Govindam record brings Prabhupada to tearful ecstacy

Gargamuni Dasa: Prabhupada was sitting in his room and we understood from telegrams and letters that they recorded a record with George Harrison. And from the sales, we heard that Germany alone, the German temple in Germany, and I guess with the distributor they sold 60 thousand, almost 57 thousand copies just in one country. And it was on the number one list for all music, rock and roll music, for about six weeks.

So in London, everywhere the record was selling, it was called Govindam. And they sent, they rushed it by special delivery from London to Los Angeles. So we got the record in the mail, but we didn't have a player, because we didn't listen to records. Of course, we had the Hare Krishna record. And then there was a record made by Dinesha called Govinda, I think, but we didn't keep a record player and we didn't sell too many records. Later on people like the live recordings on the street.

I had to go to a pawn shop near the temple that sells used items. So I bought a used, it's called a Victrola, and it plays long-playing records and it has a gadget to play short records. Govindam was a short record, it was called 75 RPM. So I brought it to Prabhupada's room and we played the record and Prabhupada went immediately into samadhi. And he must have, I could hear, I wasn't in his room the entire time, but I could hear the sound of the Victrola in the temple room. Prabhupada was playing that record for four or five hours over and over. He was in ecstasy, complete samadhi over that record.

He even wrote a letter to Shyamasundara or Gurudasa, he said this record has given me so much pleasure, tears came to my eyes. Prabhupada had never written such a letter to anybody describing his, you know reactions to a kirtana, or to this, to a record that it brought tears to his eyes. So he definitely thought that this would be attractive.