Ecstatic 1975 San Francisco Ratha-yatra

Haripada Dasa: After travelling and after spending some time, like 1975 we were doing book distribution all over the United States. So 1975, the next Ratha-yatra rolled around and that’s when Prabhupada, as the chariots all came into the park and got all situated in the head, Jagannatha, Balarama, Subhadra on the place they had designed for them to stand. Prabhupada got up on the stage. The kirtana started quite sweetly and then it became more and more ecstatic and Prabhupada grew more and more ecstatic himself. And someone had handed him as he was walking up on the stage a bouquet, beautiful pink color roses with long stems. So Prabhupada was carrying those in one arm and he sat down on the vyasasana, he still had these long stem roses and the kirtana was raging, devotees were ecstatic.

If you see some of those photographs, Gurukripa who you spoke about, he also was there, bright face, everyone, totally ecstatic, on the stage and off the stage. I was with the large group of brahmacharis. So Prabhupada as he stood up and walked forward he would take one long stem flower out of the bouquet and throw one up in the air, high in the air, and all the devotees would dive after, mostly all the men because we all crowded in. And so Prabhupada would throw one in the other direction, one in the middle like that until all of them had been distributed. And when all of those pink long stem roses had been thrown, everyone had ecstatic time trying to grab them, I was not fortunate to get one.

But then Prabhupada threw his arms up in the air as we have all seen with Prabhupada holding his hand up, he began to dance, ecstatically dance. And he had that long red rose garland and so we became even more exuberant seeing Prabhupada dance so beautifully and kirtana was raging and the mridangas were just ecstatically been played. And after some time of dancing Prabhupada then, the kirtana kept going, but Prabhupada took off the big huge long heavy red garland and the best he could threw it off the edge of the stage in the air. And of course again all the devotees grabbed and ripped it apart and they just kind of disintegrated it right before your eyes, because everyone grabbing. So that was a totally ecstatic, that was the first of only two times that I have ever saw Prabhupada dance.