In the evenings devotees and guests would crowd into Prabhupāda’s room to sit with him. Gaurasundara and Govinda dāsī would attempt to confine the devotees to Prabhupāda’s visiting hours, but their restraints were not very strong, and Prabhupāda himself would often override them. Prabhupāda was more relaxed in his room than in the temple, and he would laugh and speak about many different things.

Brahmānanda: Prabhupāda would just talk. Often there wouldn’t be any questions, and he would just get on a topic and talk, sitting casually. Sometimes it wouldn’t even be directly about Kṛṣṇa, but he would describe different things about life in India or some other topic. He would always make sure that everyone had some prasādam. One night he was explaining to a visitor that his disciples – “these American boys and girls” – were taking up Kṛṣṇa consciousness naturally, not artificially. He referred to his servant Gaurasundara: “Actually, he is doing so many nice things for me all day long because he loves me. It is not artificial.”

Govinda dāsī: One time there was an elaborate discussion about whether trains were better than buses or buses were better than trains. Another time Prabhupāda was talking about liquor, and I said, “Oh, Śrīla Prabhupāda, whiskey tastes awful!” He was shocked. He said, “Oh. You have tasted?” He was surprised that I had tasted liquor. He talked in detail about Bengal tigers and all sorts of other things.

Most of the devotees were not so astute – most of us were just recovering from being hippies and taking drugs – but everyone loved him very much. Actually, there was no name and fame. There was no money. There was no position. The center of our service, the motivating factor, was simply love of Śrīla Prabhupāda.

Nanda-kiśora: Prabhupāda explained how he had first seen snow when he had come to America. He said, “One day I looked out the window and I thought, ‘Oh, someone has taken lime and thrown it all over.’ And then I looked up at the sky and thought, ‘Oh, they are still throwing.’ ” And then he laughed. I could hardly believe he had never seen snow fall before. He was like a child. He said such things so beautifully, like an innocent child, that whatever doubt I had was just wiped away due to the beauty of his expression.

Satyabhāmā: Prabhupāda told a story about a man from Calcutta who could tell the make of any car just by hearing it. I think Prabhupāda was making an important philosophical point, but I forget the point. Anyway, this man’s friend wanted to test the other man’s ability to judge cars just by their sound. So together they went and stood on a street corner in Calcutta. The friend blindfolded the other man, and as each car passed by, the man would identify it: “That is a Cadillac …, that is a Buick …” Then a donkey came walking by, dragging some tin cans, and the man said, “Oh, that is a Ford.”

Kṛṣṇadāsa and Uddhava told Prabhupāda about the San Francisco Ratha-yātrā, and they handed him a newspaper clipping. Prabhupāda read the headline aloud: “S.F. Paraders Hail Hindu God Krishna.” After noting with pleasure the large photo of devotees pulling the ropes of the “2-ton wagon on long haul to celebrate Ratha-yātrā festival,” he handed the newspaper back to Kṛṣṇadāsa: “Read it.” After hearing the article, Prabhupāda praised the devotees – especially Śyāmasundara and Jayānanda – for constructing an attractive cart and holding such a successful festival.

Then Prabhupāda began to talk of other successes within his new movement. He had heard reports that in San Francisco Tamāla Kṛṣṇa had organized the devotees to go out and chant Hare Kṛṣṇa every day and that in one day they had sold a hundred copies of Back to Godhead. Devotees in New York and Boston, he said, were also going out and chanting, distributing magazines, and collecting as much as forty dollars in a day. He told the disciples gathered in his room that they should all expect to perform public kīrtana in the important cities of the world. Taking mṛdaṅgas and karatālas, they could perform kīrtana anywhere and get the blessings of Lord Caitanya. In this way their numbers would increase. Prabhupāda told them, “If you want to live alone in a secluded place and practice yoga for your own personal advantage, that is very good. But if you want to help others by spreading Kṛṣṇa consciousness, that is far better.”

