We had an opportunity to present a seminar on Vastu-veda to the graduate students at a university in Mendocino, Argentina. Our host was the Assistant Dean of Architecture, and as it turned out we were born the same year. As we got to know each other, over the following few days, I was rather shocked how Krsna seemed to be showing me, through this very esteemed professor, exactly what I would have become if I had not met Srila Prabhupada.

He was a very nice person, a good person. He had a sense of humor and a broad sense of knowledge and wisdom. His children were also students at the university and he was popular with both the students and his colleagues.

He took off his wrist-watch Friday afternoon and did not put it back on until Monday morning. He waved to me as he and a student crammed into the box in the back of a two-seater sports car while his daughter and her boy-friend sat in the front and zoomed off for some youth event.

Before we met Srila Prabhupada spiritual life was like a dull glow from the world around us. We could see that there were forms but there was no practical perception of their details. When we got Srila Prabhupada’s KRSNA book and the association of his ISKCON then gradually all the luminosity came up to a real intensity.

If we had not met him we would not have become an alcoholic nor bank robber. We would have had some religious affiliation, but we would not have had any intensity in our lives. We would not have even had the real chance for clear intellectual understanding of God and religion to actually achieve immortality.

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

T. S. Elliot, “The Hollow Men”