Prabhupāda: "Oh, these boys playing with Kṛṣṇa, they have attained this position, oh, after, I mean to say, accumulating many, many births pious activities." Kṛta-puṇya puñjāḥ. Just like a man collects dollar, dollar, dollar, dollar, dollar, and one time he amasses money, say, millions of dollars. Similarly, Śukadeva Gosvāmī is describing that these boys who are playing with Kṛṣṇa, they have amassed their pious activities for millions and billions of births. Because with whom they are playing? They're playing, itthaṁ brahma-sukhānubhūtya... Satāṁ. The stalwart philosophers who are after brahma-sukha, brāhmaṇanda. So that brahmaṇanda is here, Kṛṣṇa. And dāsyaṁ gatānāṁ para daivatena. And for the devotees, He is the Supreme Lord. And māyāsritanam nara-dārakeṇa. Those who are covered in māyā, for them He is ordinary human boy. And with Him these boys are playing. They have amassed pious activities of many, many millions of births. Otherwise it was not possible. So they do not know Kṛṣṇa is God. They do not know. But their affection for Kṛṣṇa is so great and nice that it is inexplicable. They were playing, Kṛṣṇa is defeated.
Billions (Conversations)
Conversations and Morning Walks
1969 Conversations and Morning Walks
1972 Conversations and Morning Walks
Devotee (1): Millions every day.
Jayatīrtha: Just like this MacDonald's hamburger stands, they have a sign in front of their hamburger stands—they have also several thousand hamburger stands—the sign says, "Over ten billion hamburgers served." Their company has served ten billion hamburgers. (break) (Outside walking:)
Prabhupāda: America?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Yes. He told me he was very pleased to see Śrīla Prabhupāda, and he said he will start chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa. He said he will go to Laguna Beach temple and he said he will try out chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa.
Jayatīrtha: He told me that he could see that this knowledge wasn't theoretical, that it was realized knowledge.
Prabhupāda: Eh?
Prabhupāda: There is no temple in India. As we are maintaining our temple, there is no such temple in India. There are temple, they are neglected. Just like here, the churches are neglected. (break) ...demons, and here we are manufacturing demigods.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: I read in the news that in the next five-year plan, they are planning to spend about thirty-two billion rupees for education, the greatest for ten years. They said that there were so many mistakes for the last ten years in introducing the basic education that everybody said there is no success. So they are planning another thirty-two billion rupees from 1974 onwards.
Prabhupāda: What education? To eat meat and beef.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Yes.
Prabhupāda: That education. And no restriction of sex even amongst the leaders.
Jayatīrtha: And all advanced contraceptive methods.
Prabhupāda: Yes, avidyā.
Jayatīrtha: So they're spending so much, so many billions of rupees, simply to culture ignorance.
Prabhupāda: Making rogues and guṇḍās and hippies, that's all. The science is manufacturing atom bomb, and philanthropy is becoming hippies. This is the result of education. They are manufacturing compounds, strong contraceptive method, infallible contraceptive method. Suffering only. What is the time now?
Jayatīrtha: (?) minutes to seven.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: So this propensity will increase in this Kali-yuga.
1973 Conversations and Morning Walks
Prabhupāda: Eh?
Scholar: (Indonesian) Billion. Four billions of years, four billion years.
Prabhupāda: Four billion years is twelve hours of Brahmā's life.
Scholar: Just one day only.
Prabhupāda: One day only. Similarly one night. Then one day.
Scholar: Eight billion years one day of Brahmā.
Prabhupāda;: Yes. So that is the calculation.
Scholar: Yes.
Prabhupāda: That's all. Just see how much...
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Millions of dollars.
Prabhupāda: How great asses they are.
Karandhara: Billions.
Prabhupāda: You, you work very hard. This rascal government takes taxes and spend unnecessarily. That's all. This is their intelligence. A set of asses. That's all. They have no sympathy "that this hard-earned money is coming from the public, and we are spending like anything." But nobody can check. This is going on. And they're giving another bluff. "Don't worry. I am going another planet."
Brahmānanda: Yeah, right. Another one.
Prabhupāda: Yes. "From there, I shall bring more dust."
Karandhara: A house, station.
Kṛṣṇa-Kāntī: So they sent it up and it failed. It cost two billion dollars or something, squandered.
