Philosophy Discussion on Charles Darwin
Śyāmasundara: Darwin is the originator of the doctrine of natural selection, or survival of the fittest. That means that in the course of adapting to the environment one type of animal will develop in a particular way which is best suited for that environment, and he will pass on his superior qualities to his offspring so that that particular species will survive, whereas another, which is not so suitable to that environment, will die out. This is called natural selection. Nature selects different species that can best survive.
Prabhupāda: So what is his explanation of the nature?
Śyāmasundara: Nature is a combination of physical forces in the universe.
Prabhupāda: What does he say about nature?
Śyāmasundara: Nature?
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Śyāmasundara: Well, nature is a... All phenomenon can be explained by means of physical laws.
Prabhupāda: Who made these physical laws?
Śyāmasundara: He is not so much concerned with...
Prabhupāda: Why is he not concerned? If he is putting some theory for understanding, why he is not concerned with some primary principles?
Śyāmasundara: He says that we cannot be certain how everything began.
Prabhupāda: Then how he is certain that this natural circumstance is favorable? How he is making certain?
Śyāmasundara: He made many, many tests; he has much evidence...
Prabhupāda: What is that evidence?
Śyāmasundara: ...to show that animals adapt to their environments, just like if you...
Prabhupāda: Why he takes animals first? Why not others?
Śyāmasundara: Animals, trees, plants, insects, men, he examines all the different varieties. For instance if you put a certain animal in a cold climate, he will develop hair to protect his body against the cold, and he will pass on this characteristic to his sons.
Prabhupāda: So why...? The people in Greenland, do they develop hair?
Śyāmasundara: They don't have so much hair, but they develop very fatty tissues. Their eyes are slitted so there is not so much snow and bright light...
Prabhupāda: Then development of hair is not only the existent; there are other many conditions. You cannot say that development of hair is due to the condition as he says, natural condition. That is not a fixed-up...
Śyāmasundara: I was just using that as an example of how a species can adapt to its environment.
Prabhupāda: The question is that this development of body, is there any plan that this body should exist in certain condition of nature, and therefore he must have these equipments, either you say, tissues or veins or hair? Who has made these arrangements? That is the question.
Śyāmasundara: His answer to that is chance variation.
Prabhupāda: That is nonsense. There is no such chance. If he says chance, that means he is a nonsense.
Śyāmasundara: He examines that...
Prabhupāda: He examines what is already existing. But our question is, who has made these circumstances, different circumstances for the existence of different animals? That is our question.
Śyāmasundara: Well, just like the frog may lay millions of eggs. Out of all those millions of eggs, a few—three, four—may survive. That means those who were the fittest, by chance they happened to be best fitted to survive. Otherwise too many frogs...
Prabhupāda: If I say that frogs or many others animals lay eggs, millions... Just like the snake. They give birth to so many hundreds and thousands of snakes at a time. So, if so many snakes are allowed to exist, then there will be disturbance. Therefore the nature's law is that the big snake eats up the small, small snakes. That is nature's law. But behind this nature's law there is brain. That is our proposition: that nature's law is not blind. There is brain, and that brain is God. We get it from Bhagavad-gītā: mayādhyakṣeṇa prakṛtiḥ sūyate sa-carācaram BG 9.10 . So whatever things are happening in the material nature, it is being done by the indication of the Supreme Lord in order to maintain everything in order. Just like the snake is laying eggs, thousands. If they are not killed, then the whole world will be full of snakes only. So there is a plan that the snakes will eat. Just like tiger. Tiger, they also have their cubs, but the male tiger kills them and the female tiger hides them. So many tigers are coming out. So that is another economic Malthus theory that whenever there is large number of population there must be some war, some epidemic, some earthquake, like that. They should die. So these natural activities are planned; they are not chance. As he is saying, "chance," that means he has no sufficient knowledge.
Śyāmasundara: On the other hand, he has a huge amount of evidence which he has gathered...
Prabhupāda: Evidence, that is all right. Evidence, we have also got evidence. Evidence must be there. As soon as there is evidence, then he should not speak anything of chance.
Śyāmasundara: Just like out of millions of frogs, one frog will be better adapted to living in the water.
Prabhupāda: That is not chance; that is plan. That is plan. That is not chance. He does not know that. As soon as he says chance, that means his knowledge is not perfect. Chance... If a man says chance when he cannot explain, that is evasive. Therefore he is not in perfect knowledge; therefore he is not fit for giving any knowledge. He is cheating, that's all, because he has no perfect knowledge.
Śyāmasundara: Well, he sees a plan or a design also, but he sees it in...
Prabhupāda: Therefore if he sees a plan and design, then whose design? As soon as you call it design, there must be designer. As (soon as) you call a plan, there must be a planner. That he does not know.
Śyāmasundara: He says that the plan is only the workings of mechanical nature.
Prabhupāda: No. That is nonsense. Nature is not working mechanically. There is a plan. The sun is rising exactly according to calculation. Calculation not first; first of all sun rises. But we get experience than in such-and-such season the sun rises at such-and-such time, so in that season, exactly to the minute, to the second, the sun rises. So it is neither chance nor whimsical. There is a plan. There is a plan.
Śyāmasundara: Could it not be said that that is mechanical...
Prabhupāda: Who made this mechanical? As soon as you bring the question of mechanical, there must be a brain who set up the machine. Mechanical means, just like your, what is that, telex is working. That is mechanical. That's all right. But behind this machine. there is a big brain who has made this possible. Now you are seeing at the present moment that by pushing one button you get your business done, mechanically, but who made this machine. That is important. This machine has not come out itself. There is iron and there is some, it is made of iron. So iron has not molded itself to that machine; there was a brain who has made the machine possible. Now when you are using, because you have no, if you have no knowledge... Just like in our childhood we used to think that there is a man within the gramophone box. This is childish. It is not mechanical. Everything has got a plan, design, and behind that plan and design there is a brain, big brain. What do you say, here is a scientific man?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Actually modern scientists try to prove that life itself started from four basic chemical elements. They are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen. These four basic elements are necessary for making all the by-processes. Somehow they say that it is made and they don't know who made it.
Prabhupāda: Therefore their knowledge is imperfect. As soon as you say chemical, chemical we have got experience, it is manufactured. Some by big company, they manufacture chemicals, so basic principle is chemicals, who made the chemicals? That question must be there.
Śyāmasundara: Jus t like a hundred years ago we did not know about the existence of uranium, so isn't it possible...
Prabhupāda: You did not know but you don't know who was there. You did not know. Then three hundred years ago that governments did not know there is a land. But it was there.
Śyāmasundara: But isn't it possible that some day we may be able to discover the source of all these chemicals.
Prabhupāda: No, no, it is... There is no question of discovering. There is already, it is known. It is not known to you. We know. It is not known to you, but it is known to us. And the Vedānta says, janmādy asya yataḥ SB 1.1.1 , the original source of everything: Brahman. We know it. Kṛṣṇa says, ahaṁ sarvasya prabhavo mattaḥ sarvaṁ pravartate SB 1.1.1 : "I am the origin of everything." So we know that there is a big brain who is doing everything, mayādhyakṣeṇa prakṛtiḥ SB 1.1.1 . So we know. Darwin may not know. That is his foolishness.
Śyāmasundara: He might say the same thing about us.
Prabhupāda: No. He cannot say the same thing about us. We accept Kṛṣṇa, not blindly. Our predecessors, our ācāryas, our learned scholars, they have accepted. So we are not blind. Rather, he cannot say anything. As soon as he says chance, that means he has no knowledge. We don't say chance. We have got an original cause. But he says chance; therefore he has no knowledge.
Śyāmasundara: The scientists have found that we grow up out of a set of genes in the sperm of the male. They are called genes, tiny cells.
Prabhupāda: That's all right. Wherefrom the genes came?
Śyāmasundara: Well these can be altered by cosmic radiation. Supposing a cosmic ray hits the gene, it may change it slightly so that maybe it comes out with...
Prabhupāda: That is not the question. Suppose if you have got life, I can kill you with a knife. But the question is, "Wherefrom this life came?" I can change, merely with a knife, your life. That is not very important thing, changing. The thing is to find out the origin, wherefrom the genes came.
Śyāmasundara: He has a book called The Origin of Species, and he traces back...
Prabhupāda: First of all, you are testing his knowledge.
Śyāmasundara: I'm trying to explain. You want to know what he thinks is the origin; so they trace back through geological excavation to the most simplest forms of life, and they see that in the...
Prabhupāda: What is the simplest form of life?
Śyāmasundara: They find at the lowest bottom of the soil layers which have built up through the years, they find small one-celled animal forms, sea shells, like that.
Prabhupāda: So how is it forming?
Śyāmasundara: Gradually, through the ages, they have become more and more complex to this age when...
Prabhupāda: What is the beginning?
Śyāmasundara: In the beginning they have found only the one-celled animals.
Prabhupāda: They found, but beyond that they do not know. They found it. It was already there. So wherefrom it came?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Another definition that is raised by most so-called modern scientists, research scientists, they try to find out the meaning of what is research and what is invention. So many scientists have posed also the concept that invention, strictly speaking, is a paradox. When we say invention, "I invented something," somebody invented radio, or somebody invented such-and-such thing, it is not really an invention.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: They say it cannot come out of nothing. It is already there.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: We did not know it, that it was already there. Foolishly we say that we invent these things.
Prabhupāda: You see, the action is already going on. You see all of a sudden something comes. But that is not perfect knowledge.
Śyāmasundara: Then how do you explain that...
Prabhupāda: We explain that everything, the source, the original source of everything is Brahman, Absolute Truth, Kṛṣṇa.
Śyāmasundara: What we are discussing is this doctrine of natural selection, or survival of the fittest.
Prabhupāda: Yes. That natural selection, that law is made by Kṛṣṇa.
Śyāmasundara: So there is a law of...
Prabhupāda: Yes. Certainly. The scientists say that we do not know wherefrom it is coming. All of a sudden I see something and you say that invention. It is not invention. It is already there. You could not see before, and now you can see. That's all.
Śyāmasundara: Just like dinosaurs, these huge animals once existing in...
Prabhupāda: That is his imagination.
Śyāmasundara: Well, they found bones...
Prabhupāda: Bones, that's all right. There are many... We also say from the Vedic śāstra there is fish, timiṅgila, which can swallow up big, big whales, you see. That is also very big. And there is Varāha incarnation, He picked up the whole earth on the tusk. How much big the Varāha animal was to show that it can pick up the whole earth, earthly planet just like a ball. He cannot imagine such big animals.
Śyāmasundara: But my point is they excavated down into the ground and they found that gradually, through the years, animals are evolving towards more and more complex forms, from very simple forms in the water to land animals, plants, and these big dinosaurs, then they died out.
Prabhupāda: If they died out, that means there is no more existence of that animal. But how can you say that the animal is existing somewhere else? Now, according to his statement that from a certain basic principle, by gradual evolution, the human body is coming. Now his theory is that the human body is coming from the monkey.
Śyāmasundara: They are related; they come from the same...
Prabhupāda: Related? Everything is related. That is another thing. But if the monkey's body is developing into human body...
Śyāmasundara: Yes. Apelike man.
Prabhupāda: Then after development of human body, why is the monkey species does not cease? Why not it does not cease?
Śyāmasundara: They are like branches of the same tree, he calls them.
Prabhupāda: Branches of the tree, just like we see now the monkey is existing and human being is also existing. Similarly, we say what he sees the beginning of life, at that time also there was human being.
Śyāmasundara: They find no evidence of them.
Prabhupāda: Why no evidence?
Śyāmasundara: In the ground. There's no evidence in the ground.
Prabhupāda: In the ground? That means that in the ground is the only evidence? There is no other evidence?
Karandhara: Scientists think that the only way to maintain integrity is not to accept anything until they can see it or understand it with their own senses and mind, by material evidence. That is their whole platform of empiric research, that nothing can be accepted until it's proven by their own sensuous experience.
Prabhupāda: But they cannot prove that there was no human being wherefrom they are starting their study. They cannot prove.
Śyāmasundara: It appears from the evidence that there are apelike men in certain layers of...
Prabhupāda: The apelike man or manlike ape is already existing. If you say development, just like from this, it has developed this, then there should be no existence of this. Kārya-kāraṇam. That's all. Now when I see still both are existing...
Śyāmasundara: The former doesn't exist any more.
Prabhupāda: No, no, no. If from monkey, man is coming, so then when monkey develops into man, the monkey should not exist. Kārya-kāraṇam, kārya-kāraṇam, cause and effect. When the effect is there, the cause is finished now.
Śyāmasundara: The monkey didn't cause the man; they came from the same common ancestor. That is their explanation. They had the same common ancestor.
Prabhupāda: That is, we say that all we come from God, the same ancestors, the same father. What is the difference?
Karandhara: Everyone has the same ancestor.
Prabhupāda: The same ancestor. What is the new thing?
Śyāmasundara: But if I am a Darwinist, your explanations are still not satisfactory to me. I'm not convinced because I see...
Prabhupāda: My explanation is that the original father is Kṛṣṇa. As Kṛṣṇa says in the Bhagavad-gītā, sarva-yoniṣu kaunteya: BG 14.4 "As many forms are there, I am the bīja pradaḥ pitā, I am the seed-giving father." So what is your objection to this?
Śyāmasundara: Well, if I examine the layers of earth, I find no evidence in any of the layers below of any...
Prabhupāda: You are packed up with the layers of the earth, that's all. That is your boundary of knowledge. That is not knowledge. That is not knowledge. There are many other evidences.
Śyāmasundara: But certainly, if there were men living millions of years ago, they would have...
Prabhupāda: But man is still living. Man is still living.
Śyāmasundara: But they would have left evidence in the earth. They would have left evidence behind them, tangible evidence, that I could see the remains of their civilization.
Prabhupāda: So if I say that the human society, man after death is burned into ashes, so where does he get the bones?
Śyāmasundara: Well, that's possible, but I don't find...
Prabhupāda: According to our Vedic system, when a man is dead, he is burned into ashes. Why the rascal will get the bones?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: There are no bones.
Śyāmasundara: But there are no other... There's no cities, tools...
Prabhupāda: The animals, they are not burned. They remain. But human being, they burn into ashes. So he cannot find the human bones.
Karandhara: Another thing is that after a certain number of years, bones cease to be bones. They turn back into chemicals and merge into the earth.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Śyāmasundara: But what about cities and tools, these things? There must be some evidence. In the lowest layer there are clam shells that have become fossilized. In the lower levels millions of years back they find clam shells.
Karandhara: They say it's been millions of years, but how do they prove it's been millions of years?
Śyāmasundara: Through radioactivity.
Karandhara: But that is an imperfect method, devised by imperfect senses.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: It is limited. It is limited. It is very hard to find about five thousand or six thousand years back.
Karandhara: They don't even agree amongst each other about what the age of things are.
Śyāmasundara: Just like if you go down a hundred feet below the soil, that soil has been down there a long time. But there is no evidences of men, actually civilized creatures.
Prabhupāda: Why he is trying to find out men's bones there? What is the...
Śyāmasundara: I'm just saying that it appears, because layer after layer is deposited in the earth's crust, that the animal forms are evolving toward more complex forms, from simple animals to bigger animals, and then more complex, then to the man, civilized man.
Prabhupāda: From where it began?
Śyāmasundara: It began with the simplest forms.
Prabhupāda: What is that simplest form?
Śyāmasundara: Small one-celled animals, then bivalves, then mollusks, then simple forms of aquatics.
Karandhara: So the one-celled animals must be God.
Śyāmasundara: That isn't what I'm talking about; I'm just saying that this evolution appears to exist, evolution of species, from simplest forms to more complex forms. That's Darwin's idea.
Prabhupāda: But the simplest form is still existing and the complex form is also existing at the present moment. Not that from the simplest form developed, developed, developed. Just like development means, just like I have developed my childhood body. The childhood body is no more there. But it is a fact I have developed from childhood body to this body. There are so many. So similarly, all the species are existing simultaneously, still.
Śyāmasundara: But they find no evidence in the earlier times that these complex forms existed.
Prabhupāda: No, no. Earlier times or modern times, when I see the all different species, 8,400,000 species of life still existing, so what is the question of development? It existed long ago also. You might not have seen, you have not source of knowledge to understand, but you have to accept it, because all these species are now existing. Similarly, millions of years ago all these species existed. You might have missed. That is a different thing.
Śyāmasundara: But then it is simply a matter of one opinion against another, because the scientists say...
Prabhupāda: No. It is not opinion, it is a fact. Do you think that this development has ceased all other species, simply human being is there?
Śyāmasundara: No. But I don't see evidence that all these complex forms...
