Satsvarupa das Goswami Remembers Srila Prabhupada

Prabhupada Memories

Interview 01

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Satsvarupa das Goswami: In the storefront window at 26 Second Avenue I saw a little piece of paper that said, “Yoga classes on Bhagavad-gita – Transcendental sound vibration – Monday, Wednesday, Friday,” and one night I decided to attend. I was shy but Raymond, later initiated as Rayrama, turned to me and said, “What’s your name?” I said, “Steve.” He welcomed me and said, “The Swami will be out in a few minutes,” and a few minutes later he came out, looking to me like a Buddha figure. Except for his top piece, his chest was bare and he was wearing pointy, white, genie-like slippers. I’ve never seen any slippers like that since then. He stepped out of those slippers, sat down on a straw mat exactly at the same level as us, looked around and began to chant while playing the kartals slowly – one…two…three, one…two…three. Although I had an attraction for Eastern gurus, I never had one and I didn’t know anything about them. But that night I was impressed by the kirtan and, even though I had trouble with his accent, by him. He was the first Indian teacher I had come across, and his silence and his seriousness, his no-nonsense appearance and his grand fatherliness– all these things I liked very much. I had come alone. Some other groups—like the Mott Street boys, Umapati, Kirtanananda and Hayagriva—came together. As the years went by, Prabhupada would remember those early days and say to one of the Mott Street boys, “Oh, you three came together,” and to me he would say, “But you came alone.” The Swami had a protocol that you could ask a question after his talk. In Dear Theo, Van Gogh’s letters to his brother, I had read that misery is eternal, so the first question I asked was, “Is there freedom from misery?” The Swami said, “There is no freedom from misery. You can break your arm and go to the hospital and come out, and then you will break another limb. So there’s no relief from misery and at the end of this body you’ll take another body. But if you are liberated and do not come back to the material world, then there is relief. The only way to be relieved from misery is to chant Hare Krishna.” Later when I was a little more advanced to talk to him one-to-one and was alone with him in his room, I asked a personal version of the same question. I was thinking of my own bad habits and my attempt to get relieved of them. I said, “Swamiji, is there a stage in advancement where you don’t fall down again?” He said, “Yes.” That’s all he said and I was very pleased to hear it. Actually, from the first night I saw him I broke all my bad habits or they went away by themselves. He and the chanting had a powerful effect on me. I wanted special attention and I wouldn’t go forward unless I was given it. I knew that the Swami held Sunday morning feasts, and I also knew that he had classes every morning and in the evening on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I didn’t attend the Sunday feasts and the morning classes because nobody invited me. But once, after the evening lecture, I was sitting on the curb outside when the Swami got somebody to bring me in and he said, “Do you know we have Sunday feasts?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “You can come, you’re invited. Would you like to come?” After that I started going. Then some of the devotees told me that I could go to the morning classes and I started attending those also. The first initiation was on Janmastami in 1966 and it was so lackadaisical that people got initiated without seriously considering whether they were going to follow the four rules. I wanted to stay independent. I didn’t think I was ready to get initiated, and besides nobody had asked me to get initiated. So I stayed home and typed for the Swami. The day after Janmastami I showed up at his door and he said, “Oh, you did not come for initiation yesterday.” I said, “No, but I did some typing.” I gave him the typing and he gave me some grapes. He saw that unless I got invited I was reluctant to get initiated, to go to the morning class, to go to the feasts. It was a defect on my part and at that time he said something important to me. He said, “I will love you, if you will love me.” That statement made a big change in me. He exposed that I didn’t love him but I was expecting him to always love me. I thought, “Why am I holding back my love for hi? Is there something I dislike about his face or his way of talking or something? I do not love him, but I’m expecting him to pour love on me.” I looked at all the ugliness inside myself that made me not love the Swami, and I decided that I should kick it out and love him. He said, “If you do that, then I’ll love you. But it’s a two-way street.” He read my heart and my mind and exposed my big barrier. When the