Prabhupāda: We are getting a better response from the Western countries than in India. In India, we see that the leaders, they do not like it. They are now opening beef shop, wine shop, and we are preaching, "No intoxication, no meat-eating." So actually, we are not very favorable to their propaganda. (laughs) They don't like us, the leaders. Now there are big, big signboards. In Juhu we have got a center, and the government has opened beef shop, very big. And wine shop, you'll find everywhere. And we are preaching, "No intoxication, no meat-eating." So how they'll like us? That is the difficulty. "It is folly to be wise where ignorance is bliss." But still, we are struggling.
Guru-gaurāṅga: The value of this movement is that if we can prove on a small level, on a model level, that it works, then any scientific man . . . this is the empirical method. If it works on a small level, it shall work on a large level.
Indian man (5): Yeah, like what?
Guru-gaurāṅga: Well, for example, when Isaac Newton discovered gravity. That discovery was a universal discovery. It was an axiom. If it works here, it will work anywhere.
Indian man (5): No. That I understand. But I mean in regard to your own work, can you give an example of something having worked that . . . whatever you mean by work?
Guru-gaurāṅga: Yes. Cultivating the land, for example. We have communities. New Vrindaban, in West Virginia; California. We are establishing in France. We can absorb as many people as wish to come, and we can feed them all, and we still have surplus of foodstuffs.
Prabhupāda: Yes. In Virginia, it has proved very successful. We are getting eighty pounds of milk daily. And from that milk . . .
Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Eight hundred.
Prabhupāda: Eh? Eight hundred. Yes. Eight hundred, I am sorry. So that milk product is sufficient for give them nutritious food. We are preparing ghee. Just like in India, they utilize milk so nicely. And vegetables we are growing. They are making sweetmeats, sandeṣa, rasagullā. There is enough milk product. And ghee, lucī, purī. Very satisfying. So that is the basic principle.
Indian man (5): This is just an example of a successful corporative enterprise which is . . . but would you speak something very new, which has not been tried before?
Prabhupāda: No. The new thing is that they do not go outside for bread. That is the new thing. Here, at the present moment, in every big, big city, they are coming from hundred miles to the office. Now there was railway strike in Bombay. I was there at that time. Oh, people are suffering so much. You see? From five o'clock in the morning, they are standing in queue for catching one . . . not bus, it is truck. The bus is on strike. So people are so much in difficulty. And if one train or two train was running, so many people smashed the . . . they were on the top of the train. So the problem is why one should be induced to go hundred miles off from his home for earning his livelihood. This is a very bad civilization. One must have his food locally. That is good civilization.
Indian man (5): Yeah. What do these people do for a living? Only grow food? Or do they do other things?
Prabhupāda: No. Grow food for eating, and then they read all these books. They become spiritually advanced. That's all. Deity worship.
Indian man (5): And did you need money?
Prabhupāda: Huh.
Indian man (5): Did you need money?
Prabhupāda: Well, we get money. We sell these books also. If they require money, there is money also. But we live very simple life. Whatever little necessity of money is there, that we can gather by selling these books. Even in Indian parliament, the question was raised, "Wherefrom this ISKCON movement gets their money?" Some Communist member raised this question. And the Home Member replied: "They get money by selling literature." That's a fact.
Guest (6): I would like to ask also a question. In your rural communities . . . I call them rural because obviously, from what you said, the main purpose is to be self-supporting as regards food. In your rural communities, do you utilize the most modern techniques with fertilizers, with mechanical means for cultivating the land? This is one question. The other is that obviously, from what you say, the necessary money for buying anything else, that is provided by the selling of your books. But of course, if you would imagine communities having not, as you have, something of . . . (indistinct) . . . announce, and therefore put into books which can be sold, such a community would not be at ease to be self-supporting in regards to everything, food and all the rest. And if, by any chance, put your system into . . . (indistinct) . . .? Supposing we could transform all the members of the Swiss community into peasants, having their piece of land and living in rural communities, I suppose from what I know that many would starve and would have not sufficiently to eat, because the conditions here, of the climate conditions, etc., are not of the same caliber of the ones which may exist in Asia or in other countries. The basic problem is that in former centuries most, or a great part of the male population of that country which population was mainly composed of peasants had to expatriate and become soldiers abroad because there was not enough food in the country. So what do you say about these things?
Yogeśvara: His first question was do we use machines and modern methods on our āśramas and farms.
Prabhupāda: We have no objection. We want to be self-sufficient. That is our point of view. We have no objection with . . . it is not that we don't touch machine. We don't say like that. But we want to be self-sufficient. That is our point. We have not taken a vow that we shall not touch any machine. No, no. We're not like that.
Guest (6): Well, I think it's an admirable objective. Certainly it can be realized in small rural communities which acquire the necessary surface to have each member in the community being self-sufficient. Like in the Middle Age in this country the monks were more or less self-sufficient within the frame of their domain. But outside this, the peasants were really always hungry.
Guru-gaurāṅga: He says that on a small level that may be valid, like the monks who had their monastery and they made food enough, but for most people, especially where the climate is so unfavorable . . . he said that the Swiss people, they could not even stay on the land in the past, but they had to go away to find food because of the climate. So on the whole he does not see the practicality.
Prabhupāda: Well, after all, this is material world. The miserable conditions are there. But as far as possible, try to minimize. Our only aim is how to save time for spiritual cultivation. That is our main aim. So we have to find out the opportunity according to the time, circumstances. We . . . we do not reject anything. Whatever is favorable, we accept.