Prabhupāda: I have said that one, this, by evolution, one after another, the human form is there. Now Darwin's theory is that some forty thousand years ago there was no human being.
Śyāmasundara: Several million years.
Prabhupāda: But we don't see that. Because at the present moment we see that all the species are there existing, including human beings.
Śyāmasundara: But he says they evolved. That's because they evolved.
Prabhupāda: Evolved, but they are still existing. Evolved, that is another thing. But all of them are existing still. So how you can say that millions of years they did not exist, all? His theory is that...
Śyāmasundara: Because there is not evidence that they exist.
Prabhupāda: Evidence, this is the evidence: if now all the species of life are existing, why not millions of years ago? What do you say?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Yes. It was existing, but simply we did not know.
Prabhupāda: Yes. That is one-sided test.
Śyāmasundara: You can say they existed, but show me. I don't see any proof.
Prabhupāda: You do not see the animals, the aquatics, the birds, bees, trees—everything—is existing?
Śyāmasundara: Yes. But ten million years ago, according to my excavations, there were no beasts; there were all aquatics.
Prabhupāda: That is nonsense. That is nonsense. Ten millions of... You cannot give a history of ten millions. It is your imagination. Where is the history of ten millions of years? You are simply imagining, that is your word. But where is historical evidence? You cannot give history more than three thousand years, and you are speaking of ten millions of years. This is all nonsense. How you can go... There is no history in the human civ... There is no history, ten millions of years.
Śyāmasundara: If I dig far into the ground, layer by layer...
Prabhupāda: No, no. Dirt... You are calculating ten millions—it may be ten years. Because you cannot give history of the human society more than three thousand years, so how you speak of ten millions, twenty millions? Where you were there? It is all imagination. You were existing(?), so existence was not there. How can you say that ten millions, twenty millions these things happened? This is simply imagination. In that way everyone can imagine and say some nonsense. Everyone can imagine their own way. I can say "No, it is not ten millions. It is fifty millions."
Śyāmasundara: They have a scientific way of testing that things disintegrate at a certain rate.
Prabhupāda: But here is a scientist, and he does not agree with that.
Śyāmasundara: What about the half-life of certain elements?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Yes. The, normally, what they call the age determination, or how old a species is, they normally find out from this so-called (indistinct). They find some bone or something which contains normally carbonate. And normally they get this age of the elements or age of these findings by so-called Carbon 14 method. Carbon 14 is an isotope of normal carbon, it is called Carbon 12. Carbon 14 is radioactive. It's one in which they put in the radioactive testing, and they find out because it follows the normal chemical laws or physical laws. This is governed by the Lord Himself, by Kṛṣṇa Himself. They're finding the chemical lowest form, and from that chemical lowest they normally try to reduce the, how old the sample is, and that method is very limited, it is not applicable to all findings also, and a test, a very reliable test (indistinct) to about five thousand, six thousand years old but beyond that it is very doubtful whether the findings are really true or not. [break] It is empiric so we cannot fully convince that such-and-such species lives such-and-such long just from that finding. You need more evidence to prove it (indistinct) was existing and it disappeared from such-and-such time but it gives a relative value from so-called modern scientific point of view.
Prabhupāda: But evolution we accept. Evolution we accept but it is not that there was no existence of human being. That we do not accept. Evolution we accept. Just like my childhood manifestation is extinct but there are many other child. Same time. So our point is all the species of life, they are existing simultaneously. Evolution there is, we accept that but it is not that one is missing, one has gone away, and another is come, ten million, thirty millions there was no human being. This is all nonsense. He cannot find in the layer, that is not evidence.
Śyāmasundara: For instance, there's no dinosaurs existing now. They're extinct now but where are they gone? Some other planets then? Is there some...?
Prabhupāda: No. Not in this planet, he has no chance to see it.
Śyāmasundara: There's dinosaurs existing on this planet?
Prabhupāda: Yes, yes, he has no chance to see it, or it is imagination only.
Śyāmasundara: That's very hard to accept. What about the dodo? It was a giant bird...
Prabhupāda: Our proposition is that there is an evolutionary process from aquatics to birds here, plants life, then insect life, then bird's life, then animal life, then human life. So this is a evolutionary process, we accept but it is not that one is extinct, another is surviving. All of them are existing simultaneously.
Śyāmasundara: But they are not all present at this particular moment on this planet, are they?
Prabhupāda: Particular, it is not that he has seen all the planets or all the universes. What he has seen?
Śyāmasundara: That's what I mean. They may be extinct on this planet but on some other planet they...
Prabhupāda: At least he has no power to see everything. That is a fact. He's not so powerful that he can see everywhere and everything. That you have to accept. He has limited power to see. By that limited power to see he cannot conclude that one species (is) extinct. That is not possible. No scientist will accept that. After all, your senses by which you are (indistinct), they're limited. So how you can say, "This is finished," or "This is that." That is not to be accepted. Because your senses are imperfect. You cannot see. You cannot search out. Have you searched out all the earthly layers or the 25,000 miles everywhere? That is not possible for you. The whole earthly planet is circumference is 25,000 miles, radius how many, has he discovered that all the places?
Śyāmasundara: No, representative samples in many places.
Prabhupāda: Our first proposition is that he says that there was no human beings some millions of years ago. That's not a fact. Because we see all different species of life existing along with human beings. Therefore it should be concluded this is always existing. Human life is always existing. That is our first charge against him. He cannot say there was no human life.
Śyāmasundara: But we don't see any dinosaurs existing.
Prabhupāda: You do not see—your power is very limited—but we have to conclude in this way, when we see at the present moment all the different species of life are existing. Therefore it is existing always.
Śyāmasundara: But I don't see all the...
Prabhupāda: You don't see because you have no power to see. Your senses are very limited. You don't see. And because you don't see, it is not to be accepted. So many people say, "I don't see God." That does not mean we shall accept, "Oh, so many people say—majority of people will say like that—'We don't see God.' " Then we are merely crazy fellow, we are after God?
Śyāmasundara: No. But dinosaurs...
Prabhupāda: But simply by dinosaur missing you cannot say that what about other all species of life, other.
Śyāmasundara: Many, many, many, many are extinct, according to...
Prabhupāda: I am accepting many are extinct, but the evolutionary process, it means one extinct, and another comes. But we see that the monkey, from monkey, man comes. The monkey is there and man is there. The monkey is not finished.
Śyāmasundara: Oh, I remember last time when we discussed this, you said, "Well, then, why don't we see men coming out of monkeys still?"
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Śyāmasundara: "Why hasn't some man been born out of a monkey?"
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Śyāmasundara: "In our experience..."
Prabhupāda: The monkey is existing, the man is existing.
Śyāmasundara: "So if men came from monkeys, why don't we see it still happening?" That's what you said.
Prabhupāda: Yes. That is our argument.
Śyāmasundara: So if you accept that there is an evolution, do you accept that the bodies change because of changing conditions of the natural surroundings?
Prabhupāda: Body is not changing. The body is already there. The soul is changing bodies, transmigrating from one body to another.
Karandhara: Darwin doesn't accept that there is a fixed number of species. Rather, the number of species may vary at any time, simply according to the natural selection. But he doesn't give any axiom that there are a certain number of species from which all other variations come. We are saying that there are 8,400,000 species to begin with.
Prabhupāda: But if first of all you give account for eight million species—you have no account. We say these are the fixed-up species. But your calculation of species, first of all give us account for eight millions, then you say, "The list is not complete."
Śyāmasundara: Their idea is that there's constant...
Prabhupāda: Whatever it may be, within that eight millions, but you cannot give us list.
Śyāmasundara: They say that there is new species always evolving.
Prabhupāda: That is not new. That is within the eight millions. You could not find the same thing, you could not find, before that; now we are finding. Your species, you could (not) give us a complete list. What is the evolutionary process wherefrom it began and how it's coming? You cannot give any fixed-up list. That is your imperfect knowledge. You are simply imagining. "It may be changed," "It may be chance," or this or that. That's all.
Śyāmasundara: Just like, let's say some condition changes suddenly in an environment...
Prabhupāda: Yes. Any condition changes, but within that eight millions. Because you cannot give us any list, so then you have to accept whatever species of life may take by changes or circumstance with this or that, that will be within the eight millions.
Karandhara: Just like if you open a marketplace, at any given point you can go through the marketplace and see that there's this kind of person, this kind of person...
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Śyāmasundara: ...and he may go away from the marketplace. So because he goes away, you can't say that that person doesn't exist any more because he's not observable there.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Yes.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Actually, in Darwin's concept he used the natural selection, but he doesn't go far enough what that nature is. He used the term "natural," but he does not know how to...
Prabhupāda: Yes. Explain what is nature. That means insufficient knowledge.
Śyāmasundara: He simply observed there are mutations in nature. For instance, he thinks that perhaps at one time...
Prabhupāda: That means nature is working.
Śyāmasundara: Yes.
Prabhupāda: Nature is working, but he cannot explain how nature is working.
Śyāmasundara: At one time he says the one ape developed an opposing thumb so he was able to use tools, grasp things, so he became superior and passed that quality on to his offspring and that developed into man. Simply by...
Prabhupāda: Then when there is offspring, then the same question comes: "Why the monkey does not produce offspring—a man?" What is this nonsense?
Karandhara: Scientists often take the shelter of this premise, that it's not..., we don't..., we're not trying to find out. Whenever they're asked what is the original source, they say, "We're not concerned with that. We're concerned with just examining the phenomenon of that source."
Prabhupāda: Yes. That is childish. That is childish. Just like I have seen the phenomena, without man there cannot be singing. In the box there must be one man there. This is childish calculation, that's all. Phenomenal study means childish. A fan, in our childhood we will think that a fan is running, there must be some ghost who is running it. So this sort of phenomenal study is not scientific study. It is not scientific. (If) we don't find the original cause, that is not scientific.
Karandhara: That's what they're looking for. But because they can't produce a satisfactory answer, they have to say, "Well, we're not looking for that." They can't come forward with an answer.
Prabhupāda: Yes. That is, what it is called? Participia principeology , or something like that, that is called.
Śyāmasundara: (indistinct) in question.
Prabhupāda: That is not perfect knowledge.
Śyāmasundara: You must admit, though, being a scientist, that supposing you go down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, you see so many layers of earth going up thousands of feet, that the layers at the bottom are very, very old. You must admit, because the earth takes so many years to deposit soil. Even if it's only one million years, it's still very old. And in that lowest layer we find only evidences of simple...
Prabhupāda: So where is the lowest layer, he has gone? Where is it? Wherefrom it begins?
Śyāmasundara: The Grand Canyon is an example. That's a very deep canyon in the ground in Arizona.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: What happens if there was no human beings in that area so that they don't find any...?
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Śyāmasundara: Human beings aside, we still find...
Prabhupāda: Just like desert. Desert there is no human beings. If you dig the desert, what you will find?
Śyāmasundara: That's all right. It doesn't matter if it was ocean; still we find gradually the forms become more and more complex toward the...
Prabhupāda: But you cannot say where is the beginning and where is the end.
Śyāmasundara: No. That we can't say.
Prabhupāda: Therefore his knowledge is imperfect.
Śyāmasundara: He said that if we say the origin of species is the simplest form, one-celled...
Prabhupāda: How the species living force came in? What is the cause? How it is coming? Wherefrom the life begins?
Karandhara: It still evades the principal question of who is the creator. I can build a big house or I can build a small box. The point is, who is the builder? So it's evading the question of who... Even if everything started with a one-celled animal, what started the one-celled animal?
Prabhupāda: Yes. Wherefrom the one cell came?
Śyāmasundara: That they say. He says (it) comes from four different chemicals: oxygen, hydrogen...
Prabhupāda: Well, wherefrom the chemical came? They're not questioning. Who supplied the chemical?
Śyāmasundara: We still may be able to discover some day...
Prabhupāda: That means you are fool, that you are granted. As soon as you say "still," then you are fool number one. That is our...
Svarūpa Dāmodara: That's what the modern scientists are doing. They're trying to make life in a test tube. What they are trying to do, these so-called biochemists, at the present time, their goal is to make life in a test tube. So what they do is they are going to put so-called big molecules—they say DNA, dioxynucleic acid. This molecule is a necessary molecule for..., it's a lively thing. So they're going to make certain combinations of these molecules and put in the test tube and find out whether there is life coming out from the test tube, and then trying to prove how life was formed. But it's such a foolish idea that they will never be able to make the...
Prabhupāda: They are a set of fools. And going on under the name of scientists. Set of fools.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: On the other hand, the so-called physicist... His name was Heisenberg. He produced the concept of the theory of uncertainty, and he found out that certain physical rules that govern certain parts of the so-called universal system of rules—why the planets are moving around the sun, and why they have a repeated course and so on. But he did not know what was the answer. So he named the title of the theory, the Theory of Uncertainty. Based on that, there are so many groups coming up, but they found uncertainty itself, that implies that there is some...
Prabhupāda: Basic principle is uncertainty, and they're building on big, big buildings.
Śyāmasundara: Darwin calls it the missing link.
Prabhupāda: That missing link, let them learn from us. We can give him the missing link.
Karandhara: But ultimately they'll say it'll come down to we propose that Kṛṣṇa is the creator or that God is the creator, then they'll say "That must be proved to me." In other words, they want to fit God within their own empiric gaze. That will be their only satisfaction when they actually become able to circumvent God's existence and create a power by their own intelligence.
Prabhupāda: He has to admit that the theory of uncertainty is bogus, but everything is there, and that masking behind all these things there must be big brain. That one has to accept. Simply uncertainty, that is not a science. The certainty is that behind all these things there is a big brain. I do not know Him—that is a different thing—but there is a big brain.
Śyāmasundara: Darwin, he was not so much interested in those questions of origin and those things, but he was a botanist and a biologist, and he simply wanted to investigate how things evolved from one simple form to a more complex form...
Prabhupāda: That he cannot say, how the evolved. He captured something out of his imagination, but he cannot explain scientifically.
Śyāmasundara: From simple forms to more complex forms.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Śyāmasundara: Well, he says that this happens through mutation.
Prabhupāda: But you do it in the laboratory by mutation, by combination.
Śyāmasundara: They can do that.
Prabhupāda: No. But he said that that is not possible.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Śrīla Prabhupāda, they find that just like I said already, the basic elements of life—carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen...
Śyāmasundara: You know the theory, not theory but practical proof, that the genes can be mutated by bombarding with cosmic rays.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Yes. That they prove by so-called... That's why the cancer... The example of that mutation is the cancer cell. They try to find out how cancer is caused in the body. They say that somehow the cell has been changed, and they say that it has been done by mutation, so they try to prove it in the laboratory by changing the structure of the cell, and that is called mutation. So they say why the cancer is formed because cancer is an abnormal cell, this is a normal cell. In answering why these elements are formed from these basic four chemicals-carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen—they try, they say that somehow this nitrogen and hydrogen, they combine forming ammonia. That is called ammonia, from nitrogen and hydrogen. They say somehow this has formed, and somehow, by combination of hydrogen and oxygen, water is formed. And somehow by combination of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, these so-called carbohydrates, or these are formed. But they say somehow these are formed, but they do not know how it is formed.
Śyāmasundara: But all that Darwin is interested in is in the evolution of species: how one type of body evolves to the other type due to the changing conditions, and that because he has evolved a certain body he is best adapted to survive in that condition so that his species survives. So the scientists have shown that by bombarding the cosmic radiation or radioactive elements, that a gene or cell can change, mutate, so a different kind of animal comes out. From one kind of mother a different kind of animal comes out.
Prabhupāda: But we say that different kind of animal is not beyond these 8,400,000 species.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Actually this is not completely different animal. Some of these properties...
Śyāmasundara: A variation.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Just a little change. But another point in that connection is that nature makes its own equilibrium, balance of all the species, and it could have been all a balance. That is why, when nature is balancing all the species, there is no question of making another species fresh or something. This has been already made. It has already been done by nature. What is that nature, you have to ask by going to the real nature, not this false nature.
Śyāmasundara: Just like Darwin first investigated some islands off of Peru, Galapagos Islands, and he found different species of life that exist there that don't exist anywhere else, so that they must have evolved...
Prabhupāda: That means that he has not seen all the species, because he has not traveled all over the universe.
Karandhara: Deductive. It's a deductive conclusion.
Prabhupāda: Yes. He has seen one island but he has not seen the whole creation.
Syamasundara: No.
Prabhupāda: Then? How he can fix up. There may be many others he has not seen.
Śyāmasundara: But the only thing that I want to get at is...
Prabhupāda: The only thing he has has studied, this earthly planet...
