ISKCON Poisoned by Mayavadis in USA 1970 - 1971 -- Following Srila Prabhupada Part 2 -- 1080p

That scene is one of the Harinam we had daily, going down Totonam Court Road. And actually, Harinam was the life of the temple in Buri Place. It was a very wonderful temple, a very tight family. Actually, the father and mother were Gurudas and Jamuna.

And they were really taking care of us in a very personal way. These are the devotees arriving from a concert tour in Germany. And a group of devotees headed by Mukunda and Tamal went over there. And it looks like they're coming back to London for the Ratha Yatra.

After our record, Hare Krishna Mantra record, was released in Europe, it became very popular to the point where we had an agent who was booking us concert tours all over Europe, especially England, but in other countries too. And we became so famous that we would put on these concerts with thousands of people in the audience who would pay to come and chant Hare Krishna and see this famous group called Radha Krishna Temple. And they would line up for autographs after the concerts. We used to go out to George's house in Esher, just the six of us, for kirtan with George and his wife, and sometimes his friends would come over. on one occasion George says you know we ought to make a record one thing led to the other and very quickly George called us into the studio and we did this Hare Krishna mantra record and I should also mention that Mukunda and Gurdas and I always knew that we would be doing this so from the time we got to London we began acquiring instruments and practicing we were pretty practiced group.

So by the time George discovered us, we already knew how to do this stuff pretty well. Jamuna with her voice and Mukunda, he was the lead musician. He had everything orchestrated. He played the harmonium, the drums, whatever was required.

I acquired an esraj, which is an Indian instrument, a bowed instrument that sits in the lap. You get that eerie violin-type sound. So we were already kind of a group before we met George. We knew that when we met George that we must have some kind of a musical relationship.

So we were already pretty well polished. And so when we went into the recording studio to do this record, we did it in about an hour. The record was in the can in an hour. Paul McCartney was there and he did a lot of the mixing in the control booth.

This was an exceptionally ecstatic Rathiatra. This is the first real formal Rathiatra we had in London. We had one in 1969 where I built a cart. There were only six original devotees plus a few English devotees and the cart collapsed a hundred feet after it got started and Marble Arch caused one of the largest traffic jams in London history, and there was no one around to record that.

This is really the first major Ratha Yatra in England, 1970, and there were so many devotees there from all over Europe they came, and from America even. One of the most ecstatic Ratha Yatras in London, ever. In Harinam, we went, I believe, three times on Harinam in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening until night to Piccadilly Circus. And when we were coming, it was to take a little pressure out of them or to see the Arctic and to read Bhagavad Gita and whatever scriptures we have.

So we were fully absorbed. So it was really our meditation, this Hali Nam. We used to meditate on hearing and chanting the holy name, trying not to be distracted from all the crowd and all the shop windows. And actually we got so absorbed that everybody was feeling full of bliss and joy.

When we first joined, and Paopat saw us dancing with our nylon, bright pink and blue saris, he was very kind. He said, Oh, these young girls, they are just flowers blowing in the wind. At that time, I was maintained. my family was selling hippie bells and beads on Oxford Street and the devotees used to pass by and Harry Numb that was quite an interesting Harry Numb sometimes used to be one devotee called Dishonor he was a French Canadian he used to play trumpet and he used to wear a dhoti it was a leopard skin pattern dhoti it wasn't leopard skin but you know they were quite a funny crowd and I used to go down Oxford Street chanting and sometimes I you know I joined on once or twice So finally then the record came out, the Hare Krishna record. And that one I used to play all day long at my little apartment.

And then we heard, well, the guru's coming. Prabhupada didn't disappoint us. He arrived on time. And then I attended the first lecture in Conway Hall.

Actually, I didn't understand anything that Prabhupada was saying, really. I mean, a few little words I could get now and again. but i just sat there you know just drinking the vibration and the whole divine presence of his of his being and uh and so by the time the interval came you know i just went to speak with the devotees and said okay when when i can join just just enough to see Prabhupada one time by the time he'd opened his mouth and by the time he'd closed his mouth was enough for me and around a week later i moved into Tittenhurst Park the devotees were living on John Lennon's estate at that time. And so I arrived there, I got out of the van and the first person I saw was Malati and she said, Prabhupada's in the temple room, quick, quick, Prabhupada's in the temple room.

So I run down this path through the trees into the temple room and I entered into the doorway and there I could see Srila Prabhupada and he was just blessing a newborn baby, I think it was the baby of Ishan. Ishan was holding out the baby to Prabhupada and Prabhupada placed his hand on the baby's head and then Srila Prabhupada got down from the Vyasasana and he walked towards the doorway and I was just like getting up and paying my obeisances and Malati immediately said you know Prabhupada you know these people are coming to Krishna consciousness and I just looked up at Prabhupada and Prabhupada looked down at me and you know and he said Hare Krishna and a big big smile on his face and it was like at that time everything just went spinning. It was like, it seemed that I'd been traveling through so many universes and so many lifetimes, and just to come to that point, you know, to see my spiritual master and spiritual father and pure devotee of the Lord stood before me just looking at me in this first meeting, you know, it was something really, really strong.

And so then one week later I got initiated, and it was during that initiation ceremony actually that I heard the four rules and regulations from the mouth of Siddha Prabhupada himself for the first time. But that was okay with me because I just was like magnetized and fixed on Prabhupada. Yes, Prabhupada, anything Prabhupada said was okay, so no problem. I mean, part of the satisfaction, of course, of a Ratha Yatra like this in those early days was just the mere miracle of having pulled it off. we really were just a handful of young people there was also a certain sense of fulfilling of a mission a prophecy and that Srila Prabhupada had told us that this was Lord Chaitanya's prediction and the sense that we were a part of the fulfillment of that prediction was a very exciting thing especially back in these days when Rathayatra was not an established annual event in every major city, this was a first.

This was a very, very big accomplishment. Our Sankirtan for Lord Jagannath and for the Rathayatra Festival was, as you can see, completely ecstatic. Jagannath was the center of our lives. Lord Jagannath came to us before Radha, Landa, and Ishwara came to us via Shamshandra.

Shamshandra carved these beautiful deities and they, like in San Francisco, were the center of all the devotees' lives. During Bhrasadam, we used to even speak about Lord Jagannath and Lord Jagannath Subhadra and Balaram's beauty and we would race up from Bhrasadam just to sit at their feet and sing Jagannath Swami, Nayana Pataghami, Bhavadhumi. So by the time this event came, you can see how ecstatic the devotees are chanting. And in some cases, it was the first time that devotees from all these three European countries were together in one place.

London Radha Yatra became so famous as the long walking yatra. Later Srila Prabhupada also walked in great ecstasy or danced in great ecstasy throughout the whole event. Vibhav Prabhupada commented about this Radha Yatra. He said, make the deities so beautiful that everyone will be attracted to them.

Make it very opulent. So that was the direction that we were heading, was to try to make the deities visible for those that were witnessing them for the first time, the passers-by, and to increase the love of the devotees already familiar with the Lord. Oh, how nice to see people who would never have had access to Lord Jagannath. So this was a real growth period in London, just as there was a burgeoning of youth interested in spiritual life and breaking out of the mold of the 50s and 60s in the United States.

This happened in London at the same time. So mostly through the holy name, the Sankirtan, we attracted people. Sometimes it was prasadam, but mostly it was through Sankirtan. Look at them, the crowds, just immense.

And this is only after being in England for two years. The first year, 1968, we were the handful. 69 it was increasing, and this is by 70. Not even a full two years.

Of course, Srila Prabhupada's arrival in 1969 was the catalyst. We were the seeds being planted, and he was the blossoming creeper of Lord Chaitanya's love. And when he came, everything ignited like a firestorm. It's like a firestorm, actually, with the thunder and the veracity and the speed of a firestorm.

I remember he sent us several letters, you know, guiding us on Rathiatra and saying things like, you know, I wish that I was there. We knew we couldn't expect him to be there, but he was with us. Don't forget this was the height of Krishna awareness in London. Everyone knew us.

We were famous. The flashing billboards in the center of London, Leicester Square. Everyone knew about the temple. We were part of the broadband culture of London at that time, 1970.

George Harrison was our friend. John Lennon was our friend. All the famous people of England were aware of us. We were appearing in concerts.

We were on the street every day, Oxford Street. And you can see by this time, many people were curious to see, what is this Hare Krishna phenomenon? And more and more Indian people had joined us. At first they were very leery of what we were doing.

And they stayed away, they shied away. We had several core families, Indian families, who were very, very helpful and very solid. Gradually, the majority of Indian people in London began to understand that this was the real thing, that this was Vaishnavism. Nicely dressed, gentlemen.

Prabhupada always used to say that only two places in the world a gentleman can live, India and England. he liked the the higher level of culture in england the bobbies everywhere they were helping they're helping move the deities afterwards they all said the bobbies all said that was one of the most delightful public displays they've ever seen everyone was perfectly mannered they got a little taste of the ecstasy themselves. All of the devotees were so enlivened in England in those days. It was such an ecstatic experience all the time. Things were humming and, oh, they had a play.

Civil disobedience. Not a great theme. We were children, you know. We didn't know much about tact and Diplomacy, politics, we did this for Prabhupada because we knew he would be happy.

You see Dhananjaya playing the role of Chankazi's men and Tribhuvanath was playing a styrofoam merdanga. And we're enacting the scene here where Chankazi and his henchmen are attacking Lord Chaitanya's Sankirtan party. The origins of the street chanting were 500-odd years ago in West Bengal when Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, the most recent incarnation of Krishna, brought the chanting of the Hare Krishna mantra into public. Here you see yours truly playing the role of Lord Chaitanya, albeit with contemporary microphone.

And this was the enactment of a story that took place 500 years ago in India. Here we see Gurudas, one of the first six disciples of Srila Prabhupada to come to London to open the temple, leading the chanting. I suspect this is toward the end of the play where Lord Chaitanya has convinced the Kazi to allow the chanting to go on. The next day all the newspapers in London, all the front pages were filled with descriptions of the 1970 Ratha Yatra.

They had never seen anything like this in London before. Normally when this many people would gather in public for a parade, it would be some protest march. This was a celebration. We sent clippings from the newspapers that covered this, Rathayatra to Prabhupada, and he showed them to everyone.

He said, you see, my devotees have conquered London. Srila Prabhupada called San Francisco New Jagannath Puri. So devotees would come from all over the world to attend the Rathayatra because Srila Prabhupada was there in attendance. There was no Rathayatras in Australia or Tokyo or Los Angeles, New York, so people would come from all over the world.

And so it was a great occasion for the devotees to come together and celebrate that festival with Srila Prabhupada. This is in front of the 518 Frederick Street. This is right on the sidewalk in front of Frederick Street. Everybody's painting the canopy and upholstering the suns.

This was the biggest festival that was ever held in ISKCON in the early days, 1970 Rathiotra. It was like this monster, out of this little storefront, we created this huge publicity campaign and we mobilized the whole city of San Francisco. All of this happened, all these three huge Rothkarts, all generated out of this little teeny San Francisco center. You know, you really couldn't call it a temple.

