For instance (Lectures)

Expressions researched:
"for instance"

Bhagavad-gita As It Is Lectures

Lecture on BG 3.27 -- Melbourne, June 27, 1974:

We have go speak many things. We have got books. So try to understand and prepare yourself next life to go back to home, back to Godhead. This is the business of human life. All other business are simply useless waste of time. Thank you very much. (break)

...but the spirit is there. Just like if anyone, relative, dies, father dies—take for instance—he is crying, "My father is gone. My father is gone." "But where your father has gone? Your father is here, sleeping." "No no, he is gone." "But did you see how he has gone? Have you got the eyes? How he has gone? But you did not see. You always saw this material body, flesh." So as the spirit soul is not flesh, but you can understand that spirit soul has gone.

Lecture on BG 7.1 -- Durban, October 9, 1975:

Indian man (4): Swamiji, we are living in a world where new thoughts, new ideas are being disseminated with by saintly people. But as we have read that the Vedas were the first book of knowledge handed to mankind. Now what I would like to know is... The Christians have Bible as their book, the Moslems have the Koran as their book, and the Hindus have the Vedas as the book. Why should we not go back to the Vedas rather than accepting, notarizing the interest in many other scriptures, the Bhagavad-gītā or the Rāmāyaṇa for instance? But the sages, four ṛṣis, who first gave them, and Vedas were given to us at the beginning of God's creation. Why don't we go back to Vedas, and then we will know the Bhagavad-gītā also?

Prabhupāda: So, what is the purpose of reading Vedas? Can you say me? Who can say what is the purpose of reading Vedas? That is mentioned in the Bhagavad-gītā: vedaiś ca sarvair aham eva vedyaḥ (BG 15.15). By reading Vedas, any Vedas, you have to understand God. Then it is perfect reading of Vedas. If you do not understand what is God, then what is the use of reading Vedas? Śrama eva hi kevalam (SB 1.2.8). Simply waste of time. If you have read Vedas, then give me full information of God. Then I can understand that you have read Vedas. If you have no idea of God, then it is useless advertisement that "I have read Vedas."

Srimad-Bhagavatam Lectures

Lecture on SB 2.1.2-5 -- Montreal, October 23, 1968:

Haṁsadūta: So can it be understand that if a person, for instance, some Americans are very wealthy, that they...

Prabhupāda: Yes. They must have done pious activities in their previous life, all Americans. But they should know that this is their advantage to become Kṛṣṇa conscious: "We have no economic problem, but we are employing our facilities in sense gratification." That is a mistake.

Haṁsadūta: Suppose a person is born in a very poor family. What does that mean? Suppose someone is born in a very poor, low, very low, and he becomes Kṛṣṇa conscious.

Prabhupāda: Yes. Kṛṣṇa consciousness is open to all. Just like we are calling everyone, "Come and chant Hare Kṛṣṇa." It is open to all. There is no question of becoming poor or rich. But if he takes the advantage, that is up to him. We are not restricting here that only the rich persons or brāhmaṇas or pious family or rich family can come here, no. Everyone. Everyone is welcome. That is stated in the Bhagavad-gītā, māṁ hi pārtha vyapāśritya ye 'pi syuḥ pāpa-yonayaḥ. Poor family or uneducated family, uncultured family, they are called pāpa-yoni, sinful family. But Kṛṣṇa says, "Never mind. Even if he is in sinful family, whatever he may be, if he comes to Me, he also can enter into the spiritual kingdom." So there is no such restriction.

Lecture on SB 2.9.4-8 -- Tokyo, April 23, 1972:

Devotee: Your Divine Grace, is this also true that every species of life... For instance, plants and trees, don't appear to be breathing as we do, but they breathe through their...

Prabhupāda: Don't appear to you. What do you know about plant life? Something does not appear to you, that does not mean there is nothing such thing. You don't be so courageous that you know everything. You have to know from the śāstra. They have got breathing. They have got feeling also. That is already proved by modern scientists, Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose, that when you cut a plant, it feels the pain and it is recorded in the machine, the feeling. So everything is there. As soon as you find some living entity... A small full stop-like... Sometimes you find in the book. It is lesser than the full-stop. It is moving, (makes sound) "but, but, but, but." It has got heart; it has got legs; it has got everything within it. Otherwise, how it is working? Everything is there. This is rascaldom, that "This has got soul; this has got no soul." This is rascal's theory. Living entity so small, one ten-thousandth part of the top tip of the hair, we are. Very... You cannot imagine. So any life he takes, any form, it has got all the, I mean to say, functional thing. Everything is there. That is God's creation. Aṇor aṇīyān mahato mahīyān.

Lecture on SB 6.1.8-13 -- New York, July 24, 1971:

Nārāyaṇa: Prabhupāda..., question? (pause) Could you elaborate on the position of the person who comes to Kṛṣṇa consciousness and is chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa and has committed all these sinful activities in this lifetime. For instance, let's say a person has been in the, involved in the Vietnam War due to his relation with the material world and has been drawn into this activity. And now he's in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. How is he then relieved of the law of karma for his activity?

Prabhupāda: You come and live with us. That's all. Is it very difficult? Our students, they are living with us. You simply come and live with us—you are free from all karma. Is it difficult? Then do that. We shall give you food, we shall give you shelter, we shall give you nice philosophy. If you want to marry, we shall give you good wife. What you want more? So come and live with us. That's all. That I've already explained: māṁ ca yo 'vyabhicāreṇa bhakti-yogena sevate (BG 14.26). We employ you immediately in the devotional service of Lord, and you become free. Kṛṣṇa says, not that we have concocted this idea. Kṛṣṇa says that "Anyone who's engaged in My devotional service, without any hypocrisy, avyabhicāreṇa, then immediately he's freed, immediately."

Lecture on SB 6.1.27-34 -- Surat, December 17, 1970:

They are not material sound. So nāma cintāmaṇiḥ, spiritual. Kṛṣṇa. Kṛṣṇa and Kṛṣṇa's name, there is no difference. Nāma cintāmaṇiḥ kṛṣṇaś caitanya-rasa-vigrahaḥ (CC Madhya 17.133). Rasa, the transcendental mellows. Every one of us is searching after some mellow, some pleasure from everything. Kṛṣṇa is the reservoir of all pleasures, rasa-vigraha, fully personified. Wherever there is Kṛṣṇa, there is rasa, a transcendental mellow, enjoyment, relishable. Very Kṛṣṇa presence.

For instance, that, when in the Battlefield of Kurukṣetra, fighting was going on between Kṛṣṇa and Bhīṣma, both of them... Kṛṣṇa, of course, did not touch any weapon because He promised. But Grandfather Bhīṣma was very severely piercing Kṛṣṇa's body with arrows, and Kṛṣṇa was enjoying. That is the relationship between Kṛṣṇa and His devotees. Kṛṣṇa can be worshiped, Kṛṣṇa can be loved, by any capacity. The gopīs loved Kṛṣṇa out of seemingly lust, lusty desires, and Śiśupāla remembered Kṛṣṇa out of anger. Kāmāt krodhād bhayāt. And Kamsa remembered always Kṛṣṇa out of fear. And, of course, they were not devotees.

Nectar of Devotion Lectures

The Nectar of Devotion -- Vrndavana, October 30, 1972:

Pradyumna: "For instance, if someone says, 'Give something to eat to the man with the weapons,' the eating process is done by the man and not by the weapons. Similarly, in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, a devotee may be interested in the paraphernalia and locations—such as the Battlefield of Kurukṣetra—which are associated with Kṛṣṇa, but he is not concerned with simply any battlefield. He is concerned with Kṛṣṇa—His speech, His instructions, etc. It is because Kṛṣṇa is there that the battlefield is so important."

Prabhupāda: Go on.

Pradyumna: "This is the summary understanding of what Kṛṣṇa consciousness is. Without this understanding one is sure to misunderstand why the devotees are interested in the Battlefield of Kurukṣetra."

Prabhupāda: Yes. Sometimes we are asked that "Why Kṛṣṇa induced Arjuna to become violent?" So then so many so-called scholars, they criticize Kṛṣṇa, but they do not know what is Kṛṣṇa. Kṛṣṇa is absolute. In whichever way He acts, it is the same thing. God is good. It does not mean when He fights in the Battlefield of Kurkṣetra He becomes bad. No. He's still good. That is the conception of God: absolute. He can do anything and anything. Still, He continues to be the Absolute Truth. That is Absolute Truth. There is no relative understanding, "This is good for God, this is bad for God," as (if) God has come before me to be judged by me.

Arrival Addresses and Talks

Arrival Address -- London, September 11, 1969:

Prabhupāda: I do not know what is Billy Graham, but I am following the Vedic principle, Bhagavad-gītā as it is. Kṛṣṇa says, sarva-dharmān parityajya mām ekaṁ śaraṇaṁ vraja (BG 18.66). God says that "You give up all nonsense occupation, simply surrender unto Me, and I take charge of you and give you protection." This is our philosophy.

Reporter: Can I ask you some questions about your general attitudes on things going on around us? For instance, what do you feel about man going to the moon? (laughter)

Prabhupāda: This is simply a waste of time. I already commented on this when I was in San Francisco. The reporters asked me this very question. I flatly replied that it is simply waste of time and money. That's all. (laughter)

Reporter: What about something very much nearer to ourselves here in this country, and that is a war or civil disturbance is going on...

Prabhupāda: Well, war is going on.

General Lectures

Lecture on Teachings of Lord Caitanya -- Seattle, September 25, 1968:

There are many forms of miseries that take advantage of our delicate body and give us pain. Miseries inflicted by other living entities are called ādhibhautika. There are many living entities such as bugs born of eggs that cause us miseries while we are sleeping in bed. There are many living entities like cockroaches that sometimes give us pain. And there are other living entities born on different kinds of planets, and they also cause us miseries. So far as ādhidaivic miseries are concerned, they originate with the demigods from the higher planets. For instance, sometimes we suffer from serious cold weather, sometimes we suffer from the thunderbolt, sometimes from earthquake, tornadoes, droughts, and other natural disasters. So we are always suffering one or another of three kinds of miseries. Sanātana's inquiry was 'What is the position of the living entities? Why are they always undergoing these three kinds of miseries?' Sanātana has admitted his weakness. Although he was known by the mass of people as a greatly learned man, and actually he was a highly learned Sanskrit scholar, and although he accepted the designation of a very learned man given him by the mass of people, yet he did not actually know what his constitutional position was and why he was subjected to the threefold miseries. The necessity of approaching a spiritual master is not a fashion, but is for he who is seriously conscious of the material miseries and who wants to be free of them. It is the duty of such a person to approach the spiritual master. We find similar circumstances in the Bhagavad-gītā..."

Philosophy Discussions

Philosophy Discussion on Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz:

Śyāmasundara: He says there are two types of truth. One is just like the principle of a triangle, there are three angles equal to 180 degrees, and the other type of truth is gathered by experience. For instance, we see that snow is white, but it is also possible that snow may be red.

Prabhupāda: But this is also experienced, that the three angles of a triangle make 180 degrees.

Śyāmasundara: But this truth exists independently, without any...

Prabhupāda: How independently? Not everyone knows what is a triangle, what is an angle, and what is a degree. When one comes to study geometry, then he understands. You cannot ask any child or any man who has no knowledge of geometry that these three angles of a triangle makes 180 degrees...

