Sabhapati das Remembers Srila Prabhupada

Following Srila Prabhupada

Interview DVD 06

Sabhapati: So this is Srila Prabhupada’s visit to Melbourne in 1974 when he came out specifically for the Rathayatra Festival. I had an arrangement with the Immigration Department that we could bring Srila Prabhupada through as a VIP so he wouldn’t have to go through the normal immigration procedures. So that was all right, but I had to actually stay with his luggage so that they could check the luggage out. So Srila Prabhupada went through, met with the devotees, and they kept Satsvarupa Maharaj and myself behind and we had to stay there with the luggage while it was being checked. By the time we came out, the devotees and Prabhupada had all left; and Satsvarupa Maharaj and myself, we were stuck at the airport with the luggage and all the devotees were gone. But there was one devotee who had not left, and fortunately we caught his attention and we put all of Prabhupada’s luggage in his van and Satsvarupa Maharaj and myself, we had to actually sit on the luggage in the back of the van to go to Melbourne temple. So at the airport, Srila Prabhupada had a television interview. Two or three television channels came, and some newspaper reporters came. Actually most of his visits to Australia we got a lot of press coverage, and that’s why Srila Prabhupada liked coming. We had very good newspaper articles, a big feature article on the second page of The Melbourne Age, and quite a few other articles and good television coverage. So at this television coverage, there were two or three television stations there – there’s only four stations in Australia anyway – and that evening we told Srila Prabhupada we were expecting it to be on the news. So Ugrasrava, he brought in a television set into Srila Prabhupada’s room, and we were watching and we were watching and watching the news. And each time the feature would come on the news and it wasn’t Prabhupada, he’d look away and let the feature go. Then the next feature he’d look to see if it was him, and unfortunately he wasn’t on. Nothing appeared. But actually that evening on the ten o’clock news there was a good feature on Prabhupada on Channel O. So Ugrasrava, he caught that and we told Prabhupada the next day and he was very pleased. It was in the middle of the Melbourne winter. It was very, very cold. It was about…probably that day it was about 12 degrees. Prabhupada came and joined us about halfway through the parade in Collins Street. Of course, when Prabhupada arrived in the actual parade, the devotees were in ecstasy. In front of the Rathayatra cart, we had this big diorama of Lord Caitanya, big golden diorama. He was about 14 feet high. He was following in front of the rath cart, and we were walking in front of Lord Caitanya. Every now and again, Prabhupada would stop and he would turn around and he would just look at Lord Caitanya in complete ecstasy. Then he would look at Lord Jagannatha, and you see in these shots he is very, very happy. Then he would turn around and he would walk again. Then Prabhupada walked for about two miles. So this Rathayatra was quite astounding for us. And although it was a very, very cold day and there weren’t so many people in the streets or actually following the procession, it was so potent and so powerful it was as though Srila Prabhupada had conquered the whole of Melbourne. It was like he was the king of the whole of Melbourne. Everything stopped for Srila Prabhupada. Look at how much ecstasy he is in there. And the devotees all present felt like this was the center of the universe because Srila Prabhupada was there and Lord Caitanya was there and Lord Jagannatha was there. So it was a very, very ecstatic program. Over the years I’ve met many, many people who actually saw the parade and saw Prabhupada on that day. Just a couple of years ago in our restaurant one lady came in, and she told me how she had seen our leader on this festival going through the streets of Melbourne and how she saw this big golden form at the head of the parade leading the procession. And she said it really profoundly affected her and that over the years many, many times she’d had dreams of that particular festival and of that particular golden form of Lord Caitanya. So that was the potency of Srila Prabhupada and Lord Jagannatha and the Rathayatra Festival. We had big ecstatic kirtan around Lord Caitanya for about 45 minutes, Madhudvisa was leading. And it was such an ecstatic kirtan that when Madhudvisa stopped the chanting, Prabhupada motioned like this to continue. He was just in ecstasy watching and hearing the kirtan. He loved Madhudvisa’s kirtan so much. Then after that, he gave a lecture. And then after the lecture, another nice feast was served. Especially after the festival the day before when we had a big program and a big feast, he was very pleased with that. But then the next day, it was on a Sunday, another big feast was served and he said, “Who has cooked this?” He was very, very pleased that the devotees had gone to so much trouble to cook two beautiful feasts in two days. This is a morning walk in the Botanical Gardens in Melbourne. They’re very beautiful gardens that are over a couple hundred acres, and each morning Srila Prabhupada would go for a morning walk with different devotees from different departments in the temple. One morning the pujaris would go, next morning the devotees from the book distributors, the BBT party, would go, the devotees who were working for Spiritual Sky. So in this way, all the Australian devotees had an opportunity to go out on the morning walks. Of course, we were chanting japa and the devotees were asking many, many questions. We actually had many nice preaching engagements for Srila Prabhupada. The first one was a meeting with three scientists from the Commonwealth of Australia Scientific and Industrial Research Organization. They had a very, very nice conversation, and they were concerned with the food problem of the world. They wanted to know how specifically the Hare Krishna movement could help with the starving people of Asia. Prabhupada just said, “Get them to chant Hare Krishna, and that will solve all problems,” and they sort of looked. That was a very jovial conversation actually, and they were very respectful of Prabhupada. At the end, one of the men admitted that his daughter had been given a copy of the Srimad-Bhagavatam in the street by the devotees and that he and one of the other gentlemen there were actually reading the Srimad-Bhagavatam. And Prabhupada said that “Because they are reading the Bhagavatam, these men are gentlemen.”