It was just a storefront. It was teeny. Imagine the energy and the, and you just, there was no consideration of yourself. You just never thought about yourself.

Oh, I'm tired. Oh, I'm wet. Oh, I'm cold. you just got on with it you couldn't disappoint Prabhupada at the time I was a new devotee I'd been a devotee about four months of course I'd been hearing Prabhupada's lectures and reading his books and listening to some of the recordings and there was a lot of anticipation about Rathayatra in general but the airport we went to the airport to greet him there was just so many devotees there and we were just having this huge kirtan waiting for Prabhupada to come. I had joined in 69 at 518 Frederick Street, but I couldn't stay because I was a Canadian.

So I went back up to Canada and moved into the temple in Vancouver, and I stayed there for six months. we came down for ratha yatra and by that time i was really psyched up uh you're meeting the spiritual master of the universe you've been wandering throughout the universe for millions of lifetimes now with this meeting your karma everything is going to be relieved so i was quite excited. You know we're waiting for the plane to come in and Prabhupada was coming off the plane and he was walking up it seemed like to me he was by himself maybe there were some devotees in the background but the image I have is Prabhupada was walking up this plank and he had this very innocent expression. I had never really seen a person exemplify that kind of humility before because he was walking up and he had this expression as if to turn around and see whoever he wanted to come to meet.

But I got all the temple presidents to spend like $100 each and buy these white gardenias, those big, beautiful, highly scented gardenias. Each president stepped forward and gave him a huge white gardenia just covered with gardenias. His eyes were very penetrating Something about his eyes Seems like Krishna Bhakti comes from his eyes or something But just for a second feeling his glance And just feeling the depth of that glance And the intensity of emotion that everyone felt We were just caught up And everyone around me and myself Tears were just coming from our eyes and just seeing a person who had characteristics that I'd never experienced before and feeling the intensity of the kirtan and it was very moving to this day. We used to be able to do that, go into an airport and just rock it down, you know.

Everything was for Prabhupada. We didn't know anything else. We didn't know anyone else. We were like clean slates.

He taught us everything. who had no outside influence. Look at that. He's dancing right in the airport. Why?

Because he got a wonderful welcome and the devotees were so enthusiastic. So, you know, you reciprocated. And the more you could do for him, the more he would reciprocate in kind. That's the lot.

Three carts are being built in that lot. This is where Srila Prabhupada came to visit the Rathayakta cart. and he amazed all the devotees he just laid out flat on the dirt and paid his obeisances to the Rathayatrakars and he said the Rath is as good as the deity you can see Jainanda and Narayana there here it is the moment of truth actually you see we're pulling the Rathayatrakars out into the street more or less in front of the temple on 518 Frederick Street I'm in the middle of all of this because I figure if anyone's going to get squashed I'm the designer and architect I should be the one to get squashed when we had finally built them and realized how massive they were we were scared stiff as to what would happen when we took them off the blocks and started rolling them down the hill we thought they would continue to roll and go right through the temple door and out the back and down into the bay I might add it had no bricks whatsoever and therefore if it had gotten away it would have gotten away what we did with the paint was we used natural earth pigments.

I took deep-tone latex base and mixed the pigments with water and had it shaken up at the paint place. And so what we did was we used the same pigmentation that they use in Jagannath Puri. You see how many men it was required to break the Rath Yatra car. All of this was designed and built custom within a matter of a few weeks.

I think we had about six or eight weeks in which we built everything from scratch. And we were able to acquire lumber. We spent very little cash for lumber. Most of it was acquired from donation, and wood was left inadvertently lying around.

Shilpa Prabhupada sent Narayana up to design the carts. And I remember one meeting that Narayana was walking around the room holding his head, you know, and Shilpa Prabhupada said, what was a matter? Because you could see Narayana was in anxiety. and he told Srila Prabhupada that he needed a special empowerment. He felt he needed a special empowerment in order to do these cards.

And he told Prabhupada it had to come in a name. So Prabhupada told him, all right, for this now you have become Vishwakarma, the architect of the universe. And Narayan lit up and that was all he needed to get his inspiration for figuring out how to build all the three cards because he had to invent the scopes for the domes coming down. The tops were designed so that the whole Rathiatra cart could slip under a 15-foot high overpass.

So the entire part came down. We had it all designed the year before. We just took a pole and lowered it down, but that cart was only 35 feet tall. These were, like, over 60 feet tall.

And so we just were building it. We didn't think. And then Srila Prabhupada was in Los Angeles. He happened to talk to Tamal and said, and how is the lowering mechanism going to be used, designed and Tamal said, oh Narayan Narayan is working on that, he knows all about it, he's a genius engineer, he can do it, you know so Srila Prabhupada said to Tamal so who is checking on Narayan Narayan and Tamal said, oh you don't have to check on Narayan Narayan he knows what he's doing, and Prabhupada said why not ask so Tamal phoned up, he said, ha ha ha I hate to ask you this, you know, I mean it's so silly but how are you doing the mechanism how is it raising up, and we said well we're just uh we're uh we hadn't thought of how to do it so lochan myself maravisa and we all sat there like for like four days without sleeping day and night not able to figure out how to raise that job and finally somehow or other it came to me how to make this telescoping tube that could be raised up in increments which is sort of the model that's been used ever since except that's been made much more sophisticated since then, much better design.

Then Prabhupada said sternly, no one should ever be in charge completely of something. There should be committee to make sure. Because Prabhupada, if anyone, had tremendous confidence in what I could do, and Tamal had complete confidence in what I could do, and yet I had made the biggest blunder that could have destroyed the whole festival if we had not stopped and worked that out. When he first came to the temple, I wasn't very conscious of who he was because that's a brand new devotee and he came into the temple room and everyone paid their obeisances and when everyone had their heads down I looked up at Srila Prabhupada and he laughed, he smiled at me it was the first realization that I ever had that he was the first person that ever loved me that was very clear that he was the first person in my life that ever loved me and then he knew clearly who I was and everything about me I felt, you know, he saw right through me, whatever.

Not in a bad way, not like saw through my artificiality, but saw who I really was. That was a very, very special thing. And then, you know, everyone sat down, and he spoke a little bit, and then, you know, someone brought him a plate of sweets, and I remember he took a galabjaman, and he tossed it in his mouth from his lap. That was so incredible.

I've tried it in the past, and, you know, it just lands on my forehead or over my shoulder, but it was so incredible to watch him. Everything he did was so perfect and aristocratic. Oh, these are the horses. This is interesting.

My father made the horses. My father's a dramatic Holocaust survivor. His heart had flames coming out of it from the Holocaust in the Warsaw Ghetto. And so he built these horses.

He painted them with fire and with smoke. They looked as though they were smoldering. And he put them on the front of the Rathia Chakars, which was quite a contribution. Four for each Rathia Chakar.

I wanted to engage him, so I asked him to do it. But when I saw the horses, I was absolutely horrified. They looked like horses of the apocalypse coming out of hell. So my father was very proud of them.

They were rather dramatic horses. My parents, I should say, were separated for 40 years. So my mother was also at the Rathia Chow Festival, and my mother and father hadn't seen each other for, oh, maybe five years. My mother walks up and said, who has made these horses? she recoils in horror seeing these smoldering burned crazed horses with wild rolling eyes who has made these horses and I look at her and say my dad made them well this will never do so she went and grabbed buckets of paint and painted them all up with nice merry-go-round design comparison and white and clean and healthy looking horses and there they looked at these horses together and they sort of felt yes this is what we've done to honor our sons choice and I could see that they both felt great satisfaction and from my perspective as a budding transcendentalist you know, two years in the movement I thought, this is their devotional service, this is the moment that was created for them by Lord Krishna to accomplish something in their lives and to give my brother and myself permission to go forward with the power of the Pitris behind us I got the Krishna book published in Japan by Dainapan I had to go there to supervise.

This is the first book with color photos. This was very special, The Windows to the Spiritual World. I went there, I think it was May, and I told Dainapan, I met with all the executives, that there was a festival in July, And I wanted to bring the book, the finished book, to the festival in San Francisco. So it meant that they had two months to produce the book.

And they said, impossible. I said, well, there is no impossible. You have to do it. Because I want to present the book to the spiritual master at the festival.

And they said, well, it's impossible, but anyway, we'll try. so they they work so hard and i would go every day and push them you know every day i would ask them are you going to have it ready you're going to have it ready it's impossible it's impossible and then i i booked my return flight to arrive in san francisco the day of rathiatra and actually they didn't have it ready and i said this is going to have serious repercussions for or future business with you, and so on. And then I went to the airport. So as I was walking up the stairs to get on the plane, this big black limousine drove out onto the tarmac. It had flags on it.

You know, Dynapon was one of the largest companies in Japan. They printed Time magazine and everything. this long black limousine and it comes right to the airplane and out come all the dined upon executives in their blue suits about five of them so I went down and they all bowing from the waist and they gave me this carton the stewardess is saying come on you gotta get on the plane they had to take off so I just took the carton I thanked them and got on the plane you know couldn't wait for the plane to take off it tore open the carton and there's this silver shining Krishna book it was so ecstatic then I start going through the book and looking at every pictures and you know how it all turned out and and there was this man next to me he was a business executive American and he saw me he said you know what do you got there and I said oh this is you know my spiritual master i printed the book in japan it's the first book and and he said he said how much is it and i said whatever i said ten dollars or something which was a good amount in those days he said okay i'll take it so then you know i came to san francisco went right away to pravapad's apartment i brought in the carton presented the book to pravapad pravapad was so pleased.

Then he said, you know, how many copies do you have? I said, well, there were 20, but now there's only 19. He said, oh, only 19. What happened to the other one?

I said, well, I sold it on the plane to the person next to me. Proud said, oh, very good. This is very auspicious that the first copy was distributed. Then he ordered, he said, all these books, there were only 19 of them he said these should all be distributed at the Rathiatra and then the one that he had in his hand and he said and this one also he couldn't see the deities until they were on the Rathkart, it was one of our technicalities that we thought had to be there, that no one should view the deities until it was like looking at Prasadam before you offer it so nobody's going to see the deities until they get on the Ratha Yatra cart.

And then when they were all up on the cart, then they would be revealed in all their magnificence. I think there were some disturbances going on and Prabhupada had given Vishnu Jan the Nrsimha prayers. And Vishnu Jan had just been up with Prabhupada and came down and we were on the street right in front of the temple and Vishnu Jan said to all of us that Prabhupāda had given him this mantra for protection of the festival. And right on the street, he taught us.

And I think this is the first time we chanted the Nrsimha prayers. Myself and Gargamuni and others there, we did not want Prabhupāda to go to the Rathayatra festival. What happened was that we got threats. The Black Panthers sent word that we're going to attack your guru if you hold this festival.