Swami said, “I will love you, if you will love me,” that became a good instruction for any relationship, certainly with a spiritual master and a disciple or with a husband and wife. You have to love the other person if you want to be loved. His words broke a lot of ice, and from then on I stepped forward more and didn’t have to be invited to things. He once spoke on the telephone about a wedding that he was arranging between Mukunda and Janaki. When he hung up the phone he said, “You’re invited to come to this wedding.” I said, “Thank you,” and I went to the wedding. I felt sorry that I had not gotten initiated, so another day I asked him, “Could I get initiated on the next occasion?” He said, “Well, you’ll have to be a strict vegetarian.” I said, “I already am.” He said, “Yes, then you can be initiated.” The Swami was teaching from Dr. Radha Krishnan’s Bhagavad-gita. He said, “The translation is 98% good. Don’t read the purport at all, it’s contaminating, but you can read the translations out loud.” Some of us bought copies of that Gita and during our classes the Swami would ask us to read. He’d say, “Raymond, read the translation for Chapter 8 Text 7.” We considered the translations bonafide. We also had the Swami’s Srimad Bhagavatams. We didn’t study them in any consecutive order. They were just there to read and grasp. I bought a set but some others didn’t have the money to buy them. I asked, “When you get initiated is your karma stopped?” He said, “Yes. It’s like the electric fan is rotating—action and reaction, or karma—but on initiation the plug is pulled. The rotations may go on for a little while, but there’s really no more karma.” I was upset and with tears in my eyes I went to him and said, “My father said if I continue to have anything to do with this movement he won’t have anything to do with me.” The Swami saw my teary state and with twinkling eyes said, “That’s all right.” Sometimes he would encourage his students to keep good relations with their parents, but he didn’t do that with me. He smiled and more or less told me to let it go. Not long after that in a letter I asked him, “Are you my real father?” He wrote back, “You have accepted me as your father, so I have also accepted you as my dear and real son. The relationship of father and son on a spiritual platform is real and eternal, but on the material platform such a relationship is ephemeral and temporary.” I never had any problem with that. I just had to be careful not to advise students in Krishna consciousness that my way was their way. It is possible for parents and their children to come together in Krishna consciousness. But I do tell students what happened to me and what happened to Narada Muni and that they shouldn’t waste too much time on it. They certainly shouldn’t tolerate blasphemy when they go home. Tamal Krishna Maharaj was close to his mother up until the end. He would write to his mother regularly, and when he became a sannyasi he wondered if he should keep it up. Prabhupada said to him, “Do you wish to make your mother a special object of your mercy?” In other words, “You have limited time and there are a lot of people in this world you have to save. You’re a sannyasi now. I’m not going to tell you to keep writing to your mother every week. However, if you want to make her a special object of your mercy, you can do that.” Prabhupada put it to TKG to think about, and TKG stopped writing to his mother so often. But they did remain close. When the Swami served the Sunday feast we saw his bare feet passing by just like you might see nowadays when you’re being served prasadam in India. With his lotus feet, he would walk past the rows of devotees and serve the preparations that he had cooked. He would ask me, “Do you want the pushpana rice or the regular rice?” I would choose and he’d put one or the other on my plate. Then he would get some other preparation and serve it to everyone. I was thinking that his feet were very worshipable but at the same time we allowed him to serve. We didn’t jump up and say, “No, no, don’t you do it!” Lunch was a real treat. It was served to about twelve of us in the Swami’s room and he would sit among us. One day before I was initiated, I had to stay an hour late at the welfare office where I worked so I couldn’t go for lunch. I called him on the phone and said, “Swamiji, this is Steve. Do you remember me?” He said, “Yes.” I said, “I have to stay an extra hour at work so I can’t come to lunch today. Could you save me a plate?” He said, “All right, I can.” So instead of going there at twelve o’clock, I went at one. The rug was rolled back, everyone had finished, everything was gone and the plates were washed. The Swami said, “Sit down.” I sat down and he placed a plate of prasadam in front of me. He paused and for the first time I bowed down at his feet. He said, “Yes.” Gargamuni asked the famous question, “If