Chapter 37 – Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Departure

When Narasiṅgha Mahārāja opened the doors for Śrīla Prabhupāda, he was stunned.

Before leaving for the West, Prabhupāda had visibly lost weight and was clearly unwell. But now, as the devotees carried him into his rooms, he was almost unrecognisable. His body had become gaunt and emaciated. Gently placing him on his bed, the devotees stood silently as he lay with his eyes closed for several moments. Mahārāja stood silently at the foot of the bed along with Prabhupāda’s other senior disciples. For several moments there was complete silence. Then Prabhupāda slowly opened his eyes and softly recited, “Kṛṣṇa tvadīya-pada-paṅkaja-pañjarāntam…”

This poignant prayer by King Kulaśekhara was one of Prabhupāda’s favourite verses.

kṛṣṇa tvadīya-pada-paṅkaja-pañjarāntam
adyaiva me viśatu mānasa-rāja-haṁsaḥ
prāṇa-prayāṇa-samaye kapha-vāta-pittaiḥ
kaṇṭhāvarodhana-vidhau smaraṇaṁ kutas te

O Kṛṣṇa, may the royal swan of my mind enter the cage of Your lotus feet this very day. For at the time of death, when my throat is choked by mucus, wind, and bile, how will I be able to remember You then? (Mukunda-mālā Stotram 33)

Those standing around Prabhupāda’s bed listened in silence. The prayer seemed to express the mood of his own heart.

While in Bombay, Prabhupāda had expressed to the devotees in his small entourage his desire that all of his disciples from around the world come to see him in Vṛndāvana. Upon arriving at the Kṛṣṇa-Balarāma Temple, he reiterated that request.

Narasiṅgha Mahārāja: I was there in the room when there was this conversation and Tamāla-Kṛṣṇa Gosvāmī told Prabhupāda, “Well, Prabhupāda, maybe a thousand devotees will be able to come.”
Then Prabhupāda said “No – let them all come.”
“Prabhupāda, that’s going to cost over a million dollars.”
“Yes, let them come.”
Then Tamāla said, “Everyone will want to come – even the pūjārīs. Each temple would be just left with the thinnest skeleton crew. And the majority of the devotees that will come are probably going to be your most enthusiastic disciples – that means the book distributors. If they all come here, book distribution will stop. That means the income will stop. And then, how long they will stay here? Maybe months and months and months.”
Again, Prabhupāda said, “Yes – let them come.”

So, I was put in charge of the devotee’s accommodation and prasādam. I immediately went to Mathurā to start arranging cooks and figured what it would cost to feed over a thousand people a day, morning and evening, and came up with a budget for it.

You could probably accommodate about a hundred devotees in Kṛṣṇa-Balarāma Temple. I was buying bedding, tents, tarpaulins and other things so that we could also put some of the devotees on the roof of the gurukula. Vṛndāvana has many āśramas, and some of them have five-hundred rooms or more which can be rented. You can also hire professional cooks who can prepare prasādam for thousands. So I went to different guesthouses to figure out accommodation. Finally, I made an arrangement down the road at Foglā Āśrama, which is a big guesthouse in Vṛndāvana with many rooms. I was running around like a madman, calculating the cost of all this.

A telegram was supposed to be sent to Rāmeśvara in Los Angeles saying, “Prabhupāda is requesting all the devotees to come to Vṛndāvana.” Now, in those days, to send an international telegram and to make sure it got to where it was supposed to go, you would have to go to Delhi and send it from the national post office. Satsvarūpa Gosvāmī was sent to Delhi to send a telegram.

So, the a few days later, at 3:30am, I was out in front of the temple alone, walking around chanting japa, and Satsvarūpa arrived in a taxi from Delhi. He asked me, “How’s Prabhupāda?”
I gave him a report and then I told him, “So I’m in charge of making the arrangements for all the devotees. We’re expecting at least a thousand devotees will come. When do you think they’ll start to arrive?”
Then he said in a ‘matter-of-fact’ way, “Oh, no one’s coming.”
“But you sent the telegram to all the temples?”
“No, I sent it to L.A. and then I called Rāmeśvara – he decided to just put the telegram in the drawer. We didn’t send the telegram to any other temples.”
I was shocked. Now, if that happened today, I’d tell him, “Get back in that taxi, go to Delhi, and go deliver that damn telegram to everyone!” I wouldn’t stand for it! But at that time, I was a nobody. I was one of the newest swamis in the movement. I’d only been a sannyāsī for about a year and seven months. I wasn’t in charge of any temple; I didn’t have any major responsibility – I travelled around India with just a bag. All I had was my cloth and a tape recorder for listening to Prabhupāda’s lectures. In other words, I didn’t have any position to say anything.
Satsvarūpa kept on talking, but I wasn’t listening to anything he said – I was too shocked. Then he went into the guesthouse, and I just stood there.

