Nara-Narayana das Remembers Srila Prabhupada
Nara-Narayan: I joined the Krishna consciousness movement in San Francisco, just after Ratha-yatra in 1968. Shortly after that, Srila Prabhupada came to San Francisco. I was immediately transferred to Seattle to build an altar and vyasasana for Prabhupada’s visit and in the fall or winter of 1968, Srila Prabhupada came to Seattle. The temple was a little house, which was full of devotees from the Los Angeles sankirtan party. When Srila Prabhupada came, we wanted to have guests come, but few came. However, once we were delighted when around twenty students came from the University of Washington. Prabhupada gave a lecture, and in the middle of the lecture he said, “Please do not misunderstand. Misunderstanding is already there.” We were thunderstruck.
Also in Seattle, during the disappearance day celebration for Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati, Prabhupada described how his spiritual master told him to spread Krishna consciousness in the Western world. He had only been given a few words of instruction: “You should go and spread Krishna consciousness in the English language.” Many years passed, and at some point, Prabhupada said, he began to see his spiritual master in dreams, and his spiritual master said to him, “It is time to go.” Prabhupada said, “I was thinking, how I can leave my four children and do this?” It seemed as though tears shot from his eyes as he said this. He looked around at us, his eyes shining, and he said, “But now, I have so many children.” From the way he spoke, it almost gave the impression that the whole world had gathered inside that tiny room in Seattle. We could envision that somehow there would be a huge world movement. Yet at that time there were less than seventy devotees. |
To view the entire unedited video go to Memories 15 - The 1996 NYC and LA Reunions
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