Bombay - Europe - Australia -- 1974 -- Following Srila Prabhupada Part 6

For a very short time, we had that flat for Prabhupāda. And when he lived there, he used to go to the rooftop every evening and give darshan, he'd chant his Gayatri. And one time when he went up there, he said, I have two favorite places in the world, and this Juhu and Hawaii. Why?

Because wherever there are palm trees, that is paradise. And at that time, I counted all the trees, we had over 200 trees on the Hare Kṛṣṇa land, palm trees. And Prabhupada loved it there. The tenants that lived in the backside, they would line up along the road.

As Prabhupada would come in, they would all be standing there ready to greet him. And Prabhupada would smile and speak to every one of them. It was such a very nice thing. Sometimes, as devotees, we had a little problem with the tenants.

But they all loved Prabhupada. They must have felt his love. at this time there were not that many people who came but the people who did come were very devoted like man mohan das kejariwal we did all kinds of life member making together in bombay and and these ladies gandharvika's mother they cooked and they cleaned they did everything there was an awful lot of of devotion in these very few people when he gave lectures at night there maybe had been 30-40 people came, they were very attentive and they were willing to do anything like Mr. Sethi when he came he built a temple as a gift to Prabhupada more or less and rebuilt it also we rebuilt it in one day practically speaking when they tore it down so at this time it was, you can't really say anything was really happening it was just try to collect some money try to get it together but Prabhupada really liked it there I think he felt very at home in Bombay.

He liked his quarters, even though they weren't very spectacular. It was just a plain old apartment. He just liked being there. He liked the weather.

He liked very much sitting on that roof at night. That's Mr. Sethi. He was very devoted.

He practically did anything. This is the daughter of the warriors. They were incredibly devoted people, the whole family. This was the Horkul kids. all of us came up and, you know, we'd made these garlands and we all offered it to Prabhupada.

It was such a festival. We were all excited at the same time. We were anxious, you know. At that time, the temple was small, so it was more like a family.

So everyone knew each other and everyone was one big family. We were there every evening. Daddy was there like clockwork. He used to go to Mangalartik and Guru Puja and then he'd go to work.

And the evening artik, he would be there too. we had pictures at first on the altar and then Navyagandarswami he had given us this Chaturbhuj Krishna so we used to go ahead and have art takes and every day evening art take was my job I was a Pujari at home that was one thing daddy had started at home was to have the evening art take 6 o'clock I had to come back and take a shower by 7 I had to do the art take and before he passed away actually the night before he got really sick and he had to go to the hospital He said, no, until baby finishes the Arctic, I'm not going. So then I came, I did the Arctic, and he was, like, breathing real heavy. He was really, really sick. And then after the Arctic, he left for the hospital, and the next morning at 10 o'clock, he passed away.

That was the last I saw my dad. After I did the Arctic, he gave me a big hug before he went, and that was it. If it wasn't for Prabhupada, we wouldn't be doing that Arctic. We taught everything we have, everything we know. that's my dad and mom and that's Mr.

Man in there and that's my dad here we see Srila Prabhupada so transcendental so detached and watching the skulls dance you know he's so patient Jagat Guru of the whole world he's writing books that will last for 10,000 years and yet he's so at home in all situations is so peaceful. That's what we now we see after 30 years because in those days we were very young we took it for granted but now that we have become older we realize that even the old age Prabhupada had no anxiety or no worries. His only The only worry was how to save the world in Krishna Consciousness. Here in Bombay he was very intimate with all the devotees as well as the guests.

Whoever came forward was blessed by Prabhupada immensely. So this was a place you can say where Prabhupada distributed love of God very freely. Without considering of who is deserving and who is not, without considering this place is okay or not, Prabhupada just magnanimously passed out loving devotional service. He is smiling so royally, so blissfully.

This is his famous style. He would nod his head, approving whatever was going on. Aksharana Maharaj, he is asking Prabhupada, showing the book, and he is going to read now. This was Prabhupada's another famous pastime.

Any guest would come, he would quote a verse from Bhagavad Gita. And then he would say, open the Bhagavad Gita and start reading. And then he would ask us to read the whole verse in the purport. So again speak on that. this way every darshan became a perpetual Srimad Bhagavatam class from 4 o'clock in the afternoon till 9 o'clock practically till you took rest you constantly speak one evening I was alone on the roof with Srila Prabhupada and we were talking about Vanashram, this was just after he gave the Vanashram talks in Vrindavan and he was telling me various things, similar things that he had discussed on the walk.

And then he started talking about Gandhi. He said that Gandhi actually wanted to establish Vanashram throughout India. His plan that he had presented to Nehru and the others was that first every village should become self-sufficient in making their own clothes food etc etc but that he said sadr patel and nehru betrayed gandhi and they went ahead with the british plan to introduce factories immediately and he said because of that india's become spoiled had they set up the villages first the way gandhi taught he said then the spiritual progress of india would have remained intact and then after that he was almost tearful and he said to me, I loved Gandhi. He really wanted the best things for India.

And I was just amazed that Prabhupada said that. So the next morning, we went on a morning walk. And every morning, Prabhupada would walk on the beach in Bombay. At different times, some of the Indian gentlemen, life members, etc., would join our party.

And when they would join the party, as is customary, they would offer with folded palms, pranam to Prabhupada, namaskar, and Prabhupada out of respect would do the same to them. So on the morning after this discussion with Srila Prabhupada, we took a much longer walk than usual, way down to the end of the beach. So when we got very far down the beach, and I was on his left-hand side, he turned to his left, and he offered his pranam in a very deep and generous way. And when I looked, there was no one there.

But way up, there was a statue of Gandhi under a gazebo. Prabhupada walked to the end of the beach to offer a respect to Gandhi. And then we're walking back, and some of the life members come and join. And one of the life members brings up something about Gandhi.

So they're saying. Gandhi said this and that in the Gita. And what did Prabhupada think? And Prabhupada said, Gandhi destroyed the Gita.

Gandhi said this. Gandhi said that. He made all mistakes. And Prabhupada was going on and on, now criticizing Gandhi's translation of the Gita and his different ideas and concepts like that.

And then after he finished saying all these things, he turned and he looked at me and he smiled. Many aristocratic people take their morning walks on Juhu Beach. and one morning as we were approaching the end of the beach some very poor and humble fisher ladies approached Srila Prabhupada and they very humbly joined their palms together and offered respects to Srila Prabhupada and said Hare Krishna. Srila Prabhupada commented that they are hundreds of times better than the rich people who don't know how to respect a saintly person. Another time as we were walking back from Juhu Beach, Dr.

Patel noticed the compound wall that Mr. Sethi had built around the property on Srila Prabhupada's instructions. So Dr. Patel told Srila Prabhupada that people are saying now you have a prison inside there. and Prabhupada paused for a moment and said no, the prison is outside inside is freedom I was walking with Prabhupada on the beach and I wasn't impressed with Prabhupada so I said Prabhupada, just look how all these people were mad after sense gratification and he turned to me and he said you brought the poison with you which means that previously India was Krishna conscious and the Westerners brought, you know, the sense gratification of Western civilization to India.

They brought the poison with them. He passed that one particular tree. It had quite a lot of foliage on it. And that morning there was a lot of birds in that tree and they were making a racket like anything.

It was very noisy. To that extent you couldn't really hear, you know, what you were saying. It was very noisy. And then Prabhupada stops, looked at the tree, and the point of his cane towards the tree, and he said, they're discussing Krishna-katha.

Everyone was like looking. And then Prabhupada turned around and he kept walking. And everyone was like, really? Prabhupada was quite serious.

Sometimes Srila Prabhupada would point to the seagulls or small birds that would walk just by the border of the ocean. and he would say the huge ocean with such huge waves at any moment the waves could drown the little birds but still they dare to walk just at the tip of the water. Why? And then Srila Prabhupada said because the ocean is under the control of Krishna and the birds know the ocean is under control. it cannot suddenly go out of its boundaries and drown them and therefore they dare to walk by the edge of the ocean. And we simply think how much we are obliged to Him for giving us protection in so many dangerous situations.

My dear Dāva, when we think of Kṛṣṇa's beautiful face and eyes and His different activities here in Vṛndāvan we become so overwhelmed that all our activities cease. we simply think of Krishna how he used to smile and how he looked upon us when we go to the banks of the Yamuna and other lakes of Vrindavan or near Govardhan hill or the pasturing field we see that the impressions of Krishna's footprints are still on the surface of the earth we remember him playing in those places because he was constantly visiting them Mahavadi takes that this Krishna Lila is Maya they are surprised How God can be affectionate like this? He is nirvika, without any attachment. They cannot understand this. On one occasion Srila Prabhupada was criticizing the mayavadi philosophy, especially the philosophy of Vivekananda and Ramakrishna.

Yato mat tato pasa. As many ways, so many conclusions. conclusions. In this philosophy, it means that whomever you want to worship, you can worship. Whoever your heart goes to, you can worship and you will attain the same supreme destination.

Sri Prabhupada was extremely opposed to this conclusion. So whenever such idea came, he would put them down forcefully and call them rascals who believes in such nonsense philosophy. So, one time one of the Dr. Patel's friends, Mr.

Shah, he started screaming, why you always criticize, you always criticize so many different people. So, devotees were ready to push him away. But Prabhupada said, no, no, don't do anything. So, for 3-4 minutes he kept criticizing and we kept walking.

Finally, Prabhupada said, what can we do? We have to train our disciples against all kinds of deviant philosophies. Therefore, sometimes we have to criticize. Krishna also criticizes in the Bhagavad Gita.

Krishna also, in this way, criticizes people who do not surrender to him. Therefore we also have to do that, Prabhupada would say. So then he kept quiet. It was about five minutes before we come to the temple, just at the corner of the Gandhi Gram road.

So we all came back quietly. Prabhupada would not let any of us become upset with the man. Then as usual we came to the Vyasasana and Guru Puja was going on. We were offering flowers, so this Mr.

Shah also came to offer flowers. He offered flowers to Prabhupada's lotus feet. Then he put his head on Prabhupada's feet and started crying like a little baby. He was just crying incessantly.

He knew he had committed a great offense. Prabhupada was so kind, he just put his hand on his head and said, It's okay, it's okay. So gradually cooled him down. Next day Prabhupāda said, we don't want to talk because if Dr.

Patel comes, he will again argue. Let us instead read Kṛṣṇa book. So this is how this Kṛṣṇa book reading started instead of the discussions. From the morning walk, Śrīla Prabhupāda would come up to the temple.

We'd open the curtains. He'd offer his respects to the deities. We would then offer flowers to the deities and flowers to Śrīla Prabhupāda. and that would be our morning greeting of the deities and Srila Prabhupada. On this particular morning when we came, Srila Prabhupada was asked to sit in the Vyasa San.

And then when he sat in the Vyasa San, a full arty was offered to Srila Prabhupada. And the prayer, Sri Guru Charanapadma, was sung in glorification of Srila Prabhupada. And we all went up and we all offered flowers to Prabhupada and offered our Dandavats. And then after this puja was done to Srila Prabhupada, then Srila Prabhupada greeted the deities.

And then we offered our respect to the deities. This was the first official Guru puja. It happened around April of 74, if I'm correct. And from that point on, it spread to all the temples in the movement.

I went back to Africa, and then I told them that this is now how we're going to conduct the morning program. And similarly, other devotees went back to other temples, and this became the standard by which we worshipped Srila Prabhupada and the greeting of the deities in the morning. One evening, we were having a very ecstatic kirtan. We were singing and singing and dancing, and I was very, very ecstatic.

So I was trying to keep to the schedule, more or less, so that he could give class afterwards. and the kirtan this night just became very very it was wonderful kirtan and the kancha blows and the art is over so i said okay let me leave one more round i let one more round and it got ecstatic i said well maybe one more round and it got really ecstatic you know i said okay this is it we're going to stop the devotees had finished responding and i stopped the kirtan and i was in the process of bowing down and I heard the cartel still playing and I looked up and Prabhupada he was still going at the same at the same tempo and he was still in ecstasy and I came back up and started chanting again you know and Prabhupada's head was rocking side to side but we kept on singing that was very very wonderful and then we went on you know past the time to start the class and everything. At that time I waited for a signal from Prabhupada to stop.

It wasn't really he said, now stop, but you could tell when he was finished, it was okay to stop. So I waited for a cue, like a physical cue from his body. At that time I became more attentive to his ecstasy as opposed to my ecstasy or our ecstasy. Always the kirtans after a class.

Every time Prabhupada finished a class, you'd go, thank you very much. Then the kirtan would start, and that was very special. The classes were so sweet and so nice and so fantastic that you felt like jumping up and down after Prabhupada gave a class. We just leapt up in the air in gratitude.

We went wild. There I am, dancing kirtan like crazy. And Prabhupada would be noticing, looking at us, and when we would see his appreciation on his face, we could read the appreciation. That would give us further boost and higher we would jump.

We were realizing this was giving him great pleasure. So we were young and energetic and we thought that was the best use of our energy, just dance for Prabhupada's pleasure. You know, of course, we are pleased. Great kirtans.

You know, that was an amazing place and amazing times. We're so fortunate being in Bombay. Dinanath was there and he was leading, and he would lead such a wonderful kirtan. And Gargamuni had come from Calcutta with his tape recorder because he liked to make tapes to give to his life members.

So, Dinanath was going from one end of the temple to the other end of the temple and all the brahmacharis running back and forth with him doing an ecstatic kirtan and Gargamuni was so funny chasing after him with his tape recorder and trying to keep it to his mouth and chasing this way and chasing that way. It was really a funny scene. And Prabhupada was sitting on the Vyasa sign laughing. Although Juhu had some opulent hotels, it was originally just a fishing village fishing village and there were many poor people who lived in the area and their children would come to the evening programs and join the chanting and dancing.

