On September 22, 1965, only five days after his arrival in America, Srila Prabhupada lectured at the YMCA in Butler, Pennsylvania. The local newspaper, the Butler Eagle, printed the above photo to accompany the following story:
AMBASSADOR OF BHAKTI-YOGA
A slighly brown man in faded orange drapes wearing white bathing shoes stepped out of a compact car yesterday and into the Butler YMCA to attend a meeting. He is A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swamiji, a messenger from India to the peoples of the West.
'My mission is to revive people's God-consciousness,' says the Swamiji. 'God is the father of all living beings, in thousands of different forms," he explains. 'Human life is a stage of perfection in evolution; if we miss the message, back we go through the process again.'
He believes that the highest possible state will be to go to God, or eternal life.
