Nanda Kishor: I first saw Prabhupada in the summer of ’66 on a television show called The Alan Burke Show. Alan Burke was a thin, frustrated-old-poet type, who smoked and wore a goatee. He was an interviewer who, after about a fifteen-minute interview, would start insulting his subject, “You are a stupid this and that . . .” He seemed like somebody who never made it but his show was interesting. My mother and I would watch it together. One week Burke interviewed a yogini who talked about yoga and who appeared on the show along with some devotees who chanted the maha-mantra. The next week the same devotees came with Srila Prabhupada. On this show, Alan Burke talked about cosmic consciousness and Prabhupada talked about yoga. I had no idea that yoga had anything to do with religion or the laws of God. Most of what Prabhupada said I could not understand. I was a spaced-out hippie and Prabhupada’s accent was thick, but there were two things I remember. One was that Alan Burke did not insult Prabhupada like he did the usual guests, but he did have a criticism. He said, “Well, if this movement is spiritual, why do you have a car? How is that spiritual?” Prabhupada said, “If a car is used in Krishna consciousness, then it is a spiritual car.” I said, “Wow! A spiritual car! That’s incredible!” The second thing that struck me was the mantra. Prabhupada said, “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama Hare Hare,” and I said, “Wow, that’s far out!” It was the reaction of a hippy. It was more than a year later that I finally came to the movement.
A lady said, “If there is a God, why are people starving?” Srila Prabhupada said, “Sometimes if a patient is sick, the doctor will prescribe that he does not eat.” That was the answer. That’s called eloquence. Another time, during the question and answer period at 26 Second Avenue, a boy in the back of the room said to Prabhupada, “Somebody told me that people who chant Hare Krishna are crazy.” Prabhupada said, “Not ‘somebody.’ Who somebody?” The boy said, “My doctor.” Prabhupada said, “Oh, a medical man?” with the tone of saying, “garbage man.” Prabhupada said, “What does a medical man know about spiritual science? But if he wants to understand, let him read our essay, ‘Who is Crazy?’” Then Prabhupada ended the class with, “We are not dry philosophers. Now distribute prasadam.” There were gulabjamons there. It was perfect drama.
Prabhupada always dealt with everyone according to desapatra- kala, the place, circumstance and time. He was a perfect artist in preaching because he dealt with each person individually. Different people could ask the same question, and Prabhupada would answer in a completely different way. For example, at Harvard, on May 6, in ’69, the night before Prabhupada married Rukmini and Baradraj, Saradiya and Vaikunthanatha, and Jahnava and me, a Harvard scholar asked, “What does ‘Krishna’ mean?” and Prabhupada said, “Krishna is a proper noun. Don’t you know that a proper noun cannot be translated? My name is Bhaktivedanta Swami. Can you give a translation for that?” He answered this question in what I call three waves, and the third wave was, “If you want to understand, we have so many books. You can read them.”
In the airport a skinny, stupid newsman interviewed Prabhupada. He said, “Swamiji, what difficulties do you encounter in your travels from place to place?” Prabhupada said, “I have no difficulties. You have difficulties.” The newsman said, “Oh, yeah.” Then, after Prabhupada had walked through the airport and stepped onto an escalator, the newsman asked him, “If your movement is so important, why do you have so few followers?” Prabhupada said, “Because we have four rules: no illicit sex, no intoxication, no meat eating, no gambling.” The man said, “Oh, I see.”
Janos Damburgs was an intellectual studying for his Ph.D. at McGill University, but from the time that he was thirteen he was looking for someone who could tell him about God. Once, at Dr. Mishra’s ashram in upstate New York, Damburgs asked Dr. Mishra about God. Dr. Mishra said, “Don’t worry, just meditate.” Prabhupada was at the asrama then, and the next day at breakfast in the big breakfast hall when all the uptown yoga ashram visitors were sitting eating, Prabhupada went to Damburgs and said, “Would you like to go for a walk?” Damburgs was taken aback but said, “Yes.” As they walked on the big campus, Prabhupada said, “This grass is so nice. Only Krishna could make a carpet like this.” As they walked further, Prabhupada said, “You see that pond over there?” Damburgs said, “Yes.” Prabhupada said, “There are millions and millions of living entities in that pond that we cannot perceive, but Krishna knows every one of them.” A little later, Damburg looked at the tilak on Prabhupada’s forehead and said, “What does that mark on your forehead stand for?” Prabhupada said, “It stands for victory.” That was the beginning of Damburg’s relationship with Prabhupada. Later he became initiated as Janardana.
The first time I came before Prabhupada, I was thinking, “Wow, I’m a great devotee.” Brahmananda, the temple president of 26 Second Avenue, had made me think like that just to encourage me. So I thought, “Here I am bringing prasadam to Prabhupada, and he’s going to say something to me like what Bhaktisiddhanta said to him, that, ‘You should preach the message of Lord Chaitanya . . .’” Prabhupada took the prasadam I brought, but he did not even recognize my existence. He could do that. It was as if he said, “You think that you’re a big devotee? This is how I deal with you.” And if you were actually humble, he might pat you on the head. He always reciprocated appropriately.
Prabhupada was on a morning walk through Central Park when he went past a sculpture of the head and chest of a man and underneath the sculpture it said, “Webster.” Prabhupada said, “Oh, the dictionary man?” And a devotee said, “No, Prabhupada, Daniel Webster.” Prabhupada said, “Ah, Daniel has come.” Now, “Daniel has come,” is a line from a play, ‘The Merchant of Venice,’ by Shakespeare and Prabhupada, who had studied that play in college, began to tell the story—how the merchant wanted the pound of flesh and he couldn’t get it and was frustrated. Then Prabhupada said, “And the purport of this story is that in this material world you can never get what you want.” No materialist person can ever get what he wants in this material world. Why? Because only in spiritual life can you get what you want.
