710905 - Conversation - London
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
(Conversation with Dr. Weir of the Mensa Society)
(The following italic text was not recorded but was written on the reel box before recorder was switched on)
Dr. Ware: Swāmījī, you'll be glad to know your Society, like ours, is worldwide and not based upon color, creed or designations.
Prabhupāda: Yes, designation means falsely identifying that I am this body.
Prabhupāda: So now the soul is in this body. Next time, the soul will be in another body. So according to the body we are having designations. As soon as we get American body, I . . .
(break) . . . designation. According to the body I create my designation. But one has to become free from all designation. That is called liberated stage—in his own constitutional position. That position is eternal servant of God. That is the real position of every living entity.
But because at the present moment the living entity is in contact with matter, so according to the material mode of the body, he's identifying himself with this body. That is called material designation, "I am American," "I am Englishman," "I am Hindu," "I am Muslim," "I am this," "I am that"—these are all designation. So real perfection of life is without designation. And that is the real, constitutional position. Jīvera svarūpa haya nitya-kṛṣṇa-dāsa (CC Madhya 20.108-109). Actual position of the living entity it is (indistinct—microphone feedback problem) Don't disturb, let it go . . . (indistinct)
So that is the perfection of life. And human life is especially meant for . . . to come to that transcendental position, without any designation. Our Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement is for that purpose. One should be always thinking of Kṛṣṇa, or God. That position is perfect position. And if one keeps himself in that designationless position, always thinking of himself as part and parcel of God, then next life he goes back home, back to Godhead. Tyaktvā dehaṁ punar janma naiti (BG 4.9). After quitting this body he does not come back again to take another material body. He takes spiritual body, or develops a spiritual body, and goes back to home, back to Godhead, which means eternal, blissful life of knowledge.
Our this Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement is for that purpose. We are trying to bring all men—of different dimensions, different division—to come to this position, always thinking of that, "I am part and parcel of God. My real position is to serve God." Just like this finger is part and parcel of my body. The business of the finger is to serve the body. So long it is in normal condition, the finger is meant for serving the body. When the finger is painful, or in abnormal condition, it cannot serve the body. Similarly, the living entity, being part and parcel of God, when we cannot serve God, that is his abnormal condition. And when he serves God, that is his normal condition. That is designationless position. That is our program.
Dr. Ware: That's very interesting. To my mind the nearest approach in the Christian religion is the Unitarian position, which I don't know if you have studied.
Prabhupāda: Christian religion is practically . . . from the name it appears, Christian and "Kṛṣṇian." Original word of this "Christ" comes from the Greek word "Christo."
Dr. Ware: "Anointed."
Prabhupāda: Huh?
Dr. Ware: "Anointed."
Prabhupāda: Yes. This "Christa" is Kṛṣṇa.
Dr. Ware: From the Sanskrit?
Prabhupāda: Yes. Kṛṣṭa is the popular word for Kṛṣṇa. And Kṛṣṇa is always anointed with tilaka. We follow this tilaka, Kṛṣṇa, anointed with the sandal pulp. So, so far I think, there is some very nearest relationship with this Christian and "Kṛṣṇian". Kṛṣṭa means love, love of Godhead, or love. We are preaching also the same philosophy. Try to . . . not try, the love of Kṛṣṇa is there in everyone's heart, but it is covered. And being covered, it is misplaced.
We are loving our society, loving this body, loving our family, loving our kinsmen or loving internationally human society. But this love is actually perverted reflection of real love of God. Because the love is not placed in the real place, therefore we are being frustrated in love. Just like in our country Mahatma Gandhi, he loved his country very much. But at the last moment the countrymen shot him down. He was shot down by his own countrymen. The love was paid by shooting him, and he lost his life. There are many instances.
Dr. Ware: Socrates, Christ. Plenty.
Prabhupāda: Yes. So here, the love propensity is being misplaced in this material world. That should be placed in God. Then the love will be perfection. Just like if you pour water on the leaves of the tree or branches of the tree, it is simply a waste of time. If you pour water on the root, then the effect of pouring water is distributed. Similarly, foodstuff, if you place the foodstuff on your nose, on your eyes or your ears, it is simply wasted. But if you put foodstuff to the mouth in the stomach, immediately the energy derived from the foodstuff is distributed throughout the whole body. Similarly, if you love God then your . . . automatically your love is distributed to everyone, every entity.
But if you don't love, if you simply love your country . . . just like an Englishman, you love your country; German, he loves his country, but there is fight between the English and the Germans because the love is misplaced. But if the Germans or the Englishmen or the Indians, they put their love in God, there will be no more fighting.
Therefore our philosophy is to educate people how to love God. That is real religion. Sa vai puṁsāṁ paro dharmo yato bhaktir adhokṣaje (SB 1.2.6). That is first-class religion which teaches the follower how to love God. And as soon he becomes a lover of God . . . just like I am Indian, but I have come to Western country to teach love of God. It is not that I am satisfied only in myself that, "I love God—that's all right," but due to my love to God I love others also, because I am trying to teach them to love God. The same philosophy. So if people take seriously this movement, how to love God, then human society will be perfect.
Dr. Ware: May I suggest you've already made one contribution from India, which is almost the antithesis, and corroborate your suggestion about pouring water on the root. We do get leaves from India. We pour water on them, and we make that delicious drink, tea, which is one of those drinks which are used for inculcating the brotherhood of man.
Prabhupāda: That's all right. But do you think it is natural to pour water on the leaves?
Dr. Ware: Well, why not then? That for leaves, water's natural.
Prabhupāda: No. You practically you see it is—water on the leave, but you don't water on the root, it will dry up. If you put food on your nose, on your eyes, the eyes will be blind and the nostril will be suffocated. But if you put in the proper place, in the stomach, the energy will be distributed.
Dr. Ware: You know that's just an analogy.
Prabhupāda: Yes. This is natural. Similarly, if God is the root of everything, as we understand from Vedānta-sūtra . . . God means the original root of everything: janmādy asya yataḥ (SB 1.1.1). The description of Absolute Truth, or God, is there in the Vedānta-sūtra. That first aphorism is, "What is God?" Athāto brahma jijñāsā—inquiry about God. The next aphorism is, "God is that which is the root of everything, from which everything emanates." That is the perfect definition of God, "the origin of everything." So the same example in God, that the root is the origin of the whole tree.
Dr. Ware: The seed is the origin of the whole tree, if I may say.
Prabhupāda: How you can be origin, because you are the effect?
Śyāmasundara: The seed.
Prabhupāda: Huh?
Śyāmasundara: The seed.
Prabhupāda: The seed. Yes, seed. The seed is described in the Bhagavad-gītā, bījo 'haṁ sarva-bhūtānām (BG 7.10): "Everything that is living, the root, or the seed, I am." God says. The seed is God. Bījo 'haṁ sarva-bhūtānām. Just like the rose tree, it has got a seed, but where from this seed comes?
(guests entering room) Come on. Hare Kṛṣṇa . . . (indistinct) . . . give him another . . . (indistinct)
Seed, original seed is God. Your theory of seed is very nice, but the original seed of everything is God, the cause of all causes. In the Brahma-saṁhitā it is said:
- īśvaraḥ paramaḥ kṛṣṇaḥ
- sac-cid-ānanda vigrahaḥ
- anādir ādir govindaḥ
- sarva-kāraṇa-kāraṇam
- (Bs. 5.1)
Kāraṇam. Kāraṇa means cause, cause of all causes, seed of all seeds. There are different seeds.
Dr. Ware: Causa causam.
Prabhupāda: Ah, cause of all causes.
Śyāmasundara: That's Latin?
Dr. Ware: Yes.
Śyāmasundara: It's similar.
Prabhupāda: What is that?
Dr. Ware: A Latin legal phrase: causa causam, the cause of the cause.
Prabhupāda: I see. So God is cause of all causes. And in the Bhagavad-gītā it is explicitly said:
- ahaṁ sarvasya prabhavo
- mattaḥ sarvaṁ pravartate
- iti matvā bhajante māṁ
- budhā bhāva-samanvitāḥ
- (BG 10.8)
"I am the original source of everything. Everything is emanating from Me." Iti matvā, "understanding like this," budhā. Budhā means those who are conversant, thoroughly in knowledge. Iti matvā bhajante māṁ budhā bhāva samanvitāḥ, in ecstasy, "Oh, here is the original cause of all causes."
So in this way those who are advanced in knowledge, budhā, they engage themself in the service of the original cause of all causes. He's the cause of all causes, but He has no cause. That is God. Anādir ādir govindam. He has no cause, but He's the cause of all life. That is God. Just like I am the effect; my father is the cause. Similarly, my grandfather is the cause of my father. My grandfather is the effect of the cause great-grandfather. You go on searching out, searching out. So when you find out the original cause, that is God. That is the definition of God.
Mensa Member: Do you . . . (indistinct) . . . prime mover argument is who is the prime mover? What is the logical necessity for a first cause? Would you agree with that?
Dr. Ware: Well, I think it's inherent in your definition of something that's omnipotent that it's very like saying it's necessary to have no beginning in order to have no end. It's really a concept. Whether it exists or not it doesn't matter.
Mensa Member: Yes. Then even negatives imply limitation. If something has only positive attributes, it's limited if you exclude negative attributes. Or is that just a . . .
Dr. Ware: Well no, if something has all attributes, we only cause, or call them to be caused, positive or negative because we have a tendency to want to think in terms of dichotomies, "good" and "bad," whereas really, if you're a scientist, you say: "This exists." It's only when morals come in, you say some things are good and some things are bad, and you start making antinomies. Really, your Godhead would contain all those things, and to Him there's no such thing as good or evil, but to Him they are all of value. It's man who saw the good and evil.
Mensa Member: I wasn't particularly thinking of the good and evil value. I was simply thinking of negative attributes.
Dr. Ware: Well, I'm sorry, I don't know quite what you mean. Unless you define the negative attribute, I'm not quite sure what it is.
Mensa Member: Not beginning.
Dr. Ware: Well that, with respect, I think, doesn't really follow, because there're some things that don't have opposites or negatives, although (in) nature. This is what I say, that there are certain categories of things to which if somebody says: "Now what's the opposite of that?" you'd have to say: "There isn't an opposite," because it isn't the sort of thing to have an opposite.