Prabhupāda: Just see why they are wasting time in that way? Money.
Kṛṣṇa-Kāntī: They were criticized in the paper.
Prabhupāda: Fool. Simply childish. Bālaka. What are they gaining? For the last, how many years they are trying? For going to the moon planet?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Russia started in 1957. First sputnik where Gagarin was there...
Prabhupāda: Twenty-five years. So they could not get anything, not a single farthing even. Still, they are doing. Just see, obstinacy. Punaḥ punaś carvita. This is called chewing the chewed. Punaḥ punaś carvita-carvaṇānām (SB 7.5.30). They will never be successful. So I am a layman. When I wrote that Easy Journey? In 1950, 67. How many years?
Prabhupāda: Huh?
Krishna Tiwari: That is 4.3 million.
Prabhupāda: Yes, and multiplied by 1000.
Krishna Tiwari: OK, we've got 4.3 billion.
Prabhupāda: Yes. That is, that is the duration of daytime, one daytime of Brahmā, and similarly calculate night, similarly you calculate, that is twenty-four hours, one day and night. Similarly, you calculate one month.
Krishna Tiwari: Yeah, I understand that, Swamiji, but uh...
Prabhupāda: In this way he lives for one hundred years, according to these calculations.
Krishna Tiwari: I can understand that, but, see, we do know. We do know the age of the earth, and we know better than anybody else does.
Prabhupāda: No, no. Creation is already there. Your knowledge is imperfect. You do not know what is that creation.
Guest (1): Few billion years before there was no human being living here.
Prabhupāda: That is rascaldom. That is rascaldom.
Guest (1): Hm?
Prabhupāda: That is rascaldom, that statement.
Guest (1): Is...?
Prabhupāda: Rascaldom.
Guest (1): Pardon me, Sir?
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Guest (1): Well, today...
Prabhupāda: Because, because you say, "Two millions of years ago..." Now...
Guest (1): Six billion, whatever you may say...
Prabhupāda: Eh?
Guest (1): Whatever amount of time, one can say, before that, there was no life here.
Prabhupāda: Yes, but Vedic literature, Vedic literatures, you see. These four yugas. Now, in the Bhagavad-gītā... We are talking always: Sahasra-yuga-paryantam ahar yad brahmaṇo viduḥ (BG 8.17). You study Bhagavad-gītā. You'll understand. Sahasra-yuga-paryantam. One yuga means forty-three lakhs of years. And multiply by... Eh?
Devotee: Mrs. Nair has come.
Prabhupāda: Thirty crores.
Guest (1): Four hundred thirty crores.
Prabhupāda: That is only twelve hours of Brahmā. So what you can two million?
Guest (1): No, no. I said six billion...
Prabhupāda: Six billion, you may say, but this is only twelve hours of Brahmā. So just see how long he's living. Hundreds of millions of years he's living, still. And you say two millions years.
Guest (1): No, when you say Brahmā, you mean Supreme or the...?
Prabhupāda: No, no. Brahmā is a person like you and me. (Hindi) Jaya. (Hindi) Brahmā is also a living entity. Just like... (Hindi) We are all living entities. Similarly, Brahmā is also a living entity. Just like you are bigger than the ant, Brahmā is bigger than me. That is the difference only. But he's also living entity. So he lives for millions and millions of years. (Hindi) So the other gentleman not yet, not has yet come, our Asnani. So let him come. Then we shall begin talking. So it is not a fact that two millions of years ago, there was no living entity. This is all rascaldom. Time is immemorial, and many, many millions of years ago there were living entities, more perfect living entities. They're still living. But we have no information. Just like Brahmā. Brahmā's one twelve hours, if you believe in the Bhagavad..., statement of Bhagavad-gītā... sahasra-yuga-paryantam ahar yad brahmaṇo viduḥ (BG 8.17). Read that.
Prabhupāda: Earth. Origin of earth is life. It is very simple to understand. Just like your body. Your body is... Or why your body? Take the tree. Tree is matter, it is earth. Wherefrom the big tree comes? From the life within the seed.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: But they say that about 4.5 billion years ago this earth condensed in such a form, but before that there was no living entity because this earth was not suitable for it.
