760608 - Morning Walk - Los Angeles

Morning Walks by Date, 1976

His Divine Grace
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

 Listen to a 'Nectar Drop' created from this lecture

760608MW-LOS ANGELES - June 08, 1976 - 49:19 Minutes

Prabhupāda: . . . from the ground. So the tree is the son, and the earth is the mother. So what is the wrong argument there? We have got experience that a child is coming from the womb of the mother. So why we should suggest a nonsense creation, that there was a chunk and there was creation? What is this? Talk on this point. Where is your experience that all of a sudden a chunk dropped and there was creation? We have got experience that creation is there. Mother is there, and a child is coming. This is the creation. So wherefrom this idea comes, that without father and mother, creation is possible? What is his argument? He is great scientist. Let him . . .

Hṛdayānanda: Chief rascal.

Rādhā-vallabha: They say that nature takes care of it all.

Prabhupāda: What? Then why nature did not take care of you? (laughter) Therefore you are a rascal.

Rāmeśvara: Śrīla Prabhupāda? The trees, they produce seeds, and the seed drops on the ground, and then another tree comes.

Prabhupāda: That's all right.

Rāmeśvara: There's no father. Simply . . .

Prabhupāda: There is no father. That I understand. But the tree is coming from the earth. So that is in anywhere. Just like the father gives the seed in the womb of the mother, and she produces the body and it comes out. The seed is coming from the father. And that is explained in the Bhagavad-gītā: bījo'haṁ sarva-bhūtānām (BG 7.10). The seed comes from the father, that you cannot deny. Mother, without seed, cannot be pregnant and cannot give child. That is our experience. Nature is mother, and the seed is given by the father.

Rāmeśvara: In science, the biologists teach that there are small animals, very small, called amoebas. And when they reproduce, they simply divide themselves into two; there is no sex, there is no father.

Prabhupāda: That's all right. So two or three or four or five coming from the life. The amoeba is a life. Not that from any stone it is coming. The life is coming from life, but in a different way.

Rādhā-vallabha: Previously the scientists used to say that they would put dirty laundry and rotten garbage in a box, then a few weeks later they would find rats. So they said that rats are made from garbage. So then everyone . . . this was presented as a very laughable theory. And then the next theory that was presented as the actual one was that life came from chemicals.

Prabhupāda: First of all, life comes from rats. (laughs) Every year, they are changing their theories.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Actually, their philosophy came from rats.

Prabhupāda: Hmm? What is that philosophy? Rat philosophy? This is called vṛścika-taṇḍula-nyāya in Sanskrit. A scorpion is coming from the stock of rice. Actually, the scorpions, they lay egg within the stock of rice, and by fermentation the eggs become scorpion and come out, not that the rice is producing scorpion.

Rādhā-vallabha: The scientists know about that, and they say yes, that is very laughable, primitive. But their new theory is simply that life comes from chemicals. So it is actually the same thing.

Hṛdayānanda: Yes, because life is also chemicals.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: But the fact is that they cannot even manufacture a tiny seed which will fructify.

Prabhupāda: Yes, let them manufacture a seed. From that seed a big tree will come.

Rāmeśvara: They cannot do that.

Prabhupāda: Then?

Candanācārya: Some devotees are saying that cockroaches come from the vapors of impure things.

Prabhupāda: Yes, they come. That is called sveda-ja. Just like from perspiration, bugs are coming out. Sveda-ja.

Rādhā-vallabha: So isn't that life coming from matter?

Prabhupāda: Not matter. From matter is not coming, but they are taking birth.

Hari-śauri: That's the atmosphere that they get born into.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Rādhā-vallabha: So are they coming from eggs, or how are they coming? Just the soul enters the dirt?

Prabhupāda: No. Just like it is a suitable circumstance from which the living entity makes his body.

Rādhā-vallabha: But how has the cockroach been formed?

Prabhupāda: Just like embryo. The living entity comes of the two secretion of father and mother emulsified. It creates a situation so that he can stay there and develop body.