Śyāmasundara: But this truth exists, whether the man knows it or not. This truth exists, that three sides of a triangle equals 180 degrees.

Prabhupāda: But truth means it exists. Not this truth or that truth. Truth means that. That you may know or not know, but it exists. That is truth. So why is he making this example?

Philosophy Discussion on Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz:

Prabhupāda: Every individual soul is awarded a little portion of independence, because every individual soul is part and parcel of God, so he has got the quality of independence, in minute quantity. That is individuality.

Śyāmasundara: Just like, for instance, say, this particulate substance, he would say that there is a force or activity which constitutes the essence of this substance, and that is the monad of this substance. He is attributing it to everything, matter.

Prabhupāda: So we take the atom. Atom is the smallest. So we say within the atom the force is Kṛṣṇa. He is simply suggesting there is some enforcing power. We are giving directly that that is Kṛṣṇa.

Śyāmasundara: But he says that in that enforcing power each atom is individual, separate, different.

Prabhupāda: Yes. Kṛṣṇa, by His omnipotency, can expand Himself in innumerable forms. Advaitam acyutam anādim ananta-rūpam (Bs. 5.33). Ananta, unlimited. As it is clearly said, aṇḍāntara-stham. He is within the atom.

Śyāmasundara: Is He between each atom as an individual entity, different from each other entity?

Prabhupāda: Yes. If Kṛṣṇa is there, Kṛṣṇa is individual. And atoms also, there are varieties of atoms. Sometimes they are combined together, six atoms, five atoms, three atoms.

Philosophy Discussion on Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz:

Prabhupāda: That is Kṛṣṇa. Kṛṣṇa is fully independent.

Śyāmasundara: He says, for instance, that a monad changes its appearance according to its desires.

Prabhupāda: That indication is for the soul. But Kṛṣṇa is not that. Kṛṣṇa is kuta; means he does not change.

Śyāmasundara: He says just like this thing, (holding up an object) it will change to another thing, to another thing, to another thing, depending on its desire, which impels it to change. He says that even behind some object there is some ability to change.

Prabhupāda: That I have already said. Just like Kṛṣṇa, first of all He created the whole total cosmic energy, and then, by His plan, by His devices, He divides into so many things, changes, parts and parts and parts. It can be taken in that way. The material changes are going on according to the will of God, or Kṛṣṇa. Is that clear?

Śyāmasundara: Yes. He says that each monad is like all of the others. They are identical, so that to know one is to know all, to know the whole world.

Prabhupāda: This individual monads can be taken as soul?

Philosophy Discussion on Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz:

Prabhupāda: This is the prime truth. The method of devotional service and other ideas, they are included, but the basic principle is devotional service.

Śyāmasundara: For instance, Leibnitz says that concepts of mathematics are necessary truths, like "Two plus two is equal to four." Someone is born with that knowledge.

Prabhupāda: So this is also mathematical truth. Because even the aborigines, they also offer obeisances to thunderbolt. As soon as there is some sound of thunderbolt, or as soon as there is earthquake, they offer obeisances—any big natural phenomena. That means the devotion is there, but that devotional service is misplaces so long as one does not reach God.

Śyāmasundara: Leibnitz states that there is nothing in the intellect which was not previously in the senses except the intellect itself. In other words, all of our knowledge comes through our senses except the fact...

Prabhupāda: And it is banked in the intellect. That is a fact. That is permanent. Therefore even if we change our body, still we can find out our means of living by that inherent intellect. That is advertised as intuition. But this intuition is previous experience only. (end)

Philosophy Discussion on David Hume:

Prabhupāda: But behind the ideas there must be some fact; otherwise how we get the ideas?

Śyāmasundara: He separates fact from idea. For instance, I may think this table is red, but it is actually brown. So my idea is incorrect.

Prabhupāda: Your idea may be, but actually it has got a color, either red or yellow. So if you have eye disease, you cannot see actually, but one whose eyes are not diseased, he can see whether it is yellow or red. Just like sometimes glaucoma—you see the moon as two moons, but actually there is one moon. But due to your eye disease you see two moons. But one who is not diseased, he sees one moon. Therefore we have to take knowledge from a person who is not diseased. Not that because my eyes are diseased, I cannot see things right way, I shall say, "Oh, there is no possibility of having right knowledge." That is not correct.

Śyāmasundara: In fact, he calls the soul a bundle of perceptions, that it is nothing but a set or sequence of ideas.

Prabhupāda: But as soon as he says "ideas," there must be some concrete things.

Śyāmasundara: Yes. He admits that the external world is full of concrete things, but he thinks that we are also one of those things because we are only a bundle of perceptions. Our consciousness is only made up of our observations of material nature.

Philosophy Discussion on Immanuel Kant:

Prabhupāda: Innate knowledge means that knowledge which you are cultivating, that is already there.

Śyāmasundara: For instance, if you are unable to receive knowledge from a higher authority, could you still somehow have this knowledge inside?

Prabhupāda: Yes. Inside, there is. We say caitya-guru; Kṛṣṇa is within.

Śyāmasundara: So one could understand about Kṛṣṇa perhaps if he was unable to receive from outside?

Prabhupāda: Kṛṣṇa is everything, outside and inside. Inside He is Paramātmā, outside He is spiritual master. So Kṛṣṇa is trying to help the conditioned soul both ways-outside and inside. Therefore spiritual master is representative of Kṛṣṇa. Kṛṣṇa comes outside as spiritual master, and inside He is personally there.

Śyāmasundara: So according to Kant, the first or basic stage is that one perceives objects and gives them concepts of time and space. Then the second step is called transcendental analytic. In other words, human understanding changes these perceptions into conceptions or ideas, which possess analytical unity. In other words, the mind applies categories to whatever it perceives. And there are four categories that he describes: quantity, quality, relationship and modality.

Prabhupāda: What is modality?

Philosophy Discussion on Immanuel Kant:

Prabhupāda: Yes. By intellectual speculation one may get some hint, but not perfect knowledge.

Śyāmasundara: He says, for instance, that this pure reason or this transcendental reason is there to guide man to an understanding of wider knowledge, to guide his understanding to knowledge, and that the aim of this pure reason is to find the totality of synthesis, in other words, to understand everything. By knowing the ultimate reality, one will understand everything.

Prabhupāda: So simply by understanding that he is spirit, gradually he understands that there is a spiritual world. This spiritual world is full of varieties. Everything is there, exactly like this, but that is eternal and this is temporary.

Śyāmasundara: He says that this pure reason has a regulative value, that is, by attempting to grasp the totality of conditions by connecting a particular phenomenon with the whole experience. In other words, for example, the idea of a supreme being is a regulative principle of reason because it tells us to view everything in the world in connection, as if it proceeded from the necessary cause, or the Supreme Being.

Prabhupāda: The Supreme Being is the cause of all causes.

Philosophy Discussion on Immanuel Kant:

Śyāmasundara: He says logically these are not fallacious; both sides are true. For instance, his first antimony is, "The world has a beginning in time and is enclosed in limits of space." This is the thesis. Then the antithesis is, "The world has no beginning in time and no limits in space, but is infinite with regard to both time and space." So he says reasonably both conclusions are true.

Prabhupāda: So how to adjust? How to adjust is there in the Bhagavad-gītā. It says this material phenomenal world is coming into existence and again annihilated. Again coming. Bhūtvā bhūtvā pralīyate (BG 8.19). So this material nature, coming in manifestation and again vanquished, this process, coming into existence and then vanquished, this is also true. Just like day and night, it is coming and going. This is true. But night is not day; day is not night.

Śyāmasundara: The first antimony describes the quantity of the world. The second antimony deals with the quality of the world. The thesis is, "Every composite substance in the world is made up of simple parts, and nothing whatever exists but the simple, or that which is composed out of the simple." And the antithesis is, "No composite thing in the world is made up of simple parts, nor does anything simple exist anywhere in the world." On the one hand, everything is simple, made up of simple parts. On the other hand, nothing is simple; everything is complex.

Philosophy Discussion on Hegel:

Śyāmasundara: The Kant philosophy, and he took this idea from Plato, is that there is an ideal on which these temporary objects are representatives. For instance the idea of tableness is an abstract idea of perfection. It's represented before me in this table in a perverted form. This table represents the ideal, expresses the ideal, but it is not the ideal.

Prabhupāda: That we say, that this material world is perverted reflection of the spiritual world. This is reflection.

Śyāmasundara: They say an "image", everything is an image.

Prabhupāda: Yes, we say that, that the same example, just like mirage. Mirage, there is no water but we see a vast sea, or big river is flowing. It is like that. Actually there is no river. No. This is going. This material world is like that. Just Śrīdhara Swami (said that) due to the factual position of the spiritual world, this illusory world appears to be true. Because there is real table.

Śyāmasundara: Yes.

Prabhupāda: The table concept.

Philosophy Discussion on Hegel:

Śyāmasundara: He says that for instance by relating one idea to its opposite that we discover a different truth about each of them which transcends their separate truths.

Prabhupāda: Yes. It is just like this Bhagavad-gītā says, that dehino 'smin... It says that this dehi, the soul which is within the body, that is immortal and this body is mortal. Two things are there.

Śyāmasundara: Opposites.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Śyāmasundara: So the synthesis transcends their separate beings.

Prabhupāda: Eh?

Śyāmasundara: The synthesis transcends their separate beings.

Prabhupāda: Separate means mortal and immortal.

Śyāmasundara: The combination is higher than both of them.

Prabhupāda: Avināśi tu tad viddhi yena sarvam idaṁ tatam.

Philosophy Discussion on Hegel:

Prabhupāda: No, why? So long as we are entrapped by this material body you are not free.

Śyāmasundara: No but for instance, just an example, there is someone who has always been free in the spiritual world and he comes into the material world...

Prabhupāda: Yes. He comes for a mission, just like Kṛṣṇa comes. He is not born. He is not born like a materialist. Similarly Kṛṣṇa's devotee also comes, he is also not born. They come with a mission.

Śyāmasundara: I mean if someone is in the spiritual world, he falls down into the material world...

Prabhupāda: Falls down is different.

Śyāmasundara: ...yes, and then he becomes again released...

Prabhupāda: Again he is free.

Śyāmasundara: Is his understanding after release higher than the previous?

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Philosophy Discussion on Hegel:

Śyāmasundara: In this regard, later Śrīla Prabhupāda said that a man who has fever and a man who has never had fever, they enjoy... When the man who has fever recovers he enjoys equally with the man who never had fever. Therefore someone who has fallen into the material world, if he is liberated, he enjoys equally with the man who has never fallen into the material world. Neither he enjoys more, for instance, that he has learned some lesson so therefore he enjoys more his freedom, nor does he enjoy less than the man who has never fallen. (break)

Prabhupāda: Well, everything is the expression of spirit.

Śyāmasundara: So everything is art?

Prabhupāda: Well, what is his definition of art?

Śyāmasundara: Art is the expression of the spirit in sensuous form.

Prabhupāda: That is there. We are worshiping Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa, there is love of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa, but that is sensuous, sensual. The gopīs are coming to Kṛṣṇa, lusty. Kṛṣṇa is beautiful, they are attracted. So these are there: sensuous, beautiful, art.

Philosophy Discussion on Hegel:

Śyāmasundara: What about between America and Germany, for instance? Neither one of them were God conscious.