And of course they would take prasad from Srila Prabhupada's hand at the end of the aarti. But Srila Prabhupada was concerned about them and he actually said that we should keep bins, one for clothing and one for food grains, and we should give the clothing to the poor children and give them prasad. And in this way Srila Prabhupada wanted to take care of them as young devotees of Krishna. So one evening Prabhupada was giving the prasad to all these kids.

I said, oh Prabhupada, let me do it. And I went to take the plate from Prabhupada. And oh, Prabhupada looked at me and he said, I will do it. Because he's actually giving mercy.

That was his mission. But this is the program, to worship Krishna, and take Krishna Prasadam. In New York, in 1966, it was an apple, a cut apple. And here it is, you know, just some fruit.

But this was Prabhupada's program. Very simple, but very deep. Prabhupada gave his full attention to it. He wasn't doing it in some offhand, quick way, but very deliberate.

Prabhupada pointed out in his talks that even well-to-do people would come to get this prasadam. They didn't need it. They weren't in need of food. But they valued it as something spiritual, something that could help them in their spiritual life.

And this, Prabhupada said, was the purpose of prasadam. is not just an altruistic activity that we give prasadam to poor people or destitute people. We can do that, but prasadam is for everyone because spiritually we are all poor, we are all destitute. We need this mercy from Krishna. And Prabhupada was very generous about it.

The children would sometimes come twice or even three times and Prabhupada would smile and wag his finger at them. but he would give them again and again proper came and he went into this room where there was a cushion and bolsters and a little table he sat down to speak to the team and I brought him in a plate of sweets and fruits and things and put down in front of him and he just stopped and he turned and looked up to me and he said thank you very much I knew that he did not mean thank you for the fruit or thank you for cleaning the department. It was just, thank you for giving your life. And that was so gratifying when any devotee got that kind of reciprocation with Prabhupada. It made it all worthwhile.

So this is Jayanta, the only African at this time that Prabhupada initiated. We brought him to meet Prabhupada. Prabhupada came to Kenya four times. When he asked me to go, I had just come from Pakistan.

This is in Bombay. Prabhupada said, what will you do? What is your program? He said, I think I'll send you to Africa.

If you go there, he said, then we will be on all the continents. And he said it in such a way that, oh, It was so inspiring. Another time, in that same little temple room, Prabhupada came down to give the Bhagavad Gita class, but just as much as Nandan was there, he had come from America, tried to settle in Bombay. So Prabhupada told him, you give the class.

Just like that, on the spot, he had to sit in front of Prabhupada and give the Bhagavad Gita class. And he gave it in Hindi. And Prabhupada just sat on the Vyasa sign and smiled. He was so pleased with his class.

And every once in a while, they'd tell him something in Sanskrit. Otherwise, they'd just let him give the whole class all by himself. I had received an inheritance in the spring of 1974. I was in Bombay at that time, and Giriraj Brahmachari came and said that there was an apartment becoming available.

And we had to buy the apartment so that the people would leave. So I was able to give part of the money to help buy that apartment, and it was an amazing apartment with this beautiful gray, very cooling granite, and it had wide open verandas and porches, so a wonderful cross breeze came through. So with the combination of the granite and the cross breeze, it always was cool in there, even if it was very hot outside. Srila Prabhupada liked those rooms very much.

He lived in that apartment the whole time he was in Bombay. And one of the salient features of the apartment was a big open roof. Srila Prabhupada would go up there and sometimes cut karela and dry them on the roof in the sun. And so Palika and I had an idea to make him a wonderful asana up there. and we arranged to have big white pillows made and big white seat for him and put them in front of a neem tree on the roof and Srila Prabhupada would go up there every evening and he loved to sit on that asana in many different poses sometimes he would sit horizontally with his legs over one pillow and his head over another and sometimes he would sit cross-legged and sometimes up with his knees drawn up and it appeared to me at that time that he was extremely robust in health and very jolly in his mood things were progressing in Bombay nicely at that time and he would sit up there and whoever would come they were destined to see the most wonderful aspects of Srila Prabhupada's personality, his character, his nature, his eloquence, his gracefulness, his aristocratic bearing, so many aspects of him were in full display.

In other words, the spirit soul is person, as much as God is also person. In person means recovering, try to understand. Yes. The covering is in person.

Not the living being who is covered. He is not in person. He is person. Very simple example.

The coat shirt is in person. But the man who is putting on coat on, he is not in person. He is person. So how God can be impersonal?

The material energy is impersonal. That is explained, that is explained in the Bhagavad-gītā. māyā tata-midaṁ sarvam jagat avyakta-mūrtu. This jagat is avyakta, impersonal. And that is also energy of Kṛṣṇa.

Therefore He says, I am expanded in the impersonal form. That impersonal feature is Kṛṣṇa's energy. So the material covering is impersonal. But the spirit soul or the super soul, he is first.

Any question on this? This is very intricate question. Anyone? I remember around this time, I unfortunately grew restless with my duties while I was in Juhu.

And I wanted some other service rather than just being a servant. So I wrote Prabhupada a note about that. and I put it on top of the letters one day instructed me and he said don't be a monkey jumping here and there looking for some different service keep the service that you have and be satisfied with it so I immediately felt terrible that I had asked to leave my service and I wrote him another note back and apologized that I asked to be transferred. And I said, please, I'm satisfied. I don't want another service.

Don't throw me away. And he wrote me a little note on top of that one. And he said, you are very pure. May Krishna save you from calamities.

But then later in Geneva, very animatedly, he was talking about the need for a library party. Now, who's going to do this? We need this. We need our books distributed all over the world.

We need a library party. But no one is doing this. Who will do this? And I was in the room, and I said, I'll do it.

He said, well, then do it. Then I left the room, and I was with the other sannyasis, and I said, well, I guess I've got this new service. And they said, yes, well, you wanted some new service, so now you have a new service. And then later I said to him, do you really want me to do this service?

And Prabhupada said, yes, you can do it. Get some other brahmacharis and do this. But you have to get a replacement for your servant duties. I think you can get Brahmananda Swami.

See if he'll do it. I found out if he could replace me and he said he wanted to do it. I brought my wife to Bombay with me. and I said to Srila Prabhupada in front of her, Srila Prabhupada, the brahmacharis for years have kind of criticized the women, saying they're less intelligent, their brain is smaller, they're lustier, things like that. Is that true?

And Srila Prabhupada's answer was, you're chanting Hare Krishna and your wife is chanting Hare Krishna. Where's the question of being less intelligent? I remember reading in Chaitanya Charitamrita and Prabhupada's purport, The women in our movement are preaching. Therefore, they're as good as their brothers.

And then I said to Srila Prabhupada also, Srila Prabhupada, I understand that the husband is representative of the spiritual master and the wife is representative of her husband. Srila Prabhupada, should she do everything I ask? And Srila Prabhupada said, and you should be so arrogant? well you know i had been cooking for prabhupada for a long time but i really had a hard time making chapatis because we were always in places where there were no proper stoves to make a good chapati you need a gas stove at least or coals and here we are like in mauritius and i'm cooking in a closet on a one burner electric stove that didn't even have enough power to boil water and I have to make a full meal that he likes, up to his standards. So Prabhupada was complaining, complaining about the chapatis and I said, you know, I can't get any wheat, I don't have any stove.

It's impossible. This was going on many times in many places. Just having to cook in the worst facilities you can imagine. So finally we get to Bombay and there are good facilities and there's good wheat.

Prabhupada knows it. However, the gas stove I had had such a low pressure There was only about maybe a little flame like this. So I had made chapatis, and they didn't blow up all the way. You know, I was really trying my best.

So then Prabhupada tells me, he says, You are so useless, big, big brain, you can't even make a chapati. You know, I had been struggling with those chapatis for months now. I was so fried with hearing about chapatis. I said, Prabhupada, no one can make a good chapati in that kitchen.

Prabhupāda said, no one? I said, no one. He said, get out of my way. He stood up.

He marched into the kitchen with me following behind him. He sits on the floor, says, give me the dough. He's making with the dough, rolls his chapati, puts it on the burner, takes it off the burner. And I'm just sitting there very peacefully, waiting for the outcome.

And he's looking at me and he puts the the chapati on the plane. Turns it over. It doesn't blow up. I thought, I got him now.

He's never going to get on my case about that chapati again. The prophet looks at me like he's going to burn me to ashes. He's making with the dough. Rolls his chapati.

Puts it on the burner. Takes it off the burner. Puts it on the flame. It blows up perfectly.

He picks it up with the tweezers and throws it right in my face it bounces off my nose he stands up and walks out of the kitchen sometimes 74 Prabhupada asked me I should go all over the world and cook and Kirtan and preach so then again after one month Prabhupada comes to Bombay he said why are you here I said I cannot go I'm not getting passport he said why you're not getting passport I say in the form required father name and I don't know who is my father he said okay bring that form then he called Aditya and said type his father name AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada and then he signed in that form then he put the stamp it's gone stamp and after two days I got the passport and ever since in my all my legal document if the my father name required the proper name comes when we become free from these artificial designations American consciousness Indian consciousness African consciousness there is no such thing this is artificial even bird and beast they are they also feel consciousness tension pleasure just like when there is scorching heat you feel some pain is that So the American, Indian, or African, scorching heat is every… If you say that I am feeling scorching heat American way, kya jīva? Ānjī. Eche ho sakta ki?

Nēi ho sakta. Eche ho sakta ki? Nēi ho sakta. Either, simply these are artificial, and everything is depending on consciousness, everything depending on consciousness.

Therefore Kṛṣṇa consciousness is the original standard consciousness. So, we have given the name, Krishna consciousness, very, what is called, thoughtful. Prabhupada installed monkey Bihari in Nairobi, and I was getting offering plates and so on in Calcutta, and I had this idea to get a pair of, I guess you call them padams, or sadhu shoes, but made of silver and very nicely engraved with Prabhupada's name and founder, Acharya. And my idea was to take these and touch them to Prabhupada's feet and then bring them back to Nairobi and worship, have on the altar.

So one morning at the Guru Puja, very ceremoniously placed them on the cushion for Prabhupada's feet where the flowers were put and Prabhupada saw them bright, shiny, silver you know, he was approving very nicely and then he put his feet into them and Prabhupada was like wearing them after the morning program, then Prabhupada went to leave wearing the shoes you know I just wanted Prabhupada to touch his feet and I was going to take them and Prabhupada like took them and I was surprised and Prabhupada could see my surprise and then he understood that I wanted them so then he stopped and took them off I could have them but he was wearing them very nicely in order to build the Juhu Temple, we needed a no-objection certificate from the police commissioner. And after waiting and waiting and making so many efforts, finally the police commissioner sent a letter in which he refused to issue the no-objection certificate on the grounds that the bhajan singing, which has been complained about in the past is likely to be a nuisance in the future as well.

We sent news to Srila Prabhupada in Vrindavan, and when he received it, he became furious. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says, satatam kirtayantamam, that one should always engage in kirtan, and how dare the commissioner called kirtan, a nuisance. So Srila Prabhupada wanted to protest the words of the commissioner and the refusal of permission. And so he asked the devotees who had come to India for the annual festival in Mayapur and Vrindaban to travel to Bombay.

He wanted them to do harinam sankirtan throughout the streets of the city to distribute books and to hold programs, and that when the people of Bombay were convinced about the value of Krishna consciousness, they themselves would prevail upon the government to give us the permission for the temple. He also wanted some of the more qualified devotees, such as Balavanta Prabhu, to meet with the political leaders to get support. Eventually we were able to meet the chief minister of Maharashtra and he somehow saw through the whole case. He saw that actually we were innocent and we were being victimized by political interests.

And within one day everything was reversed and the news spread everywhere, to every government office that the chief minister is in favor of the temple. And it was like night and day. Suddenly everyone was very friendly and cooperative. And very soon thereafter, we began the construction.

We had just constructed a temporary temple in the center of Hyderabad. And the land had been donated by one prominent sweet merchant, Sri G. Pulareddy. So, Srila Prabhupada came, and he offered arati to the deities.

At that time, we had not given any name to the deities, we were just waiting, and immediately Srila Prabhupada saw the deities. He gave the name of Sri Sri Radha Madan Mohan. They had been brought from Jaipur by Srimati Palika Devi Dasi. There was no installation ceremony as such.

That will be done later on when the main temple became completed in August 1976. At that time Prabhupada came again and installed all the deities including Sri Sri Gaurani Thay, Sri Sri Jagannath Subhadra Baladev and Sri Sri Radha Madan Mohan. So, two prominent sannyasis, disciples of Srila Prabhupada, can be seen in this movie. One is His Holiness Tamal Krishnagoswami, who was at that time GBC for the whole of India.

And the other sannyasi is His Holiness Yasodhananda Swami, who was preaching at that time in South India. And he will be also present in the main installation ceremony. The installation of the deities of Radha, Madh and Mohan occurred in August of 1976. We discussed with Prabhupada, and we made an arrangement to get 12 South Indian Ramanuja Vaishnava Brahmins under the leadership of Sampat Kumar Bhattacharya, who were very versed in these ritualistic ceremonies of how to open a Vaishnava temple.

