Prabhupāda: They're all devotees. When Caitanya Mahāprabhu was propagating His saṅkīrtana movement the brāhmaṇas, the orthodox brāhmaṇas, they took objection. "This is not according to Hindu śāstra. This is something new." But only these two gentlemen, they... Advaita happened to be the head of the brāhmaṇa community. So his support... And he was a well-to-do man, he was rich man, influential man. His support made Caitanya's movement successful in Nabadwip. He was a very influential man. And similarly, Śrīnivāsa, he was also, he belonged to the brāhmaṇa community. And Advaita gave shelter to Haridāsa. Haridāsa was a Muhammadan. So he was punished by the Muhammadan magistrate and he took shelter at the house of Advaita. He was maintaining him. You can make them appear in the scene. They were talking between Haridāsa and Śrīnivāsa and Advaita and all of them chanting and dancing, "Now our mission is fulfilled."
Gentelmen (Conv. 1967 - 1974)
Expressions researched:
"gentleman"
|"gentleman's"
|"gentlemanlike"
|"gentlemanliness"
|"gentlemanly"
|"gentlemen"
|"gentlemen's"
|"gents"
Conversations and Morning Walks
1967 Conversations and Morning Walks
Prabhupāda: And visitors coming and presenting. That is a very nice scene. Yes. The sixth scene is Lord Caitanya, a naughty boy. He would go to the Ganges side and it is the system of orthodox brāhmaṇas that they meditate in the Ganges, half. That is the system. Now He will go and swim over the water and throw water in their mouth in this way. Naughty boy. And they will be very much disgusted. "You naughty boy! You come here!" "Stop your meditation. What is this meditation? Chant! Chant Hare Kṛṣṇa!" He'll say like that. So they will come and complain to His father. "Your child has become too much naughty and just see that..., teased us like this." The father will say, "Oh, the boy is going to be very naughty. I'll punish Him. Let Him come." So father, angry father was waiting. As soon as the boy will come he would punish. But when the boy returns the father sees that He's just coming from school. There is no sign that He has gone to Ganges and taken bath. How is that these gentlemen complained? He will be puzzled. In that way, we have to show.
1968 Conversations and Morning Walks
Prabhupāda: That is not very difficult to understand. Just like you dress in a certain way, I dress in certain way. So we have got this dressing system in our Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement, and this is taken from Vedic literature. A brahmacārī should dress like that. And that is very economical. Our dress is saffron dress. It does not become dirty very quickly, and we... (break) This dress is not very important thing, but when one is initiated, he accepts the regulations which I give them. So it is not that if you do not come in that dress in our temple you will not understand our philosophy. That is not... We don't mean that. But it is convenient. But anyone who does not want to change this dress, that does not matter. We don't insist. These brahmacārīs, they voluntarily change. Otherwise there are many students, just like we have got two, three students, they are working. They come just like ordinary American gentlemen. So there is no objection in that way. Dress is not very important thing.
Prabhupāda: About three years before.
Interviewer: Now, you met a gentleman by the name of Harvey Cohen?
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Interviewer: And how has he helped you?
Prabhupāda: Yes, in the beginning he helped me. Because I rented one room. That was $72 per month. So...
Interviewer: Was this in New York?
Prabhupāda: In New York, yes, Seventy-second Street West. So whatever there was shortage, he was supplying. I was getting some money by contributions in my lectures. But in the beginning my all expenditures were not sufficient collection. So the deficiency he was giving me.
Caller: No, her sister, yes, Prudence, from this gentleman's Boston āśrama.
Prabhupāda: No.
Interviewer: No, it's some other group in Boston, she doesn't belong to this Swami's group.
Caller: Okay, okay.
Interviewer: Mia Farrow's sister?
Devotee: He's confusing us with Maharishi.
Interviewer: Yeah, okay. We'll be back in a minute. (break) Could we hear the chant maybe with everybody here? Is it possible? Can we get some microphones over there? You didn't bring what?
Devotee: We can use our hands.
Interviewer: Get everybody on the mike. Okay. (Prabhupāda and devotees all chant in unison, clapping hands, for a few minutes) (Prema-dhvani by Prabhupāda)
Interviewer: That is the opening of your ceremony?
Prabhupāda: That is, at the end we...
Interviewer: At the end.
Prabhupāda: Yes, thanks(?) to the devotees.
Prabhupāda: Well, these are..., so many people came on that day. At least, they know. They have no interest. That is the thing. That this life is meant for perfection in self-realization or Kṛṣṇa consciousness, their dull brain does not allow to understand this fact. Therefore I was explaining last night, su-medhasaḥ good brain substance. So people are becoming dull, and talking all nonsense. They are interested with so many nonsense things. Just like yesterday that gentleman came. You were present?
Devotee: Yes.
Prabhupāda: Oh, he was talking that on zero some great swami spoke four hours. And he was very proud that on zero one can speak throughout his whole life. Now I did not... (laughs) But if you can speak on some subject matter for four hours, how it is zero? Just see the contradiction. Gaurasundara, you were present when he was speaking? You heard? If I can speak something on a subject matter, is that subject matter zero? Zero means śūnya. Śūnya means nothing. So how you can speak on nothing? If you can speak on nothing, then nothing is no more nothing. It is something.
Prabhupāda: That is pleasure. That is material pleasure. Material pleasure means sex pleasure. That's all. The end of material pleasure, the topmost material pleasure, is sex pleasure. So all these materialists, they are trying to get pleasure from the sex life. In this way, that way, that way, that way, that way. That's all. Because they have no other information. Material pleasure means sex pleasure. Sex pleasure, tongue pleasure. They have manufactured so many things. That gentleman was sitting and asking "Can I smoke?" The tongue is agitating for... "Please, please give me one cigarette. One cigarette." He became disturbed. And we said, "No. You cannot smoke." This is material pleasure. You train up your senses in such a way that it becomes addicted. It cannot get out of the entanglement. So this Kṛṣṇa consciousness will save you. Yan maithunādi-gṛhamedhi-sukhaṁ hi tuccham (SB 7.9.45). They are all explained in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. The material pleasure means sexual intercourse. That's all.
Prabhupāda: Interfered... Interfered... Now you try to understand. You come from Europe or from India in a very nice gentlemanly suit. Does it mean that immigration department will allow you to enter the country? That means even if you have got suitable suit they may be opposed if you haven't got, I mean to say, proper qualities and other bona fides. Because to live in the moon planet there are different qualities and bona fides. So not only you have got to make a proper suitable dress but you have to qualify yourself for getting visa of entrance into moon planet.
Prabhupāda: I ask all my disciples to get married. I don't allow these boys living with boyfriend, girlfriend. No. You must get yourself married, life like gentlemen, treat your wife as assistant, treat your husband as your provider. In this way, I am teaching them. This boy was married just four days before. He is professor. So I have got so many of my disciples married, and they are living very happily. This girl is married. Formerly, they were living with girlfriend, boyfriend. I don't allow that. I don't allow that.
Journalist: Well, let's... Let me get a little more basic. How about when someone is fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old?
Prabhupāda: The same thing. Of course, another thing is that we teach our boys to become brahmacārī. Brahmacārī. Brahmacārī means how to lead the life of celibacy.
1969 Conversations and Morning Walks
Prabhupāda: There are some special marks on the chest of Viṣṇu by which in Vaikuṇṭha He is known that He is the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Otherwise, in Vaikuṇṭha, everyone has got the same feature like Viṣṇu. Just like if President Johnson comes here as a gentleman, you'll not, nobody will recognize him whether he's president or not unless he shows his special mark. Is it not? All government officers, big officers, they have got within the coat one, some mark. So far I know. So similarly, in Vaikuṇṭha the inhabitants, they got svarūpa. Their form is exactly like Viṣṇu. There is no difference. When the Viṣṇudūta came to take Ajamila from the hands of Yamadūta. They were four-handed with śankha-cakra-gadā-padma as Viṣṇu, the lotus flower, this disc, and the club, and the conchshell. There is no difference in the body. Simply by that special mark, some special hair on the chest and there is Bhṛgu, I mean to say, sole, sole, a mark of the feet of Bhṛgu Muni. So by some special marks one can recognize He is Viṣṇu. Otherwise, from bodily features and from dress and from ornaments, there is no distinction between Viṣṇu and His devotees in Vaikuṇṭha. They're all four-handed. Svarūpa sāyujya sālokya sārṣṭi. They have got equal, I mean to say, situation of prosperity, wealthy, equally, almost equally powerful.
Prabhupāda: That's all right. That's all right. So chant Hare Kṛṣṇa and everything will be all right. And Buffalo is also doing nice. Oh, yes. The students are educated circle. They are taking interest, both the boys and girls. And three meetings I attended. Every meeting was full, two hundred boys and girls. They were dancing, chanting, asking very intelligent questions. And Rūpānuga is holding class. There will be some examination of the students. They accept papers. Yes. Some Indians are coming from long distance. One Indian gentleman, he came to see me from, what is that place? Ninety-two miles away from Buffalo.
Prabhupāda: So I never said that "I'll give you Kṛṣṇa consciousness or this..." No, I mean to say... So it is not bluff. It is purely scientific, transcendental science. So I want some American gentlemen to understand this.
Allen Ginsberg: Well, Howard does.
Prabhupāda: Yes. So we want many Howards. (laughs) Your country is so big.
Allen Ginsberg: Actually, what I got into, you were saying so everything stands on "My," Kṛṣṇa's personality. And then there was a twist there: "But I am empty." Is that what you said before? Do you remember? Just about eight minutes ago you concluded the description of the sun and the...
Prabhupāda: Sun globe, sun, and the sunshine.
Prabhupāda: So immediately he left and was going alone to Vṛndāvana. And on the way he saw another beautiful woman. So his business was to be attracted by woman. So he again became attracted. So he was following. So this woman, after entering, she told her husband, "Just see, this man is following from a distant place." So he asked him, "Oh, come on." He saw he is nice gentleman. He was a rich man, brāhmaṇa. "What is this?" He said plainly, "Oh, I have been attracted by your wife, by the beauty of your wife." "All right, come on. What is that?" You enjoy my wife. You are brāhmaṇa. You are..." So he was received well. And at night, when he was given place, then he asked that woman, "Mother, will you give me your hair pin?" He took the hair pin and pushed in the eyes: "Oh, these eyes are my enemy." Since then he became blind. And in that blindness he was worshiping Kṛṣṇa, and Kṛṣṇa was coming to him. And he would not touch. He'll sing, dance, and He'll supply milk and go away. So this Bilvamaṅgala Ṭhākura wrote one book, Kṛṣṇa-karṇāmṛta. It is very valuable book. That is very highly estimated, Lord Caitanya.
Prabhupāda: So if you give them something actually nice, the face of the world will change. So our, this Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement, it is not a manufactured new thing. It is, from historical point of view, at least, it is five thousand years old. Because Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement means Bhagavad-gītā as it is. And Bhagavad-gītā... Of course, it is supposed to be Indian religious book, but it is not like that. It is not Indian or Hinduism. It is for all the people of the world. Not only for the human being, but also other than human being, because in the Bhagavad-gītā there is a verse. Kṛṣṇa says, sarva-yoniṣu kaunteya sambhavanti mūrtayo yāḥ (BG 14.4). In all species, all kinds of form... The living entities, they are in different forms. Just like we are sitting here, so many ladies, gentlemen, boys. We have got different forms. Similarly, you Europeans, you have got different color, or Indians, we have got different... So this whole world is full of varieties. So Kṛṣṇa says, "All the varieties of life, it doesn't matter. I am their father." Ahaṁ bīja-pradaḥ pitā (BG 14.4). Pitā means father. So Kṛṣṇa claims all living entities as His sons. But we may say that "Kṛṣṇa is Indian," "Kṛṣṇa is Hindu," or "Kṛṣṇa something." But no. Kṛṣṇa is actually the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
1970 Conversations and Morning Walks
Prabhupāda: These are also done within these five years.
Guest (1): And that too, in the foreign countries, to establish that, it is...
Guest (2): Yes, it's a wonderful thing. I was all the while imagining, imagining...
Prabhupāda: So I went in U.S.A. without any sponsor. No, I... That is the... One gentleman sponsored for one month, one month only. Not even one month. I remained there only three weeks, and then I chalked out my plan. He was my friend's son, and my friend wrote him that "You sponsor Swamiji for one month."
Guest (1): Some American gentleman?
Prabhupāda: No, Indian, one gentleman from Agra. So his son immediately sent me, sponsoring. But still, the government objected that "We cannot allow you to go there because you are sponsored by an individual person." But I wanted to see chief controller of, what is called, foreign exchange, Mr. Rao. So he kindly accepted. "Yes, Swamiji, you can go." He fought.
Prabhupāda: Which one?
Guest (5): This gentleman. You'll be answering in Hindi or English?
Prabhupāda: As you like.
Guest (5): They know Hindi.
Prabhupāda: Huh?
Guest (6): (Hindi)
Guest (7): No, no. If you want to put questions in English, Swamiji will reply in English. If you want to put in Hindi, I hope... Yesterday I heard him in Hindi, I had the good fortune, and I can say with my understanding that he is equally past master in Hindi ...(laughter) Yesterday we had the good occasion and the good fortune of hearing him in Hindi as well. Disciples will speak English only.
Prabhupāda: Yes, they do not speak.
Prabhupāda: Self-preservation. So self-preservation... They do not know what is self-preservation. That is another ignorance. They consider this body as the self. Their self-preservation means to keep this body. And that is also not possible. If you do not follow regulative principles, it is not possible to keep your body in good condition. That is also not possible. Those who do not follow the regulative principles, mostly they are diseased, some kind. We find in the medical, modern medical shop the customers are educated people. Mass of people, they are not customers in the medical shop. You'll find it. They are not so much diseased. In every gentleman's house, modern, you'll find so many bottles of medicine. But you won't find such medical bottles in any house of less educated persons. They are not so diseased. So this is one of the items. If you want to advance in spiritual life you must follow the regulative principles to rectify your mistakes in the past life and this present life.
Prabhupāda: They are sincere, sincerely seeking after. Their material business is finished because they have enjoyed enough of material things. Now there is spiritual inquiry. That is natural. When our material necessities are complete, we enjoy, then next stage is spiritual hankering. And that is explained in the Vedānta-sūtra, athāto brahma jijñāsā. After finishing karma-kāṇḍīya life... Karma-kāṇḍīya life means you do pious activities and enjoy life. That is called karma-kāṇḍīya. So... But the fact is that even you get your birth in a very rich family, you cannot avoid the sufferings of this material nature. Just like yesterday we had an interview with Holkar(?), His Highness Holkar, the old gentleman. So he was a king. He has got very beautiful wife, very beautiful family, very palatial building, but he is not happy, we saw. So the foolish people, they do not know that in this material life there is no happiness. They hanker after these palatial buildings, the motor cars, the bank balance, and so on, so on. Therefore those who have enjoyed all these things but have not become happy, there is another inquiry: "How to become happy?" (break) ...say America, they have enjoyed material life. Their children have enjoyed material life to the fullest extent but they are not happy. Therefore they have come to this spiritual life.
Prabhupāda: That's nice proposal. Unless you find an enemy, how you can fight? So of course, we do not say... We Vaiṣṇavas do not say that there is no need of fighting. We never say. When there is need of fighting we must fight. Rather, somebody in New York, some Goldsmith, he was that, "Why Kṛṣṇa is advising Arjuna to fight, to become violent?" So somebody protests like that. But there is no meaning of protesting against the action of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. That is our view. So we Vaiṣṇavas, we are chanting. It does not mean that when there is need of fighting with avaiṣṇava we shall lack in strength. We can fight. One gentleman inquired from me that "Vaiṣṇavism makes one dull. He cannot act." And, "No. You have not seen a Vaiṣṇava." In the two fightings, great fighting, the Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata, the hero was Hanuman and Arjuna, and they fought.
Prabhupāda: (chuckles) Just try to understand this philosophy. If when I see practically my father has got head, his father has got head, his father has got head, head, head, head... Go on. And the ultimate father, why he has no head? What this poor person, gentleman, has done that he has no head? (laughter) This is... This nonsense theory is going on, that "God has no head. God has no legs. God has no hand." Imperson means He has no head, no leg, no... That means... And somebody says, "He is dead," and "void."
Revatinandana: They're trying to kill Kṛṣṇa. They're trying to kill Kṛṣṇa.
Prabhupāda: That's all. That is their business. Rākṣasa, asura, miscreants, rogues, fools, rascals—that is their business. Envious. Because they are... If I say that "You have no eyes," that means indirectly I say that "You are blind." If I say that "You have no leg," indirectly I say, "You are lame." In this way, when I deny your senses, that means I am calling God by ill names that "You are blind. You are lame. You are headless. You are rascal," like that. And that is their prayer. Calling God by ill names, that is their prayer. What do you think, Girirāja?
Girirāja: Yes, Śrīla Prabhupāda.
1971 Conversations and Morning Walks
Guest: What can I say? Then only when sādhus are attacked, then only...?
Prabhupāda: No, no. You quoted from Bhagavad-gītā; I am replying from Bhagavad-gītā. You quoted from Bhagavad-gītā, so your answer should be given from the Bhagavad-gītā. You told me that Kṛṣṇa or God comes when there is such and such adharma, so what is adharma, what is dharma, who is sādhu—these things should be understood. But generally, this movement is to create sādhus. So you have to give time. You have to cooperate. This incarnation of Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa and nāma, Kṛṣṇa's name, is the same. Abhinnatvaṁ nāma-naminoḥ: "There is no difference between Kṛṣṇa's name and Kṛṣṇa." So you encourage this movement. You will see that there will be no more fighting. Kṛṣṇa has come. Welcome Kṛṣṇa. But if you noncooperate with Kṛṣṇa, then how you'll get happiness? Kṛṣṇa has already come by this Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement. You receive Him. Yad yad ācarati śreṣṭha (BG 3.21). You are all respectable gentlemen. You accept it. Then others will follow. Tat tad evetaro janaḥ. And if leading personalities of the society, they reject it, then how Kṛṣṇa is welcome? How can you expect? (Hindi) Everyone should welcome this movement, Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement.
Prabhupāda: Many millions of Vaiṣṇavas and... Just like this gentleman. He is a commander of the Air, India Air Lines. So he's not my disciple, but he's a Vaiṣṇava, Kṛṣṇa conscious. Similarly, in India millions and trillions there are, Kṛṣṇa conscious persons. And practically there is not a single... Even there are Mohammedan Kṛṣṇa conscious. In Allahabad University there is a Mohammedan professor. He's a great devotee of Lord Kṛṣṇa. So this is natural. It is said in the Caitanya-caritāmṛta that Kṛṣṇa consciousness is everywhere, in everyone's heart. It has to be awakened only by this process. That's all. It is there in your heart also. It is not that it is foreign to you. It is not that. Everyone's heart, there is Kṛṣṇa consciousness. By this process we have to awaken that. Śravaṇādi śuddha citte karaye udaya. Udaya. You know this word udaya. Just like sun rises. It is not that sun all of a sudden comes from somewhere. It is there, but it rises in the morning. Similarly, this Kṛṣṇa consciousness is everywhere, but some way or other, it is now covered. By this process it is awakened and aroused, by association.
Prabhupāda: Now one thing... The other day I was speaking to some... Where I was? In Bombay, I think, I was speaking some respectable gentlemen that "Kṛṣṇa says:
- māṁ hi pārtha vyapāśritya
- ye 'pi syuḥ pāpa-yonayaḥ
- striyo vaiśyās tathā śūdrās
- te 'pi yānti parāṁ gatim
- (BG 9.32)
Kṛṣṇa says, 'Even those who are low-born, pāpa-yoni—the striya, vaiśya and śūdra, they are also included—but by accepting Me, accepting my shelter, they are also elevated to the transcendental position.' Now, why the higher class of Hindu society, they neglected this injunction of Bhagavad-gītā? Suppose one is pāpa-yoni. Kṛṣṇa says that 'They can be elevated to the transcendental position if they accept Me.' Why this propaganda was not done by the higher class people so that the so-called pāpa-yoni could be elevated? Why you rejected them? The result was that the Mohammedans... Instead of accepting them, you rejected them, and they have partitioned, and they have gone away, and they have become eternal enemy of India." You see? So this is the first time that we are trying to elevate to the highest position of Kṛṣṇa consciousness, even one is in the pāpa-yoni. It doesn't matter because soul is pure. Asaṅgo 'yaṁ puruṣaḥ. The Vedas says, "The soul is untouched by any material contamination." Simply, temporarily, he is covered. This covering should be opened.
Prabhupāda: So if there is some discussion, I am prepared. It is, after all, for the whole human society, and it is being practically appreciated. So if there is possibility, I am, for two days I can meet some gentlemen. I can meet.
Prof. Kotovsky: Well, if you can ask Mr. Natarajan from embassy, to perform...
Prabhupāda: No, not, not in that way. If some of your assistant does it, then it is all right because, to tell you frankly, so far our Indian government is concerned, they are not very much interested with this movement. Yes. Their program is different.
Prof. Kotovsky: Yes.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Prof. Kotovsky: Yes, of course, Indian government program is more and more secular in general ideology, westernized.
Prabhupāda: But of course, people are not very happier. One gentleman... He's in government service. I am speaking, in 19..., sometimes, 1950. He was in statistics department, Mr. Dal(?), Kashmiri gentleman. He was coming to me in Allahabad. He told me that "I went... I go to the villages, and the villagers say, 'Bābuji, angrej ko bahut (indistinct)?' " That was his statement.
Prabhupāda: But you have interpreted different way, but he said "Thou shall not kill." He never said "Thou shall not kill amongst human being." Why do you interpret in that way?
Interviewer: How would I recognize a true follower of the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement by his behavior? What would his traits be? What would his outward expressions be?
Prabhupāda: Yes. His behavior, he's a perfect gentleman. That's all. You cannot find any fault in him. That is perfect Kṛṣṇa consciousness. They are prohibited not to eat meat.
Interviewer: Not to eat meat?
Prabhupāda: No. They are prohibited from illicit sex life. They are prohibited to intoxication. They do not smoke even, what to speak of other intoxications. And they are prohibited not to indulge in gambling. So if they can observe these four rules and regulations, they become perfect men. Simply.
Interviewer: Or women I presume.
Prabhupāda: Woman or man. Anyone.
Prabhupāda: But you have interpreted the wrong way. But he said "Thou shalt not kill." He never said "Thou shalt not kill among human beings." Why do you interpret in that way?
Interviewer: How would I recognize a true follower of the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement by his behavior? What would his traits be? What would his outward expressions be?
Prabhupāda: Yes, yes. He will be a very perfect gentleman. That's all. You cannot find any fault in him. That is Kṛṣṇa consciousness, perfect Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Therefore prohibited not to eat meat.
Interviewer: Not to eat meat?
Prabhupāda: No. Therefore prohibited for illicit sex life. Therefore prohibited to intoxication. They do not smoke even, what to speak of other intoxication. And therefore prohibited not to indulge in gambling. So if they can observe these four rules and regulations, they will become perfect men. Simple.
Prabhupāda: It's Kṛṣṇa's mission to awaken man's original consciousness. At the present moment we have got designated consciousness. I am thinking "I am Indian," you are thinking Englishman, another is thinking American. But actually we are neither American nor Indian nor any that sort of designation. We are part and parcel of God. That is our real identification. If we come to that consciousness, then all the problems of the world will be solved. Now, due to our designated consciousness, we are thinking, "You are different from me, I am different from you," but if we come to Kṛṣṇa consciousness, then we shall know that we are one, the same spirit soul, maybe in different dress. That is the explanation given in Bhagavad-gītā. Just like we are all human beings, gentlemen, ladies. Maybe in different dress, but our aims and objects are the one and the same. So this Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement is purificatory process. Sarvopādhi-vinirmuktam (CC Madhya 19.170). To make people free from all designations. Tat-paratvena nirmalam. And in Kṛṣṇa consciousness they become purified. And when they're purified their activities by purified senses make them perfect. That is the ideal perfection of human life. And our process is also very simple.