Śyāmasundara: ...how the bodies change.
Prabhupāda: ...but there are many other millions of planets, he has not seen all of them. He has not excavated, dug the depth of all the planets, so how he can conclude that this is all? He has not seen everything, neither it is possible for him.
Śyāmasundara: But according to the conditions, different conditions on this planet, natural conditions, certain animals...
Prabhupāda: Yes. But he has not seen different conditions in different planets. Suppose the sun planet, the condition is fire. So how life can exist in the fire, he has no knowledge.
Karandhara: You point out in the introduction to Śrī Īśopaniṣad that deductive conclusions are always imperfect because you have to be able to deduce everything in order to come out to the right conclusion. Just like if you live in a village where everyone is only five feet tall, you may deduct that everyone in existence is only five feet tall; but if you go to the next village you may find someone six feet tall. So you have to search out every village and see every person before you...
Prabhupāda: That is not possible for you. How many millions of villages are there?
Śyāmasundara: No, but see, we're talking about two different things now. He is talking about the doctrine of natural selection or survival of the fittest...
Prabhupāda: But natural selection, that means that is not his selection. Natural selection.
Śyāmasundara: Natural selection.
Prabhupāda: So nature is more powerful than him. So he has not studied nature.
Śyāmasundara: He studies how the bodies change in nature.
Prabhupāda: No. He has not studied. He has studied in a particular place only. But nature means, when you speak of nature, suppose you have studied within this planet, but in nature means there is millions of universes, but he has not studied them.
Śyāmasundara: So you say the doctrine of natural selection is not...
Prabhupāda: Natural selection is there, but how the natural selection is working, he does not know that.
Karandhara: In a sense we know from Vedic information that the species from one end from the smallest germ up to the highest demigod, they are progressively more advanced. So anyone can come along and take out a small eclipsed portion of that sequence and propose the theory that the species is advancing, but that gamut, that range, perspective of higher and lower is existing, but not that it's evolving...
Prabhupāda: It is already there. I am simply changing place, transmigration. That is our theory-transmigration.
Śyāmasundara: But you still haven't answered satisfactorily...
Prabhupāda: Just like you are traveling in a train. There is first class, second class—that is already existing. But if you pay more, you come to the first class. You cannot say, "Now the first class is now created." It was already existing. So their defect is that they have no information of the soul. The soul is transmigrating. The forms are already there. The soul is transmigrating from one apartment to another apartment. That they do not know.
Śyāmasundara: But still I'm not convinced that if we make geologic investigations all over the world, not just the Grand Canyon or here or there, but in many parts of the world we always find the same thing, that the...
Prabhupāda: But if you say that you have studied all over the world, I say you have not studied all over the planet. That is still defective.
Śyāmasundara: Let's just confine it to this planet.
Prabhupāda: No. Why should you confine it? Nature is not only within this planet.
Śyāmasundara: Because you said that millions of years ago there were many complex forms of life existing on this planet.
Prabhupāda: No. Not on this planet; maybe anywhere. It is when you say nature, nature is not confined—what is called—limited within this planet. That you cannot say. When you say nature, this material nature, there are millions of universes and millions of planets in each and every universe. If you have studied... Suppose you have studied this planet; that is not sufficient knowledge.
Śyāmasundara: So, but you said before that millions of years ago there were complex forms of life on this planet: men, horses, animals, elephants...
Prabhupāda: Yes. Yes.
Śyāmasundara: But from hundreds of different sources of this...
Prabhupāda: But I say, I say that it is still existing. The man is existing, the horse is existing, the snake is existing, the insect is existing, the trees are existing; why not millions of years ago?
Śyāmasundara: Because there's no evidence.
Prabhupāda: This is the evidence. This is the evidence. You cannot give the history of this planet. Now suppose the existence of sun, you cannot give history. The sun is existing millions of years ago. It is not that sun is created now. The sun is existing now, the moon is existing now, so why should not they come from millions of years also? The sun existing, and within the sun everything is existing. So if the sun is existing, then other things must be existing. That is my conclusion.
Śyāmasundara: They may be existing, but on this planet we have no evidence...
Prabhupāda: That doesn't mean... That means you limit your study in one planet. That is not full knowledge.
Śyāmasundara: I just want to find out for the time being about...
Prabhupāda: Why time being? If you are not perfect in your knowledge, then why should I accept your theory? That is my point.
Śyāmasundara: Well, if you make claims that millions of years ago there were complex forms of life on this planet...
Prabhupāda: Why you are... I never said on this planet. By nature's way everything is existing.
Śyāmasundara: So on this planet there were not complex forms of life millions of years ago...
Prabhupāda: So maybe; may not be. That is not of the point. The point is that everything is existing in the nature's way. The species, as we say from Vedic language, 8,400,000, fixed-up. So maybe in your neighborhood, in my neighborhood, it is, they have got..., they are fixed up. But you simply, if you study your neighborhood, that is not perfect knowledge.
Śyāmasundara: I accept that. But I want to understand that the theory of evolution is that...
Prabhupāda: Theory of evolution we accept.
Śyāmasundara: ...from simple forms of life, more complex forms evolve.
Prabhupāda: Yes. That's all right. But they are all existing still. They are not extinct. That is the point.
Śyāmasundara: All right. But on this planet, now if we could examine this planet...
Prabhupāda: Again you come to this planet. Why you are sticking to this planet?
Karandhara: Lord Brahmā, the most complex... From the Vedic information we find that the most complex living entity was first, and from him, he created all the variations. So from the most complex the most simple was evolved. Then if you have the wrong information, you could look at it and say it was the opposite, that from the most simple the most complex evolved. The sequence is there, and if you observe it in the wrong way, you may conclude it's going in the opposite direction.
Śyāmasundara: But in the Vedic scriptures...
Prabhupāda: The first creature is Brahmā, the most intelligent, the most learned.
Śyāmasundara: ...and he said, and you say that on this planet there were pastimes, for instance, of Lord Rāmacandra millions of years ago, with His men, His animals, His horses, deers, so many things. But in all of our evidences we find only at that time the most simple forms of life...
Prabhupāda: Your evidence... You will be satisfied with your evidence, but I have got my own evidence. Why shall I accept your evidence? You cannot force your evidence, your so-called evidence upon me. What is evidence? First of all you have to select, what is that evidence.
Śyāmasundara: Terrestrial, archaeological findings...
Prabhupāda: No. No. That is not evidence. That is not evidence.
Karandhara: If you find a bone, how do you know it's not...
Prabhupāda: That is imperfect. You have studied one portion of the creation. That is not evidence. In other portion of the creation there is different. But that is not evidence. Your study, your limited study is not evidence.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: So the evidence posed by Darwin's theory is not enough to explain...
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Śyāmasundara: Yes. I agree with that. It doesn't explain there is an evolution...
Prabhupāda: Evolution we accept. There is no quarrel about that point. But we say there are 8,400,000 species of life, evolution is coming through that. But you cannot give us any list that so many... We give real evolution, that there are 8,400,000 species of life, and the living entity coming through that. [break] ...evolution is taking from here to here, and how many there are? You cannot say. You simply say "missing," "something missing," "something is added," all vague.
Śyāmasundara: That admitted, but...
Prabhupāda: If you admit that you are imperfect in knowledge, then it is no use citing scripture. There will...
Śyāmasundara: But what I want to know is that...
Prabhupāda: ...evolution we admit. But your evolution theory is not perfect. Our evolutionary theory is perfect.
Śyāmasundara: But it appears that the evolution is from simple to complex.
Prabhupāda: That we admit, simple. That we admit. There is no difference. But you cannot say what is the simple and what is the complex, and what are the... You say something missing. That is evasive. Why you should be missing if you are in knowledge? You must say this thing is missing, that you have no knowledge.
Karandhara: It's just an axiom, that if any part of the knowledge is perfect, then the whole knowledge is perfect. If you have any part of the truth, you have to have the whole truth in the highest sense. So if their theory is at all correct, and any of the premises are solid, then why it doesn't conclude itself by its own logical deduction? Why it would always have to allude to something missing, some missing factor?
Prabhupāda: Jīva jātiṣu. The Padma Purāṇa says jīva jātiṣu, so different species of life. And they give: from this, this; from this, this; from this, this. Then, just like it is said that from bird's life the beast's life comes. Now the beasts, this category is of three millions types of beasts.
Śyāmasundara: Just like they find evidence of large bird, pterodactyl, which has beastlike properties. It has legs also, and they say from that kind of bird evolved a more beastlike, like you say, beasts.
Prabhupāda: Just like we say that kṛmayo rudra-saṅkhyakāḥ pakṣiṇāṁ daśa-lakṣaṇam. From the insect life the bird's life developed. That we see practically. One have becomes flies, butterflies. In the grass, worm becomes a butterfly. That is, there is evidence.
Śyāmasundara: But at that time were there only insects existing?
Prabhupāda: No. Everything was existing.
Karandhara: That's not evolution of the species, it's evolution of the soul through the existing species.
Prabhupāda: Transmigration from one body to another. The bodies are already existing.
Śyāmasundara: For instance, they say that during the Ice Age, when there were..., the earth became very cold, and there were great ice formations in Europe and America, that this animal they call the mammoth-it's an elephantlike animal but it had long, very long hair for warmth-suddenly this species appears. Does it mean that that body existed always somewhere else, but it just suddenly appeared in order...
Prabhupāda: Yes, yes.
Śyāmasundara: ...to live here in that environment?
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Karandhara: What if it is indeed a different species? What do they qualify as a difference in species? I mean, like one man has lots of hair on his body and one man doesn't. That doesn't make him a different species necessarily.
Śyāmasundara: Yes. But in this case, elephants always lived in tropical. They were living in hot climates, and suddenly they had to adapt to the cold.
Prabhupāda: No. Again, just like we have got experience with the change of season, different animals are also produced, with the change of season. But it is not that they are coming new. They are already existing.
Śyāmasundara: They're appearing.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Karandhara: Appearing and disappearing according to the seasons.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Just like this Los Angeles City, there is a havoc of flood from the ocean and all men die. That does not mean extinct; the men are there somewhere else. You cannot say that human species is now extinct, because your study is limited.
Śyāmasundara: Supposing one man is particularly adapted, and he is smart, intelligent, and he survives when everything else is killed...
Prabhupāda: That he may survive, that we don't disagree.
Śyāmasundara: But he would say that that man passes on his superior traits to his children, and it's another species.
Prabhupāda: No. He survives, but many other men like him, they are existing somewhere. He may survive of this catastrophe, but that does not mean that other men are all extinct. You cannot say that. In these circumstances this man may survive or may not survive, but man is existing somewhere else.
Śyāmasundara: And another example, for instance there is a dog called the Pekinese dog. It was made by man, it was developed by men. They took a certain type of dog and crushed it's jaws in so many instances until eventually that trait was passed on naturally to its children...
Prabhupāda: But he is still, it belongs to the dog species. We are speaking of dog species.
Śyāmasundara: But it's a new type of dog. New type. Never existed before that, here.
Prabhupāda: New type, that will not exist also. Because it has been artificially made, it is existing now; now it will not exist again.
Karandhara: There's a kind of Indians, when the babies are young they put a board on their head so that (indistinct) like that.
Śyāmasundara: But now this dog is produced naturally, with its face like that.
Karandhara: But it's still a dog.
Prabhupāda: The dog species.
Śyāmasundara: But it's a new species of dog.
Karandhara: Well, they may call it a new species, but according to Vedic definition it isn't a new species.
Śyāmasundara: What did you just define by species? You mean different types of men, you say...
Prabhupāda: The species, definition of species according to biology is different. We say species means jāti, human race.
Śyāmasundara: So four hundred thousand species of humans.
Karandhara: Different levels of consciousness?
Prabhupāda: Yes. Different levels of consciousness.
Śyāmasundara: I see.
Karandhara: And within any species there can an infinite variety of variations of that one species. Just like...
Prabhupāda: Just like the scientists, their species is different. Just like we are making division that 400,000 different types of men. They will say this is one species.
Śyāmasundara: So would you say, for instance, someone who is less intelligent or more intelligent than I am is in a different species?
Prabhupāda: Less intelligent or more intelligent does not make any species, because suppose you have got five children, one is less intelligent, more intelligent.
Śyāmasundara: He was just saying levels of consciousness determine the species.
Prabhupāda: Yes. This is levels of consciousness, that just like we divide the human society: some men are brāhmaṇas, some men are kṣatriyas, some men are vaiśyas, that can be found at any time.
Śyāmasundara: Those are species?
Prabhupāda: They are not species, according to their...
Śyāmasundara: They are types of men.
Prabhupāda: Yes. We said varieties.
Śyāmasundara: Then what is the different species of man, separate from me; for instance, what is another species that is different than I am?
Prabhupāda: I do not know exactly the species, but when we, [break] ...means jāti, manuṣya jāti.
Śyāmasundara: I mean what is an example of different species of man. What are they, for example, several species of men?
Prabhupāda: I say that species, this word is not applicable in that sense. In that sense, according to the scientists' species. But when we say species, class you can say. Classes.
Śyāmasundara: Classes. But what, give me an example.
Prabhupāda: Again, just like we are a class—Hare Kṛṣṇa class. Our mentality is different from others.
Śyāmasundara: Oh.
Prabhupāda: Therefore we are a class.
Śyāmasundara: So tribes, more like tribal distinctions?
Prabhupāda: We are not exactly tribal. Culture, by culture.
Śyāmasundara: By interest and culture. I see.
Prabhupāda: By differentiation of culture.
Śyāmasundara: Those are species.
Prabhupāda: Those who are Aryan, non-Aryan; just like I say, they are all human beings, but why you say one Aryan and another non-Aryan? It is difference of culture, that's all.
Devotee: Say, for example, there is the Caucasian race, the Negroid race, different races like that. If they are all living in the same... Say they all join Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement, then they are all the same...
Prabhupāda: But Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement is not on the basic principle of this body. It is basically on the soul; therefore you will find everyone same.
Śyāmasundara: But otherwise it goes...
Prabhupāda: Because it is culture. When one comes to the spiritual platform, there is no question. Even animal you can accept. Just like we worship Vajrāṅgajī, Hanumān. He's animal, but because he is devotee of Lord Rāmacandra, we worship him. But that doesn't mean we are worshiping animals.
Śyāmasundara: You mean like Bengalis are a different species than Gujaratis? Something like that?
Prabhupāda: No, no. Why do you mix, we have already explained? Our jāti means of the same culture. He may be Gujarati, he may be Bengali, he may be American.
Śyāmasundara: So, for instance, carpenters are different than field workers-like that, different interests?
Prabhupāda: Why different interest? The interest is to earn money. So you may earn money in some way, I may earn money in some way, he may earn money in some way.
Karandhara: So is the primary factor of the variation is how much advanced they are in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, and how least advanced they are in Kṛṣṇa consciousness?
Prabhupāda: Yes. Yes.
Śyāmasundara: So there are only two species.
Karandhara: The demons and the devas.
Prabhupāda: This consciousness is coming through so many species, animals, then they're trees, they have no consciousness, but there is living..., the soul is there.
Śyāmasundara: I'm still trying to understand what you mean by the species of human life. It's not clear to me. I don't understand what you mean by the different species of human life.
Prabhupāda: By culture.
Śyāmasundara: By culture.
Prabhupāda: Yes. One class of human being...
Śyāmasundara: But everyone is looking for money. You said the field worker is not the same as, or is the same as the carpenter, because they're both looking for money.
Prabhupāda: Yes. But one who knows how to earn money very easily, and one may not know. That is culture. That is culture. One man is sitting in one place earning daily one lakhs of rupees.
Śyāmasundara: So big industrialists and field workers are two different species of men.
Prabhupāda: Not species, class. Jāti.
Śyāmasundara: Jāti. So when you say 400,000 species of human life...
Prabhupāda: It is difference of culture.
Śyāmasundara: It's different from what we think of as species.
Prabhupāda: Culture.
Devotee: It's not species in the bodily...
Karandhara: So the angle of vision is not from the bodily, it's from the closeness of the soul to Kṛṣṇa consciousness, as far as they're able...
Prabhupāda: Unless you accept soul and consciousness, there cannot be question of culture.
Śyāmasundara: But when the scientists say "species," they mean different types of bodies.
Prabhupāda: Yes. We say 400,000 different forms of body, so human body, just like Negroes, they are also human beings, and you are also human beings. So this, scientists will say they are all one species, human being. But we say that Negro culture and the Āryan culture is different.
Śyāmasundara: They also say their bodies are different, Negroid bodies or Caucasian bodies, or Oriental bodies...
Prabhupāda: Then you can say species. Species and the different bodies.