Prabhupāda: Then it is demonic. This is not justified war, this is where two demons, we fight, just like cats and dogs fight. That's all. But there is, according to Vedic literature, yuddha, dharma-yuddha.

Kīrtanānanda: What does that mean?

Prabhupāda: Dharma-yuddha, on behalf of supreme God, that is called dharma-yuddha. Just like Arjuna. Arjuna, they are not for fighting, but Kṛṣṇa said, "Yes, I am on your side, you fight." That is dharma-yuddha. And therefore Arjuna became victorious because God was on his side. That is dharma-yuddha. So if you declare war on the principle of God consciousness, that war is justified and you will become victorious. This is the conclusion.

Philosophy Discussion on Hegel:

Śyāmasundara: He says that the history will bear out whether a policy is good or bad. For instance the Roman Empire came, and then it fell. So their policy is...

Prabhupāda: So we say that any empire will come, and fail. Without studying history. Because godless empire will never exist.

Śyāmasundara: He says that each state represents some phase of the absolute truth, that it expresses itself in the temporal events or the march of time.

Prabhupāda: We accept that without historical reference, we say unless one state or king is representative of God, that is not state. That is a group, that is not state. Just like even in aboriginals, they have also group. They have also group. That is not state. I think there must be some distinction...

Devotee: Tribe.

Prabhupāda: Yes, tribe and state.

Philosophy Discussion on Hegel:

Prabhupāda: His idea, but we are talking of substance.

Śyāmasundara: Yes. First before, for instance we make a table, we have to have an idea about a table.

Prabhupāda: No, that makes... Anything, if you are trying to approach by your idea, that is not substance.

Śyāmasundara: No, he says first there is the idea of something, then the substance, but spirit is that which...

Prabhupāda: No, no, no that is, that is...

Śyāmasundara: ...has both the idea and the substance.

Prabhupāda: When you think that first of all let us have an idea. That is not substance.

Śyāmasundara: No, so we, for instance the table. I want to build a table. So I have an idea this is what it's shaped like. Then I gather the substance together. There is a table.

Philosophy Discussion on Hegel:

Prabhupāda: Substance, everything substance.

Śyāmasundara: For instance the ideal table, the ideal table. I don't see any table that's ideal but I can imagine there's one ideal table...

Prabhupāda: No, no, if you do not know what is table, you cannot manufacture table. You have to ask what is table. You have to ask somebody that... You have got... Practically unless you see or know from some way or other how can you manufacture a table?

Śyāmasundara: Just like Albert Einstein, he thought about this theory...

Prabhupāda: Because he's Albert Einstein, he's not perfect.

Śyāmasundara: No, but he was able to conceptualize that the speed of light squared times the mass equals the energy of an object. And then he was able to experiment in the laboratory and actually find out that it was true. But no one told him that formula. He found it out through process of idealizing, ideas.

Philosophy Discussion on Hegel:

Śyāmasundara: There's a, for instance in mathematics, advanced mathematics has to do with sets of formulas, equations, symbols which have no place in reality. They have no substance. They're merely ideas on paper or in my brain. What about these kind of ideas. They are, how to say, like the square root of minus one.

Prabhupāda: Ad infinitum, ad infinitum, like that.

Śyāmasundara: Like the square root of minus one. There is no substantial reference for that idea but there is an equation: the square root of minus one.

Prabhupāda: The ultimate understanding, if we have accept this formula janmādy asya yataḥ (SB 1.1.1), so everything is emanating from the substance, so without having a place of that idea in the substance, you cannot have... That is another thing (indistinct). Because you are also a product of that something. So whatever you are thinking, that must be there, in the original.

Philosophy Discussion on Hegel:

Śyāmasundara: Even if I invent, for instance I invent the atomic bomb...

Prabhupāda: There is no question of inventing. The atomic bomb, what is that, it is brahmāstra, it is already made. You are not inventing.

Śyāmasundara: Where does the idea come from?

Prabhupāda: From the origin.

Śyāmasundara: From our past lives?

Prabhupāda: From the origin, yes.

Devotee: (indistinct) one of the chapters of the Bhāgavatam, Śrīla Prabhupāda.

Prabhupāda: That is, that is, I have explained in Bhagavad-gītā that a yogī remembers in due course, past activities, and again he begins. Where he left it, from that point again he begins. Śucīnāṁ śrīmatāṁ gehe yogo bhraṣṭo sañjāyate (BG 6.41). He is given the chance.

Philosophy Discussion on Charles Darwin:

Śyāmasundara: Animals, trees, plants, insects, men, he examines all the different varieties. For instance if you put a certain animal in a cold climate, he will develop hair to protect his body against the cold, and he will pass on this characteristic to his sons.

Prabhupāda: So why...? The people in Greenland, do they develop hair?

Śyāmasundara: They don't have so much hair, but they develop very fatty tissues. Their eyes are slitted so there is not so much snow and bright light...

Prabhupāda: Then development of hair is not only the existent; there are other many conditions. You cannot say that development of hair is due to the condition as he says, natural condition. That is not a fixed-up...

Śyāmasundara: I was just using that as an example of how a species can adapt to its environment.

Prabhupāda: The question is that this development of body, is there any plan that this body should exist in certain condition of nature, and therefore he must have these equipments, either you say, tissues or veins or hair? Who has made these arrangements? That is the question.

Philosophy Discussion on Charles Darwin:

Śyāmasundara: For instance, there's no dinosaurs existing now. They're extinct now but where are they gone? Some other planets then? Is there some...?

Prabhupāda: No. Not in this planet, he has no chance to see it.

Śyāmasundara: There's dinosaurs existing on this planet?

Prabhupāda: Yes, yes, he has no chance to see it, or it is imagination only.

Śyāmasundara: That's very hard to accept. What about the dodo? It was a giant bird...

Prabhupāda: Our proposition is that there is an evolutionary process from aquatics to birds here, plants life, then insect life, then bird's life, then animal life, then human life. So this is a evolutionary process, we accept but it is not that one is extinct, another is surviving. All of them are existing simultaneously.

Śyāmasundara: But they are not all present at this particular moment on this planet, are they?

Prabhupāda: Particular, it is not that he has seen all the planets or all the universes. What he has seen?

Philosophy Discussion on Charles Darwin:

Prabhupāda: Yes. Explain what is nature. That means insufficient knowledge.

Śyāmasundara: He simply observed there are mutations in nature. For instance, he thinks that perhaps at one time...

Prabhupāda: That means nature is working.

Śyāmasundara: Yes.

Prabhupāda: Nature is working, but he cannot explain how nature is working.

Śyāmasundara: At one time he says the one ape developed an opposing thumb so he was able to use tools, grasp things, so he became superior and passed that quality on to his offspring and that developed into man. Simply by...

Prabhupāda: Then when there is offspring, then the same question comes: "Why the monkey does not produce offspring—a man?" What is this nonsense?

Karandhara: Scientists often take the shelter of this premise, that it's not..., we don't..., we're not trying to find out. Whenever they're asked what is the original source, they say, "We're not concerned with that. We're concerned with just examining the phenomenon of that source."

Philosophy Discussion on Charles Darwin:

Prabhupāda: The first creature is Brahmā, the most intelligent, the most learned.

Śyāmasundara: ...and he said, and you say that on this planet there were pastimes, for instance, of Lord Rāmacandra millions of years ago, with His men, His animals, His horses, deers, so many things. But in all of our evidences we find only at that time the most simple forms of life...

Prabhupāda: Your evidence... You will be satisfied with your evidence, but I have got my own evidence. Why shall I accept your evidence? You cannot force your evidence, your so-called evidence upon me. What is evidence? First of all you have to select, what is that evidence.

Śyāmasundara: Terrestrial, archaeological findings...

Prabhupāda: No. No. That is not evidence. That is not evidence.

Karandhara: If you find a bone, how do you know it's not...

Prabhupāda: That is imperfect. You have studied one portion of the creation. That is not evidence. In other portion of the creation there is different. But that is not evidence. Your study, your limited study is not evidence.

Philosophy Discussion on Charles Darwin:

Śyāmasundara: For instance, they say that during the Ice Age, when there were..., the earth became very cold, and there were great ice formations in Europe and America, that this animal they call the mammoth-it's an elephantlike animal but it had long, very long hair for warmth-suddenly this species appears. Does it mean that that body existed always somewhere else, but it just suddenly appeared in order...

Prabhupāda: Yes, yes.

Śyāmasundara: ...to live here in that environment?

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Karandhara: What if it is indeed a different species? What do they qualify as a difference in species? I mean, like one man has lots of hair on his body and one man doesn't. That doesn't make him a different species necessarily.

Śyāmasundara: Yes. But in this case, elephants always lived in tropical. They were living in hot climates, and suddenly they had to adapt to the cold.

Philosophy Discussion on Charles Darwin:

Śyāmasundara: And another example, for instance there is a dog called the Pekinese dog. It was made by man, it was developed by men. They took a certain type of dog and crushed it's jaws in so many instances until eventually that trait was passed on naturally to its children...

Prabhupāda: But he is still, it belongs to the dog species. We are speaking of dog species.

Śyāmasundara: But it's a new type of dog. New type. Never existed before that, here.

Prabhupāda: New type, that will not exist also. Because it has been artificially made, it is existing now; now it will not exist again.

Karandhara: There's a kind of Indians, when the babies are young they put a board on their head so that (indistinct) like that.

Śyāmasundara: But now this dog is produced naturally, with its face like that.

Karandhara: But it's still a dog.

Prabhupāda: The dog species.

Philosophy Discussion on Charles Darwin:

Śyāmasundara: So would you say, for instance, someone who is less intelligent or more intelligent than I am is in a different species?

Prabhupāda: Less intelligent or more intelligent does not make any species, because suppose you have got five children, one is less intelligent, more intelligent.

Śyāmasundara: He was just saying levels of consciousness determine the species.

Prabhupāda: Yes. This is levels of consciousness, that just like we divide the human society: some men are brāhmaṇas, some men are kṣatriyas, some men are vaiśyas, that can be found at any time.

Śyāmasundara: Those are species?

Prabhupāda: They are not species, according to their...

Śyāmasundara: They are types of men.

Prabhupāda: Yes. We said varieties.

Philosophy Discussion on Charles Darwin:

Śyāmasundara: Then what is the different species of man, separate from me; for instance, what is another species that is different than I am?

Prabhupāda: I do not know exactly the species, but when we, (break) ...means jāti, manuṣya jāti.

Śyāmasundara: I mean what is an example of different species of man. What are they, for example, several species of men?

Prabhupāda: I say that species, this word is not applicable in that sense. In that sense, according to the scientists' species. But when we say species, class you can say. Classes.

Śyāmasundara: Classes. But what, give me an example.

Prabhupāda: Again, just like we are a class—Hare Kṛṣṇa class. Our mentality is different from others.

Śyāmasundara: Oh.

Prabhupāda: Therefore we are a class.

Śyāmasundara: So tribes, more like tribal distinctions?

Philosophy Discussion on Charles Darwin:

Śyāmasundara: So, for instance, carpenters are different than field workers-like that, different interests?

Prabhupāda: Why different interest? The interest is to earn money. So you may earn money in some way, I may earn money in some way, he may earn money in some way.