Prabhupāda: That is rascal. No, no. You have got history for billions of years?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Yes.
Prabhupāda: What is that history? We have got history that Brahmā was the first creation, and from Brahmā... Brahmā created this universe.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Oh, they say in our universe there are about ten to the eleventh stars. They can count approximately. They say there are about 100 billion stars.
Prabhupāda: Count the sand grains, count the sand grains.
Karandhara: They would make a rough estimate.
Prabhupāda: That's all right. Even if you make a fool estimate, then still, you are nothing in the face of the creator. Even if you can count.
Yaśomatīnandana: They are so stupid Prabhupāda that they do not recognize that the most important things in life is birth, death, old age and disease. And if they really want to conquer the nature, they should try to conquer birth, death, old age and disease.
Prabhupāda: That is stated in the Bhagavad-gītā, daivī hy eṣā guṇamayī mama māyā duratyayā (BG 7.14).
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Oh. Billions of dollars were spent.
Prabhupāda: That coat?
Śrutakīrti: No, coat.
Brahmānanda: Spacesuit.
Karandhara: Oh yes. Millions of dollars.
Prabhupāda: Just see how they are spending, squandering public money. You see? But nobody is to stop this.
Prajāpati: The demons have always been trying to make staircases and towers up to heaven.
Prabhupāda: Yes, yes. Demonic.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Everyone is advancing means he's going to die later on. Not only Brahmā, everyone one of us.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: But they calculate that it's only 4.5 billion year old, the earth.
Prabhupāda: Let them calculate, but who cares for that? They cannot calculate even one day of Brahmā.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: So we do not accept this?
Prabhupāda: Eh?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: We do not accept this.
Prabhupāda: How can I accept it? Because in the Bhagavad-gītā it is said, sahasra-yuga-paryantam ahar yad brahmaṇo viduḥ: (BG 8.17) "The Brahmā's one day is equal to one thousand combination of yugas." The combination of yuga means forty-three-hundred thousands of years. So such thousand times makes Brahmā's one day of twelve hours. Similar period, his night. Then day and night, it becomes full twenty-four hours. Then such thirty twenty-four hours makes one month. Such twelve months makes one year, and such hundred years he will live.
1974 Conversations and Morning Walks
Svarūpa Dāmodara: They say that there are about nine billion cells. They are called neurons.
Prabhupāda: That's all right. Just like I have given already. Why nine billion cells are there? Because you can work with it. I have given an electric running on typewriter because I know how to work it. Otherwise, this electric machine and the old electric machine, they are made of the same iron, but if I know how to work it, then I can utilize this machinery. But for a layman, it will be all the same. So that is karma. According to karma, we get a body. The body's machinery is also well-equipped, as I can work. This is nature's gift. Not that "This brain is first-class, that brain is first-class, er last class." All brain, last class. It is matter. The man who is working, the soul who is working, he is first-class, second-class, third-class. It is said clearly, īśvaraḥ sarva-bhūtānāṁ hṛd-deśe 'rjuna tiṣṭhati: (BG 18.61) "Īśvara, Kṛṣṇa, is situated in everyone's heart." Bhrāmayan sarva-bhūtāni yantrārūḍhāni māyayā: (BG 18.61) "He is offered a yantra, a machine, made by material energy." But that is under the direction of Kṛṣṇa. Kṛṣṇa has asked the material energy "Give a good machine; he can work.
Girirāja: (reads) "...we are given the histories of Kṛṣṇa's appearances and disappearances millions and billions of years ago. In the Fourth Chapter of the Bhagavad-gītā, Kṛṣṇa tells Arjuna that both he and Arjuna had many births before, and that He, Kṛṣṇa, could remember all of them and that Arjuna could not. This illustrates the difference between the knowledge of Kṛṣṇa and that of Arjuna. Arjuna might have been a very great warrior, a well-cultured member of the Kuru dynasty..." (break)
Acyutānanda: In the last part of Kṛṣṇa Book, Mahā-Viṣṇu says that Arjuna is of the capacity of Nara-nārāyaṇa. So they are avatāras also.
Prabhupāda: Yes, yes.
Acyutānanda: But as Arjuna he acts as an ordinary jīva?