Mensa Member: So you wouldn't accept the prime mover either?
Dr. Ware: Well, it's not an argument; it's a postulate. I don't accept it. I mean, you have to accept it if you're going to . . . you know the total . . . (indistinct) . . . so to speak. You can't have it half way.
Prabhupāda: This word "positive" and "negative" . . . just like the sun—the backside is the negative and the front side is the positive, light and darkness.
Dr. Ware: Well the sun doesn't have a backside of darkness. It's light all round.
Prabhupāda: I mean to say, in relationship with the sun, the planet, the planet in the front side there is light. In the backside there is darkness. But the darkness is the effect of the light. Where the light is absent there is darkness.
Dr. Ware: Only to an observer. If there's no observer there, there's no difference between light and dark.
Prabhupāda: No, this is the actual position. Just like this is sun, but this side is light, this side is darkness. So light and darkness, two opposite elements. But it is due to the same cause. Absence of light is darkness, and presence of light is light.
Dr. Ware: Or I say there are some things that have those dichotomies and others don't.
Prabhupāda: So actually the cause is one, but in different position, one side is light, one side is darkness. Therefore the cause cannot be different. The cause is one. But under different position it appears, "This is light," "This is darkness." So bad, which you consider bad, that is also caused by the Supreme Cause. In the Supreme there is no good or bad. Everything is absolute. Just like the sun is always light, but, in relationship with sun, the planets, one side is dark, one side is light. So black means that is also caused by the light, absence of light—that is black, dark.
Dr. Ware: With respect, it's not caused by the light. It's the absence of light.
Prabhupāda: Absence, that I'm saying. It is also, indirectly, the cause is the light.
Dr. Ware: No, because your illustration you gave of the light of the sun falling on one side and making that light and the other side dark, but you can also have a body which is in the complete absence of any light anyway, so there won't be any differentiation.
Prabhupāda: No. There is light. The light is now visible. Light is there. Just like we say that our relationship with God is there. One is conscious; another is unconscious. Otherwise, God consciousness is there. Therefore any process that awakens that consciousness, that is perfect process. The consciousness is there. That is stated in Caitanya-caritāmṛta, an authorized book.
Nitya siddha kṛṣṇa bhakti sādhya kabhu naya (CC Madhya 22.107). This God consciousness is not something artificial. The God consciousness is there. Just like these European boys and girls, they're now devotees of Kṛṣṇa. Not that artificially we have imposed this Kṛṣṇa consciousness. The Kṛṣṇa consciousness was there. By . . . under certain process of treatment that has been awakened.
Dr. Ware: That's why I think it's better to accept that as it is, rather than make analogies, which are dangerous.
Prabhupāda: I may make analogy or not analogy, but the thing is that Kṛṣṇa consciousness is there, but it is covered. As soon as its covering is taken away—it is uncovered—the original position comes out.
Śyāmasundara: I believe he made one observation which is rather in the British tradition, I believe, where he said that if there was no observer, then there would be no such thing as light and darkness.
Dr. Ware: Yes, light and dark are subjective reactions. Really, the scientists would say there are wave lengths of a certain type in one part of the universe and in the other they're absent. But until you have an observer, you can't notice that.
Mensa Member: But the planet would still be there . . . (indistinct)
Dr. Ware: Well, Samuel Johnson quite rightly refuted that by taking . . . (indistinct)
Prabhupāda: Actually, there is no darkness. Take it sun as, it is whole. There is no darkness and everything is in sunshine. All the planets, they are rotating in sunshine. So under certain condition, one part is becoming dark, another part is light. But actually the whole universe is full with sunshine. Sarvaṁ khalv idaṁ brahma (Chāndogya Upaniṣad 3.14.1). That is the exact definition given in Sanskrit: everything is light, brahma.
Mensa Member: That's another postulate.
Dr. Ware: You can build any theory according to the number of postulates you're willing to accept which cannot be analyzed, including the basis of science, that the atom, as originally thought of by Theocritus and others, is this thing that you cannot go beyond and cap down . . . (indistinct) . . . and saying with your philosophy or your theology that you go down until you can find nothing, except that you say that causa causam, and then you build back again from that. But that's what I was saying earlier on: the . . . (indistinct) . . . is very close to the Unitarian position in Christianity.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Dr. Ware: Far more acceptable to every type of Christian than any of the specific creeds or sects, you know, the Church of England, Anglicans, Roman Catholics, every other form of prophecy. And you have that greater universality . . . (indistinct) . . . and you've got Tibetans who will accept your basis in the same way as a Westerner could.
Prabhupāda: What is that?
Dr. Ware: A Tibetan could accept your position.
Prabhupāda: Tiberian? Tibetians? What is their philosophy?
Dr. Ware: You've heard of the Dalai Lama?
Prabhupāda: Yes. What does he say?
Dr. Ware: Well, his position would be the same as yours, wouldn't it? In religion?
Mensa Member: You mean the Tibetan Buddhist attitude towards the Godhead is the same as the Kṛṣṇas?
Dr. Ware: Yes. They have that same basis.
Prabhupāda: But so far we know, that Buddhists, they do not believe in God, existence of God.
Dr. Ware: No. They believe in this existence of a "Goddess" if you like.
Mensa Member: It's very subjective. The Buddhist point of view in general seems to be very much that of the nineteenth century English rationalist, the agnostic, in its visual sense.
Dr. Ware: That's why I say the Unitarian comes closest to it.
Śyāmasundara: What is that?
Mensa Member: Well, the fact that a Godhead is . . . is impossible to comprehend. It maybe or may not be in very brief terms.
Dr. Ware: But if you accept its existence, then it's present in everybody. Which is exactly what you're saying. Whether they utilize it, whether, as you call it, uncovered, or to the degree of which they are conscious of it, is a different thing.
Prabhupāda: Yes. It is a question of consciousness, development of consciousness.
Dr. Ware: That's where your line, I think, is so very good in saying that the real evolution of man's mind has been his ability to produce more and more of the functions of whatever the mind may be. But the mind is just as indefinable as God. We know what the brain is, but we don't know what the mind is. Yet more and more of it under conscious control instead of being irrationally eruptive.
Prabhupāda: But there is a summum bonum of that realization. That is explained in Bhagavad-gītā: bahūnāṁ janmanām ante, jñānavān māṁ prapadyate (BG 7.19). After many, many births of this mental evolutionary process, when actually he becomes wise, he becomes God conscious and surrenders to God. That is real evolution. That is real evolution. That evolution will go on. But when it comes to this summit, that is God realization. Vāsudevaḥ sarvam iti (BG 7.19). God is the cause of all causes. That is the final realization. Unless one comes to that point, he has not come to the perfection of evolutionary process of the mind and intelligence.
Śyāmasundara: How does our philosophy define mind and intelligence?
Prabhupāda: Mind is instrument. The mind's position is accepting and rejecting. And intellect helps the mind what to reject and what to accept. And that intelligence is of the soul. That ground of intelligence is the soul. First of all bodily concept is gross life, ordinary, like animals, they do not know except the body. Higher than bodily concept of life, the exercise of the mind, mental speculation. And that mental speculation is adjusted by intelligence, and that intelligence belongs to the soul. Therefore soul is the ultimate, and soul is the part and parcel of God. Therefore God is the supreme.
So the mental speculation or the evolution of mental exercise, when it comes to the summit, that is God realization. Vāsudevaḥ sarvam iti, sa mahātmā sudurlabhaḥ (BG 7.19). When one realizes, "God is everything," that mahātmā, that great soul, is very rare. That is the statement in Bhagavad-gītā. Mahātmā means whose mind is great. The mind is great. He's not thinking ordinary things; he's thinking of greater subject matter. They are called mahātmā, broader minded, broad-minded.
Dr. Ware: Do you differentiate, as Jung would do, it's only a matter of attempting to comprehend the differences . . . (indistinct) . . . of things, the difference between thinking and feeling as rational functions?
Prabhupāda: That is the function of the mind—thinking, feeling and willing. Psychological activity.
Dr. Ware: Do you differentiate them separately?
Prabhupāda: Oh, yes.
Dr. Ware: And intuition as well?
Prabhupāda: Saṅkalpa, vikalpa. This is, in Sanskrit it is called saṅkalpa, vikalpa, or accepting and rejecting. That is mind's function. I think something, and again I reject it.
Dr. Ware: Well, you also react, too.
Prabhupāda: You can say in any language, but the function of the mind is flickering. Just like when Arjuna was advised by Kṛṣṇa to train the mind by meditation, by yoga system, he said that "Kṛṣṇa, it is very difficult for me." Cañcalaṁ hi manaḥ kṛṣṇa pramāthi balavad dṛḍham (BG 6.34). "My mind is very," I mean to say, "agitated. I think to control the mind is as impossible as the controlling the wind." Cañcalaṁ hi manaḥ kṛṣṇa pramāthi ba . . . vāyor iva suduṣkaram: "And it is very difficult to . . . (indistinct) . . . high wind, and if you want to control it, as it is . . . (indistinct) . . . similarly, I think the activities of the mind, thinking, feeling and willing, to control that is very difficult for me."
So actually that is the position. So long we shall be on the mental platform there will be no fixity of conclusion. That is not possible. We have to accept something for the time being, then again reject it. Therefore all mental speculators differ. Nāsau munir yasya mataṁ na bhinnam (CC Madhya 17.186). A philosopher is not philosopher until he differs from other philosophers. Nāsau munir yasya mataṁ na bhinnam. Unless you place a different thesis, he will not be accepted as a good philosopher.
Dr. Ware: There it differs from science. Because if science is actually correct, it can only be one.
Prabhupāda: But philosophy is taken as the science of sciences.
Dr. Ware: Theology used to be that. Yes.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Dr. Ware: It shows a misconception of the word science.
Prabhupāda: So far I remember—I was also a student of philosophy—Dr. Urquhart, he said the philosophy is science of sciences. The science, their, I mean, theory begins from philosophy. Philosophy is the science of sciences. But according to Vedic version, a philosopher is not a philosopher if he has not a different opinion from another philosopher.