Karandhara: So is the primary factor of the variation is how much advanced they are in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, and how least advanced they are in Kṛṣṇa consciousness?

Prabhupāda: Yes. Yes.

Śyāmasundara: So there are only two species.

Karandhara: The demons and the devas.

Prabhupāda: This consciousness is coming through so many species, animals, then they're trees, they have no consciousness, but there is living..., the soul is there.

Śyāmasundara: I'm still trying to understand what you mean by the species of human life. It's not clear to me. I don't understand what you mean by the different species of human life.

Philosophy Discussion on Charles Darwin:

Śyāmasundara: But you just said, for instance, the industrialist and farmers are two different species of men, but there could be a Negro industrialist...

Prabhupāda: I already said that. Why don't you listen? Species, definition of the scientists is different from ours. We say class.

Śyāmasundara: I'm trying to understand, because you said class but then you also said bodies. Negro bodies are different from white Caucasian bodies.

Prabhupāda: Maybe difference of bodies. But that does not...; therefore our classification on the basis of soul. The soul is equal. In spite of different types of body, the soul is one. There is no change of the soul. Therefore in the Bhagavad-gītā it is said that he does not see the species or the class or definition. He sees one: paṇḍitāḥ sama-darśinaḥ (BG 5.18). Paṇḍita, one who sees to the (indistinct), the soul, he does not find any difference of these species or (indistinct). This is our point.

Philosophy Discussion on Charles Darwin:

Śyāmasundara: For instance, the Sanskrit language was so perfect...

Prabhupāda: Yes, Sanskrit language, everything, wonderful. So we are not carpenters, that we have to find out tools. We are brāhmaṇas.

Śyāmasundara: So if the earth is so old, for instance, it could have undergone many transformations...

Prabhupāda: Yes. That doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. After one day of Brahmā there is devastation. So Brahmā lives for one hundred years according to his calculation. So each day there is devastation. So so many devastation passes in one month of Brahmā, then such twelve months makes one year, and such hundred years will be. So there is no calculation of devastation, how many devastations. In Brahmā's one day it is calculated 5,400 Manus are born in one month of Brahmā. So our calculation is like that. We are not very much amazed of hearing millions and trillions. It is nothing. In our historical reference is billions and trillions of years. They are nothing.

Śyāmasundara: So even though several million years ago they find no evidence in the rocks...

Prabhupāda: That does not mean that there is no civilization. That is their imperfect knowledge.

Philosophy Discussion on Charles Darwin:

Śyāmasundara: There's a corollary to his theory of evolution that our standards of morality have also evolved from primitive stages. For instance, in a group, within a group of apelike creatures who were normally fighting with each other for dominance, one may develop the quality of sympathy for someone else. So by that sympathy he cooperates with the other person and together they survive when the others die. So that evolution of sympathy, morality, love, compassion—the good qualities of the human being—have evolved due to necessity, evolution, survival of the fittest.

Karandhara: The thing is this whole perspective of evolution... There doesn't have to be a sequence, that one came before the other. They all were there.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Karandhara: Just like you take a ray of the sunshine that's in this room. It's come from the sun, but simultaneously it's occurring with the sun. It's not there as a sequential evolution of that particle...

Prabhupāda: The sunshine, sunshine... Just like sunshine. You can collect time according to the sunshine. The morning sun shining is called 6 a.m., and then 7 a.m., 8 a.m., 9 a.m., like that. The shine. But this 6 a.m. shining will be somewhere else also, although here it is 8 a.m.

Philosophy Discussion on Charles Darwin:

Hayagrīva: Well, by that he means that the strong pass on their hereditary characteristics to their offspring, and that the race..., no individual survives, but that the race improves. But isn't this contradicted by the Vedas? In the present Kali... For instance, Arjuna's physical powers, prowess, was much greater, and that was, what, five thousand years ago. So isn't, instead of improving, instead of the race improving in strength and other qualities, isn't it actually...

Prabhupāda: They are degrading.

Hayagrīva: ...degenerating. What is the cause of man's physical, mental and spiritual deterioration in the succeeding yugas?

Prabhupāda: That is education. Every individual person, he is a soul, and he has got a particular type of body. Especially in the human body he requires education. What is this animal and what is higher than human race, these are Vedic description. So there are 8,400,000 different forms of life, and the body is being evolved. The body is machine, and the individual soul desires and he gets a suitable body made by material nature under the order of God. This is Vedic idea, as it is said in the Bhagavad-gītā, īśvaraḥ sarva-bhūtānāṁ hṛd-deśe arjuna tiṣṭhati (BG 18.61).

Philosophy Discussion on Charles Darwin:

Hayagrīva: ...bacteria for instance, or an ant.

Prabhupāda: So ant moves because there is soul; the bacteria moves there because there is soul. Similarly, the man moves because there is soul. An animal moves because there is soul.

Hayagrīva: And every soul is immortal.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Hayagrīva: So that's all, on Darwin. (break) This is an appendix to the Darwin. In 1925 the Tennessee legislature passed the Butler Act, forbidding the teaching of Darwinism, Darwinian evolution, in the public schools of that state. In May, John Thomas Scopes, a science teacher at Dayton High School, consented to be the defendant in a court test of the law. He was arrested and indicted by a Grand Jury and stood trial on July 1925.

Prabhupāda: Why he was arrested?

Hayagrīva: For teaching Darwinism. For teaching that man descended from the apes.

Prabhupāda: So he was teaching, and the government arrested him?

Philosophy Discussion on John Stuart Mill:

Śyāmasundara: He says that reason is essentially inductive, that is, if we can generalize from particular instances. For instance, we have observed that all men die, so we can say that all men are mortal.

Prabhupāda: That's all right, but you cannot see all men in your whole life; therefore it is defective. You cannot study all men; therefore it is defective. Which is not possible by you, if you propose something which is not possible by you, then what is the meaning of this? What is the utility?

Śyāmasundara: You mean you cannot generalize from particular instances.

Prabhupāda: Yes. You cannot generalize because your senses are limited, your life is limited. How you can study all men? You cannot go all countries where there are so many men all over the world, universe. You cannot test them. Therefore your method is defective. From his definition, that studying all men—but you cannot study. You can study a limited number of men. And if you conclude, suppose whoever you have met, you have seen that he has died. But I may say that you might not have seen a man who never dies. Then what will he accomplish?

Śyāmasundara: Well, since knowledge is limited to our experience...

Philosophy Discussion on John Stuart Mill:

Śyāmasundara: For instance, he observes if a ball being hit by a bat, it always moves. So he concludes that whenever there is circumstance of a bat hitting a ball, that the ball will always move.

Prabhupāda: But the bat is hitting, it is caused by a living being. The bat is not hitting automatically. And not each hitting is of the same force. Therefore the hitting of the ball by the bat, it depends on the other cause, the man who is handling the bat.

Śyāmasundara: Then using another example, that every apple on the tree will fall, but when it is ripe, it will fall to the ground. There is no man involved with that. What about that?

Prabhupāda: No. That is his imperfect vision. We say that God is everywhere. God is everywhere. Aṇḍāntara-sthaṁ paramāṇu cayāntara-stham. God is present everywhere, even within the atom. Now the modern atomic theory, they will explain from atomic theory about the falldown of the apples. But we say that within the atom there is God; therefore God is the ultimate cause.

Śyāmasundara: What kind of test do we apply to phenomena to see what is the cause?

Prabhupāda: For every phenomenon there is a cause.

Philosophy Discussion on John Stuart Mill:

Śyāmasundara: But his idea is to find or to utilize those principles of life which give qualitatively and quantitatively the most pleasure to the most people. That means, he says, by quality he means... Like, for instance, he makes the statement, "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied. It is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied."

Prabhupāda: But how many Socrates will you find? Then again he comes to the minimum. You cannot find Socrates on the street, loitering.

Śyāmasundara: But he says that that standard of pleasure...

Prabhupāda: Then where is the question of maximum men? A Socrates you will find in millions, one.

Śyāmasundara: But he says that that standard of pleasure that Socrates...

Prabhupāda: Then there is no question of maximum people. The number of Socrates is not maximum. That is minimum. That is minimum. If you come to the question of quality, the quality philosophy, quality understanding, that is for the minimum. Just like Kṛṣṇa says in the Bhagavad-gītā, manuṣyāṇāṁ sahasreṣu kaścid yatati siddhaye: (BG 7.3) "Out of millions and millions of persons, one person is trying to become perfect."

Philosophy Discussion on William James:

Prabhupāda: Which is factual, not theoretical—that will have good effect in practice. What is his example?

Śyāmasundara: There is no example given, but for instance, if there are two different theories involving a subject, then that theory which is more easily practiced is more true. It has become part of our experience; that is true. He says that anything that is meaningful or real must have some influence on practice on our experience, and vice verse. Anything that is practiced must be meaningful or real.

Prabhupāda: So that is Kṛṣṇa consciousness. We have invited our students, and when they actually practice Kṛṣṇa consciousness, the result is immediately there. Just like you all European and American boys, you were eating meat, and other things were practiced, but since you have taken to Kṛṣṇa consciousness, you have left it. So by practicing, we see the practical result; therefore this is most practical.

Śyāmasundara: What about, for instance, people who are practicing sense gratification, and they find it very practical to gratify their senses. Does this mean that it is meaningful or real?

Philosophy Discussion on William James:

Śyāmasundara: For instance, James uses the example of God. Whether God exists depends on the extent to which a belief in God affects my life. In other words if it is practical, if it makes me feel happy, if I get some courage and strength by believing in God, then God is true, then God does exist.

Prabhupāda: So one may not feel like that, that means that God does not exist? Suppose one man does not feel very good talking about God. That means God is null and void?

Śyāmasundara: According to James's philosophy...

Prabhupāda: That means he is an atheist. He's a godless.

Śyāmasundara: He considers himself to be a religious man.

Prabhupāda: Considers... He has no idea of God. What kind of a religious man he is? We say he is a nonsense.

Śyāmasundara: In other words, truth is relative, according to him.

Philosophy Discussion on William James:

Śyāmasundara: Well, he says it like this, that there are alternative courses of action. For every possibility there are several other possibilities. So that for instance a man can make a decision, a choice, to take different, alternative way. So he says that nature works in that way also.

Prabhupāda: No. Nature is not working that way. Nature is working very perfectly. We can see. Just after... So perfect that the astronomers, they are calculating that on such and such date there will be an eclipse, and it will be seen in India; it will not be seen in Europe; and exactly at this time the eclipse will begin. So how they are calculating unless there is a rigid law? How it is possible? They are calculating mathematically. The general matter that two plus two is always four, not that by accident it becomes five. That is not possible. So the nature's law is working in that way. Otherwise how one year before you can calculate this solar eclipse and lunar eclipse so rightly? And they can say that from this country it will be seen, and from this country it will be not seen. That means the position of the sun, moon and everything, of the latitude and longitude, everything is so nicely done that you can make calculations very perfectly. How you can say accident? There is no accident.

Philosophy Discussion on William James:

Śyāmasundara: He says the substance called experience sometimes manifests in mind, sometimes manifests as matter. So, for instance, the substance of these flowers is made up of the experience gathered from previous flowers.

Prabhupāda: Whose experience? I am asking whose experience? It is not your experience, so nice flowers. You have not made it.

Śyāmasundara: Presumably the flower's experience.