Prabhupāda: Yes, Arjuna is also... Yes, equal to Nara-nārāyaṇa. (break) ...as Nara-nārāyaṇa. Somewhere, I think.
Girirāja: (reads) "Kṛṣṇa's knowledge is so perfect that He remembers all the incidences of His appearances some millions and billions of years in the past. But Arjuna's memory and knowledge are limited by time and space, for he is an ordinary human being." (break)
Prabhupāda: ...Kṛṣṇa. Kṛṣṇa did not become God by the so-called meditation or mystic power. He has already all this yogeśvara. All mystic powers are already there. (break) ...that man?
Girirāja: Does he also appear through Mahā-Viṣṇu? When Kṛṣṇa appears, it says that...
Prabhupāda: Yes. He appeared through Kṣīrodakaśāyī Viṣṇu.
Prabhupāda: All yugas, Satya, Treta, Dvapara, Kali, the total years are forty-three hundred thousands of years.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Yes. The calculations by the biologists for the beginning of life, they say it is about four billion years.
Prabhupāda: Eh?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: About four billion years ago, the small species like unicellular species like the bacteria and these started about four billions years ago. And the human life started...
Prabhupāda: Well, where started? Bacteria?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Yes. In the earth.
Prabhupāda: Then the earth was there.
1975 Conversations and Morning Walks
Prabhupāda: Yes, the message is there, Kṛṣṇa's message.
Guest (1): Four billion, we need some people who will say, "I am the teachers."
Prabhupāda: No, that we are teaching, that you take Kṛṣṇa as the authority. Don't go to the rascals. All problems will be solved. But they are going to the rascals, instead of going to Kṛṣṇa. That is Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement.
Guest (3): You mean Swamiji then that all scientific efforts, whatever they are, should be stopped altogether?
Prabhupāda: No, not stopped. Just like you have got ordinary car and you purchase a Rolls-Royce car. The business is the same. It is simply an artistic improvement. In the ordinary car there is much jerking and the Rolls-Royce car there is no jerking. That will not benefit you. After all it is car. You can use it for going here to there, there to here, that's all. Therefore our Vedic civilization, they are not very much eager to manufacture a motor car, they are satisfied with the bullock cart. Because after all you have to go from this place to that place. And there was no need of big, big roads, three thousand miles long for driving the car. You see. The bullock cart was sufficient, here to there, a few miles. But they were interested to cultivate spiritual knowledge. That is Indian civilization. Vyāsadeva was living in a cottage and just see literature. Cāṇakya Paṇḍita was prime minister of India and he was living in a cottage, drawing no salary and he has given his politics and moral lesson, so sublime. So here at the present moment, the motor car civilization, he's anxious how to get a Rolls-Royce motor car, that's all. That is his business.
Rūpānuga: They want to make India the battleground?
Paramahaṁsa: Also, Prabhupāda, Atreya Ṛṣi said that the Arabs are preparing for the war. They're buying billions and billions of dollars worth of missiles and jets and tanks from America.
Prabhupāda: Yes, so they are being prepared. War will soon start.
Viṣṇujana: The Arab men all go to America to be trained in the armed forces there.
Prabhupāda: Hm?
Viṣṇujana: In all the armed forces centers in America, they train the Arab nations to fight.
Prabhupāda: Oh.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Amogha: But they don't know that nature's arrangement is perfect.
Paramahaṁsa: They spend billions of dollars to try to go in space, but they don't spend that money for food.
Prabhupāda: Jaya, thank you, jaya. (break)
Devotee (1): In the Bhagavad-gītā Kṛṣṇa says He creates the four varṇas and āśramas, so these four classes of men are everywhere. I was just wondering if it is correct to say that each man only finds his satisfaction performing a particular type of work according to his mode of nature? Is that correct?
Prabhupāda: Yes, yes.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Paramahaṁsa: Means 400,000,000
Śrutakīrti: Hmm. More than that. Four billion.
Paramahaṁsa: Four thousand million, which is four billion?
Śrutakīrti: Four billion miles.
Paramahaṁsa: Four billion miles is the diameter.
Prabhupāda: Is the diameter.
Paramahaṁsa: You gave that in The Teachings of Lord Caitanya also.
Prabhupāda: Yes. And the sun is in the middle.
Prabhupāda: Is the diameter.
