680320 - Morning Walk Excerpt - San Francisco

Morning Walks by Date, 1968

His Divine Grace
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

 Listen to a 'Nectar Drop' created from this lecture

680320MW-SAN FRANCISCO - March 20, 1968 - 05:26 Minutes

Prabhupāda: The symptoms of Kali-yuga have already begun, five thousand years past. And it will increase.

(break) . . . proud of advancing, but these things are important items of human civilization. They are decreasing. (break)

Mālatī: . . . world now where people, they already, if they live to be twenty-five or thirty, like you explained last night, that was a ripe old age. There are tribes in the world where people live to the age of thirty, and that is considered a ripe age. That is considered old age. And they usually die about thirty or thirty-two.

Prabhupāda: Where?

Mālatī: In places in South America and Africa. So now, as the age of Kali progresses, will those people just eventually be diminished and wiped out because they already live so short?

Prabhupāda: Not wiped out. Nothing is wiped out. The species remain. Maybe somewhere, maybe somewhere else. Nothing is wiped out.

Mālatī: They could go to another planet?

Prabhupāda: Yes. There are so many places. The living entity is described in the Bhagavad-gītā as sarvaga. Sarvaga means he can go anywhere within this universe. He can go in the spiritual sky also. Sarvaga means including everywhere, if he likes. As I explained yesterday, last night, yānti deva-vratā devān (BG 9.25). If he likes, he can go to the planets of the demigods, to the Pitṛloka, he can remain here, or if he likes, he can go to the planet of Kṛṣṇa. He has got this freedom. Just like there are many government post. You can select any one of them, but you must be qualified for that.

So it is a question of qualification, how you can go to the planets of the demigods, how you can go to the planet of the pitṛs. Ūrdhvaṁ gacchanti sattva-sthā (BG 14.18). If you develop your modes of goodness, then you go to the . . . promoted to the higher planets, because in the higher planets, the third-class living entities are not allowed. Don't you see that in here also, in America, for permanent visa we have to undergo so many formalities? Why? The restriction is there, that American government cannot allow everyone to become a permanent resident here. Restriction.

Similarly, in higher planets, only those who have developed the quality of goodness. The quality of goodness contains those eight principles: religiosity, truthfulness, cleanliness . . . so ūrdhvaṁ gacchanti sattva-sthā (BG 14.18). Sattva means quality of goodness. So one has to develop the quality of goodness. Not an upstart, simply having as play sputnik, he wants to go to the Candraloka, moon planet. (chuckles) It is not possible. What quality he has got? He will immediately die. Temperature is so . . . (break) (end)