Guest (1): Can I ask you one thing?
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Guest (1): I am informed rather that female monkey has got the highest affection for the baby, and when, after the death of the baby, she attaches the baby to her chest, to her . . .
Prabhupāda: Yes. It dries up. When the dead body dries up.
Guest (1): . . . to her, and continues to carry on the dead body until the dead body falls away. They need to jump from one place to another . . . (indistinct) . . . to that . . . upto that period she goes on carrying the dead body on her bosom. This is so sad about the female monkey . . . (indistinct)
Prabhupāda: So therefore in the society the parental affection is taken as very good qualification. But such qualification is visible even in the animals. So that is not a very good qualification. That is nature's law. Unless the mother and the child are not so affectionately connected, it is not possible for the child to grow up. That is nature's law. But that is not a qualification.
Child simplicity . . . things are very much eulogized in the society, child's simplicity, mother's affection. They are necessary. But they are not qualification to raise one to the spiritual platform. Just like this debauch, Ajāmila. His character is abominable, but he's still very much affectionate to the youngest child. That is stated here.
In one place his character is described, that he used to live by cheating, by stealing, by gambling. This was his life's profession. But still, he was very much affectionate to the child, the youngest child.
- sa baddha-hṛdayas tasminn
- arbhake kala-bhāṣiṇi
- nirīkṣamāṇas tal-līlāṁ
- mumude jaraṭho bhṛśam
- (SB 6.1.25)
Jaraṭhaḥ vṛddhaḥ. So although he was very old, still he was enjoying the child's play, pastimes, the same thing. Just like Mahārāja Nanda, Yaśodā was enjoying the childish pastimes of Lord Kṛṣṇa, the same thing is pervertedly reflected in this material world: father's affection, child's activities.
Because we are part and parcel of Kṛṣṇa, the same thing you'll find in the transcendental world. The Māyāvādī philosophers, they cannot adjust. They think that if the same things are there in the spiritual world, then what is the difference between the spiritual and the material? That is the defect of Māyāvāda philosophy.
But if they are seriously students of Vedānta-sūtra . . . it is stated clearly in the very beginning, janmādy asya yataḥ (SB 1.1.1): the Supreme Absolute Truth is that from which everything emanates. So this affection between the child and the father or mother, if it is not there in the original Absolute Truth, wherefrom it comes? Do you follow?
If the Absolute Truth is the source of everything, then whatever you will see here in this material world, they are simply reflection of the original. How you can defy? How the Absolute Truth can be nirākāra, nirviśeṣa, without any variety, if the Absolute Truth is the source of everything? So these varieties of this material world, wherefrom it came? What is the answer?
Guest (2): From God.
Prabhupāda: Then how God can be nirākāra or impersonal?
Guest (2): Nirākāra means all-pervading.
Prabhupāda: That is another thing. All-pervading we also accept. He is brahma-jyotir. He is spread all over the creation. That is His nirākāra. Another meaning of nirākāra, that He hasn't got His form like us—sac-cid-ānanda-vigraha (Bs. 5.1)—you may say that. Or nirākāra means where the varieties are not manifested. Just like you go to the sunshine.
You don't find any rest. Your plane must fly on, fly on, fly on, unless you get a support in some planet. Either you go to the moon planet or remain in this planet, you must have a support. Otherwise the effulgence, the sun effulgence, the sunlight is not your place. Similarly, brahma-jyotir is like that, just like sunshine; but you cannot rest there. If you want rest, then you have to take shelter under the lotus feet of Kṛṣṇa.
That is stated in the Bhāgavatam. Ye 'nye 'ravindākṣa vimukta-māninas (SB 10.2.32): Those who are in the impersonal situation, they think themselves that they have become liberated. Exactly the same example: Suppose you are very high in the sunshine. Do you think, "Now I am liberated from worldly connection. I am far, far away, or high"?
But unless you get shelter, you have to fly. This is crude example. Similarly, these impersonalist, they are in the liberated atmosphere. That's a fact. Brahmin. He has realized that "I am not this matter. I am Brahmin." And because he has no information in the brahma-jyotir there are innumerable planets, he thinks that "This is all in all, this jyoti, brahma-jyotir." That is his imperfect knowledge.
Guest (2): That is not ultimate end.
Prabhupāda: No.