtube.com/user/SadaputaChannel

If you knew Sadaputa and wish to help with the Oral History Project, or would like to support this and other RLTA archival activities, please contact Prishni dd at rlthompsonarchives@gmail.com

All of his booksare now available for purchase on Amazon at: https://www.amazon.com/Richard-L.-Thompson/e/B000APL4BY.