(*Click on photo to see a larger image of Srila Prabhupada.)
About that time, I was on a serious spiritual search, looking at different spiritual groups of all sorts and was never satisfied. And I somehow landed up near Geneva in France living in a kind of community. I actually had spent many months on my own, very disillusioned with material life and the kind of people that were living around me. And I had a boyfriend who went to New Zealand and sent me beads and Bhagavad-gita and books. So I spent months just reading, chanting and praying, actually very sincerely to Krishna to help me find what I was looking for. And chanting on my own, I didn't even know really how to do it, and reading Gita and Nectar of Devotion, and painting my first picture of Krishna with a deer. And then one day a friend from the community said, "Oh, I've been in Geneva and there's a poster. The leader of this Movement, the ISKCON Movement, is coming to Geneva. Do you want to come?" So I said, "Yeah, OK, it sounds interesting." So we went off to the temple that day in Geneva. I'd never been to a temple before, and we were ushered into the garden, and there I saw Srila Prabhupada and he was performing a fire sacrifice. I saw a devotee, a lady prostrate at his feet, and I stood there and just looking in wonderment, really. And suddenly Srila Prabhupada looked straight over at me and into my eyes, and I really felt I was the only one in the garden at that point. It had a two-fold effect. First, I just wanted the ground to open up. I felt my soul naked, exposed and all my anarthas, which were very many at that time, flooded forward and I felt like disappearing into a hole in the ground. And the other enlightening moment was that I just looked at him and I knew that split second, this was my spiritual master. I just knew it in my heart, this is him. So it was a very profound experience, actually, very profound. It was another year until I eventually met Srila Prabhupada again and got initiation
Sri Kama dasi
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