When Srila Prabhupada came from the airport, they gave him a very grand reception, and they actually perform a charia puja and there is even a recorded lecture where Srila Prabhupada discussed how in this age there are very few Brahmins left but he was pleased that in South India he considered that there were still some bona fide Brahmins Prabhupada had a very interesting conversation in his room with some of these Brahmins and he requested them to arrange to take Srila Prabhupada to all the major temples of South India. I want to go there and reestablish Vanashram Dharma in South India. And Srila Prabhupada was preaching to them how it was the responsibility of these educated scholarly Brahmins, very cultured people, to take this up and preach to the local people. And Prabhupada says, I will come and show you.

But overall, Prabhupada was very pleased with the opening of the temple. And on the Vyasa Puja Day, it was a grand ceremony for Srila Prabhupada's Vyasa Puja, so it was a pretty blissful experience. Srila Prabhupada stayed in Tirupati for three days, and the highlight of that trip was a special early morning darshan at 2 a.m., and I remember it was just a very mystical atmosphere, entering the deity room by torchlight and then coming in front of Lord Venkateshwara and the Pujari waving the ghee lamp to illuminate his form. It was wonderful to see Srila Prabhupada gaze in reverence upon his Lord.

At the time, Prabhupada wasn't very well, so he was traveling with his own personal cook, who was Satsarup Maharaj. But when they arrived, they had just come from India, Satsarup had hepatitis. So then it was decided that I would be his cook. So because of that, Prabhupada was very involved in the cooking.

So on three different occasions, he came into the kitchen. And on this one particular time, he came in to cook lunch. And he cooked the whole meal along with me and whoever was helping, Narmada. For some reason, I'm pretty sure we made asparagus that day.

I had cooked for him previously, but one of Prabhupada's endearing qualities, just his like pure innocence, he'd come into the kitchen. And this was a very, very tiny room. And Prabhupada would walk into the kitchen and see a bowl of chickpeas. And he just, he pointed everything.

What is that? He was just so curious, but never certainly like imposing or, you know, he would just be like this pure innocence. And what is this? What is this?

What is this? You know, like curious about everything. So we had a couple of Italian devotees cook an Italian preparation on a few days. And Prabhupada inquired what it was before he ate it, but he enjoyed it.

This particular footage was taken in May of 1974. It was the very first big public festival program that Prabhupada was present at. It was held in Hotel Parco del Principe, which is a five-star hotel in a beautiful park called Villa Borghese, right in the heart of Rome. auditorium had seating for 500 so I was thinking in the back of my mind that day what if only 25 or 30 people show up it's going to be a terrible impression and it just so happened I was with Prabhupada the whole day and we got there quite late and actually when we got to the hall the lights were down and we were showing the world of Hare Krishna so then after about five or ten minutes we were called that the film had just finished so could we please immediately come on to the stage and when we got onto the stage the lights went up I noticed that every single seat had been taken it was absolutely amazing then I noticed that there were people standing at the back of the hall there were people down the two sides of the hall and there's even people sitting in the aisle in the middle so I reckon there must have been at least 800 came to that program.

And Prabhupada turned to me, and he said, oh, he said, these Italians, they're very interested in Krishna consciousness. They want to hear. So after the kirtan, Prabhupada started to speak, and the translator, this is a very nice Italian devotee called Ali Krishna. So Prabhupada spoke for 45 minutes, then he asked for questions.

And there was a forest of arms shot up. It was just amazing. It was hundreds of people wanting to ask a particular question. And Prabhupada turned to me again and said, oh, just see.

They really want to understand. I'm very happy that they have this enthusiasm for learning Krishna consciousness. So Prabhupada spent about an hour answering questions. Then we had another kirtan.

We distributed prasadam. And then we went back to the temple in Vyamastretta. I was a very young student. I was 17 years old.

And I was very much interested in looking for some serious answer, real answer. Because I was born in Assisi, I was willing to join the monks there. I started to become a monk. But then I became discouraged because everything was very mysterious. you know no answer to my questions you know about that about life after that and no answer and i discovered the temple was just very close to my house very 100 meters so they invited me for the sunday feast because they just arrived there i never saw them before and i went to the sunday feast and practically i i joined almost immediately and i stayed there up to midnight Somagaprabhu, the devotee, was preaching to me, and immediately we became very close friends.

And after a month, Prabhupada arrived in the beginning of May. The first impression I had was that the devotees were working so hard for Prabhupada's arrival. Working day and night, especially Somagaprabhu. So much love the devotees had for Prabhupada.

I never saw anything similar before. And that love impressed me even more when Prabhupada arrived. Because I remember there were many devotees coming from all over Europe. When he arrived, everybody crying, all the devotees, maybe 150 devotees, everybody crying, chanting and crying, such deep affection, such deep love.

And I saw a very, very deep relationship. impressed me another thing that probably arrived in Rome coming from Delhi from India immediately he went to the temple and I was so impressed how we very slowly he pay his own businesses with such a deep devotion we had gone it I just installed a few few days before and immediately after he sat on the viasana and he gave a class he gave a speech to the divorce I thought he's coming from long long distance he must be very tired and you know he was traveling in the night but he was very fresh you know everybody's so enthusiastic and such such an unbelievable atmosphere i mean i i was i was becoming convinced very quickly that he was in touch with god so i got such clear information from proper philosophy i became immediately convinced by by the philosophy. And when I saw Prabhupada, I saw very, very powerful person.

And my eyes, my heart, my consciousness become completely attracted. That week changed completely my life, completely. And I can see after more than 30 years that Prabhupada has become the main thing in my life. The day I became initiated, I felt not part anymore of this world.

And I had the fortune to distribute Prabhupada's books for many years. I always faced many difficulties. You know, they put me in jail. As soon as I joined, you know, I stayed one month in jail because I was doing sangha on the street.

I was one year in Greece doing sangha on the street. A couple of times somebody tried to kill me with a knife. I don't feel difficulties thanks to Prabhupada's mercy. It completely changed my life forever.

We went for different morning walks in different historical parts of Rome, the Colosseum. He turned to me and said, what is this? I said, well, this is an old Roman ruin where they used to hold games, entertainments, like a big entertainment theatre. And Prabhupada said, and what is the purpose of it now?

I said, well, it's considered an historical monument. And then Prabhupada asked me, are there any toilets inside? I said, no, there's no toilets. He said, what is the point of maintaining such a huge building and you can't even go to the toilet.

He's just joking, obviously. And then we took him to this place called Eor, which is a new development that came up during the time of Mussolini. And it's a type of architecture called fascist architecture. And there was very tall buildings there.

And Prabhupada commented, he said, just see, they have not learned from their mistakes. They have this big historical building which is useless called the Colosseum and still they're making big skyscrapers. And what is the use of these skyscrapers? It's simply increasing their eating, sleeping, mating, and defending.

This is useless civilization. They're not learning anything. This is just simply chewing the chewed. We had this house that Prabhupada stayed in.

He stayed with us for nine days. It was a detached house with its own garden. And Prabhupada very much liked the weather there. All the neighbors on that street, that small street where the temple was in Vimha Stretta, would come every morning knowing exactly what time Prabhupada was going to go for his morning walk and they would be standing in line ready to offer Prabhupada a freshly picked flower from their gardens and some were also offering fruits to him too.

They were so respectful. Prabhupada had a very nice impression actually he said the Italians they're religious by nature they desire the blessings of God and it's up to us as devotees to teach them how to become qualified to get those you know those blessings at the end of may shrila prabhupada left rome italy for geneva this is prabhupada accompanied by satsarup and myself greeting him at geneva international airport for us this was just the most inconceivable thing that we could have Prabhupada in a very small temple for 10 days. This is Indra Dumna, who was not a sannyasi at the time, leading kirtan. This particular film was done by the Swiss National Television in French, and it was broadcast on the evening news that night.

We had a very busy schedule for Srila Prabhupada. We had 10 days of meetings with some very famous, prominent people. Everything took place in French, and I was very fortunate to be able to be Prabhupada's main translator. We had a very cute villa or house in the close suburbs of Geneva to downtown, and we organized a fire sacrifice and ceremony, and this is all the backyard of the temple.

Here we have an explanation by Yogeshwar Prabhu. Prabhupada was received upon arrival by the governor of Geneva in the main government building in the very same room where Pope Paul VI was received. The governor of Geneva was very concerned about what might happen to the Swiss economy if many of the young people joined the Hare Krishna movement. And after the official greeting in the informal conversation, I translated his queries to Prabhupada, and Prabhupada gave him a brief description of the Parnashram system and tried to allay his concerns.

Almost a year later, when I was going to the Mayapur festival, I traveled from Bombay to Calcutta on the same plane with Prabhupada. And Prabhupada remembered this governor very well and he called me over and asked me to sit next to him and said so is the governor still worried about the Swiss economy if everyone joins the Hare Krishna movement and then he laughed we organized a festival in the Salle du Faubourg in Geneva a very famous room over a thousand people came if you consider that Geneva is a famous city but a very small city with, oh, at the time, I think about 180,000 to 200,000 residents, getting 1,000 people into a festival hall, that's a significant percentage of the local population. We distributed books for so many years, we would literally knock on every single door in the country about once a year.

And we had to make sure that people had a pleasant experience with the devotee knocking on their door. Hopefully they would take a book, but even if they didn't take a book, we'd be back a year later. And so the cumulative effect of all of this was that Prabhupada's books on a per capita basis in a country, I got to think that it's probably one of the most dense distribution of books in the world. About that time I was on a serious spiritual search and looking at different spiritual groups of all sorts and was never satisfied.

And I somehow landed up near Geneva in France, living in a kind of community. I actually had spent many months on my own, very disillusioned with material life and the kind of people that were living around me. And I had a boyfriend who went to New Zealand and sent me beads and Bhagavad Gita and books. So I spent months just reading, chanting and praying, actually very sincerely to Krishna to help me find what I was looking for.

And chanting on my own, I didn't even really know how to do it, and reading Gita and Nectar of Devotion and painting my first picture of Krishna with a deer. And then one day a friend from the community said, oh I've been in Geneva and there's a poster the leader of this movement the ISKCON movement is coming to Geneva do you want to come so I said yeah okay it sounds interesting so we went off to the temple that day in Geneva never been to a temple before and we were kind of ushered into the garden and there I saw Srila Prabhupada and he was performing a far sacrifice. I saw a devotee, a lady prostrate at his feet and I stood there and just looking in wonderment really and suddenly Srila Prabhupada looked straight over at me and into my eyes and I really felt I was the only one in the garden at that point and it had a kind of twofold effect first I just wanted the ground to open up I felt my soul naked exposed and all my inortas which were very many at that time flooded forward and I just felt like disappearing into a hole in the ground and the other kind of enlightening moment was that I just looked at him and I knew that split second this was my spiritual master.

I just knew it in my heart. This is him. So it was a very profound experience, actually, very profound. And it was another year till I eventually met Srila Prabhupada again and got initiation.

A Swiss writer and lecturer who is quite famous, Sergius Golovin, came to visit Prabhupada. He came all the way from Bern. He had quite a following in his day. He was viewed as a a genuine spiritual leader.

And he took his seat on the floor in Prabhupada's room. And Prabhupada said, so, do you have any questions? And Sergio Golovin just said, no, no, I have no questions. And I was sitting there, I'd organized all of this.

And I thought, what will Prabhupada think? This fellow's come all this way, and he has nothing to say and nothing to ask. And then he said to Prabhupada, I'm just so fortunate that I can be here in your presence and benefit from the company of a great master like yourself. And then he fell silent.

He never said another word. And Prabhupada obviously felt a certain sympathy for this man because he pulled out the harmonium and he made a 30-minute bhajan. And everyone just listened intently to Prabhupada. At the end of 30 minutes, Prabhupada stopped.

He was obviously in rapture with Krishna during that time. And it was perceptible to everyone, including this fellow, who said, Thank you very much. And then Prabhupada said to me, Make sure he gets prasadam on the way out. On June 6th, Prabhupada was invited to give a talk at the World Health Organization at the United Nations.

They are responsible for all the family planning efforts of the U.N. all over the world. And Prabhupada at the time was translating Fifth Canto of Srimad Bhagavatam, specifically lecturing on Rishabhadeva and his hundred sons. So Prabhupada spoke about that at the World Health Organization. He said that when someone is Krishna conscious, he is not a burden to the earth, and there is no excess of such people and they can all live together in peace and harmony and the title of Prabhupada's lecture was The Myth of Overpopulation it got a good turnout at the UN because it wasn't the perspective they're used to hearing we had a few Swiss devotees a blonde girl, Krishna Kanta was her name a very sweet devotee, French-Swiss Who would have ever thought that Prabhupada would come to Geneva?

But why not? Geneva is, in the world history of religion, a very important city. It was there that one of the great proponents of the Reformation, Jean Calvin, organized the Protestant Reformation. So, Prabhupada was organizing the Krishna conscious Reformation of Switzerland and the world. now here we are this is entering the city hall of geneva this is srila prabhupada being shown through the uh entrance way and um somehow or other we managed to have srila prabhupada received as a dignitary in in the uh large capitals of europe that happened in rome it happened in Geneva, it happened in Paris, and this is a telling moment.

Here you see Srila Prabhupada seated while the mayor of Geneva issues his greeting, and that's Guru Guranga translating the mayor's remarks from French to English, and often there would be a declaration or some kind of plaque or something that would be handed over as a way of acknowledging Srila Prabhupada's visit to the city. And then Srila Prabhupada would reply, commenting, as he often did on such occasions, about the duty of good government to train citizens in what is spiritual life. Also warning that any government that does not take the responsibility seriously is a hellish government. I remember that that caused some consternation in Paris when he was received at the city hall there.

The mayor got very nervous. Two French reporters came to visit Prabhupada. One was an older man and one was a woman probably in her early 30s. Prabhupada didn't tell pastime stories, mostly preached about you're not that body, a lot of philosophical things, but he didn't generally tell so many stories.

