THE PRABHUPADA CONNECTION
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Hippies into Happies
(Click photo to see a larger image of Srila Prabhupada at the Family Dog Auditorium, 1969)

"I was helping to cook, and then I went down to the Family Dog Auditorium, where Srila Prabhupada was going to come after. There were so many people that would participate actually that we filled the Family Dog Auditorium and simultaneously the beach was also filled with people, and we were distributing prasadam in both places, big kirtans were going on in both places. I was in the Family Dog when Srila Prabhupada arrived, and it was just so wonderful. Srila Prabhupada was such a swan amongst men, and he floated into the Family Dog Auditorium. There were literally thousands and thousands of hippies present, and they were all in their full regalia because this was a big event for them. So just ordinarily, in that day, people’s dress was interesting enough. But for this Rathayatra Festival, they really decked themselves out. Many dressed as Radha and Krishna and similar costumes like that. So Srila Prabhupada came amongst this. He walked onto the stage, and he looked out amongst the throngs of hippies and he smiled. Then he said, 'I have come to make all the hippies into happies.' That evoked a tremendous tumult of transcendental roaring from all the devotees that were present and everyone got swept away in this wave, this tidal wave of ecstasy that was coming from Srila Prabhupada’s heart, and danced for hours and hours and hours. Vishnujana would be chanting and swooning, and then he would cry out, 'Chant and dance, and when you’re tired take prasadam! And then come and chant and dance some more!' And that’s literally what went on for hours and hours and hours."

Narada Muni das

"They assigned duties to everyone, and I was to be in charge of making the feast with the idea of feeding between five and ten thousand people, maybe more. So undaunted… I had never really cooked for large amounts of people, but in those days, we could climb Mount Everest and not be tired. Prabhupada’s energy was just driving the movement so powerfully that if we were given a duty to do, it was nothing. It was a feast actually that Prabhupada requested. There was so much prasadam there. We had gotten truckloads of watermelons donated so at the end we just stopped slicing the watermelons and just started giving whole watermelons to take home with them or to serve out."

Gour Hari das

"I remember that a bunch of the Hell’s Angels followed us. They got their fighting spirit out of them, and they followed the carts. So when we got to the Family Dog Auditorium, Prabhupada came on the stage a little bit later. We were all inside the auditorium. When Prabhupada came in, all the devotees bowed down, and there was something so magnanimous and also heavy about Prabhupada’s presence that so many other people bowed down. It’s not an unusual occurrence that people would just instinctively bow down, that here’s a saintly person. I remember that it was a wood floor and when they bowed down, there was a couple of Hell’s Angels next to me and their chains and billy clubs and everything fell out and hit the floor, and I was thinking how when all the Lord Brahmas all bowed before Krishna, all their helmets. So I was thinking that Prabhupada in Kali-yuga, even the Hell’s Angels with all their billy clubs and helmets and everything. And Prabhupada started the lecture. It was the most amazing thing because they were hippies and college students from UC Berkeley and San Jose State, and then there were these Hell’s Angels and there were Black Panthers, it was just such a montage. And Prabhupada started off his lecture by saying, 'My dear frustrated youth of America.'"

Badrinarayan das

(Interviews from "Following Srila Prabhupada" by ISKCON Cinema.)
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