Prabhupāda said that although a Kṛṣṇa conscious person is not anxious on his own behalf, he is anxious for those who are not Kṛṣṇa conscious, the mass of people who simply engage in sense gratification within a civilization of illusion. Quoting the great ācārya Jīva Gosvāmī, Prabhupāda said that a devotee who chooses to sit in Vṛndāvana and chant Hare Kṛṣṇa should make only one or two disciples; but a missionary, who preaches Kṛṣṇa consciousness all over the world, should make as many disciples as possible.

“So you are being initiated,” Prabhupāda addressed the devotees in his room, “therefore you should make it your responsibility and duty to spread this message – to follow the principles strictly and become pure Vaiṣṇavas and preach all over the world. Don’t worry about where you will sleep or eat, Kṛṣṇa will see to all these things. You simply have to become sincere in service. That’s all. Just be sincere.”

Govinda dāsī raised her hand. “Prabhupāda,” she asked, “what does it mean exactly to surrender?”

“Surrender,” Prabhupāda replied, “is to know that ‘I am nothing…’ ” As Prabhupāda spoke, Govinda dāsī, accustomed to taking dictation, wrote down the answer, while other devotees – some seated on the floor around Prabhupāda’s desk, some standing in the doorway – listened attentively. “I should know,” Prabhupāda continued, “I am less than the stool of a hog. And Kṛṣṇa – You are everything. That is very difficult. We can find millions of Isaac Newtons and Einsteins, but one very rare soul might be surrendered to Kṛṣṇa. Because it is very difficult. So as long as you are thinking that ‘He is more learned than me’ or ‘I am more learned than him’ – that is material. You must know that you are nothing and surrender.”

A new boy who had been attending Śrīla Prabhupāda’s classes asked, “Why is it that one time I feel this way, like you say, ‘surrendered,’ but at other times I forget?”

Prabhupāda: “That is māyā. That is our battle with māyā. We are in māyā’s kingdom, so we have to fight. It is like an ocean, birth and death. There are so many universes and so many species of life, and we are transmigrating birth after birth. It is like you are standing on the edge of a boat, and just a little shove and you may fall into the ocean. Then you do not know where you are going, here or there. So it is like that. If you want to keep back even one percent – to surrender all but one percent – then you have to stay here. Kṛṣṇa is so strict. If you have any desire for material enjoyment, you have to remain. Just one percent may take millions of years. So you have to surrender everything.

“Kṛṣṇa consciousness is already there within you and within everyone, but it has to be invoked. It is like a match, and if you rub it, fire comes out. And that rubbing process is chanting. So we have to inject Kṛṣṇa consciousness into the ear, and we have to go on injecting. Wherever you go, you have to chant – and without any motive.”

Gaurasundara brought in a plate of cut fruit, which Śrīla Prabhupāda distributed to each person. It was late, but Prabhupāda continued speaking: “People want to go on asking God for bread. But as soon as there is bread elsewhere, they won’t go to church. But if you teach people to love God – that they will never forget.” Prabhupāda smiled. Finally the devotees left him, satisfied. They would see him in the temple in the morning.

Montreal temple, established now for a year and a half, occupied a former bowling alley on the third floor of a building near McGill University. Although the gutters on either side of the eight bowling lanes had been filled in with wood, thus creating a smooth, level floor, the eight hardwood lanes were still prominent. An altar and vyāsāsana stood against one wall, and a temporary wall partitioned off the men’s quarters. There was also a kitchen and separate quarters for the women. With difficulty Prabhupāda would daily climb the two flights of stairs and enter the spacious temple room. On the day of his arrival in Montreal, several devotees had carried him up the stairs in a palanquin, but the winding staircase made that too difficult to do daily. So Prabhupāda chose to walk.

The original Montreal devotee was Janārdana, a Canadian attending McGill University. Janārdana wore a beard and long hair, even after his initiation, and lived in an apartment with his wife, who was staunchly opposed to Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Acknowledging Janārdana as an intellectual, Prabhupāda had written him long letters answering his philosophical doubts and requesting that he write essays and books on Kṛṣṇa consciousness.