Prabhupāda: Thompkins Square in New York. I was simply chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa, and they used to gather. And gradually, they became my disciples, students. So I began in this way, chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa Hare Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa Hare... For three hours, from two to five. That's all. And they are still doing that. They are going on the street. This Hare Kṛṣṇa, the same thing, is going on. They are being arrested sometimes. They are being harassed. But still, they don't give up. They chant. This boy in Germany, I sent in Germany. He sat down on the footpath and chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa. This boy. Practically, he started my European movement, he started first.
Guest (2) Gentlemen: Have you been harassed in London at all?
Prabhupāda: I don't think, but they are Londoners. They know better than me.
Prabhupāda: It is a disease. Disease. Lust and greediness. There are three qualities in the world, material world. One is called sattva-guṇa, one is called rajo-guṇa, another is called tamo-guṇa. Goodness. Rajo-guṇa is passion, and tamo-guṇa is darkness. So at the present moment these two guṇas, qualities, darkness and passion are prevalent. Goodness gone. Goodness gone. And the darkness and passion, the symptoms are greediness and lust. People are being educated to become greedy and lusty. That's all. Nobody is being educated to become good. So what is the use of these rascal universities? If they are producing greedy and lusty people, then what is the use of education? Vidyā dadāti namratā. Education means everyone should be gentleman. That is education. And if you produce lusty and greedy people there is no... This is animal education. The animals are lusty and greedy.
Prabhupāda: Viṣṇu-tattva. That is called Viṣṇu-tattva.
Guest: In that expansion can't we take Durgā and Siva, even for...
Prabhupāda: Yes. That is śakti-tattva. We have to take expansion according to the tattva. Substance and categories; in which category. The substance is Viṣṇu, and all other tattvas are categories. So devatās, they are śakti-tattva, śakti category, the same category as you are. The same example. Just like here a government officer, he is also Indian gentleman, you are also Indian gentleman, but he has got his power on account of his high qualities. Similarly you can become also Durgā. You can become Indra, Candra, Sūrya. So qualitatively the ant, you are a learned brāhmaṇa, they are all the same category.
Dr. Singh: (Sanskrit)-mukha.
Prabhupāda: Yes, (Sanskrit)-mukha. And one American lady, when she saw these boys are chanting on the street, she was surprised. She said that "Are you Americans?" She was surprised. One priest, when I was traveling from Los Angeles to Hawaii, one priest in..., gentleman there sitting, out of his own accord he came to me and began to talk with me that "Swamiji, I see in the face of your students brightness. How you have created brightness?" He admitted that. Another priest, Christian priest in New York..., in Boston, he issued a pamphlet that "These boys and girls, they are our boys. But we see they have got this nice qualification, they are mad after God, but we could not give them." So it is a process. The madness after God is there in everywhere, in every heart. But because it is now covered, we have to...
Dr. Singh: Would you have (indistinct)? We are having dinner later, of course. I thought maybe you would want something to start with.
Prabhupāda: One glass of water will be fine.
1972 Conversations and Morning Walks
Prabhupāda: In this way, when he became very much powerful, he began to neglect the orders of the great sages, brāhmaṇas, and respectable gentlemen. He became very much upstart.
- evaṁ madāndha utsikto
- niraṅkuśa iva dvipaḥ
- paryaṭan ratham āsthāya
- kampayann iva rodasī
- (SB 4.14.5)
So he became so strong that when he was traveling in the state, everyone was trembling. So very strong king. In this way, when he became too much powerful, then he began to preach atheism. That is the way. The rākṣasī, the demonic way is there. If a demon becomes powerful—just like nowadays it is going on—somehow or other if somebody becomes powerful, he doesn't care for the śāstric injunction or religion or God. They don't care for it. Just like there are many instances, Rāvaṇa, Hiraṇyakaśipu, like that. So he also became like that.
Devotee: Ahhhh!
Bob: Half good, good.
Prabhupāda: Not good. If he does not know this principle, that God is the proprietor... Others' thing, what do you mean by others' thing?
Bob: Like, people I'm thinking of, they're poor people who need money and food, but...
Prabhupāda: Everyone needs money. Everyone needs. Who is not poor? Anyone find out. So many gentlemen sitting here. Who is not in need of food and money? You are also in need of money. So what do you distinguish poor and rich? Everyone needs. If that is your definition, if one needs money and food, everyone needs money and food. So everyone is poor.
Bob: So, but, well, I was thinking of terms of just people who are relatively poor.
Prabhupāda: No relatively. Relatively maybe. You are more hungry than me. But that does not mean you are not hungry or I am not hungry. I don't feel hungry now, that does not mean I do not feel hungry or I am not hungry. For the time being you may not be hungry. Tomorrow you'll be hungry.
Prabhupāda: So this difference of opinion may be there, but he is also one of the..., what is called? Differentiate? This gentleman who has...
Indian man (2): Kṛṣṇa Caitanya dāsa.
Prabhupāda: So differences are there, there will be always. So how one's opinion should be taken as...
Indian man (2): Yes. No, but you see, this kind of writing does create sort of a... It does give rise to...
Prabhupāda: So Vṛndāvana is the breeding ground for such things.
Indian man (2): No, it's not Vṛndāvana. That man doesn't live here, he lives in Calcutta. The book was brought here. It was sent by him to some people, and one copy was directed to me also. Five copies were sent here, and I have the honor to be the recipient of one of them. (laughs)
Prabhupāda: How big it is?
Indian man (2): A small thing, small thing, about eighty, ninety pages. So I was just going through it, I have been, and I will call a gentleman at two o'clock today with whom I shall discuss the matter. He belongs to that party.
Prabhupāda: Which party?
Prabhupāda: Author's party. They have got a party here?
Indian man (2): No party here, but this gentleman has given the foreword. He is the author of Ṭhākura Haridāsa, that big volume.
Prabhupāda: Oh.
Indian man (2): Rama-(indistinct) dāsa. A foreword in his name has appeared in this book, which he says he never gave. He never gave that foreword, but his name was given. And he has also published this in paper, and the author of that book has not challenged it so far. So his hands seem to be...
Prabhupāda: What he is, the author?
Indian man (2): Kṛṣṇa Caitanya dāsa.
Prabhupāda: No, what he is, is he professor or what?
Prabhupāda: It is not superficial. This dancing is spiritual ecstasy. Otherwise it is not a dog's dance. You see? Any gentleman, if I ask you, "Please dance on this footpath," will you agree? It is not that dancing. You don't compare with that dancing. It is not dog's dance. They chant, they feel, they dance. That is another thing. You try to understand it. If they are coming from respectable families... Now, here is a boy. He is a professor. So if I ask him, "Please go and dance on the footpath," will he agree? A professor will agree? But when a professor dances, there is something. You should understand.
Author: Sir, I'm not saying that the dancing is meaningless. I was saying that when one sees people dancing, that doesn't mean anything.
Prabhupāda: That does not mean to you.
Upendra: What Prabhupāda is speaking tonight is very important and it might appear that he is not understanding you but he is actually speaking to you, like you said, necessary (indistinct) so that if you can assimilate everything Prabhupāda is saying tonight, you'll be able to write the book much more clearly. You might think that he is not understanding you, but he is speaking the most important part. Author: I am not (indistinct) his understanding. I think he is worried about my understanding, which is why he is... Right. Well, I appreciate this, but I am trying to convince him that I am going to try to say accurately what your philosophy is. And in this I'll have to rely on your help, because I can't do it otherwise. Prabhupāda: I have already explained our philosophy. Author: I'm sorry, not explain. Describe, I think, is a rather better word. Prabhupāda: That philosophy, if you want to know more, then we can speak more. But that is the outlines of the philosophy, that people, without knowledge of his identification, they are misled, being misled. And that is very risky. Risky means that you have got this opportunity of understanding your position and get out of the difficulties of birth, death, old age, and disease. If you do not properly use this opportunity and again you become cats and dogs, then are you not misled? So present civilization is misleading.
Prabhupāda: You cannot expect many disciples, but still, there are two thousand. Because I have got so many conditions and the fact is so difficult to understand, Kṛṣṇa consciousness. They have forgotten Kṛṣṇa, they have forgotten God, and I am trying to make them Kṛṣṇa conscious. It is a very difficult job. I have to shed my blood three tons before I make one convinced in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. That is my experience. I have to talk with him, especially these Europeans and Americans. They do not accept anything so blindly. They try to... I am always being questioned, even in my tooth(?) Question, question, question. That's nice. Inquisitive, they want to know. So I give them answers. I have got four secretaries always with me. They are giving answers. So to become Kṛṣṇa... Especially in Europe and America, when I make this condition that you cannot have illicit sex, you cannot have intoxication, you cannot meat eat, er, you cannot eat meat, you cannot have gambling... This is their daily affair. This is their life. Even Lord Zetland refused, "Oh, we cannot give up these things." So I am controlling them in this way. Still, they are coming. So it is very difficult job. Still, there are many thousands, and they are so sincere that if I ask them that... This boy is going to Red China. I am sending him. You see? So I have asked them, "You go there. You go there." They go even at the risk of life. Yes. It is the duty of the Indians to spread this Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement, but they are preaching very nicely. I am training these foreigners. They are doing this duty. It is the duty of the Indians. It is their culture. But they are satisfied only... If one young man gets a nice wife and a little bit of money, oh, he says, "My life is successful." Therefore I went away. I approached many gentlemen. "Please, you have got four sons. Give me one son. I shall make him a real brāhmaṇa." "Swamiji, (Hindi)." He does not know the value. Therefore I left India, hopeless. And Kṛṣṇa has given me chance, very good chance. Now they are appreciating. When I go to India they become surprised, "Swamiji, how you have done this thing?" This is the reason.
Prabhupāda: In every respect.
Sudāmā: The president seemed very interested, somewhat, in our philosophy.
Prabhupāda: Hm. He's a nice gentleman. (pause) They are still satisfied in wooden house?
Sudāmā: The Japanese people?
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Sudāmā: Yes.
Prabhupāda: Practically our sales are improving only for their printing. Their printing is very attractive, I think.
Sudāmā: Very much so.
Prabhupāda: Oh. You must admit that.
Prabhupāda: That's a fact. Today the superior training and intelligence. No so-called gentleman will hear. (indistinct) attention continually. Nobody will hear. They come and hear, they go on. But they were hearing very seriously. Was it not?
Śyāmasundara: Yes.
Prabhupāda: Questions were intelligent. So all these frustrated boys and girls in the Western world, they are all good candidate. You have to organize to give them; they are searching after.
Śyāmasundara: It seems like that it's the nature of all living entities to be mad after something.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Love. That I explained—love. We have got our love in store. But instead of loving Kṛṣṇa, we have distributed the love in so many ways, and frustrated. Love is there in store. That is reserved for Kṛṣṇa. And we are trying to love Kṛṣṇa, that I explained. Why I am loving this body and this apartment? Ultimately he goes to Kṛṣṇa. But that you do not know. You are actually trying to love Kṛṣṇa. But because nobody is giving him Kṛṣṇa, he's crying.
Prabhupāda: Simply sitting down like this. He cannot ask whether he is hungry or not. His daughter is always attending, giving him some food, then he is eating. Otherwise, he does not say. Lost everything. He has mentioned Bhagavad-gītā as a mental speculation, in his Indian Religion. So he is such a great offender, he must suffer. But it is good for him. Because he is a gentleman, therefore his offenses are being compensated in this life.
Devotee (1): So he hasn't got to pay next time.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Next time he may be getting chance. Because he was at heart afraid of God. Because sometimes he was, "Swamiji, you pray for me to God." He told me that. At heart he was. But because he is impersonalist and mundane scholar, he was writing all nonsense.
Prabhupāda: Just like all the men, they are spending two thousand rupees for maintenance. They must work. And if they go with the books to any gentleman, they'll take. Māyā-sukhāya udvahato vimūḍhān. (break) Americans are giving so much service, knowledge. Arrange everything. They are giving already; simply they should be distributed through us-powdered milk, grains. People will feel so much obliged, "Oh, these American people are giving us knowledge and food." Practically they'll see how to become Kṛṣṇa conscious—by our aratika, by our kīrtana, by our behavior, by our character. Not only in India—everywhere. This is real service to the human.
Ātreya Ṛṣi(?): The government is spending millions of dollars to control the drug problem. In every city there are heroin addicts and all kinds of addicts, and they are very perplexed because there is no way to control.
Prabhupāda: This is the only way.
Prabhupāda: Wire, that is also lying somewhere. Nobody cares. But one gentleman, he collected all these three things and prepared a string instrument. He joined the bamboo with the dry cover of squash and fitted the string and it began to ting, ting, ting. It is called ektara. There is instrument in India it is called ektara. The example is that so many things individually lying useless. But if somebody knows how to combine them, it becomes an instrument, very sweet. Very sweet to hear. Similarly, in this world, so many things are lying dead and frustrated. But if they are combined together by an expert, it becomes useful. So although this world is dead body, when there is Kṛṣṇa consciousness, it becomes enlivened. That is our movement. We are trying to inject Kṛṣṇa consciousness in everything dead within this world. (Prabhupāda drinks) Now just see all these ingredients, strawberry and..., what is that?
Ātreya Ṛṣi: Orange juice.
Prabhupāda: Our latest can be (indistinct). All the books. You have got this book?
Sumati Morarjee: No. (Hindi exchanges)
Prabhupāda: ...very strong heart attack in N.Y., I fell down, heart attack. (Hindi exchanges) Therefore I am asking them. So, some gentlemen here, they say that you try, money will be raised here. It will be not difficult. So I'm asking that find out some place.
Sumati Morarjee: (Hindi)
Prabhupāda: Three million pounds.
Sumati Morarjee: Pounds.
Devotee: Two and a half million pounds.
Prabhupāda: Still it is open.
Prabhupāda: His father is very rich man.
Sumati Morarjee: Is he?
Prabhupāda: His father is a very big lawyer, and mother, father, both came to me Calcutta. Mother, after all mother, she was crying, that give me back my boy (laughter) . You can take away your boy. So anyway, they are very good gentlemen. So, but he has he's graduate in psychology. He's learned.
Sumati Morarjee: No, no, he's a very nice man. So I asked him just now, I'm running a school. I said you come and, uh, give lecture, mean some stories...
Prabhupāda: Why don't you give some fruits?
Sumati Morarjee: ...to the children. No, I will take this, you give me a piece of paper, can you?
Prabhupāda: Yes, why not.
Sumati Morarjee: And I'll take this for the children.
Devotee: Isn't there some prasāda also, that's still out there in the...
Sumati Morarjee: (indistinct)
Prabhupāda: Śyāmasundara.
Prabhupāda: To raise fund.
Devotee: Hm?
Prabhupāda: Raise fund. We approach these person for raising fund, that's all. Not for taking any lesson from them. ...Now, to have a temple here, we shall hold a meeting on the Indian gentlemen to raise the fund. You find out some place, immediately, so that while I am remaining, by performing Bhāgavata-saptāha, I'm influencing the Indian rich men here, they can purchase.... She will also contribute for.... October, July, August, September, October. So the negotiation will go on for at least three month, in the meantime she will come. She will also contribute. I have already given her hint. She agrees. So let us find out some nice place.
Devotee: You won't be here that long Śrīla Prabhupāda. You're going to be leaving on the 20th, and...
Prabhupāda: No, I may come back.
Devotee: You may come back?
Prabhupāda: Yes, finish the business.
Prabhupāda: Thirty lakhs. But he has given me for fourteen lakhs. And that's also by instrument, in three years, or four years, without any interest...
Devotee: Who is that man?
Prabhupāda: Mr. Nair. Mrs. Nair. She is, she is also very nice devotee. So every year four lakhs of rupees, in three years, or four years, fourteen lakhs, without any interest. So we have got good facility. And in Vṛndāvana, some gentleman has given us the land.
Devotee: Is the land in Vṛndāvana, is it in the city? Is it on the outside of Vṛndāvana, or is it in the city?
Prabhupāda: No, it is just in front of Bon Mahārāja's college.
Devotee: It's in Rāman Reti.
Prabhupāda: (laughter) Best place in Vṛndāvana. All (indistinct). And we have got potential. There are so many buildings, they are not being properly utilized. If we want to, you can purchase the whole area.
Devotee: Yes. I think this gentleman would like to have some interview with Śrīla Prabhupāda. Would you like to translate?
Frenchman: (translated) ...great spiritual master, kindly present yourself to the listeners to (indistinct).
Prabhupāda: I have already explained what is our mission, what is this Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement. Already I have explained to some extent and if he wants some particular answer he can ask me.
Devotee: He would like to know who you are, Śrīla Prabhupāda, and how old you are.
Prabhupāda: I am now seventy-seven.
Frenchman: (translated) For how long are you at the head of this movement?
Prabhupāda: For the last five years.
Frenchman: Can you please describe the dress in which you are clothed.
Prabhupāda: You can ask about some philosophy. Dress, (how) people will benefit knowing about my dress. Instead of wasting time in that way, I can ask you why you are in dress... That's not very important thing.
Prabhupāda: So you, you can talk with Mr. Polsen and give him instruction.
Ian Polsen: Thank you, Your Grace. Before I go, Your Grace, I am employed in government service. Is it your wish that I resign?
Prabhupāda: No, no. We don't say like that. The thing is that you serve Kṛṣṇa. Our predecessor ācāryas, they are also government servants, but they resigned when they decided to preach this cult. If you have desire to preach this cult, then that is different. Otherwise, as a gentleman you can remain in your position, chant Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra, and follow the rules and regulations.
Ian Polsen: Your Grace, how many times do you recommend that I chant on my beads? How many rounds?
Prabhupāda: We recommend minimum sixteen rounds.
Ian Polsen: Minimum sixteen rounds, every day.
Prabhupāda: Otherwise, you can chant twenty-four hours. Minimum sixteen rounds.
Ian Polsen: Is it true that if I follow the regulative principles, the four, that I will be able to chant without offense?
Prabhupāda: Yes. But ah... You are married, no?
Ian Polsen: No.
Prabhupāda: Good roads. So we can go by road.
Devotee: So we can begin campaigning right away, collecting funds for the vehicle.
Prabhupāda: And you are a good driver. (laughter) Eighty miles. You once at eighty miles, his father's car. His father gave a very nice car for my driving. His father, mother, sister met me in Portland. Very nice gentleman, mother nice, sister very beautiful.
Devotee: But silent.
Prabhupāda: Huh?
Devotee: I have written to her some letters, but silence.
Prabhupāda: (laughs) Yes. They are not very happy that you are in this movement, not in the family, naturally. They think, "Our lost child." (laughter) They cannot appreciate that "My child is lost for better purposes." That is the case.
Prabhupāda: (Hindi) Don't be sorry. Indians, generally they say, "Oh, we know everything about Kṛṣṇa. What we have to learn?" Yes. When they go to some Indian, they say like that. What do they say?
Śyāmasundara: "We know all these things."
Guest (2): I don't say I know everything.
Prabhupāda: Yes. What is that Madrasi gentleman?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Chiwari? Dr. Chiwari?
Prabhupāda: Yes. In your...
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Oh, Krishnamurti.
Prabhupāda: Ah. They think, "Oh, what we have to learn from them about Kṛṣṇa? We are all-knowing." (Hindi) And you were speaking, some of your Madras colleagues. They come here and immediately they learn how to eat meat. (Hindi)
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Before they came they were not eating meat, but when they come here they normally, they buy it, they cook it, and they not only just... They buy, themselves, and they do everything.
Prabhupāda: London... (Hindi) Practically cent percent Indians, they eat meat.
Prabhupāda: So Śyāmasundara, you can invite all these gentlemen tomorrow.
Śyāmasundara: He is doing that now.
Prabhupāda: Oh, yes.
Satsvarūpa: So that is actually Kṛṣṇa Himself within the Deity and He accepts the food by our prayers. So just by His seeing, by His glancing... Try to come and see all these things. And every Sunday we have a festival there. Every evening we have classes on Bhagavad-gītā As It Is. And as long as we students repeat what Śrīla Prabhupāda said, they have the same potency. We don't try to make something up that our guru didn't teach us. We just try to present his teachings.
Guest (2): That's good. Please take it and then we're going to distribute it to everybody. This is Sister Lucille Perry. She has been to India.
Prabhupāda: Oh. Come here.
Jayatīrtha: They just like to lord it over.
Prabhupāda: Yes. I cannot say... Suppose if I become president, and if I want to say that stop this slaughterhouse, immediately I will be removed. So I cannot do anything, even if I become president, so why shall I accept this post? No sane man, no gentleman will go to the post because he knows he will not be able to do anything for the welfare of the public.
Jayatīrtha: They're so corrupt.
Prabhupāda: So corrupt. (indistinct) Even one wants to do... just like President Kennedy, he wanted to do something good—he was shot down. Gandhi wanted to do something—he was shot down. So the politics is so corrupted that as soon as you are prepared to do something actually, you will be killed.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: So seeing that mistake also, now the scientists, they are proposing that they should make a governing body, not the politicians, so when they discover something the result can be completely controlled by this group of...
Prabhupāda: That is another foolishness. That is another foolishness. They will be bribed and they will vote. They will get money, that's all.
Prabhupāda: (Sanskrit) cakra bhagavān (Sanskrit). So there was a circle of friends. So all the friends conspired to make another friend bewildered. So they conspired that "As soon as you meet that gentleman you cry, 'Oh, here is a ghost! Here is a ghost! Here is a ghost!' " So all the friends, they come (indistinct), "Oh! You are dead, you are ghost, you are ghost!" So after ten times like that, he thought, "Have I become a ghost?" Then he became bewildered, "Whether really I have become ghost, I am dead?" He became puzzled. This is like that: "There was no human being, there was no human being," and all the rascals are now thinking whether this is right. This is cakra bhagavān (Sanskrit). If you make conspiracy, even the sane man will think himself that "I have become ghost."
Svarūpa Dāmodara: The influence of the...
Prabhupāda: Yes, propaganda. That is the cause of India's cultural falldown. These Britishers simply made propaganda that "Whatever you have got in India, this is all allegory, fiction. These śāstras are nothing. But now you are learning from us England's work in India, that is your real... You are becoming civilized now. Otherwise, you are in the utopia, and all these śāstras, throw it out." Because that was Lord Macauley's policy. Lord Macauley was sent to report how Indians can be governed nicely. So he reported that if you keep the Indians as Indians, you will never be able to govern them, because they are superior. You make propaganda that they are inferior and they will imitate you and then you can... That they did.
Prabhupāda: Russia... Last time when I went to Europe I visited Russia. I was invited by one Professor Kotovsky. Perhaps you know him.
Ambassador: No, I don't.
Prabhupāda: Ah. A very nice gentleman. Indology. He is charge of the Indological department. Russia has got very good respect for Indian culture.
Ambassador: Yes. That's right.
Prabhupāda: They have very good respect. So that.... (break)
Ambassador: ...have much, they don't believe in God.
Prabhupāda: They do not know the (indistinct).
Mrs. Keating: Do you have many Indian followers? Many Indian followers as well as foreign?
Prabhupāda: Yes. This Kṛṣṇa consciousness, so far Indians are concerned, everyone accepts Kṛṣṇa as the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
Prabhupāda: He went to Rādhā-kuṇḍa?
