Contributed by: Mahavishnu Dasa

Srila Prabhupada’s Letter to: Ramesvara

India

9 January, 1973

My Dear Ramesvara,

Please accept my blessings. I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter dated December 27, 1972, and with great happiness I have read your figures of amount of bookssold during three-day period, December 22-24, 1972. It is scarcely believable that more than 17,100 books could have been sold by one temple in three days! That indicates to me that people are at last becoming little serious about this Krishna Consciousness movement in your country. Otherwise, why they should buy our books? But they can see that our boys and girls, devotees, are so much sincere and serious to distribute the message of Krishna consciousness, they are at once struck by seeing them and therefore they appreciate and purchase. This is unique in the world. Perhaps we are the only sincere persons on this whole planet. At least our books are not to be seen anywhere else.

So I am so much pleased upon all of the boys and girls in Los Angeles and all over the world who are understanding and appreciating this unique quality of our transcendental literature and voluntarily they are going out to distribute despite all circumstances of difficulty. By this effort alone they are assured to go back to home, back to Godhead. In order to change this materialistic society and prevent them from gliding to hell, first thing is to educate them. All decent men want to give service to humanity, only thing is they do not have information really what is that service. Hospitals, feeding the poor, Red Cross, these are service to the bodies only, not to the man. Service to humanity means jnana. By giving people knowledge, jnana, that is the highest service to humanity. So we are performing the actual welfare work of society by informing everyone through our literatures who is God, who they are, and what is the relationship. In this way everyone who hears our message gets the 

 to fulfill his actual position as human entity and become delivered from the clutches of maya. So you may understand it that by disseminating our Krishnaconsciousness propaganda anywhere and everywhere, by selling books, by making publicity, newspapers, television, so many ways there are to spread Krishna consciousness information, you may know it that by utilizing our energy in this way to give everyone access to the Absolute Truth, that is the real understanding of desire to serve humanity.

Understanding is one thing, and practical application of that understanding is another. But as devotees of Krishna, being engaged in the practical work of spreading Krishna consciousness, that is already the highest realization. That's all right, that is our real mission, to deliver the world by preaching Krishna's message to others, but even higher realization, the highest realization, is to save oneself.
Hoping this meets you in good health.

Your ever well-wisher
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami