Śrīla Prabhupāda : A Modern Saint
Among the hippies in San Francisco were many young people who were sincerely searching for spiritual enlightenment—and who found it when they met His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda.
As recently as 1965, Śrīla Prabhupāda, at age 69, had been living as a renounced ascetic in the holy town of Vṛndāvana, India, where he was regarded as a pure, saintly devotee of Lord Kṛṣṅa. He had lived there in simple quarters in a famous medieval temple, working tirelessly to translate ancient Sanskrit scriptures into English.
In 1921, Śrīla Prabhupāda’s spiritual master had requested him to spread the science of Kṛṣṅa consciousness in the West. So in 1965, after a lifetime of preperation, Śrīla Prabhupāda had come to America to do it.
In the whole history of Indian spiritual life, no one had ever attempted something as bold and seemingly impossible—to transform Westerners into full-fledged devotees of Lord Kṛṣṅa. But by his intense spiritual energy and compassion Śrīla Prabhupāda was successful beyond his own expectations, thus earning recognition as a great spiritual figure of the modern age.
In the Encyclopedia Brittanica Book of the Year for 1975 we read “His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda astonished academic and literary communities worldwide by writing and publishing 52 books on the ancient Vedic culture. The International Society for Krishna Consciousness which he had established in 1966, had expanded by the end of 1975 to seventy eight temples on 5 continents.”
But in 1966, when Śrīla Prabhupāda had come to San Francisco, he had brought only himself. It was by his own qualities of spiritual warmth, humor, mercy, knowledge, friendliness, and love that Śrīla Prabhupāda had charmed and won over the hippies of the Haight.
One of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s early disciples, Mukunda dāsa, tells how it was in San Francisco. We would just say to people. “ You have to come and meet the Swami. They would come, and their lives would be transformed in some way, great or small.”