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THE SCIENCE OF SELF-REALIZATION
spiritualists. You cannot judge a movement simply by the number of its followers. If one man is genuine, then the movement is successful. It is not a question of quantity, but quality.
Reporter:  I wondered how many people you think might have been taken in by fake gurus.
Śrīla Prabhupāda:  Practically everyone. [Laughter.] There is no question of counting. Everyone.
Reporter:  This would mean thousands of people, wouldn't it?
Śrīla Prabhupāda:  Millions. Millions have been cheated, because they want to be cheated. God is omniscient. He can understand your desires. He is within your heart, and if you want to be cheated, God sends you a cheater.
Reporter:  Is it possible for everyone to attain the perfectional stage you spoke of previously?
Śrīla Prabhupāda:  Within a second. Anyone can attain perfection within a second—providing he is willing. The difficulty is that no one is willing. In the  Bhagavad-gītā  [18.66] Kṛṣṇa says,  sarva-dharmān parityajya mām ekam śaraṇam vraja : “Simply surrender unto Me.” But who is going to surrender to God? Everyone says, “Oh, why should I surrender to God? I will be independent.” If you simply surrender, it is a second’s business. That’s all. But no one is willing, and that is the difficulty.
Reporter:  When you say that lots of people want to be cheated, do you mean that lots of people want to carry on with their worldly pleasures and at the same time, by chanting a mantra or by holding a flower, achieve spiritual life as well? Is this what you mean by wanting to be cheated?
Śrīla Prabhupāda:  Yes, this is like a patient thinking, “I shall continue with my disease, and at the same time I shall become healthy.” It is contradictory. The first requirement is that one become educated in spiritual life. Spiritual life is not something one can understand by a few minutes’ talk. There are many philosophy and theology books, but people are not interested in them. That is the difficulty. For instance, the  Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam  is a very long work, and if you try to read this book, it may take many days just to understand one line of it. The  Bhāgavatam  describes God, the Absolute Truth, but people are not interested. And if, by chance, someone becomes a little interested in spiritual life, he wants something immediate and cheap. Therefore, he is cheated. Actually, human life is meant for austerity and penance. That is the way of Vedic civilization. In Vedic times they would train boys as  brahmacārīs ; no sex life was allowed at all up to the age of twenty-five. Where is that education now? A  brahmacārī  is a student who lives a life of complete celibacy