Prabhupāda: He was also a little boy, but he was a great devotee, and father was a great atheist. So he was surprised that his son became so great devotee. After all, as a father he asked him, "My dear boy, what nice thing you have learned by your education?" He said: "My dear father, the best thing I have learned, that people are always full of anxiety on account of accepting material . . ." (break) . . . exactly the same thing as you were. So one thing is that formerly it was the practice to go to the forest, go to the Himalaya, but in this age this is not possible. Therefore we have to take shelter of the Lord wherever we are, and that is Hare Kṛṣṇa chanting.
Bishop Kelly: Well, of course, that the difficulty, as you rightly point out, you know, many times there, that man in the present-day civilization, he is so often mesmerized, he is captivated by what he sees in front of him . . . it is the modern Garden of Eden that he sees. He sees many delectable apple trees, so to speak, and he feels in the new vaunted value given to personalism and the expression of self, and the self-seeking, that he reaches out towards those things. And I'm afraid that in many cases the difficulty is to convince him that he is only getting, you know, poor substitutes until he has tasted and eaten and tried to digest and finds, you know, that there is no satisfaction, there is no wholesome food to be found there.
Prabhupāda: That is also stated in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam by . . . that is also statement of Prahlāda Mahārāja, this boy devotee. He says, na te viduḥ svārtha-gatiṁ hi viṣṇum (SB 7.5.31): "These foolish people, they do not know what is their actual self-interest." So he says, "They do not know the actual self-interest is approaching God. That is real self-interest. But they do not know it." Na te viduḥ svārtha-gatiṁ hi viṣṇuṁ durāśayā. "They have made their plan wrongly to become happy in this material world." Na te viduḥ svārtha-gatiṁ hi viṣṇuṁ durāśayā ye bahir-artha-māninaḥ (SB 7.5.31). Bahir-artha-māninaḥ means external: "They have taken the external energy, the material world, as very important."