Nasau munir yasya mataṁ na bhinnam. Therefore, through the philosopher you cannot come to the right conclusion. Tarko apratiṣṭhaḥ. If you simply go on arguing, that will also not help you. If you simply read scriptures, that will also not help you. Because there are different scriptures. Bible is different from Vedas, and Vedas is different from Koran.
So tarko apratiṣṭhaḥ (CC Madhya 17.186), by argument you cannot come to the conclusion. By simply reading scriptures you cannot come to the conclusion. By following the philosophers you cannot come to the conclusion. Therefore the truth is very confidential. Dharmasya tattvaṁ nihitaṁ guhāyāṁ. It is kept very confidential. Then how to have it? Mahājano yena gataḥ sa panthāḥ (CC Madhya 17.186): you have to follow the great personalities who have actually realized God. That is the conclusion.
Dr. Ware: The trouble is that you only have the opportunity of hearing or reading what somebody else has said what they have said. So you're back again on the trouble of diversity of observation and opinion.
Prabhupāda: No. So far we are concerned, we are receiving knowledge directly from God. Just like Bhagavad-gītā: It is accepted, spoken by the Supreme Personality of Godhead; therefore if you take conclusion from the speeches delivered by the Supreme Personality of Godhead, that is fact. That is very easy authority. Just like the other day I was explaining to Mr. Mathew that, "You are searching after who is your father, but if you simply ask your mother, 'Who is my father?' the truth is immediately disclosed." Immediately.
Dr. Ware: Being a lawyer, I would say that that doesn't necessarily follow.
Prabhupāda: Why?
Dr. Ware: Well, it's a wise woman sometimes who knows who's the father . . .
Prabhupāda: That is your misfortune if your mother cheats you. That's a different thing. That's different. We are expecting mother will not cheat us.
Dr. Ware: Some of them don't know!
Prabhupāda: That is different thing. Suppose you are a lawyer. I put my faith in you, but if you cheat me I lose the case. That is another thing.
Dr. Ware: Sometimes it's just honest ignorance.
Prabhupāda: No. Generally mother is honest. If one is unfortunate, he has got a mother like that, cheated. Generally expected, a mother is honest. Mother loves his (her) child, he (she) gives the good information. That is mother's position. But if someone has got a different mother, that's . . .
The same thing can be applicable to you also. You are lawyer. Everyone depends on you, but if you conduct a case in a different way just to make profit to other party, you can do that; that is my misfortune. I have to depend on you for conducting the case. I have no other means.
Dr. Ware: And the poor lawyer has to depend upon the other person in telling him what is supposed to be the true facts.
Prabhupāda: But my position is, as soon as I appoint my lawyer, I'll have to depend fully on you. I cannot do anything else. Whatever you advise me, I have to do that.
Dr. Ware: Yes, but whatever you told me depends upon what advice I give to you.
Prabhupāda: That's all right. But, as you say, the mother gives misinformation. Similarly, if you misguide me, that you can do. But I will have to depend on you.
Dr. Ware: But not deliberately. A lot of people don't know that that information is wrong.
Prabhupāda: No. Sometimes it is done deliberately. Sometimes it is done deliberately, because everyone in this material world is imperfect. Therefore there is tendency of cheating. That is one of the qualification of the conditioned soul—he becomes mistaken, he becomes illusioned, he cheats and his senses are imperfect.
Dr. Ware: Well, I'm sorry, I think you're using the word "cheat" in a much broader sense. We would use "cheat" as conscious mistake, as opposed to a person who doesn't realize that what he says doesn't happen to be true.
Prabhupāda: No, no, conscious . . . suppose you think it is right but it is wrong. That is also cheating. Without knowing the thing perfectly well, if you deliver your knowledge to somebody, that's cheating.
Dr. Ware: Well, I think that's being a bit hard. When a person is not . . . if he's tried his best to do something and he doesn't intend to mislead, to call that cheating is a bit hard.
Prabhupāda: No, even if not intend, but if you misguide some way or other without sufficient knowledge, that is also cheating.
Dr. Ware: Well, we would say, using the English language properly, that's a misuse of the word.
Prabhupāda: But, generally, if I'm not in perfect knowledge, if I guide you, that is, according to Vedic version, that is cheating. You must be confident of the knowledge perfectly. Then if you deliver that knowledge, that is right. Just like our position is that we say what Kṛṣṇa says. Kṛṣṇa is God, so we say what Kṛṣṇa says. We don't say anything which does not Kṛṣṇa . . . Kṛṣṇa does not say.
Therefore you are confident that we are delivering the right message. We don't manufacture our own philosophy or words. We simply say: "Kṛṣṇa says, sarva dharmān parityajya mām ekaṁ śaraṇaṁ vraja (BG 18.66). Kṛṣṇa, God, says that, 'You simply surrender unto Me, I take charge of you.' " We are preaching the same philosophy, that you surrender to God and you'll become happy, because God takes charge of you. We don't manufacture our word. That is not cheating.
Dr. Ware: Yes. But this comes back to what you were saying earlier on. You were saying it isn't necessary or sufficient to read the scriptures. Well if, as you just told me, you say what Kṛṣṇa has said, well then if I could find . . .
Prabhupāda: What Kṛṣṇa has said, that is not scripture.
Dr. Ware: No, but if it's written somewhere, I can read that; I don't need anybody else to tell me.
Prabhupāda: That's all right. But if it is accepted by the great ācāryas that He's God, then there is no doubt. If Kṛṣṇa is accepted God by all the ācāryas, bona fide ācāryas, authorities . . .
Śyāmasundara: Well, I think what Prabhupāda is saying is that a spiritual master is requisite in order to transmit knowledge—even though it may be revealed in the scriptures to the student—according to the time and place. Just like someone may be able to read in a book about how to perform a brain operation, but unless there's a master there to transmit that knowledge into reality, it's useless; it can't be performed.
Dr. Ware: That merely means, you might say, if you're going to be very thorough and precise, that the . . . it could be explained in greater detail, but it's easier to do it with a master. But you can learn a foreign language by reading a book, although it's much easier if you're taught.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Just like here is the medicine, diabetic. So I have accepted this medicine through a bona fide doctor. Although it is meant for diabetes, I have not accepted this medicine, neither it is advised that this medicine should be accepted by a bona fide physician, so I cannot see properly whether it is good for me. But when the physician, qualified physician, says: "Yes, it is bona fide. You can use it in this way," that is nice.
Mensa Member: Coming back to your previous point, if he made a mistake and it's the wrong medicine, would you say he cheated you? Is that the point you were getting at?
Dr. Ware: This is what worried me.
Śyāmasundara: Yes, because if he purports to be a physician . . .
Mensa Member: No, he is a physician, and he makes a mistake, a healthy, genuine mistake.
Prabhupāda: Therefore we say we have to receive knowledge from a person who does not commit any mistake. That is our proposition.
Dr. Ware: Well, that would be going like God. If you define it that way, you're . . . (indistinct) . . . aren't you?
Mensa Member: That does seem a bit . . .
Prabhupāda: Therefore I said . . .
Śyāmasundara: This can be proven. This can be tested. If someone's cheating or not cheating can be tested on a factual basis. Similarly, this science can be tested . . .
Prabhupāda: Observation and experiment.
Śyāmasundara: Whether it has effect, a good effect, or it has a bad effect.
Prabhupāda: Yes. So similarly, just like this Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement is coming down from Kṛṣṇa through the chain of disciplic succession. So if it is actually given in the exact definition, that process, it is effective. And it is actually being experienced that it is effective.
Śyāmasundara: Just like this medicine . . .
Dr. Ware: Which may not, unfortunately . . . this is the danger of analogy. This medicine may work in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, and in the hundredth one it could kill the poor chap. Now you can't say that the physician was cheating in prescribing it for the hundredth chap, because he just didn't know.
Mensa Member: (indistinct) . . . on the other hand, the other medicine might have worked.
Dr. Ware: Hmm.
Mensa Member: It is very dangerous. Analogy's awfully dangerous.
Dr. Ware: But then some people have to have a concrete example, or they haven't any . . . (indistinct) . . . it's when you analyze the analogy that you can see it's difficult . . .
Prabhupāda: No, analogy, of course, it is not always the perfect method. Analogy means the greatest number of similar points. That is analogy. Perfection of analogy is there when there is the greater number of similar points. But we give sometimes the analogy as we understand it. But so far our this Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement, there is no need of analogy. It is accepted as truth, and Kṛṣṇa is accepted as the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and whatever He says is truth. There is no mistake, and if we carry that message, there is no mistake.
Dr. Ware: In other words, Kṛṣṇa is the voice of your God, then.
Prabhupāda: Kṛṣṇa is God Himself. That is accepted. We accept Kṛṣṇa, īśvaraḥ paramaḥ kṛṣṇaḥ (Bs. 5.1). Īśvara. Īśvara means the controller. Just like here there are controllers, but here any controller is controlled by another controller. But param īśvara, God means who has no other controller. He's the supreme controller. That is described in the Brahma-saṁhitā: īśvaraḥ paramaḥ kṛṣṇa. He's the supreme controller. Here, any controller, he's controlling . . . just like this physician. He has learned his medical science from another physician, another physician, another physician. So we are not the supreme physician or supreme controller.
Dr. Ware: May I give you an example of the fallacy there, is that Sir Alexander Fleming didn't learn his curative, antibiotics, from any other person; he discovered them by natural scientific methods of observation and inference and experiment.
Prabhupāda: But experimental knowledge of scientific handling must have . . . he have learned from somebody else.
Dr. Ware: That's a different thing.
Prabhupāda: Therefore he has a teacher. You cannot say that . . . or he has taken the techniques of other scientists and he has experimented in the laboratory appliances. That is . . . he cannot say that he has . . . he invented the laboratory appliances.
Dr. Ware: No, but his power of observation was important.
Prabhupāda: That is all right. That is all right.
Dr. Ware: That's in him, and nobody else.
Prabhupāda: But he, he has taken help from other scientists' method.
Śyāmasundara: In other words, everyone operates under a certain set of restrictions, controls, that are not of their own choosing. Everyone is in that category. They may think, "I am the controller of my own destiny," but actually they are being controlled on every side.