And this woman was sitting there and he starts telling of this story about how this demon kidnapped 16,000 princesses. And Krishna finally came and killed the demon. And the princesses approached Krishna because they were really attracted to Krishna. And Krishna looked at them and he said, come on.

And that's how Krishna ended up with 16,000 wives. So as I'm listening to the story, I'm thinking, this is a pretty incredible story to tell a reporter especially in a in the western culture where everything is so rationalistic but he told that story and when he quoted Krishna saying come on that reporter's face lit up as only a woman who had some experience in the world of heartbreak could understand and even though the number of wives may have sounded so incredible that affection he had towards those princesses touched that woman's heart and she just lit up. It was beyond the rational. It was just on the level of an appreciation of the loving heart of Krishna by this very intelligent, very sophisticated French reporter.

And it was a very wonderful moment. I remember Prabhupada in a small temple in Switzerland. At one time he gave a class and he was describing how we should build a very nice singhasa in our heart and invite Krishna there. It should be as beautiful as we can.

It can be in gold, it can be in jewels, diamond, and we should sit him there and worship him. It was very impressive. I remember also asking Nittai, who was Prabhupada's secretary at the time, did Prabhupada mention where he would go next life for preaching? And Nittai told me Prabhupada said he would go on the lower planets to preach in the next verse.

That was the most viral thing. He said very clearly, yeah, Prabhupada said he would go on the lower planets to preach the message of Krishna. We had just finished completely changing the temple room, putting in arches, creating a new area for the deities. Radha Parashiswara had been sitting in the Pajari room, which is located behind the altar, while the work was going on.

And of course you know what it's like when Prabhupada is coming. I mean in Chicago they were still laying the floor while Prabhupada was practically walking in the door. So everybody's always working to the last minute. So they had just finished the work and the deities were still in the pujari room.

And they said, Prabhupada's here. So then Sital and I were carrying Parasiswara back to the altar and then she was just making the hair and making sure the crowns were neat and everything. And we had just finished and then Prabhupada walked in 30 seconds later. It was like nerve-wracking.

But the temple room looked beautiful, the deities looked fabulous. Prabhupada was in ecstasy, the devotees were in ecstasy. It was a magical, very magical time. I became Miss Denmark, and that proposed me to a career as a model.

I became the most expensive model in London and Paris, and I was working every single day for Vogue, Elle, Marie Claire. In 1974, I had a cover of Paris Match, which is a big newspaper, and it was sold in 24 countries, with my cover with a sari on, and the line was, I left everything for Krishna, and there was four pages inside, me making garlands in front of the deities, dancing around Tulsi, dancing and chanting Harinam in front of the Eiffel Tower. So, when Pai Math came out, of course they sent it to Prabhupada in Bombay, where he had it on his desk for one week. And he would say to the people coming, she gave up everything for Krishna, now you should do the same thing.

Prabhupada would be preaching like that. It was a serious, not so easy path, a path of spiritual emancipation. more I learned and the more I understood it may not be finished in one life. So I asked him if when I leave my body and I'm not a pure devotee in my next life is that you who is going to be my spiritual master? And Prabhupada reflected like this and he said you don't have to worry all the arrangements are already made.

Every day you are chanting janme janme prabhuse. That was important for me. The relationship with this person is eternal, it's not going to be broken. You know, I will try my utmost all my life, but if something happens, is it going to be there?

You know, I say yes. Oh, that was very, very important for me. I can see myself here getting my initiation beads and this is the, I think, the best moment of my whole life to actually get my beads from Srila Prabhupada and to feel like this connection was made. I think I cried the whole way through the ceremony.

I remember when my neck beads were put on, Krishnabamani put my neck beads on. She's saying to me, you can't cry in front of the deities. And I just, just looking at Srila Prabhupada and just This moment of actually getting initiated was so overwhelming that I just couldn't stop the tears. And I remember looking at Prabhupada's eyes.

It looked like Srila Prabhupada had tears in his eyes. His eyes were wet. They were like floating with water. Srila Prabhupada liked to receive the devotees in his room.

And very often when the devotees were coming, they were also bringing their children. So there is some very nice, sweet exchanges between Prabhupada and the children. The little children would go next to Prabhupada or go under his desk and play with his feet and do some little nice things children do. And Prabhupada was always very, very sweet and kind with them.

And, of course, most of the time he would give them some prasadam. But, of course, the biggest thing about children with Prabhupada was his teaching of how to manage the guru-kul. And because I did the Gurukul for 10 years, I have a lot of experience with Sri Aparapada and the children. And the thing that was the most important was, one, that devotional activities should never be forced on children.

It should always be presented to them in a way that they like it. And the other was that to use our common sense in dealing with the children. because so many things were done wrong because of trying to apply in a very, very rigid way the principles of Christian consciousness as they were applied to adults. And this brought a lot of havoc in the Gurukuls. But Prabhupada, when he saw these problems, reminded everybody, use your common sense.

We had a very big engagement for him in the biggest hall of Paris, which was called Sal Playel, Sri Prabhupada sat under the asasana, under the stage, and immediately at the back of the hall, French students start shouting, get down, not on the throne. So, you know, Prabhupada said, well, you can sit on this throne, anybody can sit on the throne if he's qualified. Then they quiet down and he started his lecture by quoting the Bible. The beginning was the Word, and the Word was God.

Because France is traditionally actually a very pious country, many monks and monasteries were started there, so he knew how to attract the heart of French people, at least some of them, not the revolutionary ones, which are not the only ones. And it worked. Many devotees were made at this engagement. I was one of them.

And then later on he said to the devotees, next time you just put a simple carpet on the stage for me. We had the Sankirtan leaders of that time from Bhagavan Zon, a little meeting with us. The first he congratulated the devotees for the results. And he asked the first question, I think the only question he asked us.

And he said, are you reading my books? Then Mrigupati said, you know Prabhupada, but we don't have much time, we don't have time to read. Then I heard I was near. Prabhupada went, what is the use?

I could see he was deeply hurt. You know, it was a major priority of our life was to be used to investigate this message, you know, these books, these thousands of hours of work. So, of course, we're distributing. But then Prabhupada was more interested. like whether we were reading his books.

Being a Pujari, I was missing everything. The morning walks, the room conversations, everything. And I was getting more and more stressed. People weren't turning up for their service.

And I was getting more and more resentful as the day went by. So it was the last night that he was there. I was crying. I wanted to see Prabhupada.

And then Bhagavan came into the kitchen. He immediately just understood. Somehow there must have been like a black cloud surrounding me. So Bhagavan ordered me, I want you to go up and see Prabhupada right now.

The thought of going up and seeing Prabhupada in this state was terrifying. And he said, no, I'm going. You come up with me. I thought, okay.

And I started walking behind him up to Prabhupada's room and I was getting smaller and smaller and feeling like I want to disappear completely. And as soon as I walked into Prabhupada's quarters, it was from night to day. you know I became so satisfied and so happy almost like like a child sitting in the lap of his mother and we were sitting and then I think it was Yogeshwara asked Prabhupada if he would sing so Prabhupada came and sat down in the middle of the room and the few of us that were there just surrounded him and Prabhupada did bhajan for maybe half an hour and they did recordings It was just like the most intimate and wonderful and beautiful experience to be there with Prabhupada singing with such emotion. And I remember Yogeshwar saying, Prabhupada, your voice is so amazing. It's so extraordinary.

And Prabhupada looked very shy, and he went, Oh, no, no, no, that's all right. Like, he just wasn't accepting that. It was very, very sweet and such a humble mood of Prabhupada. Somehow or another, my attitude had gone way off track.

And although at the time I wouldn't have thought of it, but now I see it as Prabhupada carrying Vrindaban with him in a way that, you know, we were all in that little bubble. And you didn't feel that you were anymore in Paris or, you know, in the material world, but you were in that little budge bubble that Prabhupada allowed us to enter into by his presence. So extraordinary. Prabhupada came, and we picked him up in a fleet of Volkswagen buses, which were all brand new, because our Sankirtan activities were fabulously successful.

And Prabhupada was very impressed by that. When we rolled into Schloss Rettershof, the owners who kept horses and had an academy for training, horse riding and jumping, for some reason they took it upon themselves to line up with their horses and when Prabhupada came by, the horses all made a bow. They were obviously very well trained horses and Prabhupada really liked that. We also, of course, liked it.

This particular footage from Germany would have been lost if it would not have been handed over to us by one Christian priest who was in ownership of this footage. He mentioned that the film began to deteriorate and it might be beneficial for us to take possession of it before it would be lost forever. I thought this is a nice example of cooperation between different religious beliefs. This is me talking to a journalist from a Christian organization in Germany.

When I listen now after so many years to my interview, I'm amazed how forceful, but also perhaps a little fanatical, I presented the philosophy of Krishna consciousness. My personal understanding of fanatical is that when we were young devotees, we were very enthusiastic and convinced about practicing and spreading Krishna consciousness, but naturally not very mature, not very experienced in doing so. This in itself should not be seen as a fault or mistake. It's natural.

We have seen on several occasions how Srila Prabhupada defended the behavior of his disciples, who were very serious and sincere, yet he certainly expected that in due course of time they would become more and more mature. At that time, Professor Durkheim came, and he is a huge, well-known personality in psychological departments of practically every university. He brought Zen Buddhism to Europe. He at that time had many German bishops, Catholic bishops, becoming very interested in Zen Buddhism.

He had about 30 of them coming for retreats, so he was hugely influential. And I thought that Sturckheim, the guru of the Catholic bishops, let him become the disciple of Srila Prabhupada. So when he came, he was quite reserved, but within minutes they struck up a very cordial relationship. They were contemporaries.

Durkheim was about maybe six years younger than Prabhupada. And Prabhupada talked with him so nicely that immediately developed a very wonderful relationship. And Durkheim started to listen to Prabhupada. I remember they walked over the fields.

And Durkheim also had so many ideas in his head and he started trying to impress Prabhupada. And Prabhupada looked at him at one stage and said, look, he said, this is not very intelligent. And Durkheim said, why? And Prabhupada explained to him why it's not intelligent.

And Durkheim laughed and said, I suppose you're right. It was beautiful to see these two elderly men talking to each other like friends. And I remember at the end of one discussion, Durkheim actually pays dandavat to Prabhupada. While he was in the dandavat position, he looked up and said, please accept me as your younger brother. which was kind of really nice seeing such a huge personality accepting Prabhupada's superiority.

So when I brought Durkheim back to the railway station he was talking about Prabhupada. He said it is quite amazing this visit. He said I've met many people in my life of spiritual standing. He said but I've I've never met a person like this master.

He said, he is, er ist durch. That means he is through, he made it. He achieves the perfect play. He said, this is a remarkable day in my life.

We recorded all these different lectures Prabhupada gave. I usually did the translating, which was an experience in itself. Prabhupada would start with a single sentence. Then I would translate.

I must say my English at that time was much worse than it is now. next time he had two sentences next three sentences it was getting longer and longer by some time he would speak for two, three, four minutes and I had to memorize everything to be able to translate it it was quite an experience but sometimes later in the years I listened to the tape that we recorded during those room conversations morning walks, etc and there was one sentence in there which either I had forgotten it or I hadn't heard it, but I could also not remember that anyone ever talked about it before. Out of sudden I hear the sentence, now you have become so successful in Germany, very soon the government is going to come down on you. He made a prediction. Five months later, this prediction came true.

Hansa Dutta and I were anticipating Prabhupada's coming to Germany. We wanted him to come to Germany more than we wanted anything else because it would give the devotees inspiration and I wanted to share Prabhupada with them because most of them had not met Prabhupada and we had a lot of devotees there who only knew Krishna because of us and and the books in the beginning of course it seemed like nobody knew how to do anything nobody knew how to take care of the deities or cook or clean or set things up. Everything had to be taught. It was wonderful how they wanted to learn.

And we had a way with them that Prabhupada had actually taught us. I don't think that it was something natural. I think that Prabhupada had empowered us. We were artists and we were loners before we joined the movement.

And now here we were surrounded by people day and night and more and more people wanting to join us, and we always found a place for them. And so I was always very, very busy. I was translating Prabhupada's books together with Satchi Nandan, and Nikila Nanda was there also. And so he was showing Prabhupada around in the Schloss, and then suddenly, of course, Prabhupada came in, and he showed also the translator's room.

And I had been working on teachings of Lord Chaitanya, So Prabhupada came in and he asked what we were working on, and I showed him this book is practically published. We have the galley proofs from the printer. So then suddenly he said, read. I started to read the introduction of Teachings of the Lord Chaitanya for quite some time, three, four paragraphs.

And Prabhupada was just standing there smiling, big smile and listening, although obviously he couldn't understand German, but just for him to see that the book in another language was coming out was his great, great pleasure. I put my alarm clock exactly on seven and a half minutes. All of a sudden, as I was lying behind my desk, I heard the voice of Srila Prabhupada inquiring about the German translations. First, I thought it was a dream, a nightmare.

Then, as I emerged to an ordinary, wakeful consciousness, I actually became aware Prabhupada is standing in our room. A few days before, he had said that he was never like the servants in the Dalhousie Park, who pretend to be busy but in reality sleep. And now I was sleeping under the table. I was really sleeping only for seven and a half minutes, and it was necessary to concentrate after the heavy breakfast.

But my smirta master, who only comes once in a lifetime in my area of service, now will find out I'm sleeping. I felt so bad, but I calculated it will be even more bad when Prabhupada finds me lying under the table, So I better emerge. So I somehow, as gracefully as I possibly could, brought my body in the sitting position. And at that moment, Prabhupada looked at me.