Interview DVD 08

Sabhapati: Each evening Srila Prabhupada would give a lecture, and a couple of lectures he spoke on how society should be organized according to the varnasrama-dharma and how it was the duty of the leaders of society to rule properly. So I was very impressed by these sort of lectures because previously I’d been to university and I’d studied economics and politics, and I was interested in how society should be organized. Previously in 1974 after coming back from the Mayapur Festival, some devotees in America, Balavanta prabhu in particular, were running for Congress. So in elections in Australia, I was put up to be the representative of the In God We Trust Party, the political party of the Hare Krishna Movement. From this we got so much wonderful publicity – interviewed on so many of the leading current affair TV programs, on the Mike Willesee Show, on In Melbourne Tonight. When I was on the Mike Willesee Show, he asked me what my policy was. And I was explaining to him how we weren’t so much interested in so many political ideologies, but actually we were more interested in the quality of the politician, of the morality of the politician. The politician should have good spiritual qualities because in the past so many politicians were so corrupt and involved in so many different types of scandals and corruption so they were of no good quality. One of our platforms was that if we got elected, we would close down the two bars in Parliament House where the politicians would go and they would drink so much alcohol. And then after deciding to have the vote, they would ring the bell so that all the politicians were forced to leave the bar and to leave their drinks and to go back into the House and make the vote. So we made a big point that so much legislation was passed in the Parliament by intoxicated leaders. So we thought that this was actually quite disgusting. Our political platform was actually based on Harinam. We would go out and we would chant on the streets of Melbourne, and we would stop in a particular place and perform the kirtan and, of course, hundreds of people would come around. Then we would stop the kirtan, and I would stand on a soapbox and get up and talk about the philosophy of Krishna consciousness. We would talk for three or four minutes and everyone would listen, and I would finish and they would all clap in appreciation. Then we would continue chanting on down the street and stop at the next corner and get up and give another talk. So actually we went around the suburban streets where there were just houses. Then we would have kirtan up and down the suburban streets. So in this way, not only were we participating in a political process, but it was all based on the Harinam of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu. So in that way, we were spreading Krishna consciousness. So as we engaged in the electoral campaign, we got quite a lot of publicity. One evening we were on a show called Melbourne Tonight, which was a big variety show in Melbourne; and one man came to Australia, and his name was Arnold Schwarzenegger. He had just won the title of Mr. Universe for the second or third time, and he was doing a tour of Australia. So he was a very smart guy, and he saw me on this political show. So he wanted to get publicity for himself. So the next day he rang up and he suggested that we have a meeting together and he could bring along a cameraman, and we would have publicity for him and publicity for the Hare Krishna political campaign. So we agreed to it. So the next day Arnold Schwarzenegger came and we met with him, and we had a big discussion and we were explaining to him that we’re not this body, we’re the soul. But he was flexing his muscles and telling us how good and how big and how powerful he was, and he was fit and healthy and we weren’t fit and healthy because we were doing meditation. But we challenged him to come out on an eight-hour kirtan with us and see if he could keep up. You have to be very fit. Anyhow, he declined. Then finally he brought a photographer along, and he took a photograph of myself and him shaking hands. The next day it appeared in the paper, and it had “The man of the body meets the man of the spirit” and a very, very nice favorable article underneath that caption. There was a chaise lounge that he would sit on. When the guests came, he would sit there and preach to the guests. This was a very big room. All the devotees could actually fit, it