And they were very credible threats, so we were afraid. So we told Prabhupada that, you know, you shouldn't go to the festival. But Prabhupada couldn't accept this. First of all, he didn't care so much about threats, but second, it was just inconceivable that Prabhupada would not go to the Ratha Yatra and Prabhupada insisted on going and I was insisting Prabhupada not go so Prabhupada insisted you must take me so Gargamuni was driving the car and he drove very slowly and he took a very roundabout route in order to arrive late at the festival things started out well but they quickly got worse one of the carts had a certified weld that cracked and Balaram's car was out of commission, the newspapers wrote an article called Harid Krishna.

That was just after we were attacked by the Black Panthers. And so they had all these Black Panthers all in afros, black T-shirts and black pants. And they attacked with some martial arts. So Brahmanandam and others were fighting them.

And we had poles to keep them from getting crushed under the Rathayachakars, very beautifully decorated poles. So we used these poles to fend them off. My father was dressed like an Old Testament prophet of old with his white beard, and he was stood there, and he had a staff, and he was crashing it onto the ground and he was crying, tolerance, tolerance, tolerance. We marched literally 7 miles to the sea.

At one point there were cars parked on either side. I cried out, move the cars, and 25 people would grab each car and just send it skittering. Now, Subhadra's car had an interesting miracle attached to it as well. what happened is we came along and Shamasundar had used a piece of malleable iron as the axle for Subhadra's cart and it had started to get worn through after two years of Rathiatras which we weren't aware of so we warned everyone not to ride on Subhadra's cart because we were worried about it not being strong but guess what, people got on anyhow and the wheel bent almost horizontal we thought oh no we've lost Balaram's cart now we've lost Subhadra's cart what on earth are we going to do so it suddenly occurred to me and I said, wait a minute I want 50 people to lift Subhadra's cart and 50 people rushed forward and lifted Subhadra's cart and I want another 50 people to grab the wheel and bend it down again and they did, they came and they took the wheel and that piece of iron that was 2.5 inches thick they just bent it back again so the wheel was perfectly vertical and I said, now I want another 50 people to guard it so nobody gets on and nobody got on When Prabhupada arrived at Rathayatra in the middle of Golden Gate Park, all the devotees stopped.

Srila Prabhupada was supposed to give a lecture at the beginning of the Rathayatra festival, but because there was some disturbance at that time, Prabhupada delayed his arrival and he entered Golden Gate Park up the road about a mile or so from the beginning and then walked back towards the Rathayatra cart and took everybody by surprise. Prabhupada had many garlands that were given to him and he took one of his garlands off and he looked for Jainanda and he garlanded Jainanda with the flower garlands that was given to him making that benediction to Jainanda Prabhupada began to dance in a circle and you see Prabhupada's flowing robes Bhavananda picked out the fabric for that cloth I saw this really nice shimmery peach silk satin cloth but it was actually I think like an upholstery cloth but it was beautiful so I wanted that so I bought that and I insisted my visa was terror to seek out I insisted on buying real pearls I wanted to make real pearl buttons and a real pearl button on the side you know the little strap that goes under his chin on his Prabhupada hat, a real pearl there.

So Madhavisa mumbling and grumbling gave me the money. And when Madhavisa brought the cloth over, Prabhupada looked at it and said, As you dress me, so I shall dance. Yeah, it was wonderful. He gave instructions about the dancing, I know that, for that year, I think it was 1970, that he told the devotees how to dance.

In front of the deities, specifically, based on the descriptions that are in the Chechen Chaitanya Charitamrita. At that time the Chaitanya Charitamrita was not available. In one group Lord Nityananda would be the dancer in front of one chariot and another chariot. I think it was a Dvaitacharya may have been the dancer, like that.

It's basically for the pleasure of the deity then you have an ecstatic dancer, not to impress the crowd but in Krishna consciousness for the specific pleasure of the deity. Prabhupada was showing the devotees that he liked to dance. Not just the Swami step, but jumping up and down. That was a new revelation.

He introduced that at Las Cienega Boulevard Temple, at the temple. He had introduced the jumping. Before, the Swami step was the conservative dance step that was used by everybody. But when Prabhupada started to jump at the Las Cienega Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles, That's when jumping became, you know, part of the choreography of the temple.

At the start of the procession, we had speakers on Subhadra's car, and Jivananda and I and a couple other devotees were sitting in the back with microphones to have kirtan over the microphone. Then Prabhupada sent word back that he didn't want the speakers anymore, and he just wanted kirtan parties in the crowd like in India. So Jivananda and I turned the speakers off, hopped out, and started doing kirtan. We marched literally seven miles to the sea.

Nobody thought of complaining or why don't we have buses to take us or something. People marched seven miles to the sea, and when they got there, at the Family Dog Auditorium, which was run by Chet Helms, who did all the Janis Joplin and Grateful Dead concerts and Moby Grape and Quicksilver and all that. There were those horses again. He let us use that place, and there were 10,000 people waiting at the beach who hadn't wanted to go through the ordeal of marching.

I was helping to cook and then I went down to the family dog auditorium where Srila Prabhupada was going to come after. There were so many people that would participate actually that we filled the family dog auditorium and simultaneously the beach was also filled with people. And we were distributing prasadam in both places. Big kirtans were going on in both places. and I was in the family dog when Srila Prabhupada arrived and it was just so wonderful Srila Prabhupada was such a swan amongst men and he floated into the family dog auditorium there were literally thousands and thousands of hippies present and they were all in their full regalia because this was a big event for them So just ordinarily in that day, people's dress was interesting enough.

But for this Rathayatra festival, they really decked themselves out. Many dressed as Radha and Krishna and similar costumes like that. And so Srila Prabhupada came amongst this. He walked onto the stage and he looked out amongst the throngs of hippies.

And he smiled and he said, I have come to make all the hippies into happies. And that evoked a tremendous tumult of transcendental roaring from all the devotees that were present. And everyone got swept away in this wave, this tidal wave of ecstasy that was coming from Srila Prabhupada's heart and danced for hours and hours and hours. Vishnujan would just be chanting and swooning and then he would just cry out, just chant and dance and when you're tired take prasadam and then come and chant and dance more.

And that's literally what went on for hours and hours and hours. There were so many unusual people there. And Srila Prabhupada explaining that the people in general had become hippies because they were disillusioned with modern society. But if they didn't find any guidance, then they would end up in a more difficult situation than the one that they had actually left.

And he urged all of these hippies, drug-taking hippies, to take up his message of Krishna consciousness and actually become first-class human beings. It was an amazing experience for me. I think it was what cemented my understanding that I should stay within the Krishna consciousness family. They assign duties to everyone, and I was to be in charge of making the feast with the idea of feeding between 5,000 and 10,000 people, maybe more.

So, undaunted, I had never really cooked for large amounts of people, but in those days, you know, we could climb Mount Everest and not be tired. You know, Prabhupada's energy was just driving the movement so powerfully that if we were given a duty to do, I mean, it was nothing. It was a feast, actually, that Prabhupada requested. There was so much prasadam there, we had gotten truckloads of watermelons donated.

So at the end, we just stopped slicing the watermelons and just started giving whole watermelons to take home with them or to serve out. It was the family dog auditorium. It used to be the shrine auditorium. It was a family dog auditorium.

And Baba Nanda had gotten a bunch of barbecue grills and filled them with briquettes and just bags and bags of frankincense incense. So the whole place was just billowing with frankincense incense. But I remember that a bunch of the hell's angels followed us. They sort of got their fighting spirit out of them, and they followed the carts.

So when we got to the family dog auditorium, Prabhupada came on the stage a little bit later. we were all inside the auditorium and when Prabhupada came in all the devotees bowed down and there was something so magnanimous and also heavy about Prabhupada's presence that so many other people bowed down it's not an unusual occurrence that people would just instinctively bow down that here's a saintly person and I remember that it was a wood floor and when they bowed down with a couple of hell's angels next to me and their chains and billy clubs and everything fell out and hit the floor and I was thinking how when all the Lord Brahma's you know all bowed before the uh before Krishna all their helmets so I was thinking that Prabhupada and Kali Yoga even the hell's angels were all their billy clubs and you know helmets and everything and Prabhupada started the lecture it was the most amazing thing because they were hippies and college students and from you know UC Berkeley and San Jose State and then there were these hell's angels and they were black pants it's just such a montage and Prabhupada Prabhupada started off his lecture by saying, My dear frustrated youth of America. When Prabhupada danced, when we had kirtan inside the family dog and Srila Prabhupada danced, it was like, you know, it was very hard to even express what it was like.

Everybody, the crowd went ecstatic. I mean, not just devotees, all the people there were crying in ecstasy. It was like a miraculous event. looked like he floated. It appeared that his feet weren't even touching the stage.

And then after the event, we had a little apartment for Srila Prabhupada that was just off of Frederick Street where Prabhupada was staying when he came up. And we drove up there and Prabhupada was sitting in the car and the door was open. And I was standing there with Jayananda and Madhavisa knelt down at Srila Prabhupada and said to Srila Prabhupada, was he pleased with the festival? And Prabhupada grabbed Manavisa's head and pulled it over on his lap and rubbed his head like this and said, I loved it.

And all the devotees went crazy over that. It looked like Ramachandra and Hanuman. He looked just like Hanuman kneeling in front of Lord Ramachandra. So the whole thing just look so regal.

Prabhupada was so happy about the Rathayatra festival and the success of it. He was just going on and on. He was saying, why have we done all this? Why have we put out all this energy to put on this festival?

And he began to speak that this is the compassion of the Vaishnava. the purpose of benefiting others, the Vaishnava goes to such great lengths to see to the preaching of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu. He said, this is Vaishnavism, this is Vaishnavism. Twice he said, and actually tears began to come to his eyes. And as tears came to his eyes, he couldn't speak anymore.

This is Vaishnavism, as he thought of the success of the Rathayatra. And so being unable to speak anymore, he actually just waved his hand for everyone to leave. And I realized that I was going back to Hawaii very soon, so I let everyone leave and I was the last one and I paid my obeisances. And Prabhupada saw me there and he pointed to his servant, at that time it was Kartikeya Maharaj, to give me the garland from his deities. and so he put it upon me and I realized that in this moment of Srila Prabhupada's extraordinary compassion I was getting his mercy in that form of that garland and paid my obeisances and left and I remember in the airport after the ecstatic greeting in Kirtan there were some reporters there and this reporter kept asking Srila Prabhupada when it was that he realized God And Srila Prabhupada, as we know, would never ever put himself forward or take credit.

He was always a humble servant of the servant of the servant of the servant of the most intimate devotees of Krishna. So Srila Prabhupada would just explain to the person that, oh, you know, anyone can realize God and how God is there in the transcendental sound of His holy name. So Srila Prabhupada was trying to give him some philosophical understanding. But the man was very persistent and he kept inquiring, But you, Swamiji, when did you first realize God?

And so Srila Prabhupada smiled and he said, I first realized God when I was five years old. And of course, Srila Prabhupada then said, Actually, there was never a time when I did not remember God. So we know that, that Srila Prabhupada displayed the symptoms of a pure devotee from birth. He talks about that in the Bhagavatam and how his symptoms also of holding Rathayatra and worshipping Radha Krishna, these are symptoms of a liberated soul coming into this material world just for the purpose of delivering the conditioned souls.

