Prabhupāda: Yes. Now you can do that experiment. Then our poverty will be... (laughter) It is fact. There are many yogīs, they prepare gold by drinking mercury. They drink mercury, overnight; next morning they pass urine and dip copper coins in it. And then after some time the copper coins put into the fire, it becomes gold.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: That's alchemist.
Prabhupāda: Whatever it may be, they do that. But it is a fact that copper and tin and mercury proportionately mixed will produce gold.
- yathā kāñcanatāṁ yāti
- kāṁsyaṁ rasa-vidhānataḥ
- tathā dīkṣā-vidhānena
- dvijatvaṁ jāyate nṛṇām
- (Hari-bhakti-vilāsa 2.12)
This example is given by Sanātana Gosvāmī. As kaṁsya... Kaṁsya is mixture of copper and tin, bell metal. When it is properly treated with mercury, it becomes gold. Similarly, a human being properly treated by initiation, he becomes a brāhmaṇa. This example has been given by Sanātana Gosvāmī. Tathā dīkṣā-vidhānena dvijatvaṁ jāyate nṛṇām. Nṛṇām, he says, "of all human beings." He doesn't say a particular class or particular country. Nṛṇām, the word uses. Śuddhyanti prabhaviṣṇave namaḥ. Everyone can be purified by the initiation process, by expert spiritual master. That is accepted in the śāstra.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: These elements, that science calls elements, gold and mercury, were these several other elements in the Vedic scriptures? Little information how they separate it, the technique they use...
Prabhupāda: Metal? Oh, that, that is not given. But they, all these metals, they are different forms of earth. You find in ores.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: But they are all impure.
Prabhupāda: That's all right, you have to purify, but they are in the group of earth. We have to purify. Gold is also purified. It is taken from the mine, it is not pure gold. You have to treat it, then pure gold comes.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: But that treatment must involve a lot of process.
Prabhupāda: That may be, but by treating you can get, that's all. The metallurgists, they know.