Ambarish’s first donation to ISKCON.
Ramesvara das: We were getting letters from a person named Alfred Ford and nobody had the slightest idea that he was “the” Ford family! So we were getting some letters and Krsna Kanti found out about it. At that time Krsna Kanti was still working at Spiritual Sky and he wrote this Alfred Ford a letter at his ski resort in Hawaii and asked him to please give a donation. “I’m trying to start a tape ministry to record all the lectures of Srila Prabhupada. There is no system at all.” And Alfred Ford gave a donation and Golden Avatar was started in 1972. We bought the Uher tape recorders, we bought whatever equipment there was. This was a monumental thing. From that day on Prabhupada’s servant or secretary had to carry a tape recorder and every single thing Prabhupada said was recorded. That was a major event for the history of the world. It ended up by 1977 when Prabhupada said we could use his talks, his classes and his lectures to produce books. It’s a very major event. It started in 1972 with this donation, the very first donation Ambarish ever gave ISKCON went to pay for Prabhupada’s voice to be recorded and preserved for as long as there is a Krsna consciousness movement. That is an important event in the history of our movement and Prabhupada approved it. Obviously he allowed his disciples to carry that tape recorder and stick that microphone in front of him and if it was annoying to him he would have mentioned it.