So here Srila Prabhupada confirmed his full God realization from inception in this material world. Those were the old days before terrorism, so we just used to take these huge Matsya Kirtan parties right into the airport. And then Prabhupada came, and I guess there was a press conference. And I remember standing right next to Prabhupada, and I just remember looking at Prabhupada, and suddenly my heart started fluttering, and I felt the most incredible ecstasy that I've never before or since felt, that ecstasy, just standing there looking at Prabhupada.

We would all do like that, you see, we were each given a flower and then we would give it to him and Srila Prabhupada would give us a flower in exchange. And occasionally he would stop and say something to one of the devotees and we were all sort of hoping that he would stop and say something to us. I remember I had been staying there in the temple for about two weeks and one day he stopped and when I offered my flower he said to me, Oh, you're new here? And I said, Yes.

And he said, Are you happy here? And I said, Yes. and he said very good and took the flower and he continued but it was very exciting that was the most exciting part of the day as we'd all line up kneeling on either side of the entranceway into the temple and the children would run down the middle and Srila Prabhupada would show them some extra affection and play with them a little bit show them different flowers until they found one they liked he was always very very affectionate with the children the exchange of flowers that started in Los Angeles after Prabhupada came back from his morning walk was just one of the sweetest and most memorable exchanges that I've ever had in my Krishna conscious career with Prabhupada. Prabhupada would go on the morning walk, and typically he would go to Venice, but not always, Venice Beach.

And then when he returned prior to the greeting of the deities, the devotees would be prepared for him in two lines and all the children would be there and it was such a sweet time everybody was so happy that it's so obvious that the children also sort of enjoyed the whole thing the whole atmosphere was just completely enjoyable and family like this wonderful, wonderful exchange of flowers with Prabhupada and then this was going on outside the temple I mean, we could have done it inside the temple or something, but it was just there being done as Prabhupada dismounted from the car and we were right there on the street and greeting Prabhupada right when he first, first arrived there. Prabhupada got out of his car, and as he got out of his car, Prabhupada had his foot there, and Dhananath hopped down, grabbed Prabhupada's foot, And Papa was putting his hand, and he just, he was kissing Papa's feet.

And I'm like a new devotee. I'm like, he's kissing his feet. You know, the feet are considered to be the most objectionable part of the body, not something that you would bend down and kiss. And I'm looking down, and Derenath just completely ignored any kind of social convention. and he had no concern for what anyone was thinking.

He was just kissing Prabhupada's feet, and I just remember, I couldn't believe it. Prabhupada just let him do it. It seemed like for him to turn, I just, I can't believe it. He was kissing his feet.

But, you know, Dhananath got the mercy. So Srila Prabhupada was so personal in his dealings with the devotees And that was one aspect that was so attractive to people in the early days of the Krishna Consciousness Movement. You see how Srila Prabhupada, he always relished reciprocating love with his devotees. It simply wasn't Srila Prabhupada asking for service or demanding things from his followers. but Srila Prabhupada always wanted to give back and when Prabhupada would come to the temple in LA I always think that's such a nice example of that how Srila Prabhupada would reciprocate with us this bhakti, this exchange of love by giving flowers to the devotees as we would line up along the pavement it was very sublime because Srila Prabhupada he was never rushed we would give him a flower and then Srila Prabhupada would give us a flower.

And I always think how Srila Prabhupada said that love is an exchange of feeling. You need two for love. And I remember he would, you know, sometimes when we would give a flower and then he would give one back, Prabhupada would just stand there so when we bowed down, we could put our head right on Srila Prabhupada's feet. And he always had this very ecstatic, blissful smile.

And you could see that Srila Prabhupada loved us in such a way that was practically incomprehensible because he saw us as these lost particles of spirit soul from Lord Krishna. And he was so happy to play a part in bringing us back to Krishna's lotus feet. Whoa, he's making me laugh. So this was just a real highlight in my life of being able to get a flower from Srila Prabhupada and give a flower back to Srila Prabhupada.

So simple, yet so sublime. And there was always one devotee who would block Srila Prabhupada's walkway, his pathway into the temple, just so he could get to ask Srila Prabhupada for his mercy or to say something to Srila Prabhupada. And Prabhupada never ever got disturbed or agitated that this person was being so bold in his approach. He would always just shake his head wonderfully or touch the devotee on his head with a blessing.

So we all felt that this was a very special time where Srila Prabhupada was really giving us a blessing. And when he was handing us this flower, It was like Prabhupada was touching our heart with that flower, that soft lotus petal of his flower-like glance. Shortly after this exchange, everybody would follow Prabhupada into the temple and there was the greeting of the deities. Prior to this, at least in Los Angeles, I don't think that there was really a formal greeting of the deities ceremony.

So I believe this basically introduced the greeting of the deity's ceremony as we know it today. At least it certainly did in Los Angeles. And then typically on many mornings, Shilavati would fill the deity room with frankincense, clouds of frankincense. And then when she opened the doors, the frankincense would often billow out into the temple, and there would be this sort of cloud of frankincense which also to me was very mystical and Prabhupada bowing down and then afterwards he took Charanamrita and then he would proceed to his Vyasa San and I remember Vishnu Jan leading us in the Sangsara prayers one time Prabhupada at the end of the singing of the Sangsara prayers said very gravely and then he said the whole first verse and he said what is the meaning and everybody was stunned because probably a few devotees knew but after being quizzed like that from Prabhupada nobody knew and then one person recited the English meaning of the verse but Prabhupada then said that we should all know what the meaning was it wasn't too long after I joined that the Govinda prayers started to be played in the morning.

The album had come from England, that Radha Krishna Temple album. Just one morning it happened. It seemed quite spontaneous that the deity doors opened up and the Govinda prayers went on. And Prabhupada went through as normal, offering his dandabhats in front of each altar.

But when he went around and he sat on the Vyasasana, tears were coming down his face. He was so pleased by the Govinda prayers, and he wasn't able to speak for some time. We were celebrating, I believe it was the appearance day, of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Goswami Maharaj. and Srila Prabhupada gave a lecture and he was saying how he had not done any service for his spiritual master and he was thanking all of us implying that without us his service couldn't have been rendered when in actuality it was only by Prabhupada's mercy that we were able to render any service and so he said because I have nothing to offer to my Guru Maharaj I'm going to offer all of you and then Srila Prabhupada went and he performed arati to the deities and he offered us to his spiritual master I don't know exactly the spiritual process but I definitely felt the result of Srila Prabhupada's kindly connecting us with his Guru Maharaj and then after arati Srila Prabhupada turned and started dancing and the word can't really be understood in terms of what Srila Prabhupada was manifesting.

It's more like when Lord Chaitanya is described and he was dancing in a circle like a firebrand. It was like one continuous movement. Srila Prabhupada was hopping up and down across the temple room, back and forth. and the entire you know place where we were the whole space was immediately transported to another dimension we were really out of the material world and you know I was a very young devotee and I remember to this day you know just my crying tears running down you know my face and and realizing how Srila Prabhupada was actually entering into our hearts and he was cleaning them He was purifying us so that someday in the future we'd actually be able to render devotional service. We were sitting in Srila Prabhupada's room, and Prabhupada had just had an arty for his little Radha and Krishna deities.

He had music of himself singing, playing, and Prabhupada was playing cartels. We were sitting next to him, and then when the arty was over, Jagadish handed Srila Prabhupada a letter from Dhammaraj Prabhu requesting initiation. and so Prabhupada said he could get initiated then he turned to Jagadish and he said do you know how to perform this fire sacrifice for the initiation ceremony and Jagadish said no he didn't know how and so Prabhupada instructed someone in the room to give Jagadish instructions on how to perform the fire jaga for the initiation and he at that time he said you have to know how to do this ceremony because someday you will have disciples of your own. He looked at me, and I was like in my eighth month of pregnancy, and he said, just like before, she was not mature, but now she has become mature, and she is having children of her own.

So in the same way, someday you will also have children of your own. When it was my turn, I was called up to Prabhupada's Vyasasana. And then he didn't chant the whole mantra. what he did was chant word by word in my ear. Then after that, he took the thread and put it on my shoulder and he patted me on the shoulder and he was smiling.

And I was thinking, this is encouraging. And I was feeling like he was happy that I'd become a Brahmin and also perhaps felt that I was qualified. And that's why he was smiling and encouraging me. But I also felt that he was happy that he was making Brahmins, that he felt his movement was expanding, that now someone who had taken first initiation six months earlier was given brahminical initiation because he was following the process, the process was working.

And I think this indicated to Prabhupada the future success of his movement, and I think that's why he was encouraged, and that's why he was smiling, that he felt that he's able to make Brahmins out of Westerners, and these Brahmins are needed in society to spread Krishna consciousness. At this time, there was what Prabhupada considered to be the minimization of the spiritual master by the leaders, mostly from myself. I was the most infected with this, I might say, jealousy of the spiritual master. At this visit to Los Angeles, things were going wrong. from ISKCON Press, which I was in charge of.

You know, the books were printed. Prabhupada's title was not properly put. It was just A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami.

His divine grace had been left out. And even one book, one of the Bhagavatam chapters just had A.C. Bhaktivedanta. Even the Swami was removed.

I presented Prabhupada a book from ISKCON Press from Boston that we printed and he opened the book and the binding just snapped right off. And this was in the temple when the formal presentation was made. When he went in the temple and he took the charanamrita and then he stopped and said, it is salt. And then on the altar they had placed the acharya photos.

I think it was Bhaktisiddhanta's photos placed upside down And to cure me of my disobedience and jealousy, Prabhupada ordered me to take sannyas, and that sannyas would be a cure. Because I had to give up all my position. I was in charge of the press and New York Temple. I mean, that had to all be given up.

Sannyas is a purification. I had no choice in the matter. Prabhupada just came down the stairs and just stood over me as I was bowing down and said, Tridandi Goswami Brahmananda Swami, and then walked out. When we would come back through the alley, we would stop right beneath Prabhupada's room in his window, and we would continue chanting there until Prabhupada came to the window, and traditionally he would wave.

On one particular day, we were out there chanting, and Prabhupada looked out the window and waved, And then he told Karanda, he said, don't involve them in this. And he was speaking about the controversy that was going on with the sannyasis. He said, don't involve them in this, they're innocent. I remember when Srila Prabhupada was getting ready to leave Los Angeles to go back to India.

And he wasn't feeling well. And that's when Srila Prabhupada spoke to us for the first time about Vani and Vapu. How Vani is a much more intimate association with the spiritual master than just associating with his physical form. But being absorbed in both hearing and executing his instructions and his teachings links the disciple in a much more intimate way with the spiritual master, in an eternal way rather than a temporary way. so Srila Prabhupada spoke on that and of course it was very encouraging to hear it but at the same time it was very sad as we felt great separation part of Prabhupada's leaving America going back to India is that there were the circumstances of myself and some others that were so offensive that Prabhupada wanted to leave but another aspect is that he did not want to leave and there's a conversation, it's in the conversations Prabhupada talks about how Lord Dwarakadish wanted Prabhupada to go back to India and Prabhupada didn't want to go Prabhupada didn't want to go because his spiritual master had given him the western world to preach in, and Prabhupada considered that his godbrothers, they were given India to preach in, so there was no need for him to be in India, and furthermore that he had just gotten the Watsika Avenue facility, and he wanted to develop that as the world headquarters for the Hare Krishna movement.

