This planet is created for us because we have a desire to become the master, we want to become the lord of all we survey. This is not our natural position. Our natural position is to serve God, we are servants of Krishna. Because we are qualitatively the same as Krishna, we have the same desires as Krishna. Because Krishna is the Supreme Controller, because He is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, we sometimes have the same desire, we also want to become the supreme controller. But in reality this is not possible because we are small and Krishna is great.
Krishna's has created this material world as a place for us to be the master. But there is a catch -- everything here ends in frustration. This world is a place for reformation. It has been compared to a prison house. As the government maintains a prison house for the reformation of criminals, within society Krishna maintains this world for our reformation.
Our desire to lord it over the material world independently of Krishna is a criminal desire. We have come here to be rectified. "After many, many births in the material world a thoughtful person can understand Krishna is all there is." So he surrenders to Krishna. "Such a great soul is very rare." (Bhagavad-gita 7.19)
Finding a liberated soul in this world is not a very common thing because, practically speaking, we are all criminals. We only come here because of our desire to enjoy separately from Krishna. This material world is not the place to find saintly people. Generally speaking saintly people are in the spiritual world serving Krishna, and mostly the criminals are here. If you go to a prison you won't find many good honest citizens, it will be a rarity to find an honest citizen in the prison. Therefore we should understand finding a saintly person in this world is not a common thing. Krishna describes in Bhagavad-gita (7.3): Out of many thousands among men, one might be interested in spiritual life and out of all those who are interested one out of many thousands may become liberated and out of all the liberated souls hardly one knows Krishna in truth. This is the great value of Krishna consciousness.