Rādhā-vallabha: But it requires some emanation from a cockroach body in order to create another cockroach body. So how can a cockroach body be created from vapors without contact of another cockroach?

Prabhupāda: No, no. Vapor does not create. The individual soul comes there according to his karma and, in that condition, he develops his body. karmaṇā daiva-netreṇa jantur dehopapattaye (SB 3.31.1).

Rāmeśvara: So the seed of . . . the soul is within the vapor?

Prabhupāda: The seed, when it is put into the earth, a situation is created so the soul can develop into a tree.

Rādhā-vallabha: But how would the soul develop a particular body . . .?

Prabhupāda: That is Yamarāja is . . . we are reading the Yamarāja incident. That's all.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Just like how can a living entity take birth in the fire?

Prabhupāda: Hmm?

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: The argument is that how can an entity take birth in perspiration? His question. So how can a living entity take birth in the fire? Mostly our experience is that entities are taking birth from the earth, but according to the understanding . . .

Prabhupāda: So how the fishes are born in the water? How the other living entities, they remain in air? Or without air? There are five elements: earth, water, air, fire . . . anywhere, the living entities can take birth. Sarva-ga. Sthāṇur sarva-gataḥ acalo 'yam. You read all these words of Bhagavad-gītā. Sarva-ga. From anywhere, he can take birth.

Devotee: Do the living entities who are born from perspiration require a mother and father?

Prabhupāda: No. No. There is mother. That perspiration is mother.

Rādhā-vallabha: So the reason why they get a particular body . . .

Prabhupāda: And the father is God.

Rādhā-vallabha: So they are just getting a particular body just due to Yamarāja.

Prabhupāda: Yes, according to the decision of the Yamarāja, he has to get a particular type of body.

Rādhā-vallabha: The scientists don't know this.

Hari-śauri: It's very confusing, Prabhupāda.

Prabhupāda: Confusing must be. How you can understand the subtle laws of God? You are dull brain, with cow dung. (laughs) You cannot understand.

Arcita: So according to the Christians, Śrīla Prabhupāda, Jesus Christ was born without contact of any material father. He was divinely placed in the womb of Mary.

Prabhupāda: That's all right. Divinely placed by the father is God. That's all. You cannot deny the fact. And he claims, "I am son of God." Then, what is the argument?

Arcita: Is there any such experience in the Vedic literatures, Śrīla Prabhupāda? An example we can cite also?

Prabhupāda: No, no, Vedic literature, apart from. Your argument, that without father, how it is without father? Without father, there is no question of birth, without mother, there is no question of birth. Our point is that without father there is no creation.

Rāmeśvara: Prabhupāda, when a living entity is in an animal body, then when he quits his body, there's no karma, he's just automatically promoted to a higher body?

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Rāmeśvara: So then . . .

Prabhupāda: Animal life means there is no sin. It is promotion. Because they are animal, their consciousness is not developed. Just like a child—a child, if he steals, that is not sin. He will not be criminally charged. He is child. A dog goes from the left to the right or right to the . . . he is not criminal. But if you do, you are criminal.

Rāmeśvara: Yamarāja does not direct the movements of the living entities as they are going automatically from animal body to higher body.

Prabhupāda: An animal is not jurisdiction of Yamarāja. The man is in the jurisdiction. Just like law is meant for man, not for the cats and dogs.

Rāmeśvara: So what determines the different varieties of dogs and cats if they are just automatically being . . .?

Prabhupāda: Not automatically. You are man. If you develop a dog's mentality, the Yamarāja puts you in the dog's body. And then again develop, come to the man's body. That means your term of imprisonment finished. You become again man. Now again decide. And again if you become a dog's mentality, again go. This is going on.

Rādhā-vallabha: The different varieties of suffering within the animal species are due to the different varieties of sinful activities in the human life?

Prabhupāda: Yes. And they . . . then they automatically come. Just as your term of imprisonment, by days gone, it is finished, again you are free. Similarly, by natural development from dogs or cockroaches or from this or that, there is a process of development. You come to the human form of body. Then again you decide whether you go down or you go back to home, back to Godhead. That is your choice. If you want to go down, go again. Otherwise, tyaktvā dehaṁ punar janma naiti mām eti (BG 4.9), come here. So make your choice.

