Miraculous recovery of devotees at Mayapur festival

Sravanananda Dasa: In '74 or '75, in Mayapur, it was the early stages, everybody was getting horribly sick. They were laying on mats, all throughout the original building on the veranda, you know, this nice big veranda you get cool breezes; everybody would sleep there on the floor, on the mats or sleeping bags. Everybody was sick, violently sick.

Prabhupada was very concerned and upset. We'd come to Mayapur festival for everybody to get sick... I remember one time that Srila Prabhupada organized a doctor, it might have been homeopathic because he gave all these white pills to every devotee. The doctor would come around, everybody's laying there, you could barely sit up and he would put these white pills in your mouth. And miraculously, I say that miraculously, everybody was able to just about that same day, get back in action and be able to participate and do service. I never thought about it for many, many, many, many years but I had contact with different medicinal sciences whether it be allopathic, Ayurvedic or homeopathic. Homeopathic has never been one that I had much faith in - it's of newer science - I think out of Germany. Some people in India… there's a lot of contact with Germany in the old days, liked the science of homeopathy. But I've never seen much results.

So I thought, my own speculation, that to see every devotee within hours sit up almost like perfectly healthy and able to function was a miracle that Srila Prabhupada somehow had something to do with that. Because, again, a couple pills like that normally don't work so effectively. We're talking about serious, serious gastrointestinal things that devotees were having problems with in the festival. And it was also cooking and bad oils. So we arranged these shipments that came to India for combining with milk, the toned milk, was a butterfat from Holland, called butter-oil. It was like a ghee that was created through centrifugal force. There were these large, large metal tins, like you see in India, in the old days with oils in them that came from Holland. We were able to get truckloads and truckloads of that for cooking in Mayapur that made a big difference. Because I remember, I somehow got a few of those myself. I was living in Calcutta and it was amazing to cook with it - the smell, to have ghee, which is what Prabhupada always wanted us to use.

So that was a nice change and again that homeopathy was my own perception. But to me, it wasn't a coincidence. I'm sure there are many things because Prabhupada was like that: he never was a guru that showed off mystical powers. It was a very private thing for his devotees. We've heard stories of coconuts that endlessly had water in it for many, many devotees. So it was a thing that was shared intimately, not for the public, and again not to boast like many gurus do, but just to serve his devotees with his love. That itself was the miracle I saw: Prabhupada was… how much he loved his disciples, no matter how bad we were.