…One night Srila Prabhupada said something that took me a while to comprehend. "Actually," he said, "you are the parent of your parents. The parent is the one who brings the child to life, the one who gives birth to the child. So you have come to Krsna consciousness first, and therefore you are giving your parents birth into spiritual life, which means eternal life. Actually, you are the real parent." Around that time, as if to help me understand what he had said that night, Srila Prabhupada would often mention in his lectures that if a person becomes a pure devotee of Krsna, then the Lord will give spiritual liberation to his relatives for ten generations before and ten generations to come.

Madhusudana Dasa; from a 1978 BTG