New Vrindaban Brijabasi Spirit

by Mother Rupa dd

Srila Prabhupada is SO much present in His Palace; even very many of our guests notice.

Prabhupada’s personal presence has always been very prominent at the Palace, at first during the building and then most especially after His disappearance. We used to be very aware that He had truly moved into His Palace just as He had promised He would.

Sooo many devotees had such intense experience of this during the day and days following Srila Prabhupada’s passing; both residents and visitors alike.

Many devotees can recall the little prayer Prabhupada said we could offer Krishna saying…’if You so desire, please cure Srila Prabhupada.”

For me it became another mantra I would chant even on my beads after the basics. I recall reciting it to help me try to stay more focused on what I was doing and why and to try to be as ‘good’ as I could to try to insure the desired result of the prayer.

I can recall most clearly the descriptions and the tape of Srila Prabhupada being asked to stay with us. And Prabhupada promising to come to His Palace.

And yet within a month Krishna had called Prabhupada Home.

You couldn’t comprehend how the sun could shine, or the earth could keep turning. Someone had turned the universe inside out and nothing made sense anymore.

But there was Solace at the Palace. You could feel Prabhupada in His name, in His loving reciprocation with the devotional sacrifice and realization offered Him there. You could breath again there.

I was laying the marble floor in what is now the tour guides’ room. (it was going to be Kirtanananda’s room when Prabhupada came to live there — the next room on the other side of the shower closet was to be Kuladri’s, and the room closest to the kitchen was to be Radhanath Maharaja’s –he was going to be Prabhupada’s pujari when He came.)

Anyway, I could easily hear various devotees coming throughout the day to visit, and take shelter in bhajan or prayer or darshan all through the day. I worked very late that night unaware of the freezing cold because the service was a sort of point of ‘normalcy’ for me in a world gone horribly upside down.

The sound of their pain, grief, and separation gradually made me accept the unacceptable fact. Amburish, Hladini, and very late that night, Radhanath Maharaja, Varsana Swami. and Chandramauli Swami’s visits all performed the transformation of abject loss into inconceivable ecstatic gain.

But still the little prayer for Prabhupada’s recovery chanted itself mockingly, endlessly in my head making me worse than miserable. I finally had to ask if there was anything else we could pray to stop the maddening ‘loop taps’ wringing my heart out.

It was the morning after Srila Prabhupada had left us. It had been the hardest day and night ever unimaginable. I was beginning to get physically ill. A clutch of devotees met at the little plywood door into the Palace as we arrived for the morning kirtan program planned to go throughout that day as well.

I asked my question but then got carried along into the temple room, where I was asked to wipe up the temple room floor from the track in of the previous day.

Grateful for the activity I began hunting down paraphernalia and started working in sections as there were several devotees there: some pacing japa, some more or less wiped out along the wall.

The service helped me keep my mind from driving me crazy so I focused on the actions of it minutely. At one point, I was aware of someone standing close by, waiting for me to look up.

Kirtanananda was there, he’d heard my question at the door. And he wore an expression utterly transformed from the day before. With all the experience of nearly numberless devotees before, he commented, “I know what you can pray, “Dear Srila Prabhupada, thank You for moving into Your Palace.”