Prabhupāda: That is another nonsense. The flower's experience. (laughs) Just see.

Śyāmasundara: He just calls this pure experience. He doesn't say whose experience.

Prabhupāda: That means his knowledge is not perfect. He is speculating, that's all.

Śyāmasundara: Isn't everything we see a product of experience?

Prabhupāda: Yes. Whose experience? That is my question.

Śyāmasundara: He doesn't say, so...

Philosophy Discussion on William James:

Śyāmasundara: The Darwinists, for instance, would say that this flower through time had the experience that if it produced a nice odor, more bees would come to pollinate it and continue the species. So that the experience is passed on in the gene or the seed of the flower, so...

Prabhupāda: Whose experience passed?

Śyāmasundara: The flower's experience.

Prabhupāda: The flower has got experience?

Śyāmasundara: Don't all living things have experience?

Prabhupāda: No. All the living things are experienced, but ultimately they are put into certain condition by the experience of the Supreme. And the flavor of the flower is stated in Bhagavad-gītā: puṇyo gandhaḥ pṛthivyāṁ ca. There are many flowers, but all of them have no flavor. It must be the arrangement of somebody else who has given flavor to some flowers. He has given somebody beauty and somebody not. Otherwise who will deny beauty? If it had been done by his own experience, then everyone would have been beautiful or every flower would have given flavor. Where is that experience? That means either you say flower's experience or your experience, it is conducted by another, superior experience. What is that?

Philosophy Discussion on John Dewey:

Śyāmasundara: He says that rights are also social, just like if I claim a right, a certain social right, that I must also accept my responsibility. Just for instance free speech. If I accept free speech as my social right, that I must also accept others' right to free speech.

Prabhupāda: But that is lacking in the present society, because these rascals, they are proud of their nationals but they are denying this same national life to the animals. They are being sent to the slaughterhouse. Therefore they are rascals. Why the animals should be denied their national right? They are born in the same country. They have a right to live at the cost of God. Why we are interfering with their independence, given right? Therefore they are rascals. Their so-called social, moral, philosophical, political, they are all rascaldom. Therefore our decision is, harāv abhaktasya kuto mahad-guṇā: (SB 5.18.12) anyone who is not a devotee of Kṛṣṇa, he has no good qualities. In the other direction, we will find so many defects with his so-called moral and social position.

Śyāmasundara: He says that God... He defines God as the active relation between the ideal and the actual.

Prabhupāda: Yes. We are active in God's service. People are thinking, "What service they are doing? They should be giving service to the country, to society, and they are making ārati and brass idols." They are thinking like that. But for us it is practical.

Philosophy Discussion on Soren Aabye Kierkegaard:

Śyāmasundara: One of the examples that this man's successor has used, which probably would apply here, is that in the case, for instance, of having to fight... (break)

Prabhupāda: ...not working?

Śyāmasundara: It ended. I had to turn it over.

Prabhupāda: So therefore, considering as he says past, present and future, we have to act in such a way what is beneficial for past, present and future, and then the next question is that if I existed in the past, am existing now, and I shall exist in future, then what is this body? The body, this body was not in the past. This body, it will exist for some years, and in the future it will not exist. Then you immediately understand that this body is external. Then my decision should be not on the basis of body, but on the basis of my real position, the soul. These things (indistinct). That is right decision.

Philosophy Discussion on Arthur Schopenhauer:

Śyāmasundara: He says that this will does not care for the individual's satisfaction, but only for the perpetuation of the species. For instance I have sex life; it is not satisfying to me personally, it simply perpetuates the species.

Prabhupāda: In all species there is sex life, so why...

Śyāmasundara: But it isn't satisfying ultimately. The satisfaction dwindles immediately afterward. So he says that this is a trick by the will just to perpetuate the species.

Prabhupāda: So why there is a trick?

Śyāmasundara: I think that by this sex life I will be satisfied. That is a trick of the will. I find I am not satisfied by it.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Śyāmasundara: And simply the race goes on, the species goes on.

Prabhupāda: Yes, that's nice; that's all right. He must be given a point, or a goal, that here he will be satisfied. Where is that goal?

Philosophy Discussion on Arthur Schopenhauer:

Śyāmasundara: He says that the working of the world is ethically evil. For instance, he observes that...

Prabhupāda: To some extent that is all right, because when you are in prison life, you will find evil. But that evil is good for you, so that you can learn some lesson, and when you are out of the prison you will not come again. That is the blessings of evil.

Śyāmasundara: The blessings of evil.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Śyāmasundara: For instance in the animal kingdom, he observes the brutality of one animal eating another animal, and he says that this is life's pattern, one disappointment after another.

Prabhupāda: So, the worst brutal is the human being who is eating animals. Animals are called brutal because he is eating another animal, and the human being who is eating animal, he is the worst brutal, because in spite of his sense, he is violating. So therefore, he is the worst animal.

Philosophy Discussion on Ludwig Wittgenstein:

Śyāmasundara: Yes. (laughs) He says that the propositions of logic and mathematics are tautologies, he calls it, or uninformative assertions which state nothing factual about the world. Just like, for instance, "Two plus two equals four." On paper it is just two symbols: the symbol 2, and the symbol 2 and the symbol 4. But actually that is a void arrangement. It doesn't state anything factual about the world.

Prabhupāda: What does he want more practical?

Śyāmasundara: He says that these can be demonstrated but not verified.

Prabhupāda: Why not verified? Two rupees plus two rupees equal to four rupees. This is verified.

Śyāmasundara: But that's something else.

Prabhupāda: That is..., the mathematics is required for that purpose. You have got two rupees, I have got two rupees; when combined together it becomes four rupees. That is mathematics. This is practical proof. Why does he say that there is no practical use? And philosopher, to become philosopher is not to become a nonsense. But because he theorizes something nonsensical, he's become a philosopher—that is not philosophy. This mathematical truth is practically true.

Philosophy Discussion on Ludwig Wittgenstein:

Śyāmasundara: So, for instance, the ring may be gold under one set of conditions...

Prabhupāda: Yes. It is gold under certain conditions, but the original cause is Kṛṣṇa. Everything. Under certain conditions something is wood, something is gold, something is metal, something is this, something is... These are different conditions. I am also conditioned. Under certain conditions I am talking that "I am human being." Otherwise animal, he is under certain conditions, he is an animal. So everyone is under conditions. Who is not under conditions? Everything is under conditions. Therefore this world is called conditioned world or relative world. Nothing is absolute.

Śyāmasundara: He says that a proposition is a...

Prabhupāda: It is gold, gold means it is a metal, a combination of metals. There are eight types of metals, and gold is combination of tin, copper and mercury.

Śyāmasundara: There is a basic element-gold.

Prabhupāda: Not basic. It is a combination of different elements, different metals.

Philosophy Discussion on Jacques Maritain:

Śyāmasundara: Yes. His main philosophy is that existence and essence are both there; that existence is not possible without essence. He defines existence to be..., er, essence to be potential and existence to be the actual. So that a thing, and everything that we can perceive, has both existence and, in other words, potentiality and actuality. For instance, this cup has the potentiality to be something else, to be a piece of metal, but in its actual form it is like this. But it has potentiality to become something else. So he says these two things—the essence and the existence-exist simultaneously.

Prabhupāda: So we agree to this point. Just like soul, at the present moment you have got a certain type of body, human body, but the soul has potentiality to have a spiritual body or a dog's body. Both potentialities are there. So the essential is the soul, and the reality... It is not reality; temporary form in the material body. But the potentiality as the soul has its own spiritual body. When it is uncontaminated by the material contamination, he remains only reality without any so-called actuality or temporary form.

Philosophy Discussion on Edmund Husserl:

Prabhupāda: But why these schools are there? Every day we see, actually, from the most intelligent persons, scientist, he has to go to a school. Not that at home, by speculating and talking nonsense, they have become a scientist. They will never become.

Śyāmasundara: But if evidence from that leaf—that it is the color green, for instance...

Prabhupāda: Still, you have to learn how the color green comes in.

Śyāmasundara: Well, he calls that kind of knowledge—how the color green comes in—you must exclude that kind of consideration; only...

Prabhupāda: That I am saying. Then he doesn't require to ask anybody. He has to speculate himself and think any kind of way he likes. He wants (indistinct).

Śyāmasundara: No. He wants to understand the object in its self-evidence...

Prabhupāda: What is that self-evidence?

Syamasundara: ...not that it's the color green, that...

Philosophy Discussion on Edmund Husserl:

Prabhupāda: They are called adaksi (?). Adaksi, simply that sense perception. That's all. So they are not perfect.

Śyāmasundara: No. But not... Behind sense perception he also proceeds to the other levels. For instance, there's a..., he has to distinguish between the phenomenon of a sound, of a sound, and the constituting or intelligible essence of sound. From one particular sound, try to understand the nature of sound in general—what is sound. He says the intelligence comes into play then.

Prabhupāda: Sound is a symptom of the sky. When there is sound, there is sky.

Śyāmasundara: So that would be the next logical understanding, intuitive understanding.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Śyāmasundara: Behind hearing one sound, the proof of that understanding of sound in general is the sky, like that. In an elective process, this is a process for understanding these things.

Prabhupāda: On the whole, his process is mental speculation.

Philosophy Discussion on Sigmund Freud:

Prabhupāda: No. That is not possible. There is the system that is yogic process, mechanical system to control the senses. Yoga (indistinct). Yoga means to control the senses. Yoga indriya saṁyama. So by this mechanical process of yogic exercises, one can (indistinct). One may artificially check, suppress, these tendencies, but we have many instances that even the greatest yogis like (indistinct) also failed. Our process is as it is recommended in the Bhagavad-gītā, paraṁ dṛṣṭvā nivartante. You give him a better thing, he will forget it.

Śyāmasundara: Sometimes people forget experiences which cause them pain. For instance, a child may have had a very frightening experience which he does not like to recall, so that he forgets it. But the cause of his forgetting is that it causes an unhealthy state.

Prabhupāda: Yes. So therefore we do not recommend such artificial means.

Śyāmasundara: But it's not artificial; naturally the...

Prabhupāda: Not natural. The child forgets... Our formula is bhayaṁ dvitīyābhiniveśataḥ syāt. This fearfulness is created when one is not Kṛṣṇa conscious. This is a quality of the conditioned soul. Īśād apetasya viparyayo 'smṛtiḥ. So as soon as one becomes Kṛṣṇa conscious, these things become almost nil. Nārāyaṇa-parāḥ sarve na kutaścana bibhyati (SB 6.17.28). One who is God conscious doesn't fear anything.

Philosophy Discussion on Sigmund Freud:

Śyāmasundara: Just like for instance a person may have a hatred toward a member of the opposite sex. Why is this hatred? By tracing back in his childhood we may find that there was some horrible experience with his father or with his mother which caused him to hate that particular sex.

Prabhupāda: Just like if some woman does not like to give birth to a child...

Śyāmasundara: Because she was repressed when she was a child, or beaten by her father...

Prabhupāda: Not only that. A person does not like to bear children; therefore this contraceptive method is there. It is botheration, painful. It is called pain. (indistinct) (indistinct) means pain. So nature is prohibiting that, (indistinct), child delivery, so the man is also given so much trouble. The woman is also given so much trouble. So why is the trouble there? The (indistinct) for everything is don't be implicated in this sex life. If you simply tolerating a little itching sensation, then you will not have so much pain. Yan maithunādi-gṛhamedhi-sukhaṁ hi tuccham (SB 7.9.45). These ordinary men who are attached to the materialistic way of life, their only happiness is this sexual intercourse. So śāstra says this happiness derived from sexual intercourse is very, very insignificant.