Dr. Ware: That's so. But it's only when they break out from that control by, let's say, making an observation or having an intuition that isn't inherent in the system of control in which they've been brought up that they make an advance of any sort. You see, people with . . . I always give this example of Sir Alexander Fleming and Florey and others. People have been trained that dirty petri dishes should be thrown away, because they're moldy, they will interfere with the experiment. This happens time again. Whereas a man suddenly thinks, "I will have a look at this. I'll ignore that." He breaks away from this control.
Mensa Member: It wasn't anything new, simply a rearrangement of current, existing data.
Dr. Ware: Nobody'd ever . . . they were controlled to reject it. This is what so often happens. Perry Mason is a wonderful example of that—a person who always picks out something that's been rejected in his . . . his celebrated works.
Mensa Member: I don't know if Perry Mason is . . .
Dr. Ware: Oh, Perry Mason is a very popular courtroom . . . as they say, or trial lawyer, as they call it in America. A person called Erle Stanley Gardner has written a large number of books . . .
Śyāmasundara: But a person's knowledge in the material world will always be imperfect. No matter how much he may advance in scientific knowledge, he'll never be able to solve the problems of birth, death, disease and old age.
Dr. Ware: Yes. But I mean the Americans, I believe, they would say, "Of course, but so what? You can live without a country." If you start worrying about whether you'll ever be able to comprehend the intellect, you will really not get through the day.
Śyāmasundara: But the goal of life, being to become satisfied with my life, is not meant in that way.
Dr. Ware: Oh, I agree that to be satisfied with life is to cut down your desire for omniscience; to be satisfied that you can only hope to do quite not . . . not . . . not all of the things you'd like to do, to comprehend quite not . . . not all of the things that are possible. If you are content with that, you may be content to play. Otherwise you'll be one of these dreadful people that become paranoics. Because the world only pressures you into . . . (indistinct)
Prabhupāda: Contentment . . . the death is there. If I, somehow or other, make a compromise, that is different thing. But I don't like to die. There is old age. I don't want to be old, but if I make a compromise, that is a different thing. But my desire is not to become old, not to become attacked by disease, not to die. These are my desires. So I can make some compromise, being unable to solve the problems. That is a different thing. But these are the problems. These are the problems.
Dr. Ware: It was once rather well put by some woman who said to Mr. Carlyle, who's in a way of being a philosopher. "You know, Mr. Carlyle, I accept the universe." He said: "Madam, you'd better." This is the beginning of, you might say, reason.
Prabhupāda: There are sentiments, like Cowper said: "England, I love you with all thy fault." That is another thing. That is a compromise.
Dr. Ware: The difficulty is, in any form of discussion like this, it's very fascinating, but it does show the limitations of transmission of feelings and ideas and all those complicated things by a simple verbal process, this is the real problem.
Mensa Member: I agree entirely. Zen immediately comes to mind, where the problem's recognized, immediately acted on, and it's admitted that there's an impossibility of transmission by an individual.
Dr. Ware: This is where you can't get a feeling across by writing a textbook of it. I think . . .
Prabhupāda: No. One thing is that somebody's concluding that to solve this problem—birth, death, old age, disease—is impossibility. That is one school. Another school, if they're following then there is possibility of control over the birth, death, old age and disease. So why not this school, who does not say there is impossible? No, there is possible.
Just like we follow Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Kṛṣṇa says that tyaktvā dehaṁ punar janma naiti mām eti kaunteya (BG 4.9), that, "Anyone who understands Me thoroughly, he, after quitting this body, no more accept this material body but comes to Me." Now, so long I accept this material body these problems are there—birth, death, old age and disease. Then if I don't accept this material body, then these problems are solved immediately.
Dr. Ware: This is what they call "solution by denial."
Prabhupāda: It is not called solution. It is a fact, because it is followed . . . then you have come to the original position, to follow the mahājanas. Mahājano yena gataḥ sa panthāḥ (CC Madhya 17.186). Our thought is guided by that mahājana. We accept the mahājanas, the great personalities who have achieved success. We follow.
Dr. Ware: "Let us now praise famous men and our fathers who beget us," as they oddly enough seem always to be prize-giving girls school. But I've never been able to understand why.
Śyāmasundara: But the whole idea is that these personalities have to be in a living form, not just in the past. But they live in the form of a spiritual master who's there to guide us personally—not just praise someone in the past. Unless this process is transmitted in a human form personally, it's not . . .
Prabhupāda: That is the process in the material world also. You are lawyer because you have studied laws under some big lawyer. So the process is coming.
Dr. Ware: I assure you, Swami, that the reverse was true. I went to Oxford. I sat at the feet, as we would put it, of one of the most tiresome men I ever met in my life. He gave me an extraordinary distaste for the law. Any law I've learnt has had to be learned the hard way by, you know, looking at statutes, looking at cases. So I regret to say that I have my own personal experiences . . .
Prabhupāda: That is, that is of course later on; in the beginning you are a student of a lawyer.
Mensa Member: That's used for analogy, because some people have gone on . . . (indistinct) . . . no matter who they are.
Dr. Ware: Yah. Yah. Well this is the only thing, "Seek and ye shall find, or be still and ye shall know." I think this is the essential feature that you've been saying is that, really, this grace comes to anybody if they're only willing to expect it. It's inherently there.
Mensa Member: With respect . . . (indistinct) . . . among many other people, prove that it's absolutely impossible to establish a rational, umm, a rational grounding for religion. In other words, trying to logically prove axioms is logically impossible.
Dr. Ware: Yes . . . (indistinct) . . . not necessary.
Śyāmasundara: But by verbalizing this philosophy of the Absolute, it trains the student in accepting the inexperience . . . that which is only experienced, by leading them to that point. But certainly we have to have some verbal confirmation of this truth.
Dr. Ware: Well some people, oddly enough, don't need it. Some very simple people can have a very true spiritual life without ever needing to verbalize it, usually because they had—this is where I think it's perfectly correct—they have followed some father figure or mother figure, and you know, absorbed . . .
Śyāmasundara: Just like my child.
Dr. Ware: Yes.
Śyāmasundara: She's to that point without having any rational knowledge.
Mensa Member: There's some . . . (indistinct) . . . simple people also . . . (indistinct) . . . people like Blake, for example, or Buddha . . . (indistinct) . . . simple person. It's not this sort of faith, only childlike faith—it's often found in simple people.
Dr. Ware: It certainly is easier for them, though. It's easier for the simple person, because he doesn't have all these mental, complicated doubts and, you know, arguments with himself.
Mensa Member: Yes.
Śyāmasundara: It's said that as one progresses more and more in spiritual life he becomes simpler and more innocent. But in the beginning he may have had to comprehend it on some verbal level in order to . . . (indistinct)
Dr. Ware: I often used to say to my students that I've got to remember that if anything in life to realize the difference between simple and complicated, which is objective, and easy and difficult, which is subjective. In other words, sometimes a simple thing may be terribly difficult for a person to get hold of, whereas complicated things people find quite easy.
Prabhupāda: So your student has to follow your instruction. That means accepts authority.
Dr. Ware: But even so, even if he's working something out for himself, it has that same . . . to some people it comes terribly easily.
Prabhupāda: No. No. To accept authority does not mean one should be blind. But the real source of knowledge comes from authority.
Dr. Ware: You then reject the idea of a fear of God.
Prabhupāda: No, I don't reject. The thing is that perfect knowledge is received from the authority which . . . beyond the material defects.
Dr. Ware: No, what I mean is, fear is not necessary for learning from an authoritarian source.
Prabhupāda: No, authority must be perfect. Then otherwise the knowledge is not perfect.
Śyāmasundara: He's saying that you don't need to necessarily have to fear the authority before you accept him.
Prabhupāda: There's no question of fearing. There's no question of fearing.
Dr. Ware: That's what I thought. You don't acce . . . that doesn't come in at all.
Prabhupāda: No. No. It is out of love, out of affection, the reciprocation.
Dr. Ware: Well, that's what I think very often, that it is fear that prevents people from accepting.
Prabhupāda: No. No. Why?
Mensa Member: That's true.
Śyāmasundara: He said that sometimes someone may fear authority. That prevents them.
Prabhupāda: Of course, when you accept the . . . that is not fear; that is obedience, respect. Respect. That's not fear. Just like my students—they are not fearful of me. Because I came from India, so what business they have got to be afraid of me? Neither I'm very . . . a greater man, but they receive the philosophy, they understand the philosophy; therefore they have got respect for me. The teacher should be offered the due respect. That is not fear. That is not out of fear; it's out of love.
Dr. Ware: I was saying that fear prevents it.
Prabhupāda: No. There's no prevention. There's no fear, because they are quite at liberty to ask me question, and they're asking and the answer is there. I receive so many letters daily. So there's no . . . they are not afraid of me. But, out of affection, they offer respect.
Dr. Ware: May I make one strange statement that I think it is rather true of the present world? People are always afraid of fear and love. It's almost as though it's something rather sissy or, you know, to get so mixed up with sentimentality.
Mensa Member: I don't know what it is rather than fear.
Dr. Ware: Well, I mean . . . if you don't know . . . if I were afraid of you because of absolute knowledge or . . .
Mensa Member: Yah.
Dr. Ware: . . . terrified of the unknown.
Mensa Member: That's very true. That's why plan children and such like and things like the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement who not only profess . . . (indistinct) . . . scare into lots of people.
Prabhupāda: Just like the child is afraid of the father. There is affection. "My father is displeased if I do . . . Father has said, 'Don't touch this,' so I don't touch. My father has . . ." So that fear and affection, both is there. It is not simply that he is afraid of his father, but the affection is there. So to become obedient to the authority, there is a tinge of fear also, but that is based on affection. That is not actually . . .
Śyāmasundara: They were saying also that in this age, particularly now, there is a great fear of loving someone or something on the part of the large population. They think that by . . .
Prabhupāda: There is no real love. There is expectation of being frustrated in love.
Dr. Ware: Rebuffed.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Rebuffed. So therefore they're . . .
Dr. Ware: Terrified, actually.
Prabhupāda: So because everything in this material world is perverted reflection, therefore we sometimes love somebody and we become frustrated. So therefore others see that, "This man has loved that girl and he's now frustrated. Oh, why shall I love?" That is due to frustration. But there is a perfectional stage. There is a perfectional stage, therefore we say it is perverted reflection. Just like our Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa—that is the perfectional stage of love.
