Journalist: Did you get formal training with a...
Prabhupāda: Yes, I was initiated by my Guru Mahārāja. His, here is that, my spiritual master's photo.
Journalist: Oh, I see.
Prabhupāda: Yes. So when your country wanted a certificate for making me permanent resident, so I got a certificate from my Godbrothers that I am initiated. That's all. But otherwise, in our country, there is no necessity of certificate.
Journalist: In other words, there's nothing like going to a seminary in India where you go to a seminary or a monastery and take a course for four years...
Prabhupāda: No, this is monastery. Yes, there is a monastery. We have got institution, Gauḍīya Math Institution. They have got hundreds of branches, yes.
Journalist: You go for a prescribed course of study?
Prabhupāda: Yes, prescribed course of study, these two, three books, that's all. Anyone can read. Bhagavad-gītā and Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam or Caitanya-caritāmṛta. You'll learn everything. You haven't got to learn so many huge volumes of books. Because Bhagavad-gītā is such nice book, if you can understand one line, you advance hundred years. You see? So, I mean to say, meaningful and so solid. Therefore we have published this Bhagavad-gītā As It Is. Let your people read it, let them question, and try to understand what is this movement.
Journalist: Macmillan is publishing this one.
Prabhupāda: Yes, Macmillan is publishing.
Journalist: Now when you... Do you go to this institute for a certain period of time?
Prabhupāda: There is no fixed period. No. But, say, for me, I was trained, my father was of this line...
Journalist: Oh, your father...
Prabhupāda: Oh yes. My father trained me from childhood, yes. And then I met my spiritual master in 1922, and I was initiated in... On the whole there was a background, because as I told you, 80, 90 percent people are Kṛṣṇa conscious by family-wise. You see? So we were trained up from the beginning of our life. Officially, of course, I accepted my spiritual master in 1933. Since then, I had some background, and since I met, I developed this idea. Yes.
Journalist: I see, I see. So you have been, in a sense, spreading this word since 1933 on your own.
Prabhupāda: No. I'm spreading as missionary since nineteen hundred..., practically since '59.