When we are distributing books, we have two priorities. One is obviously to distribute as many books as possible. Once Srila Prabhupada said: “The success of your preaching will be substantiated by how many book are sold. The art is to sell many, many books and not to irritate the public.” Another time he said: “Distribution of books and magazines is our most important activity. Without books, our preaching has no solid basis.” (Letter to Cyavana).
“The real preaching is selling books. You should know the tactic how to sell without irritating. What your lecture will do for three minutes, but if he reads one page his life may be turned. We don’t want to irritate anyone, however. If he goes away by your agressive tactics, then you are nonsense and it is your failure. Neither you could sell a book, neither he would remain. But if he buys a book that is the real successful preaching. That is the certificate of my Guru Maharaja, if someone, brahmacari, would sell a one paise magazine, if one of our brahmacaris would go and sell a few copies, he would be very very glad and say “Oh, you are so nice!” So distribution of literature is our real preaching.” (Letter to Bali-mardana, 30 September 1972).
Still, we have another priority, that is no less important: to make devotees. When we distribute books, we give people knowledge about the reality of spiritual life, so the ones who are sincere, who are already fed up with this rotten material world, can have a chance of hearing about Krsna. We plant the seeds.
For a seed to sprout, it needs to have the right conditions. One is that the soil needs to be fertile: a person needs to be dissatisfied with material life, to be in search of knowledge, distressed, curious or looking for some change in his life. Another one is that there is a need for water and sunlight, as well as for some protection against the weather, against insects and different animals that may destroy the plant. In some cases, one is so eager that just by receiving a book he comes to the temple and decides to surrender to Krsna by himself, but in most cases people need cultivation. Without some care from devotees, the seed of devotional service will remain in an embryonic state: the person will make some advancement by reading the book and applying something in his life, but he will not come all the way to become a full-fledged devotee.
When we distribute a book to a sincerely interested person, we should make the extra effort to take his contact and calling or messaging after a few days, gently asking if they are reading the book, what is his impression or if he has any questions, some simple contact. The goal is not to preach and convince him, but just to show that you care. Let the person follow his own rhythm. If he wants to know more, you can invite him to some bhakti-vriksa or nama-hatta program, or even to have lunch at the local prasadam restaurant. If he is a little bit interested, but not so much, you can put him in your mailing list and send him messages with nice quotes periodically, so he doesn’t forget you and has the opportunity of making contact if he becomes interested. For these messages, you can use whatever medium people are currently using (Whatsapp, Vkontakte, Facebook, SMS, etc. according to the place and circumstance)
Normally, you will divide the persons who you are trying to cultivate in two groups: the first one will be a smaller group with the most interested ones, with whom you will keep a more personal contact, calling them sometimes, messaging and so on. The second group, usually much bigger, will contain persons who were interested at some point but waned for different reasons. The best approach to them is to keep them in a mailing list (as I suggested in the previous paragraph) and send them quotes or short devotional inspirational messages that they can relate to their lives. This is a way to keep in contact that will not take so much of your time.
In my case, for example, I have (2019) mainly been using Whatsapp for keeping contact with interested people, since it’s the platform everyone uses in Brazil. When I meet an interested person, I add his number and send him a message to open an individual chat, and also add him in a group where I’m regularly sending messages explaining different points of the philosophy and spiritual practice. In this way, there is a group, where he regularly receives messages and also a personal chat where he can ask private questions. According to the person’s interests, I can also put them in contact with other devotees. It is a small scale program that I maintain in my free time, but it already is giving fruits. You can find your own model, according to your resources, personal preferences and the public you are preaching to, this is just an example.
Apart from being friendly and attentive, the essential point about cultivation is to not become attached to the people we are trying to help. To help means to do what is best for the person. Attachment means we try to make him act for our benefit, which breaks the system. We then start to insist, press the person, become angry when he doesn’t act as we want, try to control and so on. Instead of cultivating, we end up just burning out sincere persons and thus doing a disservice.
The first thing we need to understand is that everybody has his free will, that even Krsna respects. Not everyone is ready to become a devotee. We should respect each person’s level and inclinations, trying to help as far as possible, but at the same time respecting his desire. Krsna doesn’t force anybody to follow devotional life and we should follow the example. We should offer our friendship and sincere guidance, and let people take as much as they want to take. We should act as well-wishers, as sincere friends who are always ready to help, without demanding anything in return.
Some devotees will specialize in book distribution, staying for long hours and distributing thousands of books. Because they are already spending all their energy distributing books, they will not have so much time for cultivation. They are like the “heavy gunners” of the sankirtana movement: shooting continuously with their four-barreled machine guns, causing devastation to the enemy, but not caring so much about where every individual bullet goes. On the other extreme, we have devotees who can’t spend so much of their time directly distributing books, and therefore spend most of their time cultivating the persons who they meet, through the phone and internet. They will not distribute so many books, but will make a lot of devotees. They are the snipers of Lord Caitanya: shooting just a few rounds, but with remarkable accuracy.
If someone can stay eight or ten hours in the street, six times a week, he will have a good excuse to not spend much of his time in cultivation. In such cases, he may just collect the contacts and give them to other devotees who may do the cultivation part. To just give the contacts to others is not the best, because the cultivation is much more effective when done by the book distributor himself (at least the initial contact should be done by him), but it is better than nothing. Anyway, because he is putting so much effort and distributing so many books, one can say that he is already doing his part.
On the other hand, we see that most devotees usually distribute for much less time, going for only a few hours at a time and even then not every day. If that is your case, there is no excuse: you should dedicate part of the time that you are not in the street on cultivation. In this way, you can keep yourself in the preaching mood even while doing other things. This will not only help others, but also help yourself to advance. Also, there are a lot of cases where the husband likes to distribute books, but the wife has a hard time going out, or vice-versa. Such couples can work as a team, with one doing the distribution and the other doing the cultivation.
In short, at first we contact interested people and try to establish some friendships. When a person becomes a little more interested, we can give him new books, start to send him some audio classes, mantras and even some devotional movies, trying to make him interested in devotional life.
When the time to invite him to attend some program arrives, it’s usually better to invite them to some home program: to your bhakti-vriksa cell or some nama-hatta. To visit someone’s house is much less pressing than to visit a temple, and normally home programs tend to offer a much more cozy and relaxed atmosphere, where the guest will feel more at ease. Because temples involve so many people, busy doing so many things, they frequently have a more “big city” atmosphere, where guests don’t receive so much personal attention. Most of the time, devotees just ask them to sit and watch the singing or the class, without really explaining to them what is going on. Temples are important to train new devotees and to offer us a place to do devotional service and to practice spiritual life, but unless they are very well organized, they are frequently not really effective in making new devotees. Most of the new devotees nowadays are coming from bhakti-vriksa programs, and that’s not a coincidence: the more personal and friendly atmosphere in these programs is much more effective in engaging new people. Book distribution, bhakti-vriksa and temples fulfil different purposes, and thus we need to use them in a combined way for our preaching to have the maximum effect.
It’s like a pyramid: book distribution and different preaching programs bring new persons to the bhakti-vriksa and nama-hatta programs, where they receive some preliminary training. The most interested ones will naturally become attracted to the activities in the temple, and by regularly attending programs or by living for some time in the ashrama, they get trained to become strong devotees and preachers, that, in turn, is going to bring new people to the different programs, restarting the cycle.
As far as possible, we should make our preaching efforts very organized and professional, working in a very coordinated and structured way, where everyone can work effectively, using their talents for Krsna. For this to work properly, all the links in the chain should be functional, which in turn demands a coordinated effort.