And there was no mention of it again. Nobody told Śrīla Prabhupāda, “Well, you said, ‘let them come,’ Prabhupāda, but Rāmeśvara and everybody decided not to do that.”

So nobody came… maybe half a dozen people ended up coming. I’ve always felt that if they had just let the devotees come, then with that many devotees doing kīrtana together, maybe Prabhupāda wouldn’t have left this world when he did. In my opinion, that could have created a huge spiritual force on that side I think that would have been the biggest event since the passing of Grandfather Bhīṣma.

But what seemed to be lacking from the leaders was the sincerity in keeping Prabhupāda here. They were more concerned with how much money it was going to cost. That was probably the biggest managerial blunder made in Śrīla Prabhupāda’s time. The sad fact of that matter is that hardly any devotees know this happened. Most of Prabhupāda’s disciples have no idea that they were being called by him to his bedside in Vṛndāvana in his last days. 

Around the clock, devotees took turns staying with Śrīla Prabhupāda in his room in case he needed anything. Mahārāja requested the most difficult shift – from 11:30 at night until 4:00 in the morning – and served in this way for about three weeks. Two devotees would generally remain in the room so that if one needed to step outside for a few moments of fresh air, the other could stay with Prabhupāda. Most nights, Kīrtanānanda Swami shared the shift with Mahārāja, and together they sat quietly beside Prabhupāda’s bed, chanting. There was little conversation. Occasionally, Prabhupāda would ask who was there, request some water, ask to be turned on his side, or quietly tell them to continue chanting.

Sadly, by the end of October, Mahārāja’s six-month tourist visa had expired, forcing him to leave India. After offering his obeisance to Śrīla Prabhupāda, he quietly left the room, burdened by the painful thought that he might never see his spiritual master again.

Sharing a taxi to Delhi with him was the renowned book distributor, Tripurārī Swami. Prabhupāda so appreciated his enthusiasm for distributing his books that he once referred to him as the “incarnation of book distribution.” Unbeknownst to either Mahārāja or Tripurārī Swami, the two would become close friends in the years to come.

The journey back to America was a quiet one. Mahārāja was absorbed in thoughts of Śrīla Prabhupāda and the uncertain future. In Chicago, he remained on the plane while Tripurārī Swami disembarked, and the two bade each other farewell. Mahārāja then continued on to Minneapolis-Saint Paul, where Ratnabāhu Dāsa, one of the local book distributors, was waiting to meet him at the airport.

It was already dark, and during the drive to the preaching centre, Mahārāja gazed out at the snow-covered streets, sidewalks, and rooftops. Streetlights reflected off the fresh snow, and the ordered suburban landscape was a stark contrast to the winding, dusty lanes of Vṛndāvana, where cows roamed freely and temples of Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa dominated the skyline. Before long, his thoughts drifted back to Śrīla Prabhupāda in the Kṛṣṇa-Balarāma Temple. The drive ended at the modest townhouse that served as the local preaching centre.

During the next few weeks, Mahārāja gave daily classes to the saṅkīrtana devotees, went out with them on book distribution, and enthused the devotees by telling them of his adventures in Africa and India.

Ratnabāhu Dāsa: I remember Mahārāja as an independent sannyāsī who was dedicated to spreading the mission. He was very energetic in those days and many of the brahmacārīs were attracted to him because we thought he was so cool and down to earth. I remember that Mahārāja used to practice using ‘nun chucks’ – a Chinese weapon consisting of two short wooden sticks joined together end to end by a rope or a chain – the ones that Bruce Lee used and made popular. Mahārāja was also a pretty decent mṛdaṅga player and enjoyed leading kīrtana.

I was there with Mahārāja during one particularly cold morning. After our morning sādhana, it was time to go out. However, when we went to the front door to leave, we found that it was so cold that the door knob had frozen and there was an icicle had formed on it – and this was inside the house! I remember the look of incredulity on Mahārāja’s face when he saw it. I remember that he looked at me and made a joke about it and we both laughed. That day we didn’t end up going out to preach. Obviously – the weather was ridiculous!

