Prabhupada Movement Research Paper

“I think the best feature of the Hare Krishna movement is that it is providing scholars with excellent translations of the rarest books on Krishna-bhakti [love of Krishna].” - Dr. Larry Shinn, President of Berea College, Kentucky.
AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896-1977) was a renowned spiritual teacher who at the age of seventy left his home in India to travel the world spreading Vedic knowledge. He became an influential leader changing the lives of millions across the globe. Prabhupada has presented India’s spiritual culture in a manner relevant to contemporary worldwide audiences. Being the founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), known as the Hare Krishna movement, Prabhupada has promoted Krishna Consciousness
His well-known way of preaching it is “I am not this but I’m the soul”. By this, Prabhupada teaches that the body and the soul are two different things working together. The soul or conscious life force within the body is what one could call ‘the real self’. The body is like a machine which operates only when the soul is present (Prabhupada, 1975, Ch. 20.108-109). Therefore, we are not the body but we are the immortal spirit soul or the eternal servants of God. Body without a soul is a dead body. However, the soul is unborn and it never perishes, as everything that takes birth is ought to die (Prabhupada,
This idea was so foreign in the west or that no one before Prabhupada has successfully preached it. It is true that even those who came before him (like Bon Maharaj 1901-1982, god-brother of Prabhupada) were not so successful. The western world before Prabhupada was dominated by monotheistic traditions which did not and still does not make room for polytheistic religions of sort. Prabhupada though, was saying that he is also monotheistic because he accept the Krsna of the Bhagavad gita as the only god. Prabhupada also denied that he is a Hindu and he did not want to be associated with