But in this conversation, Prabhupada says that Lord Dwarakadish ordered me to go. And he said I was talking with the deity. And I was arguing with Lord Dwarakadish that I don't want to go. And Lord Dwarakadish was commanding me to go, that I want you to go.

And Prabhupada is saying, but I have this very nice temple, and I want to develop it. And Lord Dwarakadishya said, all right, I want you to go to India, that if you go to India, I will give you a temple that is better than this Watsika. You know, Prabhupada couldn't refuse that. Prabhupada said, all right.

And then, of course, Prabhupada came to India, and Prabhupada got the Krishna Balramandir. When Srila Prabhupada was leaving at the airport, My son Gopal was three years old, and he sat next to Srila Prabhupada with all of his servants while we were waiting for Prabhupada to board the plane. And they offered Srila Prabhupada a glass of orange juice, and Prabhupada said, Give it to him. He will drink it.

So my son drinks the orange juice, and then they give the cup back to the servants, and they fill it up again, thinking we'll give Prabhupada another glass of orange juice. And Prabhupada said, Give it to him. And then he says, You want to come? He says, Where's your ticket?

And then he nudged him with his arm, and he said, So you'll be the next Acharya? Like that. Devotees were all putting on garlands, and I came up and paid my obeisances and touched Prabhupada's lotus feet and put the garland on him. And then when I bowed down to touch Prabhupada's feet again, he looked down at me, and I looked up, and that was when I knew that this was my spiritual master.

After that, my material life was like a waning moon. Nothing really that I had been doing before was any longer satisfying. And I would just remember that and think of Prabhupada and want to do more and more devotional service. That was the effect that Srila Prabhupada had.

Prabhupada had been in L.A. for eight months. It was just the longest period of time. I mean, the devotees in L.A. had become so accustomed to Prabhupada's presence every day. And they just had him.

And they were so, they just cherished him. And the L.A. temple was just growing like anything. Prabhupada's presence just seemed to make everything blossom. Devotees were joining every day.

Everything was really expanding. So the devotees were very attached to Prabhupada. Eight months he had been there. then not only was he leaving which they kind of thought that he would never leave and the LA temple had set itself up it was managing in such a way that he didn't have to manage directly he had good managers there and he was very pleased with it so he could stay there peacefully and do his translation work and do his writing and do whatever he wanted and there's no inconvenience for so when Prabhupada said he was leaving it was a shock and then not only did he say he was leaving but he said because he was old he said there's a good chance he wouldn't return but we should carry on the movement anyway so devotees took that very hard at the airport everyone was crying we ran out to the fence to watch the plane and new devotees, old devotees, everybody was crying.

I would come down from Berkeley to L.A. to see Prabhupada. You would fall asleep in the Brahmacharya ashram to Vishnu Janan playing harmonium. And then you would wake up in the morning to Vishnu Janan playing harmonium. And you would never know if he ever even slept.

I mean, maybe he did. I'm not saying he didn't sleep. But I mean, that was like how non-stop Krishna conscious Vishnu Janan was. You sensed that about being in Vishnu Janan's presence, that he was just an otherworldly being.

To see Vishnu Janan and Srila Prabhupada was the most wonderful thing to watch. Of course, everybody wanted to have Prabhupada lead Kirtan when Prabhupada was there. But Srila Prabhupada would always want Vishnu Janan to lead Kirtan. And when they would look at each other, you'd start crying sometimes just to see Prabhupada and Vishnu Janan looking at each other.

You know, there was just so much love the way Prabhupada would look at them. You never saw anybody ever look at anybody like that. You know, Vishnu Janan would always be emotional, get teary-eyed. This is August 1970, New Vrindavan.

I was a brand-new devotee and Satsarupa Das Adhikari and Uddhava Prabhupada drove some of us new guys down from Boston to New Vrindavan for Janmashtami festival, which was the festival in ISKCON at the time. It was pre-India gatherings. In those days, it was standard practice in ISKCON to do near-jaw fasting on these big days like Gaurapurnim and Janmashtami and Vaspuj, which means no food and no water. and at midnight on Janmashtami we'd have a little break fast drink like a salty lemon drink and that was it and then we'd fast all day till noon on Vyasa Puja you know, there wasn't considered any kind of fanaticism that was just the standard, that was just what we did this was the first international GBC meeting where all the devotees Prabhupada had chosen to the Governing Body Commission met together for the first time to begin sharing some of the load of management that Prabhupada carried alone through the entire movement.

Up to that time, there was some controversy going on in the ISKCON at that time. He was testing our abilities to manage the movement. Subal, Brahmananda, Gargamuni, and Vishnu Jan were together, and they came to this president's meeting. They weren't presidents, they were new sannyasis.

Now the president's meeting was happening in the temple building on Nubrandaban. And meanwhile, the first GBC meeting was happening at Hayagriva's house, which was on a little hill right next to the temple, but up the hill. Brahmananda and Gargamuni and Subal, Vishnu and John didn't have much to do with it, took over the president's meeting and started doing this whole trip on us about how we were gotten way ahead of ourselves we we couldn't even understand who Prabhupada was what to speak of understanding who Krishna was and we should understand that our entire relationship was with Prabhupada and when you read Bhagavad Gita you shouldn't read Sri Bhagavan Uvaca you should read Srila Prabhupada Uvaca so what do I see when I jump out of the van hours and hours later from Boston is one of our sannyasis holding somebody against a fence and saying, Prabhupada is God, Prabhupada is Krishna, and because we haven't recognized this, he's left us.

There I was, brand new, thrilled by Prabhupada's Bhagavad Gita as it is, joining the Hare Krishna movement. And here I, two months later, I'm attending my first festival and right before my eyes I appear to be seeing the entire movement torn asunder by this controversy. Prabhupada confronted us, myself specifically, with the minimization in Los Angeles before taking sannyas. It was the most shocking experience of my life.

Prabhupada's chastisement was so severe spiritually I could feel Prabhupada withdrawing his mercy and then Prabhupada gave us the sannyas so I felt and the others that we have to compensate for the minimization and the way to compensate for that was to emphasize. Instead of under-emphasizing Srila Prabhupada, we should now over-emphasize him. Devotees were leaving. They were blooping.

You know, there were devotees just crying and walking down that road, down to the bottom of the mountain, and just leaving. Now, these are devotees who are totally dedicated to Prabhupada. There's no other reason for them to be in this movement. There was nothing except Prabhupada.

So every devotee that you see in this film, they're there because of Prabhupada. They're in the movement because of Prabhupada. No one else, nothing else. And suddenly these men announced to us that Prabhupada has left and is never coming back.

We've offended him. The mood was chaos. and they also said unless we could chant purely we shouldn't chant at all we'd be offenders to the holy name and this was a new idea because Srila Prabhupada taught us that we become purified by chanting that there's a clearing stage and you know I mean it but but you do it and you become purified by doing it and this was devastating news to me personally and to Everyone, its atmosphere of total depressive devastation took over everyone, and everyone was like wailing and weeping and thinking we were all going to have to leave Prabhupada because we couldn't chant purely, you know. I mean, it really like cast a spell on everybody. I remember at the time, I would listen to them.

They wouldn't make any sense to me. I was 28 years old in 1970, and I would listen to them. they wouldn't make any sense. But I knew Papa, I hadn't met him, but I knew he had something. So I would go in front of this very primitive altar that they had, and on the lower step they had Papa's picture.

And I would sit in front of his picture and I would cry. And I would talk to Papa. I'd say, Papa, when will these kids grow up? Why don't you come and help?

I mean, I would never get angry at them. I would feel like they were innocent, they were wonderful, they were sincere, they were genuine, they were beautiful, but they were childish. Srila Prabhupada had just formed the GPC that summer, and their first act, as far as I'm aware, is to consult Prabhupada about what his new sannyasis are saying. and Prabhupada's response is this is, I'm paraphrasing but it's nonsense, it's not true the spiritual master is not God the poison here is personal ambition because if the spiritual master is God that means you can become God too so it's Mayavada philosophy and of course Prabhupada's books were being consulted by both sides to prove this or that But Prabhupada responded very strongly, and he expelled them. To me, that experience, it was like the loss of innocence.

The ISKCON movement lost its innocence at that point. Because before that, it was all innocent and simply Prabhupada. And after that, even though the movement continued, and it was wonderful, there was this opening for this maya, this contamination to enter. So finally it got philosophically straightened out, and the sannyasis fled.

They just, like, disappeared, I think, in the middle of the night. Nobody knew where they went. Prabhupada was in Japan at the time, you know, and we had to buy letters and so on, so it took time. But basically we were, like, arrested and put into a van, and Bhagavan drove the van to Detroit.

Everybody was still upset by the whole thing, and I didn't want him talking to any of the devotees. So now that I recall, I locked them in the attic and we just sent food up there. Nobody was allowed to talk to them. And then either I got word from Prabhupada or I just decided to send them out to preach and they ended up going up to Ann Arbor.

We went out into the street. I had a quarter. That's all I had was a quarter. And the four of us went walking down the street.

We didn't know where to go. We didn't know what to do. I felt very, very disturbed. I mean, to be asked to leave devotees, you know, was the most terrible thing.

What could be worse? But at the same time, we were forced to take shelter of Prabhupada and Krishna. We felt, well, this is what sannyas is. You have nothing. and we just walked down the street.

We walked as far as we could until it became night. Then we had to sleep somewhere. So along the roadside there were these big fir trees and fir trees, you know, very thick. So they offered some protection.

And the needles make them very soft. So we slept under the fir trees, on the needles. It's interesting, in the morning we woke up and we were right outside the front gates of the Ford Motor Company of Detroit. And then interesting things happened.

You know, we had no food, we had no money. We were just starving. And then we sat under a tree and we had kirtan and read to each other what else we were going to do. And as we were doing this the first day, I'm telling you, you're not going to believe this, but a little boy came up, and he had with him a loaf of bread and a bottle of milk.

Where did this little boy come from? And he said, Here, my mommy told me to give this to you. And he put the bread down in the middle and then ran away. This was the first wave of devotees to enter India as a group of Westerners, the World Sankirtan Party from Iskand.

And it was on Prabhupada's personal order and invitation that we were together. It actually became very second nature for us to immediately begin Harinam Sankirtan, wherever we were. That was what we were going to India for. It was under the banner of the World Sankirtan Party. so we had no we didn't have second thoughts about having immediate kirtans I know I was nervous there because you know there were guards standing around with rifles and we were in Muslim land but we were bold at that point we were on our way and our devotion to Prabhupada was our our focus we had no idea about India and what was in store, but we knew we were being led.