He was a little surprised because I came out like a soldier comes out under camouflage. and then he laughed into my face with eyes sparkling with energy and joy and he seemed to communicate it's all right it's all right we all need sometimes a rest and I was very much pleased by that very human feature of Srila Prabhupada's smile. So I was mainly concerned with Prabhupada's well-being. And when he came, I knew him to be a little bit fatty, and here he was quite thin. So I thought that my cooking would be so good that he would eat.

I remember the first day, he ate everything. He cleaned his plate. There was absolutely nothing left. There were always devotees outside the door waiting for his remnants, and there was nothing left. and then he slept.

He usually napped in the afternoon after he ate but he slept. He must have slept until six o'clock that evening after he ate and I was so worried. When he woke up I asked him nobody bothered to wake you because you were so soundly sleeping and was there something wrong with my cooking? He said oh no no it was very good.

I enjoyed. I haven't enjoyed that much for a long time. So I was very happy. Another time I remember I brought him food and I gave him very good portions.

And when I came back to get his plate, he had barely touched anything. And I said, Prabhupada, what's wrong? Did I not prepare it properly? He seemed to be deep in thought.

And he said, Oh, Himavati, I've tasted everything there is to taste. He taught us how to eat. He cooked for us. I wanted to be close to Prabhupada.

And so I was very obedient and I did everything that he told me to do in person, in his letters. I took his direction. Once we were taking a walk, so because I was always had a frustrated and irritable kind of mood on account of so many obstacles being put up by German authorities, I said to Prabhupada, I said, you know, Prabhupada, sometimes I think I would rather, you know, be engaged like a Kshatriya and killing people than preaching. And Prabhupada stopped and looked at me and he said, never do anything in anger and don't touch politics.

So anyway, sometimes Prabhupada, you know, would refer to the history that Parasurami drove out the Kshatriyas and that they settled in this part of the world, especially Germany. He remarked that the Germans are the most intelligent people on the planet and that their Sanskrit scholars actually are better than Indian Sanskrit scholars. And he pointed out that the philology of German is identical or almost the same as Sanskrit. One thing he used to say even after he visited Germany, whenever he would see Himavati or myself, he would say, What is that?

Trinken and rauchen. What is that? I would say probably drinking and smoking. Yes, yes, I saw everywhere, trinken and rauchen.

You know, he noticed that early in the morning they had beer vending machines and that people were drinking beer in the morning. One day he said, yes, I saw in Germany the man urinating on the street. He said, how degrading, what is this civilization? The man is urinating on the street.

So some devotee commented, but Prabhupada in India, they pass urine and stool in the street. And he said, that's different, that's different. So this is Srila Prabhupada's visit to Melbourne in 1974, when he came out specifically for the Rathiyatra Festival. And I had an arrangement with the immigration department that we could bring Srila Prabhupada through as a VIP, so he wouldn't have to go through the normal immigration procedures.

So that was all right, but I had to actually stay with his luggage so that they could check the luggage out. So Srila Prabhupada went through, met with the devotees, and they kept Satsarit Maharaj and myself behind, and we had to stay there with the luggage while it was being checked. And by the time we came out, the devotees, and Prabhupada had all left, and Satsarit Maharaj and myself, we were stuck at the airport with the luggage and all the devotees had gone. But there was one devotee who had not left and fortunately we caught his attention and we put all of Prabhupada's luggage in his van and Satsarit Maharaj and myself, we had to actually sit on the luggage in the back of the van to go to Melbourne Temple.

So at the airport, Srila Prabhupada had a television interview. Two or three television channels came and some newspaper reporters came. Actually, most of his visits to Australia, we got a lot of press coverage and that's why Shulaprapa liked coming. We had very good newspaper articles, a big feature article on the second page of the Melbourne Age and quite a few other articles and good television coverage.

So at this television coverage, there were two or three television stations there because there's only four stations in Australia anyway and that evening we told Srila Prabhupada we were expecting it to be on the news. So Ugrasrava, he put in a television set into Srila Prabhupada's room and we were watching and we were watching and watching the news and each time a feature had come on the news and it wasn't Prabhupada, he'd look away, right, and let that feature go. And then the next feature, he'd look to see if it was him and unfortunately it wasn't on. Nothing appeared.

But actually that evening on the 10 o'clock news there was a good feature on Prabhupada on Channel O. So August Shriva, he caught that and we told Prabhupada the next day and he was very pleased. Prabhupada was very frank and strong with reporters. He actually, I think he enjoyed the exchange because sometimes reporters, you know, they like to try to find some fault and Prabhupada would really be very strong with them.

But the keynote that they picked up on, And unfortunately, it was not Prabhupada's talk. The devotees had hired a Rolls-Royce. And as Prabhupada got into the Rolls-Royce outside, then a parking warden came up and stuck a parking ticket on the window just, you know, to make a statement. So the headlines in the newspaper, of course, had little to do with what Prabhupada had said in the news conference. and they were all mainly about how either the devotees had lavished this Rolls-Royce on someone who was supposed to be an ascetic sadhu, or the fact that we got this, what they call a bluey in Australia, or a parking ticket.

A reporter from the newspaper Melbourne Age had come to visit Prabhupada and Prabhupada took a lot of care with this fellow. He really explained everything in detail and a lot of the questions and answers had to do with reincarnation. Prabhupada explained how you can become less than human in your next life. He explained it in great detail, took a lot of time with this man.

And I was eager to go out the next morning and get the newspaper to see what illuminated article would have been printed. And I was very crestfallen when I saw the title, Swami Says He'll Be Animal in His Next Life. And I was just shattered. I thought, Prabhupada spent so much time with this guy.

It was with frustration and anger that I brought the paper to Prabhupada. And I thought I should preface my giving it to him with something to prepare him. And I said, Prabhupada, he didn't understand or chose not to understand anything you told him. He just twisted your words.

And he said, what is the title? And I said, Swami says he'll be Adam on next life. Does he mention Krishna? I said, yeah.

Is Krishna's name in the article? He said, yeah. He said, count. And so I counted maybe seven times Krishna's name.

And he said, what is the circulation of that paper? I said, I don't know, a couple, two, three hundred thousand. what is two or three hundred thousand times seven he said my spiritual master said anytime people say Krishna's name it is always a success so he said this article is a great success I remember when Prabhupada arrived then we would hire a Rolls Royce and that was a cause of a lot of publicity actually it made the evening newspaper the headline was his divine grace comes rolling in i remember we put up all these posters the poster read his divine grace a.c bhaktivinanda swami prabhupada at whose feet all masters sit and then had a nice picture of prabhupada and then the program for the five days or so that he was going to be in melbourne and then there was an overpass on the freeway from the airport and someone had plastered all posters right across the walk over so they're clearly visible about 20 feet up from the roadway and we're all following Prabhupada's Rolls Royce.

I remember the Rolls Royce slowed down for Prabhupada to see. We had the side doors that the vans opened and we had Kirtan following Prabhupada all the way through the city and into the temple. This is Prabhupada at the small temple in Burnett Street in St Kilda. Actually it was a terrace house and the temple room was very very small.

Actually Lord Jagannath Subhadra and Balaram were on an altar above, directly above Radha Balabha's head. Unfortunately there's so many devotees that not everybody could fit into the room. He actually gave initiation here, fire sacrifice. I remember the smoke was pouring out of a room and we were in the corridor.

You couldn't even see the Yasasantra from the doorway. Nevertheless, Prabhupada seemed very unfazed by the smoke. So everyone was gearing up for Prabhupada to come, installing the deities. My brother was coming every day after work to build the altar.

And, of course, all the devotees were like, Prabhupada said this, Prabhupada said that, Prabhupada says Prabhupada. And I kept on thinking, when I meet him, what if I'm disappointed? And say, what's the big deal? I was hoping I wouldn't be disappointed, but I reserved the right to make my own opinion.

And as usual, Prabhupada arrived when all the devotees had gone to the airport. We'd just finished cleaning, and I was in the Brahmachrini room. And I remember hearing, Prabhupada's here, Prabhupada's here. And as I rushed out of the room at the top of the stairs to go down, just at that same instant Prabhupada was at the door to come in and I always get very choked up when I recall this because it was such a momentous moment as soon as I saw Prabhupada I knew without a doubt that Prabhupada was everything everyone said about Prabhupada anyway so it was fabulous Because Prabhupada to me looked effulgent and his glow, he was glowing.

And just to look at the physical form of Prabhupada, I had no doubt, no doubt whatsoever that Prabhupada was a pure devotee. The lecture in the Melbourne Town Hall, right opposite where our current Gopal's restaurant is today, there's a lower Melbourne Town Hall and there's an upper Melbourne Town Hall. upper one is a gigantic cavernous hall concert hall with the organ so we chose the lower town hall so it wouldn't look out of place if we only got a few hundred people because the large one holds thousands of people and we got quite a few hundred people along to attend Prabhupada's 1974 town hall lecture and it was quite a wonderful event. We see Srila Prabhupada wearing that gorgeous saffron silk outfit that he's wearing there on that incredible saffron Vyasa sun that was built by shaman under dust it was made of saffron silk and it was quite astonishing it all came to pieces and we were able to carry it to various venues some places we even had extra pieces attached there were on a motor and would spin around with little lights on them that would attract the spotlights.

That turned out to be rather of an over-endeavor. This movement, Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement, is teaching the science of God. And if you accept the name of the God, name of God, Krishna, this is also a form in other system also, then you will be able to associate with God immediately. Srila Prabhupada stayed in our house in Brighton when our temple was in St.

Kilda. So at that time the quarters for Srila Prabhupada, the St. Kilda temple weren't so nice, so my My husband and my family, we moved out of the house, Srila Prabhupada moved in and prior to him moving in the devotees adjusted the house, they covered all the wall to wall carpet with white sheeting and I would be at the house and Srila Prabhupada would be walking down the hallway and smiling and his gentleness in his eyes and at times he thanked me for him staying in the house. I only asked him if he wanted something to eat or what he would like and he was always so polite and he would say yes thank you or no thank you or do not trouble yourself.

Actually one time Prabhupada said is there any service that you need and with that you know I didn't know what to say to Srila Prabhupada when he asked me that so I said no Srila Prabhupada, just being here in your presence is all the service that I need. I didn't ask any spiritual questions of Srila Prabhupada. I was always sort of speechless in his presence, really. So I think I was a little bit too shy to ask him anything.

Here in this material world, the name and the substance differ. Just like if I'm thirsty, I want water. So the water must come to me. If I simply chant water, water, water, that will not be effective, because it is relative world.

But in the transcendental world, Krishna is the name of God, and it is God also. So by chanting Hare Krishna you are directly in contact with God. This is the meaning of Hare Krishna. Originally my family lived in Melbourne so I rang up my father and told him that my spiritual master is coming to Melbourne on such and such a day and it would be really good if you could come and see him.

And he did. and he came that day and saw Prabhupada and he came along there and merged with the crowd and listened to Prabhupada and although he's a fairly serious Christian himself he was very pleased to come along and he had nothing but words of praise for Prabhupada and he'd always supported me becoming a devotee having years early dropped out of university and become a hippie and hitchhiking around the country and every time I'd come home I'd be on to some different kind of trip when I'd, you know, rake him about it. But when I actually committed myself to fully participate and join the Hare Krishna movement he was very happy and supportive of that, you know. And I found out some years after I'd been a devotee that he was involved in some inter-Pacific conference about religious toleration because I found a printout of the conference when I was a devotee in the temple I didn't even know about when it was happening but he got up in front of everyone and said you know my son has joined the Hare Krishna movement it's in my beliefs but still I fully support him to be involved in that and I think it's a good thing and my father was a school teacher he was teaching in a grammar school I think it was a Church of England school but still after the new temple was opened in Melbourne in Middle Park with a beautiful Rata Balba and Gornitai and Jagannath Deities he organised an excursion from the school every year to come visit the temple have darshan of the deities and have prasadam And he did that for many, many years. mind, take to this, take to that, to forget this suffering.

So actually we are suffering, but we are accepting it as enjoying. This is called illusion. So whatever we are doing in certain type of body in this material world, that is suffering. That is not enjoying.

Because why you are placed? Because I wanted to enjoy life like that. So puruṣo prakṛtiṣṭahi bhūṅte prakṛti-jāna-guṇā. And this profit is nothing but acceptance of the quality of material nature.

And that is very practical, we can understand. Just like we are getting, I get, say, fifty thousand dollars in a check. So I think that I have got fifty thousand dollars. But what is this fifty thousand dollars?

It is a piece of paper. You see? This is called illusion. In this way you study your life, you will see if you are sober, if you are actually thoughtful, you will find that this is not my life.

This is not my life. But I am falsely thinking that I am enjoying life. So therefore all these varieties of life, they are being controlled. Because not controlled, He accepts to be controlled.

Prakṛti does not want, nature does not want to control you. Just like foolish force. Police force is not meant for controlling you. But when you accept to be controlled by police, when you become a criminal, then police force controls you.

Not that police force is made by the government unnecessarily to control you. No. He is to help you. Government has arranged, police men, in every crossing, they are wandering in the street, they are meant for helping you.

They are not meant for controlling you. But when you agree to be controlled by the police, then it is controlled. Prakṛteḥ kriyamānāni guṇaiḥ karmānīśaḥ. Then you become under the police control.

If you become criminal, therefore frustration. Next stage is frustration. Everyone, we are frustrated because we are in this material world. That Prahlāda Mahārāja says, a great devotee, that his father asked me, my dear boy, what best thing you have learned?

He said, my dear father. He did not say father. His father was first-class materialist. Say, he's addressing the best of the demons.

