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Walking through Golden Gate Park one day, they heard a scratching coming from a garbage can. Prabhupada went over and looked in, then pulled back in repulsion. A big city rat had somehow become trapped in the garbage can and was scratching, trying to get out. Prabhupada shook his head and said, "He is doomed." He walked on. Prabhupada commented that later the garbagemen would come, see the rat, and kill him. Prabhupada was always after the philosophical and Krsna conscious meaning; even a seemingly ordinary comment about the rat's doom struck his disciples as deep and philosophical. They could understand that their position was similar: they were trapped in the material world, waiting for the end, but Prabhupada was saving them.

On his return from India, after taking part in the first evening kirtana in the San Francisco temple, Prabhupada said, "You have all advanced." He saw that the devotees had become more enthusiastic and ecstatic -guests were also rising and dancing-and that pleased his own Krsna consciousness.

Each night after kirtana he would lecture. He was discussing the verses in the sixth chapter of Bhagavad-gita. "I am making here a series of lectures on the Krsna conscious yoga system," Prabhupada wrote to Brahmananda in mid-December of 1967, "and they are tape recorded."

Prabhupada thought of assembling the lectures into a small book. Indian gurus introducing self-styled techniques were increasingly popular in the U.S. Therefore Prabhupada wanted to distinguish the standard form of yoga and meditation, as taught by Lord Krsna in the Bhagavad-gita, from the farce taught by gurus who never mention Krsna as the Supreme Personality of Godhead but rather say everyone is equal to God, and whose disciples are allowed to indulge their senses in intoxication and illicit sex. They give a mantra for a fee, Prabhupada noted, and claim that by meditating twenty minutes in the morning you can become God in six months. He was surprised that American people, who were supposedly intelligent, were being so easily cheated. "We have actually seen such so-called yogis," Prabhupada said, "sleeping and snoring while meditating."

"Service begins by the tongue," Prabhupada said in one of his December '67 lectures, "by chanting this Hare Krsna, and by the taste of krsna-prasadam. The beginning process is very nice. If prasadam is offered to you, accept it. If you become submissive and give service, by these two practices, Krsna will reveal Himself to you-just like Krsna is revealing Himself to Arjuna. Arjuna is a devotee, he is a friend: "I am speaking to you that old system of yoga, bhakti-yoga.' Only one who has developed the service spirit with love and devotion, he can understand Krsna."

After the lecture Prabhupada would continue the theme, Krsna consciousness, in his room. It was the same theme as on his morning walks, in his letters, or in his intimate talks with individual disciples or visitors; it was the theme of his writing, and the very heartbeat of his life. When a devotee asked Prabhupada how the soul is carried from body to body, Prabhupada replied, "By desire," and cited himself as an example. "Just like I have come to America. Why? Because I wanted to preach. So by that desire I was carried here. Otherwise, I have no business to come here."

Cidananda: There would be three, four, or five devotees in his room, and he would just start talking. They would somehow gather in his room, and he would start talking about what he was trying to do. His talk was not directed specifically to anyone, but he was saying that this is what he was doing. He made everything very clear. He wanted to publish his books. He was trying to get a press for this back in New York. And if he had a letter from Raya Rama in New York, he would read the letter right there. In this way it was allaying any doubts in people's minds about what he was really going to try to do. He had his books and the temple. He was concerned about the temple and the new lunch program, where we were giving out free prasadam. His concern kept everybody going. Before he came, there wasn't that much activity. But when Prabhupada came, things started bustling very fast.


- From "Prabhupada-lila" by HH Satsvarupa dasa Goswami