His Holiness Mahavishnu Goswami Maharaj was born in the outskirts of Mumbai in 1920 on the auspicious day of Dattatreya Purnima in the month of Marga Sirsha. He appeared in a family of Vaishnavas since 8 generations. Highly educated, with M.A degrees in both English and Sanskrit, Maharaj is effectively multilingual in Marathi, Hindi, Gujerati (his native tongue), Urdu, Sanskrit and English. Since childhood, Maharaj was always filled with a burning desire to understand the Vaishnava traditions and practices he grew up with in his village. Lord Krishna responded to Maharaj's devotional service when one morning along Oxford Street London, Maharaj, as a householder chanced upon a group of Hare Krishna devotees chanting and dancing in the busy street intersection. Maharaj first took darshan of Prabhupada in 1973 when, as President of the London Gujerati Community Society, he invited Prabhupada to be guest-of-honour at the society's annual function. Maharaj enshrined Srila Prabhupada's instructions in his heart, fulfilled all his family affairs very responsibly and the Lord made all the arrangements for him to enter retired (vanaprastha) life in 1980, where he took up residence in ISKCON Soho Street Temple, London, and received initiation in 1981, as "Mahavishnu Das Vanachari". In 1991, Maharaj accepted his second initiation and the renounced order of life (sannyasa) on the auspicious appearance day of Lord Narasimha from H.H Sivaram Swami. In 1996, Maharaj took another significant step in his preaching efforts when he arrived in the Holy Dham of Dwaraka and in 2003, ISKCON's 1st temple made completely in stone and in accordance with our ancient Vedic heritage was completed amidst great celebrations. He left this mortal world on 25th January 2010. His samadhi is located at Rajkot. Visit
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