When the temple had first opened, the McGill Daily had given Janārdana a full page to introduce Swami Bhaktivedanta and Kṛṣṇa consciousness. The headlines had read, “Mind Expansion Under Spiritual Guidance.” Montreal’s French daily newspaper, Le Nouveau Samedi, interviewed Janārdana and published an article: “They claim that the Hindu God Krishna is the Father of Christ and that the inhabitants of the moon are invisible.”

About a dozen members had joined the Montreal temple, but so far they had done little to spread Kṛṣṇa consciousness in Montreal. They had spent most of their energy maintaining themselves spiritually and financially. Although they had held some public kīrtanas at the 1967 World’s Fair, mostly they had concentrated on transforming the bowling alley, cleaning, cooking for Kṛṣṇa, and meeting together for classes and kīrtanas.

When Śrīla Prabhupāda saw Janārdana’s academic studies distracting him from temple management, he asked Janārdana to appoint a temple commander. One night when Prabhupāda came to the temple for his lecture, as soon as he sat on the vyāsāsana, he looked out to Janārdana and asked, “So, have you found a temple commander yet?”

“Oh, no,” Janārdana replied, “not yet.”

Prabhupāda then turned toward the altar and beheld the Deities. “That’s all right,” he said. “Lord Jagannātha is the temple commander. We are His servants.”

One evening in the temple, as Prabhupāda concluded his lecture about Prahlāda Mahārāja, he asked if there were any questions. Himavatī, one of the women disciples, raised her hand.

Prabhupāda: “Yes?”

Himavatī: “Prahlāda Mahārāja was such a great devotee that he said, ‘nothing is mine.’ But then why does he say ‘my God’? How could God become his? Why does he say that?”

Prabhupāda: “Then what shall he say?”

Himavatī: “I don’t understand. How can he say it? If you understand nothing belongs to you, then how can you say, ‘God is mine’?”

Prabhupāda: Kṛṣṇa is the Lord of everyone. Therefore everyone can say ‘my Lord.’ That does not mean if somebody says ‘my Lord,’ God becomes monopolized. You are speaking on the platform of monopolizing, ‘mine.’ But God is never monopolized. He is everyone’s. So everyone has the right to say ‘my God, my Lord.’ In the material sense, when I say, ‘It is my wife,’ that means she is not any other’s wife. But God is not like that. I can say ‘my God,’ but you can also say ‘my God,’ he can say ‘my God,’ everyone can say ‘my God.’ This is the absolute ‘mine.’

“Kṛṣṇa says, ‘All these living creatures are My parts and parcels.’ Mamaivāṁśo. Mama means ‘My.’ So why the living creatures shall not say ‘my God’? Do you follow? Kṛṣṇa says, ‘You are Mine.’ Why shall I not say, ‘Kṛṣṇa, You are mine’? Your husband says, ‘You are mine.’ Why shall you not say to him, ‘You are mine’? But don’t take it in the material sense. In material sense, as soon as I say, ‘This is mine,’ then it belongs to no one else. It is my property. But Kṛṣṇa is not like that. So you can say, ‘Kṛṣṇa is mine.’ There is no harm. Rather, if anyone wants to possess something as his, that position should be Kṛṣṇa’s. That is the ultimate conception of ‘mine.’ That is the perfection of the word ‘mine.’

“So this is quite nice, quite fit. In the Bhagavad-gītā Kṛṣṇa says, ‘He is Mine, and I am his.’ Kṛṣṇa says. So this is not wrong. And what is your idea? That because everything belongs to Kṛṣṇa therefore I shall not say ‘mine’? That’s your idea?”

Himavatī: “I didn’t understand this, that Kṛṣṇa is the Lord. So my Lord is everyone else’s Lord.”

Prabhupāda: “Yes.”

Himavatī: “He is the controller, and that’s why He is mine.”

