# Room Conversation

*Type: Conversation Dated: April 22nd 1976 Location: Melbourne Audio file: 760422R1.MEL.mp3*

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]