I don’t feel like bowing down when the others bow down, should I still do it?” Prabhupada said, “Yes, you should. By bowing down you’ll feel like doing it.” After Kirtanananda came back from India, bowing down became more established and it made some boys rebellious: they didn’t like it. One person we interviewed for the Prabhupada Lilamrita said, “When that bowing down started, I knew I had to get out of there. I didn’t want any part in a movement that was bowing down before the guru.” Bowing down was a big change for us. At programs, outsiders would say, “Why is everyone bowing down to you?” Prabhupada would sometimes answer, “They are wondering why you are not bowing down.” Or he might say, “Everyone has to bow down to someone.” “Why? I don’t bow down to anyone.” “Oh, yes you do. You bow down to old age.” “No, I don’t.” “Yes you do. Why not bow down to a guru, an advanced person?” But stubborn persons couldn’t understand that if they bow down to the right person they would not have to bow down to repeated birth and death. One day Prabhupada sent me from Mayapur to Calcutta to do some banking. I couldn’t get it done so I went back. Prabhupada said, “You should have gotten them to write down why they refused to do what you asked them. If you had gotten them to write it down, then we would have had something. But now we have nothing. You’re a complete failure.” I thought his idea was Indian smart-business-thinking that a naive American kid wasn’t used to. I learned not to be turned away with nothing but to at least get something written down. If I had done that, proper investigations could have started. Sometimes Prabhupada put me in tears and waited for me to come up with a solution instead of sitting and crying. Once I sent a letter to Gurudas and when Prabhupada examined it later he said, “Why did you write that you enclosed a letter when you didn’t enclose it?” I said, “I looked for it in my files, but the files are not in good order. I have so many things to do.” I started to gush that, “I’m editing Back to Godhead and I’m GBC and I’m cooking for you—Pradyumna was supposed to help but nobody’s helping me do anything. I’m so overloaded!” He said, “That’s not the point. Why did you write in this letter that something is there and it’s not there?” I started to cry and I said, “I guess it means that I don’t love you enough.” I was searching for the real reason that I didn’t do it right. That answer wasn’t good enough. It was just a sentiment and Prabhupada waited for me to come up with something more than that. I was a crying mess until finally I said, “I’ll write another letter telling Gurudas that this letter was incomplete and I’ll include the paper that I forgot.” “Do it,” he said. I was dismissed. I searched and finally found that other paper. I wrote Gurudas another letter with the enclosure included. Prabhupada could certainly crush me. I was cutting a cucumber crosswise and Prabhupada said, “Don’t cut it that way, cut it lengthwise. You will never get it right, not in 300 years.” I talked back, “No, don’t say that, I’ll learn, I’ll get it right.” He said, “No, you won’t learn in 300 years.” But I talked back. Once I didn’t put any ginger on his breakfast plate and he said, “There’s no ginger on the plate.” I said, “Oh, I’m sorry,” and he imitated my insincerity, “Oh, I’m sorry.” It wouldn’t take much, just a little inflection and I would be crushed. He also had a nickname name for me—Dr. Isaac Newton. He said that although Dr. Isaac Newton was brilliant, he was also impractical. Once, Newton’s friend saw that Newton was making two holes in his door. The friend said, “Why are you doing that?” Newton said, “I have one big cat and one small cat and I want to allow them to come in and out of the house.” His friend said, “Why don’t you make one hole that they can both use?” Prabhupada said, “Just see, Dr. Isaac Newton was supposed to be a great scientist, but he was such a fool. You students are like that.” One morning in Hawaii we drove to the beach for a walk, got out of the car and locked it but my bead bag was still inside. I said, “Oh, I left my beads in the car.” Prabhupada walked off saying, “Dr. Isaac Newton.” I didn’t know whether to take it as a good name, that I was brilliant, or that I was a fool. In a letter Prabhupada wrote, “You are not a good manager, but I keep you on the GBC because you always do what I say.” Another time, when there was some corruption in the New York City temple management, Gopal Krishna suggested I could be in charge. Prabhupada said, “No, Satsvarupa is a perfect gentleman, but he cannot manage.” There was always that theme and understanding by Prabhupada that I wasn’t a good manager but I was a perfect gentleman. I liked his estimation of me. It was savvy but sweet, that he liked me. He thought that I did what he wanted to my capacity, but I couldn’t manage my way