What I mean is that a black person will talk one minute about this, switch over to that, then switch over to this, and never coming to any conclusions; but not in the way that a jnana yogi would talk. Just completely free association. It is insanity. This I thought was really far out. But I knew nothing was coming from this. And therefore I resented it because it was the mode of ignorance.
Srila Prabhupada said not to do that. He said distribute Krishna Books; paperbacks. He said Krishna paperback were especially made for black Africans. I never understood that one.
Anyways, two people came up to my house that week and bought a Krishna Book. I mean they wanted a book and I said alright take this Krishna Book. I thought these people would go home and throw it in the closet or something. Because I could not understand how they could understand Krishna Book with all those Sanskrit names in it. Then these two persons came back to me. And straight away we were friends.
The two people who bought the Krishna book, were now my friends. However, they both happen to also be dope addicts, and they bought these books. One was an old friend of Malcom X, brought up with Malcom X. This other person, the other one was a girl that he knew. This person was also a friend of Malcom X; never left Harlem for the past twenty years. Never. I mean Harlem is not that big of a neighborhood. He said I have never left in twenty years. I said you never even left the neighborhood and he said no.
I said,
“Do you work?”
“No!”
He then surprised me and said,
“If I did, I would work around here and do odd jobs.”
He said he has not been on a bus or a subway in twenty years. Now this is one thing people do not understand about black people. There are a lot of people like that in New York, in Harlem.
They have never left Harlem in their entire life. Which makes them a really unique breed of people.
You know, white people are moving every two, three years to a new neighborhood. They do not have that kind of roots like that.
So this person bought a book and he came back a little while later. I said,
“What did you think of the book?”
And this person sat down and explained to me the whole story from the Krishna Book. He said,
“I read the whole thing.”
“Do you have another one.”
He then bought another one.
I said to myself,
“Prabhupada knows what he is talking about.”
Unbelievable. I did not even know if this person could read. As far as I could tell; he was not really a literate kind of person. I mean he could read on the level of newspapers; but books, I did not know.
He said he read the whole book, and loved it. And he bought another one; and then came back and told me the stories he had read. He remembered whole stories; even better than the devotees. This person did this. He did not know the Sanskrit names because they were too hard. So I said,
“What did you do when you got to the names?”
He said,
“I skipped over them.”
But he remembered the name Krishna, he did not remember the other ones. He remembered only Krishna. He said,
“I know Krishna, but all these other people I cannot pronounce their name.”
Nevertheless, he was able to described the personalities. And he knew the whole story in each chapter. So I was very impressed how smart Prabhupada was.
“Kirtana and Prasadam?”