Śyāmasundara: Species means different bodies. too
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Karandhara: So the consciousness, the body, or my form, it's pertaining to my consciousness, the development of my consciousness.
Prabhupāda: Yes. You and your brother may be of the same type of body; there may not be a different, same type of consciousness.
Śyāmasundara: But you just said, for instance, the industrialist and farmers are two different species of men, but there could be a Negro industrialist...
Prabhupāda: I already said that. Why don't you listen? Species, definition of the scientists is different from ours. We say class.
Śyāmasundara: I'm trying to understand, because you said class but then you also said bodies. Negro bodies are different from white Caucasian bodies.
Prabhupāda: Maybe difference of bodies. But that does not...; therefore our classification on the basis of soul. The soul is equal. In spite of different types of body, the soul is one. There is no change of the soul. Therefore in the Bhagavad-gītā it is said that he does not see the species or the class or definition. He sees one: paṇḍitāḥ sama-darśinaḥ BG 5.18 . Paṇḍita, one who sees to the (indistinct), the soul, he does not find any difference of these species or (indistinct). This is our point.
Karandhara: So Darwin and similar material scientists, they have no information of the soul, but yet they're...
Prabhupāda: There they're missing the whole point.
Karandhara: But they're trying to find out information for themselves, and for others around them, but not knowing who they are, they're drawing on a material platform which is infinite, or at least infinite as far as their capacity to understand. So not only will they never be able to understand the material, the construction of the material arrangement, but at ultimate issue it has no pertinence, anyway. It doesn't mean anything.
Śyāmasundara: No. It does mean something if you accept that forms are evolving from simple to complex. That means that we can expect in the future that mankind will even be of a more superior nature than they are now.
Prabhupāda: Forms are... One form is superior than the other form. (indistinct) you said.
Karandhara: That possibility is also there. We know that by performances of certain types of sacrifices you can become, and go to the demigod planet...
Prabhupāda: That difference is that one apartment is better than the other apartment. Material.
Śyāmasundara: They would say that from the lowest apartments we are evolving to the better apartments.
Prabhupāda: Yes. So according to your position. Just like if you... There are different apartments: first-class apartments, second-class apartments, third-class apartment. But as you are fit to pay the rent or price, then you are allowed to enter in the apartment. The apartments are already there—first-class, second-class, third-class. They are not evolving.
Śyāmasundara: They say all living things on this earth are evolving in that way, from lower to higher. In the history of the earth...
Prabhupāda: That also may be accepted, because just like at certain period, people are constructing a certain type of apartment, next stage they construct a different type of apartment. That can be accepted. But the apartment itself is not evolving; the evolution is taking, of the apartment, on the desire of something else.
Śyāmasundara: On the desire of something else.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Śyāmasundara: So just like...
Prabhupāda: That they do not know.
Śyāmasundara: Oh, I see. Just like...
Prabhupāda: They say simply the apartment is changing.
Śyāmasundara: Just like if it suddenly got cold, the spirit soul would desire to be warm so he would evolve a body with hair.
Prabhupāda: Yes. That we say. That is our..., according to the mentality at the time of death you get another apartment. But the apartment is already there.
Śyāmasundara: I see. So if conditions suddenly change...
Prabhupāda: Change of mind.
Śyāmasundara: ...a new apartment would arrive on the scene because the...
Prabhupāda: Not will arrive, it is already there.
Karandhara: Simply awarded.
Prabhupāda: It is already there.
Karandhara: The material nature has it in its closet...
Prabhupāda: Yes. "If you want this, come on, here."
Karandhara: ...that, that dress...
Prabhupāda: "If you want this, come on here." It is already there.
Śyāmasundara: And then all the others will die out and that new one will begin, because the...
Prabhupāda: Everyone will die. Everyone will die means change his apartment. Now at the time of changing apartments... Suppose I am here, I have to change another, so I can select my apartment, what kind of apartment I shall have. But that apartment is already there. I'll have to simply make arrangement, that's all. It is not that I am creating that apartment.
Śyāmasundara: The elements, material elements, ingredients are already there.
Prabhupāda: Already there.
Karandhara: The possibilities are unlimited so it's not possible to make such a close...
Prabhupāda: And that apartment is fixed up 8,400,000. Now you can enter into any apartment. Or it is to be ascertained that you cannot think beyond this. Just like a hotel owner, he has got different types of apartments, and he knows the customer cannot think beyond it. So any customer wants, "I'll give this apartment." So by nature's way there are 8,400,000's of apartments. You simply change according to your mentality: "I want this," "All right. Come on."
Karandhara: There's a range. To go back to the...
Prabhupāda: It is, apartment is not evolving. I am evolving in this sense that I am changing one apartment to a better apartment. The better apartment is already there.
Śyāmasundara: To go back to this survival of the fittest theory, supposing we are all here and the water comes, like you said. Supposing one of these persons in Los Angeles has the ability to breathe in water, somehow or other he can breathe under water...
Prabhupāda: So we have no objection.
Śyāmasundara: So he survives; everyone else...
Prabhupāda: He survives means... He survives means that even if he's dead, that does not mean that the species is dead. There is another human being in another part of the world.
Śyāmasundara: I accept that, but I mean I want to...
Prabhupāda: So you say that because he does not survive, the whole species is extinct.
Śyāmasundara: No. But he survives..., one man survives because he is able to breathe in the water.
Karandhara: But how is he able to breathe in the water?
Śyāmasundara: Because he's adapted, he's mutated somehow.
Karandhara: But what has been that selective principle that he's adapted?
Śyāmasundara: According to you, you say it's his desire.
Karandhara: But the selective, active principle...
Prabhupāda: But the fact is that you do not find anyone that one can breathe within the water.
Śyāmasundara: No. That's only an example.
Prabhupāda: But you should give example which is proper.
Śyāmasundara: All right. There is a fish called a lungfish, which... Most fish have gills, they breathe underwater with their gills, they extract oxygen from water. But there's one fish in Africa that has developed lungs, so that, because it lives in an area where the water sometimes goes away, so it must be able to breathe oxygen from the air. So they say out of millions of fish in that water, one happened to have a pair of lungs, so he survived.
Prabhupāda: So we say that means he was already existing. We say there are 900,000 of species of fishes. He may be one of them, that's all.
Śyāmasundara: So the selective principle is there, but all species are already there.
Prabhupāda: Already there, existing.
Karandhara: The selection will simply be dictated by... The so-called observance of selection is just the circumstance. The water's going away, so...
Prabhupāda: The selection of the species of life. I can select. From fish, I can become man; from man I can become fish.
Śyāmasundara: So that fish desired to survive in that condition.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Śyāmasundara: I see.
Prabhupāda: Therefore there is a greater law. Just like the hotel people, he has got experience. The customers come and they want this sort of facilities. So he has made all the facilities here to receive all kinds of customers. Similarly, this is God's creation. He knows how much a living entity can think of, so He has made all these species. If he thinks like this, "Come on, here," nature will, "Yes." Prakṛteḥ kriyamāṇāni guṇaiḥ karmāṇi BG 3.27 . Nature is offering facility, "Yes, come on." God, Kṛṣṇa as Paramātmā within the heart, He knows, He wants this. He wants this, immediately nature, "Give him this apartment," and nature offers, "Yes. Come on. Here is apartment." This is real explanation.
Śyāmasundara: So I understand that, and I'll accept that, but the one thing I'm still puzzled on is that there's no geological evidence that in former times on this planet there were more complex forms...
Prabhupāda: Why you are taking geological evidence as final? Why you are taking that? That is final?
Śyāmasundara: But it's logical...
Prabhupāda: What logic? Science is progressing. You cannot say that this is final.
Karandhara: Scientists couldn't deny; they could just say that we haven't found any evidence.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Śyāmasundara: But until there's something that disproves it to me, then I must accept it, because it..., because it's logical.
Karandhara: But that's a false platform. I'll conclude on the basis of my limited knowledge because I don't have the perfect knowledge. That's an abortion of the whole scientific...
Śyāmasundara: Yes. All right. You can say that I've never seen a purple man, so there must be no such thing as a purple man. You can say that, but as far as I can operate within my practicality, there are no purple men. I've never seen one; no one has ever seen purple men. So isn't this logical?
Prabhupāda: Purple men?
Śyāmasundara: I'm just using it as an example.
Prabhupāda: What is that purple men? But you have not also seen, why you are speaking like that?
Śyāmasundara: I'm using it as an example of an exception.
Prabhupāda: No, no. What, you are scientist, what you have never seen, why you are thinking of like that? That is my point.
Śyāmasundara: I'm using it as an example of an exception...
Prabhupāda: Why example? Why you give a fictitious example which you have no experience?
Śyāmasundara: All right. So let's say no one has ever seen a...
Prabhupāda: No, no. That is another thing. You cannot say which you have never seen, at least. Because yours is experimental, I may say, but you at least, cannot say like that.
Śyāmasundara: I have excavated in all parts of the world, and every time I go to the...
Prabhupāda: No. You have not excavated all parts of the world. That is another nonsense. You have not done this.
Śyāmasundara: Well, on seven continents I have excavated...
Prabhupāda: But that seven continents is not the whole world. That is our charge. That you are claiming that you have excavated all. We say no, not even an insignificant portion. So your knowledge is limited. (indistinct) they say the same (indistinct), Dr. Frog. Dr. Frog is limited within the three-feet well. If he says "I have seen everything," that is not acceptable.
Śyāmasundara: But at least in thousands of places they have bored into the earth or dug into the earth, and they've found...
Prabhupāda: Yes. Thousands of places is not this finishing, the whole planet.
Karandhara: They're always coming up with something new. They're having to revise their theory. Just like that pamphlet. They had to revise the whole theory about Carbon 14 because they found a new factor in the deterioration in the element which they never before considered...
Prabhupāda: This experimental knowledge is always imperfect. Because they are experimenting with imperfect senses, therefore they must be imperfect. Our source of knowledge is different. We do not depend on experimental knowledge.
Śyāmasundara: Let us say that the remains of every animal, every living entity that has ever been found in the ground...
Prabhupāda: That is also a limited space. You cannot say you have excavated a portion of the earth and that is all. You cannot say.
Śyāmasundara: So far, anyway.
Prabhupāda: So far means that is not all. That is, so far, as soon as it is so far, that is not all.
Śyāmasundara: But, so surely we must be practical and say that every...
Prabhupāda: Practical means...
Karandhara: We can only operate on things that we have...
Prabhupāda: Practical means which is beyond your knowledge, beyond your capacity, that is impractical. So nothing is practical.
Śyāmasundara: How can I theorize there were other or higher forms...
Prabhupāda: You theorize partially, as far as. That is not perfect(?).
Śyāmasundara: If I accept your knowledge, how can I theorize that there were higher forms of life millions of years ago if I have never found any evidence and I have searched...
Prabhupāda: This is the evidence. This is the evidence. You have to see through the evidence, because there are, in the evolution there are so many species of life, say 8,400,000, they are all existing now. They are all existing now. Therefore why should I conclude that millions of years they did not exist?
Śyāmasundara: You say they are all existing now, but I don't see the dinosaur. There are no dinosaurs on this planet.
Prabhupāda: That is not the denied. Dinosaur you may not have seen, it may be existing some other... Neither I have seen the 8,400,000 different species of, different forms of life. But my source of knowledge is different. Your source of knowledge is different. You are experimenter with imperfect senses. I am taking from the perfect who has seen, who knows things. Therefore my knowledge is perfect. Just the same example: I am receiving knowledge from my mother, "Here is your father," and you are trying to search out where is your father. You don't go to the mother, but you are searching out. So therefore, however you may search, your knowledge always will be imperfect.
Śyāmasundara: And your knowledge says that millions of years ago there were higher forms of living entities on this planet.
Prabhupāda: Oh, yes. Because our Vedic information is that the first creation is the most intellect, that is the most intellectual personality within this universe, Brahmā. So how we can say..., how we can accept your theory that intellect develops? We are receiving Vedic knowledge from Brahmā, so perfect. So that is the evidence. The first creature was so perfect.
Karandhara: You are accepting authority anyway. We are accepting Darwin's authority that he went to these islands and found these animals. How do we know he went to the islands and found the animals?
Śyāmasundara: Because you can go there now and find them; they are still there.
Karandhara: But you have to go there to make, to make your point and deduct it. [break]
Svarūpa Dāmodara: ...when it will be cause of all his existence, survival for the fittest, but he is not going into the, who posed this, how it has been done, how it is going to that theory, so his theories are not complete.
Prabhupāda: His theory, it is not science. It is suggestion, guess.
Śyāmasundara: They call it "doctrine of natural selection," not theory.
Prabhupāda: Doctrine. So doctrine, doctrine should be fact, but Darwin's theory, so far... It is called Darwin's theory...
Śyāmasundara: It's not called theory, it's doctrine. It should be doctrine.
Karandhara: What they mean by doctrine is that they can't agree on it and say it's fact. That there's so many short-comings that they will call it a doctrine but they won't call it fact. That's practically the whole story in scientific research: the real scientists, they never call anything a solid fact; it's always a theory or a doctrine because they never find a perfect enough conclusion which takes into account everything and perfectly reconciles...
Prabhupāda: What is that uncertainty? What do you call that?
Śyāmasundara: It's called Theory of Uncertainty. Heisenberg's Theory of Uncertainty.
Prabhupāda: That is also theory.
Śyāmasundara: Yes. That has to do with atomic particles.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Accepting the (indistinct), early in 1900 when they find out the smallest particle in the atom, it was a theory; it was accepted for about ten, twenty years.
Śyāmasundara: That was long before, in Greek times, Democritus.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: But the real theory started by Darwin, that was accepted for several years, but later on, with new advancement, his theory changed. His theory became disproved, that "What you are saying, it is not right, it is not final." So theories can change. So same thing, Darwin's theory is also changing.
Śyāmasundara: But his impact upon the thinking of the world so completely changed the whole conception of...
Prabhupāda: That is now changing again. So what is the use of that, such change?
Śyāmasundara: Well, you have to investigate, because he is important for our...
Prabhupāda: No. That's all right. We will investigate; and a theory which changes, it will change, that's all. It is not a fact. The sun rising is a fact. It cannot change.
Śyāmasundara: Still, you say if there were high forms of, say Brahmā, in Brahmā's time or millions of years ago, there were also other high animals besides men?
Prabhupāda: All I say is that all kinds of different classes of forms were existing, since the creation.
Śyāmasundara: On this planet there were higher forms?
Prabhupāda: Why are you taking this planet? We are talking of the whole creation. In the creation everything is there.
Śyāmasundara: If you expect me to understand this, I have to see it on this planet.
Prabhupāda: That is not knowledge.
Karandhara: Possibly there were and possibly there weren't.
Śyāmasundara: You tell me that Rāma and some other higher creatures lived on this planet so many millions of years ago, so I can expect some day to find evidence of that?
Prabhupāda: The evidence is the authority, Vedic literature.
Karandhara: What other authority will you accept? If you dig up a bone and make a test with your own senses and accept that as an authority...
Prabhupāda: Bone authority. So you will be satisfied with your own authority. We have got our different... If you don't accept my authority, then I don't accept your authority.
Śyāmasundara: It would just seem if there were bones surviving for millions of years, why not cities, why not chariots, why not...?
Prabhupāda: Yes. During Rāmacandra's time there were chariots. Everything was there.
Karandhara: They have found pieces of chariots and pieces of cities.
Śyāmasundara: Not millions of years ago.
Karandhara: How do they know it's not millions of years ago? What is their test for proving?
Prabhupāda: That millions, that is also bogus. You see? In the human history there is no history more than three thousand years. They are talking of millions of years. Why?
Śyāmasundara: You are a scientist. What other ways do they date geological findings? How do they date them?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Now it is Carbon 14 is the most reliable technique.
Śyāmasundara: Before they discovered that, how did they do it? They knew the Pleistocene, the Iocene, all these different ages. How did they date them?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: I do know how....
Karandhara: They all remain their own postulation according to their own sense impressions, and because the initial format is imperfect, the conclusion has to be imperfect. So knowledge always remains fallible and mutable, whatever basis they put it on. It is what they have derived out of their own sense impressions, imperfect.
Śyāmasundara: Yes, admitted, but I say that...
Karandhara: So dealing on a whole range of imperfection and deduction...
Śyāmasundara: Anyone can argue on that level and say anything, but what I want to know are the facts.
Karandhara: The facts are there, but you can accept the facts as Darwin presents them or as the Vedas present them or as anyone presents them.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: These are all controlled by the force of nature. For example, we do not find evidence, scientific evidence, so-called they've got from eight hundred thousand years ago. That does not mean anything. It is all subject to the course of nature. So maybe it just changed with the earth turning. (indistinct) That does not mean that it did not exist.