Indian: Rādhā-kuṇḍa. He went there and asked the old gentlemen of that place that "Where is Rādhā-kuṇḍa and Śyāma-kuṇḍa?" But none of them (indistinct) Rādhā-kuṇḍa.
Prabhupāda: Oh, yes, discovery of Rādhā-kuṇḍa.
Śyāmasundara: From this place He went there.
1973 Conversations and Morning Walks
Prabhupāda: (chuckling) Yes, this is the explanation. There is no second explanation. Na māṁ duṣkṛtino mūḍhāḥ prapadyante narādhamāḥ (BG 7.15). This is the only explanation. What explanation can you... Who can give another explanation? There is no second explanation. Bhagavad-bhakti-hīnasya jātiḥ śāstraṁ japas tapaḥ, aprāṇasyeva dehasya maṇḍanaṁ loka-rañjanam. It's like if you decorate the dead body. It may be pleasing to some relatives of the dead body, otherwise what is the value of it? Others will think, "What a foolish man, he is, that decorating the dea..." Suppose if there is dead body and you're decorating (indistinct) flower. That may be your sentiment because the dead body belongs to your father or mother, like that. It is pleasing to you, but actually what is the value? So similarly, this human civilization is meant for understanding God. If that sense is lacking then it is simply decoration of the dead body. That's all. There is no value.
Guest (1) Indian man: This gentleman doesn't understand English.
Prabhupāda: (Hindi) (break)
Guest (1): He's nice devotee of Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa. I remember many years ago, I met him in Surbaya. He used to preach on Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, but in Sindi language.
Prabhupāda: Very good.
Prabhupāda: Flag. It is flag.
Guest (1): Flag? (indistinct) It is better to do like this?
Devotee: Yes.
Guest (1): And some Indian gentlemen only married here (indistinct) and...
Prabhupāda: This is temple. Temple.
Guest (1): Yes. Temple.
Prabhupāda: Lord's temple.
Devotee: The Lord's temple. Temple of God.
Guest (1): (Japanese)
Devotee: Yes.
Guest (1): This quite different Japanese, Asian sometimes but European made never like this only female, lady like this Europe.
Prabhupāda: No. It is sacred thread, sacred thread.
Prabhupāda: But they are not nice men. They are rascals. They're not even gentlemen. A gentleman will have some shyness, some shame. But they're shameless. They cannot answer properly, still, shamelessly, they claim they're scientists.
Brahmānanda: They're expert bluffers.
Prabhupāda: They're not even gentlemen. At least, I take them like that. They're talking that in the past, from matter, living force came, and when I ask them: "Why don't you produce?", "Oh, that we shall do in the future." Why? You have already experienced in the past, and you cannot do it, and you are leaving the matter for future. So they're shameless. Not even ordinary gentlemen. Shameless. That in talking all this nonsense. That is my charge. What do you think?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Yes. They're...
Prabhupāda: Shameless. Shameless men. We cannot say even gentlemen. A gentleman will be shameful, ashamed to speak something nonsense.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: They do not think.
Prabhupāda: That means they are not human being. A human being thinks twice before saying anything. Animals.
Prabhupāda: Calcutta, yes. A very perfect gentleman. Kind-hearted. Sometimes we joked. We were taking this, what is called, peanuts. So the professor was passing. So some of our friends remarked: (Bengali) So he thought that professor did not know Bengali. So immediately he turned: (Bengali). So we became very much ashamed. Yes. So all the professors from foreign countries, they were instructed to learn Bengali language, local language. That was the system. All officers, big officers, educate... (Aside) Good morning. ...big educationists, they were to learn the local language. And they used to learn Bengali. Especially in Calcutta. There was one professor, Mr. Scrimgeour. He was professor of literature, English literature. So while teaching one English literature, he was giving parallel passage from Bankim Candra Chatterjee. Yes. "Your Bankim babu says like this." He used to say like that.
Prabhupāda: Seaweed. The Chinese, China, China grass? What is called? China grass? Some foodstuff is sold in the stores, China grass?
Brahmānanda: Oh, yeah, I think they dry it...
Prabhupāda: No, they go under some chemical process. That gentleman, Mr. Patel, in Ahmedabad, whose guest I was, he's doing this business.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Oh, this can be taken as food?
Prabhupāda: Yes. under some chemical process. No, as it is can be taken. The Japanese take it.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: That is one of the targets of scientific research. They're going to find food from the ocean now.
Prabhupāda: There is already food. What is this? You are You have labor (indistinct). There is already food.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: They're going to find more.
Prabhupāda: Why more? Let them eat all the fishes first of all. Rascal, what more? They would take all the fishes and eat first, finish it. Then, then search for another. Simply rascaldom. Simply to take money from the government: "I'm making some research."
Prabhupāda: So if they admit they have no perfect knowledge, how they can say there is no God, or there is God? They cannot say.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: They are very doubtful.
Prabhupāda: Doubtful. That means not perfect knowledge. So how they can say that there is no God. They can say: "Yes, there may be or may not be. We do not know." That is a gentleman. How they can say there is no God? And people are misled. "Oh, such and such scientist has said there is no God. Therefore there is no God." He does not know that he's a perfectly foolish. His statement has no value. Yad yad ācarati śreṣṭhaḥ lokas tad anuvartate (BG 3.21), because he has posed himself as a very big man, people follow him blindly and they're misled.
Karandhara: Like the Russians...
Prabhupāda: Oh, they are set of fools.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: They do not believe in God, the Russians?
Prabhupāda: No. They are all rascals. I have studied them in one week.
Prabhupāda: Never use this china clay. Never. No respectable gentleman will use china clay. Still. So if a poor family is in need of money, immediately he can take one Benarsee sari, or some metal utensils to the pawn maker. He'll immediately offer some money. "Yes." So these are conveniences. Investment was in gold ornaments. Still we have seen that so many jewelry shop, silver dishes shop, ornament shop. Still. Every marriage, the father must give at least fifty tolās. I was not a rich man. Still I had to give to my daughter fifty tolās of gold during marriage. Fifty tolās. Two and a half tolās makes one ounce. So what is the value of fifty tolās?
Karandhara: Twenty-five ounces? Right now that's worth about two thousand, three hundred dollars.
Prabhupāda: Just see. So that is her stock. Strī-dhana. The husband cannot touch. Then it is criminal. So in case of need, she can convert the ornaments into money. Sometimes there is disagreement with the husband. So she has got some stock. The father gives some ornaments. The father-in-law gives some ornament. The relatives also, during marriage, they present some ornaments. So if he, if she gets hundred tolās of gold, that means at least five hundred...?
Karandhara: Almost five thousand.
Prabhupāda: That's all. Andhā yathāndhair upanīyamānāḥ (SB 7.5.31). Anyway he has admitted, "I do not know." That is sufficient defeat for him. But they are shameless. In spite of being defeated, they won't admit that "I am defeated." Not gentlemen. Formerly between two learned scholars there will be argument. If one is defeated... Just like Sarvabhauma Bhaṭṭācārya. As soon as he became defeated, he became His disciple. That's all. That was the system. Not that we go on arguing for hours, and one is defeated; still, he remains the same. No. If you are defeated, then you must accept the other party as your master. That was the system. As soon as he said that I do not know, he should have become your disciple. That is the system. "If you do not know why you have come to teach me."
Svarūpa Dāmodara: He should come and become a disciple of Śrīla Prabhupāda.
Prabhupāda: No, Prabhupāda... No. We want everyone to become Kṛṣṇa's disciple. That is our mission. We are disciplic succession. The original master is Kṛṣṇa. (end)
Prabhupāda: Corpse, yes. You require everything, full body. You require head, you require arms, you require belly, you require legs. But if you have got simply the belly and legs, then it is a dead body. It cannot work properly. The brain is lost; therefore they are mad after so much advancement of civilization. They are exactly like cats and dogs. As soon as you enter some country, dog, watchdog: "Wowf! Wowf! Why you have come? What is your position?" ("Where is your visa?"?) This is dog's business. This is dog's business. (laughter) And they have set up immigration department. But it is a dog's business, watchdog. I say it is watchdog's business. A first-class gentleman is being searched out pocket, whether you have got revolver. Cannot be trusted, all these educated rogues and thieves. So what is this advancement of civilization? It is civilization? No sober man, no intelligent man, all cats and dogs, thieves, rogues. Is that civilization? It is not civilization.
Mr. Wadell: But one has to believe the...
Prabhupāda: Yes, if the process is perfect, one has to believe, one has to believe. Just like I will give you one example: Nobody knows who is his father; neither it is possible to know one's father by speculation. But there is a process. If you ask your mother, and if she: "This gentleman is your father," you accept the process and you get the perfect knowledge.
Mr. Wadell: One could look like one's brother. (laughs)
Prabhupāda: What. I do not follow. What is...?
Mr. Wadell: You do not understand?
Śyāmasundara: Say it again.
Mr. Wadell: I have a brother, who is very like me, and, well, this helps me to believe that I know who my father was.
Prabhupāda: No.
Mr. Wadell: In one sense.
Prabhupāda: That is another thing. Because one gentleman resembles your features, you think that he is your brother. That is another thing. But here the process that if you want to know who is your father, the process is it should be known through the mother. There is no other process. It is not that suggestion: because somebody resembles my face, he is my father. Not like that. It is the perfect process.
Prabhupāda: Yes, this is relative world.
Mr. Wadell: I agree, but I am using this in, as an example, not as an absolute description. I think my view—may I explain this—of the whole of which I am, as I say, I think, an imperfect part, a part which is trying to learn something which I am not even quite sure what it is that I am trying to learn...
Prabhupāda: No, no, this is... You are perfect gentleman, means that you say that "I am imperfect." That is nice. But our point is that from imperfect man, imperfect knowledge is received. We cannot expect perfect knowledge from imperfect man.
Mr. Wadell: No. But where does your perfect knowledge come from and how do you recognize it?
Prabhupāda: Yes, that is very important point, where to get the perfect knowledge. That is wanted. That is intelligence. Therefore the Vedas says, gurum eva abhigacchet: "You go to a guru." "Guru" means heavy, who knows better than you, or who knows perfect. That is injunction.
Guest (2): This gentleman went to the hotel and found a small finger.
Prabhupāda: Small children cut up. And there was another case in Calcutta. The, one Chinaman, he was eating human being. And then... (break) ...some Kancawala (?) (beggar) him called, and then captured and killed him. This was going on. Later on, when police enquiry was made, so many human...
Guest (2): Bones...
Guest (4): Skeletons.
Prabhupāda: ...bones, skeletons was found. In Africa there are still cannibals.
Guest (4): Oh, yes.
Kṛṣṇa-bhāminī: In South America as well.
Prabhupāda: South America also? In India also.
Prabhupāda: Huh, that's right. (laughter) But you do not see. You do not see. So you have to believe the authority. Then you can see. Your father existed before your birth. So you have to ask from mother, "Who is my father?" And if she says, "This gentleman is your father," then it is all right. It is easy. Otherwise, if you makes research, "Who is my father?" go on searching for life; you'll never find your father.
Revatīnandana: So to come to your point, as he was pointing out, in the past, back hundreds of years, thousands of years, all the great authorities of spiritual knowledge and yoga have accepted Kṛṣṇa as the Personality of Godhead. And these ancient Vedas, they confirm it clearly in many, many places. Now, if someone comes and he says something else than Kṛṣṇa is God, "I am God" or "This light is God..."
Prabhupāda: You find out this verse
Revatīnandana: Then its different, you see. That's why not Guru Maharajaji.
Prabhupāda: Paraṁ brahma paraṁ dhāma pavitraṁ paramam (BG 10.12), in the Tenth Chapter.
Pradyumna: 10.10?
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Prabhupāda: Just see. Immediately he understands Kṛṣṇa. Sarvam etad ṛtaṁ manye: (BG 10.14) "Whatever You have spoken, I accept it," Then there is no difficulty. And You are accepted by Devala, Nārada, Vyāsa, and You are speaking Yourself, and later on, all the ācāryas have accepted. Then I'll follow: mahājano yena gataḥ sa panthāḥ (CC Madhya 17.186). I'll have to follow great personalities. The same reason mother says, this gentleman is my father. That's all. Finish business. Where is the necessity of making research? All authorities accept Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead. You accept it; then your searching after God is finished. Why should you waste your time?
Student (1): Say we say that Kṛṣṇa is God. Right?
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Student (1): Then do you believe that there are other ways, apart from the way that you're going, to get to Kṛṣṇa?
Prabhupāda: Yoga means to understand Kṛṣṇa.
Prabhupāda: Oh. So whenever you find time, you can come, or, if you like, you can live with us. We have got ample place. Girls and ladies, they live separately. Boys and gentlemen, they live separately. Those who are married, we have got apartments for householders. And gradually, we are improving, I mean to say, arranging further facilities. First of all you try to attend our class in the morning and inquire all about your doubts. Have some clear idea what is this Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement. Read our literatures as far as possible. You have taken some book, I see, I saw. And if you agree to this principle, we take charge of you. You haven't got any botheration, how you'll get prasāda. We shall arrange for that...
Guest (3) (young British woman): Religion, meaning trying to serve God, is any more right than another?
Prabhupāda: This is not religion. This is the only business. Religion is different thing. Suppose... Just like... I have already explained, that you are sleeping, and you have got a good engagement. And somebody's trying to awake you, that "You have to go there. Just get up! Get up!" So this kind of business is not religion. Religion is a, what is a kind of faith, a sentiment. That is different thing.
Prabhupāda: Where you are staying here? London?
Buddhist Monk (1): That has become a little difficult because... It's difficult. We didn't know these āśramas, and we came yesterday. The Guru Nanak temple people made arrangements for our transport. We were staying with them for one week, and they looked after us dearly, and they made arrangements for our transport to come here. Some people were coming on some other business. So they brought us. So it was not much time. So we met a person in the street, and we told them that we are looking after a place to stay. And that person said, "Well, it's difficult here." Then I asked about two or three, and we had some addresses and they were far away. Then we met a friendly gentleman who was just reversing his car. He was smiling. And we smiled. We said, "Well, could you tell us a small place to pitch a tent." We carry a small tent. We said, "For a day or two..." He asked me how long. I said, "Just to find some breathing space at least." So we have pitched up a small tent in a private garden. That's somewhere in Cheswick Lane.
Prabhupāda: Where it is?
Haṁsadūta: Cheswick Lane.
Buddhist Monk (1): That's by the river, uh? It's quite far away, yes. So last night we stayed there. Is that on the western side of...?
Devotee: Yes, that's the West Fork.
Buddhist Monk (1): West Fork. West Fork.
Prabhupāda: This is northern? No, southern. I do not know. We are also (Buddhist laughs) camped for the last few days. We do not know much about...
Prabhupāda: Anybody else is coming? No. Somebody's coming?
Devotee: There's supposed to be two gentlemen coming, coming some men coming, and...
Devotee: School? He's coming from the school?
Devotee: No. More boys will come.
Prabhupāda: Eh?
Devotee: They were from the same... Those boys all came from the same school as those teachers. They're just up the road. They'll all come now.
Prabhupāda: They are understanding our philosophy?
Devotee: Very nicely, yeah.
Prabhupāda: Oh!
Prabhupāda: So Bhagavān dāsa has gone?
Devotee: Yes, he went this morning.
Devotee: Two gentlemen were supposed to come, but I think they were afraid.
Prabhupāda: Afraid? Why?
Devotee: Well, guru, they have to surrender to guru. They must surrender. So it's difficult sometimes for them to come.
Prabhupāda: But it is compulsory? (laughter) They can come. It is not the question of surrender.
Prabhupāda: So you give... Yes. That is the... The only difference is that in human form of life you can awaken your Kṛṣṇa consciousness. In the animal form... Here we are sitting with all human form of life, gentlemen, civilized men. I cannot call cats and dogs and sit here, and to understand what is Kṛṣṇa consciousness. That is not possible. Therefore this opportunity should be given. This opportunity should be given. And especially, you are English nation, recognized, great nation, respectful, you are respected... Especially in India, we have got very good respect for English nation. We had connection for so many years. And the politicians, they spoiled. Otherwise, the, I, we liked the British Empire, means unity of the human being all over the world. That can be revived again. That can be revived again. If you come to this Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement, your Queen comes to that,... There is process. There is process. You can revive your British Empire. It is not story. If you people take little advice from me, I can help you. Yes. You are intelligent nation. So kindly do this service to the students and awaken their dormant Kṛṣṇa consciousness. It will be a great service. And we are meant for helping you all. So you can inquire. You are at liberty to come at any time and inquire.
Prabhupāda: But if we transcend the position of our bodily concept of life, we come to the spiritual platform. So there is no difference.
David Lawrence: The difference is irrelevant then.
Prabhupāda: No. There is no difference. Just like we are talking. You have got a coat. I have no coat. That does not make any difference. We are talking as gentlemen. That's all. The last time when I was in Calcutta I was invited by the Indo-American Cultural Society, and they gave me the subject matter: "East and West." So I talked, "We don't find any such distinction, 'East and West,' when we come to the spiritual platform. This is all material platform."
David Lawrence: We find when we're teaching, you know, really secular youngsters that it's terribly difficult to get off this cultural veneer, you know.
Prabhupāda: Therefore one has to understand first that "I am not this body."
David Lawrence: That's it. And you've got to believe... The teacher... This is the big thing, isn't it? The teacher has got to be God conscious.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Prabhupāda: Oh, I see.
Paramahaṁsa: If you want, I can clean it and cut it.
Prabhupāda: No. Just I am asking. Take. Come on. (pause) Another gentleman was to come here?
Śyāmasundara: Yeah, there's one man coming later.
Prabhupāda: When?
Mukunda: He's expected in about five minutes.
Prabhupāda: Oh.
Śyāmasundara: Oh, at seven.
Paramahaṁsa: Śrīla Prabhupāda, I wanted to ask you that in your lectures you continually speak of the ten saṁskāras that children should have.
Prabhupāda: Well, that is not possible.
Prabhupāda: (break) ...is taking place. The rascal Darwin says that it is coming from monkey. Why the monkey does not produce a human being? All rascals. Harāv abhaktasya kuto mahad-guṇāḥ. Simply rascals. His name is Neiman?
Pradyumna: Couldn't get his last, Ruby something.
Prabhupāda: Ruby, that...
Pradyumna: He is a very nice gentleman. He appreciated Bhagavad-gītā. He said right away, very...
Prabhupāda: Yes...
Pradyumna: My wife's typing up all your lectures. She has finished L.A. lectures. Now she is typing Māyāpur lectures, this lecture, that lecture. She has permanent machine and typewriter and apartment. So she types all during the day and she minds the child. And then it is in the same apartment.
Prabhupāda: Attending class also?
Pradyumna: Oh, yes.
Prabhupāda: That's nice.
Prabhupāda: You should teach philosophy by behaving yourself.
Revatīnandana: Very nice. So simple.
Prabhupāda: (break) ...talked with many gentleman, lawyer. That Goldsmith, he was against war, but when I asked him, "Whether you are meat-eaters, killing animals?", "Yes, that is our food." So if the poor animals can become your food, the big nation can say, "The small nation is my food. I can kill them. We can kill them." Everyone can say. And that is happening like, "Might is right."
Revatīnandana: Yes.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Revatīnandana: Goldsmith? He's a lawyer or something in Los Angeles?
Prabhupāda: Hm, hm, hm. (Yes) No, not Los Angeles. New York.
Dr. Arnold Toynbee: Yes, yes. But the people who rule India now have a western education mostly. The Indians who...
Prabhupāda: Yes. Perverted, converted. Just like Nehru. Nehru was western-educated. He was educated in London. But he hated everything Indian.
Dr. Arnold Toynbee: Yes.
Prabhupāda: Yes. That was the res... Formerly, in our childhood we saw that any gentleman coming here in London and goes back to India, he no more mixes with the Indian soil. He... They were called "England-returned." So they made their own society. Then our Ram Mohan Raya, he formed a Brahmo Society. And so many things changed. Again, they are now topsy-turvied. So actually, India's position is that they have lost their own culture, and they could not assimilate the western culture. But in the western countries, if they accept this Vedic process of civilization, then they will again take it.
Dr. Arnold Toynbee: Yes.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Prabhupāda: The people do not know all these things. They have no idea. They have no idea, neither... Even these things are there in the Vedic literature, they are not very much interested. And practically, in the darkness, they do not know what is next... I talked with Professor Kotofsky in Moscow. He, he is in charge of Indology. That gentleman told me, "Swamiji, after death there is nothing. Everything is finished." So I was surprised, that such a learned man, and he has no idea of the transmigration of the soul. These are the defects of modern civilization. Those who are leaders, teachers, they are not sufficiently in knowledge.
Dr. Arnold Toynbee: I think, in western countries now, people are very much afraid of death. It's...
Prabhupāda: Eh?
Dr. Arnold Toynbee: Especially in America, people are very much afraid of... They won't even mention or think about death which is a great weakness. One should be able to think about death.
Prabhupāda: No, no. The thing is... That is natural. That is natural. Suppose if, after my death, I am going to become something lower than my present position, certainly I must be afraid of it.
Lord Brockway: But there'll be too many today to be associates.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Yes. Now it has come to another platform. So anyway, the knights, they are respectable gentlemen of the society, leading men of the society. So our, this Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement is meant for enlightening people to the right standard of understanding the goal of life. Because after this life, after this body is annihilated, we do not know what kind of body we are getting next. We must prepare. Just like you are elevated to the position of lordship. So you had to prepare yourself. Not that this lordship is offered to anyone and everyone. One who is qualified, he is offered this position. Similarly, we should know how we are becoming qualified for the next life. But that education is lacking. There is no such education. In the university or anywhere, nobody thinks, "What we are going to become next life?" But we should be prepared. If, after becoming Prime Minister in this life, or President, like Mr. Nixon, and again, by his activities, he's going to be another animal, oh, that is not very successful proposal. But there is such chance. Because after death, after giving up this body, we are completely under the grip of material nature.
Prabhupāda: ...what kind of service we shall give? I can give you one example. I have seen it practically, that in Calcutta one neighbor, neighboring gentleman, he is (has) a daughter-in-law, he (she) was beating her young son. So I inquired, "Why that daughter-in-law...?" Because her father-in-law was of my age, little older. "So why daughter-in-law is punishing her son? What is the fault?" Naturally, young, a small child. So the report came that the, one of the child, one of the boy, was suffering from typhoid, fever, and another boy stole from the kitchen some parāṭā and gave him to eat. And when the mother came into knowledge, she was punishing, that "Why you have given this parāṭā?" Because in typhoid, no solid food is taken. So he cannot... But the suffering child was thinking that "Mother is not giving me food." So he requested his younger brother, "You give me some food." So he does not know. He has given the food. But the result is that he is being punished. So without knowing how to give service, sometimes we may be punished. What kind of service we shall give? (indistinct) example. So there are three kinds of services: goodness, passion, and ignorance. If we...
Lord Brockway: Goodness,...?
Śyāmasundara:Passion.
Pradyumna: Passion.
Prabhupāda: Passion, yes.
Śyāmasundara: And how, the highly civilized manner in which discussion was going on, problems were being solved, very gentlemanly, with high thinking...
Lord Brockway: Yes.
Śyāmasundara: ...and that actually, if all countries of the world had House of Lords, and there were pious men in the House of Lords of all countries, easily the world would solve all of its problems.
Lord Brockway: Not easily. Not easily. And you have a House of Lords which is not democratic. Many of its members...
Prabhupāda: No, democracy we don't approve.
