Sri Nathji: Prabhupada came to my parents’ home. I was surprised when my mother phoned me at the office and said, “Don’t forget to come a little early for lunch.” I said, “Why should I come early?” She said, “We’re having a very important guest.” I said, “Fine.” My father and I came home at about 12:30 p.m., and when we entered, devotees were singing the maha-mantra and dancing. At that time I was a disciple of a famous Mayavadi, Chinmayananda Swami, who was anti-Prabhupada. So I was shocked to see these Westerners, dressed with dhotis, saris, and tilak, singing and dancing and behaving as if they owned my house. And they were all over the place. My mother loved it, and my elderly father, who held a senior position in the government as a Member of Parliament, appreciated what Prabhupada was doing. After the kirtan the devotees sat in the library room. The first thing Prabhupada said to my father was, “My disciples are getting a bad name in India. They are getting investigated to see if they are CIA agents.” This was in 1971, and the devotees were being harassed. They were not getting visas and were sometimes deported or arrested. Prabhupada said, “My disciples get up early in the morning, chant their rounds, attend mangal arati and classes. They do so much service for Krishna. Why don’t you go to Parliament and get that investigation stopped? Allow all my disciples to have long-term visas.” My father said, “Let me see what I can do.” Prabhupada was getting my family into devotional service. The next thing he said was, “You see this young man here”—and everybody turned to the young man, about nineteen years old—“he was originally an associate of Lord Chaitanya.” I was looking very carefully at Prabhupada, examining him. And in my heart I thought, “This is a con man. This guy really knows how to speak.” Then Prabhupada said a very strange thing. He asked my father, “Do you think you can adopt this young man and make him an Indian citizen?” My heart sank. That young man was Jayapataka Swami. My father said, “Let me see what I can do.” During the course of the next few months, Prabhupada made my father a Life Member. I believe he was the thirty-second Life Member in ISKCON. Today of course, there are more than twenty-five or thirty thousand Life Members in India alone. Prabhupada gave my father his personal books. He gave him his own Bhagavad-gita, which he had always kept with him, his personal copies of the Krishna books, Teachings of Lord Chaitanya, and The Nectar of Devotion. My father gave a lot of money to Prabhupada. I thought, “Prabhupada makes my father work and takes away his money.” So I told my father that we needed to talk a little bit. I was about thirty-one years old, and my father was close to sixty years old. I asked him, “What are you doing? This man comes in our house, and he virtually asks you to do everything for him.” My father said, “He’s doing a very important duty. He is like a Vedic ambassador. He’s spreading Indian culture, and nobody’s done this before. I appreciate it. I am going to help him.” Prabhupada captured the hearts of my parents. It was just the reverse of what I hear happens in the West. There Prabhupada captured the hearts of the young men and women, and their parents complain. My case was the opposite. I was complaining about the relationship Prabhupada had built with my parents.
Before the Juhu temple was even conceived, Prabhupada lived at Seaface Park in Bombay, and every day my wife and I used to meet him there. Out of respect I would offer my obeisances and listen to Prabhupada, but I was a Mayavadi, and I would also argue with him. I said, “Prabhupada, Brahman is supreme, not Krishna. Brahman takes the form of Krishna, Rama, Nrisimha, etc.” Prabhupada tolerated my nonsense. He would give us prasadam. He would give us his association, but he would say, “Who has told you all these nonsense things? This is all rascaldom.” I would say, “My spiritual teacher is Chinmayananda Swami.” Prabhupada said, “Oh that rascal. He’s the biggest Mayavadi in the world today. Ask him, ‘If you’re Narayana, why are you getting old, why are your teeth falling out, why is your hair getting gray? Why are you not looking young like Narayana?’ He’s calling himself Narayana, and he calls other Mayavadis Narayana. Other Mayavadis call him Narayana. This is all nonsense. God is always God. He doesn’t become God. We are always jivatma, and we’ll always be jivatma. We are parts and parcels of God and the part-and-parcel can never be the same as the complete whole.” I was confused because, although Prabhupada’s logic seemed quite clear, I still thought that he might be conning me. When you come from a city like Bombay or New York, you meet many con artists. In India, lots of so-called spiritual teachers collect money and sell mantras and do all sorts of other nonsense. So I’d go back to Chinmayananda Swami and ask him, “Swamiji, why do you get old? If you control Mother Nature, why are you getting old? Can you not control that?” And he would say, “I have to look old so that people respect me more.” I’d go back and tell Prabhupada, “He has to look old because people will respect him more.” Prabhupada would say, “That is rascaldom. Mother Nature is under Krishna’s control and not under his control. He will always be controlled by nature. You go and tell him that.” And Prabhupada would usually quote some verse from Bhagavad-gita, like the verse where Lord Krishna says, “I am the seedgiving father.” How could Swami Chinmayananda be the seed-giving father of everybody? Again I’d go back and tell Swami Chinmayananda that. Slowly, over a period of seven years, I tried to find fault or inconsistency in Prabhupada’s books, teachings, tape recordings, and letters. I couldn’t find a single inconsistency or untruthfulness. There was no duplicity. Duplicity is very common in those who are doing some sort of variation or concoction of religion. But Prabhupada was sticking to the original teachings of Lord Chaitanya, the original teachings of Lord Krishna. It was unique. Eventually Prabhupada asked me to invite Chinmayananda Swami to come and have a debate. I asked Prabhupada, “What point shall we debate?” Prabhupada said, “We shall debate whether Chinmayananda Swami will lift Govardhan Hill or not. If he’s God, he should be able to do that. God did it. If he knows what’s in my mind and everybody’s mind, then he’s God. He’s Paramatma. But if he only knows about his own body, and that too not fully, he’s just another human being who’s trying to cheat God and trying to cheat everyone else.” I told Chinmayananda Swami, “Are you prepared to have this debate? It’ll resolve this awful doubt I have now as to which of you two are the real spiritual master.” But Chinmayananda Swami refused. I asked Chinmayananda Swami, “Can you please tell me whether you can know what’s in the minds of everyone? God knows what’s going on in everyone’s mind. Can you do that? For instance, if I sat down now and thought about something would you be able to write down what I was thinking about?” He said “No. I am not a mind-reader.” I said, “No, no. I am not talking about reading minds. If you are really at an elevated level where you are one with God, then it’s like you’ve plugged yourself into a computer that has so many facts. You should be able to retrieve information.” He couldn’t do it. Then I surrendered to Prabhupada. I became his driver.
The twenty-eighth of September 1977 was a very sad day. At about 4:30 in the morning I got a phone call from Giriraj Swami. Crying, he said, “I want you to bring your big Dodge car.” I had a huge American car with a back seat long enough to lie down in. Giriraj Swami said, “Prabhupada wants to leave his body.” I said, “What?” I had never heard anybody say that someone “wanted to leave his body.” It sounded as if he wanted to commit suicide. I said, “What do you mean, ‘Prabhupada wants to leave his body?’ Where does he want to leave his body?” He said, “He wants to go to Vrindavan, and he’s leaving his body. He’s going away, and we have to take him to the train station.” By that time Prabhupada hadn’t eaten for nearly six months. He was living only on juice and charanamrita, and his body was depleted. He had hardly any muscles, and his veins were pressing on his bones. It was very painful to see him. Here was the person with whom I had fought and argued. Here was the person who was such a fine debater that he was like a lion. He could defeat anyone philosophically. But that morning, when I saw how very thin Prabhupada was, it reminded me of Krishna’s description in the Bhagavad-gita of a person withdrawing himself like a tortoise withdraws himself within his shell. So in Bombay, on the twenty-eighth of September 1977, Srila Prabhupada decided to leave, and for the first time I cleaned my car. I didn’t want Prabhupada to sleep in an unclean car. My wife arranged nice silk bedding, flowers, and incense in it, and I drove to the temple. There, Prabhupada was brought down from his quarters in a big basket. It reminded me of stories of Moses and Karna who were both put in baskets. Devotees were crying. They were devastated. They were intensely feeling imminent separation from Prabhupada. I was supposed to drive, and I felt like Akrura, the cruel person who took Krishna from the gopis. I was taking Prabhupada away from the