SP went into this kind of ecstatic trance
Kalakantha das : Prabhupada was speaking in the Bhagavatam class one morning. At a certain point in the lecture, he went into this kind of ecstatic trance. He was clearly very alert. It wasn't that he appeared in any way to be dozing. His eyes were just closed, and he appeared to be ruminating very deeply. But he was silent for a long time, and everybody in the temple room was dead silent. It was a very, very poignant moment where everyone was in utter state of attention and nothing was being said. Everybody was just waiting for Prabhupada to do something, and nobody dared make a sound. After what seemed like much longer but was probably a minute or two, Hansadutta started chanting nama om visnu-padaya and broke the moment; and Prabhupada shook his head and indicated to go on chanting.
Srutakirti das: So then Prabhupada went up to his room, and then this big argument started downstairs and outside Prabhupada's quarters with the different devotees. They were all speculating on what the proper etiquette was when your spiritual master goes into ecstasy on the vyasasan. Some devotees were saying we should have just sat there and waited for him to open his eyes again and others said, "No, we should chant Hare Krishna. Chanting Hare Krishna is always proper." So anyway, it went on and disagreement was there. So then we just had Prabhupada. Do we go to Prabhupada and ask him? You could always get the final answer. We could fight and fight, and no one would ever agree.
Brahmananda was his secretary at the time, so we went into Prabhupada's room and he said, "Prabhupada, do you know downstairs this morning when you went into ecstasy on the vyasasan?" Prabhupada was just looking and he said, "We were wondering what's the proper thing to do when you do that?" And Prabhupada got all shy and humble and said, "I don't do that very often." He said, "No, no, Prabhupada, it's all right. But when you do it, what should we do? Should we just sit there and wait for you or should we start kirtan, should we start chanting?" Prabhupada said, "You can chant Hare Krishna," and that was it. We were so silly. It would have been nice just to sit there even if it was an hour. It would have been wonderful because when Prabhupada went into ecstasy, you couldn't help but on some level feel ecstatic symptoms yourself. Just knowing Prabhupada was in ecstasy like that, had gone inward like that, was enough to make you feel some bliss. So sitting and watching was nice.
Reference: Following Srila Prabhupada-A Chronological Series by Kalakanta Dasa
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