It was now the beginning of November. Although no one wished to admit it openly, the devotees sensed that Śrīla Prabhupāda’s departure was drawing near. The devotees approached the saṅkīrtana leader, asking if they could leave for India before it was too late.

Narasiṅgha Mahārāja: There was a meeting in the temple and I knew what was supposed to be happening. First, twenty devotees were supposed to be going, and the authorities kept whittling it down, whittling it down, whittling it down, till finally they decided that nobody would be going!
I was sitting behind the devotee-in-charge, and there were these two devotees that were a little more aggressive, they were determined to go – I remember that one of them was Keśava Bhāratī – but then the authorities kept shutting them down, “No! It is not a service to Śrīla Prabhupāda to give up your book distribution.”
Now, I was there when Prabhupāda said, “Let them come,” so I was behind the guy in-charge, quietly mouthing, “Go! Go! Do it! Do it!” Except for those two devotees, nobody else saw me do that, otherwise there would have been trouble. They were both looking at me and getting more and more determined – “No, we must go!” and they asserted themselves. Finally, the in-charge said “Okay, you two can go, but nobody else.”

As the days passed, Mahārāja continued his service with the devotees in Minneapolis, never far from thoughts of Śrīla Prabhupāda in Vṛndāvana. He longed to return at once, but the stringent Indian visa regulations at that time prevented him from obtaining another visa immediately after leaving the country. He would have to wait a month or two before obtaining a new visa.

And then on the morning of November 14th the news came.

Śrīla Prabhupāda had departed.

Ratnabāhu Dāsa: We received news that our beloved guru, Śrīla Prabhupāda, had left his body and, of course, the mood totally changed in the preaching centre. Mahārāja became extremely quiet and solemn. The gloomy and heavy atmosphere seemed to be made all the worse by the inhospitable cold and dreary weather outside. My memory of what specifically happened for the rest of the day has faded now, but I do have vague images of us staying inside and doing kīrtana. 

The two saṅkīrtana devotees that Mahārāja had encouraged to defy their in-charge and go to India, arrived just five hours before Śrīla Prabhupāda left the world. They had made it, he had not.

In the years that followed, Narasiṅgha Mahārāja never spoke about his own experience on 14th November 1977. The place where he received the news had long faded from memory, overshadowed by the event itself. It was only thirty years later that he happened to recall where he had been.

The anniversary of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s disappearance was always a particularly solemn day for Narasiṅgha Mahārāja. In the morning, he would speak to the devotees about Śrīla Prabhupāda’s extraordinary achievements and unique qualities. But each year, at 7:20 in the evening – the time of Prabhupāda’s departure – while the devotees would perform guru-pūjā for Prabhupāda, he would quietly retire to his room, sit alone with his japa beads, and absorb himself in remembrance of his beloved spiritual master.

Only once, in 2002, did he remain with the devotees that evening and speak about Prabhupāda’s final months and the service he had rendered to him. Those close to Mahārāja understood that these memories were deeply personal and that his separation from Śrīla Prabhupāda remained profound.

Years later, Mahārāja reflected on Śrīla Prabhupāda’s antya-līlā. Although both doctors and devotees offered various medical explanations for Prabhupāda’s physical condition, Mahārāja believed that such diagnoses could describe only the symptoms – not the deeper cause of his spiritual master’s departure. He explained:

Narasiṅgha Mahārāja: Many years after Prabhupāda’s disappearance, I read a description of Śrīnivāsa Ācārya visiting Gadādhara Paṇḍita in Purī. After Caitanya Mahāprabhu left this world, Gadādhara remained here for some years, overwhelmed by intense feelings of vipralambha, separation, and gradually he also departed. The description I read of Gadādhara Paṇḍita’s symptoms were very similar to those that we saw in Śrīla Prabhupāda.

So many devotees will talk about how thin and emaciated he became, and how he didn’t eat. They describe Prabhupāda as withdrawing from the world due to due sickness, but ultimately it was not simply sickness. They never relate those symptoms to separation – never! In reality, a Vaiṣṇava does not leave this world because of disease or due to any loss of something.

Śrīla Śrīdhara Mahārāja and other godbrothers of Śrīla Prabhupāda felt that he was a śaktyāveśa-avatāra and that Nityānanda Prabhu entered his body to live there for twelve years. That means that at a particular time Nityānanda Prabhu came, and at a particular time He withdrew. And when Nityananda Prabhu withdrew, at that same time Śrīla Prabhupāda also withdrew from the world, feeling separation from his Lord.