The fact that people just love to hear stories is one reason why some of the Vedic codes were gradually transmitted in story form, like the epic histories Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa and the Purāṇas. When such stories concern the pastimes of the Lord and His devotees, they are called līlās. Being labeled Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva’s pūjārī in Mayapur, I have been asked to recount some stories in connection with Him, but unlike the śāstras, these “līlās” have no authority except for the testimony of the devotees who told them. In most cases there were no other witnesses. Although I am generally quite skeptical when it comes to accepting other people’s mystical experiences as truth, just too many things started happening recently, not to sit up and take notice.

For instance, during the last Gaura-pūrṇimā festival, I called over a mātājī in the crowd and asked her to distribute the Lord’s caraṇāmṛta to the ladies, which she did. Later, when she brought the caraṇāmṛta pot back, she remarked that Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva was very merciful to reciprocate so quickly.

“I was praying this morning that I might be able to offer some direct service to Him, and now you have given me this service.”

“Yes,” I said, “desires are quickly fulfilled in the dhāma. Just see, the same day you desire, it happened.”

“No, not the same day—the same moment!” she replied. “The very instant I expressed that desire to serve Him, you called me over.”

“Wow! that is amazing!” I acknowledged. “Did you hear about how one devotee’s eye problem was cured at the same time that Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva’s original eyes were placed back, after one donor had bought Him new eyes?”

“Oh, yes,” she told me. “As a matter of fact, I was staying in the same building when Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva spoke to her.” She added, “You know, there was so much energy around that night that nobody could get any sleep.”

Just a few days later, another devotee revealed how Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva helped him:

“I was suffering intensely. I could not even stand without supporting myself on the column in front of Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva’s altar. I prayed, ‘Please help me, take away this suffering condition so that I may serve You fully.’ I then felt all my pain moving up and flowing out of my body. It just left.”

While I was hearing this, I noticed another devotee who had come for the darśana of the Lord. Earlier in the morning this mātājī had asked my advice what to do, for she had been afflicted for about two weeks with a severe problem that contaminated her body, which wouldn’t allow her to paint some Deities in Assam, although she had already been commissioned to do it and had an air ticket to go.

“Mātājī,” I exclaimed while walking over to her, “Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva is giving instant benedictions. Why don’t you ask Him to remove your problem?”

The very next morning, when she saw me, she said, “Thank you so much for the advice! You know, when I arrived home from the temple yesterday, my problem had completely disappeared.”

Some days later another mātājī came to the pūjārī room and told us about a dream, wherein Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva walked and talked with her just like a father. When she asked how she could serve Him, He told her to offer Him some mangoes.

It wasn’t the mango season, but she managed to get some, and we offered them for her. This was the year that Śrīpāda Gaura-Govinda Swami left his body in Mayapur.

A few days after this tragedy she came again and said, “Actually, I only told you half of the dream. Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva also said to me, ‘My pūjārī is very dear to Me, and I am going to take him back with Me.’”

“Oh, don’t do that, please,” I fearfully exclaimed. “We want him to stay here.”

“No, I think I will take him back.”

“And after my pleading with Him for a long time, the Lord firmly announced, ‘All right, then, I will take one of the gurus instead.’”

She concluded by saying, “I told my spiritual master about this dream, and he advised me not to tell anyone. But now, because it has come true, I think I can tell you.”

When I repeated this story to my friend Viśvambhar from Carolina, he said, “This is amazing! My wife also dreamed about Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva and mangoes. You see, yesterday, while she was walking outside the Mayapur campus, she saw a jar of mango pickles in a shop and desired to buy them for Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva. But doubting the purity of the contents, she refrained. However, last night, Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva appeared in her dream and asked, ‘Where are My mango pickles?’”

When Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva first came to Mayapur, all the pūjārīs were reluctant to worship His awesome form. Bhāva-siddhi Dāsa was particularly frightened and always very nervous worshiping Him. One night, after putting the Lord to rest, he was leaving the altar, when he heard such a tremendous sound that it made his hairs stand on end. Looking back fearfully, he saw that everything was in place.

So he quickly left, locked the door and paid his obeisances, praying for forgiveness for any offense he might inadvertently have committed. At the end of that night he was awakened by the shaking of his bed. Bhāva-siddhi was sleeping on the top of a bunk bed. So he thought it must be the pūjārī below him, getting up for maṅgala-ārati.

However, when he opened his eyes, he saw Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva sitting on his bed. That fortunate pūjārī became very fearful, practically to the point of panic.

As he tried to get up, Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva placed His two hands, which felt like the weight of the universe, on his shoulders.

“Be peaceful, be calm,” the Lord consoled him. “I have just come to tell you that when you worship Me in the temple, there is no need to fear Me. Please, give up this fear.”

The Lord then disappeared, but Bhāva-siddhi began to run up and down the veranda of the Long Building, where he slept.

“What happened?” asked some concerned devotees. But they received only incoherent replies. They started to think maybe he had gone mad or become haunted by a ghost. Finally Bhāva-siddhi ran over to the temple and prostrated himself before the door where Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva is worshiped and offered heartfelt prayers. After some time, he became a little pacified, and began walking back to his room.

“I wonder why everyone is staring at me,” he thought.

When he looked down, the answer was obvious: He had gone to the temple in his night dress.

I saw Bhāva-siddhi at last year’s Gaura-pūrṇimā festival—he is living in America now—and asked him about that incident.

“Yes,” he said, “I still have those two marks from Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva on my shoulders. They are almost gone now, but they are still visible.”

He wasn’t the only one to claim to have seen Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva. Once, a devotee from a nearby Gauḍīya Maṭha came to offer worship to Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva and told our head pūjārī, Jananivāsa, that on Nṛsiṁha Caturdaśī (the appearance day of Nṛsiṁhadeva) he had been staying up all night chanting. Then, at the end of the night, Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva manifested Himself in his room.

“It was the form of Nṛsiṁhadeva from the ISKCON temple, and He appeared to be smiling very sweetly at me. My Guru Mahārāja said I was very fortunate and should come here and worship Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva.”

Another time, the frantic parents of a runaway boy, after searching all over the country, finally heard that their son was at our Mayapur center. They immediately came and spent the whole day looking for him, inquiring at the reception desk and from individual devotees, but they were not at all lucky in tracing him.

At the end of the day, during the sandhyā-ārati of Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva, his mother was praying with folded hands:

“My dear Lord, the last time I came here, I happily participated in the chanting and dancing, but now my heart is broken because of my lost son, and I find no pleasure in life anymore. My Lord, if only my son could be returned to me, then I would also raise my hands and chant ‘Haribol, Hare Krishna.’”

As these words left her mouth, a figure passed and stopped before her and Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva: it was her lost son. Both parents have now accepted Vaiṣṇava initiation, started a nāma-haṭṭa center, and are enthusiastically preaching the Lord’s glories.

There are other stories—some I would be hesitant to repeat, and others that I can’t, having been told them in confidence. The devotees who told me these stories have had their faith and conviction strengthened, and certainly mine was, too, by hearing them. So if others derive the same benefit from reading them—even though they are not śāstra—it will be most beneficial. They help us advance in Krishna consciousness.