Anyone who is very much sensuous, very much attached to sense gratification, they are called demon. Those persons who do not indulge in sense gratification but utilize this body or this life for God realization, Krishna realization. They are called gods. There are two classes of them, demon and God.

Those who are engaged in God consciousness, they are not God but godly. And those who are not, because this human life is meant for this purpose, forgetting our father, forgetting our God. We are criminals within this material world. Therefore our only business is how to get out of this prison house and go back to home, back to God.

The quality is the same. A drop of Atlantic or Pacific Ocean and the ocean, if you taste the drop, a small drop, It is salty. You can understand that the ocean is also salty. But the containing, the contents of salt, that is very small.

And the contents of salt in the ocean, that is very big. That you cannot imagine. God is like you and me, a person. But He is Pacific Ocean.

We are dropped. Yes? Yes. Wait a second.

Hold on. What is your question, please? This gentleman. Yes.

Doctrine. He wants to know what the doctrine of Kṛṣṇa consciousness is. Kṛṣṇa consciousness means that you are part and parcel of Kṛṣṇa or God. You being separated, I have already explained, you are suffering in this material world. so you back to your father go back to your father and be happy that's all you're saying that god is spirit we are spirit and and what what follows from there so we're spiritual ideas and of god so therefore the material state of mind so what is the question which is the scripture that we study, it says that Kṛṣṇa did not want us to come to this material world.

The question is, if Kṛṣṇa did not want us to come, why are we here? Yes. You force Kṛṣṇa to allow you to come. Just like sometimes a child forces the father.

Father says, my dear son, do not do this, do not go. But he says, I must, I must. All right, you go at your risk. That's all.

And you suffer. What can be done? Because you are God, because you are son of God, God has got independence, full independence, almighty. Therefore you have acquired the quality of your father.

You have got little independence. So God does not interfere with your little independence. If you persist, then I must go and enjoy independently. So God says, all right, you can go.

This is the case. You have to take sanction. That is a fact. But when you persist, God sanctions, and you come and enjoy.

Beginning from Lord Brahmā, down to the wands in the stool, gradually, according to work according to your desire. You manufacture your different types of body and enjoy and suffer. My job was to do the speaking engagements for Prabhupada, the bookings, and one such booking was at a monastery, monastery-seminary combination called St. Pascal's.

Prabhupada gave a wonderful lecture. I listened to that lecture once a year just to remind myself of how wonderful it was. He was speaking to seminarians, people that were committed to another religion. And he created a broad basis of commonality.

It was a wonderful non-sectarian lecture about God consciousness. And it wasn't overly long. But there was a very nice question period, which was prolonged, because he had definitely piqued their interest. And I remember one of them stood up and he said, What do you think of St.

Francis? And probably as he often did, he said, What is his philosophy? and the seminarian said you know he saw God everywhere he called the tree his brother or the bird his sister and probably eyes got wide he just looked at the seminarian his head went back and he looked around at everybody and he said that is real God consciousness and that brought tears to some of these guys eyes that here was a man from India and on the basis of this very much to the point description probably had more respect for him than anyone in the room than the people coming from his very own tradition and that impressed them and then there were some other questions which were very deftly handled and then we came to the point where Prabhupada invited them all to join us in Kirtan he said I've heard that the Greek word for Krishna is Christo and he said what happens when you say it repeatedly Christo, Christo, Christo, Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, Krishna so you have your word for Christ and we have our word for God and it's the same word so let's join and by gosh they did and during the course of that kirtan they all stood up they all were clapping they all were chanting and for the second time I saw tears coming from their eyes have this human form of life the facility of this life, of this form of life, is given to us just to understand God.

Other forms of life, cats and dogs, trees, and so many other things. There are eight million four hundred thousand forms of life. So in other forms of life it is not possible to understand what is God. If you call all the dogs of your country, come here, we shall talk about God.

There is no possibility of only chance. But in the human form of life, there is possibility. It doesn't matter whether it is in India or America or Australia. any human being, if he tries, and if he reads the scriptures, never mind Bible, Bhagavad-gītā, Bhāgavatam, then he will understand God. The beginning of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, janmād-daśya-yataḥ, absolute truth is that that from whom everything has come into existence.

Now, what is the nature of the Absolute Truth? Everything means there are two things, matter and spirit. Two things. Just like this table is matter, And we, living entities, we are spirit.

Spirit soul. This material body is my covering. Just like dress. Every one of us is dressed, covered by some kind of dress.

Similarly, all living beings, they are dressed by the material covering. So we, the spirit soul, part and parcel of God, at the present moment we are covered by two kinds of dresses. The subtle dress, mind, intelligence and ego, and the gross covering. Sattva means we know there is this thing, but we cannot see.

Just like you know I have got mind, I know you have got mind, but I don't see your mind, you don't see my mind. I know you have got intelligence, you know I have got intelligence, but we don't see, don't see what is that intelligence. intelligence. Similarly, identification, I am this consciousness, that also you have got consciousness, I have got consciousness, but we don't see. So things which are not visible to these material eyes, that is called subtle.

And spirit soul is still subtle. So human life is meant for understanding that spirit soul and the Supreme Soul. Your devotee said that you aim to get beyond the disease of material existence. I didn't quite pick up what your process was for doing this.

Could you tell me what the end result is? Why should you get beyond this? What is that? In Kṛṣṇa consciousness, the process is to get beyond the disease of material existence.

Yes. The first part of his question, how to do this? Second part of his question, what is the end result after taking to the process? The process is to transfer yourself from material energy to spiritual energy.

We are under energy. God has got two energies, material energy and spiritual energy. We are also energy. We are marginal energy.

So marginal energy means we can remain under the material energy or on the spiritual energy, As we make our choice. Marginal, just like on the beach, you find sometimes on the border of the water, the water is covering the land, and sometimes the land is open. This is called marginal position. Similarly, we are marginal energy of God, living entities.

So we can remain under the water, means the material energy, or we can remain open only. What is our view of Lord Jesus Christ? Lord Jesus Christ, Lord Jesus Christ, He is Son of God, the best Son of God. We have all respect for him.

Yes. Anyone who is teaching people about God consciousness is respectful to us. It does not matter in which country, in which atmosphere you are preaching. It doesn't matter.

Francis of Assisi found God in him and utilized the material for God. And St. Francis used to talk about brother dog and sister cat and sister water and brother weed. And what does his face look like as St.

Francis approached the material? St. Francis, the founder of this particular order, which we have been invited to speak to, found God in the material world. and he used to address the aspects of the material world as brother and sister, brother tree, sister water, like that. What is your view upon this?

This is real God consciousness. This is real God consciousness. Not that I am God conscious and I kill the animals. That is not God consciousness.

To accept the trees, plants, lower animals, Hence we can answer even as brother. samaḥ sarveṣu bhūteṣu This is explaining the Bhagavad-gītā. brahma-bhūtaḥ prasannātmā na śocate na kāṅkate samaḥ sarveṣu bhūteṣu Samaḥ. Samaḥ means equal. To all living entities, to see the spirit soul, anyone. It doesn't matter either he is man or cat or dog or tree or ant An insect or big man, they are all parts and parcel of God.

They are simply dressed differently. Pandita samadarsin. One who is pandit, learned, his vision is equal. So if St.

Francis was thinking like that, there is higher standard of spiritual understanding. Yes. We were pushing to have them finish for the festival. on the following day so i was in there sewing and then somebody came running and shouting and screaming there's a big fire it was right next door some sort of sewing facility also i think there were a lot of people on the top story that were working there ladies and it turns out the whole building was on fire and they were trapped on the top floor so everyone was trying to decide what to do they're all screaming and shouting what can we do and I think it was me that might have suggested take this canopy so we took the canopy which made of ripstop nylon very strong and we took it out and the men there's a large number of men there devotees and they held it a few feet off the ground taught as they could make it and told the women jump and at first they didn't want to.

But when the flames started whipping out the window and the smoke was coming and they just couldn't take the fire any longer, then one by one they started jumping. And they all jumped successfully. And as one jumped and landed, then they would tighten up the canopy again and another would jump. Then the last one to jump, who was the most fearful, she was a pregnant lady.

And when she finally jumped, at that time the canopy gave way and split where the seam was. But, however, she was fine. She survived that jump, and the baby survived also. So I was glad to see everyone was safe and sound, but I immediately started thinking, aha, how can we use this for publicity?

So I suggested someone go and call the press quickly, and we got the newspapers there, and we explained what had happened. So that in the following morning's newspaper, headline news was Hare Krishna heroes save ladies from fire or something like that and they showed it to Prabhupada and he was extremely pleased and it was very good advertising for the Rathiyatra because we're on the front page the very day of the Rathiyatra festival so we had a huge crowd that year. The irony surrounding the whole town hall engagement and the Rathiyatra festival was that the people that were issuing us thousands and thousands of dollars worth of tickets for chanting, dancing in the streets and distributing Srila Prabhupada's books in the streets were the same people that we had to go to to get the permits to conduct the Rathayatra festival. So I remember when I first had to go there to the Melbourne City Council, big dark oak draped council room with 30 or 40 of these city councilmen sitting around the table and I walked in with my shaved head and my dhoti and had to convince them that they should allow us to have the Ratha Yatra festival.

So when I walked in, he had this big pile of tickets on the table. And the head of the city council, the mayor of the city, said, well, what are we going to do about all these tickets here? And I convinced him, well, Krishna convinced him that they should not let these unpaid tickets have a bearing on their opinion whether they should give us the Ratha Yatra permit or not and I remember thinking to myself looking at the mayor's chest and saying that Krishna you are in his heart inside his chest is his heart and inside his heart you are there and if you want to allow us to have this Ratha Yatra festival then you instruct him from within that he should allow us to have this so the mayor was very flamboyant He said, just tell me one reason why I should allow you to have this festival, seeing that you have flaunted, you have snubbed us by not paying one single ticket that we have issued to you, which is thousands and thousands of dollars.

Why should we give you the permission to parade through our streets? And I looked at the council and I knew the egalitarian sentiment of the Australians. They always wanted to give people a fair chance because the history of Australia is that they were subjugated by the British. The prison colonies were started there and they were always for the common man.

So I looked at the mayor and I used one of the Australian idiomatic expressions. I said, well, just can you give us a fair go? That's all we're asking for is a fair go. and the mayor looked around and he didn't want to be the one to say that he wasn't going to give someone a fair go and looked at the members of the council and he said alright we'll give you a fair go and he stamped the permit and we got the permit to have the Rathayatra so the same people that were giving us tickets had to give us the permits and Krishna arranged it in such a way that they didn't hold it against us so the Rathayatra went on and Srila Prabhupada's speaking engagement went on in the Melbourne City Hall, and the newspapers gave us favorable reviews. Prabhupada came in for Rathiatra.

It was mid-winter, June. That was partly because he had told Madhavisa, if you become the number one book distributors in the world, then I'll come. And so we did, actually. He organized a BBT party, and Australia was consistently at the top of the book distribution ratings, even though we were just a tiny yatra at that time, maybe about 50 or 60 devotees in the whole country.

But Prabhupada kept his word and he came in 74. It was in the middle of the Melbourne winter. It was very, very cold. It was about, probably that day was about 12 degrees.

Prabhupada came and joined us about halfway through the parade in Collins Street. And of course when Prabhupada arrived in the actual parade, the devotees were in ecstasy. and in front of the Rathiatra cart we had this big diorama of Lord Chaitanya, big golden diorama. He was about 14 feet high. He was following in front of the rath cart and we were walking in front of Lord Chaitanya.

And every now and again Prabhupada would stop and he would turn around and he would just look at Lord Chaitanya in complete ecstasy. Then he would look at Lord Jagannath. And you see in these shots he's very, very happy. And then he would turn around and he would walk again.

And then Prabhupada walked for about two miles. So this Rathiyatra was quite astounding for us. And although it was a very, very cold day and there weren't so many people in the streets or actually following the procession, it was so potent and so powerful. It was as though Srila Prabhupada had conquered the whole of Melbourne.

It was like he was the king of the whole of Melbourne. Everything stopped for Srila Prabhupada. Look at how much ecstasy is in there. And the devotees all present felt that like this was the center of the universe because Srila Prabhupada was there and Lord Chaitanya was there and Lord Jagannath was there.

So it was a very, very ecstatic program. I remember that Bhai Bhave had stumbled upon a technique called anodization where she made breastplates and armlets for the deities, Jagannath Subhadra Alaram, out of foam. And then you submerge them in a solution which would make them shine like silver or shine like gold. And so we'd bedeck Lord Jagannath and Balaram with these wonderful warrior-like breastplates, and I think there were even kshatriya turbans and armlets on them.

They just looked gorgeous. Prabhupada walked a lot of that route, I think the entirety of it, and I remember there was a fellow, I think his name was Bob Jones, who had a big karate school in Australia at the time, and he provided a couple of bodyguards for Prabhupada. They walked on either side. that's me playing the big bass drum sometimes we have a we have a big kirtan in sydney temple and just as a kind of embellishment um madhavisa brought out a big bass drum one time and i used to be a drummer in a rock and roll band before i joined the harry krishna movement so i would put on the bass drum and it would kind of give a bit of an extra thump a bit of an extra impetus to the to the kirtan so when we had rathiatra myself and my brother jamal ajun would would strap on these big marching band bass drums and play them in a kind of rhythmic merdanga type, what we call the Naam Hatha beat, the sort of moving kind of exciting sort of rhythm.

