About

“Poverty means poverty of knowledge,” Srila Prabhupada would often say. His conviction was that humanity was lacking in spiritual knowledge, which was essential for achieving real happiness in life. His vision therefore was that of a global East-West synthesis, based on the proverbial blind man-lame man story. India has the divine vision of spiritual wisdom but is financially crippled due to centuries of foreign exploitation and so is like the lame man. USA has financial and technological resources but is lacking in spiritual knowledge and so is like the blind man. If the blind man and the lame man join forces, both of them can reach the destination. Similarly, Srila Prabhupada brought together Indian spiritual wisdom and American technology to revive God consciousness all over the world through ISKCON. With this in mind, he trained thousands of disciples to live a life of pure spiritual principles in the modern world.

Srila Prabhupada preached that the chanting of the holy names of God, especially the Hare Krishna maha mantra, is a practical and powerful way to raise spiritual consciousness individually and globally. He demonstrated the liberating potency of mantra meditation by freeing hundreds of hippies from self-destructive drug addictions during the period of the counter-culture in USA in the 1960s and 1970s, a feat that was recognized even by Western scholars and sociologists. Srila Prabhupada would stress, “Without the awakening of divine consciousness, there is no use of crying for world peace.”

Srila Prabhupada will always be remembered for the selfless saintly compassion with which he gave the light of genuine spiritualism in the darkness of materialism. Thus he ilt a house in which the whole world can live.