Prabhupāda: You cannot see even what is there after hundred years. What is the value of your eyes? Why you are proud of your eyes?
Paramahaṁsa: So you say it's based on faith.
Prabhupāda: Not faith, it is fact. Just like if somebody says me, "The other side is Japan." I cannot see, so I may disbelieve. But that's a fact; Japan is there.
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: But others have seen.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Therefore you have to hear from a person who has seen.
- tad viddhi praṇipātena
- paripraśnena sevayā
- upadekṣyanti tad jñānaṁ
- jñāninas tattva-darśinaḥ
- (BG 4.34)
Darśinaḥ means one who has seen.
Rādhāvallabha: How do we know he has seen?
Paramahaṁsa: We have to have faith again then.
Prabhupāda: What is that?
Paramahaṁsa: To begin to believe that you have seen, I must have faith in you.
Prabhupāda: Yes, that faith. How do you believe there is Japan?
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Faith.
Prabhupāda: Have you seen?
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: No.
Prabhupāda: Then why do you believe?
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Faith.
Hṛdayānanda: Every day on the news, every day on television a man comes on and he says what's happening all around the world, and everyone accepts. No one has ever seen any of those places.
Prabhupāda: You have to believe.
Satsvarūpa: Why is it that people are so disinclined to listen to our authority—that they all take the scientists' authority—if it's just one authority or another?
Prabhupāda: Because they are nondevotee. That is the defect. More the nondevotee, more rascal mūḍha, duṣkṛtina, mūḍha... They cannot. Duṣkṛtino mūḍhaḥ, na prapadyante. Māyayāpahṛta-jñāna: "Knowledge has been taken away by māyā." (break) ...more you become atheist, the more you become blind. This is the point. (break) ...given this maxim in our Back to Godhead, "Where there is God there is no nescience." (break) ...preaching, back to God. "If you want to know things are there, then come back to God. Don't go this side; come this side." This side means he will be drowned. There are two sides. If somebody unnecessarily goes this side, he is death, and this side, he is saved. So one who is going this side we are asking back to Godhead, "Come in this side." If one goes this side, he will find the downtown, so many nice buildings, parks and everything. And the boy who goes this side, he will die.