out of a paper bag. Since the children were untrained, the gurukula teachers found it hard to discipline them and the teachers asked what they should do. Prabhupada told them to tell the children Krishna stories and engage them in Krishna-lila plays so they would be occupied and happy. He said that academics should be restricted to English, Sanskrit and a few other studies, but not much. Prabhupada said that for punishment the children could be hit on the hand and one day, when Prabhupada visited the gurukula, someone gave him some long rods. The teachers and the children gleefully pushed forward with their hands out wanting to be hit by Prabhupada. Prabhupada said, “No. You’re only hit on the hand if you do something wrong.” But then Prabhupada said that the teachers should never hit the children and if they do, then the teachers should be hit. Another question was if the school should be a day school or a boarding school. I was in favor of having it as a boarding school but Mohanananda wanted it to be a day school. With great trust in me, Prabhupada said to Mohanananda, “Whatever Satsvarupa says is right. You do what he says.” In that question Prabhupada sided with me in a very personal way. But Prabhupada himself also favored a boarding school because the children would be with the teachers in a Krishna conscious atmosphere all the time. They would be living in the temple and learning how to be devotees by the teachers’ example. The idea was that living in the temple was better than living at home because in the temple the children had the opportunity to attend the full temple program. The boarding school could have worked out if the teachers hadn’t been such wrongdoers or if they had been trained. But it didn’t work out. Now there are mostly boarding schools in Vrindavan and Mayapur but elsewhere it seems that day schools are better. On the question of, “How do we know that we’ll take another body after death?”, Prabhupada said, “Krishna gives the simple example that in this life we change from a young man to an older man to a very old man, and then we die and take another body.” I said, “But because we transmigrate in this life doesn’t prove that we’ll transmigrate to another life. It only proves transmigration in this life.” Prabhupada said, “No, it does prove transmigration in the next life.” I said, “No, it’s not actually proof. It’s faith in an analogy. But it doesn’t prove that I will become another person in another body after I die.” I’d hang in there taking the devil’s advocate position and Prabhupada would not stop his strong arguments based on Krishna’s words and the shastric statements. He’d say, “It’s not just an analogy. The most important thing is that it’s Krishna’s analogy. Krishna and all the authorities say that the soul is eternal and after this body you’ll take another body because the soul doesn’t die. Based on their authority we take this as true.” Then I realized, “I’d better cut this out. I don’t want to keep arguing with my spiritual master. The answer to this question finally rests on faith.” So I would concede, at least on that one. But to this day I think that the idea of another life after death is a matter of faith. On some morning walks we went beyond intellectual play and our faith was really touched. Once we were sloshing through the sand, made a turn and started going the other way when Prabhupada said, “To see God, you have to have somebody who is not blind. I am not blind, I can see God. You follow someone who is not blind.” I thought, “Wow, Prabhupada is not blind. They’re all blind. But he knows. He is not blind.” His words were such gems, such blockbusters. “Because I know, I’m not blind.” His was prima facie, clear and plain evidence. Someone gave me a DVD about Ram das’s guru. On it they showed a picture of his guruji and we heard his disciples talking about how his guru made you feel love for other people. But there was no mention of love of God. Prabhupada was a great scholar of the Vedic literature and he made you feel love of God with such conviction, argument and philosophy. His love and his giving this love to us was such a gigantic thing. I don’t mean to criticize Ram das’ guru for only having the apparent quality of love for other people. But Prabhupada’s love for us had the potency to bring us back to Godhead. His love was astounding. To me Prabhupada’s most meaningful quality was his love. He didn’t always show it because he was the general on the battlefield and he didn’t have time. But we all needed love even though some of us, like Tamal Krishna Maharaj, were ready to take the battle orders and fight. On the back of one of the Memories books I read a quote from one of Prabhupada’s lectures. He said, “So if you will just follow these four regulative principles and chant sixteen rounds then you will go back to home, back to Godhead. I guarantee it.” Why does