Paramahaṁsa: You gave that in The Teachings of Lord Caitanya also.
Prabhupāda: Yes. And the sun is in the middle.
Paramahaṁsa: So two billion miles from the edge of the universe.
Prabhupāda: Yes. And they say? 93,000,000.
Śrutakīrti: That's from the earth to the sun. That's not from the sun to the edge. That's from earth to the sun.
Amogha: Is earth near the edge of the universe?
Prabhupāda: No. There are many other planets down. Seven planetary system.
Paramahaṁsa: The higher planetary systems are closest to the sun? And then...
Prabhupāda: No, sun is the middle. This is circumference. Sun is the middle. And the whole diameter is fifty lakhs and... What is...? And moon is above, 200,000 yojanas above the sun.
Paramahaṁsa: They can't just stop and say, "OK, now we..."
Prabhupāda: If they stop, then they are failure.
Paramahaṁsa: Yeah. And then everyone will complain, "Oh, you wasted billions of dollars."
Prabhupāda: And if they go, then they will have the right information. But they will never be able to go.
Devotee (1): Just like Rāvaṇa could not reach the heavenly planets just by building the staircase.
Prabhupāda: That was his only demonic proposal, that "We make staircase." He said that "Why you are undergoing so much austerities to go to the heavenly planets? I shall make a staircase. You will go."
Paramahaṁsa: They want to see with telescope.
Prabhupāda: This is nonsense, this telescope. That is their defect. They do not admit the imperfection of the senses. What we calculated? How many billions?
Śrutakīrti: To the sun?
Prabhupāda: No, no, the length and breadth.
Śrutakīrti: Oh, it is four billion miles.
Prabhupāda: Four billion miles. So how much the telescope can see? Can you see four billion miles? Eh? Where is the telescope? If you cannot see perfectly even ten miles, with telescope you can see, say, a hundred miles or something more, something, but can you see four billion miles?
Prabhupāda: I don't (indistinct) some men here, or the whole universal souls combined together, still they are finite. They're not infinite. Yes, multi-billions of zeroes cannot make one. So I don't say that, but the quality is there very minutely.
Jesuit: Imitation of the divine powers.
Prabhupāda: Not imitation, actually we have got. Just like, another example, gold and a particle of gold, a small fragmentary, that will be called gold, but not the gold equal to the mine.
Jesuit: No.
Prabhupāda: Therefore the philosophy is acintya-bhedābheda, inconceivable one and different simultaneously. One in quality, but different in quantity. God's power... I have got some creative power, and God has got creative power. So the creative power is there. But God has created millions of the planets that floating in the air and we have created a 747 airplane, we want to take more credit than God. That is our foolishness.
Prabhupāda: Huh? Space mouse.
Devotee: Space monkey also.
Prabhupāda: So since 1955 even. So twenty years, what they have done?
Devotee: Spent billions of dollars.
Prabhupāda: Yes, simply they have brought little dust, that's all.
Madhudviṣa: Now they have found that that same dust is here on the earth.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Simply propaganda. They are not going. Now the Russian scientist and American scientist are combined. Because both of them thieves, so one thief is asking, "Don't expose me. I will not expose you, so that our business will go on." This is the way. "Let us combine together and cheat these rascals, and otherwise, if you expose me, then I will expose you. Then our business will stop."
Paramahaṁsa: Even if they wanted to stop this space project, they couldn't stop because they've already spent billions of dollars for making equipment and rocket ships and launching pads and rocket bases and so many employees. If they stop, then so much would be wasted, so many people would be unemployed. So they have to continue even if they know that it's a bluff.
Prabhupāda: That is the way of falsehood. If once you speak something false, then to protect that falsehood you have to take to so many other falsehoods. This is the way of falsehood.
Paramahaṁsa: One lie leads to another.
Prabhupāda: (break) ...are going to Venus, Americans and Russians combined together?
Ambarīṣa: This summer.
Prabhupāda: Oh, in the summer. Venus is very cold? Why they have selected summer season? (laughter) (break) ...could not go to the moon, and Venus is far above moon. How they will go?
Prabhupāda: Photograph, what is this nonsense photograph? How long it can go up?
Ambarīṣa: They're taken from hundreds of miles up in space, and then they say there is no life.
