Dear Śrīla Prabhupāda,
Please accept my most humble obeisances to your lotus feet. All glories to Your Divine Grace!
I want to share with you the feelings I and other devotees have of belonging to you. Most of your followers, including me, never saw you personally. I was born in the very degraded country in the USSR, behind the iron curtain. When I became a devotee in 1980, I had a very bitter feeling. I was suffering just because I missed the opportunity to meet you in person, because by that time you had already gone to the spiritual world. But even if I’d become your devotee earlier, I would not have been able to see you because Soviet people generally did not have the opportunity to travel abroad, and at the time you came to Moscow, I was too small a child to travel to Moscow.
Somehow, despite the feelings of separation, I never felt that you are not present on the planet. Maybe just on your tirobhāva festivals that acute feeling of great loss was haunting me. Otherwise, I felt that you are always present in your instructions, books, and ācāra. When I meditated on your photos, I felt that you are still really present, you are alive, and that warm feeling in the heart was more real to me than all other people in my life.
Not long ago I had a preaching opportunity at one nāma-haṭṭa gathering in Kyiv. Devotees present had never personally met you, but at that meeting they started sharing their personal relationships with you. Some of them were so moved by their feelings of gratitude to you that they started crying. All they have is your books, your biographies, your ISKCON, and your preaching mission to participate in. Due to that, they felt very much connected to you. You changed their lives, and you cared for them without ever seeing them. But they were included in your spiritual vision, and they felt that.
The world is becoming more and more crazy every year. Our foolish sentimental, utopian expectations from the material world are rapidly evaporating under the scorching heat of the fire of war in many corners of this world. You warned us about the uncertainty of the material world, and now we are practically realizing your prediction as scenarios unfold. What would we be, and where would we go without your clear instructions? Which shelter would we take?
Thank you for the guidance in these stormy waters of material existence.
I never saw you personally, but I pray I will become a speck of dust at your lotus feet eternally to assist you in your great mission of spreading Kṛṣṇa consciousness.
Your insignificant servant,
Acyuta Priya Dāsa