Prabhupāda: That gentleman I talked to, he was also very intelligent. John. But this thing is meant for intelligent class men. Because in the jñānīs, they are also in the third grade, so how much in the position of the bhakta? That is explained in the Bhagavad-gītā. Brahma-bhūtaḥ prasannātmā (BG 18.54). When one gets the brahma-jñāna, brahma-bhūta (SB 4.30.20), and identifies himself, ahaṁ brahmāsmi, "I'm Brahman," so, prasannātmā: immediately he gets relief of all material anxiety. He has nothing to do with this material world. Na śocati na kāṅkṣati. Then he can see everyone on the equal level. Samaḥ sarveṣu bhūteṣu. Then, mad-bhaktiṁ labhate parām (BG 18.54). After being brahma-bhūta, then he can begin bhakti. This is the position of the bhaktas. The real bhaktas, śuddha-bhaktas, unalloyed bhaktas. Bhaktas, they have got three stages-kaniṣṭha, madhyama, and uttama. First, at least one comes to the madhyama-adhikārī, not to remain in the lowest stage, kaniṣṭha-adhikārī.
Prabhupāda: Then you become pure. You become pure.
Revatīnandana: Yes. Yes.
Jesuit Priest: That's very interesting.
Revatīnandana: I just met a gentleman who told me exactly that. Just a few min... He's a businessman here in London. He's about forty years old. And three months ago, he decided, because he learned, heard this from us, he decided to become a vegetarian. And a few weeks later, I talked to him. He said, "You know, it's amazing the difference in my consciousness." He says, "I have become a completely different man." Yeah, he told me that.
Prabhupāda: Well, yes...
Revatīnandana: And he's a very intelligent man. He's in the Mensa Society.
Prabhupāda: In the Vedic literature it is said the animal killers cannot understand God.
Prabhupāda: Just for example, that in the Ten Commandments, the first Commandment is "Thou shall not kill." So when I ask any Christian gentleman, "Then why you are killing?" they cannot give me any satisfactory answer. (pause)
Revatīnandana: How does the, how does the process of animal slaughter in the slaughterhouse as we find it today, how does it fit in your philosophy for, say, changing the society? Where do you put that in your philosophy?
Schumacher: Well, I think one should try and do without it. You can't everywhere do without it. It's like all nonviolence. It's a direction of movement, to try to do your utmost to go as far as...
Revatīnandana: So wherever possible, the slaughtering business should not go on.
Schumacher: That's right. But the Eskimos, for instance...
Prabhupāda: That is another thing.
Revatīnandana: But in the last week we've had a Jesuit priest, a Black Friar's monk, several other theologically inclined Christian gentlemen have been here, and not one of them has assented to that statement. They do not agree. They think that...
Prabhupāda: They do not agree that animal killing is sinful. They do not agree.
Schumacher: It's a very long question, isn't it. I mean...
Prabhupāda: No, it is a simple question. Killing, do you think killing is very good business? Then why it is forbidden, "Thou shall not kill."
Schumacher: No, but sometimes protection is necessary.
Prabhupāda: That is another thing. Generally, you should not kill. But when there is absolute necessity, that is another thing. But generally, this killing process you cannot support, and at the same time, you want to make the society purified. You commit sinful activities; at the same time, you want to purify.
Revatīnandana: The distinction between killing a cow and cutting off a cauliflower from a plant. He said, "Both are alive." Yes, both are alive. But what is the psychological state of a cow, and what is the psychological state of a cauliflower plant? Practically speaking, he has no psychology. No senses, no mind, no ability to feel elation or suffering. But a cow is a completely different condition. Cow is very nearly to human consciousness. Practically the next birth after a cow, according to the Vedas, is a human birth. So you're putting so much suffering unnecessarily. But he had no sense, not... An intelligent man who can sense that "If I suffer, I don't like it," then when he sees another living entity put into suffering, he thinks, "How I could avoid that suffering for that living entity, because I don't like to suffer." But this gentleman had no conception. He's...
Prabhupāda: There is one moral instruction by Cāṇakya Paṇḍita. Cāṇakya Paṇḍita was a great minister during the time of Mahārāja Candragupta. So he was honorary Prime Minister in the empire. So he has a book of moral instruction. So he says in that moral instruction, who is a learned man. So he gives the description of a learned man, that: mātṛvat para-dāreṣu. Mātṛvat. "Just treat all other women except your wife as your mother." Mātṛvat para-dāreṣu, para-dravyeṣu loṣṭravat. Loṣṭa means as there are so many pebbles lying on the street, you don't care for it, similarly, others' property, others' money you should treat just like these pebbles lying on the street or the garbage lying on the street. Don't touch it. So mātṛvat para-dāreṣu para-dravyeṣu loṣṭravat, ātmavat sarva-bhūteṣu. And treat all living entities as you want to be treated. If one has got these three qualifications, he is learned man. He does not say, one who has got this BAC, DAC degrees, and so on, so on, so on.
Prabhupāda: In 1925. There, in Lahore, there is, there were many Bengalis.
Dr. Inger: Oh yes. Yes.
Prabhupāda: So one Bengali gentleman, he was Mr. Mitha, they were physician. So I became his guest. They were very well-to-do men. They were living therefore two, three generations. Mithi family.
Dr. Inger: I see. There was also some man called Birmitha. Was he the same? Bir...
Prabhupāda: I, I...
Dr. Inger: Perhaps...
Prabhupāda: I forget the name.
Dr. Inger: Yes, there were quite a number of Bengalis there.
Prabhupāda: Yes, yes, yes.
Prabhupāda: American, they cheated the Red Indians. They got the land. Now they are claiming, "It is my land." But where you got this land? You have cheated the Red Indians, and you claim now it is your land. "Nobody should come here." Everywhere that is there it belongs to... Napoleon, he thought, "France is mine." France is there. Where he has gone, the proprietor? Yes. And with this idea he fought so much. Now nobody knows what he has become, where he is living, either in France or in hell, maybe in heaven. But there are so many places and so many forms of life. And our Bhagavad-gītā says, tathā dehāntaraṁ prāptiḥ. Just like I am now in this body. Child is in this body. So all of us sometimes were in this body, childish. So where is that body? That body is not existing. But I am existing; you are existing. You know that you had such a body. You were also playing like this child. I also remember. So the body is not existing. I am existing. So I have got a different body now. So where is the difficulty to under-stand that when this body is also finished I get another body? Where is the difficulty? And Bhagavad-gītā says, tathā dehāntaraṁ prāptiḥ. As we are changing from one body to another, another, another, even within our experience, similarly, as soon as this body is finished, I get another body. Now I am working in this body as national, as Napoleon, as Gandhi, as you according to our own whims and ideas, and fighting in the UNESCO, everything, just like recently Pakistan representative, India... But as soon as the body is finished, just like Gandhi finished, Jinnah finished, now what kind of body he has got now? May not be Indian or Pakistani. Now in that body he is thinking according to his body, a dog is thinking according to the doggish body. A man is thinking according to the man's body. So thinking and everything is changed with the change of the body. Just like this child is. This child, she cannot concentrate because due to the body. Other gentlemen, ladies, they can concentrate.
Prabhupāda: I don't find anything.
Yogeśvara: There was this gentleman this afternoon who was asking you about people who are constantly, constantly being tested by all kinds of miserable circumstances. She asks: Is it not a sign of a soul that God has chosen to favor that he sends them such miserable conditions of material life?
Prabhupāda: Yes. Devotee, in miserable condition, they accept it as a favor of God. (break) ...in the Bhāgavata:
- tat te 'nukampāṁ susamīkṣamāṇo
- bhuñjāna evātma-kṛtaṁ vipākam
- hṛd-vāg-vapurbhir vidadhan namas te
- jīveta yo mukti-pade sa dāya-bhāk
- (SB 10.14.8)
We are put sometimes in difficult position. But a devotee takes the difficult position as mercy of God.
Prabhupāda: They will print it. They will supply in August or July, they said. They'll supply. So it has come out very successful. Just imagine, 200,000 copies distributed within one year.
Professor: In one year. That's very good.
Prabhupāda: And in America, our people go to saṅkīrtana. Many gentlemen comes down, gets down from the car, inquires, "You have got Bhaktivedanta's Bhagavad-gītā As It Is?" They purchase like that. Yes. At least, they have become inquisitive on account of the word "As It Is."
Professor: What?
Prabhupāda: "As It Is."
Professor: Oh, As It Is, yes.
Yogeśvara: Because of the fact that our title is "Bhagavad-gītā As It Is."
Professor: "As It Is."
Yogeśvara: "As It Is." Yes.
Professor: Yes.
Prabhupāda: Because they have read different interpretations. Now they want to read as it is.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Everyone likes. Yes. Even Christian priests they also like. No, any sane man will like because... Somebody sends me money: "Sir, you are doing so nice work, spreading God consciousness. Here is my little contribution."
Professor: I see.
Prabhupāda: Yes. From your, these Western countries. Just week before, I got hundred dollars from one gentleman. Simply appreciated that I am spreading God consciousness. So actually we have no program of proselytizing or making Hindu from Christian, Christian... We have no such program. We simply want to see that everyone is God conscious. Never mind through which venue, he becomes a God conscious. It doesn't matter.
Prabhupāda: Because they don't find any suitable place.
Professor: No.
Prabhupāda: That is the difficulty.
Professor: Yes. But this gentleman told me that he is married, for instance.
Prabhupāda: He is married. So we have got so many married couples.
Professor: Your wife is here?
Yogeśvara: Yes.
Professor: In the same society?
Yogeśvara: Yes.
Professor: And in the same...
Prabhupāda: She also translates.
Prabhupāda: Somebody, somebody says so many things...
David Lawrence: Yes, that's right. Oh yes, I mean if you take them, they all differ in their views. But one of the things, one of the themes that comes through is the idea that...
Prabhupāda: Therefore the gentleman the other day was asking, "How is that you say electricity?" Oh you were not present that time? Because we have translated there is no need of sun, there is no need of moon, there is no need of electricity in the spiritual world. So when he heard the word electricity, he became astonished.
Śyāmasundara: He thought the word did not exist at the time?
Prabhupāda: Yes.
David Lawrence: Yes, I must admit I was amazed at that reference, reading that yesterday.
Prabhupāda: That frog philosophy is going on. Dr. Frog. He's simply calculating the well, that's all. How there can be Atlantic Ocean? That is frog philosophy. You know frog philosophy? Yes?
David Lawrence: Yes.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Harry: We do have this liaison. You know, I must keep in liaison with you. So if I come over here, gentlemen, you must realize I am not here, I am not here for the purpose of, say, spying, if you may think this. I don't suppose you do?
Śyāmasundara: You're welcome at any time.
Harry: But this is the purpose, anyway... I don't know if I've got to, stay overstayed my welcome...
Śyāmasundara: We feel very good when we see you here. We feel very pleased to see you on the grounds.
Harry: Yes, oh, yes, yes. But don't forget, gentlemen, as I say, I, you must realize that I still have a job to do and if there was something in which you think I should report upon...
Prabhupāda: Mr. Ha... (opening letter), you can read this letter, that so many people, they offered their place for our temple. Just now we have received this letter. One body is offering his...
Śyāmasundara: Yeah. I brought that letter from London. It's from Guyana.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Śyāmasundara: He wants to write you into his will or something, give some money.
Prabhupāda: In India, also, there is that Bengali gentleman, he was offering two lands, one Agartala, and Agra. The people are still willing to cooperate with religious movement.
Revatīnandana: Yeah, this place is also donated.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Śyāmasundara: George is going to Portugal next month for reading and chanting. He's...
Prabhupāda: Oh, Portugal?
Śyāmasundara: Portugal is a country in Europe near Spain.
Revatīnandana: Outside of Spain, Portugal?
Prabhupāda: Portugal, yes.
Prabhupāda: Just down. You can see.
Paramahaṁsa: Dr. Suneson is also a friend of Dr. Bernhart and Dr. Stahl, Prof. Stahl in Berkeley.
Prabhupāda: Oh.
Professor: Bernhardt, I know, I know...
Paramahaṁsa: He knows them. And both of these gentlemen have Śrīla Prabhupāda's literature in their universities, in their libraries.
Professor: Hm, hm.
Prabhupāda: This book is recommended in the Temple University as textbook.
Professor: Hm, hm. This one.
Prabhupāda: Nectar of Devotion. This is Caitanya-caritā..., I mean to say, Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu. Yes. "The summary study of Śrīla Rūpa Gosvāmī's Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu."
Professor: Hm, hm? So it's the complete text?
Prabhupāda: Yes. Complete. You can read from any portion; you'll find so nice description. Anywhere from, you can read. Yes.
Prabhupāda: Yes. I went there in June, 1971.
Ambassador: And did you stay in the city, or did...?
Prabhupāda: Yes, in National Hotel. One Madrasi gentleman...
Ambassador: I remember now, sir. Abhiyarthe(?) Natarajan.
Prabhupāda: Nataraja, yes.
Ambassador: Mr. Natarajan Rao told me because I was away. I was away in Central Asia. I remember his telling me. And Natarajan looked after.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Ambassador: I see.
Prabhupāda: So you have heard something about our movement?
Ambassador: General, generally, in general.
Prabhupāda: All over the world, they are expecting something spiritual enlightenment from India. That is a fact. But our government is callous in that respect. Therefore any so-called swami, yogis, come from India, they gather to receive him, to hear something from him. Yes. This is the tendency, that... The real thing is that people expected something... Still they are respectful to India on account of the spiritual enlightenment. That I have studied. Still they go to India to have some spiritual enlightenment. And actually we have got this in India. If anything has to be learned about spiritual, then it is only India. That has been admitted by one Chinese gentleman. He's a learned scholar. His book is recommended in New York University. I forget his name. He has written in his book that "If you want to learn something religion and spiritual, then you must go to India."
Prabhupāda: Children, small children, they're just like animals. The cats and dogs, just they are playing, they're also playing like that. But he, he does not belong to that category because when he'll get..., he'll get another body in which he'll be intelligent. Another body, he'll be highly educated. Another body, he'll be doctorate. The cats and dogs, they'll have to wait to get that body. So with the body, we are changing our consciousness. So different body, different consciousness. Similarly, why not after death a different body, different consciousness? If you make progress. Yes. This is progressive. So that is confirmed in Bhagavad-gītā: tathā dehāntara-prāptir dhīras tatra na muhyati (BG 2.13).
- dehino 'smin yathā dehe
- kaumāraṁ yauvanaṁ jarā
- tathā dehāntara-prāptir
- dhīras tatra na muhyati
- (BG 2.13)
So people cannot understand. That means they are not dhīra, not even, according to Vedic conc..., not even gentlemen. One who cannot understand this simple theory, that, "After this body, as I have changed so many bodies, similarly, I shall change this body also." That's a fact. So dhīras tatra na muhyati. Dhīra, one who has got brain, one who can think, he'll not be puzzled. "Yes, he has... Death means he has changed body." Any gentle, good brain will understand. But people are so foolish now, they cannot understand. They are not educated even to understand this simple thing. This is the position of the world. Even a big professor like Kotofsky. So this is the position of our present human society.
Prabhupāda: But others, they say that "I am Hindu," "I am Muslim," "I am Christian," "I believe in God," but he does not know anything.
Ambassador: I'm afraid most of us are like that, to be honest. That's true.
Prabhupāda: (laughs) I should say that Moscow are gentlemen. Because they cannot understand, they say, "Don't believe."
Ambassador: It's mūḍha-dhī.
Prabhupāda: Yes. But these rascals, they say, "Yes, I'm religious," but he's doing most irreligious activities. You see? I asked the Christian so many times that "Your Bible says, 'Thou shalt not kill.' Why you are killing?" They cannot give any satisfactory answer. This is my experience. It is clearly said, "Thou shalt not kill." And they are maintaining slaughterhouses. What is this? The other day in London, one lady, she was showing me... She... You were present? Broke some grass blade?
Haṁsadūta: Oh yes, I was present.
Prabhupāda: Just see. Breaking a grass blade is equal to keeping a big, organized slaughterhouse. Just see.
Prabhupāda: Mostly they are vegetarian, strictly vegetarian. Actually, in Southern India, they maintain the Hindu culture. You'll find big high-court judges, they have got tilaka.
Ambassador: That's true.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Strictly in Rāmānuja sampradāya, or Śaiva sampradāya they have got... Strictly taking bath and tilaka. In New Delhi, you'll find so many Madrasi gentlemen, big, big, high officers, they're strictly following Hindu principles.
Ambassador: You'll be surpri...
Prabhupāda: And still, if I am correct, in Madras, they, there, there is not many Mohammedans. The Mohammedan culture could not enter...
Ambassador: That's very true.
Prabhupāda: ...into Madras, Southern India. And you'll find also in our Caitanya Caritāmṛta... Now I am translating. When Caitanya Mahāprabhu went to Southern India, practically whole Southern India became Vaiṣṇava by His preaching.
Ambassador: I do not know what we can do here, Your Grace, but we will be very happy to help them if they want any special material like dahl or any vegetables or... whatever it is... I think they are quite well.
Prabhupāda: Yes. We, we, we have no fixed income.
Ambassador: Yes.
Prabhupāda: But Kṛṣṇa has given us opportunity. Our books are selling... You have seen our books?
Ambassador: I've seen them in Moscow. One gentleman had a complete set. So I have glanced through them. Especially the Bhagavad...
Prabhupāda: Bhagavad-gītā As It Is?
Ambassador: ...translation, yes. And also the Bhāgavatam, also.
Prabhupāda: Bhagavad-gītā As It Is.
Ambassador: Yes, this one, yes.
Prabhupāda: This is published by Macmillan Company. We are selling about more than one lakh copies per year through Macmillan Company. Yes. Similarly, we are selling our other books. Bring...
Ambassador: The complete set I have seen. And also the other...
Prabhupāda: That is not yet complete. Bhāgavatam will be finished in sixty volumes.
Paramahaṁsa: Śrīla Prabhupāda, this gentleman is Dr. Christian...
Devotee: Hauser?
Paramahaṁsa: Oh, I see. And he's a very good friend of Gauracandra. He's a devotee from Amsterdam. And he's a professional psychiatrist.
Haṁsadūta: Prabhupāda's just saying his mantra, Gāyatrī.
Paramahaṁsa: Jaya.
Prabhupāda: So very glad to see you. (break)
Dr. Hauser: You see, when I met George, he was a very, what do you call it, person that hadn't found anything very specific in life. He floated about very much and he... Now when I met him yesterday he was very, he seemed very happy and very sure of himself and what he was doing, and that made me very happy. I thought that was something very nice. I liked him very much.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Kṛṣṇa consciousness is the original status of the living entity. Just like a son is conscious always that "I am the son of such and such person." This consciousness is natural. So living entities, when they come to Kṛṣṇa consciousness... Because we are all parts and parcels of Kṛṣṇa. It cannot be broken. A person may go mad. But when he's cured, he immediately understands that "I belong to such and such family, such and such gentleman's son." That is natural. Similarly in the contact of this material nature, the spiritual spark, living entity, he's in madness. You are a psychiatrist. You know very well. Every man is more or less a madman.
Reporter (1): Many thanks. I'm very grateful... (break)
Prabhupāda: Thank you.
Haṁsadūta: Haribol. (break) This gentleman's from the Sunday Mirror.
Prabhupāda: Oh.
Haṁsadūta: His newspaper, is that right?
Reporter (2): That's right. Ah...
Prabhupāda: Oh, Sunday Mirror, they published, some, something about us...
Haṁsadūta: I think you published something about us a few weeks ago, about the manor out at Letchmore Heath.
Reporter (2): That's right. Yes. With a lot of pictures. Were you there at the time?
Haṁsadūta: Yeah.
Prabhupāda: Eh?
Reporter (2): You were there at the time?
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Prof. Gombrich: But do you think for instance, in this country, if somebody is a Protestant, or I mean a Christian and goes to church, this is also, you don't try to convert them away from that?
Prabhupāda: No, no. We have no such process (indistinct).
Prof. Gombrich: Because your movement is extremely distinctive.
Prabhupāda: Yes. We don't try to convert. Just like one gentlemen was asking, "Why these ladies, girls, they are putting Indian sari?" I never said that "You do that." But they're doing out of their own accord. So I never canvassed to become a Hindu, or like that, no. Our propaganda is, "Just become God conscious." (end)
Prabhupāda: You cannot ever overcome, because you are all weak. Daivī hy eṣā guṇamayī mama māyā (BG 7.14). Unless you are very strong, māyā is very, very stronger than you. How you can avoid it? Daivī hy eṣā guṇamayī mama māyā duratyayā, mām eva ye prapadyante. Only one is very, very strong in capturing the lotus feet of Kṛṣṇa, he can avoid. Otherwise it is not possible. All these Villa Parle, Juhu gentlemen, they are daily coming to their city business. And is it very difficult for us?
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: They have an office, though, in the city where they come to.
Prabhupāda: Office means their business is office. But your business is begging. Your business is not office. Your business is not... They have to direct so many things from there. That we can do. Besides that... Anyway, even they have got office, they come from in Bombay, Calcutta, even from hundred miles away. So if there is no such program, Deity worship, regulative principles, then it will be a joint mess. Hotel. Transcendental hotel. And transcendental fraud. This will go on. The business will be transcendental fraud, and life will be transcendental hotel. (Break) ...twenty, twenty-five. So these women devotees, they are given cāpāṭis by the bābājīs. Kṣurasya dhārā. Actually it is like that.
Guest (1): No, when you say Brahmā, you mean Supreme or the...?
Prabhupāda: No, no. Brahmā is a person like you and me. (Hindi) Jaya. (Hindi) Brahmā is also a living entity. Just like... (Hindi) We are all living entities. Similarly, Brahmā is also a living entity. Just like you are bigger than the ant, Brahmā is bigger than me. That is the difference only. But he's also living entity. So he lives for millions and millions of years. (Hindi) So the other gentleman not yet, not has yet come, our Asnani. So let him come. Then we shall begin talking. So it is not a fact that two millions of years ago, there was no living entity. This is all rascaldom. Time is immemorial, and many, many millions of years ago there were living entities, more perfect living entities. They're still living. But we have no information. Just like Brahmā. Brahmā's one twelve hours, if you believe in the Bhagavad..., statement of Bhagavad-gītā... sahasra-yuga-paryantam ahar yad brahmaṇo viduḥ (BG 8.17).
Śyāmasundara: You, you dreaming?
Prabhupāda: Yes. Guru Mahārāja said, "Come, come with me." I was going. But that... Many things happened before this. Yes. And at last it became, in America.
Śyāmasundara: Did you tell everyone you were leaving, or you simply disappeared?
Prabhupāda: No, I never said. Oh, why shall I? I lost all friends, money, everything.
Guru dāsa: I met one gentleman from Allahabad... (Apparently someone comes in)
Prabhupāda: (Hindi)
Guru dāsa: Oh.
Prabhupāda: Hare Kṛṣṇa. Get this light. (break) ...to this point, and you have joined. Do it nicely. It is the greatest movement for making the whole human civilization happy. Take it seriously. Don't...
Tejas: Śrīla Prabhupāda, this is Mister S. Domi(?) Singh, he's a... (end)
Prabhupāda: They are coming for playing golfs?
Karandhara: Yes, as soon as it's light, they'll be playing. They work hard all week so that they can play golf on Sunday.
Hṛdayānanda: They think that a gentleman should play golf.
Prabhupāda: Yes, that is the fashion of the society.
Karandhara: A man is considered very rich if he can play golf every day. The rich men play every day.
Prabhupāda: It is very expensive, golf?
Karandhara: Well, if you play golf, you don't have to work. People who are rich, they don't work. They just play golf all day. (break)
Citraka: ...newspapers, that now he is follower of Śaṅkarācārya in India. The queen of Greece. She's a follower.