Rāmeśvara: So the living entity who is in the lower body like insect or plant . . .

Prabhupāda: Yes. They will come automatically to the human form of body, by promotion.

Rāmeśvara: And he passes through all the species?

Prabhupāda: Oh, yes.

Rāmeśvara: So he has no desire to fly, but still he passes through bird species.

Prabhupāda: No, just like child is taken care of. Child does not know what he is doing, but the father, mother, taking care of.

Hari-śauri: He's taken through stages.

Prabhupāda: So mother nature takes care to bring him again to the grown-up youthful life. Now you make your decision. So if you don't make your decision, the knowledge is there, the books are there. If you don't make your decision, still you want to remain as cats and dogs, again begin.

Devotee: Do most humans go down into the animal species again after human life?

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Do most human beings fall down into the animal species?

Prabhupāda: Not necessarily. He can become a stool worm. (laughter)

Rāmeśvara: Śrīla Prabhupāda, what is the value for the living entity to automatically pass through all these different species? Does he get any knowledge?

Prabhupāda: To . . . to finish his life of imprisonment.

Rāmeśvara: How is it benefiting him?

Prabhupāda: He's corrected. Benefit is he's corrected. After undergoing so many species of life, he is corrected, and again he is brought to the human form of life, civilized form of life. Let him make his choice. If he again makes his choice, go down to become a stool worm. Go. That is nature's . . . prakṛteḥ kriyamāṇāni guṇaiḥ karmāṇi—guṇa, according to qualities he has taken. Prakṛteḥ kriyamāṇāni guṇaiḥ karmāṇi sarvaśaḥ ahaṅkāra-vimūḍhātmā (BG 3.27): the rascal, being proud, "Now I have got this life, civilized life. I can do whatever I like. Ah, there is no God." Then God comes as death and puts you again to become a worm stool. That's all.

Duryodhana-guru: Śrīla Prabhupāda, in the Seventh Canto you mention that there certain species of human life for who certain sinful activities, they don't receive any reaction.

Prabhupāda: Yes, uncivilized, they are like animals.

Duryodhana-guru: So they can perform, like, let's say for example, intoxication or meat-eating, and they won't receive any sinful reaction?

Prabhupāda: Yes, oh, yes. No. Because they are uncivilized. And you claim to be civilized and you are killing animal? Must be responsible.

Arcita: Śrīla Prabhupāda, those who come up from the animal species, do they automatically get a chance to contact Kṛṣṇa consciousness, or they might be born in low family, or . . .

Prabhupāda: No, they get . . . just like we are opening centers, we are giving chance to everyone. If he takes opportunity, he can become realized in that . . . (indistinct) . . . kirāta-hūṇāndhra-pulinda-pulkaśā (SB 2.4.18). That is the duty of devotees, to raise everyone to the sense of Kṛṣṇa consciousness. But if one is unfortunate, he does not take the advantage.

Hari-śauri: It's a question of fortune, then, in the human form, to get that.

Prabhupāda: Yes. Obstinacy. If you take the worm from the stool, aside, it will go again to the stool. You see? Again it will go.

Baradrāj: Śrīla Prabhupāda, there's still, within all the different species, there are still different varieties. What accounts for all these varieties?

Prabhupāda: Varieties of the body, according to the mentality.

Baradrāj: According to karma?

Prabhupāda: Yes, according to karma at the time of death, mind is saturated in that way, and he gets a body. That's all.

Mahendra: And then after, say, if a human being falls down into the animal species, after that, does he go through each and every one of these species successively? Even there are different types of dogs, he becomes each different type of dog?

Prabhupāda: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. That is Darwin's gradual evolution.

Mahendra: Except this is evolution of consciousness, growing bigger.

Prabhupāda: Darwin has captured that portion, how the body is changing one after another.

