Watch: Guru Prasad Swami Recalls How a Texas Campus Kirtan and a Bhagavad-gita in Panama Led Him to Srila Prabhupada

In a three-minute video recorded for Hare Krsna TV, GBC member Guru Prasad Swami tells how a campus chanting party in Texas, a Bhagavad-gita found in a US Army library in Panama and a meeting with Srila Prabhupada in 1976 brought him to Krishna consciousness.

In a short first-person video published by Hare Krsna TV, the video channel of ISKCON Desire Tree, Guru Prasad Swami recounts how he became a devotee: from his first sight of chanting devotees as a student at the University of Texas, through his years as a US Army soldier in Panama, to his initiation by Srila Prabhupada in Vrindavan on 4 April 1976. The clip, titled “How I Came in Krishna Consciousness by Guru Prasad Swami?”, was uploaded on 14 March 2016 and runs just over three minutes.^[1]

A knock on the door in Texas

Guru Prasad Swami says he first encountered Krishna consciousness while studying at the University of Texas, when he saw devotees chanting on campus. He found them unusual and watched for a while without approaching them.^[1]

Shortly afterwards a devotee knocked on the door of his apartment, gave him a magazine and, as he puts it, “took all my money for a donation.” He later learned, he says, that the visitor was Visnujana Swami. He found the magazine very interesting, but someone took it from him, and when he went looking for the devotees he could not find them.^[1]

A Bhagavad-gita in an Army library

A few years passed. At the end of 1973 he was serving in the US Army, stationed in Panama, and practising yoga on his own. Unhappy in what he calls a “materialistic, degraded atmosphere,” he found Srila Prabhupada’s Bhagavad-gita in the library, read it through once, and wrote to the devotees, who sent him chanting beads. He began practising as best he could.^[1]

A few months later, he recalls, devotees opened the first temple in Central America, in Costa Rica. One devotee met him in Panama, and then the temple president came to see him. The temple president, he says, “solidified my Krishna consciousness” and cleared his remaining impersonalist and material views.^[1]

Meeting Srila Prabhupada

After leaving the Army in 1975 he joined a travelling sankirtana party and then the library party, which took him to India in 1976. There he attended the Mayapur festival and met Srila Prabhupada. Although he had already been recommended for initiation, he says he waited for the chance to be initiated by Srila Prabhupada personally, which happened in Vrindavan on 4 April 1976.^[1]

Forty years of service

His first service was distributing books, which he did “for many years.” He then moved into management as a temple president and regional secretary, and in 1987 became a member of the Governing Body Commission, “which has been my service from 1987 until now,” he says in the 2016 recording.^[1]

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Sources

1. Hare Krsna TV, “How I Came in Krishna Consciousness by Guru Prasad Swami?”, YouTube, 14 March 2016. youtube.com/watch?v=hQgskJTV6qY