was almost as big as the temple room. One particular preaching engagement was with a social worker from the Department of Social Welfare. We actually rang up the departments and tried to get the ministers to come and meet with him, but the minister couldn’t come but he sent one of his top men. This man came along and actually he was very, very nervous, and I don’t think he actually wanted to be there. Anyhow, he met with Prabhupada, and he was respectful. Then Prabhupada started to tell him about our principles and how one of our principles was no illicit sex. And when Prabhupada mentioned this, this man became very, very agitated. Prabhupada kept talking about this, and this man became so agitated that in the end he wanted to cut the conversation off. Although Prabhupada was giving him the answers and the solutions to so many of their social welfare problems, this man was not willing to listen. Prabhupada’s preaching was very powerful, but they were not willing to hear. Also on the same visit he met with one man whose name was Brian Dixon, and Brian Dixon was a very, very famous man in the state of Victoria. He was a very famous footballer, and later on after that he became a politician, a government minister. He came with his secretary, and she was not dressed very appropriately. She had a short dress, she had the makeup on, everything, and she was very provocatively dressed. So Brian Dixon came in and met Srila Prabhupada. And he made the comment straight away that he saw the Hare Krishna devotees on the streets singing and dancing and chanting and whenever he saw them, he saw that they were always happy. So he asked Srila Prabhupada, “Why are you successful?” He knew that we did not participate in taking drugs, and he was impressed by this. Prabhupada explained that we follow four principles and one of them is no intoxication and that by chanting Hare Krishna you become happy. And Brian Dixon, he was listening. So then Prabhupada mentioned that we do not engage in illicit sex, and Brian Dixon became embarrassed. He actually blushed like anything. Almost immediately he looked at his watch and said, “Oh, I’m sorry, I’ve got another appointment,” and he had to leave. So Prabhupada was preaching very, very strongly, and he was giving these particular men the answers to their problems that they were dealing with. But again, they were not willing to listen or to implement this particular program. Then again we had one newspaper reporter come from The Age newspaper, which is the main Melbourne newspaper, and Srila Prabhupada preached to this man for about 45 minutes, simply preached to him about “you are not this body,” straight preaching. Although the man was asking general sort of questions, Prabhupada just stuck with this one point of how you are not this body and you are the servant of Krishna and he just preached to the guy full on, and the guy just sat there and listened. So then the next day he wrote a very, very nice article. It was about half a page on the second page of The Melbourne Age, quite an extensive article and very well written, because most newspaper reporters, they actually misinterpret what the original message was. We showed Srila Prabhupada the newspaper article the next day, and he was so pleased that he asked us to get 12 copies of that particular article and he got his secretary to send them to some of the big Life Members in India.

Interview DVD 10

Sabhapati: Gurukripa Swami was the GBC at that time, and Hari Sauri Prabhu was Srila Prabhupada’s servant on that visit. Of course, Hari Sauri prabhu joined in the Melbourne temple some years before. So each evening Srila Prabhupada gave Bhagavad-gita class and a kirtan was held, and the public were invited to come along to the lecture. So I remember each evening Gurukripa would lead a very, very ecstatic kirtan, and Prabhupada would sit and watch the kirtan each evening. We used to run up and down the whole temple room and jump. Each time we would go to one end we would all do a big jump, and then we would run down to the other end in front of the Deities and jump before Them. One night we were going on like this for about 15 minutes and Prabhupada was sitting there and he was so happy, and every time we’d jump he would motion with his hands like this. So he was in ecstasy to see the wonderful spirit of the kirtan. When Gurukripa Prabhu went to his room one evening and came back, he told us how Prabhupada thought that our kirtans were very wonderful.