February 2023: ISKCON sannyasi [Name deleted] Maharaja spoke about Henry’s decalogy Gold, Guns and God and compared it to the Sanskrit epic of ancient India, the Mahabharata, attributed to the sage Vyasa. Mahabharata is the longest epic poem ever written, roughly ten times the length of the Iliad and the Odyssey combined, and four times longer than the Ramayana. Henry explained:

“My godbrother [Name deleted] dasa, who lives in an ISKCON temple and asked to remain anonymous due to fear of retribution from the institution, gave a complimentary copy of Gold, Guns and God, Vol. 8 to a former New Vrindaban resident, [Name deleted] Maharaja, who is often seen at the ISKCON temple where he lives. According to my godbrother, Maharaja was at first hesitant to take the book, but accepted after he found out my godbrother wasn’t going to ask for a donation.”

The next day, my godbrother told me, “[Name deleted] Maharaja must have looked through your book last night. This morning he spoke to me briefly during Tulsi Puja, and said he just realized that there’s more volumes; ten in all. He said your decalogy must be like the Mahabharata!”

I responded, “I am totally flattered that [Name deleted] Maharaja, who I knew from New Vrindaban in the mid-1980s, has compared my decalogy to Mahabharata. Perhaps it is an accurate analogy, as the Mahabharata’s author, Vyasa, claims his work as being itihasa (history). His epic narrates the heroic struggles between two groups of cousins in the Kuruksetre War, and the fates of the leading characters and their successors. It is full of conflict and intrigue and backstabbing and cheating, yet also reveals transcendental knowledge. My books are also itihasa (histories), dealing with conflict and intrigue and backstabbing and murders and cheating between godbrothers (disciples of A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada), yet my books also reveal hints of transcendental knowledge for those who are willing to seek. According to Wikipedia, Mahabharata has about 1.8 million words, and my books (ten volumes of Gold, Guns and God, plus Killing For Krishna, and Eleven Naked Emperors) have exactly 1,713,521 words according to a Microsoft Word search. I’m only about 80,000 words short!”

P.S. The names of my godbrother and the ISKCON sannyasi have been deleted as requested by my godbrother, who is afraid of retribution from the institution.