We had a mission. Most people had their faces skewed, staring and wondering, what are they doing? We even tried to preach to them in English. And as soon as a kirtan party would stop, we would all either chant japa with some ferociousness or go out and preach to whoever was standing and staring at us.

There's the famous Brothers Airway plot plane that was really not a fit for human travel. It was the inside of a freight company's plane with absolutely no facility. You could see straight into the cockpit from the main body of the plane. I remember there were these guards with big machine guns, huge, huge guns, pointed at Girage as he was walking along.

They couldn't put him in a category and weren't sure what he was invocating, but they had his guns on him, and he was completely oblivious, immersed in the Holy Name. I took a walk. I just didn't want to watch. And I took a walk around the plane, chanted myself, you know, prayed for protection.

And when I came back around the plane, I looked over. The first thing I saw were two machine guns leaning up against the bus and Giriraj Maharaj holding one guy in each hand. And these Egyptian military guys are jumping up and down, chanting Hare Krishna with big grins on their face. Our Sankirtan party from Europe and England arrived in India on October 4, 1970.

And I was only in Bombay for under two weeks, but those two weeks were two of the most powerful two weeks in my life. because at this time Srila Prabhupada allowed us to taste kirtan in Lord Krishna's Bharat Varsha. The center of our activity every single day was Nagar Sangh kirtan. That was our main engagement. We had prasadam in the morning, a morning program, chanted our rounds, and then went out on kirtan, sometimes twice a day.

This kirtan party was so wonderful. We were like a family, a tight family, and each person played a role. Those are Malati's banners, the same ones we brought from England. The heartbeat of our kirtan were the rindangas of Dinanath and Rishikumar.

They kept the rhythm going, and all of the rest of us played either another drum or cartals. And we were shoulder to shoulder, just like godbrothers and godsisters, with so much affection and respect we had for each other. and we felt as if Srila Prabhupada were our father and we were all his spiritual children. And there was such a nice mood in this early Sankirtan leg of Srila Prabhupada's mission in India. We were enthralled by the streets of Bombay.

Everything was so new and exotic. I think the people were enthralled by us too from the way they looked at us. But we were thrilled to see how Krishna conscious the people were. We'd see people wearing dhotis and kurtas, and of course most of the women wore saris.

We'd see cows, we'd see names of buildings and businesses that included the holy names of Krishna and Rama. and we were just enthralled and at the same time filled with the sense that we were pioneers in Srila Prabhupada's mission working to please him and serve him according to his superior guidance and vision and we had faith that the whole process would culminate in some wonderful result. There were many engagements and Prabhupada would just have us set up anything for him to speak. It didn't matter if it was small or large or in a seedy part of town. And when he spoke about Krishna and sang the holy names, he was happy and he would get energy.

And sometimes we would even say, well, Prabhupada, we went to this place before and two people showed up and we don't know if it's worth your time to go there. And Prabhupada would say, no, I'm like a cow. I give milk anywhere. That is what I like to do.

And we would go, just go with him. This place, that place, this town, that town. we just like to be with him after kirtan took place jila prabhupada wanted his books displayed and he would inevitably speak something of his books or have a disciple speak something about his books and surround himself with his books and i can think of no place where this activity didn't take place where he didn't want his books displayed and sold and made available He would very often times give a gift copy to whoever was hosting. Srila Prabhupada taught us how to drink water without touching the glass and how to peel a banana without touching it with our left hand, with our teeth. And he said, you know, everyone will be watching you very carefully, so, you know, you should do these things nicely.

He was tireless when we were in India. He went from engagement to engagement to engagement. And then in the evening, he would speak public lectures, and then every morning, we would get up early and have aarti and morning lecture on the Bhagavatam in his room. The Somanis were a very religious and wealthy family of Bombay.

The senior Somani at the time was G.D. Somani, and he became a life member. And gradually the other brothers and then sons and nephews also became life members. but they were very devout Hindus and they were very active in promoting Hinduism in India and when they met Srila Prabhupada and practically all the pious and aristocratic Hindus of Bombay and India in general when they came to know about Srila Prabhupada and the work he had done to spread Sanatana Dharma in the West and throughout the world, they were astonished. They felt here is the first time that someone from India has gone abroad and really made an impact on people's lives, really brought people to Sanatana Dharma, to Krishna consciousness.

And they wanted to come forward and help. They wanted to be part of the great movement that Srila Prabhupada had started. And at the same time, Srila Prabhupada had the idea that the people of India want to imitate the West. They want to imitate the Americans.

So Srila Prabhupada had the idea that if the Americans take to Krishna consciousness and then the Indians see it, they'll also want to imitate the Americans taking to Krishna consciousness. And actually, Srila Prabhupada's thought worked. People looked again at their own tradition, at their own culture, at their own practices, and saw there must be more there than they even thought themselves. Otherwise, why would Americans and Europeans who had every chance to enjoy material facilities and sense gratification, why would they be chanting Hare Krishna and dancing? studying Bhagavad Gita and preaching and then why would they come to India so they were thrilled and sometimes they were so moved when they saw us tears would come to their eyes they were just so touched at the end of Srila Prabhupada's visit Kailash Saxeri arranged a huge program on the terrace of his house and invited all the elite of Bombay, and they came.

But the thing that struck all of us was Srila Prabhupada's humility. Here he was addressing some of the most affluent and aristocratic and influential people of India. And he spoke very briefly. He referred to his disciples and his work in the West.

And then he appealed to the ladies and gentlemen present. He spoke the verse from Prabodhananda Saraswati, You're very learned and intelligent and pious people. I stand with a straw in my teeth and I beg you, please chant Hare Krishna. And then he went into the last kirtan.

One time they were having a yogi sangha or samayalans, where many yogis come from all over India to speak, a venue on Chaupati Beach in Bombay. Many different swamis and yogis were sitting up on this stage, and each day several of them or one of them would speak, and they invited Prabhupada and us to come down there. and at first they didn't like the idea that Prabhupada would have us up there on the stage with him but he told them that these western Vaishnavas are every bit as spiritually advanced as the other yogis and swamis here I want them up with me and they agreed Prabhupada was introducing us to India as the real authentic thing that we were swamis and yogis in our own right he was very proud of us At the same time he was showing us his country, he was also showing his countrymen what he had done in the West.

The huge crowds came down, all very intelligent, high-class families came down to hear the yogis speak. And here was Prabhupada stealing the show. No one could put on a show like we could. Nobody even came near.

This was in Bombay. The program was a Sankirtan procession where they took deities on a kirtan procession. They had bands. The bands were playing the Mexican hat dance.

Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, da-da-da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, da-da-da-da-dum, da-dum, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. You know the Mexican hat dance? That's what the band was playing for the deity, for Radha Krishna deities. We were chanting along with the Mexican hat dance.

I remember that. And we got out on this pier, and there were several speakers to speak, and one of the other speakers was one of the most famous Mayavadi sannyasis in Bombay. And Prabhupada knew his name. He was in the Sivananda line, which is the big Mayavadi-Sivite line in India.

Almost every one of the big gurus that came to the West was a disciple of Swami Sivananda in Bombay. And this guy was his successor. and then Prabhupada spoke and he said, so you've been listening to such and such or such and such is here and he's very famous and he mentioned him by name and he is impersonalist he does not believe that Radha Krishna are the supreme personality of Godhead but I will tell you something that I know in secret he is worshipping Radha Krishna deities and the man smiled real big And Prabhupada had him. He said, even though he says he does not believe God is person, he cannot resist worshipping Radha Krishna. Sankirtan at Mathura Junction Station, this being such a holy place, and the first time that any of us had touched the holy dom, we were in a trance of ecstasy, feeling Lord Krishna's presence by Srila Prabhupada's mercy.

When we jumped from these trains to do kirtan, it was the life-giving aspect of our existence. The trains were just vehicles to take us from one kirtan to another. That Srila Prabhupada allowed us to become so attached to kirtan is a miracle. But it was from the beginning in India, our main activity.

Very often times people didn't join in in the kirtan because they were so quick. just a short four or five minutes in a station, sometimes ten minutes. And it was so nice, our party. Various people would lead kirtans. It was not one person all the time.

People shared the leading of the kirtans. Such a nice experience. And again, the camaraderie was so strong. When we passed Kurukshetra, Srila Prabhupada called us all to the train car.

We were standing looking out the train car door and Srila Prabhupada took his left hand and unfolded his arm and said, this is where the battle of Kurukshetra took place. And all of the devotees paid obeisance as well. We were speeding along in the train. Then we had a small stop in Kurukshetra station and we jumped out and performed kirtana.

We all felt so fortunate to be with Srila Prabhupada. I will enumerate, sir. Srila Prabhupada was so tireless in this preaching phase. From Mangalarti until 11 o'clock at night, we had engagements.

And all of his youthful devotees, 25 and early 30s, could barely keep up with Srila Prabhupada. And when we weren't having kirtan at the pandal itself, We did Nagar Kirtan throughout the streets of Amritsar. And they were very receptive to our Kirtan party. This is a very large Sikh population where the Golden Temple is.

One day we were brought to have a tour of the Golden Temple. And no pictures, like a mosque, and at the top of the little temple there's a Grantha. The holy book is there and they sit reading it all the time. And after we went there, we went to the chapati room.

In those days, they were feeding anywhere from 6,000 to 8,000 people a day a free meal. The pit itself must have been about 12 or 14 feet across, and suspended over the middle of the fire was a big old cast-iron plate. And in a rounder room were all these Indian men and women rolling chapatis. As we sat and watched, there were chapatis unpuffed and puffed, flying through the air in the room all the time like flying saucers.

Prabhupada said, see how they are doing this. This is how you distribute prasadam. He really liked it. He said, learn to do like this.

The citizens of Surat would greet us with sandalwood paste and kum kum. And many times they would come and give us bananas and mangoes and whatever kind of fruit they had. And we were pulled into people's houses from the middle of Kirtan and offered, you know, a cold lassi or some sweets. And the whole town was just suffused with Krishna consciousness.

The entire town was on fire with devotion. They made us even more spiritual and more devotional. We'd done harinam in many places, but the people made this an experience of a lifetime. And Prabhupada was tireless.

He would speak nonstop. He would greet the children and give them the little sweets. And he would sit for hours and have darshan with thousands of people. People were just so kind to us and so genuinely sweet.

Prabhupada said when we were in Surat, this is a city of devotees. They basically closed the whole town off for Prabhupada. They would close off streets and have parades with him, and every shop would shut down. The man who we stayed at his home, Bhagavad Jariwala, was a beautiful, small-bodied, elderly, very healthy-looking Indian banker.

I remember we all had dysentery there, too. It was pretty serious, 26 devotees, and they just took care of us. They just kept taking care of us. Whatever we needed, they would take care of it.