Philosophy Discussion on Sigmund Freud:

Śyāmasundara: He says that these neuroses or disorders of the personality are due to repressed sex impulses in childhood, and that these cause traumatic and shock experiences. For instance, he says that at a certain age, around four or five, the son becomes jealous of the father, and he...

Prabhupāda: These are all right, but what is the remedy that he is suggesting? That the child should be allowed to have sex life?

Śyāmasundara: No. The tension that is created by repressing the sex desire...

Prabhupāda: There are so many (indistinct), we established some of them. There are so many problems. But our program is that threefold miseries, everyone who has accepted this body has to undergo the threefold miseries. You may describe in...

Śyāmasundara: (break) ...psychoanalysis that by releasing these emotions, which have been built up due to tension, frustration, then the original shock can be released through admitting, confessing, remembering, like that.

Prabhupāda: What is the guarantee that he will not get another shock? He is getting shock after shock. You (indistinct) one and another is present.

Philosophy Discussion on Sigmund Freud:

Devotee: Is doing it from the beginning necessarily always going to work? For instance in Nairobi, (indistinct) he came with his wife and two children, and his son was so frightened, he never liked to leave the house at night because he thought when he left the house at night, when he returned the house wouldn't be there, and you were saying that that was recalled from his previous life, that he was bringing that... (break) ...simple desires?

Prabhupāda: Yes. That is continued from the previous birth. As soon as the seed is there, we are getting so many impressions, there are seeds, so many impressions. So therefore Lord Caitanya said that we are getting so many seeds, every moment, so one who is fortunate, he gets the seed of bhakti by the mercy of Kṛṣṇa and guru. Guru-kṛṣṇa-prasāde pāya bhakti-latā-bīja (CC Madhya 19.151). The bīja is there, that seed, and if he nourishes that seed by watering, (indistinct), then it grows, he becomes a devotee. Everything is seed. Either bhakti or sinful life or anything—it grows (indistinct). So brahmacārī means from the very beginning sowing the seed of goodness, and if one becomes a devotee, then automatically other things are lost.

Philosophy Discussion on Sigmund Freud:

Śyāmasundara: He doesn't call it a seed; he calls it a shocking experience which we repress because it causes pain, and this repression makes a tension. For instance, a person grows up with a great hatred of woman: "Oh, I hate all woman."

Prabhupāda: That is particular (indistinct) for a particular person.

Devotee: Otherwise, let's say when the child was very young, the mother became angry and locked him in a room for too long, and he was crying, locked up. So then that person for the rest of his life, as soon as the windows are closed, he will be afraid, because he remembers, even if he has forgotten the original experience. He is always afraid of. That's claustrophobia.

Śyāmasundara: Freud says by remembering this experience you can explain...

Prabhupāda: Suppose the child is locked up, and his brain becomes deranged. Then how can (indistinct)?

Philosophy Discussion on Sigmund Freud:

Śyāmasundara: He says that ego is concerned with self-preservation—by organizing and controlling against neurotic conflicts and the demands of the id. In other words, if the id sees something, like foodstuffs, it automatically has the urge to eat it, kill it, eat it. The ego is concerned with controlling that desire in order to preserve the individual. For instance, this becomes restrained. Voluntary restraint, control, by personalities and the superego are the authoritarian values of the society, or the parents which say "No, you do not kill like that. You do not eat this, like that." So these three systems are functioning in the personality, and they are always in conflict with a person as he progresses.

Prabhupāda: But the basic principle is called, as Vivekananda says, that he is following the principles of (indistinct), he has no conception of the soul that is existing beyond the body. So they are taking consideration of the body. So according to our philosophy, Bhāgavata, anyone who is in the concept of this body is no better than an ass. Sa eva go-kharaḥ (SB 10.84.13). Yasyātma-buddhiḥ kuṇape tri-dhātuke (SB 10.84.13). One who is identifying this body of three elements as the self, he is no better than an ass.

Śyāmasundara: These three types of reaction to anything—the id reaction, the ego reaction and the superego reaction—these are all bodily reactions.

Prabhupāda: Yes. They are all bodily—subtle reactions.

Philosophy Discussion on Sigmund Freud:

Śyāmasundara: He observed, for instance, when someone came up against a massive task, that sometimes they got sick in order to escape the task—these kinds of things. He investigated slips of the tongue and different accidents. He said that a lot of times they are caused by the self, the psychic.

Prabhupāda: Yes, that is intention, not insanity.

Śyāmasundara: Another area of his investigation was the problem of anxiety. He says that the source of anxiety is the id, or the primitive instincts, which are always forcing us to do this and do that. In other words, desire. These impulses threaten to overpower the rational or the moral self. So there is always a tension or an anxiety produced.

Prabhupāda: Anxiety shall continue so long as you are in material condition. You cannot be free from anxiety in your conditioned life.

Śyāmasundara: It is because we desired something and we were always frustrated by that desire?

Prabhupāda: Frustration must be there, because you do not desire the right thing.

Philosophy Discussion on Sigmund Freud:

Śyāmasundara: Another field of investigation for Freud was the idea of projection. He said this is a technique for attributing one's own unconscious attitudes onto other people. In other words, X called Y a name, but actually Y is the object of that. In other words, for instance, X may regard Y as being jealous, but in fact X is jealous and he projects that attitude onto someone else.

Prabhupāda: That is accepted. (indistinct) Everyone thinks others like himself.

Śyāmasundara: So he says that this desire to accuse someone else of being the same is sometimes repressed and replaced by the opposite expression. In other words, someone may dislike someone, but they will inhibit that dislike and show overt symptoms of friendliness, where in fact there is no friendliness there but it is only a mock friendliness. This is one of the psychological attitudes he was studying. Sometimes someone who may have dislike for someone, instead of expressing dislike, may express just the opposite, extreme fondness, where in fact he dislikes the person.

Prabhupāda: That is called (indistinct), silliness. What is the meaning of silly?

Philosophy Discussion on Carl Gustav Jung:

Śyāmasundara: He sees that the mind is composed of a balance of conscious and unconscious, just like light and dark, there's an equal amount, but that the function of the personality is to integrate the conscious and unconscious functions. For instance, if one had a strong sex desire, if somehow he were able to cultivate or channel that into a creative art or a creative value. Just like this brahmācārya, that sex impulse is channelled into higher thinking about Kṛṣṇa.

Prabhupāda: That is our process. Just like sex impulse is natural for everyone in the material (world), but if we think of Kṛṣṇa embracing Rādhārāṇī or dancing with the gopīs, then our sex impulse becomes subordinate, no more stronger. Hṛd-rogaṁ kāmam āśv apahinoti. Hṛd-rogaṁ kāmam, this is a heart disease, to be lusty. But if anyone hears about the pastimes of Kṛṣṇa and the gopīs, through right source, then this hṛd-rogam, this lusty desire in the heart, is suppressed and he will develop devotional service.

Philosophy Discussion on Carl Gustav Jung:

Śyāmasundara: Just like when we investigate different folklores, different mythologies all over the world, we find certain symbols which are the same. For instance the swastika, we find that in the Indian mythology and you find it in Māyā or Inca, western Indians' mythologies as well. And different symbols which are common to man all over the globe, whether they are primitive or whether they are advanced, he says that these are archetypal images which for thousands of generations have been passed on in men's consciousness. So that we are composed not only of our own individual thoughts and ingredients but also the ingredients of our ancestors. Is this a fact?

Prabhupāda: Yes. That is called tradition. That is called tradition. But that is not paramparā. Paramparā is different. Paramparā means we get the right knowledge from the supreme. It is not something ac..., what is called? What he is speaking?

Śyāmasundara: Acquired. Archetypal. Means the original type.

Prabhupāda: My acquired knowledge can be changed by understanding from superior. Just like generally we have got bodily concept of life, but Kṛṣṇa says, "No. You are not this body." So this knowledge is not coming to me from tradition, but I learn it from great authorities like Kṛṣṇa.

Philosophy Discussion on Carl Gustav Jung:

Śyāmasundara: But he would, for instance, say that our means..., aware of understanding Kṛṣṇa as a supreme father, as our cause and so on, is an archetypal tendency that is shared by all human entities, that they have the same tendency to react in that way, to understand someone as their father or as their cause. And they will represent Him in different ways but always..., always similar.

Prabhupāda: Yes. We see that. Exactly similar. Rather, this father is (indistinct). Kṛṣṇa, or God, is the supreme father. It is similar. As father has many sons, similarly Kṛṣṇa has many sons. You can say it is similar. As sons are born, children are born of father, similarly, we are born of Kṛṣṇa. It is similar.

Śyāmasundara: For instance, in the dream life, our dream life, in the dream life of savages or anyone else on this planet, certain common occurrences take place in the dream. Sometimes we feel we are flying in dreams, or sometimes we feel that there's a disruption coming from below, or certain symbols are there, common to all men. He calls these archetypes or the collective unconscious. All human beings share these propensities.

Nara-nārāyaṇa: Universally one.

Philosophy Discussion on Carl Gustav Jung:

Śyāmasundara: For instance, someone may have some kind of desire which he does not like to reveal to others, so he keeps it suppressed, unconscious.

Prabhupāda: Yes. That is politics. That is diplomacy. Cāṇakya Paṇḍita advises, (Sanskrit): "Don't manifest your intentions by your words, since you are thinking (indistinct)." These things are required because it is material world. Cāṇakya Paṇḍita has advised, tato śāstram samadvayam (?). The people are cheaters, so you have to become cheater also; otherwise you cannot live. What can you say? Just like a shopkeeper, everyone knows that he is making profit, but he has to make bargain. So a shopkeeper says, "I am taking (indistinct). You are my friend, I am not taking a single paisa profit." How he'll do it, come on (indistinct). But if you know that he is making business, he must make profit. But he's cheated. He doesn't want to be cheated. That's all. So therefore my Guru Mahārāja used to say that "This is a society of cheaters and the cheated." That's all.

Śyāmasundara: Sometimes this shadow personality, he says, is not even known to myself. I don't even know my...

Prabhupāda: Why you will know? You are being cheated. How can you know?

Philosophy Discussion on Carl Gustav Jung:

Śyāmasundara: For instance, I may think that I am like this, I am like that, but I don't realize that I am also like this. There's some other part of me which I'm not aware of which is guiding my behavior, which I repress.

Prabhupāda: Unless one comes to Kṛṣṇa consciousness, he thinks (indistinct), that "I am like this," "I am Indian," "I am American," "I am brāhmaṇa," "I am this," "I am that." But when he's fully conscious, he knows that "I am eternal servant of Kṛṣṇa." That is the final (indistinct). Otherwise he (indistinct), "I am this," "I am that," "I am this," "I am that."

Revatīnandana: (indistinct) actor who take parts in a cinema production, he said that whenever he takes a part he probably could becomes, that actor, he (indistinct), or the part that he actually forgets who he thinks he is.

Prabhupāda: Yes. The best actor is he who forgets his real identity and plays blindly. That is best actor. He forgets, but he creates such (indistinct) that he forgets that he's Mr. Such-and-such.

