In 1965 His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, a Vedic scholar and holy man in the renounced order of life left India for America to transform a bold vision into a historical reality of global dimension. To fulfill the desire of generations of Indian saints who wished to see India’s timeless spiritual culture benefit the entire world, Śrīla Prabhupāda left India and sailed to the United States.
When he arrived by freighter he was practically penniless. But after nearly a year of struggle, he established the International Society for Krishna Consciousness in July of 1966. In the years that followed, the society grew rapidly and Hare Kṛṣṇa became familiar to millions of people.
Śrīla Prabhupāda became the focal point for the public’s interest in the Hare Kṛṣṇa Movement, but he was never too busy to carefully answer any question and with each and every encounter he would open the doors to the ancient philosophical and spiritual knowledge of India.
An Ācārya is one who teaches by example. By his personal example, Śrīla Prabhupāda demonstrated that the soul, the self is naturally eternal, full of knowledge, and full of transcendental bliss. When a living being is awakened to his original constitutional position of Kṛṣṇa consciousness he becomes filled with sublime, exalted spiritual emotions that have no material counterpart.
As a great self-realized and God-conscious saint, Śrīla Prabhupāda often exhibited the spiritual happiness that Kṛṣṇa describes in the Bhagavad-gītā. That sacred and ancient fountainhead of wisdom has this to say about the final state of human perfection: 'In that joyous state one is situated in boundless transcendental happiness and enjoys himself through transcendental senses. Established thus, one never departs from the truth, and upon gaining this he knows there is no greater gain.