Another time at an airport Prabhupada was sitting waiting to take a plane somewhere when he said, “The scientists are very proud.” When Prabhupada said that, he made a fist and drew his arm across his chest. We laughed to see this. We were immediately entertained by it. Then Prabhupada withdrew his senses like the tortoise pulls his legs within his shell. It was as if Prabhupada said to us, “I am your spiritual master, I am not here to entertain you.” Subtly, almost unconsciously, we had taken what he said and did it the wrong way. It’s an amazing thing.
At the International Students’ Association on the Harvard campus in May 1969, an Indian man said, “In the Bhagavad-gita, Krishna says that ‘all paths lead to Me,’ so, no matter what we do, won’t we naturally come to Krishna?” Prabhupada quoted the Sanskrit and said, “All paths lead to Me, that is very good. But if we will naturally go to Krishna, why does Krishna instruct Arjuna? It is not that we will necessarily come to Krishna naturally. Therefore, Krishna instructs us in the quickest way to come to Him.” That was the first wave of the answer. The second wave was, “If we acted naturally, we will come to Krishna. But when we come to this human form of life, we do so many unnatural things. In the human form of life, with human intelligence, we begin to act unnaturally.” Many people there could relate to what Prabhupada was saying, as it was the era of LSD and many other drugs. There were so many ways to fall into lower species of life.
In the summer of 1968 in Montreal, Prabhupada was lecturing in a big, eight-lane bowling alley. He was speaking calmly for about twenty minutes or a half an hour. At the time, there were a lot of new yogis giving different teachings in America and there was one who taught that by meditating for six months you would become God. When Prabhupada spoke about this yogi, he started roaring. I was looking around thinking, “Who’s he yelling at?” He’s the spiritual master of the universe, and he was roaring at the universe. Anyway, at a certain point he said, “What is this nonsense that you can meditate and become God? God is God! He is God when He is sitting in the lap of His mother, He is God when He is speaking on the Battlefield of Kurukshetra, He is God when He is playing with the cowherd boys in Vrindavan. He is substantially God!” Prabhupada made his point most absolutely. He absolutely made every point.
During the summer of 1968, the temple needed some money, so I worked at the McGill Library and helped support the temple. Once, when I was coming back from work, some devotees had just arrived who I didn’t know. I had no idea what was going on at the temple. Of course, a lot of people were coming, so it was no surprise. There were two or three initiation ceremonies during the week, as well as Monday, Wednesday and Friday classes by Prabhupada. Prabhupada was there for all these functions as well as the Sunday program. Practically, he was in the temple seven days a week. I remember walking up the stairs to the Montreal temple, which was on the third floor, and hearing a woman’s voice, “All glories to Swamiji.” I thought, “Boy, Jadurani has gotten a stronger voice.” But it wasn’t Jadurani. It was Janaki. When I walked in, I saw seven new devotees who looked halfway between hippies and devotees. In their own way, they were far out. Shyamasundar, Malati, Mukunda, Janaki, Gurudas, Yamuna and Saradiya. Saradiya didn’t go on to England with the others, but she came to Montreal with them. So I came into an ecstatic kirtan with Prabhupada and all the devotees who had just arrived. Nobody had told me that they were coming or who they were or what they were going to do. When the kirtan ended, all the devotees were sitting in a circle and Prabhupada was sitting on the floor, in the place where he performed sacrifices. Prabhupada said, “This is all by the grace of my beloved spiritual master,” and a big tear came out of his eye and the whole room became absolutely caught up in his mood. He said, “In 1954, when I was a householder, my spiritual master came to me in a dream and he said, ‘Take sannyas and go and preach.’ But I was thinking, ‘I am a householder, how can I give up my family?’” And then Prabhupada said, “So, this was maya.” He was criticizing himself. We said, “Oh, no, Prabhupada.” Then he got specific. He said, “So I am very pleased to see these devotees who have come here from San Francisco. They are going to open a center in London.” It was as if he knew what was going to happen, as if he was already celebrating what they were going to do. We had no idea they were going to meet the Beatles and that they would preach in different ways. But Prabhupada saw it all. He said, “I am very pleased. My Guru Maharaj sent so many sannyasis to London, but they could not do anything. Now I am sending these householders.” It was almost as if he was saying, “And they are going to be a great success.” Of course we accepted, and that’s exactly what happened—it was a great success.
A newcomer sitting up front said to Prabhupada, “I can’t understand why all these young people are bowing down to you.” Prabhupada said, “Just as you are thinking they shouldn’t bow down, they are thinking that you should bow down. This is a democracy, is it not? And the majority is bowing down.” Prabhupada was always perfect like that.
Shivananda brought an Indian Christian from the West Indies to see Srila Prabhupada. Prabhupada was a perfect gentleman with him. When the man said, “I am a Christian,” I expected Prabhupada to say, “You’re born in India, the land of religion, and you’re following meat-eaters?” and so on. But no, Prabhupada said, “That is all right, we don’t say you change your religion. We say that whatever religion helps to awaken your dormant love of God. That is perfect.” Prabhupada was a perfect judge of place, circumstance and time—desapatra- kala—and he was always a perfect gentleman. Of course, sometimes he did rip the ether with his lion-like voice. He was sometimes as ferocious as a lion and sometimes as soft as a rose. He had everything. I’ve thought this: that Srila Prabhupada is the greatest person who has ever set foot on the incontinent continents of North and South America; the greatest person ever to set foot here. That’s something to contemplate.
