Double Shock
Jahnava Dasi: Srila Prabhupada called Baradraja and me to his room to talk about painting for the Krishna book. Baradraja was already speaking to Srila Prabhupada when I came in. The minute that I came in, Srila Prabhupada turned to me and said, "So, at the end of his life, what was Einstein's conclusion?" Now, I'm not a scholar and don't know anything but the amazing thing is that I knew the answer to that question. I said, "That there is a higher consciousness and that the universal order implies a higher being." Srila Prabhupada said, "Yes" and then he continued speaking to Baradraja. Similarly, Srila Prabhupada asked Brahmatirtha the meaning of one verse out of the 700 verses of the Bhagavad-gita. That verse was the only one that Brahmatirtha had memorized and he was able to quote it to Srila Prabhupada. So, Srila Prabhupada began telling Krishna book stories we had never heard before. He said, "Lord Krishna, He was such a naughty boy. A naughty boy is an intelligent boy. I was naughty when I was a little boy, and so was Lord Krishna and so was Lord Chaitanya." He said, "Lord Krishna used to pass urine on the clean floor, and then He'd go 'pthoo' on it," and Srila Prabhupada went on like that. Of course, in the book it says, "spit" but Srila Prabhupada went "pthoo". Then Srila Prabhupada began telling us about the Universal Form, the universe contained within the mouth of Lord Krishna when Mother Yasoda asked Him to open His mouth. Srila Prabhupada described how there were oceans and seas, and there was air and fire and earth and water and the ten directions, north, south, east and west, mountains..... He went on for about five minutes describing it. As he was speaking in this wonderfully charismatic way, Baradraja and I, unbeknownst to us, were gradually leaning forward, getting involved in the story. Then at one point, Srila Prabhupada said to Baradraja, "Now, you paint that!" It was such a shock. It was a double shock because we were coming closer and closer and we weren't expecting Srila Prabhupada to suddenly say that and it was also a shock to be asked to paint it. Baradraja almost lost his balance and I fell backwards too. Months later, Baradraja was in Montreal struggling with how to paint this picture. He wrote to Srila Prabhupada and said, "Srila Prabhupada, in all due honesty, I cannot figure out how to put all those things in Krishna's mouth." Srila Prabhupada sent back a little sketch that showed a stick figure of Mother Yasoda standing up, a little stick figure of child Krishna sitting down with a balloon coming out of His mouth, and Prabhupada said, "That's how you do it." Then Baradraja made the beautiful painting that's in the original Krishna book of the universe in Krishna's mouth. That painting now hangs in the foyer of the Montreal temple.
Reference: Memories Anecdotes of a Modern Day Saint - Volume 3 by Siddhanta Dasa
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