These European, American boys, they are coming from well-to-do families. The Americans are all well-to-do family. There is no poor man. Now why they are serving me? I'm Indian, coming from a poor country. (chuckles) I cannot pay them. Eh? And when I came here I had no money. I brought only forty rupees. And that was only one hour's expenditure in America. (laughter) So their life and soul is engaged to carry out my instruction, and therefore they're making progress. Praṇipātena, paripraśnena. They are asking question; I am trying to reply them. And they have got full faith. They are serving like menial servant.
But this is the process. If the spiritual master is bona fide and the disciple is very sincere, then the knowledge is immediately there. This is the secret: yasya deve parā bhaktir yathā deve tathā gurau (ŚU 6.23). This is the secret of success. Therefore formerly, the students were sent to gurukula. It doesn't matter whether he's a king's son or . . . of course, the brāhmaṇa, kṣatriya, vaiśya, they were coming from very respectable . . . even Kṛṣṇa, He had to go to gurukula. There is story, one day Kṛṣṇa went to collect dry wood from the forest. And there was all of a sudden rain, and they could not get out from the forest. The whole night they remained in the forest with great difficulty, torrents of rain. The next morning, the guru, teacher, with other students, they came in the forest and searched them out. This story was being reminded to His one friend, Sudāmā Vipra: "My dear friend, do you remember that night, how we had to suffer?" So even Kṛṣṇa, whom we accept the Supreme Lord, He had to go to the gurukula—this is example—and serve the guru as a menial servant, to go to the forest. There was no fuel at that time, gas stove. (laughs) Then to collect this . . . what, the dry wood had fallen. That's all.
So all of the students had to do like that. How a brahmacārī would live, the description is there: brahmacārī guru-kule vasan dānto guror hitau (SB 7.12.1). A brahmacārī should live at gurukula, very submissively. Dānto means submissive, and only for the benefit of guru. No personal benefit. In this way brahmacārī should take lesson from the guru. That is tad viddhi praṇipātena paripraśnena sevayā (BG 4.34). They were trained up from the very beginning how to become the first-class submissive student. Then guru, out of affection, would teach him open-hearted: "These boys are doing so much for me. Let me teach them as far as I know." This is the process. There was no question of monetary transaction. On the basis of love and education. So we have already one gurukula, in Texas. We are teaching on that basis. And another gurukula just going to open in Vṛndāvana.