Duryodhana-guru: Śrīla Prabhupāda, in Bhagavad-gītā it says, śucīnāṁ śrīmatāṁ gehe yoga-bhraṣṭo 'bhijāyate (BG 6.41). So for somebody who is now a disciple of the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement, are we to understand if he is not born in a family of devotees, and if he is not born in an aristocratic family, that he was not a yogī in his past life?

Prabhupāda: Eh? Past life, they had some good deeds. Therefore they have come to Kṛṣṇa conscious movement. It is called ajñāta-sukṛti. Besides that, whatever he may be in the past life, the movement is there; it is open for everyone. Everyone can come and take advantage, despite whatever he did in his past life. It doesn't matter. If he comes and if he is fortunate, if he chants, then he becomes advanced.

Duryodhana-guru: This is Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu's special mercy.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Rāmeśvara: Śrīla Prabhupāda, you were explaining to the reporter yesterday that the difference between the animal and the human is that the animal cannot think of God; he has no religion. So when the living entity is passing through these different species, he doesn't have sufficient knowledge of . . .

Prabhupāda: No knowledge. That is animal. That is animal.

Rāmeśvara: Then how is he benefited? You explained it, as he is being promoted he is being corrected.

Prabhupāda: Corrected, yes.

Rāmeśvara: But if he cannot understand God . . .

Prabhupāda: No, there is no need of . . . that different stages of body . . . just like you are going up one step, another step, another step, another step. There is no need of knowing, "What is this?" But you are going up, step by step.

Mahendra: In the Bhagavad-gītā, you explain that one takes a specific birth due to a specific degree of lust.

Prabhupāda: Yes, mental situation.

Candanācārya: Śrīla Prabhupāda, you once said that if someone is not attracted to chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa, that he is being punished by Yamarāja.

Prabhupāda: Yes. Āpana karama bhuñjāye śamana kahaye locana dāsa.

Dānavīra: Śrīla Prabhupāda, sometimes when we're preaching to people that we don't eat meat, fish or egg, they say: "Why not eggs? They're not actually living. It's just a . . . it hasn't been fertilized."

Prabhupāda: Then that's a rascal. You explain it, explain to him that why they cannot make an egg by chemical composition and give it for fermentation and a chicken may come. Why do they not do that? Why they are taking eggs from the hens? Why do they not chemically manufacture egg?

Baradrāj: Must have life.

Prabhupāda: That is rascaldom. If that is a fact, that there is no life, then you prepare egg. What is there? Some white chemicals, a little yellow. You can do it.

Rāmeśvara: Just like abortion. They have a process to take the egg from the hen, and they make sure that the egg will not grow into a chicken. It is like an abortion.

Prabhupāda: That's all right. The life is there. You make some arrangement that it will not take part, that is another thing. If it is a fact that the egg is not life, then why you rascal do not manufacture a chemical egg and get a chicken? Why you rascal talking nonsense? That is our challenge. We say "rascals" not without consideration. Because actually they talk like nonsense. Rascals. They cannot do, and still they'll insist they will do. That is rascal. Is it all right? (laughs) South . . . South America, er, South Africa, there are so many factories of begetting chicken.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Rainbow Chicken Factory.

Prabhupāda: Yes, the chicken factory, but they're taking the eggs from chicken. Why not manufacture small egg and give to the fermentation and come? There is no question of killing animals. Why they are taking?

Rādhā-vallabha: They say God has provided it for us for food.

Prabhupāda: That's all right. Then you become a dog. God has provided you a dog's body. Take advantage of it and bark. (laughter) Protest, "Why You have made me? Why You are doing?" (laughter)

Rādhā-vallabha: When I was in the hospital, right next to me there was one yogī, and a girl yogī came to instruct him every day.

Prabhupāda: Girl?

Rādhā-vallabha: Yes. (laughter) One of her instructions was . . . the first instruction was that you can do anything you want; you just cannot be attached to it.

Prabhupāda: Then suffer. Why you have come to hospital? If you have become attached to the suffering . . .

Lady passerby: Good morning!

