He was the first disciple of Srila Prabhupada from (ex) Yugoslavia.
After meeting the disciples of the person who would later become his spiritual master in 1974, Gopikantha Prabhu renounced everything and, that same year, moved into the ISKCON temple in Geneva. Shortly afterward, he met His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada and was deeply moved by the personality who became the foremost pioneer in bringing Vaishnavism to the West.
“When I met the devotees, I considered myself the luckiest person in the world. They radiated such profound joy, something I had never encountered in anyone else. I understood that this joy reflected a higher inner state,”
he said during a recent interview.
In 1977, Sri Gopikantha Dasa decided to return to Croatia, to Zagreb. Despite the communist regime, he began to preach Srila Prabhupada’s teachings with great determination, printing and distributing books that presented the principles of bhakti-yoga.
He knew well how deeply his spiritual master, Srila Prabhupada, wanted Krishna consciousness to be spread in communist countries. This was one of Srila Prabhupada’s principal preaching objectives at the time. Indeed, he declared that anyone who preached in communist countries would receive his mercy ten times more.