The highest realization is to save yourself

Bhaktadas: At the end of a Christmas Marathon in 1973 or '74, Rameshvara sent Prabhupada enormous book distribution scores. Srila Prabhupada wrote back, "Congratulations on selling so many books. This is very nice, and I'm very pleased." But in the final sentence, he wrote, "The highest realization is to save yourself."

That sentence was like a sledgehammer in my heart, because most of us were thinking, "We're saved, and we're saving others." But here he was telling us that the highest thing is to save ourselves. I felt that we had become like Christians, thinking, "I'm saved by the blood of Jesus, and these people are all heathens. We're going to save them."

I felt that we'd become puffed up and intoxicated by ourselves. The words in that letter always stayed with me.