Foreword | xiii

the festival had become so popular with San Franciscans that the mayor
issued a formal proclamation—‘‘Ratha-yatra Day in San Francisco.”’

By late 1966 Srila Prabhupada had begun accepting disciples. He was
quick to point out to everyone that they should think of him not as God
but as God’s servant, and he criticized self-styled gurus who let their dis-
ciples worship them as God. ‘‘These ‘gods’ are very cheap,”” he used to
say. One day, after someone had asked, ‘‘Are you God?” Srila Prabhu-
pada replied, ‘‘No, I am not God—I am a servant of God.’’ Then he
reflected a moment and went on. ‘‘Actually, Iam nota servant of God. I
am trying to be a servant of God. A servant of God is no ordinary thing.”

In the mid-seventies Srila Prabhupdda’s translating and publishing in-
tensified dramatically. Scholars all over the world showered favorable
reviews on his books, and practically all the universities and colleges in
America accepted them as standard texts. Altogether he produced some
eighty books, which his disciples have translated into twenty-five
languages and distributed to the tune of fifty-five million copies. He
established one hundred eight temples worldwide, and he has some ten
thousand initiated disciples and a congregational following in the
millions. Srila Prabhupada was writing and translating up to the last days
of his eighty-one-year stay on earth.

Srila Prabhupada was not just another oriental scholar, guru, mystic,
yoga teacher, or meditation instructor. He was the embodiment of a
whole culture, and he implanted that culture in the West. To me and
many others he was first and foremost someone who truly cared, who
completely sacrificed his own comfort to work for the good of others. He
had no private life, but lived only for others. He taught spiritual science,
philosophy, common sense, the arts, languages, the Vedic way of life—
hygiene, nutrition, medicine, etiquette, family living, farming, social
organization, schooling, economics—and many more things to many
people. To me he was a master, a father, and my dearmost friend.

I am deeply indebted to Srila Prabhupada, and it is a debt I shall never
be able to repay. But I can at least show some gratitude by joining with his
other followers in fulfilling his innermost desire—publishing and dis-
tributing his books.

“*T shall never die,”’ Srila Prabhupada once said. ‘‘I shall live forever in
my books.”’ He passed away from this world on November 14, 1977, but
surely he will live forever.

Michael Grant
(Mukunda dasa)
