At Ramacandra Prabhu’s Home

Rāmacandra Prabhu (Mr. Rajkamala Julka) had his residence on the top floor of a four storey building on Kailash Hill in South Delhi. He and his good wife Śrīmatī Kalavati didi had invited Śrīla Gurudeva and his associates to their home. After going up a few flights of stairs, Śrīla Gurudeva asked, “How much further is it?”

“Just one more storey Śrīla Gurudeva,” Rāmacandra Prabhu said.

As you come in to the apartment, you see the kitchen on the right and the deity room on the left. Passing through there are two bedrooms. So near Ṭhākurajī’s place there is one sofa. Śrīla Gurudeva sat there, but Rāmacandra Prabhu and his wife thought he had gone into his bedroom for rest. At that time I was Navīna Kṛṣṇa Brahmacārī. I had to go out for Śrīla Gurudeva’s other service. So Kalavati didi began cooking for Gurudeva and Rāmacandra Prabhu was very happily doing their Rādhā Kṛṣṇa deity service. Rāmacandra Prabhu was sitting there on the floor and Kalavati didi was coming in and out and speaking to Rāmacandra Prabhu about what to get from the market and what things they had to do for Gurudeva’s service. All the while Gurudeva was quietly sitting on the sofa two or three feet from Rāmacandra Prabhu, but he and his wife did not see him. After one hour, Rāmacandra Prabhu saw, “Oh, Gurudeva, have you rested enough? It was a long jouirney from Mathurā.”

“What rest, I have been sitting here for about one hour chanting and observing how you are so absorbed in your service.” said Śrīla Gurudeva. “I see that both of you are happily engaged in your service. If someone wants to be successful in bhajana, they must observe the process as you and your wife are doing. You are not neglecting me, but so absorbed that you did not even notice me. I am very pleased by this. This is an ideal example of how bhajana is to be performed.”

Rāmacandra Prabhu called his wife Kalavati, and she too had not noticed Śrīla Gurudeva. She said that she thought Śrīla Gurudeva was inside the room and after that she became very shy.

Śrīla Gurudeva mentioned that in the eleventh canto of ŚrīmadBhāgavatam there was a most intelligent avadhuta brāhmaṇa who learned from twenty-four gurus. “Dattātreya learned different things from the mountain, the trees, the air, the fish, the deer, the small baby, the elephant and so on. He learned from the arrow maker that one should be so absorbed in bhajana that they become unaware of what is happening around them. The arrow maker was a blacksmith. He was so absorbed in making the king’s arrows sharp that when a marriage party passed by, playing drums and singing and dancing, he didn’t even notice. He was not even aware of it until someone told him that a beautiful marriage party had passed by.”

Śrīla Gurudeva said that we should be absorbed like this. “We shoudn’t want to see and know what’s going on here and there. We should be absorbed in Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa and not in all this other nonsense, material illusions. We should just chant Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra and not hear anything else. Everyone is different and it is not for us to criticize and find fault with what Kṛṣṇa Bhagavān has arranged for others. We should be absorbed in hearing and chanting ourselves and not be bothered by what others are doing, like the arrowmaker who was absorbed in his own service.”