Mahadyuti Swami: The very first thing I read from Prabhupada was a line in one of his books that said, “This world is a world of birth, death, disease and old age.” My immediate reaction was, “Finally, somebody is telling me the truth.” I had experimented with so many things like materialism, impersonalism, LSD, Buddhism and Christianity, but no one had made this statement of reality that hit me like that hard truth. That was really convincing, and then I accidentally got caught up in a kirtan, and I had this distinct realization that the body and the soul are different. I remembered that the devotees told me, “This sound vibration goes straight to the soul; it doesn’t have to go through any kind of intellectual or mental layers. It goes straight to the soul.” I thought, “Wow.” I was seeing that was actually happening.
In the early seventies in ISKCON, there was what was called the Library Party. It was a special elite party of just a few devotees whose responsibility was to go to professors and librarians and try to sell them standing orders of Prabhupada’s books. Standing order meant that they were buying all the books that Prabhupada had already published plus all the books that he would publish in the future. If we didn’t sell standing orders, then we could sell a set of Caitanya-caritamrtas, a set of Bhagavatams or individual Gitas. Our general plan of attack would be to select from the course catalog the professors that we thought would be suitable for our presentation. One day I had an appointment with a lady professor of Southeast Asian Studies. One of our standard lines was that much of the culture of Southeast Asia comes from India. She said, “Well, that’s not the modern thinking now.” I said, “What do you mean that’s not the modern thinking?” I said, “You are a history professor, right? [laughs] Isn’t a history professor concerned with facts?” She said, “No. In every period of time there is one particular professor who is prominent in the field and his way of thinking about the situation is what everybody else follows.” And she said, “We are not concerned with facts.” That comment really stuck in my mind. I was amazed. A few weeks later in February or March of 1975, I was in Atlanta with the rest of the Library Party when Prabhupada was there and we got to go on a morning walk with him. Ganashyam Prabhu, later Bhakti Tirtha Swami, almost right at the beginning got into a dialogue with Prabhupada. Now even at that early stage Ganashyam started becoming prominent in ISKCON. He was not exactly a big shot yet, but he was going in that direction. As he was discussing things with Prabhupada, I was listening and burning with envy. I was thinking, “Okay, Ganashyam prabhu is the biggest distributor on our party. Fine I understand that.” Then Mahabuddhi prabhu also chimed in a couple of things. My mind was reeling. “Okay, he is the second biggest distributor. I understand that. Well, I’m also going out every day distributing Prabhupada’s books to professors and librarians, and I also want to have a dialogue with Prabhupada.” [laughs] My envy was so great that I don’t even remember what Prabhupada was saying. I don’t remember the topic or anything and I was just thinking, “I want to get into this dialogue. I want to be involved.” [laughs] At one point, Srila Prabhupada said, “We simply have to give them the facts.” That statement rang a bell in my brain from my experience with that history professor. Without even thinking about what I was doing, I blurted out, “But Srila Prabhupada, they say they don’t care for facts.” Prabhupada stopped abruptly. His eyes were flashing and he looked right at me and said, “Then we do not care for you!” I must have jumped about a foot in the air because everybody started laughing. I thought, “This isn’t funny. [laughs] My spiritual master just said he doesn’t care for me.” It took me at least twenty-four hours to understand that Prabhupada wasn’t talking about me. He was talking about the professor and people like her. [laughs] From that experience I concluded that maybe it’s better if I just let Ganashyam prabhu have the dialogues with Prabhupada. [laughs]
I remember one lecture Prabhupada gave in Honolulu when he said something about how we should be grateful for modern technology. Immediately at that point a brahmacari named Ananda das let out a big “guffaw.” Because of that loud laugh in a relatively small room, Prabhupada stopped and said, “No!” He said, “Do not laugh!” He said, “Of course we should be thankful for modern technology; otherwise, how could we spread Krishna consciousness all over the world?” That made a big impression on me.
The temple president in Honolulu didn’t believe in buying bhoga, and in particular milk. I was really attached to milk and milk products and I was really suffering separation. I was thinking every day about how I just wanted some cream cheese or something of that nature. Then during one of Prabhupada’s lectures he started talking about the glories of milk products. My ears really perked up and I thought, “Wow, this is amazing! This means Prabhupada knows what’s going on here because he was glorifying milk products when we were being deprived of milk products.” I thought this was Prabhupada’s indirect way of giving a message to the temple president. Apparently, the temple president didn’t get that message because nothing changed. [laughs]
In 1977 Srila Prabhupada was physically extremely ill and getting worse and worse and worse. It was becoming more and more apparent that probably he was going to be leaving his body. A lot of devotees were going to Vrindavan to be with Prabhupada, and I also went with two other devotees from America. We arrived in Vrindavan at Krishna-Balaram Mandir in the middle of the night and went immediately to Prabhupada’s room. It was dark. It was very quiet since nobody was there except for Bhavananda Maharaj who was attending to Prabhupada’s needs. He motioned for us to come in and sit down quietly, so we did that. We sat maybe a meter away when Bhavananda very quietly said, “Srila Prabhupada, these boys have come all the way from America just to be with you.” Srila Prabhupada turned his head just slightly towards us and said, “Oh, thank you very much. How are you?” Now the three of us were more or less thirty years old and relatively healthy, and in fact embarrassed by the question. We just looked at each other thinking, “How are we?” We didn’t say anything because we just felt so awkward. But that’s the way we felt, and it was just another illustration of how humble Srila Prabhupada was and how much he cared for other living entities even in his own very difficult circumstances.
The thing that I found most compelling about Srila Prabhupada was that he was a revolutionary. He was making a real revolution. I came of age in the sixties during the revolutionary time in America. I tried the Timothy Leary revolution and I didn’t last very long with that. Somehow or other I just never got into the political revolution, like burning buildings, which never attracted me. But Prabhupada’s movement was a real revolution and this was definitely what I was looking for. Prabhupada was a spiritual revolutionary.
