Bhagavatgita to Queen Elizabath

A friend to everyone is one of the prominent attractive qualities of Prabhupada. [Breaks down crying.] Prabhupada has said that relationships that we use to anchor ourselves within the material nature, like husband, wife, sister, brother, friend, are just dim reflections of the transcendental world. [Continues crying.] You grieve when you can't be with your friend, eh? Why tears? It is not lamentation. It is just wishing so hard that he could be here. It's pretty selfish. Prabhupada always said that it is the desire of every living entity to have peace and be satisfied. That's what we want. That's our nature.

Whenever Prabhupada was in my presence, I always felt that to the ultimate. He wasn't just a friend to me. He was a friend to everyone. And everyone who met him had a relationship with him, in some way or other. And I'm hoping and praying that we have an eternal relationship and we are together again. It is my only reason for existence. [Cries.] Also, Prabhupada said that friendship is two-sided, that the friend reciprocates. We were talking once about Queen Elizabeth, that David Wynn had recently done her bust, and he had given her a copy of Prabhupada's Bhagavad-gita. I asked him, while she's sitting there for hours, while he's designing her bust, to slide her this copy of Prabhupada's Bhagavad-gita and let her thumb through it. And he did one day, while she was sitting there; for hours she looked at Prabhupada's Bhagavad-gita.

David Wynn relates that she at one point looked with a bemused look on her face, a faraway look, and said, "Krishna is a friend of everyone, and Krishna is responsible for everything and everyone." Something like that and she said, "Wouldn't that be wonderful?" And Prabhupada, when he heard this story said, "Yes. Krishna is the friend of everyone, but there must be reciprocation. That is what she is missing." You can't just become Krishna's friend. I mean, you're his friend, but you can't become his friend without reciprocation.

So Prabhupada was friends with everyone, even those who didn't reciprocate. Just because they existed, they were his friend. But with certain people who served Krishna, he was especially friends. And there's another one faultless. Prabhupada had no errors in any of his behaviors, his actions, his words, anything. There was never any mistake. Even in so-called superficial mistakes, like, "Oh, I left my glasses behind," there would always be a very good reason why that was done. And I saw a lot of years of that. [Chuckles.]

In every movement that Prabhupada made, I could never find any mistake. So when you find such a person, how can you let them go? Especially when Prabhupada says that "You can become like me too." He always held that out for us. If you do this, this, and this, you can become a self-realized soul, a pure devotee of Krishna. Otherwise, what hope is there, what hope have we got? If we are just idolizing a person who has reached that, without any hope of attaining it ourselves, then what's the point? Prabhupada always encouraged us to come up the trail, little by little. And he always made us feel better, whenever we fell down, that whatever you have done up to date will be counted on your credit side of your ledger.

It's going to be a long time yet, boy, for me. Who knows how it happened or how many lifetimes or what he went through to achieve the birth he did in a devotee family, where he never had any sinful activity, although he does say that he had many temptations. He was from an aristocratic family and had access to all the newer things that were coming out, like movies and electricity and all the gadgetry and the intoxication that was going on. But there was something that prevented him from doing any of that. So he never had a thought that wasn't Krishna conscious, hardly from his birth. So, how are we to wipe away so much trash that we have accumulated? Only by his mercy.