And at the end, when we left, Bhagavad Gita, Jariwala talked, and he said, I want to thank all of you for this wonderful experience. It's been an honor to serve you, and please forgive me for any offenses I've committed. And he started crying, and Prabhupada looked over at us, and he said, just see, this is a Vaishnava. and then he gave us all money after we had been offensive and sick in his house but they never took offense they never took any, the whole family they just served and served and served and served and served I remember in one town where we arrived that the whole town had closed shop, the mayor came everyone came to the train station in other words the whole town closed down to greet us to greet Prabhupada and And I don't know who was the mayor, but some dignitary said that even if Indira Gandhi had come to this town, she would not have received the reception that they have organized for Prabhupada.

And especially this program in Surat, every day they would take us to a different part of the town to do Harinam. and the devotees were just received like they had just flown in from a heavenly planet. I mean, it was just overwhelming. I remember at one point I started weeping because I could understand that this is what's meant by Lord Chaitanya's mercy and the flood of the Sankirtan movement because just a few years before we were just on the street. vagrants and hippies and whatever. I mean, the potency of Prabhupada was manifested through his early disciples in settings like Surat in India where people, by the thousands, I mean, they were hanging out the window off the roof in the street.

It was packed wall to wall, just enough room for the devotees to pass through. but they were so enchanted and mesmerized by the presence of the devotees chanting Hare Krishna. You could understand that this was because of Prabhupada. We were just following behind him like little ducklings follow the mother. Sometimes gentlemen would come to meet Srila Prabhupada and discuss with him.

Once I was struck when Srila Prabhupada told one gentleman that the government of India should have a department of Bhagavad Gita. That Bhagavad Gita is the greatest asset of India and it should be preached all over the world. But then he said, unfortunately, the government is neglecting. Quite often, he would say that India's ambassadors go all over the world and beg, Give me money, give me rice, give me this, give me that.

And Srila Prabhupada said, But I am going not to beg, but to give. I'm giving the knowledge of Bhagavad Gita. And people are appreciating. Before we went to India for the first time in San Francisco in 1967, Achyutananda sent us pictures of Srila Prabhupada on Nagarsan Kirtan in Calcutta.

And when we saw Prabhupada chanting in the streets of India, In this one still picture, all of us were just praying for the day that we would join Srila Prabhupada. And he said he would take us to India and show us India on foot. And when we were in San Francisco, we had no idea what that meant. But this is what it meant.

Going on pilgrimage to a place is one thing, but until you're on foot in the streets, walking as those before us have walked, chanting the holy name, you can't taste India. Surat is near Dwarka, and so it's a traditionally Vaishnava province. They worship mostly Balakrishna in the Balabhacharya line, but any Krishna worship is very popular there. And so Mr.

Jariwala was very respected in the town, and every day he had our Kirtan route printed in the newspaper, so people knew exactly which streets we were going to be on. and they had those streets streamered with sari cloth all the way across the roads everybody had little white chalk auspicious diagrams in front of their houses on the sidewalk and they were out there with kumkum and rice and flower garlands to put the red kumkum and rice on our foreheads and garland us we got so many garlands put on us that after a while we had to take 20 of them off and pass them out to the crowd and next thing you know we'd have 20 more garlands on We got garlanded 50 times in the course of each procession. And people were doing our teak to us in the street as we went by in the kirtan procession.

Basically, that was just a ton of fun. Generally, the women were placed in the front in sang kirtan in those days rather than in the back. And we all danced in the same way. Or sometimes we were in the middle of the kirtan party and the men surrounded us.

This is the time when we met Mr. John Greiser for the first time, who came to film Srila Prabhupada, and he joined our party. I think he was the only non-devotee in our party. That person later became Yadubara Das.

I first met Srila Prabhupada here in Surat. I'd come to India to do a master's degree thesis in photography on the origins of Krishna consciousness in India. The summer before, I'd done a couple of magazine articles on the movement. That's me in the blue shirt.

I brought those magazine articles with me and showed Srila Prabhupada, and he liked them. He went through each of them page by page, much to my embarrassment because one of them had some nudity in it. Srila Prabhupada didn't bat an eye. He just kept going through until he reached the article on Krishna consciousness, And then his comment was, even we find gold in a dirty place, we take it.

The second day I was there, Srila Prabhupada asked me, so you're going to become a devotee? I couldn't imagine myself wearing the robes and the shaved head, so I said no. Although inwardly I felt I was. So Srila Prabhupada's reply was, then you cannot stay.

I was naturally shocked. And I didn't leave, I stayed with the party for two months. Every day I'd sit in Srila Prabhupada's room, and invariably when a visitor came in, he'd introduce me. He would say, this is Mr.

John. He is from America. He is an expert photographer. In this way, Srila Prabhupada encouraged me, and he could understand I was becoming a devotee gradually.

We were brought into the Durga temple. This one was new. The deity was new. She was nicely dressed and nicely worshipped.

When we came into the room, I remember Prabhupada said, do just exactly like I do. And when Prabhupada came before the deity of the demigod, he bowed down before the demigod, just like he'd bow down before the Radha Krishna altar. But instead of putting his left side toward the altar, he put his right side toward the altar. He said, when you bow down before a demigod, you keep the demigod on your right, the understanding is your spiritual master is in front of you and Radha and Krishna are on your left.

So you're still bowing to Radha and Krishna and your guru, but you're also offering respect to the demigod at the same time. And that's how you offer respects to a demigod, with your right-hand side toward the altar. In other words, he was respectful to Durga, but he didn't want her worshipped in the same way that we would worship Radha and Krishna, so that's the distinction. Not only did we have kirtan through the streets of Surat, many times they would invite us outside town for engagements in the villages.

And Prabhupada was so available to us at all times. And one time I had gone into his room. We were staying at the house of Bhagavad Giriwala. I went into his room and I told him I had memorized the Sri Sopanashad.

And so on one of these engagements, after speaking, he called me. He said, Koshalya, come here. So I came up to him and he said, sing Sri Sopanashad. I went, oh, God, I'm on the spot now.

So I did it. I sang the Sri Sofana Shad. And the whole time I'm looking at Prabhupada while I'm singing. And his smile, he's gradually becoming more and more pleased, and his smile is getting bigger and bigger.

And when I finished, he called me closer to him, and I started to pay my obeisances, and he grabbed my head and put it on his lap and patted me on the back and rubbed my head. I felt like a puppy dog. It was really special. As in other places, we would go into Srila Prabhupada's room early in the morning and sing the prayers to the spiritual master.

So one morning, after the prayers, Prabhupada gave a little talk and then he asked, why does Krishna come into the material world? So different devotees gave different answers, but Dhinanath Prabhu gave the answer, that he comes to give pleasure to the devotees. And Srila Prabhupada said, yes, that was the right answer. Because the other purposes could be fulfilled by other agents, but only Krishna could come and satisfy his pure devotees.

So after Dhinanath gave the answer, Srila Prabhupada said, now you are liberated. Because the Bhagavad Gita says, that one who knows about the appearance and activities of Krishna in truth He never has to take birth again, but he goes back home, back to Krishna. When we would come back from the Harinam Sankirtan in the mornings, many of the people of Surat would be following the Harinam party. But although Prabhupada wasn't with us physically on the Harinam Sankirtan, he was in the back of everyone's minds.

He was in the back of our minds, because whatever we were doing was for him. And he was in the back of everyone else's minds, because he was the great saintly person who had gone to the West from India and taken Krishna consciousness to the foreigners. so when we got back to the Jariwala house people wanted to see Srila Prabhupada Prabhupada would be in his room doing his own work but sometimes the demand of the audience from below was so great that Prabhupada would emerge onto the balcony and give them darshan from the balcony the throngs were elated and so were we This was the first time that all the devotees from all over India came together. Prabhupada had arrived in Calcutta and other devotees had arrived in Bombay. And for a whole year, people were doing preaching at different places.

Some devotees were preaching in Delhi. Some devotees had gone down south. But at this time, Prabhupada was going to reorganize all the preaching in India. So devotees came from all over different parts of India to be with Prabhupada at this specific time.

So in the morning, Srila Prabhupada would go out and take his walk. And he wanted to have the kirtan party going on with him when he took his morning walk. And as he walked through the different camps, sages would come out and pay their respects to Srila Prabhupada. As Srila Prabhupada described this Magamela at the time, there were reported 7 million saintly souls that went to take part in the festivities throughout the month.

Never had we been in such crowds of people or lived amidst so many people. Srila Prabhupada determined what our activities would be from morning till night at this Pandal. So it was both for purification and for example of what Vaishnavas do. And while a program of deity worship went on with ayatis and offerings throughout the day, one of the main engagements of the day was prasad distribution.

So virtually people were cooking and distributing prasadam throughout the whole day. and different devotees volunteered for that cooking service. Sagar Maharaj was instrumental in showing us how to shop in this environment and Rabadhi Nandan Maharaj was quite instrumental in the making and distribution of both halwa and khichri. I didn't get to go on a single one of those morning kirtans. I had to cook for 45 people breakfast on the fires. and I had to cook lunch on those fires.

Then one day Prabhupada said, after lunch was over, he said, I want you to prepare rice, puris, and chutney for 700 people. And that was to be passed out in the pond all in the afternoon. And then after that, I had to get dinner ready for 45 people. I had two little wood fire pits, and all we had was sticks.

I mean, just sticks, not even chunks of wood that you could make a bed of coals out of, you know, just sticks. so all you had was flame and soot the pots were covered with soot I was covered with soot somehow I was putting out every bit I had to do that service at that time it was the hardest thing I ever did materially I was just following the crowd, most of us were and then we arrive in this place by foot and it's just like all the bizarre things you'd ever thought about or heard about India were right there in front of your face and going on You know, the naked Nagar Babas, big men riding on elephants, the snake-charming Babas. It was just all happening there. And every day Prabhupada, as you can see, would take us out on Nagasankirtan. There's my daughter, Haribo.

This is a very ancient festival. Prabhupada told us it goes back many, many thousands of years. It's time that all the holy men, they come and they gather because there's a very auspicious constellation. And if you take bath at that time, you're guaranteed liberation.

And I remember asking Prabhupada whether that was really true. Prabhupada said, yes, it's true. He said, but we didn't come here for that, because we're already liberated. We came here to preach Christian consciousness.

But I did go for, you know, because I wanted the guarantee. I went and you have to go early in the morning about 4 o'clock and there are no lights, it's very cold the wind is blowing because it's winter time and just hundreds of people are wandering towards the river and it was a really sensational experience here you can see Srila Prabhupada shaving there was no hot water available perhaps someone heated a little water up for Prabhupada But the amazing thing was that Prabhupada, at such an advanced age, came to this place with so many devotees to live in a tent. Everyone was living in a tent. And it was wintertime.

It's cold. Of course, during the day it warmed up a bit because of the sun. But it's also said that on a certain day in the course of this festival, it rains. And sure enough, when that day came, it rained. and so it was really miserable after that because everything was damp and very difficult to keep warm.

So here we see Srila Prabhupada and the devotees getting ready to make a visit to the local Gaudiya Mutt. And, of course, Prabhupada lived in Allahabad for a number of years and he had a business there. And he told us also later that he donated the deities there. I remember what struck me when we went there that day was there was Prabhupada in the lead and then there was eight or nine rickshaws following behind again like little ducklings wherever he went we followed behind that was our relationship never never knowing exactly the full significance of what what Prabhupada was doing but as I said before looking back now it's clear to me that Prabhupada knew exactly.