Prabhupāda: Queen of Greece. This cloth is very inconvenient... (break) ...illusion. Accepting this illusion, wherefrom the idea came? Just like in the tailor's window, there are nice beautiful women or men standing. That is illusion. Actually, that is neither man or woman. It is doll. But wherefrom the idea came of this illusion?
Hṛdayānanda: Kṛṣṇa.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: They are saying that "We are beginning to learn more and more..."
Prabhupāda: Yes. That means that you are fool. While you are in the process of learning, that means you are fool. Say directly that we are fool. That is gentlemanliness. You do not know; still, you pose, "I am, we are scholar, we are scientist. Give us Nobel Prize." You see. This is going on. We don't want Nobel Prize. We are giving the topmost knowledge. We don't hanker after Nobel Prize. But they give false knowledge and hanker after Nobel Prize. Just see. Their real aim is how to get the Nobel Prize by cheating. That is their real aim. How an educated man, learned man will cheat? So therefore my Guru Mahārāja used to say that "This modern human society, or always, it is a society of the cheaters and the cheated." Somebody is cheating and somebody's cheated, and they have combined together to make a so-called civilization.
Prabhupāda: To cure their disease, you have to give them prasādam, and give them chance to hear Hare Kṛṣṇa. This is valuable. Just like a man suffering from jaundice, he sees everything yellow, and if you say, "No, it is not yellow. White" "No, I see yellow." What can be done, then the medicine has to be given. He'll never say it is white. He'll say it is yellow, because he is suffering. You have to cure. The Kṛṣṇa consciousness method is curing the disease of jaundice.
Hṛdayānanda: In other words, Prabhupāda, unless there are enough gentlemen to accept saintly persons, we cannot talk to them. (break)
Devotee (2): ...we have to defeat them by prasādam.
Prabhupāda: Yes. No, we have to show them mercy. It is not a question of defeat. Just like a diseased person is talking nonsense, so doctors takes care, "All right, go on talking nonsense. Take this medicine." (devotees laugh) That is hospitalization.
Prabhupāda: All right. Make appointment. What, what is his purpose to meet me?
Umāpati: Well, Professor Scharfe is interested in your writings, and I don't know the councilman's motives. He just sent word to me that he would like to meet with you.
Prabhupāda: We welcome any respectable gentleman. We have to go this way?
Karandhara: Uh, yeah, Prabhupāda, we can go this way, through here. (break)
Hṛdayānanda: The scientists will never give up.
Prabhupāda: They are trying.
Hṛdayānanda: They are like Jarāsandha. They come back every day on your walk.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Śrīla Prabhupāda, we have any specific reference for acintya in the Vedic reference?
Prabhupāda: Acintya, acintya, yes, acintya. Acintya potency, even you have got acintya potency. That I have already explained. Because we are part and parcel of Kṛṣṇa, therefore there is pinch of acintya, inconceivable potency, in us also. Harer nāma harer nāma harer nāma... (CC Adi 17.21).
Prabhupāda: Thank you very much. Hare Kṛṣṇa. Rascal means that... You know the story, that Kālidāsa, a great poet, he was a great rascal. So... It is a long story. So he was sitting on the branch of a tree and cutting. So some gentleman: "Why you are cutting? You'll fall down." "No, no, I'll not fall down." But when he fell down, then he went to that gentleman, "How did you know, sir, that I shall fall down?" Then they concluded, "Here is a rascal number one." (laughter) "Here is a rascal number one." They do not know that they are going to hell. That is rascaldom. By their so-called scientific advancement, philosophy, education, they are going to hell. That they do not know. Therefore they are rascals. Therefore they are rascals. This is the definition of rascaldom: one who does not know where he is going. If somebody goes in this way straight, and you say "Don't go!" "No! Why shall I not go?" He's rascal. (laughter) He's rascal. And the another rascal, "Yes, yes, you can go, it is all right." Yata mata tata patha. "As many ways you manufacture, it is all right. You can go this way." He's another rascal. This is going on.
Prabhupāda: Just like this sun, the sunshine, the sun globe, and within the sun globe. In the Bhagavad-gītā you'll find, the Fourth Chapter, the person sun, whose name is Vivasvān, he was instructed by Kṛṣṇa. Imaṁ vivasvate yogaṁ proktavān aham avyayam (BG 4.1). You are a Sanskrit scholar.
Professor: No, I'm afraid not.
Dharmādhyakṣa: That was the gentleman whose works he translated. In other words, the gentleman that he worked for was the Sanskrit scholar.
Prabhupāda: I see. So... Oh, you have no seat? They are giving him? All right. So from Bhagavad-gītā we understand that Bha... Just like in this planet we are so many persons, or the President Nixon is the President. Similarly, in every planet there are living entities, and the President of the sun planet is called Vivasvān. So he was instructed by Kṛṣṇa long, long ago. In the higher planetary system, the time is different. That was proved when the Russian aeronautics were on the sky. In one hour twenty-five minutes, he went round the earth, twice or thrice, like that. So time is different.
Hṛdayānanda: So if you can produce something, that means you actually understand it.
Prabhupāda: Yes. You say that it is a combination of such and such chemicals... Just like these rascals say, "Life..." Now he said that "You take the chemicals. Can you produce?" He said, "That I cannot say." You see? Avoiding the issue. This was discussed in the meeting. What is that gentleman?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Professor Stanley Miller. He's from San Diego, physicist.
Prabhupāda: Miller. Yes, he has got Nobel Prize. And his theory is that from chemicals, life has begun. So he said in the meeting that "If I give you the chemicals, can you produce life?" He said, "That I cannot say." Just see. And he has got Nobel Prize. He has no pure idea, still he has received the Nobel Prize.
Prajāpati: Number one speculator.
Prabhupāda: Topless, bottomless. That is going on. It is a regular policy that girls may remain unmarried, and the drunkards and the meat-eaters may take advantage of the prostitution. This is the policy. They have no sympathy. So many hundreds and thousands of innocent girls, they're like children. And they're exposed to prostitution. They have no shelter. Now these girls who are with us, they're feeling some shelter, you see? That we are giving some shelter. Everything should be reformed, political, social, and be, you American nation—you're favored nation, that I am always speaking; you should utilize the favor of God and be yourself perfect—and be leader of the whole world. Anyone who is not believer in God, he should be punished. Because he's animal. He is animal, and he is posing himself as human being. Cheater. Human life is meant for tapasya, for understanding God. That is human life. This dog's life, cat's life, this is not human life. If you become a very powerful tiger, is that human life? They're thinking like that. "If I become as strong as a tiger, then there we are perfect nation." Then what is the use of tiger? It is simply kill only. What other intelligence he has got? So in your country there are so many things to be done. I give you the idea, now you take the leaders. (break) Rascal. Sentimental. Be yourself leader. (break) ...you give up all this material advancement. But there must be Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Otherwise it is waste of time. Live very comfortably, gentlemanly. Kṛṣṇa never says that "You live like wretched urchins.
Prabhupāda: That's because they're rogues. Against their ideals. "Why you're laughing like fools? Does it belong to you or your father? This whole world? Why you are laughing like a fool?" You should have said like that. "You're laughing not like a gentleman; you're laughing like a fool. Can you say that it belongs to your father? Or you'll be allowed to stay here in America? After some years you'll be kicked out. Do you know where you were going? Why you are laughing like fools?" This should be the answer.
Karandhara: The Arabs, some of the Arabs, they say they believe in God, but that everyone else is...
Prabhupāda: Nobody believes in God. That is our proposition. Nobody believes... All this bogus. Now they should come to understand what is God. This, in this Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement. Nobody believes, neither know what is God. Here we are giving the name, the address, the form, the activities, everything of God—Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Let all the Arabians, all the Americans, let come to us. Those who are chief men, intelligent man, we shall convince them. That is our preaching.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: So even I am not the boss of my body, then?
Prabhupāda: No, no. That is said. Why don't you read Bhagavad-gītā?
- prakṛteḥ kriyamāṇāni
- guṇaiḥ karmāṇi sarvaśaḥ
- ahaṅkāra-vimūḍhātmā
- kartāham iti manyate
- (BG 3.27)
He is being pulled by the ear, by material nature, but he is, rascal, thinking that "I am the boss." This is explained in the Bhagavad-gītā. Prakṛteḥ kriyamāṇāni. Did you not read this? Prakṛteḥ kriyamāṇāni guṇaiḥ karmāṇi sarvaśaḥ ahaṅkāra-vimūḍhātmā. Puffed up in false egotism, he is thinking that he is boss. That is illusion. He is not boss. But he is thinking he is boss. Ahaṅkāra-vimūḍhātmā. One who is thinking that "I am boss," he is ahaṅkāra-vimūḍha. By false egotism and being a rascal, he is thinking like that. And because everyone is under that impression, therefore we say generally, "Rascal. Rascal." People may be amazed, "Why this gentleman says everyone rascal?" But prakṛteḥ kriyamāṇāni, vimūḍhātmā. Bhagavad-gītā it is said, "Anyone who is thinking that he is boss, he's a rascal." (break) ...Scientists struggle is that he wants to stop the action of prakṛti, nature. That is his foolishness. That is not possible. You cannot become boss of the prakṛti. You are under prakṛti. The boss of prakṛti is Kṛṣṇa.
Prabhupāda: That is their business. They must.
Karandhara: Just like there they build big buildings for them and let them...
Prabhupāda: But they do not go. In Bombay also, municipality has constructed big buildings, but they do not go. They hire it, yes, they get, to some gentleman. They get some fifty rupees and "All right, you take." And he lives in a hut. Yes. This is practical. They don't like. Just like a worm in the stool. You take it away. He will again, again go. (laughter) Again go there. You are very philanthropist: "Oh, my dear friend, why you are in the stool? Come on, here." "No, no, sir, I will go there again." How can you check it? Nature's law.
Karandhara: Well, they say it can be checked by time and education.
Prabhupāda: Oh, that time, you wait for time. By that time you will die.
Prabhupāda: So you feed them. But we also feed them. But we feed them with Kṛṣṇa prasādam. That is the difference. You do this. That will be actually beneficial. By distributing Kṛṣṇa's prasādam, you will be benefited, they will be benefited.
Prajāpati: If we see a group of demons fighting, killing each other, should devotees go and try to stop them from killing each other?
Prabhupāda: First of all you must know whether they are demons. But demons fight. Gentlemen do not fight.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Let them fight.
Prabhupāda: Let them fight. (laughing)
Svarūpa Dāmodara: The devotees should wish that "O my Lord, please..."
Prabhupāda: Devotees must pray that "This great demon Hiraṇyakaśipu may be killed by You, my Lord." Therefore He comes. Just like Prahlāda Mahārāja passively... (break) ...father was being killed. He could have stopped it, but he did not. He did not. If Prahlāda Mahārāja would have requested, immediately it would have been stopped, but he did not. He said, rather, in his prayer, that "Nobody is sorry when a serpent or a scorpion is killed." He said like that.
Prajāpati: After hearing such nice information about God, I think some sincere men might come forward and say...
Prabhupāda: Yes. Any gentleman, any sincere man, must accept this proposition. It is so logical.
Prajāpati: They will come forward and say, "Now, what practical can we do to help implement these in the government, in the world? What can we do practical?"
Prabhupāda: Yes. That you take instruction from us. Because you are all rascals, you do not know. We are experienced. Take advice from us. First thing is that you close the slaughterhouse. Close the liquor house. Will they do that?
Prajāpati: It is a question of business. Businessmen have so much control...
Prabhupāda: Business or whatever nonsense it may be, but our first proposal is that you become sinless. But they will not agree. They will remain sinful, and still they will say, "In God we believe, we trust," these slogans. "We go to church, we pray," like that. This is the defect. A man has come for your... You are a physician for treatment. As soon as the physician says that "You don't do this," you say, "I cannot give up this." Then how he will be cured? Let him rot. This is the position.
1974 Conversations and Morning Walks
Guru dāsa: Because blind leaders, we have allowed bribery to come about. In the passport line you have to stand because they suspect one thief. Every man who is a gentleman also has to stand and be inspected. It's Kali-yuga.
Guest (1): One thing is there, when I am worried about this thing or that thing, this is the place where I get peace of mind. I forget everything.
Prabhupāda: That's a fact.
Guest (1): And I don't come here with any expectation, not for liberation or anyone or anything, this or that. I, what I get...
Prabhupāda: If you're getting...
Guest (1): I am liberated that way already. I don't care about the liberation of tomorrow. Yeah, that's true.
Prabhupāda: So in this way he decided, or he made a plan, not to kill. From superficial, material point of view, he was very nice gentleman. But Kṛṣṇa actually chastised, kutas tvā kaśmalam idaṁ viṣame samupasthitam, aśocyān anvaśocas tvaṁ prajñā-vādāṁś... (BG 2.11). "You are talking like a very learned man, but you are fool number one." This is the instruction of Bhagavad-gītā. And then at last He said that "The most confidential part of knowledge I am telling you," sarva-dharmān parityajya mām e... (BG 18.66). "What I say, you do. That means I am asking you to kill, to do that." So he said, kariṣye vacanam, "Yes." That is Kṛṣṇa consciousness. "I do not like to do it, but Kṛṣṇa wants me to do, all right." This is Kṛṣṇa consciousness. It is very difficult. (laughing) I do not like to do, but Kṛṣṇa likes to do, I have to do it. This decision is very good. A Kṛṣṇa conscious person, a devotee, is prepared to do anything nonsense for Kṛṣṇa, even in the estimation of ordinary person. People ask me that "You are spreading Kṛṣṇa consciousness and he is, say, encouraging war," because they have got experience of the last two wars in Western country. So when Kṛṣṇa encouraging the war, they do not take it very nicely. They say, "What kind of God He is?" because they have suffered in the war, and then we are presenting a God who is encouraging war.
Prabhupāda: Oh yes, I was Dhawan's guest sometimes.
Dr. Kapoor: You were his guest, yes, yes. My son-in-law was telling me.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Dr. Kapoor: He was telling me.
Prabhupāda: I think that gentleman is no longer alive.
Dr. Kapoor: His father is no more.
Prabhupāda: No, yes, I am speaking of the old Dhawan.
Dr. Kapoor: Ah, I see.
Prabhupāda: Even though he was a young man.
Dr. Kapoor: Ah, he was a young man. When did you go to Kanpur?
Prabhupāda: I think I went to Kanpur sometimes in the year 1956.
Dr. Kapoor: I see. You carried your books with you?
Prabhupāda: Yes, I took two-hundred sets of books.
Dr. Kapoor: I see.
Prabhupāda: So I was taking the stock to the booksellers there or some institution or some friend. In this way, sixteen dollars, the full set sixteen dollars. In this way collecting. (break) ...That gentleman who carried me in his car, he is Mr. Kaśinātha Servan(?). (break) ...Bhagavad-gītā As It Is, a large edition, this size, eleven hundred pages.
Dr. Kapoor: I see.
Guru dāsa: We should let Dr. Karan Singh patronize ...
Prabhupāda: Huh?
Guru dāsa: ...an Indian edition of it. We should let Dr. Karan Singh patronize an Indian edition of it, without, with one photo. As he was suggesting, let him patronize it, the Indian printing.
Prabhupāda: Oh.
Prabhupāda: In the beginning also I requested them to publish the whole, but they said, "No, it will be very big, it will be costly. You reduce it to 400 pages." So that 1100 pages were reduced to 400 pages. Now when people are demanding this Bhagavad-gītā As It Is, people are coming. When our saṅkīrtana party goes in the street many gentlemen comes and demands "Have you got Bhaktivedanta's Bhagavad-gītā As It Is?"
Dr. Kapoor: Hm, yes.
Prabhupāda: Yes, they demand it. In every center it is going on very nicely. Then we have many customer requested the enlarged edition. So, so everything is ready. Now this controversy, whether MacMillan will publish or we shall publish.
Dr. Patel: Not even... Philosophy also. Gaurapāda,(?) the grandson of Śaṅkarapāda. Gaurapāda, Gaurapāda was, he's Govindapāda and Govindapāda is Śaṅkarācārya. So that also you will see that some Śaṅkara's greatest sire was a Bengali gentleman.
Prabhupāda: Now taking too much, too much taking in political part. Aurobindo, Aurobindo, he was a politician.
Dr. Patel: Great politician. He was a humanist also.
Prabhupāda: Yes, but he left. "This is no good." I must take to yoga practice.
Dr. Patel: No man can become like an Aurobindo again. Very great man. A politician, a saint, and what not. And a great rushi. He is a rushi. I consider him as a rushi.
Prabhupāda: Who?
Dr. Patel: Aurobindo.
Prabhupāda: Rushi?
Dr. Patel: A modern rushi.
Prabhupāda: Just you hear me! He thought himself that "I am Kṛṣṇa."
Dr. Patel: That is wrong. Nobody is Kṛṣṇa.
Prabhupāda: So I am talking that. So he was a pākā Māyāvādī. And gentlemen were offering their daughters and their wives to dance.
Guest (2): (Hindi)
Prabhupāda: (Hindi)
Guest (2): (Hindi)
Prabhupāda: (Hindi) I'll kick on their face!
Guest (2): (Hindi)
Dr. Patel: Because it has been wrongly explained, the whole...
Prabhupāda: Therefore these kind of things are done by the Māyāvādīs.
Prabhupāda: What following? We are following for the last four months. They are calling, "Come day, this date, that date." This is following.
Dr. Patel: I was a member of the Municipal Corporation of Bombay. I know that in ordinary course these rascals don't pass the plans for six and eight months. What do you say?
Prabhupāda: So how one gentleman can deal with rascals? That is another dilemma.
Dr. Patel: Very difficult.
Guest (3): They told that within one month time we will do it, the municipal (indistinct). But they will (indistinct) for some special purpose, whatever it may be.
Dr. Patel: It is because you call it a temple. If you don't call it a temple, it's such an...
Prabhupāda: No, how can I take, tell false things?
Dr. Patel: No, that is what they are objecting.
Guest (4): No, no. It must be a temple.
Dr. Patel: When I constructed this house, I wanted to make it into a sort of hospital and a nursing home. So they, "If you want nursing home, well, we won't pass it." Because my nephew was to come back to India. Now he is suffering in the States... (break)
Prabhupāda: That clerical staff, they are making budget. One clerk is saying. "No, no, it must be twenty lakhs." And another clerk says, "No, no, ten lakhs."
Viṣṇujana: And there were only two Hindu gentlemen in the village and still, the Mohammedans received us and arranged for our kīrtana and prasādam distribution.
Prabhupāda: Very nice.
Viṣṇujana: We felt it was Nityānanda's grace.
Prabhupāda: Hare Kṛṣṇa. Yes.
Viṣṇujana: First we were afraid. Haridāsa Brahmacārī told me: "Oh, these are Mohammedans. They'll not help us in any way, nor will they accept prasādam." But then I said let us go...
Prabhupāda: No, no. Everyone will help us. Maybe... In that way sometimes Hindus are also against. It is not the Mohammedans. Caitanya Mahāprabhu's time, even the Hindus were against His movement, the brāhmaṇas. They complained to the Kazi that "This is not Hindu movement." You see? The saṅkīrtana movement. Therefore Kazi had to take steps to stop the saṅkīrtana movement. So Kazi took step on the ground of complaint by the Hindus.
Brahmānanda: The preaching necessitates that.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Because if there is no other alternative, what can I do? In the beginning I had no disciples. So I was cooking myself. So one gentleman, he... Later on, he became my disciple. He gave me some place. I was cooking. And in the refrigerator, I saw there was meat. (laughs) So I asked: "What is this?" He said, "It is for cats. I don't take meat." "All right. (laughter) I'll do (?)." So of course, I stayed there for three, four days. And if I cry, "Oh, I have violated my rules and regulations..." Rules and regulations can be violated when there is urgent necessity of service, not whimsically or for one's sense gratification. And that is, of course, in our present..., with the permission of the spiritual master, not one should think, "Oh, I have become so much great devotee, I can violate all the rules and regulations." No, you cannot. If there is need of violating rules and regulations, you must take permission. Now we have no temple. Under the circumstances, we are doing that. So you construct the temple as soon as possible so that people may not criticize you. (break) ...for all gṛhastha devotees, you should begin preaching amongst the gṛhasthas. It is not forbidden for the gṛhasthas to preach. Because preaching is required everywhere. Arjuna was gṛhastha. So yei kṛṣṇa-tattva-vettā sei guru haya (CC Madhya 8.128). One must know the science of Kṛṣṇa. Then you can become preacher.
Prabhupāda: Yeah. Ahaṁ brahmāsmi. "I have become now Brahman—stop work. Eat and make your belly..." You see how Māyāvādī sannyāsī... Ah. (Prabhupāda gestures; devotees laugh) They think that "Now I have become Brahman, I have nothing to do. (Prabhupāda laughs) I have become Nārāyaṇa." "If you've got nothing to do, then why you are eating?" And for one cāpāṭi you'll find there are many Māyāvādīs. They're busy simply collecting cāpāṭis. (devotees laugh) So what is time of your starting?
Pañcadraviḍa: We're starting at nine.
Prabhupāda: Nine.
Pañcadraviḍa: Prasādam is being served at eight.
Prabhupāda: Oh. This Christian land is not available?
Devotee: There's no reliable information on it.
Prabhupāda: You can get from that gentleman... (end)
Viṣṇujana: Thirty years now.
Prabhupāda: Eh? Thirty years they are struggling for United Nations, big, big expenditure, so many humbug, bharam udvahato vimūḍhān, humbug program, and no result. Prahlāda Mahārāja said, "I am thinking, I am, only for these rascals. They're making humbug program, but there is no action. And for temporary, so-called happiness, without God consciousness. I am simply thinking of them. Otherwise, personally, I have no problem." This was spoken by Prahlāda Mahārāja to Nṛsiṁha-deva. Śoce tato vimukha-cetasa māyā-sukhāya bharam udvahato vimūḍhān (SB 7.9.43). (break) ...business has become like Prahlāda Mahārāja. We can chant anywhere. That's all right. Kṛṣṇa will provide everything. We have no business to do. But we have to take them because we are sympathizer, that so many people are being killed by this modern civilization. They had the opportunity to become Kṛṣṇa conscious, but by the set-up of this rascal civilization, they are being killed spiritually. Therefore we have to take it. (break) ...devotee, personally, he has no problem, but he pushes himself in this degraded society to teach them how to live, how to become gentlemen. Therefore... Otherwise, we have no business. But if we don't give them the opportunity, they'll not be able to come to Kṛṣṇa consciousness. (break) ...it will be good for you because Kṛṣṇa will see, "Oh, here is My devotee. He's doing so much for me." Your service will be recognized by Kṛṣṇa. Don't think that because you are teaching a śūdra how to work like this, you have become a śūdra. You are not śūdras, any circumstances. Even though you teach to a śūdra how to work like a śūdra. (break) ...stand. Don't misunderstand. Clearly understand what is the purpose. Is there doubt? Or it is clear?
Satsvarūpa: Yes.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Prabhupāda: ...disciple has read it that from government side there is an article that in Iranian country they want meat, so all these skinny cows should be killed and meat should be exported so that you can get oil economically. So one should not think of this religious sentiment. They should be practical. They should not object. Government is going to open many slaughterhouse to get oil, and kill these loitering, mischief loitering cows, no food. Like that. So government policy is that religious (indistinct) is an opiate of the (indistinct). It is a sentiment. It has no value. That is government conclusion. So therefore their decision is not to encourage these temples and this bhajana. To their point of view, it is useless. So indirectly or directly, they will patronize this. So under the circumstances, we have to make vigorous propaganda, public opinion. You see? Therefore I suggest that various meetings should be arranged in big, big halls and public meeting so that public may understand, at least, that this movement is very important. And let there be advertisement, different subject matter, to invite people here. They may come. Then I will explain. And all my students and others, they may hold, arrange for pan... I'll also speak. In that meeting make a nice gentleman president. In this way, create public opinion so that they will come here and they will sign this, "Yes, here must be one temple." Take signatures and...
