Anne Jackson: May I ask you a few questions? Could you please tell me a little bit about your life and how you knew that you were the spiritual master for the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement?
Prabhupāda: My life is simple. I was householder. I have still my wife, my children, my grandsons. So my Guru Mahārāja ordered me that, "Go and preach this cult in the Western countries." So I left everything on the order of my Guru Mahārāja, and I am trying to execute the order. That's all.
Anne Jackson: And is this picture here the man . . .?
Prabhupāda: Yes, he is my Guru Mahārāja.
Anne Jackson: And he is no longer living.
Prabhupāda: No.
Anne Jackson: He spoke to you spiritually?
Prabhupāda: So this is my . . . (indistinct) . . . that's all.
Anne Jackson: At what point was it that he told you to do this? It was very late in your life that you . . .?
Prabhupāda: Yes. When I was twenty-five years old I met him first. On the first meeting he ordered me to this. So at that time I was married man. I had two children. So I thought, "I shall do it later on." But I was trying to get out of family life. It took some time. But I was trying my best to carry out his order. In 1944 I started magazine, Back to Godhead, when I was gṛhastha. Then I started writing books in 1958 or '59. In this way, in 1955 (1965) I came to your country.
Anne Jackson: You have said that you are very small and that you are not God, and yet it appears to me as an outsider that the devotees treat you as if you were God.
Prabhupāda: Yes, that is devotee's duty. Just like a government officer. Personally he is not very important, but so long he executes government order, he should be respected as government. That is the way. Even a ordinary policeman comes, you have to respect him because he is government man. But that does not mean he is government. He is respected. Sākṣād-dharitvena samasta-śāstrair uktas tathā bhāvyata eva sadbhiḥ. If that man thinks that "I have become government. People are respecting me," then he is foolish. So . . . but it is the etiquette. If the government man comes, he should respect him as government.