Rādhārāṇī is a young girl and Kṛṣṇa is a young boy. There is love. So originally this love between young boy and girl is there, but that is in perfect stage. Here, in this material world, the same thing is pervertedly reflected. Therefore it is imperfect. So we have come to the perfectional stage, not be afraid and give it up—frustration. But love is there. But there is a perfectional stage of love. We have to learn that.
Dr. Ware: The Greeks call it agape, as opposed to the old, other form of eros.
Śyāmasundara: Yes. Lust and . . . eros, lust. Agape is pure love, transcendental love.
Prabhupāda: Yes. There is. This Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement means to bring everything to the perfectional stage. The others, they're, out of frustration, they want to stop all activity. That is voidism—to stop all this activity. Buddha philosophy is more or less based on this voidism: make everything null and void—no more activities, no more love.
We don't say. Just like you cannot see properly because our eyes are diseased. To cure the disease, and then you see properly. And other says, "All right, pluck it out. The disease in the eye, take away." That is not very good proposition. We say that make treatment to make the eyes to see properly. Remedy problem.
Our proposition is, sarvopādhi vinirmuktaṁ tat-paratvena (CC Madhya 19.170). We simply cleanse the process. The seeing process we cleanse. We don't pluck out the eyes out of frustration: don't see; make everything void. No. We don't say that, because there is no void; it is simply frustration. There is variety, nice variety, spiritual variety. We are bringing people to that position.
Dr. Ware: I must say that's very interesting.
Mensa Member: Can I ask one last question? The Bhagavad-gītā—do you accept that as historically . . . an historical fact?
Prabhupāda: Truth is historical fact is.
Śyāmasundara: Bhagavad-gītā—did it take place? There was a battlefield of Kurukṣetra.
Prabhupāda: Yes. It is historical. Mahābhārata. Mahābhārata means the history of Greater India. Greater India. Mahābhārata.
Dr. Ware: Mahābhārata.
Prabhupāda: This Mahābhārata means . . . mahā means greater. Formerly, five thousand years ago, the whole planet was called Bhārata, India. India it is now called. Actually the name is Bhārata. Bhārata is the name given after the reign of Mahārāja . . . one King Bharata. He was the ruler, emperor, of the whole world. After his name this planet is called Bhārata, this whole planet.
Mahābhārata. Mahābhārata is Greater India or Greater Bhārata. The headquarter was in India, but it was greater, according to Mahābhārata history, and this Bhagavad-gītā is given there in the Mahābhārata. Therefore it is history. And actually it is historical, because the battlefield is still existing . . .
Dr. Ware: In the mind . . .
Śyāmasundara: No, it's there, Kurukṣetra.
Prabhupāda: Kurukṣetra, battlefield.
Dr. Ware: Oh, I'm sorry, that's the place . . . (indistinct) . . . I thought you meant the battle was still on.
Prabhupāda: No. Battlefield, where the battle was fought, took place, that is still there. There is a railway station, Kurukṣetra. And that Kurukṣetra is still dharmakṣetra, a religious place. People go for pilgrimage, and in the Vedas also it is stated that kuru-kṣetre dharma . . . (indistinct) . . . you perform religious rituals in Kurukṣetra. Therefore in the Bhagavad-gītā it is said, dharma-kṣetre kuru-kṣetre (BG 1.1). It is fact, historical fact. It is not imagination. But many commentators have taken as imagination, therefore they are misled. It is historical.
Mensa Member: Well, will you . . . can you take the central road, Dr. Ware?
Dr. Ware: I would not need a road if I took it . . . (indistinct) . . . you have been very generous with your time
Śyāmasundara: You may ask more questions if you like.
Dr. Ware: Well, I'm sure there are other people who, I mean to say, wanted to have the opportunity discussing matters.
Mensa Member: Next time the Swami's in England, perhaps we can . . . Mensa members can . . . (indistinct) . . . in comparative religion could be . . .
Dr. Ware: Indeed, I think that would be very . . . and also it would be very interesting if you would care to take our test.
Śyāmasundara: Test?
Dr. Ware: Yes. The entrance qualification.
Śyāmasundara: (laughs) What kind of questions? Is it scientific?
Dr. Ware: No. Just simple intelligence, that's all.
Mensa Member: (indistinct) . . . an I.Q. test.
Dr. Ware: . . . that's all. Call it test, but it's something; we've got nothing better at the moment.
Prabhupāda: We think our activities above intelligence. Spiritual. Spiritual.
Dr. Ware: That's quite different.
Prabhupāda: Because above the mind . . . above the body there is mind; above the mind there is intelligence, and above the intelligence there is soul, and above the soul there is God. So we are talking of relationship between God and the soul. It is above body, mind and intelligence.
Dr. Ware: That's what interests me. One has this hierarchical or superior attitude even in the statement you've just made, that things, you know, about more contained which is what I feel is easier.
Prabhupāda: Because we take from God there is no mistake. There's no mistake. Otherwise He cannot be God.
Dr. Ware: I mean this is just unnecessary. It is just tautological. But since this is in your definition of God, you don't have to go any farther.
Prabhupāda: But God means He's above mistake,
Dr. Ware: Yes.
Prabhupāda: . . . above the illusion, above cheating, above imperfection. This is God.
Śyāmasundara: There's a central premise that everything is simultaneously one and different. Just like flowers—there are many flowers, roses, but within the flowers there is variety.
Mensa Member: But still it raises the danger of another . . . (indistinct) . . . it really does. This is a very . . . (indistinct) . . . you're trying to make, but it's impossible to talk about physics in the language of chemistry. It's impossible. So when . . .
Śyāmasundara: So when he says there's a gradation, that we see gradation, that the soul is higher than the body, this is also . . . (indistinct)
Prabhupāda: Soul is higher than the body, mind and intelligence.
Dr. Ware: Yes. But that is only because we've learned, I think, when we were small to look up to higher people . . .
Mensa Member: (indistinct) . . . on each side of them and in the middle, on the other side, before and after . . .
Dr. Ware: This is the . . . you see, unconsciously you grow up with all these sort of prejudices, which are necessary. You've got to have some sort of time scale, you've got to have some sort of measuring scale, and therefore you tend to look up, and therefore you think highly of more important . . . (indistinct) . . . you talk about high position, you don't think of chaps sitting on the fence . . .
Śyāmasundara: Inherently you'll find the rose is better than the daisy.
Dr. Ware: No. Some people might prefer the daisy.
Śyāmasundara: But the qualities are there, inherent in the rose, which are preferable to those of the daisy.
Dr. Ware: Why? Tell me why. I mean, you haven't given me any reason for saying it is better.
Prabhupāda: What is that?
Śyāmasundara: The rose has nice scent. It appears . . .
Prabhupāda: . . . beautiful.
Śyāmasundara: . . . beautiful.
Mensa Member: (indistinct) . . . be subjective . . . (indistinct)
Dr. Ware: And you see, a lot of people would like a red rose, because that has a symbolism to it. Why have a yellow rose? It must have a sort of subjective reaction. It has nothing to do with the fact that it's got a chromatic wavelength.
Prabhupāda: So that is a cause. That means there is a cause. We have to accept the cause. So that cause, we go further till we find out the cause of all causes.
Dr. Ware: You see, what worries me, Swami, is that there is two ways of making sure you live, each containing this necessity of eating. Now, some people eat . . . (indistinct) . . . they digest it, they live perfectly healthily. They know nothing about carbohydrates, proteins and fats. They know nothing about saliva. They know nothing about enzymes or digestion, and they live quite satisfactory lives.
Other people start worrying about whether they've got the right amount of calories, the right amount of vitamins, whether they're taking enough water with the meal or not. One wonders that if you're starting to worry about that, it means somehow you're less perfect than the person who's able to digest quite happily without the knowledge.
Prabhupāda: Well, if you say like that, the majority of living entities, they are eating without this knowledge of enzyme and other things. So if you take votes, the votes are greater. Just like human being, a few human beings are interested in analyzing this enzyme. And the human beings are very small quantity. There are 8,400,000 species of life. They're eating with a natural way, and they're quite healthy.
Mensa Member: Knowledge of the process is comparatively important. If you want to enjoy it more you don't have to know about enzymes and proteins, you have to know about the right sort of wine and the . . .
Śyāmasundara: Enjoyment is the standard.
Dr. Ware: And there, what worries me, I was going a stage further, you do tend to find that people who want to understand about digestion are those whose stomachs are not very good.
Prabhupāda: Another thing is . . . just like grass, straw. The cows are eating straw and giving the most vitaminous food, milk, full of vitamin A and D. But if you scientifically say that there is, I mean to say, vitamins in grass and straw, then you eat straw and produce. Vitamins is there. Why it is so? Your analysis of enzyme and vitamin, how you can say milk . . .
(break) . . . you'll die. Why this law is there? The cow is producing most vitaminous food, milk, by simply eating dry grass and straw.
Dr. Ware: No, with respect, Swami, no. By simply imbibing at the same time bacteria which flourish in its intestines and are necessary for it to be able to metabolize this straw. We couldn't metabolize straw . . .
Prabhupāda: But you're lacking that bacteria. You're lacking that bacteria. The bacteria which the cows have, you haven't got.
Dr. Ware: We've got them, but we kill them.
Mensa Member: . . . another analogy.
Dr. Ware: Exactly. This is the trouble. It's unwise . . . if you could accept the concept as a whole, there's no need to try and give an analogy.
Mensa Member: I don't accept your, um . . . the point you were making when you began that analogy, I think, was that people that do look for spiritual knowledge, in quotes, um, it would appear there was something wrong with them.
Dr. Ware: No, no, not always. I say there are some people who obviously . . . if they have to look for it, they haven't got it. The people who've got it don't need to look for it.
Mensa Member: Yeah. Resorting to the accursed thing again, some people go to the doctor that are sick and some people aren't sick, are hypochondriacs.
Śyāmasundara: It's just like if someone points out to you, for instance, that this material world is based upon sense gratification and everyone is striving to gratify the impulse of their senses, that's a verbalization of a truth which is not apparent in any other way, or it's very difficult to find out in any other way.
