Initiation of Sravanananda Dasa
Sravanananda Dasa: Prabhupada arrived at the Brooklyn temple in New York in the United States. Everybody was extremely excited whenever Prabhupada arrived - lots of flowers being thrown. Everybody was ecstatic because we got to see Prabhupada maybe once or twice at the most in a year, which was more than most temples, because Prabhupada was traveling a lot. If a temple got to see Prabhupada once in a year, it was just that their life was complete, everybody was fully ecstatic.
The next morning Prabhupada came out of his room. There was a hallway that he would walk down and everybody was ready to pay obeisances for Prabhupada. I come from another yogic background - for a year or two before I joined ISKCON, before I came to Prabhupada - and in those yoga groups it was about seeing auras.
I thought, "This is my guru," because I had read his books and I knew he was going to be my guru because Prabhupada knew Krishna, knew God. You can tell his writings were not simply opinions or conjectures, it was pure realization and that's what really brought me to Krishna consciousness. I read the Bhagavad-gita the night or two before I joined, the whole Bhagavad-gita in one night and said, "He knows! He knows God." That's how he referred to God at that time - as Krishna.
I was very excited when, finally, Prabhupada came and I was going to get initiated. Prabhupada came out of his room and we all paid obeisances. I thought, "Let me pop up and see Prabhupada's aura." So I popped up and looked directly at Prabhupada and he looked directly at me and I saw quite an effulgence of Srila Prabhupada. I was pretty ecstatic - I knew that he was a super-super-elevated pure devotee. And as almost, as though he knew what I was popping up to see, he showed me what I wanted to see. I was just ecstatic and that day we received initiation.
Many times Prabhupada didn't personally even sit at the initiation. He was always concentrating on printing, translating, getting the books ready for society for 10,000 years. So that's all he really did most of his time. So if he was upstairs translating that, he would have what we called a ritvik that would officiate the fire sacrifice and give the beads and give us our name on behalf of Srila Prabhupada. I was hoping to get the name Maha Vishnu and basically Brahmananda said, "Your name is Sravanananda Dasa."
I was pretty ecstatic at the time. We all received beads and we were all told to go out and get some guru-dakshina. So we went dressed in dhotis on the streets of New York asking people for donations and we would bring them back as a gift to Srila Prabhupada. Unfortunately, the first day that I went out to get the guru-dakshina, I was opening the car door and my beads were caught on the door opener and they broke. In those days they weren't knotted between each bead, so there I was in the middle of Manhattan, my beads rolling in all different directions. I don't know if that was some kind of thing - to come in the future - of all the problems I would have. But that's what happened and it really disturbed me, I mean, seriously disturbed me. I came back to the temple and they said, "Oh, don't worry Sravanananda." They gave me more beads, but these were the ones I received (on) initiation day. Then we had a big feast - many, many devotees were initiated that day. I don't remember too much more - it was 40, 43 years ago - that was my first initiation, 1973. I think April - earliest March, latest April. Then I left for India soon after that in November, I think of '73, and stayed for 10 years.
Second initiation I received in Mayapur, 1974 at the Mayapur festival. That I received, of course, it was always personally from Prabhupada, Prabhupada was present. We went and we got in our best clothes that day, and I think I had to go to Navadvipa in Mayapur at the festival to get a brahmana thread. It was Holi, March 1974, and it was very difficult because I was wearing nice, clean, dyed bramachari cloth and I was going through Navadvipa, and people were chasing me everywhere to put color on me.
I had to go right into Prabhupada room afterwards so I was doing my best battling with people to get them not to throw. I was pleading with them not to throw color on me. I was saying, "It was my initiation day," you know my diksa, my Gayatri and some people accepted it and some people would throw it. I somehow maneuvered my way out and actually, I ended up in Prabhupada's room without any color on my clothes. So I was very proud of myself - it was like cat-and-mouse all afternoon just to get my Gayatri thread. When I went to Prabhupada's room, I practiced the Gayatri, we had practiced, I think we practiced ahead of time, Prabhupada was in his room sitting and he took my Gayatri thread and put it around his knees to stretch it and then he gave it to me over my neck very quickly, just put over my neck and asked me to recite it and I remember reciting and I was really trying to say it nicely and Prabhupada said, "Very nice."