Prabhupāda: Good morning. Thank you, Hare Kṛṣṇa.

Devotees: Hare Kṛṣṇa.

Lady passerby: Oh, isn't that nice.

Rādhā-vallabha: So the whole time he was in the hospital, all he talked about was how much he was suffering.

Prabhupāda: Don't be attached. (laughs) Rascal. Don't be attached. (devotees laugh)

Rāmeśvara: But the . . . certain psychologists are very, very interested in trying to put a person under hypnosis, and then he can talk about experiences he has had in his past lives. They are very eager to have a person under a certain condition where he will remember experiences from his past life.

Prabhupāda: So why the psychiatrist does not remember? Why he does not remember?

Rāmeśvara: They say that only certain people have the ability to remember.

Prabhupāda: Just see. Certain rascals.

Candanācārya: They hypnotize them, and they say: "Remember your last life."

Prabhupāda: And whatever nonsense he says, it is all right.

Candanācārya: Yes.

Rāmeśvara: Is that possible, that the living entity can remember?

Prabhupāda: He can remember, but not these rascals' mechanical process. That is not possible.

Hari-śauri: They say they take him into the subconscious and extract thoughts from the subconscious.

Prabhupāda: But they say certain people can be done. That means it is nonsense. If it is a fact, if it is a process, then everyone can remember. Why certain? That is their jugglery of words. Cheating.

Mahendra: They also say, Śrīla Prabhupāda, that since little children, little infants . . .

Prabhupāda: Stop them, all rascals. (break)

Rāmeśvara: . . . ability that they have studied, they call it ESP, or extrasensory perception, and by this, the ability to see through the eyes is greatly increased, and you can . . . like sometimes they have a playing card and they turn it face down, and the man can guess what is the actual card. And they have all these games, and in this way they say certain people have special powers.

Prabhupāda: As soon as they say: "Certain people," that is not fact.

Candanācārya: Actually, they say that potentially everyone has these powers, but some are more developed than others. Also the powers to understand each other's thoughts. (someone passes with a portable radio transmitting a news broadcast)

Prabhupāda: Hare Kṛṣṇa.

Rāmeśvara: The only hope is to read your books, Śrīla Prabhupāda.

Devotees: Jaya.

Prabhupāda: Not my books, Kṛṣṇa's books.

Hṛdayānanda: It's time to go back.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Duryodhana-guru: In Bhagavad-gītā it is stated, nityaḥ sarva-gataḥ sthāṇuḥ. So sarva-gataḥ, meaning the living entity is all-pervading, this is nominative singular.

Prabhupāda: Not all-pervading. Everyone can go, gataḥ, one who can go anywhere.

Duryodhana-guru: Oh, so that's the understanding, because the impersonalists' understanding, they could say that the living entity is actually God by saying that he is all-pervading, sarva-gataḥ. They could interpret it in this way.

Prabhupāda: But you ask him, you are sarva-gataḥ? If you are intelligent you should have asked him, "Are you sarva-gataḥ?" What he'll answer?

Duryodhana-guru: Well, he'll have to say: "No, not in this stage of life. Once I become liberated, then I will be." (devotees laugh)

Prabhupāda: (laughs) Just see the jugglery of words. Now, why you forgot yourself? You are sarva-gataḥ; now why you are conditioned? Why?

Duryodhana-guru: Well, couldn't answer, I guess.

Prabhupāda: That is nonsense. (devotees laugh)

Rādhā-vallabha: Sarva-gataḥ tomorrow.

Nalinīkaṇṭha: When I'm liberated, I'll be able to answer you.

Prabhupāda: If you are not liberated, why you are talking nonsense? Then you are a nonsense. You are not liberated, you cannot talk correct things. Don't talk. If you are not liberated, whatever you are talking, you are nonsense. So why you are misleading people? First of all be liberated, then talk.

Baradrāj: What is the position of Dhruva Mahārāja, Śrīla Prabhupāda?

Prabhupāda: Hmm? He was devotee, that's all. He never said that "I am God."

