(Kadamba Kanana Swami, Stockholm, June 2011)
I remember the story of how Srila Prabhupada went to Scotland in Glasgow. They made a very nice arrangement and hired out the theatre. It was a nice theatre with balconies on the side and in the centre. It was just packed. Everywhere there were people, there were even people standing in the aisles – that’s how packed it was. It was amazing!
So there were devotees managing the whole thing. They rented out the whole place and. They were stood at the door as guards and so on. Everything was nicely managed, and Srila Prabhupada gave a lecture, which is a story in itself.
There was a huge kirtan – a big kirtan, and Prabhupada himself got into that kirtan on stage. They got really ecstatic……so much so that the guards at the door just left their posts and joined the kirtan! And then these little grubby street kids. In ‘The Lilamrita’, Satsvarupa Maharaja used the word ‘little urchins’ (dwarf like figures – small) and they were kind of blackish and dirty, like street kids. They just came in and tried to climb on stage with Prabhupada, and when the devotees saw them, they were throwing these kids off the stage and Prabhupada said:
“No, they are devotees. They want to chant Hare Krishna”.
The kids joined the kirtan in ecstasy! That mood of abundance of just distributing to anyone without discrimination – that mood was there in Srila Prabhupda! No one else had that. All of his god brothers didn’t have that mood! None of them had that mood!
