B.A. Paramadvaiti Swami: A young man from the second channel of the German television visited our temple which was in the very heart of Berlin. He came in and told us that he wanted to make a documentary about the Krishna conscious movement. At that time our temple president was Sivananda das, an American devotee, who had been sent to Europe by Srila Prabhupada, who was very enthusiastic and very kind, but he did not speak German yet. So, since I was a talkative fellow, he asked me to please take care of this documentary making
together with the film crew. The most important activity here is to try to satisfy our spiritual master. We can accomplish this by distributing the message of Krishna consciousness to everyone. This is the Ku'damm— the heart of Berlin. It's like the top road. We were only six blocks away from the hot spot of Berlin so we used to walk to sankirtan. And then I bought a megaphone somewhere in a secondhand shop. You saw me using that. Actually what I did in those days, I looked up the newspaperswhat was the daily headline. I would just talk about
that headline and as you see practically hundreds of people stay and listen. And devotees would go out and sell the books to them. So it was very entertaining and of course we interrupted with
singing and dancing all the time. It was a beautiful style of sankirtan. I mean if you look at that: this straightforward, honest, going and singing there in dhotis, speaking to the public and giving out Prabhupada's books like "Easy Journey to Other Planets." It was absolutely spectacular. Of course, I was speaking to the people, like people usually do, after a little Harinam, and to invite people over to our temple. And you can see in the pictures,the temple was lively. Many, many new faces were there all the time, and we were very, very happy. You could say the temple president was very good, prasadam was very good, we were very satisfied.
Every time when we would go to the S-Bahn to go to sankirtan, we could actually look over the Wall, the Berlin Wall, into the East and we were very, having mixed feelings, because at that time Berlin was like an island within the East and so
you have compassion. You feel, "Oh, these people on the other side cannot get Krishna consciousness." So we were always thinking from the very beginning how to move onwards and also reach out to Easy Germany. You know Prabhupada's spirit was with us. I had a little accident and I couldn't go out on normal sankirtan, so in that time I used to go everyday to East Berlin through Checkpoint Charlie and the West Germans had a 24-hour visa only into the East. They could not stay longer than that. Sometimes we took one or two books in our pocket. It was extremely prohibited, but you were not always completely searched. So just one or two books, that was able. So that's how the first books got there. So I would go in the morning and come back at night I would go to Bahnhof Friedrichstrasse in the East, change myself into a
dhoti in the bathroom, and walk out of the bathroom now as a robed monk. And I would just
run around in the streets, what is the hot spots of East Berlin, and people would approach me
and I would start talking to them. Then we used to have a Sunday feast in East Berlin, every Sunday in a different park, and only the more closer, really trusted people, they would know where the next feast is. So it started working up. We ended up with Sunday feasts for 50 people. So it was a totally undercover thing, and as a matter of fact one day one man who had a little farmhouse, he had invited us to do a gathering in his farmhouse. So when we went there, that moment one spy from the Eastern government actually ended up in our program and from then on we were persecuted. But still the devotees managed somehow. The movement never stopped
ever since we started there. And later one devotee was initiated by Prabhupada. I used to go everyday, but then my health got better again and Sivananda also wanted to go.
They tried anything and everything to make him part from our philosophy which they didn't manage. I think he was chanting 64 rounds there, in this confinement. And finally they got so disgusted with him, that one night they took him for a ride and he thought they were going to kill him and they took him out into a forest and they said, "Walk this direction and never come back." And when he kept walking, all of a sudden he was in West Germany. So he was the first Krishna devotee who was actually thrown out from East Germany because they couldn't convert him back to a normal communist. And of course at that time also the preaching started in the East. We met the first person from Czechoslovakia, Turiya, and that's when the Polish yatra also got the first messages from the East Germans. They took something there, and also first preaching in Hungary. We smuggled in a van full of
books and did a lot of preaching there.
We were starting to learn English with Prabhupada's tapes because it wasn't an English-speaking country, so in the beginning it was difficult because Prabhupada's intonation isn't that easy. But quickly we learned it and then listening
to Prabhupada's tapes was really one of our main joys. Without Srila Prabhupada, nothing
would have happened at that time. He had this mystical power to reach us, even though we were so distant from him and knew so little about him, but he had us electrified. And whatever the plan of Krishna was, it was definitely meant to happen and Srila Prabhupada was floating in that nectar of his Movement reaching out everywhere. But when you went to Prabhupada or when you talked to him about any specifics, you could see that he was so aware of all the details: just like perfectly the pure devotee in contact with the Supersoul, knowing what to say and what's going on, even though it's impossible that he knows it all simultaneously. But he was always there for each and every one of us and we felt that protection. That's why not only it worked at that time, it also works for those who follow him even afterwards because nowadays there are
so many generations of devotees. But I have a very, very strong feeling that there's not much difference of them to us because even though we are fortunate at having met Prabhupada personally, the mystical influence of Prabhupada's outreach, it just reaches anybody who loves him and who has a feeling that he wants to do something for him. And that's a mystical power
which definitely keeps working just like as if he was still with us.