So suddenly that knowledge awakens one to a higher desire, to attain something higher. So that is the point of verbalization of these things. If we are silent, how will someone be awakened to that truth, that simply by saying this material world spins upon this principle of material sense gratification. That's a truth that you can easily verbalize.
Dr. Ware: Well, I think there's a double difference always with these things between the subject and the object. If, in other words, it's objectively necessary to gratify the senses, if you like. In other words, you've got to have diets and things like that, and you've got to breathe, but you can also get a subjective pleasure out of doing that which is different from just doing it automatically. Sometimes we know when we're busy, we just shovel our food down. We don't really have any gratification out of it. We just ha . . .
Śyāmasundara: Yes. There are four basic principles that Prabhupāda mentioned—eating, sleeping, mating and defending—which are natural for the animals or to the humans. But man is using his propensity, his conscious propensity, to simply enjoy material nature on a more advanced level: to eat better, to sleep more, to have better sex life and so on. It still boils down to that. Everyone is seeking sense pleasure.
Prabhupāda: Such propensities are there in animals. Then what makes the difference between animal and man?
Dr. Ware: Animals, as far as I know, don't conduct scientific research.
Śyāmasundara: What is the point of scientific research? That's the question.
Dr. Ware: Because of this feeling of wanting to know.
Mensa Member: I wonder what . . . (indistinct)
Dr. Ware: No, no, they've made the observation. I don't think they have the power to . . .
Śyāmasundara: Why do scientists make their analysis, and what are the advancements of science used for? What can man use them for?
Dr. Ware: Largely, a Freudian would say, to compensate their feeling of inadequacy, of their being not sufficiently treated with empathy and love when they were young.
Śyāmasundara: Objectively, seeing is just to gratify the senses.
Dr. Ware: Well, Freud said . . . of course, he's the great chap on gratification, and that's where Jung sensibly said: "Ah, that's not sufficient. You've got to have the spiritual side of life as well." He comprises it. Jung got the advantage of being, you might say, a higher stage, to use the words of the Swami, because he's able to contain the lower things like . . .
Prabhupāda: The conclusion comes in this way, that to remain animals, scientific animals, that's all. The propensities are the same, sense gratification, but the man is trying to make it scientific. That means to remain animal but become scientific, that's all—scientific animal.
Dr. Ware: But at the same time he's a spiritual animal. It's interesting to find that in this twentieth century, science is rather replacing the spirituality. You know, people in the past gave religion an enormous importance, and science was practically unknown. Now they're going the other way around.
Prabhupāda: That scientific spirituality, that is advancement more than the animals. Otherwise, if you simply remain on the . . . (indistinct) . . . eating, sleeping, mating and defending scientifically, you remain animal. But when that scientific research goes to the spiritual thing, that is special prerogative of the human.
Śyāmasundara: This replacement by science of religion has proven inadequate also in the twentieth century, because how can it satisfy ultimately the questions?
Dr. Ware: In the same way, how can you satisfy a person's lack of emotional content in his job by giving him more money? Half of the trouble starts with the jobs. They have no emotive content now because there's no rapport between them and their boss. They have practically no intellectual interest because they have a routine job in a factory. And you know they are really deprived in this sad way.
Mensa Member: Then what worries lots of people about lots of religions is the . . . (indistinct) . . . for example of pointing a finger at the moon and choosing the finger with the moon.
Dr. Ware: One of the difficulties, and I think this is true when I was saying simple people, using that in its broader sense, some people cannot get anything at all unless they have a little picture. You know, it helps them; not like the dear old lady who found . . .
Prabhupāda: That we give, the picture "Here is God."
Śyāmasundara: Just like Christ. He came to speak with a very ignorant class of men. He was forced to speak in parables and stories.
Dr. Ware: Ah, yes. Now parable is better than analogy. An analogy is an intellectual thing, whereas a parable is a human thing. It's got a warmth in it. It's in three dimensions, not a cross-section. And he was, of course, awfully clever at choosing them.
Mensa Member: I don't think your friend Christmas Humphreys will agree with either of those statements.
Dr. Ware: Knowing him very well, I don't . . . one would be surprised at . . . (indistinct) . . . he would be perfectly happy to feel that I was disagreeing with him. I think he confuses himself with Kṛṣṇa at times.
Mensa Member: Well, is that absolutely . . . (indistinct) . . .?
Śyāmasundara: The Buddhist thinks that everyone is God?
Prabhupāda: In Buddhist theory there is no acceptance of God. There is simply to diminish, or to nullify, the sense of pains and pleasure. That is called nirvāṇa.
Dr. Ware: The atheist is the person who worries most about God. I mean, he really . . . God must exist, but he tries to deny it all. Rather like I had a lecturer at Oxford who wasn't interested in women. He was a misogynist. He talked, you know, against women, and he spent all his time telling you that he wasn't interested in women. He thought about nothing but women and the fact that he wasn't interested in them. His lectures were full of it. It was pathetic.
Śyāmasundara: Just like Kaṁsa!
Prabhupāda: Hiraṇyakaśipu. Gold and women.
Śyāmasundara: Kaṁsa hated Kṛṣṇa, and he wanted to kill Him, but all he could think about was Kṛṣṇa. So somehow or other it boils down that one somehow has to become Kṛṣṇa conscious under some process.
Dr. Ware: Even other people, not using that name.
Śyāmasundara: (indistinct) . . . God consciousness.
Dr. Ware: That's what I say Unitarians apparently by having so much of this in their . . . (indistinct) . . . in quite a different way from a different philosophy. And, of course, you begin to feel that they must be very . . . (indistinct) . . . because they were so persecuted. If a person is no real menace to you, you don't have to persecute him. Both Socrates and Christ are perfect examples of that.
Prabhupāda: Now we are . . . (indistinct) . . . we have to speak something.
Dr. Ware: I think that's been most fascinating, Swami. Very kind of you, indeed.
Prabhupāda: Thank you.
Dr. Ware: And we would welcome you if you would just comply with our simple requirements. We don't have as one of our requirements the acceptance of anything other than the task of spending, about, at the maximum, an hour and a half doing some simple problems. It's an open invitation.
Śyāmasundara: To one of your meetings.
Dr. Ware: Oh, no, to the test for the qualification.
Śyāmasundara: Oh, a test. They have a test for entry into their Society, and they want to know if you can take this test.
Prabhupāda: So why not you come to our Society and we test you?
Dr. Ware: We test something different, you see.
Prabhupāda: We also test different.
Dr. Ware: That's right, yes, quite right.
Prabhupāda: As you have process of test, we have also process of test.
Dr. Ware: And ours is just as universal.
Prabhupāda: Our process of test is how far he is advanced in God consciousness. That is our test. Harāv abhaktasya kuto mahad-guṇāḥ. It is said, yasyāsti bhaktir bhagavaty akiñcanā (SB 5.18.12). If one has developed God consciousness, all good qualities must develop in them. All good qualities.
Harāv abhaktasya kuto mahad-guṇāḥ. And one who has not developed Kṛṣṇa consciousness, or God consciousness, he cannot have any good qualities, because his business is mental speculation, mano-rathenāsati dhāvato bahiḥ. By simply mental speculation, he'll be fixed up in this material world.
Dr. Ware: Mental speculation alone is sterile.
Prabhupāda: Mental speculation, mano-rathena. Ratha means chariot, one who is driving on the chariot of mind, mano-rathena. The chariot of mind will take him . . . will fix him only on material conditions. So long one remains in the material conditions of life, he cannot have any good qualifications. One has to transcend this material platform and come to the spiritual platform. Then his natural good qualities will come out automatically.
Dr. Ware: This, of course, is the basis, too, of real . . .
Prabhupāda: For example, for example, our boys, Europeans, American boys, they were addicted with illicit sex life. They were addicted for meat-eating. They were addicted drinking. They were addicted to gambling. Now they've given up everything. There is no illicit sex in our society. There is no gambling. There is no meat-eating. There is not even smoking, or taking . . . drinking tea. How it is possible? They were addicted to all these things from beginning of their life. Now they have given up. If you take this as good qualities, then they have already developed, besides others. Why? Because due to Kṛṣṇa consciousness.
Sometimes in America the authorities, they are surprised. They want to consult us on that, "How you people have given up this (MW - entire) LSD?" They are spending so much money to stop this bad habit. "How it is that your members used to . . . (indistinct) . . .?" Not only LSD, all kinds of intoxications. So if you take it as a good quality, that good quality is developing due to Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Therefore this is a fact: one who has no Kṛṣṇa consciousness, or good consciousness, he may go on speculating, but he'll never come to the platform of goodness. That is our test.
Dr. Ware: That is most impressive, that giving up those things which are really . . . if they were inessentials it would be good to give them up, but since they are harmful, it's even more beneficial. How that can be achieved in the modern world is quite a remarkable feat.
Mensa Member: Would you say that you agree with the Swami the . . . some of the bases of religion are essential, are therapeutically useful, valid?
Dr. Ware: I think, again, it depends upon the person. I should say to lots of people they are essential, or you might even go farther, as Jung would say, that to everybody they are essential, but they mean something different to different types of people from the very . . . (indistinct) . . . and from the long hair to the very abstract. But the people who lack it do seem to lack. It's rather like they lack a gyroscope. They've got no stability. They just sort of wobble all over the place.
Mensa Member: No, they don't. One . . . (indistinct) . . . scientific truth is this works.
Dr. Ware: I would like to put my own view, is that I believe very much in the Christian ethics, and I could believe in Kṛṣṇa ethics, or, if I might say. But I could also believe in that without the need to believe in Kṛṣṇa or God. Now whether that's a delusion on my part, and I really do believe deep down inside me, and I don't know . . .
Śyāmasundara: But the idea is how to transform that belief into practical action. That's the art.
Dr. Ware: But some people need the bridge of the Godhead to achieve it. Other people do it abstractly.
Śyāmasundara: Today we went to a service, a Christian service, the first one I've been to in years, and in this Baptist church, we walked in there were eleven old ladies sitting in the pews. And outside I could hear the roar of traffic and people. I began to think how much the Christian Church has lost track or lost pull of this ability to be able to guide people to the practical application of moral and spiritual principles, so much so that no one was interested even to come in . . .
