Gopinath Acharya das : Srila Prabhupada would always give wonderful lectures, but sometimes devotees would be falling asleep maybe due to having too much prasadam. And I must admit, in those days I used to fall asleep a lot. But I do remember one incident, it really floored people. We had a program at the Palais Theater in Saint Kilda, which was a pretty hip part of town. It wasn’t a very big theater, and it was cozy and intimate. It was eclectic, put it that way.
There were a lot of philosopher hippie types there, and Srila Prabhupada was sitting on his vyasasan. He gave his lecture, and the acoustics unfortunately weren’t that good. It was reverberating around the room and it was hard to catch what Srila Prabhupada was saying, but there were a lot of people there. Anyway, at one particular point somebody asked a question: “There are so many yogis and swamis that have come and this and that. What can you do?” Either “what can you do,” inferring what that others can’t do or what can you do. Srila Prabhupada said, “I can save you from death.” Then there was complete silence, and everyone knew that Srila Prabhupada meant it. It was the most sobering thing I’ve ever heard someone say. So from then on, the rest of the program was sober. People were respectful.
Reference: Following Srila Prabhupada-A Chronological Series by Gopinath Acharya Dasa