Rāmeśvara: Sometimes devotees argue that, "Dhruva Mahārāja, he had a material desire, and still he became perfect. So I can keep my material desires."

Prabhupāda: No, when he gave up material desires, svāmin kṛtārtho 'smi varaṁ na yāce (CC Madhya 22.42): "I don't want anything," then he became liberated. So long he had material desires, he was not liberated. When he refused to possess anything material, svāmin kṛtārtho 'smi varān na yāce, then he became liberated.

Hari-śauri: But say, like Dakṣa, he saw Lord Viṣṇu and he had a desire for sex.

Prabhupāda: Hmm?

Hari-śauri: Dakṣa. So he was still having sex desire, but he saw Lord Viṣṇu.

Prabhupāda: What is that?

Hari-śauri: So then someone could argue, use that as an argument for returning.

Prabhupāda: Seeing Viṣṇu is not liberation. Just like when Kṛṣṇa was present, so many people saw Him. Does it mean that everyone became liberated?

Hari-śauri: It's a question of understanding His position.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Rāmeśvara: Just like now many people are seeing you, Śrīla Prabhupāda, but only a few are getting the benefit. Everyone is getting benefited in some way, but only a few are understanding.

Prabhupāda: Apart from me, even one sees Kṛṣṇa . . . there are so many. But it is said that in the battlefield, everyone who died seeing Kṛṣṇa, he got liberation.

Candanācārya: You once said if someone sees saṅkīrtana and wonders, "Who are those people?" then they are ten times more advanced than the greatest scientist.

Prabhupāda: Yes. What is our test? Just explain. In the morning . . .

Hari-śauri: Oh. Prabhupāda was explaining to the reporters yesterday, one man was asking what Prabhupāda's opinion was about these other yogīs. So he said . . . he quoted the verse in the Bhagavad-gītā that if someone does not know Kṛṣṇa, then he's either a fool, or he's a rascal or he's the lowest of mankind, or his knowledge is . . .

Prabhupāda: Most sinful.

Hari-śauri: Most sinful, or his knowledge is stolen by illusion. (break)

Baradrāj: I understand, Śrīla Prabhupāda, that the pure devotee can be as pervasive as Supersoul?

Prabhupāda: Hmm?

Baradrāj: By the mercy of Supersoul, he can be present in many places at once?

Prabhupāda: Yes. By the grace of Kṛṣṇa, a devotee can become anything.

Duryodhana-guru: So in other words that means the pure devotee can be omniscient?

Prabhupāda: Everything. God is omniscient, so a pure devotee can become omniscient by the grace of God.

Rādhā-vallabha: Śrīla Prabhupāda explains that Varuṇa is omniscient.

Duryodhana-guru: Varuṇa?

Rādhā-vallabha: It's in Fourth Canto.

Madhusūdana: Śrīla Prabhupāda, how come that in the śāstra sometimes there are verses that are slightly doubtful about . . .

Prabhupāda: Whenever there is doubtful, go to your . . .

Madhusūdana: Just like it will have something that has perhaps two meanings, you can't . . .

Prabhupāda: Huh? There cannot be two meanings. Tad-vijñānārthaṁ sa gurum evābhigacchet (MU 1.2.12). In order to understand, go to your guru.

Madhusūdana: In other words, sometimes it says Kṛṣṇa comes Himself, and actually the meaning is that He comes as His incarnation, like Lord Buddha, but the verse seems to say that it's the Supreme Personality of Godhead Himself, and without your purport it's not possible . . . it's almost left so that you can be fooled, as if it's a covering, a special covering so that nondevotees cannot understand it.

Prabhupāda: The Supreme Person, He cannot come? Is it said there?

Madhusūdana: No, it says that He comes in the form of Lord Buddha, but I remember it was a great misunderstanding that Buddha was . . .

Prabhupāda: He can come in any form He likes, not particularly as Lord Buddha. He's coming as fish, He's coming as tortoise, He's coming as boar. So why as Lord Buddha?