Prabhupāda: One priest in Boston, he issued leaflet regretting that these boys—he saw our students—he appreciated that, "These boys are so much after God, and they're our boys. We could not give them." Actually the same boy was, one year or two years ago, he was not going to church, he had no interest in God consciousness, but now this same boy is mad after God. And he's twenty-four hours in God consciousness. They're chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra twenty-four hours. How they have become so . . .
Mensa Member: The Swami made a good point when I talked to him the other day that some of the American churches are packed. There's a great swing towards religion in America, and they're getting a lot of humbug, you know, which is, just one of those . . . I think I disagree with you that today theology has lost its status with the . . . (indistinct) . . . of science, but there seems to be a swing, in my little world, towards spiritual things.
Dr. Ware: Oh, I'm glad to hear that because, as I say, one's been watching the swing the other way. Coming back to your point, the other vital thing, we said that earlier on, that we still don't know, in other words, in order to get spiritual qualities you've got to have silence. Correspondingly, in the modern world we have this neurotic disease, the desire for noise. These people can't even do a job without having a transistor set on. There's something psychopathic about this.
Mensa Member: It can be used though, can't it? The Kṛṣṇa people use it, the concept of using the word "Kṛṣṇa" . . . (indistinct) . . . the ears, the most subtle of the senses . . .
Dr. Ware: Yes, but this "boop-a-doop" noise they have, the language stops you from doing your work properly.
Śyāmasundara: A material noise.
Dr. Ware: Noise, background noise, wireless . . .
Śyāmasundara: But if a person is at our temple and he can hear noise coming . . . it's always there, twenty-four hours a day, because that propensity is there in this age. We should be taking advantage of it.
Dr. Ware: But if I might say, you're not taking advantage of it now, you're merely going back to what has always been the cream of any form of sensation, and that's music. Plato's time, the old idea of the music of the spheres. Music is the food of love. I mean it's, to my mind it's the most wonderful sound.
Śyāmasundara: In Revelations, I don't remember the exact verse, "Strike the . . . (indistinct)"
Mensa Member: The only spiritual sensation for many people, really, it's from music.
Śyāmasundara: Silence is defined in Bhagavad-gītā as speaking about Kṛṣṇa, or hearing Kṛṣṇa's name. That is silence.
Dr. Ware: Well, if you're silent you can hear things, but if you're making noise, you know, the message doesn't come through, and if somebody else is making a noise, you've got an excuse for not getting the message. I think a lot of people again are afraid of getting the message. So with the noise they can say: "Of course, I didn't hear it, so you mustn't blame me."
Now that sort of cheating, I think, is a very bad one. That's not what I call positive cheating. That cheating yourself which is even more dangerous than . . . if you cheat the other chap, if he's clever enough he can avoid the effect of it, but if you cheat yourself, you know you might try and pull yourself up by your own bootstraps . . . (indistinct) . . . you can't get out of it.
Śyāmasundara: I believe that the . . . (indistinct) . . . spread this philosophy as much as possible in this age because it's been lost by so much noise. . . . (indistinct) . . . in some people. Our message is getting through, though.
Dr. Ware: The fact that it can be heard sometimes even above the noise . . .
Prabhupāda: One noise makes liberation, one noise makes bondage. Noise must be there.
Dr. Ware: But we do have in this modern world a neurotic desire for noise and novelty. The two things together, they . . .
Śyāmasundara: There again, novelty and noise, they're sense gratification. We want to gratify the senses.
Dr. Ware: Well, don't you think it's also possible too, mind you, that you only have to have novelty because you are not being satisfied.
Śyāmasundara: Yes.
Dr. Ware: In other words, what's happening is you're not satisfied, so you have to have something to do.
Śyāmasundara: Yes. The senses can never be gratified, but always the drive is there to gratify them.
Dr. Ware: If you go to a good play or see a good film or hear some good music, you feel satisfied and you don't have to flash back next night because you've seen it before. You have a feeling that, you know . . .
Śyāmasundara: Even that, a good play or a good music, is not very long lasting. When you come out of the theater you're hungry. When your hunger is satisfied, then you want some sex life. Then you want to drive home fast. There's always something there to agitate the material senses.
Dr. Ware: The trouble is, aren't you going to lead yourself into this difficulty: if you are spiritually satisfied, you would sit down and do nothing. And if everybody were doing that, we should be rather back to where we started rather than have enough food or music or transport.
Prabhupāda: That is for the voidist, not for the spiritualist. The spiritual life there is enough activities for even scientists. That they do not know. They mean spiritual life mean void. That is negation of the present activities only, negative idea. But actually, when you stop material activities your real activity begins. That is spiritual life. The spirit, spirit soul, is active. You cannot stop it. You cannot stop it. Now it is acting through these coverings of material, matter, therefore it is imperfect activities. But if the activity is uncovered by material things, that is real activity.
Mensa Member: But aren't desires biological in cause?
Dr. Ware: They're necessary.
Mensa Member: Yes, but they're biologically necessary rather than spiritually necessary.
Dr. Ware: Well, may I say, let's go farther, that when you say biologically necessary, is it necessary for you to be alive? What scientific . . .
Śyāmasundara: Prabhupāda has told us that even in the spiritual world there is desire to have the senses enjoy. Isn't that so?
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Dr. Ware: But I think you need . . . I agree, I would say you need both. I want spiritual life, material life.
Mensa Member: (indistinct) . . . spiritual thing, I mean, isn't it like people talking about China or New York . . . (indistinct) . . . about it, in fact it might even be a little . . . (indistinct)
Dr. Ware: Well, I think to each person his picture is different, too.
Śyāmasundara: The idea there is that in spiritual activity everything is seen in relationship to God, and if you serve God with your every activity . . .
Prabhupāda: Yes. The same example, just like this finger is part and parcel of body. So long it is attached with the body it has got activities. You cut it from my body, there's no activity.
Dr. Ware: Yes, but you've still got a body.
Prabhupāda: Eh?
Dr. Ware: You've still got a body, and you've still got some other fingers left.
Prabhupāda: No, you can call it a finger, but it will not act as finger; it will act . . . (indistinct)
Dr. Ware: No, but the others will. I don't see the need for your analogy.
Śyāmasundara: The God is there and we are His servants.
Prabhupāda: If we are part and parcel of God, then we must be active in serving God. That is my analogy.
Dr. Ware: But I don't see the need for analogy. That statement is sufficient.
Prabhupāda: Why not? Why not? There must be a need. If you think, if you know that you're part and parcel of God, then you must act for God.
Dr. Ware: You see, I would go the other way round and say that as long as I know that God is part and parcel . . .
Prabhupāda: You cannot . . . (indistinct) . . . God is the spirit and you are spirit. Therefore you have to take lessons from God. In the Bhagavad-gītā it is stated there, mamaivāṁśo jīva-bhuta (BG 15.7) that, "These living entities they are My part and parcels." So, because part and parcel of God, therefore the part and parcel must be active on account of God. That is real life. Why stop activity? That is real life.
Dr. Ware: I fear, Swami, if I may say so, without disrespect, that in some ways you're preaching to the converted, and you only make it more muddled to me by giving analogies. Don't you feel that at times?
Mensa Member: Yeah, I think the Swami's used to . . . probably used to talking to people that need this . . .
Śyāmasundara: Never mind the method.
Prabhupāda: When there is a truth spoken by God that, "Living entities are My part and parcel, mamaiva," why shall I not give the analogy? How do part and parcel acts? I must give analogy. Otherwise how they can understand?
Dr. Ware: It's like some people . . .
Prabhupāda: For understanding, analogy must be there. Analogy is created for understanding.
Dr. Ware: But not in the . . . (indistinct) . . . example. A lot of people try and give an analogy to explain entropy. Now, of course . . .
Prabhupāda: Now I do not know what other people give analogy, but my business is that we take it from Bhagavad-gītā that living entities are part and parcel of God. Therefore, just like this part and parcel of my body is active in relationship with this body, but if it is cut off from the body, it is no more active. Similarly, those who are not active in rendering service to God, they're as dead as this finger cut off from the body.
So they have to be awakened to that consciousness. Just like a tree, you cut it, it has no consciousness to protest. But even an ant, a small ant, because it has developed consciousness, you try to kill it, it will protest. Therefore the more consciousness you develop, you become active. That is nature's law. That is nature's law. Developed consciousness does not mean to become dead.
Dr. Ware: This is what I've said earlier on, that the whole of the . . .
Prabhupāda: Yes. So therefore if one comes to God consciousness, you becomes more active.
Dr. Ware: The whole evolution, I think I may have said it before you came in, the whole evolution to the human mind is to become more and more in conscious control.
Prabhupāda: So mind, mind, activities of mind, activities of intelligence and activities of spirit, the spiritual activities more greater than the mind's mental activities.
Śyāmasundara: The other day we were discussing Socrates. And Socrates' method was to bring the self under control by inspecting oneself, "Know thyself," and thereby be able to lead a moral life with self-respect and self-control. But Prabhupāda was saying that this is not an ordinary thing. Not many men can achieve this rational control. So by simply cultivating spirit, nourishing spiritual life, any man can control his senses.
Prabhupāda: Just like, somebody, there is a child, a child is active, but his frivolous activities, or mischievous activities, have to stop when he's active in taking education. The same child, his energy for becoming active is transferred for taking education. He's no more acting mischievously, breaking this, doing this, doing that.
The activity is there. Now that is purified. Similarly, spiritual life means the spiritual activity, that is purified activity. These boys, they have given up drinking, meat-eating. That does not mean they stop eating. They're eating better things. Therefore they have given up the nonsense eating. So that is spiritual life. Spiritual life means activity purified.
Śyāmasundara: Rationally, I was thought to be intelligent. I went to college, got so many degrees, but I could not in the least control my senses and control my mind, even though I tried. I studied philosophy so hard. But by simply chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa and coming to the platform of service for God, all my activities became dovetailed in one direction so that the other things were automatically brought under control as a result.
