Dear Śrīla Prabhupāda,
Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to you.
I noted that this year will be the historic sixtieth anniversary since you, Śrīla Prabhupāda, founded ISKCON and began your extraordinary mission to share Kṛṣṇa consciousness with the world.
I am fortunate to take part in glorifying you in your Vyāsa-pūjā book and at the same time have appeared on “the number one podcast of ISKCON – the Namarasa/Vyenkatta Bhatta interview.” In my case, I was picked up personally by you some sixty years ago from the gutter (my initiation was on September 23, 1966), a very fallen, sinful, addicted wretch living in bad association on New York City’s Lower East Side. The two podcasters invited me to their show at the beginning of 2026, and I was able to speak of my early memories of you, Swamijī, and this was much to the pleasure of thousands of devotees who had never been present or heard about these pastimes of yours, and how you struggled in the beginning, and how you gathered less than ten men (or boys, as you called us), and with compassion, courage, and unwavering devotion, raised us at first as a small family.
To this day I still recall those early days as my favorite, because you, Śrīla Prabhupāda, were so accessible to us. And for myself, personally, I really needed special attention from you – and you gave it freely and saved me. I promise I will never forget your individual attention and kindness toward me, and I will never leave your feet or abandon your mission.
I have an irresistible desire to remember the early days with you, but not at the cost of acknowledging how wonderfully you and your followers have expanded your desires and seen the movement grow, purify itself of its anarthas, and become more and more potent and populated with sincere souls over the years and decades.
Now it is sixty years since you began and since I joined. And while I may have a special sentiment for the early days with you when you were so close to us, I don’t deny that you actually wanted your movement to grow bigger and bigger. This has come about by your grace and by the potency you placed in the hearts of your initiated disciples.
I personally do not have so many years left to live in this body, since I’m already 86 and in failing health. I don’t know what you have in store for me in the next life, but I pray that I may join with you and go back to Godhead, as you have hinted is possible in one lifetime. If I have to come back for many lifetimes, I still pray to be faithful to you. Let me not forget the wonderful early days, and let me not abandon you ever at any point, but let me stay with you and help contribute to making ISKCON a greater and greater institution, an institution with heart and right behavior and love for you, dearest Śrīla Prabhupāda.
Hoping I may be with you on this earth for many more Vyāsa-pūjās, but when I have to go, I hope I will still be able to take part as your disciple and stay with you, either in this world or eventually making progress back to Godhead.
Yours in service, a fallen, faulty servant,
Satsvarūpa dāsa Goswami