And it would add a new dimension to the kirtan and to the Rathayatra parade. It was very nice to see Srila Prabhupada coming off the rath kart and actually walking in the Rathayatra procession with us. We had the three karts and we had Subhadra's kart set up for Prabhupada to ride the whole way, very comfortable, big Vyasa sign on the front. And I was very fortunate.

I was going to be on the cart there because I was the Pujari for Subhadra. So I was sitting right up there alongside Prabhupada. And I was thrilled. But then I was very demoralized because Prabhupada didn't get on the cart because he was so attracted to and fascinated by the big gold and Lord Chaitanya that we'd made.

And he just loved to walk alongside it and dance with it. And so he wouldn't get on the cart. He walked the whole parade. It was cold and it seems like it was about three miles long, but he danced and walked the whole way.

When we got to the end of the parade, then he got onto the cart inside of the hall. And at that time he gave the lecture sitting on the cart but I don't think I'd slept for several days because we were making the carts and there were so many things going on preparing for Prabhupada's coming and I was falling asleep on my feet so when Prabhupada started giving his lecture and I was fanning Subhadra I just kept falling asleep. Lady Subhadra was very kind and Prabhupada just kind of glanced now and again. I can't imagine what he was thinking, but I did my best to stay awake.

We would do that in those days. We would just work so hard that we couldn't survive when Prabhupada actually arrived. We were preparing for him to come, and then we missed half the classes. I was reading a letter yesterday that Prabhupada said, I appreciated very much how you were leading the kirtan and at the same time taking care of my personal.

But we were walking along in the Ratha Yatra festival. You wouldn't think that Prabhupada would observe that, but he saw how I was leading the kirtan and at the same time taking care of his personal. That's the way he worded it. In other words, making sure that everybody was around Srila Prabhupada and not blocking the way.

I'd had books which I had purchased a couple of years before when I was an attorney downtown. and I had those books on my bookcase and occasionally I'd pick up a Bhagavatam and try and read it to see if I could understand it but I never really understand I couldn't make head or tail of it but I knew, somehow or another I knew that this was it, this was the truth this was the real thing and also Prabhupada, I just had the conviction that this person, he was a person who had no ego and that he stood for what was the truth. And then just prior to the Rathayatra, on the Thursday I was on my way to one of my favorite jaunts, a wine bar, and next to the wine bar there was a big poster which was promoting the Rathayatra and Prabhupada. And on the poster there was a beautiful picture of Prabhupada with the caption that said, at whose feet all the masters sit and it really impacted on me and i looked at the poster and i thought yes so um then the saturday came around so i went to the rathiatra and then in the distance i saw these amazing huge chariots there were three of them with amazing canopies and and this amazing uh statue which was maybe 30 40 feet high of this golden personality with his arms in the air and there was literally hundreds of devotees that appeared to me were dancing ecstatically and blissfully and it was just a swirl of color and movement there was a couple of marching bass drums and it was just a wonderful sight I was just struck with wonder and then in the middle of the chanting party was this diminutive personality Srila Prabhupada who I had recognized from the books and from the poster when I first saw him he was actually dancing blissfully with his arms in the air I could see all the devotees were completely caught up in rapture so it appeared to me in retrospect Prabhupada was like the the full moon surrounded by the the stars in the sky on a cloudless night it was just a wonderful sight to behold and I was just completely overcome with joy myself at seeing it at this stage I was hooked and so I followed the procession up the street and into the exhibition buildings and there Prabhupada gave a lecture but I really couldn't understand what he was saying but it was something that was totally out of this world and something that I just felt that this is it this is it I want to be a part of this, whatever it is.

But I was caught up. I had Prabhupada fever very quickly. I mean, it was very contagious. It was spreading right throughout.

And I caught Prabhupada fever that first time that I saw him. And I still have it today. Apparently, it's incurable. Once you catch Prabhupada fever, you have it forever.

Over the years, I've met many, many people who actually saw the parade and saw Prabhupada on that day and just a couple of years ago in our restaurant one lady came in and she told me how that she'd seen our leader on this festival going through the streets of Melbourne and how she saw this big golden form at the head of the parade leading the procession and she said it really profoundly affected her and that over the years many many times she'd had dreams of that particular festival and that particular golden form of Lord Chaitanya. So that was the potency of Srila Prabhupada and Lord Jagannatha and the Rathayatra festival. After the Rathayatra parade, which was extremely successful, we wheeled all three carts into the Royal Exhibition buildings which were the final resting place of the Rathayatra festival and Prabhupada gave a nice lecture from the cart.

After his lecture he came down the stairs and he rested on a chair in a small room as we were preparing to distribute the feast and one of Prabhupada's disciples, Gopinathacharya entered the room with some incense So Srila Prabhupada is sitting there resting a little on the seat and Deepak Prabhu introduced me to Srila Prabhupada and said, oh, this is Gopinathacharya Das he's one of our leading book distributors So Srila Prabhupada was actually very interested And he turned his head very regally, looked at me, and asked me what I said to sell the books. So I mumbled and fumbled something to the effect that, oh, Srila Prabhupada, I just tell them it's about yoga. They think it's about exercises, like that. And Srila Prabhupada thought very pensively for, you know, 30 seconds or so, and he said, you should tell people that these books will solve the problems of life and help reduce the miseries of life.

In retrospect, I believe Srila Prabhupāda must have been thinking of the verse from the first canto of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, anātopasamam sākṣa bhakti-yoga-madhukṣuji lōkasi ātanato vidvāṁś cakvi-sattvita-saṁhitam The material miseries of the living entity, which is superfluous to him, can be directly mitigated by the linking process of devotional service. But the mass of people do not know this, and therefore the learned Vyasadeva compilation of Bhagavatam. So I felt very blessed to be privy to Srila Prabhupada's personal instruction what to say to distribute his books. Unfortunately I hadn't been able to introduce that kind of presentation on the street when we were selling books for many years but later on when we were selling Srila Prabhupada's sets of books they proved to be very successful.

People warm up to that. Actually, everyone has suffered. And Srila Prabhupada's real business was to somehow or another give people some happiness through Christian consciousness. So then he began to speak about the prediction in the Chaitanya Bhagavatam.

That Lord Chaitanya's name would be heard in every town and village. So Srila Prabhupada went on to say that this means that there will be a Radha Krishna temple in every town and village. Were there these six brahmanas who worshipped the deity? The next day I was told that there was a big program down at Ormond Hall.

I used to go to Ormond Hall back in the mid-60s when I was a jazzer, and jazz bands used to play down there. So it was one of the joints that we used to frequent. and so I went to Ormond Hall and I walked in and there's this amazing kirtan going on and Lord Chaitanya there's once again that golden figure is in the middle of the room and the devotees are just ecstatically dancing around it was an ecstatic blissful kirtan once again we had those marching bass drums I think there was about three of them and the devotees were just wild with enthusiasm and they were just dancing around like Indians surrounding a wagon train, whooping. And it was just, once again, another amazing sight. By this time, after seeing Prabhupada and the devotees at Rathiatra, seeing Prabhupada gliding past me at the temple, and then seeing this wonderful sight at Ormond Hall, and then Prabhupada walking in and giving a lecture once again, I couldn't understand what he was saying. but by this time I was completely convinced that yes I have to become a devotee so virtually a couple of days after that I moved into the temple and the day after that I was out on the street selling incense and collecting donations we had big ecstatic kirtan around Lord Chaitanya for about 45 minutes Madhavisa was leading and it was such an ecstatic kirtan that when Madhavisa stopped the chanting Prabhupada motioned like this to continue right he just he was just in ecstasy watching and hearing the kirtan he loved Mother Lisa's kirtan so much then after that he gave a lecture and then after the lecture another nice feast was served especially after the festival the day before when we had a big program and a big feast he was very pleased with that but then the next day it was on a Sunday another big feast was served and and he said who has cooked this He was very, very pleased that the devotees had gone to so much trouble to cook two beautiful feasts in two days.

As usual, my service was to cook a huge feast for the program. As I remember, I had to cook a huge feast, a codice feast. I can't remember exactly everything I made, but I do remember that I was sort of busy during the program that Prabhupada was talking, sort of organising the food and getting it ready to be served out at the end of the program. So I couldn't be present at the whole program.

But what we did was arrange all the plates and serve them all out in a room that was nearby or next to this hall where everyone was chanting and hearing Prabhupada talk. And when the program was over and Prabhupada was walking out, he walked past and saw all the plates of prasadam spread out and he looked at Madhavisa and said Oh, who has done all this? And Madhavisa said Dwaparayana has done this and Prabhupada said, Oh, this is very good The large murti of Lord Chaitanya that we see in the Ormond Hall lecture here that was created by Dormya Das and Dormio had perfected the art of cold electroplating he was able to build this murti in pieces and then create a wonderful shiny gold coating and then with pegs assemble the murti and bring it to various events it was there at the Rathiatra festival and as we can see Prabhupada encouraged us with a wave of his hand that we all circumambulate the deity and he was like the general ordering the troops and just with that little movement of his head and the little movement of his hands, we took his lead and we danced ecstatically around the murti with those very big bass drums that we had used the day before at Rathayatra.

Complete knowledge. So if you read Bhagavad-gītā, you get complete knowledge. So what Bhagavān says, Bhagavān Kṛṣṇa is teaching Arjuna. So in the ninth chapter He says, My dear Arjuna, I am now speaking to you the most confidential knowledge, guhyatamam.

Tamam means superlative, positive, comparative and superlative. In Sanskrit, tara-tama. Tara is comparative, and tama means superior. So here Bhagavān says, the perfect personality of Godhead says, idāntute guhyatamam prabhakṣāmi.

Now I am speaking to you the most confidential knowledge. Jñānaṁ vijñānaśahitam. The knowledge is with full knowledge, not that imagination. Jñānaṁ vijñānaśahitam.

Vijñāna means science, practical demonstration. So jñānaṁ vijñānaśaita. Yajñātyā, if you learn this knowledge, yajñātyā mokṣaśe asubhā. Asubhā.

Mokṣaśe means you get liberation, and asubhā means inauspicity, inauspicity. So our present life, at the present moment, present life means so long we possess this material body, it is full of inauspicity. Moksase asubhāt. Asuha means inauspicity.

So what is that confidential knowledge? When he met Sri Caitanya Mahāprabhu at Prāyāva, there is a place, holy place in India, which is called Prāyāva. So Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, after accepting His renounce order or sannyāsa, He went to Prayāga and other holy places. So Śrīla Rūpa Gosvāmī, He was minister of the government, but He gave up everything and joined this Hare Kṛṣṇa movement with Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu.

So when he first met and he offered this verse, namo mahā-bhādānyo. Bhādānyo means the most magnanimous. Yes, Kṛṣṇa asked that you rascals surrender unto Me. You are all rascals, you surrender to Kṛṣṇa.

Then your life will be successful. That's right. This is the sum and substance of Kṛṣṇa's instruction. Sarva-dharmān parityajya mām ekaṁ śaraṇaṁ bhajau.

Kṛṣṇa is not asking only Arjuna. He is asking all us, all us beings, that you are manufacturing so many things for becoming happy. You'll never be happy. Rest assured.

But surrender to Me, and I'll make you happy. That's all. One life. So what can be done?

Kṛṣṇa is offering all opportunities, and we, humble servant of Kṛṣṇa, we are trying to preach it, but the rascals will not accept it. What can be done? That is the difficulty. They want to continue to remain as rascals.

That is what can be done. This is the difficulty. Otherwise, everything is there. if we take it, even a child can take benefit out of it, a Kṛṣṇa consciousness that you have seen practically. But we'll not take it.

That is the issue. Prabhupāda would be giving a lecture and his glance would kind of fall over you and he'd just be looking straight through you. The devotees, they felt that Prabhupāda was seeing right into their heart. You know, I've heard that from a lot of devotees and I've felt that also.

Definitely that's reality. Right? Because it's confirmed by not just me but confirmed by so many devotees they felt Prabhupada looking right into their hearts even though he was giving a lecture and certain things he was saying in the lecture he'd look at you and that thing that he was saying was applying to you he wasn't just talking to the crowd he was talking to you and what Prabhupada was saying in that particular point of time really penetrated deep into your heart we were very fortunate that William Kerr who was a freelance cinematographer and filmmaker gave his services to film a lot of the footage that we see of Prabhupada in Australia and he had a whole team that would come and and film as many of the events that they could including the installation of the deities the opening of the temple morning walks the classes the town hall programs and he was filming over over a number of years from 1973 all the way through to Prabhupada's 1975 visit so he would have well, a big camera actually, on a dolly and wheel it through the Botanic Gardens and take a lot of that classic footage.

So we were very indebted to him for doing that. There were three major universities in Melbourne and La Trobe University was one of them. We arranged a program. I remember we went into the hall, it was an auditorium, and there weren't many students there, even though we'd extensively advertised.

There might have been about 50 to 100 students. But it was a huge auditorium and it wasn't filled up, so then Madhavisa had the idea to take all of the devotees out and Prabhupada hadn't arrived yet and do a big Harinam on the main quadrangle in the university and try and bring more students back and it had the desired effect because it was right at lunchtime. It's like the Pied Piper, Madhavisa brought all these students in, the whole auditorium was full to capacity but as it happened it was only about two or three minutes into Prabhupada's lecture and the students started heckling At this time, in the early 70s, La Trobe University were in the throngs of Vietnam protests. The Vietnam War had become a very unpopular war throughout Australia, and Srila Prabhupada was identified by the students as someone who was taking the thunder away from their anti-war demonstrations by preaching peace and love.