Prabhupāda: Paraṁ dṛṣṭvā nivartate (BG 2.59). The exact word is there, that if one gets good engagement, he can gives up bad engagement. But he cannot make it inactive. That is not possible, because soul is active. It is living. How he can make it inactive? That is not possible. Nirvāṇa means stop nonsense, but take to spiritual life. That is next, athāto brahma jijñāsā. Nirvāṇa does not mean to stop activities; to stop nonsense activities. Come to the real activity.
Dr. Ware: Well aṇiman, the word many people use for the soul, also means of course, life . . . (indistinct) . . . being animate. The two are synonymous.
Śyāmasundara: Just like you were saying a while ago that if you were in God consciousness, you need not wear a robe. That's also our philosophy. It's very practical. But your consciousness would be always serving Kṛṣṇa, always serving God, in whatever status of life. It isn't necessary to put on a robe first and then God consciousness.
Dr. Ware: But it helps some people.
Mensa Member: The soul is a very interesting concept, the soul as well, the fact that the soul is quantifiable, that it exists in a smaller part in the larger animals, and a higher part in a higher animals.
Śyāmasundara: No. It's the same size in all entities.
Mensa Member: Oh, it is, is it? But when we reach a point when we don't know whether there are living things or not, you know, the amino acids, and things like that or . . .
Dr. Ware: Well, I would take up that straight away, fundamentally, that it's perfectly correct to say it's the same size every . . . (indistinct) . . . has no size.
Prabhupāda: No. It has size. We cannot measure it.
Dr. Ware: That's what I mean. Therefore the word "size" is a misconception.
Prabhupāda: But that is not a scientific statement. Because you have no measuring instrument you cannot say it has no size.
Dr. Ware: Now, if what you say it has not got three dimension, but when we talk about size . . .
Prabhupāda: Yes, three dimension. It is said, it is estimated that ten . . . one ten-thousandth part of the tip of the hair.
Dr. Ware: (laughs) We could do better than that with a micron.
Prabhupāda: Then find out the soul, if you have got instrument.
Mensa Member: How many angels on the end of a pin?
Dr. Ware: In fact this is coming back to that . . . the analogy again.
Mensa Member: But the whole thing is so . . . (indistinct) . . . about this . . . (indistinct) . . . putting in Kṛṣṇa instead of Christ.
Dr. Ware: But the whole business, if you try to explain . . .
Prabhupāda: In geometry they say the point has no length nor breadth. But that is not fact. The point has length and breadth, but you cannot measure it.
Dr. Ware: Ah, but the mathematician would say that that isn't . . . the definition of a point is something that has no breadth or depth, but his purpose is working out his philosophy.
Mensa Member: (indistinct) . . . he'd say something entirely different. They'd say that the absolute point . . .
Prabhupāda: But if you magnify the point, you'll find there is . . .
Dr. Ware: But, coming back to . . .
Prabhupāda: It is a question of vision. With your present imperfect vision you do not see. When you take a magnifying glass you see, "Oh, there is length and breadth."
Dr. Ware: Ah, but that brings you, Swami, straight away into the problem of the infinite regress.
Prabhupāda: Whatever it may be . . .
Dr. Ware: It becomes smaller and smaller. But you know, you might just as well stop at the beginning as start at the end.
Śyāmasundara: Kṛṣṇa says: "I am the smallest of the smallest."
Prabhupāda: That is stated in the Veda. Aṇor aṇīyān mahato mahīyān (Kaṭha Upaniṣad 1.2.20). God is greater than the greatest and smaller than the smallest.
Dr. Ware: You're using materialist words, Swami. You're using materialist words, "greater" and "smaller."
Prabhupāda: What you meant spiritual?
Dr. Ware: No, but I say you are using materialist words to describe them.
Prabhupāda: What do you mean by spiritual? No speaking?
Dr. Ware: What I say is . . . (laughter)
Prabhupāda: If I say greater and smaller in this way, and you say this is material, then what is a spiritual expression of this? Can you give me? That means stop, stop talking?
Dr. Ware: You don't need it . . .
Prabhupāda: . . . you have to. This is not material. When you speak in spiritual connection, this is spiritual.
Dr. Ware: You'd have to invent a new language, really.
Prabhupāda: No. Why invent? The same language. The same language.
Dr. Ware: Well you won't get very far in any form of philosophy in . . . (indistinct) . . . language.
Mensa Member: . . . (indistinct)
Śyāmasundara: But the consciousness in which something is done denotes it. For instance, I could be sweeping the street. Someone would think, "Ah, I'm just a material street sweeper." But if I'm doing it for Kṛṣṇa, it's a transcendental activity, it's a spiritual activity, not a material activity.
Dr. Ware: Ah, yes, but I mean, then you have a sort of . . . if somebody else who's sweeping faster and better, you say that he's greater spiritually even if he's doing it . . .
Śyāmasundara: No.
Prabhupāda: No, the purpose must be spiritual. The purpose must be for Kṛṣṇa.
Śyāmasundara: So if we're speaking about Kṛṣṇa, then our words become spiritual.
Dr. Ware: Yes, but I think if you're talking about spiritual things, you mustn't try and quantify it.
Prabhupāda: Spiritual means it has no material qualification. Nirbandhaḥ kṛṣṇa-sambandhe yuktaṁ vairāgyam ucyate (Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu 1.2.255).
Dr. Ware: You can't measure the beauty of a rose with a ruler.
Śyāmasundara: But you can say it's like this, it's like that. You have to be able to describe it somehow.
Prabhupāda: Actually, in higher sense there is nothing material, because everything is emanating from God, therefore everything is spiritual.
Dr. Ware: Well, that's true, but the electron, as far as you can say, may be spiritual.
Prabhupāda: There is no distinction in higher status, because we say that everything that we see, that is manifestation of God's energy.
Dr. Ware: Exactly.
Prabhupāda: Energy. So in that sense, if it is God's energy there is nothing material. It is material when we forget God. That is material.
Dr. Ware: Well, I would have said . . . but really, rather going back to the analogy of the light. If there's no light there, you can't see whether there's anything there or not. Directly you have the light it enables you to see it. But the things exist independent of whether the light was there all along.
Prabhupāda: The light is . . . light is in relationship with fire. So light is not different from the fire. Unless there is fire there is no light, there is no heat. So as soon as you feel heat or see light, the fire is there. In higher sense, those who can realize, immediately realize that there is fire.
Just like here there's light. Immediately you can understand there is fire, there is electricity. So it is a question of realization. In the higher realization there is nothing matter; everything is spiritual. Simply when you forget God, that is material. That is material.
Śyāmasundara: By using this analogy he's proving that there's a contingency. There's a . . . that wherever there's heat and wherever there's light there must be fire.
Dr. Ware: With respect, no, because you can have an infrared thing which is not fire.
Śyāmasundara: The original source is fire.
Dr. Ware: Or ultraviolet. No.
Prabhupāda: How can you explain light without fire?
Dr. Ware: Ultraviolet light doesn't have a fire.
Prabhupāda: There is sun, ultraviolet rays of the sun.
Śyāmasundara: How can you produce ultraviolet light except with electrical apparatus, electricity?
Prabhupāda: Light and heat, you cannot think of without fire.
Mensa Member: Fluorescence, certain chemicals.
Śyāmasundara: The origin is . . .
Dr. Ware: You're making . . .
Prabhupāda: There is no light, no heat without fire. That's a fact.
Mensa Member: Everybody . . . (indistinct) . . . I think.
Dr. Ware: Yeah, you see, that's the trouble. You can say really that there's no light or heat without an electrical movement. That's as far as you need. You don't need to go any farther.
Mensa Member: No, the point you were making is that the absolute source of everything is the sun. Was that the . . .?
Prabhupāda: That is heat. That is fire.
Mensa Member: Even if it's not there now, it was there a thousand years ago.
Śyāmasundara: It's gone through about the different transformations from its original source.
Dr. Ware: Well, this is a form of scientific atavism. It's rather outmoded with the usual concepts of long ago. But one's got beyond that now.
Śyāmasundara: No, it then takes . . .
Prabhupāda: (aside) So we have to go down or not. So we can go down.
Dr. Ware: Most interesting . . . (indistinct)
Mensa Member: Yes, but it all . . . (indistinct) . . . great argument.
Prabhupāda: Yes. We shall talk more when we meet next.
Dr. Ware: Well, I've enjoyed it very much, and it was very kind of you. Where are you going on Wednesday? Where are you going?
Prabhupāda: I'm going to Mombasa.
Dr. Ware: Really. One of my greatest pleasures was to be able to entertain the Dalai Lama's secretary in the luncheon hall in Lincoln's Inn just near here.
Śyāmasundara: We went walking there one morning, Lincoln's Inn.
Mensa Member: . . . (indistinct)
Dr. Ware: Yes. I've always wanted to go there. We've got four Tibetans over, studying . . . (indistinct) . . . part of the college estate of Hampstead. And I've always liked the idea of their going up into those wonderful mountains and . . .
Although you may say, you know, one mustn't overvalue material things, as far as their diet is concerned, they must be very much like you followers. You know, they have . . . because they have . . . (indistinct) . . . they have nothing wrong with their gums or their teeth. It must be about the only place in the world . . .
Śyāmasundara: Prabhupāda has all his teeth, too. He is nearly eighty.
Prabhupāda: Yes. I've got my natural teeth.
Śyāmasundara: Perfect diet.
Mensa Member: Thank you for sparing this time and . . .
Dr. Ware: Such short notice, I didn't realize . . . it was such a pleasure, and I was so glad that you were able to fit it in before you go.
Śyāmasundara: He's going to speak now down in the temple. If you can stay, listen more.
Dr. Ware: Well, I don't know. I should imagine the crowd is so great.
Śyāmasundara: (chuckles) Well, you can sit in front.
Dr. Ware: We will see as we go down, I think . . . I must take my spiritual . . . (break) (end)
- 1971 - Conversations
- 1971 - Lectures and Conversations
- 1971 - Lectures, Conversations and Letters
- 1971-09 - Lectures, Conversations and Letters
- Conversations - Europe
- Conversations - Europe, England - London
- Lectures, Conversations and Letters - Europe
- Lectures, Conversations and Letters - Europe, England - London
- Conversations with People from Social Groups
- Audio Files 90.01 Minutes or More
- 1971 - New Audio - Released in June 2016