devotees. But that was my duty. I had to do that. I drove, and next to me was big Brahmananda Swami, and next to him was Tamal Krishna Goswami, who was Prabhupada’s last secretary, and finally there was Giriraj Maharaj. It was such a huge car that four people could sit in the front. Prabhupada was lying on the back seat, and Upendra, his servant, was sitting on the floor of the car next to Prabhupada. Prabhupada’s luggage was behind. Like a schoolteacher, Tamal Krishna Maharaj told me, “Don’t drive fast. Drive very slowly.” The Bombay roads have potholes, and Prabhupada would be uncomfortable if I drove fast. I said, “Fine.” We were going to Bombay Central Station, and I asked, “Which train are we going to catch?” Someone said, “Prabhupada’s taking the Mathura Express to Vrindavan. It leaves at 11:00 a.m.” I started to drive very slowly. From the back Upendra told me, “Prabhupada wants you to drive faster.” So I said, “Okay, if Prabhupada wants me to drive faster, I will drive faster,” and I picked up speed. My huge car could really move, but the moment I pressed the accelerator, Tamal Krishna Maharaj got very upset. He said, “I told you to go slowly. What are you doing?” I said, “Upendra just told me that Prabhupada wants me to drive fast. Tamal Krishna Maharaj said, “No, no, no. Go slowly.” So I slowed down. Within a minute, Upendra again said, “Prabhupada says go faster. Why aren’t you going faster?” I thought, “The person I have to serve is Prabhupada, so I will drive faster.” I said to Tamal Krishna Maharaj, “You sort this out with Upendra and allow me to drive.” We thought we had reached the Bombay Central Station too early. Rama Tulasi, another devotee there, and I went to the station-master to get a wheelchair for Prabhupada to transport him from my car to his special cabin on the train. In my usual style, I asked the station-master, “Is the Mathura Express going at 11:00 a.m.?” He said, “Didn’t you read today’s newspaper? It leaves at 10:30 a.m.” The timing had changed that very day. I looked at my watch and said, “There are five minutes left. The train is leaving in five minutes.” Rama Tulasi and I ran with the wheelchair. I told that stationmaster, “I will pay you anything, but stop that train. Don’t start it until I tell you.” He said, “What? I’ve never heard such a request.” I said, “There is a big team coming. A very holy person is going to leave his body in Vrindavan, and he has to be on that train.” The stationmaster said, “Leave his body? What do you mean?” I said, “Just run with me.” So we ran. This happened twenty years ago when I was thirty-seven. I told Giriraj Maharaj, “The train is going a half-hour early today.” He said, “No, according to the timetable it leaves at 11:00 a.m.” I said, “Whatever it says there doesn’t matter. The stationmaster is going to blow his whistle, and the train is going to go.” We ran. Some of the devotees got Prabhupada’s special cabin ready. It should have been an air-conditioned one, but for some reason the devotees had booked a non-air-conditioned cabin. We took Prabhupada into his compartment just a few minutes before the train was about to leave. From 4:30 until 10:30 that morning I had not had any water or food, and I was very thirsty. I bought a soda from a stand at the station, when Upendra came and said, “Prabhupada wants to see you.” I left the soda and went in the cabin, wondering, “Why is Prabhupada calling me?” Prabhupada said, “Come closer.” I went very close to him, and he said, “Thank you for driving me.” I was very touched. Prabhupada was just about to give up his body, and except for this small service I had done nothing much. So in the train, in front of everyone, I offered my obeisances and caught Prabhupada’s lotus feet. Tamal Krishna Maharaj and others said to me “Don’t touch his feet.” I said, “No. This is it. This is the last moment I’ll ever get.” I said, “Prabhupada, I surrender to you. You are my spiritual master.” He put his hand in my hair and blessed me. He put pressure on his elbow and got up a little. He was smiling sweetly. The train started, and some of the devotees said, “Look, the train started, and you better jump off, otherwise the next station is quite far away.” Reluctantly, I jumped off the moving train, and I watched it go until the last car had left. I wasn’t thirsty anymore. I didn’t care for the soda. With tears in my eyes I got into my car, and lo and behold, there was Prabhupada’s garland on the steering wheel. He’d not forgotten me. That was the last time I saw Prabhupada. From 1971 through 1977, my memories are of fighting with him, debating with him, arguing with him. Finally, at the end I surrendered. Hare Krishna.