Instead of encouraging students to demonstrate against the war, Prabhupada was telling people to chant Hare Krishna and to solve the problems of the world like that. So they had strategically placed many students in the audience that were specifically there just to disrupt the lecture. So after the kirtan was over, Srila Prabhupada began to speak and immediately one student stood up and started to object to what Srila Prabhupada was saying. And the gist of what they were saying is that Srila Prabhupada was there just to disturb their anti-war sentiments.

Then we had that person removed and brought into the back, and then as soon as Srila Prabhupada started to speak again, someone else stood up and started to speak, and they would be using profanity and wouldn't be reasoned with. And I tried from the microphone to try to diffuse the whole situation, but they were determined that they wouldn't listen to any logic. Although the audience wanted to hear Srila Prabhupada speak, these hecklers were determined to stop the meeting. So after three or four of those people did this and wouldn't allow Srila Prabhupada to speak, then Prabhupada finally said, Well, just chant.

So we chanted, and then Srila Prabhupada left. But while this whole thing was going on, the devotees were taking these hecklers out and bringing them into the vestibule. And the fistfights, there was a big fistfight, broke out. So although it appears to be calm in the auditorium, just outside the doors there was a full-fledged Donnybrook going on.

And the devotees were defending themselves, and it became quite a bloody scene. And one of the students had a knife and he threw the knife on the ground and he said, look, look, they have a knife. They're trying to stab me. And so the security guards came and it was a big commotion out there.

But just Krishna was working in such a subtle way. The temple president of Sydney, Australia now, whose name is Atmarama, he was initiated by Srila Prabhupada. But at that time he was a student at La Trobe University. And he saw all these people walking into the men's room.

They were all bleeding, bloody noses. And he says, gee, I thought those Hare Krishnas were, you know, peaceful people. He says, how come there's a big fight going on? He said, oh, they were heckling his spiritual master.

And he said, oh, these guys are really committed. And he was profoundly affected by the devotees' fierce loyalty to Srila Prabhupada. and soon after that he became initiated and now he's the temple president of Sydney. So Krishna works in strange ways. Also the students up on top of the underpasses as the devotees were leaving they dumped black paint on our white vans.

So it was an orchestrated thing by these anti-war demonstrators. So when Srila Prabhupada got back to his room he said, now we know we cannot have any free speaking engagements anymore. He says, whenever I speak in public like this, you must charge $5 or $2. There must be some admission charge, because when we have these free assemblies, then any riffraff can come and cause a disturbance.

Now, if the intelligentsia of Australia cannot sit for half an hour and listen to a gentleman speak about love of God, it does not speak very well for you. We are simply not asking for disturbance. We are not asking for violence, but we will meet violence with violence. We are not artificially pacifists.

We are asking you to listen like gentlemen. We have come here in goodwill. We have come here not to cause any disturbance. So we ask you please to have that much respect for our spiritual master.

Now at this time, if there is any questions about Krishna consciousness philosophy, not about fighting, we can go out in the street and fight and we can solve everything out there we have come here to speak about spiritual matters if we want to speak about spiritual matters, let's speak together like brothers and sisters, let's not cause disturbance I have an ego, you have an ego if you do something to flick off my ego, I may get mad if I do something to flick off your ego, you get mad so we'll go out into the street and set it like a cat and a dog no, we're not here in this university to act like that we're supposed to have raised above that platform so please we ask you to present sober questions to our spiritual master yes sir well he's coming welcome he shall welcome it's very good news that Jesus is coming Jesus had no reputation he wore sandals and he was crucified between two thieves in Karaklikna And your spirituality is in a Rolls Royce, on a padded seat, and you're all in the money, you Krishnas. You want money, you rip off people in the streets.

We came for this university program independently, not with the devotees, so we sat in the audience rather than on the stage. And it became quite unpleasant. And because it was so disturbing, it was a little bit shocking, I remember for myself and later I remember Srila Prabhupada said that under such circumstances they should have just immediately started kirtan and not done anything else and the kirtan would have been enough we had three questions maybe there's somebody else who have a question another question yes sir do you consider your movements the major form of enlightenment emanating from the United States today, what order of priority has your movement in the White House Psychological Warfare Department, the CIO, and will you also be coming along to our July 4th demonstration again this year to try and f*** it up and divert people away from taking up real political issues concerned with Australian independence?

We can answer one at a time. I can answer the four if you like. Our movement is not coming from the United States. If you have some paranoiac stigma about everything coming from the United States, well, that's your hang-up, not mine.

The spiritual master, he came to the United States to start this Krishna consciousness movement because he got a free ticket on a boat to go there. And because it was the mercy of this one lady who gave him the free ticket on the boat, he came to America on the orders of his spiritual master. This is the reason he came to America to start Krishna consciousness. If you had sent him a free ticket, he probably would have come to Australia first.

He was a monk, a penniless monk in India, and he was trying to follow the orders of his spiritual teacher by spreading love of God. He's not trying to stop any kind of a political movement. Actually, he is trying to spark a revolution in consciousness. I think that you are also interested in revolution.

We are also interested in revolution also. But we are interested in the revolution which will help people to feel peace with themselves whether they're communist or Marxist or Leninist or whatever it is you like. This is a morning walk in the botanical gardens in Melbourne. They're very beautiful gardens, sit over a couple of hundred acres.

And each morning, Srila Prabhupada will go for a morning walk with different devotees from different departments in the temple. One morning, the Pajaris would go. Next morning, the devotees from the book distributors, the BBT party, would go, the devotees who are working for Spiritual Sky. So in this way, all of the Australian devotees had an opportunity to go out on the morning walks.

Of course, we were chanting japa and the devotees were asking many, many questions. I went on this morning walk and I was sitting next to Prabhupada. There were only a few of us. And Prabhupada was looking out at the people all going to work along St Kilda Road and they were all dressed up in their suits, men and women.

It was one of the very kind of upmarket parts of Melbourne and all these people were dressed up, all rushing off to work and I was sitting next to Prabhupada and I remember I was looking at him thinking, oh how fortunate I am, I'm here with Prabhupada, I'm here with the great pure devotee of the world and they're all these people just going off like mudhas to work and then Prabhupada was looking out at them too and then Prabhupada turned around to me and I saw that he had tears running down out of his eyes and he looked at me and he said, how can they be saved? That was the most important question Prabhupāda ever asked me in my life. I've been dwelling on that ever since. How can they be saved?

So while we were thinking of how fortunate we were, Prabhupāda was purely thinking of the people who he couldn't connect with because of the barriers they'd put around themselves in different ways. It was early in the morning, about 6.30am, and one person was practising his golf, putting, and Prabhupāda stopped in the middle of a walk and said, what is he doing? The bodhisattva said, oh, he's practicing his golf, Srila Prabhupada. The Prabhupada said again, well, what is he doing?

He's wasting his human form of life. In the same austerities, he's going to practice his golf at 6.30 in the morning. He could easily be directing towards Krishna. And actually Prabhupada had tears in his eyes watching his determination to practice his golf.

And we're in the gardens on a morning walk. I was having a bit of trouble chanting my rounds. I was thinking how difficult it was to follow the regulative principles and I remember I very rarely ask Prabhupada questions but on this occasion Prabhupada was talking about transcendental anxiety and I said to Prabhupada is it transcendental anxiety Prabhupada when you're worried because you can't get your rounds done or you're worried about following the four regulative principles and things like that and Prabhupada said no He said, that is material anxiety. Transcendental anxiety is where Mother Jisoda is worried that Krishna may get attacked by a monkey.

He said, fear for Krishna, it's anxiety for Krishna. It's not anxiety for yourself. He said, that's mundane. So Prabhupada cleared me up on that one.

I always realized from then on that all my anxieties are basically material. We had the temple in St Kilda and Srila Prabhupada was still staying at my house in Brighton I'd pick Srila Prabhupada up for the morning lecture Prabhupada would go inside and give the lecture and I'd listen to the lecture and when Prabhupada had finished I'd bring the car around the front double park it in the street and I'd pick up Srila Prabhupada and put him in the car This particular day Chittahari said to me begged me that could he take the fair lane for a drive and I said okay take the fair lane for a drive don't take long because Srila Prabhupada's nearly finished has to be back in time so Chittahari didn't come back and Prabhupada was finishing his lecture so I raced around the back of the temple we had this old combi wagon which had Radha Krishna painted up on the side door that was what we used to take all the rubbish to the tip and all the the excess strassatum down to the beach to throw into the ocean lecture was finishing up so I've raced around I've thrown all the rubbish out into the laneway I got a broom I got a hose I tried to clean it as best I could it stunk I've got the combi wagon I've come around I've double parked because Chittahari still hasn't turned up and Prabhupad walks out sees the combi wagon and I put him in the front seat so the two of us take off to Brighton.

It was raining so the windscreen wipers were on. So every time the windscreen wiper went backwards and forwards the horn would go beep. So the windscreen wipers go and the horns go and as we're going down the road Burnett Street and Prabhupada looked at me and he said what is going on? And I said, well, Srila Prabhupada, the Jedi need to come back with the car.

We had to get the old truck. So Srila Prabhupada watched the windscreen wiper, listened to the horn go, and he just broke up. He thought it was the most hilarious thing. And we went into great discourse about Indian cars, similar to the one that we're in at the moment.

We actually had many nice preaching engagements for Srila Prabhupada. The first one was a meeting with three scientists from the Commonwealth of Australia's Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. And they had a very, very nice conversation and they were concerned with the food problem of the world. They wanted to know how specifically the Hare Krishna movement could help with the starving people of Asia.

And Prabhupada just said, get them to chant Hare Krishna and that will solve all problems. And they sort of looked. That was a very jovial conversation actually, and they were very respectful of Prabhupada. And at the end, one of the men admitted that his daughter had been given a copy of the Srimad Bhagavatam in the street by the devotees, and that he and one of the other gentlemen there were actually reading the Srimad Bhagavatam.

And Prabhupada said that because they were reading the Bhagavatam, these men are gentlemen. There was a fellow scholar who had an idea to interview Prabhupada's disciples in order to work up psychological profiles on them and perhaps get an angle on what type of person might be most inclined to join the Hare Krishna movement. And he went to Prabhupada to get Prabhupada's permission to interview his disciples and ask them what it was they had been doing before they joined the Krishna consciousness movement. And Prabhupada said, no, it doesn't matter whether they're hippies on the street taking drugs, it doesn't matter whether they're PhDs, whatever they were, it was black.

It was all black. It is not worth writing about. What's important, what's notable is the fact that they have joined this Krishna conscious movement. And as far as trying to work up a psychological profile of what type of person joins the Krishna conscious movement, It is simply the quest for the truth.

If you want the answer to your question without a lot of research, those who are interested in the Absolute Truth, they will join the Krishna Consciousness Movement. And their lives will have little or no meaning or value. They're certainly not worthy of the subject of study before becoming devotees. But after becoming devotees, yes, that is worthy subject matter.

So we used to try to think of some gift to give to Srila Prabhupada. What can we think of? So one morning in the St. Kilda Temple in Melbourne, which was quite small, and all the devotees from all over Australia were crowded in there, so Prabhupada entered the room and we all offered obeisances and I just heard Prabhupada say, don't touch the Bhagavatam to the floor.

Somebody had touched the Bhagavatam to the floor because Prabhupada said don't touch it to the floor. So I had this idea I could get a nice cloth made to wrap around the Bhagavatam and I asked ladies who do sewing for the deities. So they had this nice brocade cloth with gold tassels at the end. And I asked her to make that.

And then I went into downtown Melbourne. I found some really nice looking mangoes. I think I bought about six. So I put these things all in the back of Godhead box.

And then I went to the house where Prabhupada was staying. And I entered the room where Prabhupada was sitting in behind his desk and talking to a whole room full of devotees. So at one point he paused and he looked over my box. So he said, so what is this?

So I got the book cover cloth out and I guess you could say when I entered the room I thought, well I've got these really good gifts to offer the Prabhupada, you know, thinking this is pretty good. I've got something, right? So I picked the cloth up and I said, Srila Prabhupada, I heard this morning you said that we shouldn't touch the bhagavatam for the floor. So I got you this nice cloth to keep around your bhagavatam.

Prabhupada said, I don't touch my bhagavatam to the floor. And then I wanted to explain what I meant, what led to me deciding to do this. But Prabhupada, every time I start to say something, he'd interrupt me. So I say, oh, but I mean, no, I don't touch my bhagavatam to the floor.

Every time I try to explain, he stopped me, you know. I'm keeping my bhagavatam on the shelf. I don't touch my Bhagavatam to the floor he's very stern you know and then all the devotees started laughing laughing really loud and then he said this is for you so in that way I was totally totally humbled you know I just felt like oh if I could crawl in a hole and hide you know I would everybody's laughing at me and Prabhupada was so stern I meant to give him a gift but it sounded like an insult I didn't mean it as an insult but I can't explain it so i can't describe the feeling you know i just sat there and waited and then he said then at this stage if i get these mangoes out you know what's going to happen if i get them out so i i picked the mangoes up and and i said and i also got you some mangoes then probably i looked at mangoes and then a big smile came on his face and he said ah this is a gift mango is the king of fruit and then his whole mood changed from stern to like just beaming and i was like totally relieved but it relates to the idea that that if you offer something with pride then krishna doesn't like it it's not the right mood but he created that mood in me begging please accept this offering prabhupada to me was a man full of grace he was a gentle man, a gentle person and compassionate and cultured he displayed so much culture and yet he was he led such a simple life, you know, needed very little to comfort him, so every day when I return from work I always go to our puja room at home and thank Srila Prabhupada just for So, just for the knowledge and allowing us to know all these wonderful things.

Actually, I get very emotional when I start to think about it. So, I miss Srila Prabhupada very much. I would like to say I love you Srila Prabhupada.