Śyāmasundara: If I'm a Darwinist; I'm still not convinced. Because you still haven't proven to me that the layers of earth that are far, far below are not millions of years old. You say that they may be newly formed, but...
Karandhara: They haven't proven that they are millions of years old.
Śyāmasundara: Well, I'm not a geologist...
Prabhupāda: My charge is that you cannot give history of human society more than three thousand years; how you speak of millions of years? That is my charge.
Śyāmasundara: Written history...
Prabhupāda: No. Suppose a child says that "Millions of years ago it happened like this," but I will say (to) the child, "You were born three years ago. How you speak of millions of years?" That is my charge.
Śyāmasundara: I don't know how geologists date earth layers...
Prabhupāda: They bluff everything.
Śyāmasundara: But even if, let's say the deepest layer is only five hundred years old, but still the ones on top are newer. So in the lowest layer, there are no chariots, cities...
Prabhupāda: We can rather believe the Bhagavad-gītā, who gives a description of one, twelve hours duration of life, millions of years. So we can believe such authority. You can actually gain...
Śyāmasundara: Just like when you are dreaming, you may think it's millions of years, and it's only five minutes. You wake up and you've only been asleep five minutes. even though it seems like millions of years.
Prabhupāda: And actually, according to modern scientists, the law of relativity, so everyone speaks with his relative knowledge. It is not perfect. Everyone speaks to his relative knowledge, that's all. Therefore we should accept knowledge from a person who is not within this relativity.
Śyāmasundara: There is also some scientific evidence that where there is land now, it was once water, and where there is water now, it was once land. That the oceans reversed...
Prabhupāda: Yes. That we accept.
Śyāmasundara: ...so it's quite possible that if there were great civilizations existing, that they are all, all remains are swallowed. There's no trace.
Prabhupāda: That is, everyday you see. One day we walk on the beaches, and the next day it is covered with water. That is not very difficult to understand. But when the covered with water portion you cannot experiment, how you can say what is there within? Has Darwin gone within the sea, layers, studied the bottom of the sea?
Śyāmasundara: Yes. Where it has become land. And you find that there are sea shells, sea animals, in the layer, in the next layer up more complex forms, in the next layer more complex forms...
Prabhupāda: I mean to say, but there is already sea. Has he gone down the sea and excavated the level of the sea, gone down?
Karandhara: Even if they discount...
Prabhupāda: That you do not know. That you do not know. Not that he knows. Because we cannot accept that. Nobody has said that they have excavated down the bottom of the sea. But you also said that bottom may be opened at one, some time. So unless it is opened, your experiment is insufficient.
Karandhara: Even if you were to grant that the first life forms on this planet were simple one-celled life, that does not mean that more complex life did not begin earlier on other planets. The theory is not aborted. It may be you can discount the possibility of...
Prabhupāda: The whole thing is that Dr. Frog, famous story. He comes to this country, Dr. Frog's understanding. He has studied the three-feet-wide well, and he says he is satisfied with that. He has nothing to do with the Atlantic Ocean. But Atlantic Ocean is also a reservoir of water, and that well is also a reservoir of water. But (there is a) vast difference. So we take knowledge of who has created Atlantic Ocean. Therefore our knowledge is perfect. What do you say?
Śyāmasundara: I just want to try to cover this from every angle so that Darwinists will not be able to argue. Today I'd like to find out how they date earth layers, how geologists find...
Prabhupāda: No. Your geologists have given, "It may be millions of years ago." They say like that.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: They estimate.
Prabhupāda: Estimate.
Śyāmasundara: They estimate, but there must be some basis for their estimation.
Karandhara: They don't even agree amongst one another. They argue. I attended college with scientists, and they argue amongst one another. They don't agree on their own scientific evidence.
Śyāmasundara: But at least they all agree that there is several million years old, many millions of years old, at least.
Karandhara: No. Not necessarily.
Śyāmasundara: The Pleistocene two hundred million years...
Karandhara: Just an assembly of fools. You can get all the fools to agree on the same thing. It doesn't make anyone...
Śyāmasundara: Well I still want to find out how they...
Prabhupāda: Kṛṣṇa nāma koro bhai ar sab niche, parai gab pap nahi yoni ache piche (?). Our real problem is birth, death. All these scientist, they could not solve any of these problems, neither they could answer. Maybe Darwin's cam(?) has died. They could not stop death. Kata choto dayana na mari meri jao (?).
Śyāmasundara: Tomorrow we can discuss ethical evolution, how ethics evolved. That is also part of his doctrine.
Prabhupāda: Ethic morality?
Śyāmasundara: How morality is also a product of evolution.
Prabhupāda: We change morality within six months. The most immoral man, you can make the most moral man within six months. This is practically happening.
Śyāmasundara: It also helps the fittest to survive.
Prabhupāda: You may not be fit, but we can make you fit.
Śyāmasundara: That's what I mean. If you become moral you become fittest to survive. That is also his theory, doctrine.
Prabhupāda: Yes. So that we can do within six months.
Śyāmasundara: He says that at some point a man who had developed sympathy for others, he was able to survive because he would cooperate with them to survive when others were killing each other, like that. So gradually morality also evolved. Tomorrow maybe we should finish Darwin. [break]
Prabhupāda: An animal is put in some certain atmosphere, he adjusts. But there are different types animals. Just like we see while walking (in) severe cold, we try to adjust by covering. Others, the birds, the skylark, the so on, they do not adjust.
Śyāmasundara: His finding is that new types of species will come out, which will be better adapted. The swans, if it becomes too cold, they will die.
Prabhupāda: They are better than us, than human being?
Atreya Ṛṣi: What the theory is Prabhupāda is that, for example, if there are many, many swans living in one place, those who cannot adjust will be extinct after many, many years, and those who can adjust will live. In effect, what he tried to prove was that Kṛṣṇa's law, nature's law, is perfect. But he was missing Kṛṣṇa. In other words, what the proof is very scientific, but it is lacking.
Prabhupāda: Yes. He is adding zero, without one.
Atreya Ṛṣi: That's right, Prabhupāda.
Prabhupāda: Therefore the value remains zero. He couldn't find the one, so that the value of the zeroes at once increases.
Atreya Ṛṣi: But there are some great scientists like Newton who studied many, many, many years and made many, many theories and then they gave it up when they realized that they couldn't go further. Newton, at a very early age, like forty-three I think, went to a monastery.
Śyāmasundara: We discussed Newton's philosophy.
Prabhupāda: Sir Isaac Newton?
Śyāmasundara: Yes. Long ago, in Africa.
Prabhupāda: No, he was Englishman.
Śyāmasundara: No, but in Africa we discussed his philosophy.
Prabhupāda: He died at the age of twenty-three. His picture is there in Westminster Abbey.
Śyāmasundara: His tomb, his grave. He is buried there.
Prabhupāda: Westminster Abbey has become now a museum.
Śyāmasundara: Graveyard and museum.
Prabhupāda: People go to see, tourist.
Śyāmasundara: I think it cost us sixteen shillings for us to see. Remember we saw King (indistinct). So they're making some money.
Prabhupāda: Yes. For some period, Elizabeth to Queen Victoria, the English nation advanced in so many ways. They wanted to record it that they are the greatest nation in the world. But the basic principle was how to get money from outside in London. That was the basic thing. By advertising there... Actually by nature they are very impoverished. They have no sufficient food, even; their nature. And they wanted to be greatest nation. By nature they are not very much favored. Now they are coming again in the lap of nature.
Śyāmasundara: Darwin's theory about them would be that because their environment was not very suitable for farming or mining, no natural resources, therefore their brains developed and they were able to survive.
Prabhupāda: That we accept. That we accept, that we have to adjust things according to circumstances. That is acceptable. But finally, if God does not approve of it, it does not happen. Pratividhi. Pratividhi, counteraction. Tavat tanu-bhrtāṁ tvad-upekṣitānām. Pratividhi. We make counteractivities for adjusting things, but unless it is approved by the Supreme Lord, that adjustment also will not be very much helpful. Bālasya neha pitarau nṛsiṁha. Just like a small child, the nature's way is the parent has got affection to take care. At that time, if the parents do not take care, the child cannot live. But the parents' taking care is not all. If the child is condemned by the Supreme Lord, in spite of the parents taking care, it will not be happy, or it will not exist. Parents' care is natural. Generally it so happens by the parents' care the child is happy, but in spite of parents' care the child is unhappy, then you have to go to the Lord. Is it not? Just like when a man is diseased, the counteraction is physician, medicine. Generally it is expected by attendance of good physician or using good medicine, diet, the patient becomes cured. But it is also seen that in spite of all careful attention, scientific medicine, he dies. Then what is that?
Śyāmasundara: Darwin would say he wasn't well enough equipped to survive.
Prabhupāda: That is the deficiency, that you will not be well equipped if Kṛṣṇa doesn't wish you to survive. That means you will not be able to counteract with all the counteractions. You cannot.
Atreya Ṛṣi: In other words, Prabhupāda, nature's arrangements, you are saying is Kṛṣṇa's arrangement. In other words, when Kṛṣṇa wishes something it happens in a natural way.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Atreya Ṛṣi: Not in an unnatural way, but in a natural way. But it is still Kṛṣṇa's desire.
Prabhupāda: Yes. This is all just like a child is protected by the parents, that is also natural. But in spite of his taking care, the child dies, suffers, that is also natural.
Śyāmasundara: Just like some children are born with blood disease or some incurable disease; the parents take all care, but they still have to die young.
Prabhupāda: Yes. So then it is to be understood that different natural laws are working, and they are working under one controller, and that is God. Just like we are taking so many services from this electricity current, but all this electricity current are working under one leader in the powerhouse, the resident engineer. From him, the original electricity current is coming, is generated. And we are utilizing the same current in different varieties, purposes. So then, just like electric current, the same electric current working in this machine, in a way; another machine another way. It may be contradiction, but the power is the same. According to the machine, the same example: one machine is cooler, one machine is heater, although the current is the same. Parāsya śaktir vividhaiva śrūyate svābhāvikī jñāna-bala-kriyā ca CC Madhya 13.65, purport . Everywhere God's energy is working as if natural.
Śyāmasundara: Just like a tiger's body and a deer's body—the tiger kills the deer, but the same current is working in both. One survives, one does not survive.
Prabhupāda: Nobody will survive. (laughter) This is called karma. This is activity. The body is the field of activity. You are given license to act with this body for some time. That's all. No question of survival. Nobody will survive. You can act for some time.
Śyāmasundara: By survival he means species. The species will survive.
Prabhupāda: Any species. Nobody will survive. That is also false theory. Nobody will survive. Where is the species that is surviving?
Śyāmasundara: Just like horses. Horses, they have found in the fossils and millions of years ago, they say millions of years ago horses were there. Slightly different forms, but still they were horses.
Prabhupāda: So different forms, just like human beings, formerly they were very tall, and they are reducing their stature, and at the end of Kali-yuga they will be stature like this. So this is not change of the species. This is changing, just like your father is taller than you, is he not? Is he not taller?
Śyāmasundara: No. I'm taller than he is. But they say because our generation got better foodstuffs than our parents.
Prabhupāda: So therefore, according to circumstances, the stature is changing. It is not the species. It is the same human, but formerly the human being was taller, stouter; now they are reducing in strength, in stature, in memory, in duration of life, span of life, in mercy. That is stated in Bhāgavatam. They do not change every species.
Atreya Ṛṣi: This changing of human size also may be a scientific thing, scientifically because of our conditions, because of our state of consciousness and because of the conditions...
Prabhupāda: Yes. Under certain conditions, changing.
Atreya Ṛṣi: And we will be changing, and this change will... [break]
Śyāmasundara: ...research. They found that atomic particles vibrate at a certain frequency, a certain rate of vibration, and that elements such as lead, iron, all the different chemical elements, disintegrate gradually. The atomic particles vibrate out of the element and change the structure of the element gradually, and this is a constant—what they call—life of the element, and the constant number of years before it disintegrates into some other element. So this life they have measured, and they have a table or a chart, and by this half-life formula they can determine how old a rock is by how quickly the isotopes are disintegrating. So according to their calculation, the layers of the earth go down for many millions of years; and in those lower layers, millions of years old, there is either no form of life or very, very simple forms of life only. There is no evidence of any complex forms.
Prabhupāda: Bolo... (Bengali—to Svarūpa Dāmodara)
Svarūpa Dāmodara: The age of the rocks, by determining by scientific techniques, find how old the rock (indistinct) is, and how correct it is. So I asked (indistinct) of this department, Professor Roland, and he told me that (indistinct) such and such, I mean the rocks coming from the moon, brought by astronauts. They calculate that by this (indistinct) technique, they find that they are about three to fourteen million years old, these rocks from the moon, the moon samples. But that does not give the real age of the rocks. He told me that what you call the age means how long that crystal... For example they tried to find out the crystals like iridium and strontium crystals, that the method that they use is strontium iridium technique and so he told me that the age, this age, about three times three billion years old, that means that crystal containing that iridium model has crystallized for that long year, that gives the age. They do not know how long it has been there
Śyāmasundara: The rock is at least three billion years; maybe it's older.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Yes, maybe older, but it does not give the exact age. We do not know.
Śyāmasundara: But the point is that they have determined that there are rock structures in the earth very, very, very, very old and that these contain no evidence of any complex forms of life. So that if there is a statement that there were higher forms of life millions of years ago existing on this planet, there has been no evidence ever found of that.
Prabhupāda: So why they're trying to find out evidence from the rocks, not from any other source?
Śyāmasundara: Well as civilizations come and go, they leave remains, evidence behind of their...
Prabhupāda: "Civilization goes" means? Where goes?
Śyāmasundara: Well, if people come and they...
Prabhupāda: Do they come, and they are still living? They are still there? Just like my great-grand..., great-grandfather was living. So I am his descendant.
Śyāmasundara: But where is he?
Prabhupāda: Where is he? You want to see him? Therefore you (indistinct).
Śyāmasundara: No. I want to find his remains.
Prabhupāda: You want to see my great-great-great-great-grandfather?
Śyāmasundara: But he must have left some remains.
Prabhupāda: I am the remaining. I am his descendant.
Śyāmasundara: But he made no tools, or he had no house?
Prabhupāda: Who said? You said. You said that there may not, but because my fore... I can make tools; naturally, my grandfather, he can make too. And what is there making tools?
Śyāmasundara: No. But why weren't there any tools left behind for us to find, remnants?
Prabhupāda: What?
Śyāmasundara: Why no remains of tools or other evidence of other men.
Prabhupāda: What is the use of tools? Tools are used for the carpenters, and we are not carpenters.
Śyāmasundara: But if there were high forms of men living...
Prabhupāda: Then he's (indistinct) with the carpenters, not the philosophers.
Śyāmasundara: ...they must have lived in cities.
Prabhupāda: My forefathers were philosophers. They did not require any tools.
Śyāmasundara: They required no houses?
Prabhupāda: No. Even they required, they called some carpenter and they did it.
Śyāmasundara: Yes. My point is that there...
Prabhupāda: Because there is no tools, therefore there is no civilization?
Śyāmasundara: But tools, not... Houses or anything that men have to use, there should be some remains left behind when their civilization...
Prabhupāda: What is remains? Remains means just like the coal, that is the remains.
Śyāmasundara: Coal.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Śyāmasundara: Coal is the remains of trees, plants...
Prabhupāda: Yes. This is the remains.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Coal, oil, petroleum.
Śyāmasundara: That means there was some evidence that there were... If we look in coal beds we find remains of trees that were very simple, no complex forms of trees. Now trees are much more complex.
Prabhupāda: Complex or simple, it doesn't matter. There were trees.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Actually, the coal doesn't say whether the tree was complex or not.
Śyāmasundara: No, but they find impressions from leaves and the carboniferous age, they find that the remains of trees, plants, twigs, all very simple forms like our (indistinct). Today they're more...
Prabhupāda: Our evidence is intelligence, not with tools and (indistinct). Our evidence is intelligence. We find, we get Vedic information by disciplic succession-highly intelligent. So that is our evidence. Not the tools.
Śyāmasundara: The Scripture. The evidence which is written and spoken in...