Prabhupāda: Many thousands many lakhs. And this is one point... And we prove from śāstric evidences, as it is stated that, in the Bhagavad-gītā, that catur-vidhā bhajante māṁ sukṛtino 'rjuna. Bhajana, bhajante, this bhajana word is used with reference to the very pious men, sukṛtinaḥ. And just opposite number is duṣkṛtinaḥ, miscreants. So bhajana is for the most pious man, recommended in the Bhagavad-gītā, and Bhagavad-gītā is held up in so great estimation all over the world, and this man has accused bhajana as nuisance? So how much rascal and ignorant person he is. And he is one of the important position. This is government. The bhajana is described in the Vedic śāstra as,... It is a dealing of the most pious men. And he's talking it as nuisance. So far kīrtana, bhajana-kīrtana, kīrtana is concerned, Kṛṣṇa has said, satataṁ kīrtayanto māṁ yatantaś ca dṛḍha-vratāḥ (BG 9.14). These are the symptoms of mahātmās. So we have to make position that bhajana is so important. And Bhagavad-gītā is meant for all solution of material problems, but we are not accepting it. So why not try to follow the principles of Bhagavad-gītā. And the most easiest process, satataṁ kīrtayanto mām (BG 9.14), always chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra. "So you please come with us. We are foreigners, but we know Kṛṣṇa is not for this or that. Therefore we have taken seriously this, here. So why, Indians, you are lacking here? This is... You come forward. You are educated youths, gentlemen. You take your culture. We have taken our cul..., your culture. It is not 'your-our,' but you think that it is your culture. But Kṛṣṇa is neither for Indian or for you. He's for everyone. So therefore we have taken to Kṛṣṇa. So why not try this, that it is stated in the..., that kīrtanād eva kṛṣṇasya mukta-saṅgaḥ paraṁ vrajet (SB 12.3.51). Simply by kṛṣṇa-kīrtana, one becomes free from all contamination. So why not join with us? What is the wrong there? It is stated in your śāstra. And we have adopted it. And we are feeling actually better. So why you are so much callous, you educated youths, gentlemen?" This has to made propaganda. And let them come. At least, Sunday morning. And... It is roaming like this?
Prabhupāda: Hyderabad, I do not know.
Yaśomatīnandana: Hyderabad is easier because the people are very much in favor.
Prabhupāda: Yes. And Vṛndāvana they gave it very late. After one year. Vṛndāvana. Because the government doesn't want further development of Vṛndāvana. They are neglecting the city in such a way that no gentleman will go there. The old city... Formerly, it was planned that "So many pilgrims come here. It should be nicely developed." But now they have given up. They have purposefully kept so nasty. You have seen the city?
Yaśomatīnandana: Yes, yes.
Prabhupāda: So nasty that nobody will go there.
Guest: But should we now take the help from the political parties such as Shiv Sena?
Prabhupāda: That is very good.
Dr. Patel: Like... How shall I speak? Shall I beat your body?
Prabhupāda: No, no. (laughter) Don't speak.
Dr. Patel: Where is the right way?
Prabhupāda: No, no. Any gentleman says... It is right? If I ask a child, "What is this?" What he'll say? "It is hand." Will he say, "It is head"? Then? You are speaking like less than a child.
Dr. Patel: That is what I am.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Now, Mr. Sar!
Dr. Patel: No, he will not say anything because he's a baniya (?). He'll reserve his opinion.
Guest (4) (Indian man): To answer the scripture... (break)
Prabhupāda: No, no. Vedic system is...
Guest (3): You know, all these... (break)
Prabhupāda: ...Arjuna. In the beginning he was arguing, but when he saw it is useless, he said, śādhi māṁ prapannam. Śiṣyas te 'haṁ śādhi māṁ prapannam (BG 2.7). That is required.
Prabhupāda: Eh? No, the guru, I mean, the aspirant śiṣya will hear and study whether he's actually fit for becoming guru. Similarly, the guru will also study that whether he's actually fit for becoming a... Just like in our society. We don't accept immediately. We don't give initiation immediately. First of all lives for some time. Then when he becomes eager, we give the first initiation, chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra. Then after one year, when he's fit, he's doing everything well, then we initiate him. This is our process. (break) Yes.
Dr. Patel: So if you don't hear near me, so that is the misfortune of all...
Prabhupāda: No, no, no. You are a learned gentleman.
Dr. Patel: He's learning.
Prabhupāda: A learned gentleman, that is another thing, yes. And we are preaching. We must talk on the point of philosophy. That is another thing.
Dr. Patel: So we have made up now. Don't worry. (break)
Guest (3): You cannot argue what he says.
Dr. Patel: No... That is the way. You see, I am trying to... (break)
Prabhupāda: That is nice.
Dr. Patel: He's serving somebody or everybody. More or less it is...
Prabhupāda: No, no. No. Everybody or somebody. "Everyone's servant is nobody's servant." That is an English proverb. Anyway, this service is required. You cannot live without serving. That is not possible. Anyone of us, serving somebody. But the result is, this material service... I have given several times the example that Mahatma Gandhi, he gave so much service. But result was he was killed. He was killed. Nobody thought... That person did not think that, "Oh, this gentleman, old man, he has given so much service to us. Suppose I do not agree with him. Oh, how can I kill?" So people are so much ingrateful. You see? That whatever service you may render, they'll never be satisfied.
Prabhupāda: That we can do.
Dr. Patel: We can do it here. I know so many people who, who can... (break)
Prabhupāda: Just like we are printing these books. And as soon as we take the bunch of books to any gentleman, he pays immediately, "Eleven hundred. Take it." Better business. You see. First of all I began business of this, simply by giving the Kṛṣṇa Book.
Dr. Patel: How much money you collected? I am sorry to ask this particular question.
Prabhupāda: How many members we have now?
Bhava-bhūti: Bombay we have...
Prabhupāda: All over India.
Dr. Patel: All over India.
Bhava-bhūti: All over India? Well..., (break)
Prabhupāda: ...and people very gladly. "What is this? Bhāgavata? All right." "And we have got six copies." "All right, give me six copies." Like that. And they ask, they get down from their car. As soon as they see our saṅkīrtana party's going, "You have got Swami Bhaktivedanta's Bhagavad-gītā As It Is?" "Yes." "Give me." They ask like that. (break) ...injecting Kṛṣṇa consciousness.
Prabhupāda: That is the law of breaking temple. And when we want, that is the law, "No sanction." (Hindi) This is our position. If we go forward, then we are culprit. And if we remain backward, then we are culprit. Both ways. (Hindi)
Dr. Patel: Now, camp of the sin of these people is now filling up, and Kalki-avatāra must come out. (break)
Prabhupāda: ...gentlemen. Otherwise, how they could reign for eight hundred years? At that time Hindus were very strong. They were rigid. And there were many native princes. Still, they ruled over India for eight hundred years. As soon as the Aurangzeb showed his bigotry, it was failed. Muslim... As they're advertised, Muslims are not like that.
Prabhupāda: ...Kṛṣṇa. Definitely. (break) ...not independently. (break)
Guest (5): ...why the Jesus says you offer the other cheek? Which is better? Is the choice of us to be violent or nonviolent?
Prabhupāda: Yes. The persons to whom Jesus Christ taught, they were already fighting. Therefore his first injunction is "Thou shalt not kill." They were already killers. You see? And Arjuna is a gentleman. He was thinking before killing. Therefore he has to be induced, "You kill like this." But they were already killers. Otherwise why Jesus Christ said, "Thou shalt not kill"? That means that society was accustomed to kill. (break) Yes, that (indistinct) circumstance.
Indian (3): But even then they don't listen.
Prabhupāda: No. Even Gandhi refused. Gandhi was approached by the... "Mahātmāji, you can stop this cow-killing." He replied, "How can I stop? It is their religion." Just see. (break) ...kṛṣi go-rakṣya-vāṇijyaṁ vaiśya-karma svabhāva-jam (BG 18.44). This is the duty of the vaiśyas.
Indian (3): Killing of the cow, there is no...
Prabhupāda: Eh? (break) But who supplies the cow to us?
Indian (3): They are Hindus.
Prabhupāda: They are Hindus. (break) ...travelling with a Mohammedan. At that time there was no Second Class, Inter Class or Second Class I was. So that Mohammedan gentleman, when he called for that food supply, so he was asking very... "Is there any meat, cow's flesh?" "No, no, sir. No, sir." "That's all right." (end)
Prabhupāda: ...yamena damena. There are so many. Out of that, there is one, anasana, not eating. Yes. (break)
Girirāja: "...not very turbulent, he cannot become violent." (break)
Prabhupāda: ...yuktāhāra. Not to eat more, not to eat less. That is required. (break) ...when I was alone in Baroda, I was making my customers for Back to Godhead. So I entered one gentleman's house and from the porch he was, "Don't come! Don't come! Don't come!" (laughs) Immediately.
Dr. Patel: Baroda was a very small place then. (break)
Prabhupāda: ...if I go to place, jataji bhikṣā dijiye, so everyone will be compassionate. And it is our duty, at least in Vedic civilization, that when a sannyāsī comes he is received. Aiye, mahārāja, betiye. Still. Still in the villages they do that. Just like it is mentioned in the śāstra that brahmacārīs and sannyāsīs should be taken as the sons of the society.
Prabhupāda: Why king should be under any criticism? (breaks) There is a jalebi seller. He is the medium of bribing police. He has got ten lakhs of rupees, ordinary jalebi seller.
Girirāja: "Yet even in places where the police get good scores for solving crime and apprehending law-breakers, the crime rate remains high."
Prabhupāda: When we were children, there was a respectable gentleman, Mullick's family. He was agent of taking bribe on behalf of... (break) ...Los Angeles. The same thing I am talking.
Dr. Patel: So you will have them, all the photos from here also. (break)
Prabhupāda: Anardhena nyāya-rahitam: "If you have no money, then you'll never get justice." Dalmia, he was imprisoned for two years.
Dr. Patel: He was never in the jail. I know.
Prabhupāda: He was in the Delhi Hospital. (break) I am speaking so loudly real thing. Here you cannot. Immediately you'll be in the black book.
Prabhupāda: Others also, followers. These ordinary, so-called Gosvāmīs in Vṛndāvana, in the outwardly, in religious dress, and inwardly they are committing so many sinful activities, they will become the dogs and hogs and monkeys in Vṛndāvana. So one Gosvāmī, he has taken very much objection to this writing, and he is making propaganda against me like anything. There was arrangement of reception. He stopped it. (break) That I have also written, that now, after finishing the sinful reaction, these monkeys and dogs will be liberated. That I have also written. (break) ...one has passed stool, during daytime, due to the sunshine, the upper side is dry. So if somebody says, "This side is better than the other side. The moist side is not so good. The dry side is good." (break) ...nation, you'll find (indistinct) gentlemen, but they do not know that these things are criminals. They think it is ordinary thing, illicit sex, meat-eating, intoxication.
Pañcadraviḍa: When the soul is entering, they are all complete?
Prabhupāda: No, no, no. If you keep... A man is dead, and keep his body. So it will decompose, but the life will come. So many worms will come. So these are... If you say that chemicals, these material, then the chemicals are there, and life is coming. Now you take this chemical and prepare. You cannot say, "Although these chemicals are there, there is some deficiency. Therefore the life is not coming." No, why do you say like that? Life is coming. That man is not coming, but the life is coming. So these are ingredients for life. You prepare. You bring that man. Still, the rascal will say that life is made from matter. Not even gentlemen, what to speak of becoming scientist? You prepare. "No, in future we shall see." And he is getting Nobel Prize. Just see how the human society has become full of rascals, go-kharaḥ. They cannot prove; still they will insist, "Yes." And so far God is concerned, we learn from śāstra that God's two energies are working like heat and light. So energies are working, we can see. How these mangoes have come unless there is some energy? So therefore the energy is working. Therefore God is there.
Prabhupāda: You said that one gentleman, his name is Adhyātma?
Indian man (1): He was blaspheming our society. It was a (indistinct)
Prabhupāda: I can understand that he is not very favorable. But still, you said that we hate Hindi. You have said like that. Don't say like that because there may be one... Because preaching means we have to preach amongst the rascals but you do not become rascal. He may be... (break) "...Who will read Hindi? You do not... Who will read Hindi? You can read Hindi, that's all. But who will read outside Hindi? Therefore, Guru Mahārāja..." This should have been the reply. "If there is good customers for Hindi reading, then we can write Hindi books. But nobody will read Hindi." That should have been the reply. Therefore we write in English. "Why Jawaharlal Nehru read his books in English? Why Dr. Radhakrishnan writes his books in English? He has not written a single book in Hindi. Why? Why he was president? Why he was prime minister? Why did you not criticize him?" That should have been replied, that "As soon as a book is written in English, it is for world reading. And if it is written in Hindi, who is going to read except a few people like you? Why still Indians, they are sending their children for education through English?" You know that? There are so many English medium school. Is it not? Yes. Why? Why they are anxious? So much agitation was made for studying Hindi, but then why India still, even in families they are talking in English? In Bombay they talk in English amongst family members. And any gentleman meets another gentleman—he talks in English. Why it has not been stopped? So actually Hindi has no effect and if we take international rule, what is the use of Hindi? Nobody will like to... And even here, even here in India, who is reading Hindi? Nobody is reading Hindi. It is compulsory in every province, Hindi? Not compulsory.
Indian man (1): Suppose if we learn English, then we can preach in our local language.
Prabhupāda: Yes, local language is required. No, Hindi also, you should learn, but... We can have publication in Hindi also. But when we speak of international organization, English must be there.
Pañcadraviḍa: (break) ...them into all the schools.
Prabhupāda: Yes. School, college, library, enlightened gentlemen, businessmen, they have all accepted.
Pañcadraviḍa: This is how it would work. This is Akṣayānanda's work. He has been doing this for some months here now. He goes every day to all the different colleges and schools, and he speaks, and he shows them your books for their college libraries. He's been having a lot of programs like this. They always take the Bhagavad-gītā and Kṛṣṇa Books and Nectar of Devotion, like this.
Prabhupāda: Best thing is that "Why your president, he did not write a single Hindi book? He has got so many. He is a famous philosopher. Indian religion, Indian philosophy, and Bhagavad-gītā. Then... He has written so many books but not a single in Hindi."
Pradyumna: I asked (indistinct)
Prabhupāda: Yes. If you rise early and take a walk, all your ailments will be cured. (break) If a gentleman wants to walk early in the morning, he must have his dog friend.
Mahāṁsa: They have a saying that dog is man's best friend now. Instead of God being man's best friend, they have made it dog is man's best friend.
Prabhupāda: Just like he is a dog. (break) ...strike. Simply strike, protest. Where is happiness? (break) ...unnecessary spending. Unnecessary spending, then why you have allowed opening cinema? One side advertisement, "Unnecessary spending," and the other side so many rascal things, so people will spend for that.
Akṣayānanda: But they will say, "You must have some time to relax."
Prabhupāda: That is unnecessary. Everyone will say, "What I am spending unnecessarily that is my relax." (break) ...government officer will have a big bungalow and now there is act that "Others, if he has got a big bungalow like this bungalow, this is unnecessary." Now it is prepared to act(?). And for minister, it is relax, and for common man it is unnecessary. This is then... "Smoking for me, it is relax, and for you it is unnecessary." These rascals are preaching like that. If smoking is unnecessary, it is unnecessary for me and for you also. "No. For me it is relax." (break) Is that their advertisement? Save money?
Prabhupāda: Ah? No, no, is Gujarat, here.
Devotee: Gujarat.
Prabhupāda: The next province. Hare Kṛṣṇa. (break) ...speaking all the words that he has learned from him. Very good. Very nicely he's presenting.
Mahāṁśa: He's an elderly gentleman?
Prabhupāda: No, no, only twenty-five. (break) ...all these culprits, the burglars, the thieves, they should be punished exemplary. (chuckles) Yes, that should be done. (break) One telegram: "Come immediately Bombay. Everything is all right, Kṛṣṇa has blessed you." (break) I mean to say intelligent in their part, they'll at least give a chance to him. Yes. (break) ...doing all right.
Satsvarūpa: He said he didn't feel well, he was not going to take a walk.
Prabhupāda: Hm?
Satsvarūpa: He said he felt too...
Prabhupāda: He has come.
Prabhupāda: Quality is better, but it will be cheaper. It doesn't matter. But to get books there, it takes so much time and the book department is not being managed nicely. But if we print here, the all problems will be solved. Here that gentleman, he has got press. Why not let him print? Yes. Why don't you call him immediately? If he can print. We can reprint all the books here.
Mahāṁsa: But the quality will not be half as good.
Gargamuni: There is now a paper shortage in India, very acute.
Prabhupāda: Well, we can get paper from foreign countries. That will be not difficult.
Mahāṁsa: Oh. If we can get paper from foreign countries, then the printing results can be very good, because the printing is not bad. It's the paper which is very bad.
Tejiyas: Still, at the same, time everybody buys Gita Press books, even though the quality is bad.
Prabhupāda: The quality is third-class.
Prabhupāda: The idea is purify the senses.
Guest: And meditation, meditation. Being devoted, your life will be changed. The master teaches these things, purification. He has written also some books. When he came to America in 1967, I met him personally. And he initiated a group of people. And I was also aiming at that, being a vegetarian a few years prior to that. He accepted me and gave me initiation with the group. And, of course, he went back in about... He stayed in the States about twelve days then he came in Europe. Then he went back. I haven't seen him ever since. I have a picture of him. I carry a picture of him, the leader of, in our movement. (indistinct) meditating on the master. And I try to live up to it, to the teachings. Would you like to see that picture?
Prabhupāda: Yes. Yes, I have seen this gentleman. In Delhi I have seen him.
Guest: In New Delhi. And there are the five names of meditation on the back.
Prabhupāda: What is that?
Yogeśvara: I can't read it.
Prabhupāda: At the present moment there is all over the world... We are touring all over the world. It is very hard to find out ideal class of men. That is the defect. In the Vedic culture the ideal class of men were the brāhmaṇas. Their qualification was: truthful, self-controlled, mind and the senses, and then tolerant, very simple life, full of knowledge, practical application of knowledge in life and full faith in God. These are ideal character. But such men are not available at the present moment. So therefore the social idealism is defective. Just like in your body, there are four divisions. The head, the arm, the belly and the leg. If the head is spoiled then you are a madman. In spite of possessing hands and bellies and legs, you cannot work properly. So at the present moment the heads are spoiled. Therefore the whole world is in chaotic condition. People, advanced in education, still they are inimical, one man to another. If you are passing on in the street, the gentleman's house there is a signboard, "Beware of the dogs. Don't come in," because he cannot believe anyone. You go to the airport, any high-class standard man. They search out the pocket. So nobody is believable. So this is the result of modern education. You cannot find out an ideal character man.
Prabhupāda: Hare Kṛṣṇa.
Richard Webster: Hare Kṛṣṇa. I'll see you tomorrow.
Yogeśvara: During your conversation with this gentleman, you mentioned that there was nowhere any sanction by God for industry or business. So does that mean that these workers in factories and industries, to take to Kṛṣṇa consciousness they could not go on with their work?
Prabhupāda: No. Our recommendation is that whatever position you are, you can chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. So even the workers in the factory, they can chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. What is the difficulty? Even in factory, they take some leisure hours. So why not sit down for five minutes, ten minutes, and chant Hare Kṛṣṇa? Where is the difficulty? Apart from the work they are doing, we are recommending, "Whatever is done is done. You chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. Then everything will be all right." Where is the wrong?
Yogeśvara: But eventually it's understood they must stop their industry.
Prabhupāda: There is no question of stopping. If that is their livelihood, how they can stop it? That is not possible. But they can add this Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra chanting. Then things will be adjusted. It is not possible to stop different methods of livelihood. That is not possible. If one can stop, it is well and good, but even he does not stop, he can chant Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra.
Bhagavān: Actually, they like to work hard.
Prabhupāda: Yes, they like to work hard and they want good protection. That is their happiness. Even still in Africa, the servants, domestic servants, Africans, I have seen in Indian family, they are very happy. They are very happy, and the master also takes care of them. They want to eat sumptuously, and that's all. They have no other ambition. They don't want any motorcar or like this, no. And they work very nicely, domestic work, very clean. But sometimes they steal. That is their habit. My father used to say, "If you do not allow the servants to steal, so don't keep." Don't keep servants. "A servant who does not steal, he is not a gentleman. He must steal."
Dhanañjaya: Just like in the forest. The animals, they select the lion to be the king.
Prabhupāda: Yes. So this is going on. That is condemned. One who is not God-conscious, one who does not know that he is not body, he is animal. That's all. Maybe in different dress, in different... So you have to set up real human society in a small scale so people will see, "Yes." Because man has got intelligence. Just like, although I am condemning the western mode of life, still, so many western young boys, they have come. I never came to speak to flatter you, that "Your western civilization is very nice." I never said that. Why you are coming? I never came to flatter you, neither I never came to say, "Yes, there is no God." I am speaking just opposite, everything opposite. "You are drunkard; no drink. You are illicit sex hunters; no illicit sex." So I am just speaking opposite, from the beginning of my preaching. So why you are coming? So if you stick to your position, real human civilization, people will come, gradually. Because they have got the sense. When we say others are animals, demons, we don't say whimsically, capriciously, no. On the basis of sound knowledge. Therefore our declaration is completely right. We are not mental speculators, that I say some gentleman, "You are animal." No. I see, I know, that he is animal. Therefore I say. A man is running his motorcar, (makes sound) rarararara, and a dog is running. We don't see any difference, although he is on the motorcar. We don't find any difference. He is as good as the dog. Unnecessarily he is running. What is the meaning of running of the dog?
Prabhupāda: And... Why Calcutta? You go to the airport. You will find so nice gardens, still existing. Now it is spoiled also. Because people have changed locally to the city. Nobody has to take care now. Otherwise, in Bengal especially, throughout the whole India, Bengal was so beautiful. The Europeans became attracted by the beauty of Bengal. Therefore they made Calcutta their capital, the Britishers. Yes. Every European liked Bengal. Every European. I met one European German gentleman in Bombay. He was in Calcutta. When I was in Bimha (?). So I asked, "Why you left Calcutta?" "Oh, I am very sorry. Calcutta was so nice." And actually. Where we have got our temple, these quarters were known as "Sahib" quarter. Just like our temple is "Sahib" temple. So these Chowringee and Camac Street, Park, these were all European. They liked very much to live in Bengal. And there is another story. One English officer he became attracted by the beauty of a Bengali woman. There is story by Bankima Candra. Candrashekhara. The man was after that woman, how to get it. That is the subject matter of story. He was attracted by the black eyes and black hair. Bengali beauty.
Yogeśvara: So he would ask, "Do I have to close my factory?"
Prabhupāda: No, we shall run on the factory. You give us in charge. We don't want anything from you. Let us manage. I can manage. Just organize saṅkīrtana. It will be solved. Now, these factory men works and goes home. So if you say that "You come early in the morning and you take prasādam here and chant Hare Kṛṣṇa half an hour," they will immediately agree. Immediately agree. And give them good prasādam and have chanting for one hour. They will be all submissive. Is it not? Will they not agree? At least, they will see that "We haven't got to spend money for our food at home. We shall get nice food here. Let us chant. What is the harm?" And as soon as he chants, he becomes a gentleman. That's all.