Madhusūdana: But you explain that Lord Buddha is not viṣṇu-tattva, but that He is śakty-āveśa-avatāra.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Madhusūdana: But the verse says the Supreme Lord will come Himself, so one tends to think, well, Lord Buddha is the Supreme Lord Himself. But actually without your purport we wouldn't understand that He's śakty-āveśa.

Prabhupāda: So the śakti is Kṛṣṇa. Śakti-śaktimator abhedaḥ (Brahma-sūtra). The śakti, energy, and the energetic, they're identical.

Duryodhana-guru: But sometimes also the Supreme Lord comes Himself as śakty-āveśa-avatāra.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Duryodhana-guru: Sākṣāt variety.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Arcita: Śrīla Prabhupāda, just like in this material body there are so many millions of living entities, but there's one living entity, myself, who's thinking that, "I am this body." Is it the same way in the spiritual body—there are many living entities in one body, but there's one living entity who's thinking that, "I am this body"?

Prabhupāda: Explain.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: There's many living entities within the body. Just like there's tiny germs, worms, all kinds of living beings. Because of our attachment, our particular modes of material nature, kāraṇaṁ guṇa-saṅgo 'sya sad-asad-yoni-janmasu (BG 13.22), we are identifying with this material body.

Arcita: Is it the same in the spiritual body? Is it the same in the spiritual body? Is the spiritual body actually composed of many living entities, but there's one living entity that thinks that "I am . . ."

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: The spiritual body is identical with the soul. Here in the material world there is duality, inferior and superior. In the spiritual world everything is of the superior nature. There is no duality. There's no material.

Prabhupāda: (cars passing close by) Petrol smelling everywhere.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: From these automobiles, the exhaust. They say that in some cities like New York, just living in the city itself, it is like smoking two packs of cigarettes every day because of so much pollution in the air, so contaminated. (break) . . . in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam that the cure for madness is open space and fresh air. That's Āyurvedic method. So in the cities there's all kinds of confined spaces, the air is not all clean. There's so much madness. (break)

Prabhupāda: (in car) . . . scientists are changing their theories, how we can accept? Reasonably? You are changing your theories, how we can accept you are scientist? You are not sure of your position. Philosophers also, they say: "I believe." What is the meaning of this philosophy?

Hari-śauri: They simply give their own opinion about something and present that as being fact, and everyone else has their own.

Prabhupāda: I have got my own opinion. Or anyone can have his own opinion. Why your opinion should be accepted? I have got my opinion. (break) . . . is that one does not understand that he is imperfect. Or he knows that he is imperfect, still, he wants to push forward his opinion. That is the difficulty. He knows he's imperfect. But he does not think that, "I am imperfect. What is the value of my opinion?"

Rāmeśvara: If I have a bigger brain than someone else, and if I give my . . .

Prabhupāda: Comparatively, you are less crazy. That is another thing.

Hari-śauri: "My idea may not be perfect, but it's better than yours," that's their idea.

Prabhupāda: That's all right. That is not your secure position. One child is older than the, another child. That does not mean he is a grown-up. (break)

Rāmeśvara: . . . means to know who your father is.

Prabhupāda: Yes, certainly.

Rāmeśvara: Śrīla Prabhupāda, I was once told by some devotees that you had said in some previous age of Kali, the dinosaurs, gigantic animals, were on the earth.

Prabhupāda: I said?

Rāmeśvara: They say that you said. (laughs)

Prabhupāda: (laughs) I never said. I never bother with these nonsense things.

Rāmeśvara: They have got so many bones in the museums showing these gigantic animals.

Prabhupāda: No, gigantic . . . there are bones. But that animal is still there, whalefish.

Rāmeśvara: Whalefish.

Prabhupāda: Oh, yes. Very big body.

Rāmeśvara: Some have become extinct.

Prabhupāda: Why they should be extinct?

Hṛdayānanda: No longer on the earth.

Rāmeśvara: No longer on this planet.

Prabhupāda: Not necessarily. They are within the ocean.

Hari-śauri: No, other animals.

Prabhupāda: What other animals?