Prabhupāda: “He’s mine, He’s yours, everyone’s. That’s all.”

Himavatī: “I can understand.”

Prabhupāda: “That’s all.”

Rukmiṇī: “I feel so far away from you, you know, when you are not here.”

Prabhupāda: “What is that? I can’t follow. Janārdana?”

Janārdana: “She is saying she felt so far away from you when you were not here.”

Prabhupāda: “Oh, that you should not think. There are two conceptions, the physical conception and the vibration conception. The physical conception is temporary, and the vibration conception is eternal. Just like we are relishing the vibration of Kṛṣṇa’s teaching. So my vibration is also present. As soon as we chant Hare Kṛṣṇa or chant Bhagavad-gītā or the Bhāgavata, so Kṛṣṇa is present immediately by vibration. He is absolute. Therefore vibration is more important than physical presence.

“When you feel separation from your spiritual master, you just try to remember his words and his instructions, and you will not feel separation. You will feel like he is with you. So we should associate by the vibration, not by the physical presence. That is real association – śabdād anavṛtti – by sound. Just like we are touching Kṛṣṇa immediately by sound. So we should give more stress on this sound vibration, either of Kṛṣṇa or of the spiritual master. Then we will feel happy and no separation.

“When Kṛṣṇa departed from this world, at that time Arjuna was overwhelmed with sorrow, and he began to remember the instruction of Bhagavad-gītā. Then he was pacified. Immediately he began to remember the teaching which was taught to him on the Battlefield of Kurukṣetra, and he was pacified. Kṛṣṇa was his constant friend, so when the Lord went to His abode, Arjuna was feeling overwhelmed. But he began to remember His teachings. So whenever we shall feel separation, the best thing is to remember the teachings. Then it will be very nice. Is that clear?”

Rukmiṇī: “Yes.”

One of the girls asked, “Prabhupāda, will you be our father eternally? Will you always be our spiritual master, eternally?”

Jokingly, Prabhupāda said, “Yes, I think so.” Then he quoted a verse, cakhudāna dilo yei, janme janme prabhu sei, but he said, “… janme janme pītā sei. The one who has opened my eyes – he is my father life after life.”

Prabhupāda was concerned about the weak financial condition of the Montreal temple. Although some of the devotees were employed, their work wasn’t very auspicious. One disciple had a job – at the No Sags Spring Factory – which Prabhupāda called “ugra-karma,” bitter, unwholesome labor. When Nanda-kiśora told Prabhupāda about his job as a busboy in a restaurant, Prabhupāda replied, “Oh, a blind uncle.” Nanda-kiśora looked puzzled. Prabhupāda told him the story of a boy who had no uncle. One day a blind man came to the boy’s home and said, “I will be your uncle.” “Well,” the boy replied, “a blind uncle is better than no uncle.” But when Nanda-kiśora told Prabhupāda the details of his work and that he was sometimes cooking meat, Prabhupāda remarked, “Oh, but not so blind.”

The question of financing the Montreal temple puzzled Prabhupāda, and he carefully analyzed the situation. There were two paths of Kṛṣṇa consciousness, he said: one for those who were renounced, eating fruits from the trees and living in caves; and the other for those who were married and honestly employed, like Kṛṣṇa’s friend Arjuna. Both paths were good, but the question for Prabhupāda was which path his disciples should take. If they attempted to take the path of ascetics like Śukadeva Gosvāmī, they would probably remain hippies, and Prabhupāda wanted many big centers with respectable guests coming to take prasādam. Yet if to maintain such temples the devotees had to engage in ugra-karma, then who would preach? It was a puzzle.

“I have either to stop this brahminical system,” Prabhupāda said, “or I have to have brāhmaṇas work.” He thought of starting his own business; he had had a little capital, and there was organization. Then he thought of enlisting the support of the Indians in Montreal.

Montreal had a large Indian community, and families were already attending the Sunday feast at the temple. Of those who came forward to meet Prabhupāda, the most promising was young Gopal Khana, a business major at McGill University. Although raised in an orthodox Hindu family, Gopal knew little of the Vaiṣṇava philosophy.

