Dear Śrīla Prabhupāda,
Please accept my humble obeisances.
Before you, I did not exist, Prabhupāda! And the more I searched for myself, the more I became lost. The longing to possess myself made me ill. It was necessary, therefore, to give myself up, to flee from myself, in order to find the true cure in you.
Whatever Kṛṣṇa consciousness exists in me is because you are Prabhupāda! In me, no Kṛṣṇa consciousness could exist if you were not Prabhupāda! I, the devotee, might not exist, but you, Prabhupāda, would never cease to be Prabhupāda!
You are an ocean of mercy, while I am only a microscopic island trying to emerge from the ocean of birth and death. From the deep waters of my ignorance, you lifted me, yet I remain afraid, for I am still in danger. If your potency were to cease holding me above the sinister waters of my own ego, then at that very moment I would fall again into the darkest abyss of existence.
Therefore, I think of you today and always, Prabhupāda.
And the more I do so, the more I forget this fictitious and ephemeral character that covers my soul. The closer I come to your immense fullness, the more I divorce myself from myself – from this fragile and petty emptiness that bears my name. For this reason, I think of you today and always, Prabhupāda. And in doing so, I come closer to my true self. To be with you, Prabhupāda, is the only way to glimpse the possibility of being with myself.
Therefore, I think of you today and always, Prabhupāda.
And the more I do so, the more your gigantic and immaculate reality rises before me. Then this microscopic speck that I mistakenly call “I,” which lives lost in the mists on the horizon of māyā, ceases to torment me.
Therefore, I think of you today and always, Prabhupāda.
And the more I do so, the more I am healed. I understand that revolving around myself – around my small and great grievances – makes me sick, petty, dissatisfied with myself, and therefore with all men. And so I pray to you, Prabhupāda. I pray that your tangential force may seize me ever more, and that, like a rapturous cyclone, it may hurl me into your world – the heroic world of your joyful tempests – where to live, to work, to suffer, to struggle, and to die is sweeter than honey.
Outside of you there is no salvation for me. Therefore I pray: sustain me, strengthen me with your power, illumine me with your light, warm me with your heat, overwhelm me with your infinite happiness, and place me in harmony with the sweet poetry of life. This ineffable poetry is you and your adorable Lord. You are the great dawn after the cold nights of my heart. You are the smiling rainbow above the deluges of my tears. You are the hymn of peace in the midst of the battlefields within me.
Your eternal servant,
Candramukha Swami