Śrīla Prabhupāda-līlāmṛta tells the story of a remarkable individual and a remarkable achievement. The individual is A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda: philosopher, scholar, religious leader, saint. The achievement is the revolutionary transplantation of a timeless spiritual culture from ancient India to twentieth-century America and the world.
In this fourth volume, In Every Town and Village, we follow Śrīla Prabhupāda through the years of his greatest active participation in ISKCON, as its sole leader. During this period (March 1969 to June 1971), besides traveling throughout North America, establishing, solidifying, and inspiring communities of disciples, Śrīla Prabhupāda turned ISKCON into a truly international phenomenon. In Britain, with the active assistance of Beatles George Harrison and John Lennon, a recording of the Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra became a smash hit, and the movement took off. Śrīla Prabhupāda also introduced Kṛṣṇa consciousness to Australia, Malaysia, France, Africa, and the Soviet Union during these years.
Perhaps the most significant development during this period was the movement’s return to its spiritual motherland. In the fall of 1970, Śrīla Prabhupāda embarked on a dramatic tour of India with a select group of American disciples, whose rejection of Western materialism and zealous embrace of India’s ancient spiritual culture caused nothing less than a sensation among the Westernizing Indians, planting seeds for an authentic religious revival there.
Through all these travels and events, certain themes remain constant: Śrīla Prabhupāda’s towering and heroic spirituality, the powerfully transforming effect his presence had on those who chose to follow him, and the disciples’ ever-deepening realization and experience of the profound sublimity of a relationship with a genuine guru and saint.