The day before Śrīla Prabhupāda had arrived in Montreal, Gopal had received an invitation card from a devotee. Because for the past year Gopal had been seriously wanting to understand God, he had been interested. In his spiritual search he had been attending services at a Hindu temple in Toronto as well as visiting various other churches and temples; he had given up meat-eating and smoking. On coming to the temple and seeing the excitement of the devotees in preparing for Prabhupāda’s arrival, Gopal had asked to help, so one of the devotees had instructed him to help clean Prabhupāda’s apartment. Prabhupāda had taken an interest in Gopal, who, although he had never met a sādhu before and didn’t know what to think at first, respected Prabhupāda.

A friend of Gopal’s, a Mr. Mukerjee from Calcutta, also began attending Prabhupāda’s lectures. Mr. Mukerjee, who claimed to have spiritual knowledge, told Gopal that, although he had touched the feet of many Indian sādhus throughout India, never had he met anyone as saintly as Prabhupāda. Gopal took his friend’s endorsement of Prabhupāda very seriously, and soon he was attending all the lectures in the temple and chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa on his beads, acting like a regular devotee. He would usually be the only Indian to remain through the kīrtana and lecture in the temple. Then afterwards he would stay and have hot milk with the devotees, returning home around nine-thirty.

Associating with the devotees and being of the same age as they, Gopal automatically included himself among the intimate disciples who regularly visited Prabhupāda at his apartment. Prabhupāda asked Gopal about his family and background in India and encouraged him to take up Kṛṣṇa consciousness. When Gopal told Prabhupāda that he had been chanting oṁ, Prabhupāda explained that by itself oṁ was incomplete. If he wanted to chant oṁ, Prabhupāda said, then he should chant oṁ kṛṣṇa.

One night Gopal was present as Prabhupāda discussed the financial problems of the Montreal temple. Although the temple rent was only $150 and expenses were minimal, the devotees were struggling. At one point in the discussion Prabhupāda turned to Gopal and asked, “So, Gopal, what is your solution to this financial problem?” Guessing that Prabhupāda might be hinting for him to contribute money, Gopal said he didn’t have a solution.

Prabhupāda lectured at a nearby Christian school, and Gopal and his friend Mr. Mukerjee attended. When, after the kīrtana and lecture, Prabhupāda asked if there were any questions, Mr. Mukerjee raised his hand, stood up, and, to the shock of the devotees, began insulting Prabhupāda.

“It is not a fact that Kṛṣṇa is the Supreme Personality of Godhead,” Mr. Mukerjee said before the hall filled with Christian students and ministers. “You should not speak like this in a church. Why do you say that Kṛṣṇa is the Supreme and that we should surrender to Him?”

Prabhupāda remained calm. Although the attending devotees, looking furiously at Mr. Mukerjee, could barely restrain themselves, Prabhupāda didn’t even speak. He simply called on someone else in the audience and allowed the unpleasant event to pass.

Some days later Prabhupāda asked Gopal about Mr. Mukerjee, who hadn’t come by recently. To Gopal’s surprise, Prabhupāda asked to see Mr. Mukerjee again. Gopal, considering Mr. Mukerjee too envious and blasphemous, advised Prabhupāda against it. “No, it does not matter,” Prabhupāda said. “I must have done something against him in my past life, and now he has taken his revenge. Please call him.”

Gradually some of the Indian visitors responded to Śrīla Prabhupāda and began to give money to support the temple. Most of them, however, were reluctant to spend money or time apart from their careers and families. Indian culture, Prabhupāda said, had completely fallen, due partly to foreign invasions into India and partly to India’s leaders’ madly abandoning their original culture in favor of Western materialism. “But still,” Prabhupāda told the devotees, “if there is any civilization left anywhere, it is in India. In India they are all originally Kṛṣṇa conscious, and with a little chanting and taking prasādam their material covering can be removed.”

Prabhupāda compared modern-day Indian civilization to a dead elephant. An elephant is such a valuable creature that even when dead, because of its tusks and hide, it remains almost as valuable as when alive and working. Similarly, although the Indian culture was practically dead, India still had great potential. Most Indians in the villages still retained a simple faith that their present suffering was due to karma of their past lives and that they would have to transmigrate to another body in their next life. That basic transcendental knowledge, commonly understood by the Indian masses, was unknown in the West even to the most sophisticated and advanced members of society.

But Prabhupāda was sorry to see the Indians in the West abandoning their piety and taking the cheap life of sense gratification. He compared the Indian immigrants to the “new crows.” When crows eat garbage, after a while they are full. But if a new crow arrives, he becomes especially eager. Similarly, many Indians, newly arrived in the West, were more eager for material advancement than the Westerners. Yet despite Prabhupāda’s criticism of Indians, whenever he met anyone of Indian birth – in the temple, in his room, or elsewhere – he seemed to become especially sympathetic and friendly, conversing with them in Hindi or Bengali as if talking with old, familiar friends.

Janārdana was concerned about presenting Kṛṣṇa consciousness to Montreal’s main religious contingent, the Catholics. Because he came from a French-Canadian Catholic family, Janārdana thought Prabhupāda and his disciples should learn to present Kṛṣṇa consciousness in terms of Biblical teachings. It was possible, Prabhupāda agreed, but it would require great expertise. It would be better, he said, to stress the universal, nonsectarian nature of Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and all other religions had some idea of God, though not much realization of pure love for God. Kṛṣṇa consciousness, however, was like a postgraduate study for persons of all religions. Prabhupāda requested his disciples not to divert their attention to criticizing the Christian or any other sectarian faith. Rather, they should simply preach Bhagavad-gītā and Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam.

When Śivānanda and Nanda-kiśora brought an Indian Christian to Prabhupāda’s apartment, Prabhupāda demonstrated the art of preaching to a committed follower of a sectarian religious faith. “We don’t say you have to be this religion or that,” Prabhupāda told the man. “The real test of religion is how one is awakening his dormant love for God.” Prabhupāda went on – without attacking the man’s religious affiliation – to describe the degradation of Kali-yuga. “At the present moment,” he said, “never mind whether one is Christian, Hindu, Jew, or Muslim, most people are godless and don’t care for God. They simply take an official stand. But actually, in the depth of their heart, they have no idea what God is. If a Christian believes in God, let him love God more prominently than matter.” The man agreed.

Janārdana took Prabhupāda to see some of the great cathedrals in Montreal. Entering the spacious Notre Dame, Prabhupāda said, “Yes, this is worship of God as Lord Nārāyaṇa – in awe and reverence.” The church tour impressed Śrīla Prabhupāda, and the next day he revealed his thoughts in a letter to Aniruddha.

Yesterday, Janardana took me to a nice church here called Notre Dame, a very nice wooden structural worksmanship with colorful figures and windows, decorated with nicely painted pictures of the crucifixion of Lord Jesus Christ. Everything was grotesque. Generally, the Roman Catholic religion depends on this crucifixion incident in the life of Lord Jesus Christ, but I think depiction of this incident simply stimulates the tensions of differences of opinion, and differences of religious principles, between Jews and Christians. My idea is that, if simply by narrating the crucifixion incident of Lord Jesus Christ, the Roman Catholic religion can spread to such a wide area of the world, how much there is great potency of spreading our Krishna consciousness by depicting many hundreds and thousands of such incidents in different appearances of the incarnations of Lord Krishna.

Prabhupāda and Janārdana visited another church, which displayed the relics of a saint who had been adept at healing. Walking through the exhibit of the saint’s clothing, desk, bed, and personal effects, Prabhupāda was unimpressed. “Just see,” he said. “They are adoring him for healing bodies that are now dead. But they do not take interest in the healing of a soul in his eternal situation.”