Prabhupāda: Yes. And that is coming by śruti, by hearing. Just like Vyāsadeva heard from Nārada, Nārada heard from Brahmā, millions and millions of years ago. If you take, according to our calculation, Brahmā's age, Brahmā's one day we cannot calculate. It is now some, so many millions of years past, and still it is not even Brahmā's one day. So many millions of years. Because in Brahmā's one day seventy-two..., fourteen, fourteen Manus come and go. And each Manu's age is seventy-two millennium. One millennium means 4,300,000's of years. So such seventy-two millennium makes complete one Manu's life, and there are fourteen Manus in Brahmā's one day. So millions and trillions and billions of years, that is not very astonishing to us, because it is not even one day of Brahmā. That Brahmā was born, and intelligent philosophy is still existing from the date of Brahmā's birth. Brahmā was first educated by God. That is our calculation. So we get in the Vedas such intelligent information; therefore we understand that our forefather was very, very learned(?).
Śyāmasundara: For instance, the Sanskrit language was so perfect...
Prabhupāda: Yes, Sanskrit language, everything, wonderful. So we are not carpenters, that we have to find out tools. We are brāhmaṇas.
Śyāmasundara: So if the earth is so old, for instance, it could have undergone many transformations...
Prabhupāda: Yes. That doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. After one day of Brahmā there is devastation. So Brahmā lives for one hundred years according to his calculation. So each day there is devastation. So so many devastation passes in one month of Brahmā, then such twelve months makes one year, and such hundred years will be. So there is no calculation of devastation, how many devastations. In Brahmā's one day it is calculated 5,400 Manus are born in one month of Brahmā. So our calculation is like that. We are not very much amazed of hearing millions and trillions. It is nothing. In our historical reference is billions and trillions of years. They are nothing.
Śyāmasundara: So even though several million years ago they find no evidence in the rocks...
Prabhupāda: That does not mean that there is no civilization. That is their imperfect knowledge.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Actually, our so-called modern scientific stories, knowledge is so empiric it's now (indistinct) on complete proof. It is always stands to have objectionable work, sides; so it is not perfect at all. Just like from Śrīla Prabhupāda's book on the Easy Journey to Other Planets, Śrīla Prabhupāda mentioned the discovery of the anti-proton, by the scientists who got the Nobel Prizes in 1959, and Prabhupāda gives all information from Bhagavad-gītā, anything, is already there; Prabhupāda has said it. They say anti-proton... They just discovered the anti-proton, but they still think it is some matter, that is not..., they say anti-proton but still they think that it is connected with matter. But Prabhupāda said it is not matter, it is spirit. Differentiation between matter and anti-matter. Matter is material thing; anti-matter is spirit or (indistinct). So Prabhupāda comments so nicely about the so-called modern scientists to do further research on this concept of anti-matter. Perhaps they will come to an understanding about the spirit, they come to a point. Our knowledge is what you call a modern scientific findings or evidences always subject to changes also...
Prabhupāda: This must be changing because the instruments by which we acquire knowledge, they are imperfect. So by our so-called research and sensuous acceptance of knowledge, that is never perfect. It cannot be perfect.
Śyāmasundara: Just like they say that the rate of disintegration of the atomic particles of an element is constant. But it may not be constant; perhaps in earlier times it was faster or slower, there are so many possibilities.
Prabhupāda: Yes. So the so-called scientists and philosophers who do not follow the system of (sic:) ascending knowledge, knowledge received from higher authorities, they are not perfect. They cannot have any perfect knowledge, either research work with the blunt imperfect senses. They will not... So whatever they say, we take it as imperfect-dream. And when Kṛṣṇa says that "I enter into the universes," viṣṭabhyāham idaṁ kṛtsnam ekāṁśena sthito jagat BG 10.42 . Now the weightlessness of the planets, the scientists describe in so many ways, but that is not very perfect. What is the cause of weightlessness? I have, what is called, (indistinct).
Śyāmasundara: That because of the orbits, different orbits of the planets cause weightlessness.
Karandhara: Centrifugal force.
Prabhupāda: Centrifugal.
Śyāmasundara: When planets go around the sun they go in such a speed, that there is no mass.
Prabhupāda: So, but who has set on the speed? How the speed is going on? That is not explained. But we have got our explanation. Kṛṣṇa says that "I enter into each and every universe and planet, and I keep them floating." That is understandable. Just like we have, in our childhood we used to, I mean to say, fly paper balloon by forcing into it some camphor smoke. Did you do it? We did this in our childhood. Such a big paper balloon, and then you take camphor, so much, and we struck up and burn it, and camphor is burning, it is producing too much—what is called—black smoke; and it becomes big, big smoke, it goes, very nice. So if the camphor smoke entered into the paper balloon can fly it, then God cannot fly all the universes by entering into it?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Another example is lot of these astronauts going to the moon, and sometimes they are afraid, they call the transition from the earth's gravitational force and the moon's gravitational force, there is a layer, this transition from one to another it is very critical. So they said that when the, these rockets or these Apollo instruments either go up or go down, they have to go to a certain angle, very specific, and if the angle is slightly changed, so they'll be either circulating the moon or either they'll be circulating the earth. They'll never be able to come down or go up, but they'll be floating like... There's no control.
Prabhupāda: Without any control.
Śyāmasundara: Because where the two gravitational pulls meet, there is a certain force. If you don't pass through it at the right angle, then you are caught in it.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: If you are not going right in the angle, say for example he has to go..., he's coming down so he has to go at 45-degree angles, slanting; he has to go 45-degree angle, but it changed by mistake, say 47 degree angles, then it will never come down. He'll be just circulating around, floating.
Prabhupāda: So, in the (indistinct) stage, we are dependent on the laws of nature, and we still, we are declaring we are free from any control. We are making our own proposition and theories.
Karandhara: They're always saying their conquest over nature.
Prabhupāda: But where is the conquest of nature? Now if there is a mistake of two degrees, you have to go round forever. What is the independence? Vikathante. The exact word used in this connection in the Bhāgavata, that these people talks all nonsense, vikatha . Under the influence of illusory energy they have become mad, and they are talking all nonsense.
Śyāmasundara: I didn't know we were going to have a class today, but for the next class I wanted to read that article about heredity, genetics, how they think that they might be able to reproduce life in the future.
Prabhupāda: Again "in future."
Śyāmasundara: I have that article, I want to read it and study it first. I wasn't prepared for today.
Prabhupāda: The future... Any fool can say "In future I shall prove." Then what is the difference between scientists and the fool? "Trust no future, however pleasant."
Śyāmasundara: But Darwin is the one who introduced this whole concept that we are evolving towards something better.
Prabhupāda: That we accept. That we accept. Just like we are now in human form of life. Now we can go, can make our position better. Either we go in so many higher planetary systems or we go to Vaikuṇṭha.
Śyāmasundara: In terms of species actually living on this planet, he thinks that we have come up from apes, now we may go up to higher forms of men or species.
Prabhupāda: That is already... The apes are already there. You are also there.
Karandhara: Their idea is that if they can sufficiently understand this process of evolution and know its principles then they can control it, they can manipulate it to their own ends.
Prabhupāda: There is information.
Karandhara: They can produce their own eternal superhuman being. They know how...
Prabhupāda: Superhuman... Kṛṣṇa conscious people, they are superhuman being. They are (indistinct).
Karandhara: They had a big meeting recently in Europe of the foremost scientists, chemists, physicists and researchers, and they predicted that by the year 2050, the scientists will be able to make the superhuman eternal human being. Then they started asking themselves, "Well, who will decide? Who will play God? If we can make an eternal person or manipulate, who will decide?" What if they make a hundred Hitlers or some demoniac scientists who knows how to do this makes a hundred Hitlers. So even if their whole thing is (indistinct), they'll misuse whatever power they acquire by understanding the laws of nature. They've misused the atomic energy.
Prabhupāda: They can produce for human being, many (indistinct)?
Śyāmasundara: They call it the genetical xerox machine.
Karandhara: They can analyze someone's genes. Say they take my genes and analyze their chemical structure. They can reproduce that structure and make a hundred me's, just like me—the same brain, the same body, the same mentality, everything.
Prabhupāda: That's all right. But who made you? Just like I have written one letter; you can make a hundred copies. But I have written the letter. Similarly, there may be hundreds of copies of your personality, but who made you?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: (indistinct) about the genetic code (indistinct) concerned persons taking our material (indistinct) some people are more intelligent than others, like scientists, Einstein said he had a different brain than other people.
Prabhupāda: Our explanation is that from previous life he is modeled. That is coming. It's continuation.
Śyāmasundara: So Darwin said that also, that one's superior traits are passed on to his children, like that. And then the superior traits survive over the inferior traits, and so on.
Prabhupāda: And where he goes? After transferring to the children, where Mr. Darwin goes?
Śyāmasundara: He disintegrates into matter.
Karandhara: It's total materialism because there's no spirit, just a combination of material elements.
Prabhupāda: Then if you are going again to be mixed with the elements, then why you are bothering your head about your children?
Śyāmasundara: He's concerned on a social level...
Prabhupāda: In the beginning, in the beginning you are in the matter. By evolution you have come to, again you are going to the matter. So why you bother in the middle so much. After all, you are matter. In the beginning you are matter and at the end you're going to be matter.
Śyāmasundara: He's concerned that the society can be made better by this understanding.
Prabhupāda: So why do you concern with the society? You are going to be (indistinct). It may be better or no, but it doesn't matter.
Śyāmasundara: He had a vague idea that societies or species would evolve toward something better, so he wanted to help that evolution.
Prabhupāda: That is a fact, but not that Mr. Darwin's foolish theory that he is going to be matter. He'll remain spirit but another species of life, another form of life. That another form of life will decide whether you are degraded or elevated.
Śyāmasundara: Darwin passed on his traits to his son, Charles Darwin, and his son's great contribution to the world was that the moon was moving away from the earth at the rate of five inches per year. So what good is that knowledge?
Prabhupāda: What kind..., in what way you give such an evolution? It may be ten inches or five inches or (indistinct). That conclusion anyone can give. Any rascal can say anything, and what is the contribution? Just like modern day art. You just make your brush like this and it becomes art. You see?
Śyāmasundara: Relative values.
Prabhupāda: Relative values. Now you imagine what is there. This is the mentality.
Śyāmasundara: There's no absolute scale of value in the material world.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: They're speculating that the genes of these supposedly very intelligent people...
Prabhupāda: The superhuman being is already there in what we call demigods. Brahmā, Viṣṇu, Maheśvara, Indra, Candra, they are superhuman beings, already there. What he will make? Let him make one ant first of all. Let me see that you have made one ant; then talk of superhuman. You have not been able to create even an ant, so how do you dare to say superhuman. It is all foolishness.
Karandhara: According to modern information, man now is living longer, is more healthy and is more well off than ever before.
Prabhupāda: That is another nonsense. I have seen my grandmother lived ninety-six years, but I don't expect I shall live ninety-six years. My father did not live more than eighty-one years; so gradually the span of life is decreasing. They are not healthy enough. Decreasing means they are not getting proper food or proper bodily comforts; therefore they're decreasing their life.
Śyāmasundara: Their statistics are so open to error there's no way they can say...
Karandhara: They baffle the population. Everyone believes "Now I'm living longer. I have more chances to live a healthy life than ever before." They think this is what this modern society gives him, a chance to live longer.
Śyāmasundara: By discovering new medicines and new techniques to improve our health.
Prabhupāda: So where is the medicine which stops disease? You are discovering medicine, and many new diseases are coming out, so where is the stopper?
Karandhara: That's supposed to come. That is the promise.
Prabhupāda: Promise, a fool can promise anything. And...
Śyāmasundara: And instead all they do is...
Prabhupāda: That is a different thing.
Śyāmasundara: ...add more wars.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: President Nixon has made a promise that very shortly this cancer disease should be cured. So he has allotted a lot of money for the coming few years and he is giving to all scientists (indistinct). He is saying he is going to stop this death from cancer, but...
Prabhupāda: Suppose he stops death from cancer. Can he stop death at all?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Not at all.
Prabhupāda: Well then? What is it? He'll direct some other disease come?
Śyāmasundara: If Darwin's theory is correct, some new form of cancer will evolve which will survive...
Prabhupāda: Why? Any disease will be (indistinct). You can check the disease. Therefore our conclusion is that however scientifically you advanced you make, you cannot stop birth, death, old age and disease. That is our conclusion. So why should we waste our time for that purpose? We are utilizing our time, and after giving up this body we may go back to home, back to Godhead. That is our business. But everyone has to give up his body. Mr. Darwin and his company will give up this body like cats and dog. We shall give up this body for higher elevation of life. Therefore our philosophy is better, far better than all these things.
Śyāmasundara: There's a corollary to his theory of evolution that our standards of morality have also evolved from primitive stages. For instance, in a group, within a group of apelike creatures who were normally fighting with each other for dominance, one may develop the quality of sympathy for someone else. So by that sympathy he cooperates with the other person and together they survive when the others die. So that evolution of sympathy, morality, love, compassion—the good qualities of the human being—have evolved due to necessity, evolution, survival of the fittest.
Karandhara: The thing is this whole perspective of evolution... There doesn't have to be a sequence, that one came before the other. They all were there.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Karandhara: Just like you take a ray of the sunshine that's in this room. It's come from the sun, but simultaneously it's occurring with the sun. It's not there as a sequential evolution of that particle...
Prabhupāda: The sunshine, sunshine... Just like sunshine. You can collect time according to the sunshine. The morning sun shining is called 6 a.m., and then 7 a.m., 8 a.m., 9 a.m., like that. The shine. But this 6 a.m. shining will be somewhere else also, although here it is 8 a.m.
Śyāmasundara: That's a relative measurement.
Prabhupāda: So the sunshine is existing always the same. It is relatively understood by others. Otherwise sun is fixed up in his position and is shining all over the world.
Śyāmasundara: The speed of light is constant also, it is said.
Prabhupāda: Yes. It does not change as it reaches. When it may reach, it is already there.
Śyāmasundara: It takes one particle of sunlight eight minutes to travel from the sun to here.
Prabhupāda: That may be, but the sun's...
Svarūpa Dāmodara: This constant can be taken (indistinct) astronomy (indistinct).
Prabhupāda: Anyway, the sunbeam, the sunshine, is always (indistinct). How it is constantly coming? Just like heat and the fire. The heat is always coming out of the fire, always.
Karandhara: According to a point of observation, there may appear to be a sequence, or a beginning or an end or an evolution...
Śyāmasundara: If we look back-say our written history goes back three thousand years—if we look back within that span, according to Darwin, our levels of consciousness are getting increasingly higher.
Prabhupāda: No. We say lower. We say lower. Degraded.
Karandhara: They're basing their quality on whether there's a better level of consciousness and what is more (indistinct) sense gratification.
Śyāmasundara: Technical advancements, scientific. Actually, morality...
Prabhupāda: ...is degrading.
Śyāmasundara: ...hasn't evolved. The ancient Greeks had a much higher standard of morality than the British or Darwin's time.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: (indistinct) degrading (indistinct). We see every day, every moment.
Prabhupāda: So we have seen in our childhood, they're also. No voucher or receipt. I'll tell you one little story. My father was dealing in cloth. So supposing he has come, my customer, he wants so many things. So I haven't got stock all of these things, but I wrote down his order, that you are market broker, I say just get these things immediately from the market. You go to the particular person who has got the stock and you order him to my shop, "Such and such you send me." So you have ordered for say twenty, fifty men. So their men are coming with a load of cloth, and he'll simply ask the firm's name: "This is Rajaram (indistinct)?" And someone declares, "Yes, yes, yes." But no voucher. He simply asks whether this firm is Rajaram (indistinct), and somebody nods, "Yes, yes." So he drops the bundle of cloth. It may be five hundred, or thousand rupees' worth or more than that. So similarly, many porters drop, because I require so many things. Now, you are my broker, you come, you see the stack of cloth, you ask my clerk, "Just credit this from such and such firm." But firm has sent without any voucher, without any (indistinct), and the porter simply asks whether this is the same firm, and somebody nods and we (makes noise like stamping something), that's all. Then you come, you pick up so many bundles, "Just note down, 'This has come from such and such firm.' " You note down. Then my clerk notes it. This is transaction. And out of many such bundles, you find that you did not order this, "Wherefrom it came? It is not mine." So we set aside. Three days after, one (indistinct) comes, "Sir, on such and such date I dropped a bundle here which did not belong to you, so please give me this back." "Oh, you will see there are so many. What is yours you can take back." And he picks up, "Sir, this is my bundle," "All right, take it." He's unknown, but simply he comes and says that "I dropped one bundle here which does not belong to you. By mistake I dropped it," and I say, "Yes. So many bundles there are, you can take whatever is yours." This was the transaction. Then on the due payment day, those who supplied the cloths, they come to take payment and they say, "Sir, on such and such day, such and such cloth was supplied to you." No voucher, nothing. I open my book: "Yes, yes. That's all right." So he says that "This is the price and so much money is due payment." So he calculates, "Yes." So he pays the money and then, when taking money, he puts a stamp and he signs on the book. Now in the meantime, so many transactions we'll see, how much faithfully it was going on. So how much we have now became degraded: we supply something to somebody, we take three copies of voucher; one he takes, one we keep on book, one he gives (indistinct); then also he will try also, cheat, again. So much morally we have improved. I am speaking, say within, when I am child's age, now I am seventy-six. I may be fourteen, fifteen years old, like that. Fifty years ago these things were going on. Fifty or sixty. Sixty years ago the business dealings was so easy and plain.
