Prabhupāda: Oh, yes. Yes. Rūpa Gosvāmī, he used to sleep only for one and a half hours.
Guest (4): How long could the body hold up? How many years could the body . . .
Prabhupāda: Well, there is no guarantee of holding up your body even if you have no sleep or have sleep. The material condition is so cruel that body can be finished at any moment. So that is no consideration. The consideration is how to advance in the spiritual consciousness, or Kṛṣṇa consciousness. And if you make, I mean to say, considerable advance, then the eating and sleeping and sex demand or defense, these things will be negligible. Negligible.
These things are depending on our practice. Because actually, I don't depend on sleeping or eating or mating or defending. It is simply due to my bodily consciousness these things are required. But when one is actually spiritually advanced, he has no such appreciation. Just like Lord Jesus Christ, he was crucified, but he never protested, because he had no bodily consciousness at all.
So when one is spiritually advanced, there is no bodily consciousness. But we should not imitate. That requires advancement, as we have mentioned. Nothing has to be done in hasty. But if we follow the rules and regulation, then someday it will be experienced that how we have spiritually advanced. Just like if you go on eating, not that in the first eating . . . first morsel, second morsel, you become immediately satisfied. But when you are full in your satisfaction of hunger, you feel happiness, you feel strength. Similarly, we have to follow the spiritual process, and gradually, as we develop, we become free from all these demands of the body.
There was Raghunātha dāsa Gosvāmī, he was eating only, say, a few grains of butter every alternate day. Only. A few grains of butter only. Every alternate day he was eating. So eating is also nonessential, one who is spiritual advanced. And so-called sex life, oh, that can be given up from the very beginning. And so far defense, nārāyaṇa-parāḥ sarve na kutaścana bibhyati (SB 6.17.28). One who is fully spiritually conscious, he doesn't care for death. He does not know what is the meaning of death, because he is living perpetually.
So these things are to be experienced when you are advanced. But this is possible. This is possible from the examples of great saintly persons, and from literature we can find that one can be completely free from the four demands of the body, namely eating, sleeping, defending and mating.
Yes?
Girl: Did you say that having a family necessarily interferes with Kṛṣṇa consciousness?
Prabhupāda: What is that?
Devotee (1): Did you say that having a family necessarily interferes with Kṛṣṇa consciousness?
Prabhupāda: No. Nothing interferes if it is properly adjusted. Now here in our Society we are actually living in family. We have got brother, sisters, mother, father, everything. But there is adjustment. It is on the basis platform of love. There is no self-interest, therefore it is happy. So as soon as we turn everything in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, the whole world becomes peaceful and happy.
Of course, that is not possible, but as far as possible we can do it familywise, we can do it individually. As much as possible we can extend. But the platform is such nice that in that platform the family life or friendly life or social life—everything becomes nice, joyful and peaceful. That is the test of Kṛṣṇa consciousness.
All right. Thank you. Jaya.