Tag Archives: Swamiji

When Swami Met Sally

Posted on by under A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, People, Sally Agarwal

When Swami Met Sally

By Satyaraja Dasa

The kindness of strangers played a pivotal role in ISKCON’s pre-history.

Last year I had the good fortune to meet Gopal and Sally Agarwal, an elderly couple who played a significant role in ISKCON’s origins. They are forever etched in the devotees’ collective memory as two of the Western world’s earliest recipients of Srila Prabhupada’s mercy. It was the Agarwals who hosted him in the fall of 1965, before ISKCON was even nominally born, giving him shelter, hospitality, friendship, and love. Indeed, for one month their home served as Prabhupada’s earliest refuge outside India.

As Prabhupada acquainted himself with the Agarwal home in Butler, in western Pennsylvania, he saw a typically quiet American town nestled in the hills, a town that has changed little since his brief visit those many years ago.

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A Conversation between A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami & Allen Ginsberg

Posted on by under A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Allen Ginsberg, Back to Godhead Magazine, Back to Godhead Magizine, People

046_-_BTG_Year-1968_Volume-01_Number-17_Page_01

This morning I was cleaning out one of the sheds, and found this old suitcase filled with cassette tapes. There were some of the old Bhaktivedanta Archive tapes, Golden Avatar tapes, various lectures, bahjans and kirtans. I started to listed to some of the old vintage kirtans and lectures and I was filled with a nostalgic mood of yearning, for the early days of the Hare Krishna Movement. This lead me to re-examine the old Back to Godhead magazine issues. The following is one article I found very reminiscence of those early days.

A Conversation between A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami & Allen Ginsberg
Recorded by Guru Das Adhikary

Swamiji had come to San Francisco in late January, 1967 for the opening of the Krishna Consciousness Temple there, at 518 Frederick Street. Allen Ginsberg had always shown friendly and helpful interest in the Society; and he agreed to attend a giant “Mantra Rock Festival,” which the temple members were planning to hold in the Avalon Ballroom. And so, a few days before that event, the good poet came to early morning Kirtan (7 A. M.), and later joined the Swami upstairs in the apartment his pupils had rented for him.

We were sitting in the glow of this holy man, munching on Indian sweetballs cooked by the Swami, when Allen Ginsberg came through the door, a warm smile on his face.

The Swami offered him a sweetball: “Take.”

They sat in silence for a few moments, radiating mutual love.

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