Śyāmasundara: So to become increasingly complex—now we have computers and all—doesn't necessarily mean we are becoming more and more superior.
Prabhupāda: No. They are becoming more inferior. There is no necessity of computer machine.
Śyāmasundara: So even though there may be an evolution from simple to more complex, there's no evolution from inferior to superior.
Prabhupāda: That is not improvement. No. Now human society has become very complex. I don't trust you, you don't trust me. I keep my dog so that you may not come in my house—"Beware of Dogs"—and if you enter I can fire you, there is law. So what is this (indistinct)? Therefore we get from our śāstra that even you will receive your enemy at home, you will receive him so friendly way that he'll forget that you are his enemy. Gṛhaṁ satram api prāptaṁ visvastham akuto 'bhayam. He should feel himself so confidential that he's not near his enemy. His dealing and behavior are so nice. The morality is that "Whatever you may be, you have come to my house, you are my guest, so I must offer you all kinds of hospitality, never mind you are my enemy. Now you are my guest." So how much ethically improved the society was. "Yes. We are enemy, so when we fight we shall fight like enemies. But now we have come to my home, you are my guest, honorary guest, I must receive you with honor." That was being done Mahābhārata time.
Śyāmasundara: In the ancient times, the Neanderthal man, the Cro-Magnon man—they always are saying that these people were killers and hunters; they had to kill to survive.
Prabhupāda: That is Darwin's philosophy, not my philosophy.
Śyāmasundara: But there is no difference between the oldest cavemen and the men today. We're still killing, still hunting, still fighting. Same things.
Prabhupāda: No. Suppose just like Jesus Christ instructed his disciples, "Thou shall not kill." Say two thousand years ago in the Western countries, the men were killers, that's all. But we'll see Bhagavad-gītā, five thousand years ago, Kṛṣṇa is arguing that "If our women become widows then they'll be polluted. There will be varṇa-saṅkara, unwanted children, the society will go to hell." How much elevated society. Five thousand years ago. It is a question of place. It is a question of place. If Darwin says... Here in the Bible it is said that "Thou shall not kill," so that means two thousand years ago they were simply killers. That does not mean five thousand years there were no highly elevated personalities. That is his lack of studying. He is too much localized. He has no broadened knowledge, neither he has studied all the books, contemporary books; therefore he has poor fund of knowledge. He's very poor in his knowledge. Just like, still, there are many Americans... You Americans are completely different from others. You cannot say that all the Americans are drunkards and irresponsible; therefore, they are also. Side by side some moral is still there. You don't drink; you don't take meat; you are all God conscious; side by side there is. So how you can write history that "Such and such, 1971, '72, all Americans were LSD"? How you can conclude like that?
Śyāmasundara: They may find three or four bodies...
Prabhupāda: Even they may find one, they cannot conclude.
Śyāmasundara: Yes. Right. That's all. They can't tell from three or four samples what everything was like.
Prabhupāda: That's not possible.
Karandhara: Just like if five thousand years from now some archeologists came to Los Angeles, which is all covered over, who knows what they may dig up? They may dig up a monkey who lived in a zoo, they may dig up the mayor of Los Angeles, they may dig up anything. What will they conclude from their findings? That all of Los Angeles was made up of monkeys?
Prabhupāda: It is simply poor fund of knowledge. He is going to give us knowledge, but he is very, very poor in his knowledge.
Śyāmasundara: Actually, most of the men that they've dug up from ancient times were dumb hunters who died in some hunting accident anyway. They were a lower nature man. But I am still not clear about why they have never found out any remains of cities or ancient civilizations that were highly...
Prabhupāda: That is no reason. Suppose...
Karandhara: Actually they have. There are a number of archaeologists who have made findings like, particularly one, I can't remember his name, but he did an elaborate investigation on the Egyptian culture. And his thesis was that their culture was far more advanced than ours. They had mathematical techniques, they had...
Prabhupāda: Ajanta Caves. Ajanta Caves. Why that is? So artistic. He's unfortunate, he's simply excavated caves...
Śyāmasundara: I read about the paint in that cave. They don't know how it's still preserved. There's no chemical that they have today that will preserve paint so long.
Prabhupāda: So he's unfortunate. He could not find out Ajanta Cave; he found out some monkey's cave, that's all.
Karandhara: The Egyptians had geometric techniques that they're even..., they don't understand. They discount them...
Śyāmasundara: Prabhupāda said that they took that from the Indians, geometry.
Karandhara: But this one archaeologist wrote a book saying that this community in Egypt three thousand years ago was far superior, and no one accepted. No one believed him.
Śyāmasundara: Even in Mexico there are so many highly advanced...
Prabhupāda: Mexico is Indian civilization. They were showing to (indistinct). The Rāvaṇa had subway to Brazil. It can be seen from here where you can make subway...
Śyāmasundara: Yes, straight through.
Prabhupāda: Straight through. And therefore Rāvaṇa had so much gold; he took it from his brother's kingdom. Partly it was all one kingdom, and one part was being managed by his brother (indistinct) and one by himself. And in the Rāmāyaṇa it is said that Rāma-Lakṣmaṇa was taken to a subway to (indistinct) Rāvaṇa's place; that means Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa was taken to Brazil through subway. So now if you can make subways now—in Russia there is subway for five hundred miles—then why not five thousand miles? What is the difficulty? If it is possible to make subway up to five hundred, why not five thousand? It will require so many things.
Śyāmasundara: They say that the center of the earth is molten fire, fiery. It is liquid. Liquid fire.
Karandhara: (indistinct) insulated tube, insulated tube through the fire.
Prabhupāda: No. That portion may be avoided.
Śyāmasundara: Oh. Go around the crust.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Therefore "I am going in subway, now here is the hard column, so I go this way." What is, what is that?
Śyāmasundara: If the worms can do it, why we can't?
Prabhupāda: Rats can do it. Snake can do it. Not snake. Snakes cannot. Rats can do. [break]
Svarūpa Dāmodara: ...the knowledge that we get from the so-called scientific theories of...
Prabhupāda: Poor fund of knowledge.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: ...consciousness, and the theory of...
Śyāmasundara: Are scientists beginning to understand that fact, or are they still...?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: They never think about that. That's why they are trying to find out so many things, because they think that when somebody tries to make something medicine or some compound, they try so many ways and means, and sometimes, when they are at a loss, they say, "O God, please give me (indistinct)." They do not know where it comes from, how this can be made. They try so many ways in making a compound. Sometimes they have to take a hundred or two hundred mistakes, and sometimes they will never get the compound. Ultimately when they are all disappointed, they say, "O God, please help me." So ordinarily the final conclusion is everybody (indistinct) supreme being.
Prabhupāda: And that is natural because, after all, God gives him his intelligence. It is stated in Bhagavad-gītā: mattaḥ smṛtir jñānam apohanaṁ ca: BG 15.15 "It is from Me." Apohanaṁ ca. He was forgetting. That was also..., God was not giving the chance, and he prays to God, then God is kind: "All right, do it like that." That is the statement in Bhagavad-gītā.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: But as soon as they get a compound, then they forget God.
Śyāmasundara: Darwin did that. He made the appearance and disappearance of animals' bodies seem so mechanically arranged that God was removed from the picture, and it appeared as if combinations of ingredients created animals and they evolved from each other.
Prabhupāda: That is another foolishness. Combination means God. He is combining. Combination does not take automatically. Suppose I am cooking. There are so many ingredients for cooking—they are not combined together. I am the cooker; I am cooking, first of all oil, and the spices, then the rice, then the dahl, then the water. In this way nice foodstuff is coming out. So this combination means God. Otherwise where is the instant the combination is taking place? I place all the ingredients in the kitchen room, and after one hour if I go, "Oh, where is my food?" (laughing) You nonsense, who is cooking your food? You starve. Just take help of a living being, then he'll cook and then you can eat. This is our experience. So why does he say combination? Wherefrom the combination comes? He is such a fool he does not know how combination takes place.
Śyāmasundara: There are several theories in that book of yours. Where is that book about the origin of life? There are several theories how everything began. They are quite interesting.
Prabhupāda: That is theory, but we see practically that material things, material elements, ingredients, they cannot be combined automatically. There must be a living entity who will combine them.
Śyāmasundara: One of the theories is that everything comes out of energy.
Prabhupāda: Energy means somebody's energy. I am sitting here, I am pushing one button, the energy is immediately created, and it goes. Just like this telex machine. So somebody is pushing the button.
Karandhara: The energetic.
Prabhupāda: And then energy, immediately produced. Computer machine, the machine is doing nothing out of his own accord. Somebody is going and pushing the button. Then it will..., the energy is created. Similarly, according to our Vedic knowledge, as soon as God wishes, immediately the energy is set off, set into action, and then other things come automatically.
Karandhara: In the trend of the scientists is that by their scientific research and their limited success which they enjoy, they are becoming more and more convinced that there is no God. They say everything is due to physical law.
Prabhupāda: No. That is the proof that they are saying there is no God, because as soon as God would withdraw the speaking power, he would not be able to speak—there is no power.
Śyāmasundara: This book is called The Creation of the Universe.
Prabhupāda: It is a scientific book?
Śyāmasundara: Oh, yes.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: It is written by a scientist from Colorado(?) University.
Prabhupāda: So he does not agree God created?
Śyāmasundara: Oh, no.
Prabhupāda: So there was a chunk.
Śyāmasundara: "The hierarchy of condensations." There are two theories: one is that everything was originally gas, and the other is that everything was originally turbulence or energy.
Prabhupāda: Originally gas. Now, so far we have got our experience, gas is produced from some liquid, is it not?
Śyāmasundara: They say that the liquid is produced from the gas.
Prabhupāda: That is also taught by us.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: (indistinct)
Prabhupāda: Yes. Anything, what was there in the beginning, that was matter.
Śyāmasundara: This says, "After the first complement of the atomic species had been formed during the first hour of expansion, nothing of particular interest happened for the next thirty million years." This is the... They have it all...
Prabhupāda: Where is the evidence that he is speaking the truth?
Śyāmasundara: The making of atoms.
Karandhara: They say that something came out of nothing, that originally there was nothing, at a point in history there was nothing, and at a point in history something began.
Śyāmasundara: Well, it says that there was a "frozen equilibrium and a spontaneous break-up of primordial nuclear fluid. The original state of matter is assumed to be a hot nuclear gas, ylen, y-l-e-n."
Prabhupāda: So first thing is that whatever he is speaking, what is the evidence for his word is to be accepted by us?
Karandhara: For most people it is just his word. Whatever his contemporary scientists conclude, he offers some insignificant evidence.
Prabhupāda: If words are to be accepted as true, why not accept the words of Kṛṣṇa? Who can be greater authority than Kṛṣṇa? If your word does not require any evidence, you are a renowned scientist, your words are sufficient, then greater scientist, greater personality is Kṛṣṇa. Then why should we not accept His words? We do not know what it is, but you are presenting there in bombastic words and we have to accept your word. Is it not? So I will say that instead of accepting your words, why not accept Kṛṣṇa's word? He's greater personality.
Karandhara: Someone will come along in a year or a few years and refute everything that this scientist says.
Prabhupāda: Yes, yes. That we say.
Śyāmasundara: There are three different theories, each one different. They all start with an original situation of like a chunk, a hot gas measured in billions of degrees of temperature, and out of that hot gas things condense.
Karandhara: That's not starting from the beginning...
Śyāmasundara: It was called a frozen equilibrium.
Karandhara: If there's an equilibrium, there has to be some principle, or energetic.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: I think the book is written just so that the (indistinct) looks like, funny things broken down. He himself says whether the universe is finite or infinite (indistinct) modern telescopic experiments can (indistinct) but beyond that he said maybe the universe is finite (indistinct) that is beyond our knowledge, beyond our capacity.
Śyāmasundara: This is a diagram of four different possibilities of what the universe looks like.
Prabhupāda: This is very nice-horse saddle.
Śyāmasundara: The round one?
Prabhupāda: No, no the next.
Śyāmasundara: This one?
Prabhupāda: This one.
Śyāmasundara: Yes, they call it a saddle.
Prabhupāda: It is convenient to ride over.
Śyāmasundara: Masters of the universe.
Karandhara: They could make a thousand different drawings.
Śyāmasundara: These are all based on mathematical principles. Because they have observed that the universe is expanding, so they are trying to figure out what shape it is expanding into.
Karandhara: That information is also in the Vedas: as Mahā-Viṣṇu breathes out, the universes expand, and as Mahā-Viṣṇu breathes in, the universes contract.
Śyāmasundara: It says, "It can be shown that a closed Einsteinian universe can expand only to a certain limit, beyond which the expansion will go over into contraction." So they also agree that the universe expands and contracts.
Prabhupāda: Expand means it was not in its present state. Original state was in seed.
Śyāmasundara: That seed they say was a hot gas.
Prabhupāda: So the seed is so powerful that it has become a universe. So who made that seed, wonderful seed? And wherefrom it came? What is the tree? What is the fruit? Wherefrom seed comes? So many questions are there.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: The so-called modern increased living taught by people who have the ideas of these things. The result is they are always led by people who think like that. Because like Śrīla Prabhupāda said on some of the letters, "The blind men leading the blind."
Prabhupāda: They accept blind men leading them.
Karandhara: They say the empiric mind just, you cannot accept revelation, that revelation isn't experimental to our limited knowledge, or to our knowledge. The hard-core scientist doesn't want to listen to revelation or what he considers theoretical spiritual knowledge, because he can't examine it or experiment with it himself; therefore he considers it a waste of time. If he can't see it or understand it with his mind, he doesn't think that it has any bearing or importance.
Prabhupāda: So scientific brain means ultimately becoming a fool. He'll talk all nonsense. Once he is recognized scientist, then he can talk all nonsense, and the people accept it as scientific truth.
Śyāmasundara: They say that our planet, along with all of the other stars and bodies in this universe, is about five billion years old. They have calculated in several ways. One of the ways they have calculated the age of our oceans to be five billion, and the age of our oldest rocks, along with the way that the stars are distributing themselves, that they must be five billion years old. [break] Could you repeat that, Śrīla Prabhupāda? I want to record it.
Prabhupāda: The Western philosophers and historians, in order to support Darwin's theory of anthropology, has never agreed to accept that the Vedic literatures written long, long years ago, but these less intelligent philosophers and theologists, their theory has been also dismantled by the discovery of this Ajanta Cave. From that cave it was very, very intelligent; as they are excavating other part, simply studying the bones. But there is other side also, this is also excavation; and it can be proved that very intelligent persons were there.
Śyāmasundara: I read about a column near Delhi that they found, made of some metal, that has been there for many, many thousands of years.
Prabhupāda: Many such things have been discovered, and besides that, they are searching after dead bones, and we are searching after living brains. So which should we consider better? Now this Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa, it was written at least eight hundred, five thousands of years ago.
Śyāmasundara: Eight hundred times five thousand?
Prabhupāda: No. Eight hundred thousand and five thousand.
Śyāmasundara: 850,000 years.
Prabhupāda: Eight hundred thousands of years and five thousands of years.
Śyāmasundara: 805,000 years.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Long, long ago the Vedic knowledge was there. The Brahma-saṁhitā, it is to be understood, written by Brahmā millions and millions of years ago.
Śyāmasundara: In all of our Western history they never once referred to the Indian civilization.
Prabhupāda: Because they will be defeated. Because they will be defeated. They never recognize. That was British policy. Britishers wanted to... That is the cause of degradation of Indian culture. They manufactured such a... Even Dr. Radhakrishnan is a victim of that policy. They wanted to impress upon the Indians that before the arrival of the Britishers we were almost uncivilized: "We have made you civilized." And these rascal leaders, they accepted. That was their policy. Because they are very intelligent people. Lord Macauley (said): "If you keep them as they are, you will never be able to rule over them." And later on also, when Gandhi started that "Noncooperate with these rascals, they will go away. They are by force getting our cooperation and killing us." So noncooperate. Therefore he established the noncooperation movement. And Sir (indistinct), one of the greatest diplomats, statesmen of India, he said that "This is a very dangerous movement. Try to cut down this movement. Otherwise, if one percent of the Indian people noncooperate, it will not be possible for us to rule over this country." So in order to get our cooperation they are simply impressing that before the arrival of the Britishers, Indians were uncivilized. So many books they published. One American prostitute wrote Mother India.
