1. From Bhakti Rasayana Sagara Swami’s VP offering, 2016

    I was distributing your books at the Covent Garden in London City, when I stopped a man in his mid sixties to offer him a book. He smiled and said that he “knows the guru personally.” I wondered whom he was talking about, and he responded that it was “the elderly Indian man,” whom he, as a teenager, had met in New York on the Lower East Side. I realized then that he was actually speaking about you! Then he asked how you were doing and was shocked to learn that you had left this world many years ago. He paused and said that you were always very nice to him and other kids in the neighborhood. They were very surprised to see how you could endure staying outdoors dressed quite lightly in the snowy New York winter, and he remembered that despite the cold you had a blissful expression on your face as you chanted Hare Krsna next to a piece of cardboard on which the maha-mantra had been written by hand. Apparently these were the days when you were completely alone, with no followers or supporters at all. And then before he left he said something I’ll never forget: “I know there are many people who speak ill of him, but don’t believe any of it. He was the most wonderful person I ever met in my life!”