Mrgendra: I first met Prabhupada in 1971 when he came for the San Francisco Rathayatra. I wasn’t initiated yet, but I knew the etiquette, which was that if you see Prabhupada you pay flat obeisances. So prior to his arrival I kept meditating on that point of etiquette and thinking, “Okay, when I see Prabhupada I’m going to do that.” When he arrived at the airport and came walking down the steps of the airplane to the tarmac, I didn’t have to think, “I’ve got to bow down.” It was like an ocean wave slammed me down on the ground. It was an automatic response to seeing Krishna’s pure devotee. I stayed down on the ground for quite a while and then something came by. I smelled a big whoosh of a gardenia aroma that was heavenly. I looked up and Prabhupada had just walked by.
Right after the San Francisco Ratha-yatra in 1971, we had to clean up everything from the festival site. When we finally got back to the temple in Berkeley it must have been around eleven o’clock at night. The next morning the temple president, Yasodanandana, said, “Prabhupada called. He’s coming over here.” It wasn’t scheduled because he was staying in San Francisco but he was due to arrive in an hour. We got up, took quick showers and immediately cleaned up the temple, which we had neglected due to the Ratha-yatra. Because of the brief amount of time before Srila Prabhupada was due to arrive, we put every extraneous item from the halls and temple room outside where the garbage area was. Prabhupada arrived and gave a short class because he must have known the devotees were extremely tired. He got up after the class and the first thing he wanted to do was to inspect the temple. He walked out of the temple and immediately went to the garbage area. He told the temple president, “This should be clean.” We were thinking that we had done a great job cleaning, but the first place he went to was where we had just dumped everything. At that point I was thinking Prabhupada must be some kind of mystic.
Prabhupada came to Chicago in 1976, and the temple president at the time, Uttamasloka, arranged for the book distributors to meet with him. Uttamasloka introduced me and told Prabhupada that I was going out to the airport to sell his books. Prabhupada asked me, “What do you tell them?” I said, “Well, we tell them that George Harrison helped with this book and…” Prabhupada immediately stopped me and said, “You should tell them something about the book.” From Prabhupada’s heavy energy I felt bad that we were selling books basically just on George Harrison’s name. Prabhupada was so deep and powerful I realized that the preaching had to come from the philosophy of the books rather than the “name dropping” we were doing at the time.
When Prabhupada was writing or speaking, I understood that it was Krishna who was speaking directly through him. Prabhupada was simply the messenger of Krishna and he never looked for personal praise. He only wanted us to follow his instructions as he was trying to please his spiritual master, Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati. That was one of the main motivations, one of the things that kept us going. I remember in Atlanta he was saying that his spiritual master would bless us even more than he would. We took that as an extra bonus in that not only have we got Prabhupada, now we’ve got Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati behind us as well.
I first met Prabhupada in 1971 when he came for the San Francisco Rathayatra. I wasn’t initiated yet, but I knew the etiquette, which was that if you see Prabhupada you pay flat obeisances. So prior to his arrival I kept meditating on that point of etiquette and thinking, “Okay, when I see Prabhupada I’m going to do that.” When he arrived at the airport and came walking down the steps of the airplane to the tarmac, I didn’t have to think, “I’ve got to bow down.” It was like an ocean wave slammed me down on the ground. It was an automatic response to seeing Krishna’s pure devotee. I stayed down on the ground for quite a while and then something came by. I smelled a big whoosh of a gardenia aroma that was heavenly. I looked up and Prabhupada had just walked by.
Right after the San Francisco Ratha-yatra in 1971, we had to clean up everything from the festival site. When we finally got back to the temple in Berkeley it must have been around eleven o’clock at night. The next morning the temple president, Yasodanandana, said, “Prabhupada called. He’s coming over here.” It wasn’t scheduled because he was staying in San Francisco but he was due to arrive in an hour. We got up, took quick showers and immediately cleaned up the temple, which we had neglected due to the Ratha-yatra. Because of the brief amount of time before Srila Prabhupada was due to arrive, we put every extraneous item from the halls and temple room outside where the garbage area was. Prabhupada arrived and gave a short class because he must have known the devotees were extremely tired. He got up after the class and the first thing he wanted to do was to inspect the temple. He walked out of the temple and immediately went to the garbage area. He told the temple president, “This should be clean.” We were thinking that we had done a great job cleaning, but the first place he went to was where we had just dumped everything. At that point I was thinking Prabhupada must be some kind of mystic.
Prabhupada came to Chicago in 1976, and the temple president at the time, Uttamasloka, arranged for the book distributors to meet with him. Uttamasloka introduced me and told Prabhupada that I was going out to the airport to sell his books. Prabhupada asked me, “What do you tell them?” I said, “Well, we tell them that George Harrison helped with this book and…” Prabhupada immediately stopped me and said, “You should tell them something about the book.” From Prabhupada’s heavy energy I felt bad that we were selling books basically just on George Harrison’s name. Prabhupada was so deep and powerful I realized that the preaching had to come from the philosophy of the books rather than the “name dropping” we were doing at the time.
When Prabhupada was writing or speaking, I understood that it was Krishna who was speaking directly through him. Prabhupada was simply the messenger of Krishna and he never looked for personal praise. He only wanted us to follow his instructions as he was trying to please his spiritual master, Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati. That was one of the main motivations, one of the things that kept us going. I remember in Atlanta he was saying that his spiritual master would bless us even more than he would. We took that as an extra bonus in that not only have we got Prabhupada, now we’ve got Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati behind us as well.
