Interviewer: The American. And about eighteen months ago or more, if I remember right, there was a film, a documentary, on your school in Texas, on the National Broadcasting Company's program, which was very hostile, if not vicious. It was an attack on your whole movement, the rearing of the small children. So my question is, what is it that made you bring your movement into a culture and a religious ethos which is hostile, to begin with, with most of your major assumptions?
Prabhupāda: Hmm. So this is education. The Western people are not educated in the spiritual life. So our predecessors, our gurus, they are for educating people in the spiritual life. Caitanya Mahāprabhu, five hundred years ago, He advised Indians to go, first of all, make his life . . . Indian should make his life perfect, and then he should go outside India and preach the perfectional life, how to become perfect in life. That was His mission. He said pṛthivīte āche yata . . . you understand Bengali?
Interviewer: Yes.
Prabhupāda:
- pṛthivīte āche yata nagarādi grāma
- sarvatra pracāra haibe mora nāma
- (CB Antya-khaṇḍa 4.126)
- bhārata-bhūmite haila manuṣya-janma yāra
- janma sārthaka kari' kara para-upakāra
- (CC Adi 9.41)
So Indian life means para-upakāra. They are in the darkness, others, in the darkness. They have no such culture, spiritual culture. India has got that culture, this Bhagavad-gītā. So one should make his life a practically Bhagavad-gītā life. That is Kṛṣṇa conscious movement. And preach it to the world. That is Caitanya Mahāprabhu's order. And this order was not only . . . because Caitanya Mahāprabhu happened to be a Bengali. He appeared in Nadia District, a district in Bengal. But He does not say the Bengalis; He said the bhāratī. Bharata-varṣa janma haila yāra. So it is India's mission to become exactly on the line of Bhagavad-gītā. That is also spoken by Caitanya Mahāprabhu, that perfection of life means to understand Bhagavad-gītā. He said, āmāra ājñāya guru hañā tāra' ei deśa (CC Madhya 7.128): "You just become a guru and deliver this country." "This country" means wherever you are living—it doesn't matter whether in India or America or anywhere else—you just deliver them. So to become guru means to save a person from the conditional life of matter. So long you become a materialistic person, that means you are under condition of material nature. So you have to get your freedom from the laws of material nature. That is your perfect life. But people in the Western countries, they do not know much of this freedom. India knew it, or some of Indians, they know it. But at the present moment they, being conquered or influenced by the Western culture, they are also losing their identity. Therefore my Guru Mahārāja ordered me to do something about the spiritual life in the Western countries. On account of this I came here.