Śyāmasundara: Yes, but secretly, unknown to him there may be something about him that he does not know himself...

Philosophy Discussion on Carl Gustav Jung:

Śyāmasundara: For instance, he says that all male personalities, in their shadow personality, there is a bit of the female, and in all females there is a bit of the male propensity. So often we cover these up and become repressed and we do not understand our actions.

Prabhupāda: That is our philosophy, because every living entity is by nature a female, prakṛti. I was discussing this morning, parā prakṛti, living entity, but it is prakṛti. Prakṛti means female and puruṣa means male. So here in this material world, although we are prakṛti, we are (indistinct) ourselves as puruṣa. This male-female dress, that is immaterial. Our consciousness is now male consciousness. A female, the so-called female, here, she also wants to enjoy a male, and the male also, he also wants to enjoy the female. Both of them have the same propensity of enjoying. So this enjoying propensity is for male. Therefore jīvātmā is sometimes described as puruṣa. But actually the jīvātmā, the living entities, they are puruṣa, he's prakṛti. Prakṛti means predominated, and puruṣa means predominator. So we are all predominated. And the (indistinct) predominator is Kṛṣṇa. Therefore originally, by constitution, we are all females.

Philosophy Discussion on Carl Gustav Jung:

Śyāmasundara: So for instance in nature, he sees male and female characteristics. For instance a mountain, we see a mountain and we give it a male, a male characteristic because it is strong, it is dominant, it is (indistinct), like this. And the sea, which is passive and calm and deep, we give a female aspect. He sees all these in nature.

Prabhupāda: These are all mental concoction. It has to be more scientifical. You can think of something in your own idea. That's all. That is not the real identity of it. What is that?

Devotee (3): You said that all things are created out of the water of origination. There's an ocean, the Kāraṇodaka, by which all these worlds are generated, (indistinct) the primeval ocean, from which (indistinct) the ocean...

Prabhupāda: Wherefrom the ocean has been generated? Everything is generated from the breathing of Lord Viṣṇu. Viṣṇu is lying in that ocean, that's all. So I'm lying on this bed, and something is coming out of my breathing, that does not mean it is coming from the bed. That's all.

Devotee (3): That is the reference to the ocean of the womb.

Prabhupāda: (indistinct) You can say like that. (indistinct) And the child is floating in that water.

Philosophy Discussion on Carl Gustav Jung:

Śyāmasundara: So to say that, for instance, the ocean is a female, has female characteristics, and the mountain has masculine characteristics...

Prabhupāda: (indistinct) I do not know why the ocean has female characteristics (indistinct).

Śyāmasundara: Well, they say "mother ocean." They sometimes say "mother ocean."

Prabhupāda: Yes, yes. That is just like because ocean keeps within, her cover, covering element. (indistinct) element. As the female keeps the child covered within the abdomen, so in that comparison you can say "mother." But similarly in the mountain also, there are so many minerals, so many gems, and so many nice stones. Simply by saying it is very strong. So generally male is strong and the female is weak. In that sense you can give a terminology.

Philosophy Discussion on Carl Gustav Jung:

Śyāmasundara: These psychologists like Jung, all have different processes for finding out a person's unconscious mind. For instance, interpreting his dreams, or by sometimes they put a picture, they say, "How do you look at this picture? What do you see in this picture?"

Prabhupāda: But he does not know what is the standard status of the mind. He doesn't know. Even the psychiatrist, he is also not in sane mind. "Physician heal thyself." Because he's identifying himself with this body, so he is also insane. So that treatment will not perfect. How a diseased man can become a physician? Therefore the English word is, "Physician heal thyself."

Śyāmasundara: So this Jung sees a positive aspect of psychology, not just the negative aspect, whereas Freud saw that the goal of psychology was to restrict or reach (indistinct) these powerful, primitive instincts then to mitigate troublesome symptoms, which is a rather pessimistic or negative philosophy. Jung says that man is capable of changing positively into something better by the use of psychology.

Prabhupāda: Yes. Otherwise why he was making this propaganda unless there is chance that we will be better? And actually we see they are becoming better.

Philosophy Discussion on Jean-Paul Sartre:

Śyāmasundara: Just like moods. For instance, today I may be happy, tomorrow I may be unhappy. So I'm not definite. There is no definite nature that I have.

Prabhupāda: That can be admitted to some extent, that it has not cause. Just like if you are put into the sea, so there you have no control and you are moving according to the waves. That means you have controlling power, but you are put in a certain condition where you lose your controlling power. So it is to be admitted that you are in an awkward position; therefore you cannot ascertain what change is going to take place next. That means you are not in a good situation. Just like a man, when he is on the land, he has got control. If a car is coming, he can take care. He can save from the accident. But when he is put into the ocean, the waves are floating him. So it is circumstantial, not accidental.

Śyāmasundara: Oh, circumstantial but not accidental.

Prabhupāda: Yes. So if you put yourself in better circumstances, then this uncontrolling feature will not be there. He cannot control himself. Everything is accident for him, because he is mad. But if he is cured to a sane man, there is no question of accident.

Philosophy Discussion on Jean-Paul Sartre:

Prabhupāda: No. Abandoned by God—why? God is not partial, that He is accepting somebody and abandoning somebody. You have done something for which you are abandoned. So if you rectify your position, you will be accepted again. (aside as someone enters:) Yes?

Śyāmasundara: His idea is that because we have to choose for ourselves, everything is in our hands. That for instance we can become in a situation either a coward or a hero. This is in our hands, some situation that we must confront.

Prabhupāda: Then what you can do? If you say that you are being tossed by some superior power, how you can become a hero? If you become a hero, then you will be more kicked, because you are under superior power. Therefore a man who is culprit, he is under police custody, so if he becomes hero he will be simply beaten and punished, that's all.

Śyāmasundara: I remember one example he gave was that supposing there is wartime, and you are called upon to go to war. He said it wouldn't matter if you went or didn't go. If you went, then you must choose to be a hero; you must fight very bravely, and not a coward. But if you don't go, then you must choose to be a hero to resist the war. You must choose to be a hero resisting the war. One way or the other, you have to choose to be a hero and not a coward.

Philosophy Discussion on Jean-Paul Sartre:

Śyāmasundara: He says that this condition of bad faith must be replaced by solid choosing and faith in our choosing. For instance, if one chooses a certain path of action, that he must have faith that by carrying out this action valiantly, heroically, that he will be doing the right thing.

Prabhupāda: But if his decision is wrong, then what is the use of such heroism?

Śyāmasundara: He says there's no such scale of right and wrong. There is no absolute right and wrong, that everything depends upon how...

Prabhupāda: Then where is the question of responsibility if there is no right and wrong?

Śyāmasundara: Whatever I do, I must do it...

Prabhupāda: Whimsically. Whimsically. Whatever you do, you do it whimsically. Does he mean to say like that?

Śyāmasundara: No. Whatever you do, you do courageously.

Prabhupāda: Courageously... Just like the example I gave, the insect goes very courageously into the fire. Is that a very nice decision, to go forward courageously into the fire? He'll go courageously.

Philosophy Discussion on Bertrand Russell:

Śyāmasundara: What about the knowledge, for instance, "This snowball is white"? Isn't that a direct fact, this understanding by everyone?

Prabhupāda: Yes. The snowball is white, but it may be mixed up (indistinct) white. That is also very (indistinct).

Dr. Rao: Snowball is actually colorless. It is not white.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Dr. Rao: I mean, so this proposition is incorrect. It is the rays of sun which are falling on the snowball, they are reflected, and then you see that snowball is white. Otherwise, snow is colorless.

Prabhupāda: Sometimes we see seven colors on the snowball. It is white. It is sunshine reflected there.

Dr. Rao: White light. You see white light, but white light is composed of seven colors: violet, indigo, blue, you know, (indistinct) and green, yellow, orange and red. So, but you are seeing white. (indistinct).

Devotee: (indistinct)

Prabhupāda: But that is imperfect.

Philosophy Discussion on B. F. Skinner:

Śyāmasundara: And they call their process social engineering. For instance, they say a criminal does not become bad because he is naturally bad but it's because of his environment. So if we train him in such a way he will be good, and we can...

Prabhupāda: Just like in the Western countries, the social (indistinct), the killing of animals—it is taken not bad. In other societies it is taken as bad. How is that? There are two contradictory societies. One society says that nonviolence is nice, better, but another society says no, violence is better. Then how will I (indistinct)? Which society is good, which society bad? How you will decide?

Devotee: He has no way of deciding.

Prabhupāda: No. There is no way. If you come to the Vedic life, then you will know.

Śyāmasundara: So we should propose this to Skinner: "We will accept your process if you take direction from us."

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Philosophy Discussion on B. F. Skinner:

Śyāmasundara: Right now, the level of their experiments are relatively small. For instance, they have created teaching machines where a child is put in front of the machine and a question is asked, and if the child answers it correctly he gets the reward.

Prabhupāda: Another nonsense. The thing is that the Vedic conception of raising children, brahmācārya, that system is perfect.

Śyāmasundara: Not by machine.

Prabhupāda: No, this is (indistinct). We are not machines.

Śyāmasundara: No. But he says that when the answer is given correctly by the child, then he is rewarded by him.

Prabhupāda: The answers and questions are already there. That is (indistinct). Just like we say that tad vijñānārthaṁ sa gurum evābhigacchet (MU 1.2.12). There is question and answer. Therefore in order to understand the transcendental science, we must go to guru, gurum eva abhigacchet. And then what is the symptom of guru? Samit-pāṇiḥ śrotriyaṁ brahma-niṣṭham. Guru means who has learned knowledge by the paramparā system. Śrotriyaṁ brahma. The result is that he is perfectly a devotee.

Philosophy Discussion on B. F. Skinner:

Devotee (2): For instance, they would say if our students are falling back, that is because of the environment.

Prabhupāda: They are not falling back. Some of them (indistinct).

Śyāmasundara: Some of them...

Prabhupāda: That is (indistinct) anyway.

Śyāmasundara: So he says that ideally, if our environment was conditioned in such a way that they were rewarded for doing good things and punished for doing bad things, that they would not go away.

Prabhupāda: They would be punished, but they don't care for punishment. Just like it says in the lawbook that if you steal, you'll be arrested, but they don't care for your lawbook, the thief. What can you do? That independence is already there. The lawbook says that if you commit theft you will be punished, and he is actually punished. But if he doesn't care for punishment, then what can you do? Punishment is already there.

Śyāmasundara: For instance, he gives an example that, let's say that in an institution there is lunch served for one hour between twelve and one, and at one o'clock the door is closed and locked, sharply. So automatically everyone who wants to come must come before one o'clock, otherwise they will be punished.

Philosophy Discussion on Karl Marx:

Hayagrīva: He's never, he's never, he never saw Communist Russia for instance, or any Communist state. He, he felt that religion has..., was the cause of antagonism between men. He says, "The most persistent form of antagonism between the Jew and the Christian is religious antagonism." How has one solved an antagonism by...

Prabhupāda: No.

Hayagrīva: ...by making it impossible?