Devotee: I saw that book
Prabhupāda: Yes, simply blaspheming Indian temples, culture, priest, like that. Gandhi remarked on that book, "Drain Inspector's Report." And he has simply picked up the bad side. Sometimes these priests in the temple, they make some bad behavior with woman; she has picked up this, not the better side.
Śyāmasundara: Practically, until now, no one except you has brought Indian culture out.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Śyāmasundara: No one has known before that they had high culture.
Prabhupāda: No. Because regular propaganda. And all the swamis and yogis, they also rascals, they brought some yoga system, exercises, like that.
Śyāmasundara: No philosophy...
Prabhupāda: No philosophy, no culture. As we are touching now everything: sociology, politics, religion, culture, philosophy, everything, completely. Just like we are discussing now this Pṛthu Mahārāja's kingdom, how nice it is.
Śyāmasundara: Today when we were looking at the Sanskrit ślokas, I suddenly realized that this very strict form of śloka made it easy to memorize for the people.
Prabhupāda: Yes, oh yes.
Śyāmasundara: Therefore they were always...
Prabhupāda: Yes. That Sanskrit śloka is so made that if you repeatedly chant five, six times, it will be memorized. And once it is memorized, you will never forget it.
Śyāmasundara: Then you can pass it down and you don't have to write it.
Prabhupāda: No. That requires only memory. That was the system, śruti. Once hears from the spiritual master, it is memorized for good. The memory was so sharp, and the memory was prepared by this brahmācārya.
Śyāmasundara: And the grammatical rules are so arranged to make it easy to memorize-natural rhythm.
Prabhupāda: Natural, quite natural, natural rhythm. It's not artificial.
Śyāmasundara: Whereas our Western poems are all so many different lines, lengths, rhythms, you can't remember them.
Prabhupāda: There is no standard. There is Trayita Darpana (?), there is a book, you can... So many words, the first pronunciation five, second pronunciation seven, like that. There's different kinds of (indistinct), sandhi.
Śyāmasundara: So it's meant for hearing and memorizing.
Prabhupāda: Yes. You can sing also very nicely, sing also, like songs, with tamboura. It is very nice. (sings:) Cintāmaṇi-prakara-sadmasu kalpa, like that, it is very nice. In every temple there should be, one man should play on tamboura and chant. It requires nice pronunciation, and with the sound of tamboura it will be (indistinct). People are coming, offering darśana, and the singing is going on. That is the system in Indian temples. It immediately vibrates.
Śyāmasundara: Do you suppose that the British supported Darwin so that that would also help their political ambitions, by introducing...
Prabhupāda: Yes. These British wanted that all the big men born in their nation—all big scientists, all big philosophers, all big politicians—they are God's selected persons; therefore they must rule over the world. That was their program.
Śyāmasundara: And by putting out this book, The Origin of Species, they at once did away with God to be able to... After that Nietzsche, another philosopher who said, "God is dead," he made that statement first, right after Darwin's book came out: "God is dead."
Prabhupāda: So we have to fight against all these nonsense philosophers.
Śyāmasundara: That boy Svarūpa Dāmodara is going to move into the temple for a few days, and each day we will discuss a different scientific topic. Tomorrow genetics, and something else.
Prabhupāda: Yes. He is a scientist. He will talk technical words.
Śyāmasundara: He is going to bring all of his books. And I also studied science for many years, so if I refresh, and if all of the students become armed with these arguments, they can defeat any scientist.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Oh yes.
Śyāmasundara: Normally they are unable to answer scientists. It is difficult to answer scientists for some devotees, because they have such strong arguments.
Prabhupāda: This point should be stressed, that he is dealing with dead bones, and we are dealing with living brains.
Śyāmasundara: Just like Bhagavad-gītā is so perfectly written, so perfectly conceived.
Prabhupāda: Yes. And also there is Bhāgavata, Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, everything, everything; every, Purāṇas.
Śyāmasundara: No barbarian could have ever conceived...
Prabhupāda: They have presented all these books as—what is called—allegory.
Śyāmasundara: Fiction, allegory.
Prabhupāda: Story. And the so-called swamis, they have also accepted like this. Therefore you can interpret in your own way. If it is a fact, how you can interpret it? But we are presenting as it is, fact. That is our business.
Śyāmasundara: They present so many newspapers every day and say this is fact, but it's lies, so many lies.
Prabhupāda: Even Dr. Radhakrishnan has said mental speculation is a big thing, of the Western propaganda.
Śyāmasundara: I think he said it is the crowning achievement of speculative thought.
Prabhupāda: He has said like that?
Śyāmasundara: " Bhagavad-gītā is the crowning achievement of speculative thought," as if some sages thought it up.
Prabhupāda: Now what is there? Finished. [break] ...fact. It is known to the Vedic culture millions of years ago. (indistinct) I was reading, aśitiṁ caturaś caiva , this is Brahmā-vaivarta Purāṇa and this Brahmā-vaivarta Purāṇa was written by Vyāsadeva five thousand years ago. And it was known long, long years ago. It was written in the Purāṇas, but it was coming by tradition long, long ago. So (indistinct). He has stolen this theory, this idea, from Brahmā-vaivarta Purāṇa, and he has tried to prove it in a different way. Otherwise this evolutionary theory is already there.
aśitiṁ caturaś caiva
lakṣāṁs tāñ jīva-jātiṣu
bhramadbhiḥ (puruṣaiḥ prāpyaṁ
Śyāmasundara: But Darwin doesn't have any conception of the jīva.
Prabhupāda: He's a nonsense. That's all.
Śyāmasundara: He sees only the bodies are changing.
Prabhupāda: Yasyātma-buddhiḥ kuṇape tri-dhātuke, sa eva go-kharaḥ SB 10.84.13 . Anyone, that is also mentioned there. Teṣām ātma vimanuna (indistinct). Foolish. Child. Child thinks "I am this body." (indistinct) means fools. Ātma vimanu : "I am this body." Animal thinks that "I am this body." Virakara (indistinct) ātmā vinanena anāśrita. They do not know what is my position. Misleading.
Śyāmasundara: There is a scientific subject which has become very popular now, called genetics, which has to do with the origins of life.
Prabhupāda: Well these so-called scientific theories are popular now and unpopular after few years. That's all. Again something popular. They are not science. Science cannot be popular now and unpopular after some days.
Śyāmasundara: But it's only because they have just discovered it.
Prabhupāda: Discovering, partial, that's like... They cannot discover. The things are there passing on, so many things, passing on.
Śyāmasundara: What it means in essence is that they have analyzed the individual cell of the living entity and they have found in each cell a set of genes, forty-six in each cell. These genes contain the blueprint for the whole body, like the seed of a tree contains the whole tree. So it is possible, they say, by rearranging these genes or changing them slightly that a new type of person can come out, or a new type of living entity, from the original.
Prabhupāda: Definitely. What we call the jīva, they might be talking of the jīva or genes. The genes, the jīva, they can have any nice type of body.
Atreya Ṛṣi: Can the scientists control that, the type of genes, the kinds of body, the child will get? The theory is...
Prabhupāda: Not theory... Just like we give dimension of the soul, so that statement is given by some man. Just like one ten-thousandth part of the tip of the hair, we get information from the Purāṇas. So this statement is also given by a man, but he is not ordinary. He is not ordinary. So any extraordinary man can give it.
Śyāmasundara: These genes are visible through a microscope, so they are not...
Prabhupāda: This is also visible. When I say that one ten-thousandth part of the hair, it is visible. Otherwise how I say? But it may not be visible to you. (indistinct)
Śyāmasundara: I mean these genes are not the same as the jīva in this case.
Prabhupāda: That is different thing. But jīva can be given any type of body. That is not difficult.
Śyāmasundara: So they say that each person is different from every other person because the arrangement of the genes in his cell is uniquely his, but the same genes will be passed on...
Prabhupāda: (indistinct) That depends on the father and the mother.
Śyāmasundara: The same genes will be passed on to their children, so they will have characteristics like their parents in that way.
Prabhupāda: That is the body—this body.
Śyāmasundara: So they are considering that by altering these genes in certain ways, they can make very highly intelligent persons come out or very low-bred persons come out.
Prabhupāda: But that is already there. What is their credit?
Atreya Ṛṣi: They want to control more.
Prabhupāda: What is the control? It is already there. It is not under your control.
Śyāmasundara: Their idea is that they can make xerox copies of whatever type of personality they like.
Prabhupāda: That's right; xerox copy means the original sample is already there. So what is the credit there?
Devotee: There may be only one very, very intelligent person, but by their method they may think that they may create a whole society.
Śyāmasundara: I'll read you some of their predictions. They're very frightening. They say by 1980—that's eight years from now—that they will be able to create synthetic life in the form of artificial viruses which will be used to cure some forms of genetic diseases. Artificial life. In eight years they say they will have artificial life.
Prabhupāda: And that artificial life?
Śyāmasundara: Small viruses or living organisms, very small. But by the year 2000 they say they will be able to keep...
Prabhupāda: 2000!
Śyāmasundara: Yes. That's twenty-eight years from now. They say that they will be able to deep-freeze embryos, that means unborn babies, as insurance against nuclear holocaust and for interplanetary colonization. In other words, they can send these unborn babies in frozen form to other planets and have an arrangement for them to be born and grow in the spaceship and then go out.
Prabhupāda: Don't waste your time with these rascals.
Śyāmasundara: They'll have an artificial and mechanical baby factory, effective control of most human defects. Single-celled life will be created from chemicals off the shelf. They can make intelligent animals to do menial work. And then in seventy-eight years they say that they will be able to regenerate...
Prabhupāda: Just like there was Pan American, they were selling tickets for going to Candraloka. Reservation.
Atreya Ṛṣi: Prabhupāda, is it possible that man could ever make even a one-celled living being?
Prabhupāda: Even if he makes, what is credit there? Cells are already there. What is the question of making?
Śyāmasundara: All they're doing is creating the conditions for the jīva to enter, actually. Isn't it?
Prabhupāda: Whatever their proposal, these things are already there. So even they can create something, xerox copy, what is the credit?
Śyāmasundara: But then they'll have control over it. That's their...
Prabhupāda: No, no control, because you are beginning from something on which you have no control. So where is your control?
Śyāmasundara: "From now on I am the master. I can create more Einsteins. I can create many Einsteins."
Prabhupāda: But first of all keep Einstein living. Why he is dying?
Śyāmasundara: That's on their program too.
Prabhupāda: That's on their program—that is is another foolish thing.
Śyāmasundara: Postponement of death by at least fifty years...
Prabhupāda: So what is the profit? After fifty years he has to die. Stop, stop death, then that is credit.
Śyāmasundara: They say they will be able to take out someone like Einstein's brain when his body dies and keep it alive, a disembodied brain, and use it like a computer.
Prabhupāda: All right. Whatever. (sounding disgusted) No. All rascals, fools. As if in the brain there is the thing. What is this brain? It is a material substance, what is there, lump of matter.
Śyāmasundara: Just like they can take a heart out of a living being and they put it in a machine and keep it alive and then they transplant it to some other person.
Prabhupāda: The same intelligence, yasyātma-buddhiḥ kuṇape tri-dhātuke SB 10.84.13 , they're trying to find out life in this lump of matter. That is their defect.
Śyāmasundara: They'll spend so many billions of dollars, and years of work.
Prabhupāda: The same example. Just like computer machine. They do not find that the machine is made by a brain which is different from this material. But he's trying to find out a brain from this. This is their childish... The brain is different from machine. The machine is lump of iron. And the one who is working with the machine is a different from the machine. That they do not know. That they do not know. That is their defect. Now what is this computer machine will do unless there is a worker in the computer room, highly salaried man?
Śyāmasundara: Unless it's plugged into the wall it doesn't work.
Prabhupāda: Lump of matter, iron, that's all. But that they do not know. They are so foolish and rascal. Then they're trying to find out... This is same childishness, that "I'm trying to find out the singer within the box, within the box." It is like that.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Actually the proposals that they made here (indistinct) very speculative type. It's just a projection that can be made by their own speculation.
Prabhupāda: That's all. It is simply mental speculation.
Śyāmasundara: They haven't even come near to these things yet.
Prabhupāda: They'll never come.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Mostly scientists are digging up, trying to find out something when they get some very basic preliminary ideas, they speculate so much (indistinct) this, so on. In such and such time I'll be able to make such and such things. Every scientist does like that. Ultimately it is all, it is always...
Prabhupāda: Failure.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Something on the way, something comes up.
Prabhupāda: Then there, it has changed. It has changed. The circumstances have changed.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: (indistinct) very, very delicate, the substances that they are handling, the cells of the the microorganisms. They are also subjected to different changes, without knowing anything. So, but they're taking that things are thus perfect, (indistinct) based on their perfect thinking, what they have learned is infallible. (indistinct)
Prabhupāda: Therefore our śāstra says these classes of men, no better than cows and asses. Sa eva go-kharaḥ SB 10.84.13 . Go means cows and asses. We take them like go-kharaḥ, cows and asses. They may speculate, but we take them, "You are no better than asses and cows."
Śyāmasundara: They work very hard for a little morsel of grass.
Prabhupāda: Yes. That's right. Some fools will give them credit, and that credit is given by such class of men: dogs, hogs, camels and asses. No good men. Kṛṣṇa conscious men will never give them anything. But men like dogs, hogs, asses and camels will give them. Samstutaḥ puruṣaḥ paśuḥ, this they are. Śva-viḍ-varāhoṣṭra-kharaiḥ saṁstutaḥ SB 2.3.19 . Saṁstutaḥ means eulogized. This class of men will be eulogized by whom? By dogs, hogs, camels, and asses. No Vyāsadeva will give them credit; no Nārada will give them credit; neither Kṛṣṇa will give them credit, nor followers of Kṛṣṇa consciousness will give them credit. Because they have a criterion to know what kind of man he is. They have got śāstra, and from the śāstra it is understood one who is accepting this body as the self, he is no better than cow and ass. That is our culture. He has not still found out that the worker of the machine is different. This body is just like machine. May be composed of highly mechanical arrangement, electronic parts and this and that, so many things, but after all, it is a machine! And this machine must be worked by somebody. He must be living. He is not machine.
Śyāmasundara: They can't create a machine that will act like a human?
Prabhupāda: No, no. Even if it can act, still it has to be worked. Unless I push the buttons, you cannot work. That they are missing. Just like you say that computer machine is the same, or so many things, but as soon as you say that "I want this," immediately. But you have to push the button. This machine is working when I push this plug into the electricity.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Just like a computer cannot correct a mistake. They'll just give a message that it's wrong. That's all.
Śyāmasundara: No. They have correction. They have correction.
Prabhupāda: That's all right. Even they... But ultimately the mechanic (is) able to work on the computer machine.
Śyāmasundara: But what about this artificially changing bodies before they are born, before they are growing?
Prabhupāda: That is also same thing. Just like I change your shirt, what is that?
Śyāmasundara: But I mean, isn't that a demonic act?
Prabhupāda: That we shall consider later. Demonic it must be, but this change, this change can be possible.
Śyāmasundara: If by our karma we desire a certain type of body but they create all the bodies to be the same, how is that? But men are tampering with the bodies.
Prabhupāda: Let them create first, then say. Where is the man they are creating? It is simply theory.
Līlāvatī: That living entity would still have the same desire, that previous desire for that previous body, won't he? If some scientist can change the genes so that the jīva can have a different kind of body, he still would have the previous desires?
Prabhupāda: No, no. That is not possible. If his body... The word is daiva netreṇa: by superior arrangement. So how these rascals can be superior? They are not.
Atreya Ṛṣi: And also, Prabhupāda, in case, for example some scientist makes a change, like if the scientist comes and cuts off my hand, that's also my karma. In that way he's not making a change. Everything that is happening is God's plan.
Prabhupāda: No, no, no, no, no. Everything, even if it is not in my karma, I can cut, I become responsible for cutting.
Atreya Ṛṣi: In other words, if somebody comes and cuts my hand...
Prabhupāda: Yes. He can do that. He creates his own karma.
Atreya Ṛṣi: Jaya. But how about my karma?
Prabhupāda: My karma is that such thing may happen. Your karma is that he'll also cut his hand, next life.
Atreya Ṛṣi: The fact that my hand got cut this life, wasn't this due to something I did before? (end)