Prabhupada say that? On behalf of his Guru Maharaj. Out of love. He has love for the cow, love for the poor living entities, but even more love for his disciples. I think he wants us to come up to grade so that he can present us to Krishna, “Please take these souls back.” I don’t know how much love I can claim I saw, but I have faith that I did see it and that that’s what he’s offering us. That’s the value in remembering him. These Memories videos and books and any remembering programs are so important . When Sanatana Goswami was in jail, Rupa Goswami sent him a cryptic note saying, “Where has the Mathura of Krishna gone? Where has the Ayodhya of Raghupati gone? By reflection, make the mind steady, thinking, ‘This universe is not eternal.’” It means that although the dhams, like Vrindavan Dham, will always be there, on earth they are deteriorating. Similarly, memories of Prabhupada’s presence and qualities can also deteriorate. We have to remember him and speak about his qualities so that we don’t forget what he is in our lives. As an empowered, loving agent of Krishna, Prabhupada has the power to take us back to Godhead. I’ve been reading his Jaladuta and New York diaries. Krishna said to Prabhupada, “You go in the material world, fit into the disciplic succession in a very special way and bring all these souls back.” Prabhupada has done a lot and by following his example his followers have to do a lot more. All we can do is follow his example. Some of us have flopped as trying to be gurus or trying to imitate him, but remembrance of him is in itself a good thing and a big thing – even to remember how Prabhupada held a cup or did this or did that. When his disciples explain what he was like and what he did, people in the future can remember those stories. For example, somebody once asked Prabhupada, “What do you feel when you chant?” He said, “I feel no fear.” For anyone to hear that story and keep it with them, they can also feel no fear. It is wonderful. It is preaching. What I need is his love because I need to be forgiven. By Srila Prabhupada’s love, his charity, his leniency, his empowerment, I need—we all need—to be released. I had the thought that when I die I’ll call for Krishna and they’ll ask, “Whose disciple is he?” “Prabhupada’s.” “Oh, Prabhupada, a very famous guru. Ask Prabhupada, ‘Do you know this disciple, Satsvarupa? What do you think of him? What is your recommendation for him?’” One devotee was telling me that she had a revelation that Srila Prabhupada is going to save every one of us at death, that we have nothing to fear. Maybe that’s true. We just have to remember him and love him back, as he said to me, “I will love you, if you will love me.” And by “every one of us”, I don’t mean only those who got initiated by fire yajna, but all those who want to be his disciples can be his siksa disciples. They can all be linked with him. After all, in the very beginning of Srimad Bhagavatam Srila Prabhupada dedicated it to his spiritual master and then wrote, “He lives forever by his divine instructions and the follower lives with him.”

The full Prabhupada Memories Series can be viewed here and also at www.prabhupadamemories.com

Following Srila Prabhupada

Interview DVD 06

Satsvarupa das Goswami: I remember around this time I unfortunately grew restless with my duties while I was in Juhu and I wanted some other service rather than just being a servant. So I wrote Prabhupada a note about that, and I put it on top of the letters one day. He instructed me and he said, “Don’t be a monkey jumping here and there, looking for some different service. Keep the service that you have and be satisfied with it.” So I immediately felt terrible that I had asked to leave my service, and I wrote him another note back and apologized that I asked to be transferred and I said, “Please, I’m satisfied, I don’t want another service. Don’t throw me away.” And he wrote me a little note on top of that one and he said, “You are very pure. May Krishna save you from calamities.” But then later in Geneva, very animatedly he was talking about the need for a library party. “Who is going to do this? We need this. We need our books distributed all over the world. We need a library party, but no one is doing this. So who will do this?” I was in the room and I said, “I’ll do it.” He said, “Well, then do it.” Then I left the room and I was with the other sannyasis and I said, “Well, I guess I’ve got this new service,” and they said, “Yes. Well, you’ve wanted some new service, so now you have a new service.” Then later I said to him, “Do you really want me to do this service?” and Prabhupada said, “Yes, you can do it. Get some other brahmacaris and do this. But you have to get a replacement for your servant duties. I think you can get Brahmananda Swami, see if he’ll do it.” I found out if he could replace me, and he said he wanted to do it.