I lived in Highland Mills from the age of five months to four years old, almost five. I have found that my early memories are not always accurate when it comes to time frames, sometimes it happens that I thought an event took place at one point in time but later I realized it had to have taken place at another. But we moved to Newburgh just before I was five and moved from there just after I turned eight.
At some point my grandmother asked me to come to Queens for a week during the Summer. My parents asked if I wanted to and I said yes. So off I went to New York City, to the house my mom had grown up in. My father had grown up in Queens too, although my parents never met each other until they were almost out of high school I think?
One day my grandmother told me the “real reason” she had invited me to her house. She told me there was an old man who kept asking her about me and telling her things about me and he was so kind and so persistent that she was now beginning to wonder herself about all the things he was saying about me and he wanted to meet me but because he was an old man the best way he figured he could do it was if I came over to her house. I later heard Srila Prabhupada would sometimes go out to the city on his own in the early days. But no matter how it happened she said he was standing on the sidewalk outside her house right now. So she sent me out with some money for a block of ice for her ice box and some butter and out I went.
She also told me his name. When I got across the street the man asked me, “So, are you the gopi I have heard about for all these years?” (his words not mine, as far as I can remember) and I told him, “I must be Srila Prabhuba (I did not remember how to pronounce it right) because I know you have been asking about me and I am the only one here!”. Srila Prabhupada looked around and said, “I know where I am right now but I am not supposed to be here”. What I think that meant was he was supposed to be someplace else, like in Canada, and he had suddenly come to be in New York. He was even wearing a coat? He winced when I said his name and told me he hadn’t decided if he was going to let his disciples call him that yet.
Anyway he asked me if I even knew what a gopi was and I told him no and then he said, “Someone must be playing a trick on me.”. He then asked me if I was sure I had never heard of Krishna, or gopis, or anything else. I told him no. Then he mentioned the family from India I had spoken to and how they said I needed a guru, the family from when I was living in Highland Mills, New York. “Oh now I remember!” I said, “Yes, they told me I needed you.”. It had been arranged in 1965 that I would become Srila Prabhupada’s disciple by them, they spoke back and forth between Srila Prabhupada and myself when I was four.
Srila Prabhupada said he didn’t have much time, he normally wouldn’t do this, but it was so important he wanted to pray to Krishna for a miracle, and would I mind praying along with him, in order to help make sure that it worked. I said sure, although I did not know what he was talking about. But now I was determined to help him. So we prayed and he pulled out his Bhagavad Gita. It wasn’t HIS edition he translated, but another copy he had used he told me before he published his own edition, which was just about coming out. The book had Sanskrit. He asked me if he showed me a verse in Sanskrit if I could read it, that was what we had prayed I could do. I said if you say so, this is your prayer. So he showed me a verse and right away I saw it in the air. It was in purple letters, all in Sanskrit, and I looked at the lines and I read it. He looked surprised a little and said “That is exactly right”. Then he asked me “Have you secretly been studying Sanksrit for all these years since you spoke with those people earlier and I said no. Then he asked my grandmother who had come out by then. The store owner also was standing there by then he did not wish to miss this he said and he had come out to see as well.
Srila Prabhupada asked me for a translation and purport which he said the translation was almost what he wrote himself, this was without my looking any further at the book, and the purport, since he asked me for my own explanation, I gave according to my own understanding. He asked if that was true according to my religion and I said yes, I quoted when I heard it in church, and the store owner confirmed one point I had made and my grandmother confirmed another. Then Srila Prabhupada said “I am convinced”.
What he was convinced about was he said he had prayed for someone like his spiritual master to come down and help him with his movement. I told him I would not be able to help him while he was alive. He said he was afraid of that. I asked him if he would take down my name and tell all of his disciples about me and he said they didn’t all believe him even then. So he said the best thing he could do is take down my name, and also my grandmother’s name, and give it to one of his disciples, a person just like me but also different.
He told my grandmother I could save her if she wanted. She asked me later on if I could do that for her and I said, “I guess so if he says so, but I don’t see how?”. She told me he said if a devotee goes back to Godhead he can take his relatives with him. She told me she would like that. Years later I came across devotees in London and the guru there had heard my name. Another time I went up to a GBC meeting and one guru told another, “See, I told you he was coming”. Another time when I joined the San Diego temple the temple president also had been told my name and said “they knew I was coming” but he had just heard about me. One mataji told me Srila Prabhupada had seen me on the sidewalk in New York when I was a child and I passed right out, but when I got back up I told her I didn’t want her to tell anyone about that. Finally I met the mataji who was given my name by Srila Prabhupada. I don’t know how we are the same or how we are different. But she has told the same story to devotees for a long time, how Srila Prabhupada gave her my name and my grandmother’s name and told her “A wonderful boy” would some day come along and join the movement.
While we were talking Srila Prabhupada said I would be able to become his disciple but not in the usual way. He told me I would also need to have another guru. One of his disciples, because if I was not going to be able to join ISKCON while he was still on the planet, then I would still need to take a guru who was. So I asked him for a favor back, since he had asked for a miracle when he first met me. I said to please give me your most advanced disciple for a guru. It was only fair since I would not be able to have him. He said that he would.
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