Introduction

‘‘Who is Srila Prabhupada?”’ people often ask, and it is always a hard
question to answer. For Srila Prabhupada always eclipsed conventional
designations. At various times people have called him a scholar, a phi-
losopher, a cultural ambassador, a prolific author, a religious leader, a
spiritual teacher, a social critic, and a holy man. In truth, he was all these
things and more. Certainly no one could ever have confused him with
the modern entrepreneurial ‘‘gurus’’ who come to the West with slickly
packaged, watered-down versions of Eastern spirituality (to satisfy our
urge for instant well-being and exploit our well-documented spiritual
naiveté). Srila Prabhupdda was, rather, a true holy man (sddhu) of deep
intellectual and spiritual sensitivity—he had deep concern and compas-
sion for a society which, to such a large degree, lacks real spiritual
dimension.

For the enlightenment of human society, Srila Prabhupada produced
some eighty volumes of translations and summary studies of India’s
great spiritual classics, and his work has seen print both in English
and in many foreign languages. Also, in 1944 Srila Prabhupdda single-
handedly launched a magazine called Back to Godhead, which today has a
monthly circulation of more than half a million copies in English alone.
Nearly all the interviews, lectures, essays, and letters chosen for The
Science of Self-Realization first appeared in Back to Godhead. /

In these pages Srila Prabhupada presents the same message that the
great sage Vydsadeva recorded thousands of years ago, the message of
ancient India’s Vedic literatures. As we shall see, he quotes freely and
often from the Bhagavad-gita, the Srimad-Bhdgavatam, and other classic ;
Vedic texts. He transmits in modern English the same timeless knowl-
edge that other great self-realized teachers have spoken for millennia—
knowledge that opens up the secrets of the self within us, nature and the
universe, and the Supreme Self within and without. Srila Prabhupada
speaks with startling clarity and a kind of convincing, simple eloquence
and proves just how relevant the science of self-realization is to our
modern world and our own lives.

Among the thirty-six selections chosen for this special book, we hear
Srila Prabhupada’s moving poem upon his arrival in America, his ex-
change with a noted cardiologist on ‘‘soul research,’ his revelations to
London Broadcasting Company on reincarnation, his telling remarks to
the London Times on real and false gurus, his dialogue with a German

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