View source for You are defective in four ways. "To err is human." You must commit mistake; you must be illusioned; your senses are imperfect; and you have got a cheating propensity. These four defects are there

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[[Category:You Are]]
[[Category:Defect]]
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[[Category:Illusion]]
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[[Category:Cheating Propensity]]
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[[Category:Pages Needing Audio - SHARMISTHA]]
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<h2>Lectures</h2>
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<h3>Bhagavad-gita As It Is Lectures</h3>
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You are imperfect. Your senses are imperfect. You are defective in four ways. You are . . . "To err is human." You must commit mistake; you must be illusioned; your senses are imperfect; and you have got a cheating propensity.
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[[Vanisource:721119 - Lecture BG 02.13 - Hyderabad|721119 - Lecture BG 02.13 - Hyderabad]]
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ccording to the Vedic system, marriage is there. Without marriage, the population, increase of population, means varṇa-saṅkara. So these things were discussed, but that was not the main case. The main case was whether Arjuna was to fight and to kill the other party. He was thinking very serious.

So Kṛṣṇa in the beginning said that, "You are lamenting on the point that your brothers, your grandfather, they will die." That is the general impression of the people, that "I die. You die." But Bhagavad-gītā says, na hanyate hanyamāne śarīre ([[Vanisource:BG 2.20 (1972)|BG 2.20]]): nobody dies, even after the destruction of this body. This is the beginning of that instruction. Na hanyate hanyamāne śarīre. We are eternal. Nityaḥ śāśvato 'yam, na hanyate hanyamāne śarīre.

Now where is the knowledge? We are traveling all over the world. We have never seen any university or any department of knowledge where this technique is instructed, na hanyate hanyamāne śarīre. There is no such instruction. So just try to understand, in the name of education, how people are placed in ignorance. They are thinking that, hanyamāne śarīre, hanyate: after killing the body, the body's finished, the man is finished.

I was talking with a big professor in Moscow, Professor Kotovsky. He said: "Swāmījī, after destruction of this body, there is nothing more. Everything is finished." So just see, a big professor, a responsible person, he has no knowledge about the soul, what is soul, what is body. He's superficially, he is studying that after this body is finished, everything's finished. But that is not the fact.

And persons who do not know this fact, they are becoming leaders, they are becoming educators, they are becoming spiritual master and so on. So how these people will be in knowledge? Because those who are teaching them, they are in ignorance. Andhā yathāndhair upanīyamānāḥ ([[Vanisource:SB 7.5.31|SB 7.5.31]]). One blind man is leading so many blind men. So where is the education?

Here is the beginning of education, real education: what Kṛṣṇa says. I have already explained that . . .

(aside) Why they are talking?

I have already explained that our process of accepting knowledge is the paramparā system. Avaroha-panthā. There are two ways of acquiring knowledge: āroha-panthā and avaroha-panthā. Knowledge coming from the authorities, that is perfect knowledge, and knowledge acquired by experimental knowledge, that is not perfect. Because we are imperfect.

Suppose a big professor, just like that Russian Professor Kotovsky, they are trying to understand things by so-called inductive process, or āroha-panthā, going up by one's speculation, by speculative method. But our process of knowledge, Vedic process of knowledge: tad-vijñānārthaṁ sa gurum eva abhigacchet (MU 1.2.12). Their knowledge should be taken from the authority. Do not manufacture knowledge.

Because how you can manufacture perfect knowledge? You are imperfect. Your senses are imperfect. You are defective in four ways. You are . . . "To err is human." You must commit mistake; you must be illusioned; your senses are imperfect; and you have got a cheating propensity. These four defects are there. Those who are not liberated, mukta-puruṣa, they have got four defects.

What is that? He must commit mistake. Just like we can give you instance: Our Mahatma Gandhi, he was so great personality, but he also committed so many mistakes. Even on the day of his death, it is heard that he was forbidden not to go the meeting. The other persons, they scented some danger. But he forcibly went there and he was killed.

So mistake, committing mistake. To err is human. That is not fault, that is our habit. We commit mistake. And we also, we are illusioned. Illusioned. Just like I am not this body, I am spirit soul, ahaṁ brahmāsmi. But we are giving identification with this body, "I am Indian," "I am American," "I am brāhmin," "I am śūdra." So this is illusion. So to commit mistake and to become illusioned and cheating propensity: "Actually, I do not know things as they are, still, I am writing books, to educate people."

Big, big scholars, they have no clear thought, clear understanding; still they write books. Even Darwin's theory. He's proposing, "Perhaps," "It may be," and he's writing a big book, anthropology. And people are taking knowledge from that book. So if his knowledge based on "perhaps," "maybe," what is the value of that knowledge? Huh?

So things are going on like that. The senses are imperfect. He has got a cheating propensity. Cheating propensity means he has no perfect knowledge; still, he wants to give knowledge, to become famous in the world, to famous in the community. So what is the value of your writing books if you have no perfect knowledge?

But because we have got a cheating propensity, we do like that. So Vedic knowledge is not like that. There is no cheating. There is no imperfection. There is no illusion. There is no error. That is Vedic knowledge.
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