760422 - Conversation A - Melbourne

Conversations by Date, 1976

His Divine Grace
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

760422R1-MELBOURNE - April 22, 1976 - 03.19 Minutes

Prabhupāda: What is that?

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: The machine, I forgot to turn it . . . one knob down. I wanted to tape what you were saying, because . . . (break) We find actually it's true that when we try to speak philosophy sometimes to unwilling persons, they take that we are trying to convert them.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: And therefore they feel threatened. They react in an adverse way, put up so many barriers.

Prabhupāda: Chanting they will take part. That's it.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Before you went to America, in India, before 1965, were people coming at all, Indian people, to learn anything? Were they interested in any way?

Prabhupāda: No.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Now they're coming, so many.

Prabhupāda: They were coming, but I was engaged in writing. I was not visiting many . . . (break)

Hari-śauri: . . . when they begin to write, then they finish up their activities and retire and simply write. But you wrote first and then came out and distributed it.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: I personally, I don't think that even Americans or Westerners would have accepted even your teachings, as clear as they are, without having your personal association and seeing your example. I think people would have thought that it's totally impossible to do such a thing.

Hari-śauri: It would have remained theoretical. But because you came and showed practical example, then everything has become very easy.

Prabhupāda: Yes. Āpani ācārī prabhu jīvera śikṣāya. That is the way of teaching. Caitanya Mahāprabhu used to do.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: I've read some of your old Back to Godhead magazines, and actually you've been saying the same thing all along, with the same force also. Some of your critiques of Dr. Radhakrishnan's Bhagavad-gītā and modern science . . .

Prabhupāda: You have read?

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Oh, yes.

Prabhupāda: "Scholars Deluded."

Hari-śauri: Sometimes the devotees say that, "Now Prabhupāda is preaching much more strongly than ever before." But then, when we read the old Back to Godheads, it's exactly the same.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Even if we read the First Canto of Bhāgavatam . . .

Hari-śauri: It's very powerful.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: You translated that in India before you came. (end)