Satsvarūpa: We have to try to teach everyone.
Prabhupāda: Yes, that is our duty because everyone is rascal. So we have to give them knowledge. The first basic principle, knowledge, that "You are not this body." And they will never agree. They will not take this knowledge. They will stick to this principle, "No, I am this body, I am American," I am Indian, I am brāhmaṇa, I am kṣatriya, I am this, I am that." They will stick to that. So as soon as they stick to this principle, they are animals. The dog is also thinking like that. If I say to a dog, "Mr. dog, you are not this body; you are soul," what he will understand? The same position of the so-called human society. If I say that "You are not American; you are not Roman; you are spirit soul," he will not agree. So what is the difference between dog and him? Is there any difference? The dog cannot understand. If I say, "My dear dog, you are not this body; you are spirit soul," he will not be able to understand. And if I say a gentleman, American or Indian or Roman, that "You are not this body," if he cannot understand, then where is the difference between the dog and the man?
Dhanañjaya: No difference.
Prabhupāda: Rascal, what you have done? You are simply talking. What you have done? There are so many starving people all over the world. What you have done? "Starving people." I have seen. They cannot give starving people. Just like we went to Russia. So we wanted rice. There is no rice. There was no good rice. We wanted fruit. There was no fruit. So what you have done? I am starving for fruit and rice. You cannot supply me. That is practical. I have seen it. They will offer, "Take this beef instead of fruit." Then I will starve. So what he has done for me? I am starving. I cannot take beef. I want rice, but you cannot supply me. That I have seen. One Madrasi gentleman was bringing rice for me. It could not be purchased in the market. There is no fruit. So if I want fruit and rice and if you give me beef, it is as good as if I want bread, if you give me stone. So where is the capacity to satisfy the starving? I am starving for rice. You cannot give me. Why do you propose like that, that you can satisfy the starving man. You cannot do that. You are talking nonsense. Can you satisfy everyone? Somebody is starving for knowledge. So how you can... This bluff will not satisfy him. So where is the question of starving, satisfying the starving? It is not possible.
Prabhupāda: It is my practical experience. Śyāmasundara had to waste at least two to three hours to secure rice, fruits. Only milk and butter could we get. And then we had to wait in the... They would not allow us to cook unless they had finished. This was the difficulty. Practically I have suffered. All their claims are bogus. The people are not happy there. The young men are not allowed to go outside the country. Just see. All freedom lost. All freedom lost. It is a government of terrorism, that's all. And whatever the Communists do, simply by terrorizing that's all. They have no gentleman's method. Terrorizing. (break) ...misleading other rascals that "You come this way; you will be happy." And the rascals are being misled. They are accepting. This is going on. Andhā yathāndhair upanīyamānāḥ (SB 7.5.31). The blind man is asking other blind men, "Come on, I shall cross you the street." But because he is rascal, he does not ask, "Sir, you are also blind. how will you lead us?" They cannot inquire. Or he does not know that "This man is asking me, who is willing to take the leadership, he is also blind." This blind man does not know, do not know. They do not know. This is going on.
C. Hennis: So it's the whole bovine race that's protected, and not just the cows themselves, not just the female cows?
Prabhupāda: No, both the male and female. The bullocks are used for so many other purposes. They can till the field. They can be used for transportation, so many other purposes. Or even we are spreading Kṛṣṇa consciousness. During Kṛṣṇa's time... Kṛṣṇa was born of a very well-to-do father, but at that time the bullocks were engaged for transportation from one village to another, one village to another. Or for carrying goods. Actually the United Nations should now think how the whole human society can live peacefully for a purpose of life, not whimsically, without any purpose of life. Now, anywhere... We are preaching. We are going everywhere. If I ask any gentleman, any philosopher, any scientist , if I ask him that "What is the purpose of life?" he cannot explain. That means there is lack of intelligent class of men. Nobody knows what is the purpose of life.
Prabhupāda: Now the so-called, the priestly society, priestly society, they are amending the Biblical injunction according to their whims. Just like in the Bible, the injunction is, "Thou shalt not kill." But the priestly class and all classes, they are simply killing. So how they can guide? They are keeping regular slaughterhouse for killing. So how they can guide? I have asked so many Christian gentlemen, including priests that "Your injunction is that 'Thou shalt not kill.' That is Lord Jesus Christ's order. Why you are violating this?" They give me vague answers. Directly it is said, "Thou shalt not kill." And the whole world is simply killing poor animals, and keeping up-to-date slaughterhouse.
Prabhupāda: Everyone is concocting some ideas, and they are going on as different organization. That's all. No standard idea. The standard idea is there in the Bhagavad-gītā, that cows should be given protection, go-rakṣya. Who is following this? Everyone is making plan how to kill cows in a more scientific way. This is going on. Who is taking the instruction of Bhagavad-gītā? Nobody is taking. Even in India where Bhagavad-gītā is originally, these rascals also not taking. And they have become so brainless. Therefore the whole human society is a dead society. And the dead society's dressing, decorating, is useless waste of time. That's all. Their education, their advancement... He has no brain. What is the use of education? That is said by Cāṇakya Paṇḍita, that snake is a snake. Do you think a snake decorated with a jewel on the hood is gentleman? Similarly, a man without brain, so-called education, is just like a jewel on the head of a serpent. Kim asau na bhayaṅkara. Cāṇakya Paṇḍita asks "Whether a snake with jewel on the head is not fearful? He is as much fearful as the other snake without the jewel." Similarly, if a human being has no brain, with his so-called education or no education, it is as good. The education has no value. He does not know what is good work, what is bad work, what is my aim of life, what is this body, what is the soul? If these things he does not know, then what is the value of his education? So the man is not satisfied?
Guru-gaurāṅga: He was in a hurry to get out.
Prabhupāda: Piling of bricks and stones? Heaps of stones and bricks? That is emblem of civilization? They have seen. In Rome they have seen. They also piled like that. Now they have gone. Where they have gone? Why they left? Why they were obliged to leave? That nobody is questioning. And if he has got a different body, if he is living in that house as cats and dogs and rats and ants, then what benefit he has derived? There is possibility. If you have got an attraction for the body, for your house, but you are not going to get a human body, then you'll have to take your birth in that place, as tree, as plant, as live as rat or cat or ant. You have to live. Nature will give you advantage. But you must get the body according to your karma. That you cannot violate. Where is this science discussed? As soon as we shall speak gentleman like them, they will say, "I have got meeting."
Yogeśvara: Yes, "I must leave."
Prabhupāda: Ah, "I must leave." When we come to real proposition, immediately they want to leave. This is their brain.
Yogeśvara: Every time a gentleman like that comes or a man like that comes and we get too close to the point about Kṛṣṇa consciousness, they seem to become afraid.
Bhagavān: (about passerby) He's got one arm, and he's running to keep healthy.
Prabhupāda: Yes. (laughs) In the morning they begin fishing, this walking, and golfing, no engagement. These poor fellows, they have been not informed that there is better engagement. They do not know. This is their civilization. And here, Kṛṣṇa conscious young men, they are chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa. That is the difference. They appreciate the Kṛṣṇa conscious boys. "Bright faces," they say. The priests and the common gentlemen, they say, and they inquire, "Are you American?" They see it. Come and see in our Los Angeles temple, in every temple, how these younger boys and girls are sitting so peacefully, look so nice. Is it not? A year ago, all hellish. Hellish. The same boys, the same girls. That's a fact. Just the counterpart of our society is the hippies-frustrated, all disappointed, mad. They should come forward now to cooperate with this movement. The other day one somebody came to solve the problems of the hippies.
Prabhupāda: The fascist and the non-fascist and this and everyone... And that is being prepared, the atomic bomb. You see? They will be all killed, nature's way. You see? They have become so sinful. I am speaking this freely because you are a gentleman, but the civilization, modern civilization, everyone is addicted to intoxication, everyone is flesh-eating, everyone is illicit sex, everyone is addicted to gambling. So where is pure person? They require all to be killed, fascist and non-fascist. Because according to Bhagavad..., paritrāṇāya sādhūnāṁ vināśāya ca duṣkṛtām (BG 4.8). All these people, under different names.
Prof. Regamay: Yes, it's violence for the violence's sake practically.
Prabhupāda: So people are so degraded, and there is no education, and there are so-called leaders. They are themselves degraded, they are themselves blind. So what is the position of the present society? It is very precarious condition. Therefore, at the end of Kali-yuga, people will be more and more, more and more degraded. There will be no more preaching. Kṛṣṇa will come as Kalki avatāra, simply killing, simply killing. That's all, finished.
Prabhupāda: Because the man who is awarding him Nobel Prize, he is also a rascal, (laughs) and he is also rascal. The society of rascals, that's all. My Guru Mahārāja used to say, therefore, "This is a society of cheaters and cheated." That's all. Somebody is cheater, and somebody is cheated. And they have made a civilization of cheaters and cheated. That's all. They have got good sense. They have... Just try to utilize it. Just like last night that gentleman, "In my opinion..." He never thinks that what he is, what is the value of his opinion. But he thinks, "In my opinion..." And what is this nonsense? What is your opinion? Then he admits "No, no, I have no objection." That is progress, that he admitted his fault. What is the value of your opinion? I said, "We have no opinion. We take the opinion of Kṛṣṇa, that's all." We have no opinion.
Prabhupāda: One gentleman came the other day, Protestant Center?
Yogeśvara: Yes. Pastor Babel. Yes. They are familiar with him. Monsieur Douant.
Swiss Man (1): The President.
Prabhupāda: Why don't you give him a chair.
Swiss Man (1): (French)
Yogeśvara: Little rheumatism.
Prabhupāda: Give him chair.
Prabhupāda: Naturally it follows, but if somebody wants to cheat, that is another thing. Naturally it follows.
Yogeśvara: (translates)
Swiss Man (1): (French)
Yogeśvara: This gentleman suggests that he prefers someone who may be committing all four of these sinful activities but who helps his fellow man.
Prabhupāda: The fellow man helping, what does he gain?
Yogeśvara: (translates) He says, "Even if someone is committing all kinds of sinful activities..."
Prabhupāda: No, no. What you gain by helping your fellow man? First of all that is the question.
Yogeśvara: He says, "The purpose of helping other people is not to gain something for yourself."
Prabhupāda: But I say that you help your fellow man. So do you know how to help him?
Swiss Man (1): Certain circumstances.
Yogeśvara: He says, "In certain circumstances."
Prabhupāda: In certain circumstances, but if you do not know how to... Suppose a man is diseased and you think... The doctor says that he should not eat anything. But if you think that "Let me give some food. The doctor is very cruel. He is not giving food," is it, that, helping or fully pushing him towards death? First of all you must know how to help. If I do not know—I help in the opposite way—that is not helping. That is degrading. These are all manufactured things. They are not... Helping means, real helping is, that a man or anyone... Everyone is suffering for want of knowledge. So if you can give knowledge, that is real help.
Yogeśvara: The first thing is that this gentleman doesn't agree. He doesn't think that the major problem is ignorance. But this gentleman suggests that there is a danger, there's a danger in what he calls "spiritual pride," "spiritual egoism," that is to say, thinking that we have helped someone and actually...
Prabhupāda: But that pride is there. That gentleman is proud that he's helping someone. That prideness is there. But out of these two kinds of prideness, one prideness which is real, that is welcome. If one is falsely proud, that is useless. But if one is actually proud of doing something, then he... That is good. Just like in the Vedic literature it is recommended that you should feel ahaṁ brahmāsmi: "I am Brahman." This is also ego. This is real ego, that "I am spirit soul." This is not bad. But when one thinks, "I am this body," he's a rascal. If one thinks that "I am servant of God," that is real ego. And if one thinks, "I am servant of Satan," that is not very good.
Yogeśvara: I think this gentleman still isn't feeling satisfied about his question.
Prabhupāda: What is that?
Swiss Man (1): (French) Guru-gaurāṅga: (French) This gentleman says we had difficulties with the police in the beginning. And I said, "Yes, but then I went, and I gave him all your books, and he read them, and then there were no more difficulties." Prabhupāda: Yes, on account of our books we are being appreciated everywhere. In the beginning they might have thought that "Some of the hippies," like that. Swiss Man (1): Have you been in connection with Aurobindo? Yogeśvara: Have we been in contact with Aurobindo, Śrī Aurobindo? Prabhupāda: Why? Why I shall be in contact, Aurobindo? Swiss Man (1): Because he's... We know in (indistinct). Prabhupāda: He does not know better than Kṛṣṇa. So one association is sufficient. There is no need of going this Aurobindo, Saurobindo. We never... Why should we waste our time? We have got sufficient education in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. First of all let us finish these hundred books of four hundred pages.
Prabhupāda: You cannot do anything. But they show. They make a collection, that "We are doing such nice work." The Vivekananda also imitated like that and could not do anything. It is not possible. Swami Nikhilananda said... He belongs to the Vivekananda group. Because they raise funds from America, huge funds, that "We shall feeding the poor in India." And they eat meat and big, big become fat, these rascals. So the Americans asked them that "You are taking away our money somewhere to feed the poor. But when we go to India, two sides we see all poor men are lying on the street. What you have done?" So this is a slogan. They cannot do anything. Thinking of poor... Now, those who have accepted voluntarily povertyism, the hippies, what you are doing for them? Why don't you make arrangement for their gentlemanly living? They are not poverty-stricken. Why they are living like wretches, lying on the street, no program for eating, no for sleeping, no for bodily comfort, just like animals? What you have done for them?
Yogeśvara: Because the real problem is not poverty. That they haven't understood.
Prabhupāda: This is karma. If you have bad karma, then you must suffer by the laws of nature. You may be a rich man's son or king's son.
Bhagavān: (break) ... complicated solution to the problem.
Prabhupāda: Yes. No. These rascals, they do not know that our process is most difficult. Because as soon as ask them that "Give up meat-eating," it is very difficult task for them. And actually, it is very difficult for them. You see? That gentleman in Geneva, as long as I was talking about meat-eating, he became little disgusted.
Satsvarūpa: He said, "Why don't we speak of higher principles?"
Prabhupāda: Yeah. Because this is the beginning of higher principles. "No, no, this may let... Let it remain. Let us go to the higher principles." The rascal does not know that you cannot go without learning A,B,C,D, how you can ask for passing M.A. examination? But "No, I do not know A,B,C,D, but let me go for passing M.A. examination." You see. This is A,B,C,D, that yeṣām anta gatam... Any sinful man, he cannot understand about God. It is not possible. Paraṁ dhāma pavitraṁ paramaṁ bhavān. But without being pavitra, they want to go to the platform of understanding God.
Bhagavān: Do you remember this gentleman?
Prabhupāda: Hm?
Bhagavān: He was the one who wrote that book.
Prabhupāda: Herbert?
Bhagavān: Yes, that's right.
Prabhupāda: Mr. Herbert?
Bhagavān: Yes. He's asking your opinion of him.
Prabhupāda: Yes, he is a scholar, but he is impersonalist.
Jyotirmayī: (French)
Prabhupāda: So I met him. He is a good gentleman, scholar, but he is a Māyāvādī, he is impersonalist.
Jyotirmayī: (French)
Prabhupāda: But if he... He has already written one book. He has presented me, that Kṛṣṇa...
Devotee: The Yoga of Love.
Prabhupāda: The Yoga of Love. So he has many times repeated the word "Kṛṣṇa." That will benefit him.
Prabhupāda: So we have to abide by their sentiment? Because they are rascals, we have to become rascal? Even if you take so-called responsibility, you will not be allowed to carry it out. The example I was giving., Napoleon, Hitler, and Gandhi, they took responsibility but they were driven away. What can you do? So what is the meaning of your responsibility? You will not be allowed to execute your responsibility. What remedy you have done that you will not be allowed, kicked out? Then what is your responsibility? Even if you are very nice gentleman, you have taken responsibility, but nature will not allow you to execute the responsibility. What is your answer to that? Big, big Napoleon, big, big Hitler, big, big Gandhi came and gone. Where is the responsibility executor? The Napoleon was given horse urine, you know, by the Britishers.
Bhagavān: At that point, he stopped arguing.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Yes. And mother is the only evidence. That's all. Similarly, acintyaḥ khalu ye bhava na tas tarkeṇa yojayet (?). Śāstra says that "What is beyond your experience, you don't argue on that point." You go to the authority and take it. Why you should you argue? It is beyond your experience. Therefore you must find out who can give you the experience. Tad vijñānārthaṁ sa gurum eva abhigacchet (MU 1.2.12). But don't stop there, that "It is beyond my experience; therefore I should not have experience." This is foolishness. If it is beyond your experience, then go to a person who has got experience and take from him. Suppose if I am in this park. I do not know which way to go. It is beyond my experience. Then I ask one gentleman, "Where shall I go?" He'll say, "Please go this way." This is the way. Why should you stop and think others also, that God is beyond his experience also? Why? It may be beyond your experience, but unless you go to a person who has got actually experience, how can you get the experience? (pause)
Bhagavān: He seemed frustrated that he says he's tried, but he hasn't found. He was in India for twenty-five years.
Prabhupāda: Then why shall we make compromise? That gentleman, Mr. Herbert, Gene Herbert, he said that "It has taken eighteen years to write these books." I said, "Still, there are so many mistakes." Immediately I said. And he could not say anything. Do you remember that?
Devotees: Yes.
Prabhupāda: Immediately I said, "Yes, you have labored eighteen years. Still, there are so many mistakes."
Nitāi: Anyone else would have said, "Oh! Very nice."
Prabhupāda: (laughs) Eh? I did not say.
Puṣṭa-kṛṣṇa: He said that morning "What can we do, Prabhupāda?" He said, "What can we do? If we do not compromise, we will make enemies."
Prabhupāda: No, you'll not compromise; at the same time, you'll not make enemies. That is tactics. If you make enemies, then what is your tactics? You must speak the truth; at the same time he'll not be displeased. That is tactics. If you can defeat him by your argument, then he'll not be displeased. After all, everyone is human being. If you can find out his defect, why he shall be enemy? Therefore, it is said, "You better make a reasonable man an enemy, but don't make a friend fool." You don't make friendship with a fool, but if a man is intelligent, better make him an enemy. Because, because he's intelligent, although he's an enemy, he'll not do any harm. Because intelligent. But a fool, he may pose himself as friend, and he can do anything which is very harmful.
Prabhupāda: How they'll understand, all dull-headed fools, rascals? Dressed like gentlemen, that's all. Tāvat ca śobhate mūrkho yāvat kiñcin na bhāṣate. A rascal fool is decorated so long, as long he does not speak. As long he'll speak, his nature will be revealed, what is he. This gentleman therefore did not stay long to expose himself. (laughter)
Bhagavān: That's intelligent.
Jyotirmayī: When this man left, he told me that there is a very, very, big actress. She's known all over the world. She's called Brigitte Bardot. And she's making propaganda now everywhere against slaughterhouses. So he said she's living around here, and we should meet her, and ask her to come and see you. So if she's here, we can try.
Prabhupāda: This mayor, mayor...? This mayor?
Yogeśvara: This man was explaining there's a very famous, beautiful actress. Her name is Brigitte Bardot, and she has become very popular now because she is trying to protect the animals. So she lives around here somewhere. He suggested that we contact her.
Bhagavān: What about him?
Yogeśvara: He just wants to...
Prabhupāda: What did he say about himself?
Prabhupāda: This, we are chanting the holy name of Lord so that people may hear and their hearts be cleansed to understand what is God. (French)
Pṛthu-putra: This gentleman asks if the disciples have to give up their religion, if, for example, they are Christian, they have to give up Christianity to be devotee.
Prabhupāda: Well, Christianity also, they are trying to understand God, and we are also trying to understand, not only understand, but we, we are trying others to understand what is God. (French)
Pṛthu-putra: He asks if we have temple in France or if we do in apartment or if we do in conference, private conferences. How we are doing it?
Prabhupāda: Anyway. We welcome all, all learned men, or leading men, to understand this philosophy. And the book is... You show Bhagavad-gītā. And all other books also show him. (French)
Yogeśvara: He says, unfortunately, he doesn't read English.
Prabhupāda: Here is French. French language.
Prabhupāda: Rogues. Rogues. After education, they are rogues only (pause) (break)
Bhagavān: ...take breakfast a little earlier. Is that O.K? And then this other gentleman can come with us and we can go faster that way. Because their truck is slow. (break) ...human being, those who have system of religion? Is that what makes them civilized? So the society today, even though it seems to be technologically advanced, can that society be called civilized? No.
Prabhupāda: So long technological advancement is meant for bodily comforts, so, so long one remains in the bodily concept of life, he's animal. (pause) (end)
Prabhupāda: So what is that one? (French)
Yogeśvara: So what I think this gentleman is explaining is that he finds the idea of non-dualism very attractive because he says that if a real religion is to fulfill it's responsibilities, then it will not try to teach its followers that there are two separate things, there is the creation, and there is you, the creator, that there is you.
Jyotirmayī: Creator.
Yogeśvara: That there is a creator and then you, but rather, that there is a harmony with the individual being and the totality of existence, not just on an individual religious level, but also socially. So in other words, he's seeing that this advaita philosophy, this non-dual philosophy is very nice on the political or social level as well since it teaches a kind of unity of the individual with everything.
Prabhupāda: This is not very clear. (laughs) Now, dualism means two, and monism is one. So he says monism, advaita. So monism, what is the center of monism? (French)
Yogeśvara: So he says that to discuss what is that center of monism is not as important as it is living the...
Prabhupāda: But you cannot... If you have no objective, then you cannot live in one way.
Prabhupāda: That's all right. How you will do secretary work if you do not hear? These are the important philosophy is going on. Where is the other man Bhagavān dāsa? These important talks going on and you do not..., you think that you have learned everything. What is this?
Yogeśvara: This young gentleman's question is: if you are pierced with an arrow, it's not so much important to discuss how the arrow has got there. Just like you suggest we define the disease before we try to cure it.
Prabhupāda: No, we are not caring how the arrows, but you have got the arrows, you must take out the arrows.
Yogeśvara: That is his point also.
Prabhupāda: Yes. So the disease is because he has forgotten his own self, therefore he is suffering. (French)
Yogeśvara: He says that actually that is the actual problem, to find out our real self.
Prabhupāda: Suppose a man, a sane man, has become insane. That insanity should be cured. Then he becomes a sane man.
Prabhupāda: They have been cheated by some cheaters that this practice, gymnastic practice, is yoga. That's all. They do not know what is yoga. Yoga-indriya-saṁyama. Even... All yoga systems, Patañjali's system. So indriya... Where is indriya-saṁyama? They are gratifying their senses to the fullest extent. And what is their yoga? That is described... You do not read the Sixth Chapter of Bhagavad-gītā. Why don't you explain them that, that "You are yogi... You not yogi. You only making some farce. Where is your yogi? Are you going to a solitary place? Are you practicing alone, sitting on your seat like as they are described, and looking on the point of the nose? Are you doing that? You are not yogi. You are simply a caricature. You are not yogi." Don't accept them as yogis. If one is yogi... That, that, that gentleman, that yogi came there. He appreciated very much.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Professor La Combe: The Vice Chancellor of Jadavpur University was killed the day before I arrived in Calcutta.
Prabhupāda: Old gentleman?
Professor La Combe: Yes. And he was retiring. He was still in activity, but he was soon retiring, and he was walking from the University campus to his home, not far, a short walk. And he was killed by one of these...
Prabhupāda: Naxalites.
Professor La Combe: Naxalites or somebody of the same kind. I don't know exactly. And he was not a politician at all. He had no political activities.