Rāmeśvara: Those gigantic, they called them . . .

Hṛdayānanda: Brontasaurus.

Rāmeśvara: Tyrannasaurus. Gigantic animals, they say are meat-eaters.

Hṛdayānanda: Dinosaurs.

Hari-śauri: Tetrasaurus.

Prabhupāda: Another imagination. These are actual facts.

Hari-śauri: They just made up different compositions of bones and then drew some outlines on them.

Prabhupāda: Yes. They are imagination.

Hari-śauri: But you said in Hawaii, though, that there are some animals that are as big as skyscrapers?

Prabhupāda: Yes, there are birds. It is heard from the śāstra. They travel from one planet to another.

Rāmeśvara: So these bones that they have found of these gigantic animals, they were all living underneath the water.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Rāmeśvara: None on the land.

Prabhupāda: Maybe. But the list is there: jalajā nava-lakṣāṇi. There are 900,000 different forms, and how many we have seen? There is information in the śāstra, paśavas triṁśal-lakṣāṇi: three million different types of animals.

Hari-śauri: (laughing) We've seen a few hundred at most.

Prabhupāda: That's all. (laughs) That is also doubtful.

Rāmeśvara: Kṛṣṇa incarnates into every species of life. He can appear in any form.

Prabhupāda: Yes. Otherwise, why the form came? Janmādy asya yataḥ (SB 1.1.1). If we have to accept this sūtra, that everything emanates from Him, so unless Kṛṣṇa has got such similar form . . .?

Hari-śauri: That's one argument that always defeats the impersonalists. They can't explain how forms have come from something without form.

Prabhupāda: Impersonalists, they are neophytes. My Guru Mahārāja used to say: "With poor fund of knowledge." Their knowledge is imperfect.

Rāmeśvara: Yesterday you were telling a reporter that it is not possible for modern man to travel to the moon, but in your Second Canto you describe that in a previous age of Kali the men had created mechanical means for going to other planets, and they were creating havoc all over the universe, and Lord Buddha appeared to stop their nonsense.

Prabhupāda: Lord Buddha?

Rāmeśvara: I remember . . . (break)

Prabhupāda: . . . they are all mythology. Do they not say?

Rāmeśvara: Yes.

Prabhupāda: Therefore I'm stressing on this point, that it is not mythology. It is fact. It is history. (break)

Rāmeśvara: . . . they are sending their sputniks to . . . with televisions.

Prabhupāda: They cannot stay there. They're coming back.

Rāmeśvara: No.

Prabhupāda: They cannot go there.

Rāmeśvara: But they have TV camera on the sputnik, and the sputnik is flying over the planet, and they are filming it, and they don't see any life. That is their argument.

Prabhupāda: No, we have got our own argument, that the other planet is as good as this planet. If this planet is full of life, why is the other not? Analogy. Analogy is also another science.

Rāmeśvara: Sometimes, you write in the Kṛṣṇa Book that the demigods can come to this planet invisible.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Rāmeśvara: So if ordinary man went to some other planet through this sputnik, would he be able to see the demigods?

Prabhupāda: Eh? Why not? Some men arguing that . . . because he did not see, it does not mean there is no life. That they cannot say. Just like in the water we don't see. Superficially.

Hṛdayānanda: Yeah, if they take a sputnik . . .

Prabhupāda: Eh?

Hṛdayānanda: If they take a camera over the water, they won't see any life.

Rāmeśvara: Or over the fire. They will not see any life on the sun . . .

Prabhupāda: No.

Rāmeśvara: . . . with their camera.

Hṛdayānanda: Even over the earth, you can't see life. They took pictures of the earth, you can't see life.

Prabhupāda: That, that is their defect, that their eyes are defective. They cannot go there. That they will not accept. The camera which they manufactured, that is also defective, because you have manufactured it. You are defective. Your senses are defective. Therefore, in the Vedic literature, "Don't try to see with your eyes, but try to see by ear, śruti." Śāstra-cakṣuṣā. You should accept as your eyes the śāstras, not your so-called eyes. (end)