It was like a great campaign that he had planned and been carrying out. The Rupa Gurumatha in Allahabad, this was a most exciting event for all of Srila Prabhupada's Western disciples. Not only were we attending a program with Srila Prabhupada, But we were attending a program at a temple that he was very instrumental in serving in the years before he left India, when he lived in Allahabad. Oh, here's the deities.

We were all aware of the fact that Srila Prabhupada had, in his business years, arranged for the archivigraha at this mandir, the Radha and Krishna deities. it was his service this is in fact one of the first arch of vigrahad that i ever saw a photo of in my entire life when we were in san francisco in 1967 and some very early photos were sent from calcutta taken by a chittananda and ramanuja brahmachari we had a photograph of these deities that were sent to us in San Francisco. And so it was one of the first Radha and Krishna deities that I ever saw from India. So they always remain very dear to me. Srila Prabhupada was very proud of the fact that of all these Pandals at the Magh Mela that year, none attempted a deity worship program of Radha, Krishna, Archa, Vigraha's but ours.

So we became very famous for even that aspect of our presence. The Arcavigraha was Sri Sri Radha Madhava. Prabhupada, on another day, he took us all through, not all of us, but I know I was with him, and we drove through the city, and he pointed out different places where he lived and where his business was and things like that. I remember one day Prabhupada told us that many yogis come here and some of them are very old, up to 300 years, and he said that they appear just like young boys, so you wouldn't recognize them.

He said two came to see him and they told him that they lived in the jungle with some tigers. I remember being amazed because it was the first time Prabhupada spoke about some of the siddhis that the yogis there had. He said, he told us you must be very careful because these are very powerful yogis here and that many of them have very powerful siddhis and they can go down in the Ganga at the Himalaya and come up here at Triveni. They have the siddhi to be able to move between places.

He said, so you must be very respectful, very careful. During this time at the Kumbh Mela, we were taken across the Ganga in boats and we went to the ashram of Prabhupada Brahmachari. He was an old man and he was famous because he had done the translation of the Chaitanya Charitamrita, which was originally written in Bengali and Prabhupada had translated it into English, but Prabhupada had translated it into Hindi. So most people in northern India speak Hindi, so they were able to appreciate the translation of Prabhupada.

Allahabad is figured as a very prominent place in the Gaudiya Vaishnava's history because Rupa Goswami was instructed by Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in Allahabad, in Prayag, for so many days, I think 10 days, when Rupa Goswami was on his way to Vrindavan to carry out his mission. And at this specific spot, Mahaprabhu instructed Rupa Goswami, and Rupa Goswami later on wrote down all the Gaudiya Vaishnava philosophy, which governs all the Gaudiya Vaishnavas to this very day. All his writings, he was considered the most prominent of the Goswamis, Rupa Goswami. But I was so sick that when I got up in the morning about four o'clock and had to run for the outhouse, there was somebody in the outhouse.

And then I went back in and I climbed between the quilts again to get warm. And I just laid there and I couldn't move. And then I heard the Mangala Arthik start. And I got up and I got dressed and I came into Arthik and I must have been ten minutes late.

And Prabhupada watched me walk in from the back. And he was talking about the Bhagavatam story of Ajahn Mila about the subject of atonement. The Sanskrit word is Prayasthita, and it means atonement. And he was talking about how atoning for sins doesn't solve the problem because it doesn't cleanse the seed of sinful desire from the heart.

And so even though you can get free from the reaction by atonement, by some kind of prayaschita, you can't stop the tendency to commit the sin again that way. And then he started talking about Ajamil and how Ajamil as a youth, and he said he did some very pure service. And Prabhupada was looking at me as he said it. And then he said, very pure.

But then later in his life because of circumstance he fell down and he went to his death as a fallen worldly man but it was right as i walked in and as he was looking at me that he talked about a jamil doing some pure service in his youth and then as he was looking at me he said very pure even now thinking back on it and what happened and then how my life has gone since it almost seemed like he saw my future. Here we see Vairagibaba meeting Srila Prabhupada on the Harinam procession at Kumbh Mela and he was a devotee of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. He had huge cartels that we call whompers and he would chant Haribol, Haribol and clash the whompers together. Srila Prabhupada had met Vairagya Baba earlier in Bombay at Prem Kutir.

And then again, Srila Prabhupada met him at the Gita Jayanti Samayalan in Indore. And one evening, Vairagya Baba joined Srila Prabhupada and the devotees on the stage. And Srila Prabhupada got up off the Vyasa San and came right in front of Vairagibaba and began to jump up and down and dance in an effort to encourage him also to jump up and down and dance and there were the two of them jumping up and down and dancing before thousands of people. Then at the Kumbh Mela, Srila Prabhupada encouraged Vairagibaba to join us and some of the evenings at the Pandal program, Vairagibaba would also come on stage and he would chant and dance with the devotees, and we could see that Srila Prabhupada really wanted to engage him, and he was very enthusiastic about Sankirtan and Mahaprabhu, and he was also enlivened to be part of Srila Prabhupada's work.

And there was a big kundi, and we'd empty the coins every day, and the next day we'd go on a walk. Prabhupada would have us give the coins to the lepers and other afflicted people. There's a whole colony of these people as part of the mela. They come to the mela, they get the blessings of the sadhus, and, you know, it gets to the paces they have to live.

So one devotee said, one morning, he stopped and said, well, wouldn't it be better if we gave them prasadam? Because we saw prasadam as a big plate of hollanda and khichdi. Prabhupada stopped and turned. He said, for them, this is prasad.

I was in Banaras at that time when Srila Prabhupada was touring, travelling India with his 40 disciples. I read in a newspaper, in America, Krishna Bhakti is preached. Naturally, I was a devotee of Krishna, so I liked this topic. so I went there then there was a procession from the Sasmed Ghat to Tapan Mishra's house that is now in Banaras when procession finished I approached Sushila Prabhupada and I spoke in Hindi Bhagavan, when did you go to America? when you went to America and how you preach The Prabhupada said, you see, I just chant Hare Krishna and give some lecture. He said, they need this Vedic knowledge, so just see how they are happy and they are chanting.

Then I asked, where is your program after Banaras? The Prabhupada said, I will go to Gorakhpur. So I wrote down the date. Then I went to Gorakhpur and Prabhupada was there.

He was staying in Krishnani Ketan. So I went there. I was waiting. Prabhupada was at that time alone.

So I did not recognize that he is Prabhupada. Where is A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami? I asked Prabhupada.

So Prabhupada asked me, Why do you want to meet with him? I replied, because he is my guru. I like him very much. Prabhupada asked me, why you accept him as your guru?

I said, because he is the servant of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. Then Prabhupada asked me, who is Chaitanya Mahaprabhu? So I said, he is Krishna himself. So I was talking and Prabhupada asked, why you accept Lord Chaitanya as Krishna?

Because I read Chaitanya-charitamrita, Krishna himself came as a devotee to preach. Then Prabhupada said, no, no, no, he is not Krishna. He is devotee of Krishna. I said, no, he is Krishna himself.

Prabhupada insisted, no, he is devotee of Krishna. He is not Krishna. Then I spoke very hard words to Srila Prabhupada. I said, just keep quiet, don't speak anymore.

Then Prabhupada laughed very loudly. Very loudly he was laughing. Then some bhaktas came and they were offering abhiscences. So I realized that he is Guru Maharaj, he is Srila Prabhupada.

So when they offered abhisheksa, I also offered abhisheksa. So I said, please forgive me. I offended at your lot of spirit. I did not recognize it.

Please forgive me. Then Prabhupada caught my hand like this and come to my room. Then three disciples were sitting there. Prabhupāda was laughing, laughing.

His smile was not stopped. And then he told that he knows that Caitanya Mahāprabhu is Kṛṣṇa Himself. He said, you chastised me. I like that.

I am very happy with your words. The biggest splash we made, of course, was at the Krasmaidān Festival in March of 1971. We brought western style advertising techniques to India for the first time and made huge advertising efforts with balloons and I remember we had one skyscraper, seven story building with Hare Krishna written down the side in giant letters and we selected the park or the grounds right in the center of Bombay called Krasmaidan where daily tens of thousands of people walked and the whole idea was to introduce Hare Krishna movement to India and daily 50 to 100,000 people would attend morning and evening lectures but all day long the Pandal was kept open for people to walk around and ask devotees questions, there was a question and answer booth, different displays of Krishna consciousness around the world People began to get the idea that this was a global movement started by one of their own.

I was especially attracted by their appeal. It said, American sadhus are in town, European sadhus. I had only heard of Haridwar sadhus or Vrindavan Mathura sadhus or Pandharpur sadhus. So I was curious.

That time I didn't get to see Prabhupada. I was mostly in meeting devotees, but I was very much impressed with Prabhupāda's devotees, Prabhupāda's followers. They were pretty dead serious, grave, convinced, knowledgeable, and I had these impressions. And if this was his followers and disciples, then I could only imagine Imagine, their guru, their spiritual master must be far, far superior.

I had just come down from the Himalayas and Varanasi and Bodh Gaya. I was in Bombay. I was walking down the road. I saw a big sign saying Hare Krishna Festival at Krasmedan.

It was on that first day of the Pando program. Tens and thousands of people attended. And I was way, way back in the crowds, just watching. And Prabhupada came on stage.

Madhavistha Prabhu was leading kirtan. The devotees were dancing. And Gurudas Prabhu was taking photos. And I saw Gurudas called over by Prabhupada, and they were talking for some time.

And then Gurudas was looking, looking, looking through the crowds for quite a while. And he came all the way to the back of the crowds and took me by the hand and said, Prabhupāda wants you to sit with him on stage. And I asked, how does Prabhupāda know who I am? And he didn't say anything.

He just pulled me up. And when we came to the stage, Prabhupāda smiled at me. And with his hand, he gestured that I should sit not far from his Vyāsasana. And I sat.

And I saw Śrīla Prabhupāda when he was speaking. He just had such a sincere longing to reach people's hearts, such deep compassion, such deep concern. When he sat down to speak, I could barely understand his accent was so strong, but the purport was surrender, and that came through. the idea of surrendering was a little overwhelming but the thought was certainly there I knew this was a pivotal moment meeting his divine grace this marriage ceremony seemed to be a very very proud event for Srila Prabhupada because it was really displaying the international influence of Krishna consciousness on a very solid basis of lifelong vows of dedication. While the marriage was taking place, suddenly I felt somebody holding onto my hand.

I turned down, and it was little Saraswati. She looked at me right in the face and said, Guess what? I replied, What? And with a big smile on her face, she said, Krishna is the supreme personality of Godhead. and then she ran away.

Later on, during one of the lectures, Srila Prabhupada noted how this little Saraswati was a perfect preacher, because whatever she knew about Krishna, she was eager to share that with others.