Veda Vyasa Priya Swami Remembers Srila Prabhupada

Prabhupada Memories

Interview 01

Veda-vyasa Swami: Reading Prabhupada’s books and his teachings actually turned my life around. My father found the First Canto of the Srimad-Bhagavatam in a garbage can at Rockefeller Center. He didn’t read it, but I read it and I was convinced. Then I convinced him and he also later took initiation as well as my mother. The idea is that the potency of conviction of the absolute truth was in Srimad-Bhagavatam—the mahatmya of Srimad-Bhagavatam. Everything is so clearly explained by Srila Prabhupada in his purports that I was convinced from that point.

We won the biggest court case in the historical fight against the charge of brainwashing and lumping us in with other groups who were labeled as cults. Srila Prabhupada during that time was guiding the devotees and the devotees were guiding life members how to counteract these charges. We collected petitions and we propagated so heavily, but Prabhupada was directly instructing us how to handle the court case. I vividly remember that he sent us the message, “Just pile my books on the table before the judge and Krishna will take care of the rest.” And he was exactly right. The judge was so impressed by the reviews and content of the books that he declared Hare Krishna as an authentic bona-fide religion with a history of over five thousand years. Prabhupada stated that the books are so potent that even a person who doesn’t have any faith can generate faith. We didn’t expect anything like that judgment—to evaluate the books on the merits of authenticity and the historical treatise of the Vedanta studies. By Prabhupada’s mercy the devotees were helped out, but Prabhupada gets the credit.

To view the entire unedited video go to Memories 64 - The New Talavan Clan +3

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