Devotee: Still, nowadays, they are having strikes every day, big marches, processions.
Professor La Combe: Oh, strikes, perhaps, yes, but no killings.
Devotee: And just before I left there they had a big strike where some of the younger communist kids, they got out in the street and they stopped all the buses, traffic and told the drivers to leave their cars. They burned a couple of cars and buses. But it is not as bad as it used to be.
Professor La Combe: Now it is better.
Prabhupāda: Actually, there was no government.
Prabhupāda: He did not raise any question. And he is simply translator. He has no philosophy. I asked him "Which philosophy you are...?" "So I make comparative study." I think he did not like to enter into philosophical... Is it not?
Devotee: Most of these gentlemen who come here, when they see you and begin talking with you, like you said, they show their ignorance when they begin to speak. So they prefer not to speak. They always make some excuse that they have an appointment because they know that if they speak, they will be in real trouble.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Tāvac ca śobhate mūrkhaḥ yāvat kiñcin na bhāṣate (?): "A foolish man is very nice as long as he does not speak. As soon as he will speak, his foolishness will be captured." So therefore, sometimes they do not like to talk. Remain as a nice man, (laughs) without being discovered.
Devotee: I think maybe the first gentleman who was here, who said... He was talking about experiencing God... He says, "Actually I experienced God, but actually God is beyond my experience." You gave him such a hard time that I think he must have made phone calls to all these other men, "Be careful of Bhaktivedanta Swami. He is very dangerous." (laughter)
Prabhupāda: I told him that you have no experience.
Yogeśvara: This gentleman is Mr. Tran-Van-Kha, the president of...
Pṛthu Putra: Mrs. Basti (sp?), she is the president of the Society of Buddhists in France. And,...
Guest (1): Thomas Dhu (?).
Prabhupāda: Sit down.
Pṛthu Putra: He's the president, (indistinct) honor of honors. Mr. Tran-Van-Kha was ambassador from Vietnam...
Prabhupāda: Vietnam.
Pṛthu Putra: ...in America twenty years ago, and he's now president of the society of Buddhists in France.
Prabhupāda: If... Vietnam (indistinct)? No?
Yogeśvara: Vietnam what? Well, they say.
Prabhupāda: So Vietnam, they profess Buddhist religion?
Pṛthu Putra: (translates into French)
Guest (1): (French)
Pṛthu Putra: Eighty per cent.
Prabhupāda: So the Buddhist religion so far we know, they are nonviolent.
Prabhupāda: So the Buddhist religion so far we know, they are nonviolent.
Pṛthu Putra: (French)
Guest (1): (French)
Pṛthu Putra: This gentleman added tolerance.
Prabhupāda: Tolerance. If one is nonviolent, he must learn tolerance.
Pṛthu Putra: (French)
Prabhupāda: We pray Lord Buddha: Nindasi yajña-vidher ahaha śruti-jātam. "My Lord, You, for the time being, You are decrying the Vedic authority."
Pṛthu Putra: (French)
Prabhupāda: Nindasi yajña-vidher ahaha śruti-jātam. Śruti-jātam means Vedic rituals. Śruti means Vedas. It is learned by hearing. Why He decried the Vedic rituals? Sadaya-hṛdaya darśita-paśu-ghātam. You are so much compassionate by seeing animals sacrificed. Animal Killing. Sadaya-hṛdaya darśita-paśu-ghātam. Ghātam means killing, so He wanted to stop this animal killing, sinful life. Keśava dhṛta-buddha-śarīra jaya jagadīśa hare. My Lord, You have appeared now as Lord Buddha, I offer my respectful obeisances unto you.
Prabhupāda: Anywhere. In Calcutta it was dangerous to go out because the next... You do not know whether you'll come back. People are so afraid. He's going to work in the office. It will be God's grace if he returns back. It is such a city. Actually so happened. We were sitting, I was at that time in a... I was guest in our life member's. Sitting in morning, afternoon, o'clock (?). "Oh, that gentleman is killed." He was very important businessman. He went to the temple, a Marwari, and on his coming back, he was killed from the backside. Life is still so, but it is little diminished. (break) ...about so-called saintly persons, they are: tapasvino grāma-vāsāḥ. "The so-called yogis, they'll live in the town." Actually, the yogis have no business in the town. They should go to a secluded place. But they will live in... Just like the other... He's living in Paris City, and he's a yogi.
Yogeśvara: This is all from the Twelfth Canto?
Prabhupāda: Yes. Foretold, five thousand years ago. Here said, tapasvino grāma-vāsā nyāsino 'tyartha-lolupāḥ: "And the sannyāsīs, they'll be too much greedy about money."
Nitāi: There are many guests here to see you.
Prabhupāda: Yes, yes. "Even they'll not give protection old parents."
Yogeśvara: To old parents.
Prabhupāda: Old parents. (guests come in) Hare Kṛṣṇa. Jaya. Thank you. Hare Kṛṣṇa.
Jyotirmayī (translator): So I'd like to introduce you to these gentlemen and these ladies. He is... He's called Pere Canivez. Pere Canivez, here, and he is the Secretary of the Bishops of France, and he would like to come and discuss with you. Here is the Pere Fransad. He's a Christian priest also who, that I knew and so by his help Pere Canivez came. And he'd like to come with this lady who's come, Madame Siaude. She's living in India usually.
Prabhupāda: Oh, you live in India?
Madame Siaude: Yeah, in the French part of, far eastern state, in Pondicherry.
Prabhupāda: Pondicherry?
Madame Siaude: Yes.
Prabhupāda: Oh, Aurobindo's place.
Prabhupāda: Oh, Aurobindo's place.
Madame Siaude: Yes, I have been there a long time.
Jyotirmayī: And she was studying with M. Laconde, this gentleman who came yesterday. She's very much studying Rāmānujācārya, Madhvācārya...
Prabhupāda: Hm. Vaiṣṇava philosophy.
Jyotirmayī: Vaiṣṇava philosophy. And we'd like to invite also M. Misraki. He's a compositor of music, but he also wrote book on life after death and many different things. So he was interested to come also. So they all came together.
Prabhupāda: So they are all nice gentlemen and ladies. It is...
Jyotirmayī: And very interesting too, that the first question, one of the first questions that Pere Fransad asked me, was: "Do you believe in love of God, and that God is a person? Some people say that God is not a person, and we say God is a person."
Bhagavān: So you can translate in French so that they can understand.
Prabhupāda: At least Christians cannot believe in impersonal God.
Yogeśvara: When you were here last year, there was a meeting at the Indian Tourist Bureau, a press meeting, and there was a man who came to meet you at that time who is president of the court of Paris. And he was supposed to be a Buddhist. Do you remember this gentleman? He said to you that "Meat-eating... We must eat meat in the West. Maybe in India, because of the climate, you can get away with that."
Prabhupāda: That is rascaldom, another rascaldom. He's a first-class rascal. That was the support by Vivekananda. He was eating everything. All the Ramakrishna Mission, they say like that, "Oh, without meat-eating, without drinking, you cannot stay." All rascals. Therefore, the conclusion is, all rascals, the religious, social, all rascal. If they want to be saved from their rascal position, this is the only, Kṛṣṇa consciousness. If they don't want to be saved, if they want to go to hell, who can check? Ātma-han. Ātma-han means "self-suicide." Suicide, yes. If you cut your throat yourself, who can save you? So they are all these like, all, all these Buddhists, Christian. We may not speak very strongly. They will be our enemies.
Prabhupāda: MRA, MRA, Moral Rearmament Movement. Do you know, anyone of you?
Haṁsadūta: No. Do you, Satsvarūpa? No.
Prabhupāda: So it was going on for some years, then collapsed. The movement was started by some priest or gentleman, and it was supported by President Eisenhower. It was patronized by him. So their principle was that, Christian principle, that "You do whatever you... Simply confess. Simply confess." So that man came to India also with his party, just like I travel. (break) ...substance, no movement will stay. It may go on for some time, bhūtvā bhūtvā pralīyate (BG 8.19). Now, what about our movement? It will stay or it will also go like that?
Satsvarūpa: It will stay. We already have another generation coming up in Gurukula. The big danger, you say, is faction.
Prabhupāda: We shall go straight or right?
Haṁsadūta: Right.
Prabhupāda: You can put this side.
German devotee: Śrīla Prabhupāda, these gentlemen are professors from the Theological Philosophical University. And this is Doctor Zara (?). He is the leader for the society of yoga and integral philosophical studies in Germany.
Prabhupāda: Yes. It is very fortunate to see so many big men at a time. So we were also talking to this doctor about this philosophy, how human civilization should be conducted. I was explaining to Professor that at the present moment, not at the present moment, always in this material world, we do not know what is the goal of life. We have got different philosophies, different mode of life, because we do not know what is the goal of life. If the goal of life is... (break) ...then everything is solved. Now it is very good fortune that you are all present. What is the goal of life? That is my submission. Human life is there, human intelligence is there. So what is the goal of life to achieve? The goal of life cannot be different. That is one. That is, we take from Vedic literature, this goal of life is to understand what is God. In the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam it is said, na te viduḥ svārtha-gatiṁ hi viṣṇum (SB 7.5.31). (aside:) That is one. You serve it out. So we are missing the point, that we do not know what is the goal of life. Different persons, different philosophers, they have got different proposition of the goal of life. Similarly, different politician also. But we think the goal of life is one, to understand God. Then everything is solved. Self-realization. (pause) And we are writing all these books. These books will be finished in eighty volumes. And already we have published fourteen volumes only. And small books also, many, about two dozen. But our only writing is the goal of life, Kṛṣṇa.
Prof. Pater Porsch: I seldom saw so many happy faces as today, this evening, below.
Prabhupāda: Yes. That is the case. In America also the ladies and gentlemen ask them, "Are you Americans?" Because they do not see Americans with such nice face. One Christian priest—I was going from Los Angeles to Hawaii—so he came to talk with me. He inquired "Swamiji, how is that your disciples look so bright?" He inquired. Yes.
Prof. Pater Porsch: Without drugs.
Prabhupāda: Yes. And one Christian priest he showed one pamphlet that these boys, they're our boys but before this they're not coming to the church. They do not want to ask anything about God. Now they're mad after God. How is it? He admitted, "They're our men." And I give you another example. In our Los Angeles temple—this was a church, big church—but it was not going on. It was being closed. And it was sold to us. And now you go and see there is daily thousands of... the same men, the same place. The crowd is so... Why? I have not brought all these men from India. Judge. Unless it is something sublime, how they're accepting it? And they're all young boys. Not that they have become old, therefore they're seeking after God. (everyone laughs) And young men have got so many aspirations, they go to the restaurant to smoke, to enjoy girlfriend, boyfriend, these... They have given up everything.
Prabhupāda: We have no other... Even in the Indian Parliament, the question was raised that "How is that this international society is spending lavishly? What is their income?" There is a rumor that Americans are sending these CIA, what is this? (everyone laughs) Rascal people, they think the CIA has come to dance and chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. (everyone laughs) So, of course the reply was given that we have no information that these people are CIA but we know that they are maintaining themselves by selling their literature and public contribution. That's all. And we have got 102 centers like this. This is not very... If you go to our Los Angeles center, New York center and other, Vṛndāvana center and Navadvīpa center, not less than 200 men are there always. And we are providing with their food, shelter. We give education to their children. We are getting them married. We don't allow these boys to live as friends. No. "You get yourself married." Yes. (German) Here is a girl, Kausalyā. I picked her from Hawaii. Now you can ask what she was and what she is now. Now she's married. She's happy. She has everything here. Life is there. (pause) Hare Kṛṣṇa. So I think you are all learned gentlemen, you should give us support and cooperate with this movement. It is very nice movement. That is my request to you.
Prabhupāda: You can become a life member and read all these books and chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. There is no loss. Suppose you chant Hare Kṛṣṇa there is no material loss on your part, but if there is any gain, why don't you take it?
Prof. Pater Porsch: No, my question was perhaps a little, not quite clear. Many of us here, myself felt, represent not only our personal selves but are here on behalf of certain institutions and we are active in some form or other of public service, these gentlemen probably also. And in what way, for example, would we serve your movement by giving a clear explanation about the aims of your activity, for example, removing prejudices and supporting Sanskrit studies and the better distribution of the Bhagavad-gītā in this form, in such ways, perhaps?
Prabhupāda: Yes. We are writing these books for distribution.
Prof. Pater Porsch: Yes. Yes. Yes, I've already suggested that one.
Prabhupāda: Yes. And they are not manufactured knowledge. They are standard knowledge, Vedic knowledge, I am explaining for understanding of the people in general. Each word is being explained. Here is my dictaphone. I am sitting here. So as soon as I stop talking, I shall write immediately. At night also, I get up at two o'clock, one o'clock, and write these books.
Prof. Pater Porsch: And during the Bangladesh crisis you also...
Prabhupāda: Yes, anyone came; we feed. That much... There were many refugees, so we fed them.
Prof. Pater Porsch: But that automatically answers the question of this gentlemen also, the body in the service of other people, you see...
Prabhupāda: No, we give food. Anyone come and take food. Here also. There is no question of Bangladesh. Let anyone come and take food. In our Māyāpur center we especially give food distribution on Saturday and Sunday. At least five thousand people come. So all humanitarian work is included.
Lady: Thank you very much.
Prabhupāda: Hare Kṛṣṇa. Thank you. (some guests leave) So now we have come to Germany. You cooperate and make it a great success for the general benefit of the whole humanity. We have got arts, music, literature, culture, food, everything.
Prabhupāda: Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa.
Professor Durckheim: ...in orthodox church and also very... They chant the name of Jesus. Again and again, the whole day, they say the word "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, have pity of us. Jesus, Jesus have pity of us."
Prabhupāda: But Jesus said, "God, hallowed by Thy name." Jesus never said that "You chant my name." No gentleman says like that. He said, "Hallowed be God. Hallowed by Thy name." And why they are sectarian? If there is name already, why do they not chant it? And what is the harm?
Haṁsadūta: There are so many places. At one point he says, "I have kept them in your name. Thou shalt not take the Lord's name in vain." So many references to the name.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Professor Durckheim: The Jews have the Jehova, Jehova name, Jehova, but they don't chant.
Prabhupāda: No? They are not following.
Professor Durckheim: Jehova. How beautiful it is here.
Prabhupāda: Yes, very nice. (pause) Bhāgavata, Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam is presented in such a nice way that go on reading, reading there are eighteen thousand verses, and in each verse you will find new knowledge about God, Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. And if you study one verse, it will take at least one month.
Prabhupāda: What these theologicians think about God? It is already 1,500 months' substance to read. What they will discover? Teeny discovery? We have already stock for 1,500 years' understanding. So what we have to understand from them? (break) ...anādir ananta-rūpam. This is only for Kṛṣṇa. But Kṛṣṇa has got expansions—unlimited. Advaita, acyuta, ananta. Ananta means unlimited. God, His one feature is Kṛṣṇa, and He has unlimited features. If a gentleman simply reads the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam quietly at home, he will be fully conversant, fully aware of what is God. Just like a scholar. He is not limited in one university or in one book. He reads various books to understand the subject matter of his research. Similarly, those who are actually serious about understanding God, they should not stick only to a particular scripture. They should read all others where the information of God is there. Just like we sometimes quote from Bible, but the Christians, they cannot quote from Bhagavad-gītā or Bhāgavata. They cannot do that. But they do not read. Even they do not read fully their Bible.
Professor Durckheim: All the night or do you at the day sometimes?
Prabhupāda: No. At night I get up at one, at half past one, sometimes half past twelve. But I take a little rest, one or two hour in the daytime. So two hours at night, two hours at day, or three hours at night, two hours in day. In this way, altogether five hours, not more than that. Our predecessor gurus, Gosvāmīs, they were taking rest not more than two hours or 2-1/2 hours. So we should come to that standard, yes. Nidrāhāra-vihārakādi-vijitau **. About them this description is: they reduced their sleeping, nidra. Nidra means sleeping. And āhāra. Āhāra means eating and collection. Collection is also āhāra. Yes. So they were mendicant. They had no collection. And they had no preaching mission. They were simply writing books. Nānā-śāstra-vicāraṇaika-nipuṇau, very expert to study different scriptures just to get the essence of scripture and give to the people. Lokānāṁ hita-kāriṇau. So their life was engaged for the benefit of the whole human society. What these people are talking philanthropy and humanitarian? They dedicated their life for... Just like we are doing. It is not for any sect or any person. For the whole human society. So that should be the mission. Lokānāṁ hita-kāriṇau tri-bhuvane mānyau. Therefore their literature is honored all over the world, all over the universe. Just like our books. We are selling all over the world, all universities, all school, all colleges, all gentlemen. It is not sectarian. Lokānāṁ hita-kāriṇau tri-bhuvane mānyau śaraṇyākarau. This was their hard labor, and rādhā-kṛṣṇa-bhajanānandena mattālikau, and they were very much pleased in worshiping Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa Deity. All the Gosvāmīs established a Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa temple. In Vṛndāvana each and every Gosvāmī established one temple in the beginning. Then others followed. Rūpa Gosvāmī established Govindajī's temple. And Jīva Gosvāmī established Rādhā-Dāmodara temple.
Devotee: Yes.
Prabhupāda: Yes. So... Just like if you have got your child on your lap, if some friends come and takes your child and pats him and kisses him, then you become pleased, immediately. "Oh, this gentleman loves my child so much." Similarly, if a Vaiṣṇava, a devotee, is respected, then Kṛṣṇa is more pleased. Therefore it is called, yasya prasādād bhagavat-prasādaḥ **. The respectful to guru makes easier to receive mercy from God. Yasya prasādād bhagavat-prasādaḥ **. What is the meaning?
Satsvarūpa: "By the mercy of the spiritual master, one gets the blessings of Kṛṣṇa."
Prabhupāda: Yes. Because Kṛṣṇa is immediately pleased. "Oh, he's obedient and respectful to My devotee." It is in the same way, "Oh, he loves my child so much. He loves my dog." Dog is not qualified. But because the gentleman's dog is loved, the gentleman is pleased. This is counteractive. Similarly, a pure devotee, representative of God, if he is offered respect, that respect goes to God.
Devotee: In Australia?
Prabhupāda: Yes. The Attorney, in the... Attorney-General of the Federal Government. You saw that?
Satsvarūpa: I didn't see the paper.
Prabhupāda: They have recognized, bona fide religious sect. (pause) So the priestly order this morning, they liked it very much.
Devotee: I think so, yes.
Prabhupāda: This gentleman, he's also a priestly...
Satsvarūpa: At seven-thirty the Catholic bishop is coming, very high-ranking in the church.
Prabhupāda: What is the time now?
Satsvarūpa: Ten after six, quarter after six. (end)
Bishop Kelly: I hope that in some real way that the cause of God will be served the better for this meeting. I do wish you Godspeed in your work, and in that, of course...
Prabhupāda: Yes, we are trying our bit to educate people how to revive his original God consciousness. Then he will be happy. Our principle is how to make people happy. There is a verse about the gosvāmīs. Nānā-śāstra-vicāraṇaika-nipuṇau sad-dharma-saṁsthāpakau lokānāṁ hita-kāriṇau. This word is very important, lokānāṁ hita-kāriṇau: "for the welfare of the people in general." People accuse sometimes—of course, foolish people do that—that these God conscious person they are escaping. No. Who are actually God conscious person is always thinking how to do well to the people in general. Yes. Sad-dharma-saṁsthāpakau. Give it to him. You can take.
Bishop Kelly: Banana?
Prabhupāda: No, take other thing. Keep it there. You take the whole thing.
Bishop Kelly: The whole, oh, no, no. (laughter) No. No. Oh, no.
Prabhupāda: Give to that gentleman.
Bishop Kelly: My compeer may be better at that than I am. (end)
Prabhupāda: But I think there is a book, "Miracles of Milk," written by one American gentleman. He has greatly valued the milk and milk products. Similarly, we Indians, we give very, very importance to milk and milk products.
Dr. Harrap: Yes, I think this is so, has always been so here, but in recent years there has been shown to be a relationship between the cholestrol level in the blood and the ratio between the saturated and polyunsaturated fat in the diet. The lower the level of polyunsaturated fat, the higher the level of cholestrol in the blood. And this has been associated with heart disease. So there is quite a move to, among many in the medical profession to prescribe diets which are low in saturated fats.
Prabhupāda: (aside:) Have you got our picture, Kṛṣṇa stealing butter?
Dr. Harrap: And we are doing some quite interesting work at the dairy research laboratory aimed at making ruminants' milk, cow's milk, much more like human milk in this way by a special feeding techniques to the cows.
Prabhupāda: Yes, milk means cow's milk. Milk means cow's milk because you find in this book that kṛṣi-go-rakṣya. Go means cow. Cow protection, cow's milk is important, not other animal's milk.
Prabhupāda: The land is not suitable?
Madhudviṣa: Well, in Australia there is vast areas which cannot be cultivated, like deserts and semi-deserts. The gentleman's contention is that if we try to grow grains in a semi-desert area it would throw off the balance of the natural, the natural pulse of the earth, let us say, and it would cause havoc in other fields. One of the basic things that our spiritual master is putting forward is that if we put an emphasis on producing food grains and milk and vegetables to live on, concentrating on those points instead of complicating our lives with great industries for cosmetics and film industries and things that are really not essential to us... There's people that don't have the essentials and other people who have all the trappings of the modern technological science. Our spiritual master's contention is that real happiness lies in simple living and high thinking and this is the education that we're trying to put forward. (break)
Prabhupāda: ...these are all misconceptions because I am not this body. I am spirit soul. When the spirit soul goes away, then where is the distinction? Suppose in hospital some Hindu dies or some Muslim dies, some Christian die, the spirit... They are stacked together as useless matter. Is it not? There is no distinction there now, Hindu, Muslim, Christian, white, black. Now it is dead body, put aside. Eh? So, but when living, when the spirit soul is there, they are dividing, this designation. So this knowledge that so long the spirit soul is there in the body, it is important. As soon as the soul is gone, it is useless. But people are giving more stress on the body than on the active principle, living force, what is there.
Prabhupāda: Why you are lacking? You have got enough books. I inquired from you in the morning. You said, "Yes, we have got enough stock."
Madhudviṣa: We have them but we do not have them here.
Prabhupāda: No, that is not... Here are people coming, gentlemen coming.
Madhudviṣa: The question was, Śrīla Prabhupāda, that he wanted to know what you are thinking about India, India's...
Prabhupāda: I am not thinking of India. I am not thinking of India. I am thinking for the whole human society. Why shall I think for India? Vasudhā eva kuṭumbakam. When we become God conscious, then we don't think in that way, "I am Indian," "I am Englishman," "I am Australian," "I am this," no. We don't think. This is the crippled thinking of the materialistic person. Paṇḍitāḥ sama darśinaḥ (BG 5.18).
Prabhupāda: But that is not yet finished.
Bali Mardana: Well, it is going on now. The one building is finished. Other building is still... Until we are living there...
Prabhupāda: That, one Japanese gentleman wrote in a paper that "This Movement, as it growing fast, within ten years the whole world will become Hindu ."
Bali Mardana: Jaya. (laughter) (break)
Prabhupāda: So even it is as it is, they may take in palanquin, but there must be a protest meeting continuously. Protest meeting and the Indians should approach the Ambassador that, "Represent our case to the Queen that Hindus are being harassed." This should be organized.
| Page Title: | Gentelmen (Conv. 1967 - 1974) |
| Compiler: | Mayapur |
| Created: | 29 of Oct, 2011 |
| Totals by Section: | BG=0, SB=0, CC=0, OB=0, Lec=0, Con=227, Let=0 |
| No. of Quotes: | 227 |