Prabhupāda: There is not the question of antagonism. If we actually know who is God and what He desires... I give always this example: if we know the government and the government laws, then there is no antagonism. The government says that "Keep to the right," so there is no question of antagonism; anyone must keep to the right. So there is no question of antagonism. But the antagonism is there when the so-called religious system does not know what is God and what is actually the desire of God. Then there cannot be any antagonism. That perfectness of understanding God and God's regulation or order is clearly described in the Bhagavad-gītā. We are therefore advocating Kṛṣṇa consciousness, that "Here is God and here is God's instructions." So if we deliver it, and the proposal in the Bhagavad-gītā, they are all practical.

Philosophy Discussion on Mao Tse Tung:

Śyāmasundara: Well, speaking more of, for instance, Marx's theory, that...

Prabhupāda: Now, first of all... He said scientific. So I mean to say that so-called scientists are imperfect. So what is the value of such scientific statement? There are so many scientists. Their statements are imperfect. Or other scientists differ. Then what is real scientific? You are scientist and he is scientist. I am talking on the scientific... Experiment. He says experiment. So when a scientist says that "This is wanting," then by experiment let him prove it that actually this is wanting.

Śyāmasundara: Well, still, his basic idea is that all theories, all natural laws are proven in practice, social practice, that... For instance, Marx's idea that capital is not necessary for production, that profit is not necessary for production. It's proven by the communist state where there is no profit-taking, there is no capital making, and still the wheels(?) of production go on.

Prabhupāda: Yes. So that sense is by nature's law. But artificially we have adopted so many things. That means, nature's law means God's law. So God's law is that you have got land. You till and you get production. But if you cannot till personally, then you have to employ somebody else. So you have to pay him. Therefore you must require profit.

Philosophy Discussion on The Evolutionists Thomas Huxley, Henri Bergson, and Samuel Alexander:

Śyāmasundara: But, for instance, in ancient Greece, they fabricated so many myths, mythology...

Prabhupāda: Well, that I have already answered. Anything manufactured by man, that is not religion. That is not religion. That I have already explained. Religion is not manufactured, but it is given by God. That is our point. God is giving religion, "Here is religion. Surrender unto Me." So any religious system may be different in method, but ultimately, if it comes to this point, surrendering to God, then it is religion. Otherwise, it is not religion. Reject it.

Śyāmasundara: He says that prompted by this vital impulse, the human will identifies with the divine will in a mystical union...

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Śyāmasundara: ...and that this is real religion.

Prabhupāda: Yes. That is our Kṛṣṇa consciousness. We are teaching people that you agree with the divine will. The divine will is that you surrender. So you agree. You surrender. That we are teaching. That is real religion.

Philosophy Discussion on The Evolutionists Thomas Huxley, Henri Bergson, and Samuel Alexander:

Śyāmasundara: Occasionally, for instance, there will be some great genius born in a family, and they will say that somehow or other, nature has produced this genius. The parents are not so intelligent.

Prabhupāda: No. Genius means he, in his previous life, he cultured, and next life is being manifested. Just like in the Bhagavad-gītā it is said, śucīnāṁ śrīmatāṁ gehe yogo bhraṣṭaḥ sañjāyate (BG 6.41). So yoga-bhraṣṭaḥ, one who could not finish his yogic activities perfectly, he is given chance. Śucīnāṁ śrīmatāṁ gehe. Not that accidental.

Śyāmasundara: So through the practice of some kind of yoga system, men develop higher consciousness.

Prabhupāda: Yes. This is also, we are practicing, bhakti-yoga.

Śyāmasundara: Otherwise...

Prabhupāda: No. Without your... This is the thing, you have to gain by your own endeavor. Other things naturally come in. Tasyaiva hetoḥ prayateta kovidaḥ. Therefore śāstra says, "For that perfection, one should devote his life." Here people are taught to struggle how to get material comforts, but according to Vedic system, material comforts you will have whatever is destined to you.

Philosophy Discussion on Johann Gottlieb Fichte:

Śyāmasundara: He says the institutions such as laws can participate in this unfolding of the reason of the universe, duty of the universe for instance by controlling conflicts between personalities and so on. Law, the laws of the state, the laws of (indistinct) can participate in the unfolding of the universe, the purpose of the universe.

Prabhupāda: Yes. We accept that personality may be (indistinct), not that we pick up any man from the street and we accept guru. That will not (indistinct). Śrotriyaṁ brahma-niṣṭham (MU 1.2.12), one who has heard properly from his spiritual master and as a result of such hearing he is perfectly in God consciousness (indistinct).

Śyāmasundara: How does this fit in with what I was just saying about institutions such as laws, things like that. They can participate in the purpose of the universe, in bringing out the purpose of the universe. I make a law that you shall not kill, does that participate...

Prabhupāda: No, you cannot make law. Law can be made by God. You have to abide by the law. You cannot (indistinct), you are imperfect, how you can make law? Your law will be imperfect.

Philosophy Discussion on Plato:

Hayagrīva: For instance...

Prabhupāda: Bījāhaṁ sarva-bhūtānām. In Bhagavad-gītā it is said, mattaḥ sarvaṁ pravartate, that even the spiritual world and material world, everything is emanation from Him. The difference is, in the material everything is created and maintained then annihilated. In the spiritual world that is not the case. Just like material world this body, and spiritual world the soul. The body is created, maintained and annihilated; the soul is not. Na hanyate hanyamāne śarīre (BG 2.20). After the destruction of the body, the spirit soul is not destroyed. What happens to him? He takes another body. And one who is perfect, he goes directly to Kṛṣṇa, tyaktvā dehaṁ punar janma naiti mām eti (BG 4.9). So we can make this life... Because we are preparing for the next life, so why not take advantage of going back to home, back to Godhead? This is our mission. You have to prepare yourself either for going to the higher planetary system, yānti devān deva-vratāḥ... You can go to the higher planetary system, you can go lower, and you can go to Godhead. So they, therefore, if I have to change this body and go elsewhere, why not go to God? That is intelligence. Now what is the advantage? If you go to God, then you will have..., haven't got to change any more this body. That is eternal, blissful. Therefore our intelligence should be utilized how to go to back to home, back to Godhead. That is intelligence.

Philosophy Discussion on Rene Descartes:

Hayagrīva: "If they could think as we do, they would have an immortal soul as well as we, which is not likely because there is no reason for believing it of some animals without believing it of all, and there are many of them too imperfect to make it possible to believe it of them, such as oysters, sponges, etc." Is thinking a necessary function of the soul? He says, well for instance an oyster. How does he know whether or not an oyster thinks?

Prabhupāda: God is there giving him. God is, gives us instruction that we will advance, human being. We refuse, but they do not refuse.

Hayagrīva: You've said that anything that grows has a soul. The grass has a soul, has soul.

Prabhupāda: Yes. In dormant state.

Hayagrīva: Dormant.

Prabhupāda: Yes. Just as child has soul, but it is not yet..., the body has not yet developed. According to the body, according to the circumstances, the soul acts.

Hayagrīva: But he equates the mind and the higher mental processes with the soul.

Prabhupāda: No.

Philosophy Discussion on George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel:

Hayagrīva: He thinks... He says in many Oriental states this assignment... He says, Hegel, in tle Platonic state, in Plato's Republic, the government assigns each individual his occupation. In Oriental states, in..., for instance in India, he says this assignment results from birth. The subjective choice, which ought to be respected, requires free choice by individuals, and he considers this the basic right.

Prabhupāda: No. The thing is just like Bhagavān Kṛṣṇa said, cātur-varṇyaṁ mayā sṛṣṭaṁ guṇa-karma-vibhāgaśaḥ (BG 4.13). This is going on all over the world. The occupation is that just like engineering occupation. So who can become engineer? Guṇa-karma, one who has acquired the qualification of engineering profession and is actually acting as engineer. That is wanted. Guṇa-karma. Kṛṣṇa never says, "Birth" But later on, because an engineer trains his boy as engineer, so naturally he becomes also engineer. Formerly, as we understand from the history of Ajāmila... He was a son of a brāhmaṇa, and he was being trained up as a brāhmaṇa. That was the system. Not that because he has born in the brāhmaṇa family he becomes brāhmaṇa. No. He has got the chance of being trained up as brāhmaṇa by the brāhmaṇa father. So it became later on as caste, by birth, because naturally a brāhmaṇa father trains his son to become brāhmaṇa.

Philosophy Discussion on George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel:

Hayagrīva: But you shouldn't think of Kṛṣṇa in any..., in another way, for instance a palm tree or...

Prabhupāda: (indistinct) Then He is giving indication that "Amongst the trees I am this." So you take it.

Hayagrīva: Yes.

Prabhupāda: Just like Kṛṣṇa said, raso 'ham apsu kaunteya (BG 7.8). He said that "I am the taste of the water." So you are drinking water always. The taste which quenches your thirst and you feel satisfaction, that is Kṛṣṇa. Now if you follow Kṛṣṇa's instruction, "Now I am drinking water. Now I am feeling satisfaction. Now this satisfaction is Kṛṣṇa," then you remember Him.

Hayagrīva: Hegel mistook this for pantheism.

Prabhupāda: Hm?

Hayagrīva: Hegel mistook this for pantheism.

Philosophy Discussion on Thomas Henry Huxley:

Hayagrīva: He writes in this way: "In the theory of evolution the tendency of a germ to develop according to a certain specific type, for instance of a kidney bean seed to grow into a plant having all the characters of Phaseolus vulgaris," that is a kidney bean, "that is its karma. The snowdrop is a snowdrop and not an oak tree—and just that kind of snowdrop—because it is the outcome of the karma of an endless series of past existences."

Prabhupāda: Yes. Karma... That is called karma-bandhanaḥ: one after another, one after another, one after another, it is going on. So if this evolutionary process one comes to the form of human being, then he is allowed the discrimination to decide whether he shall continue in this karma-bandhanaḥ process or he should stop his karma-bandhanaḥ process and surrender to Kṛṣṇa. If he surrenders to Kṛṣṇa then his karma-bandhanaḥ process stopped, and if he does not, then he is again put into the karma-bandhanaḥ process by the laws of nature.

Hayagrīva: So he does appear at least a little closer than Darwin, because Darwin didn't recognize any of this transmigration at all.

Philosophy Discussion on Samuel Alexander:

Hayagrīva: Alexander distinguishes between what he calls deity and God Himself. For him deity is how it feels to be divine. Now deity for him is a relative term. It is the next highest level of existence. For instance, for an ant, a dog may be a deity; for a dog, a man may be a deity; for a man, a demigod may be a deity. He says, "For any level of existence, deity is the next higher empirical quality."

Prabhupāda: Hmm.

Hayagrīva: "It is therefore a variable quality, and as the world grows in time, deity changes with it. On each level a new quality looms ahead, which plays to it the part of deity. However, God is the being which possesses Deity in full." That is to say God is always one step ahead of every creature.

Prabhupāda: They do not know the science of God, but as philosopher they are suggesting the method. That is nice. Just like for ant, a bird is deity; for a bird, a cat is deity; for a cat, a dog is deity. So in this way, according to the position one selects the deity. But if you go on searching out, when you find out somebody that he has no any, anyone to worship... The ant has to worship the bird, bird has to worship the cat, cat has to worship the so on, so on. In this way, when you come to a person who hasn't got to worship anybody, He is God. That is sense. In the lower stage there is another, higher living being than the lower living being, but in this way searching out, when you come to a point that there is this person who hasn't got to worship anybody ...