Kesava Bharati Goswami Remembers Srila Prabhupada

Following Srila Prabhupada

Interview DVD 08

Kesava Bharati Goswami: They had a rath because that’s the tradition. There’s a rath and the spiritual master rides on the rath, and then there’s a procession. There were hundreds of devotees, and at one point Prabhupada decided he wanted to get off the rath and walk with us. So when he did that, everyone wanted to come and touch Prabhupada’s feet at the same time, especially the Indian-bodied people who had come to the festival. So immediately…I think it was Tamal Krishna Maharaj, he was there…he organized us into human chains. We locked arms on either side of Prabhupada. So we went along the procession like that, keeping people from crushing Prabhupada. During that procession, at times we would be farther away from Prabhupada and at times we would be closer to Prabhupada. The farther away you got from Prabhupada, it was like being in a hurricane. It was just chaos. And as we came closer to Prabhupada, it got calmer and calmer and calmer until when we were right next to Prabhupada, it was like we were in the eye of a hurricane. It was so calm and serene, and Prabhupada was emanating this ecstasy. It was a very stark realization of the consciousness that the empowered pure devotee had. He could change the atmosphere, not just in a room where everything was organized perfectly, but he could change the atmosphere anywhere.

Interview DVD 11

Kesava Bharati Goswami: I had lived with Jayananda for two years in San Francisco, so we were very close. He was in preparation like normal, doing everything himself, superhuman effort to prepare the carts for the festival. So I came up the elevator in that skyscraper building, and I came around the corner and there was a bathroom down that hallway. I saw Jayananda and he was walking with his torso parallel to the ground, literally. I yelled out, “Jayananda!” and then I went running down the corridor. And before he got to his room, I came in front of him and I said, “Jayananda, what’s going on with your body, with your health? What is it?” And he looked at me, put his hands on both my shoulders and he said, “All right, I’ll tell you something, but you’ve got to promise me one thing – that you won’t say anything until after the Rathayatra.” And I said, “OK, Jayananda, I won’t say anything, please.” Then he lifted up his arm, and underneath his armpit there were huge lumps. And then he lifted up his other arm and his other arm was the same, these huge lumps. I said, “Jayananda, you have to take care of…” and he said, “You promised.” So I kept my mouth shut based on that promise. Of course, it turns out he had leukemia. It means that Jayananda was suffering like anything during the preparation of that Rathayatra, and then that famous picture of him pulling the cart in complete ecstasy. You look at his face, you could not have told that he was wracked with pain. That’s who Jayananda was – fixed in service to Srila Prabhupada.