Prabhupāda: What is hundreds of miles? It is, er, forty billion, what is that?
Paramahaṁsa: Four billion.
Prabhupāda: Four billion. So how they can calculate?
Paramahaṁsa: If they took a photograph of the earth planet from up in space, they would probably also say there is no life.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Prabhupāda: What is the meaning of argument if they have stopped? That is failure. Don't talk nonsense anymore. Phalena paricīyate. By the result we have to understand. Your result is you are failure. Then what is the use of talking nonsense? Stop this nonsense.
Ambarīṣa: It's like five years ago they declared a war on cancer, and they spent billions and billions of dollars on it, and just the other day they now said that it was a complete failure, that the disease has just kept on growing and growing.
Prabhupāda: Yes. You cannot stop even cancer disease and you are controlling nature. Just see their (?) false, puffed up. They cannot control one disease, and they are going to control nature. We have to believe that.
Harikeśa: He just told me I was spaced out because I wasn't punching this in, but I'm still astounded by the fact that the moon is further away than the sun. When the devotees hear this tape, they're not going to believe it.
Prabhupāda: But there is austerities.
Paramahaṁsa: Yeah, actually they end up performing greater austerity.
Prabhupāda: You have to earn money with so much labor and spend it for nothing.
Paramahaṁsa: Billions of dollars. Some of them are working like madmen.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Paramahaṁsa: They work all day and most of the night. (break)
Prabhupāda: ...expedition is exposition of the scientists: useless. But these materialistic persons will be cheated again and again. Punaḥ punaś carvita-carvaṇānām (SB 7.5.30). The scientists will propose something else and they will accept. They will never say that "You are failure in your moon expedition. Why you are proposing again something nonsense?" They will never ask. They will pay me, "Yes."
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Yogi Bhajan: That is the Godhead.
Prabhupāda: Yes, that is reaction...
Yogi Bhajan: But everybody here in this world, four billion people, everybody does not have that experience...
Prabhupāda: No, no, I mean to say that every religious sect believes in God.
Yogi Bhajan: Um hm.
Prabhupāda: If we present, "Here is God. You are seeking after God. Here is God," now what they will say?
Yogi Bhajan: Well, some will say, "Yes, it is." Some will say, "No."
Yogi Bhajan: No, we may try to become limited or unlimited. Question is very simple. There are four billion people on this earth and...
Prabhupāda: And therefore they are not expected to understand, four billion. They should follow the leader. It is not expected that...
Yogi Bhajan: That is what we are trying to do. We are going to get the leaders together.
Prabhupāda: That leaders... the leaders are already there. Now, suppose Guru Nanak says "Kṛṣṇa is God," so will the Sikhs follow Guru Nanak or their own whims?
Yogi Bhajan: No, no, Sikh will follow the instructions...
Prabhupāda: Of Guru Nanak.
Yogi Bhajan: ...Guru Nanak.
Prabhupāda: The Guru Nanak says Kṛṣṇa is God.
Brahmānanda: It's a big business.
Prabhupāda: And bluffed. That is usefulness.
Indian guest: They have spent hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars in that process, certainly a lot more money than one can imagine.
Bahulāśva: Even by studying the soil on the earth, Prabhupāda, they cannot make food grow without rain.
Prabhupāda: They cannot do anything. Simply they can bluff. Prakṛteḥ kriyamāṇāni guṇaiḥ karmāṇi sarvaśaḥ (BG 3.27). Everything is being done by the nature. What they can do? These foolish rascals.
Indian guest: Certainly, nature got a whole lot of power.
Prabhupāda: Before me. You are saying something. They may say something else. So brothers together, we sit down together, and bring this...
Devotee (2): All right. But we have some, also, questions that don't require that. These are philosophical questions. For instance, in Kṛṣṇa Book there is a statement that King Ugrasena had four billion personal servants. Now you have asked that we go and spread Kṛṣṇa consciousness to the scientific community.
Prabhupāda: So everyone is servant. What is the question of four billion? Kṛṣṇa's servant...
Devotee (2): No, Ugrasena, King Ugrasena, that when he was on the planet, he had four billion personal servants.
Prabhupāda: That's all right. He is always the master. He... The Kṛṣṇa is the only master.
Devotee (2): Not Kṛṣṇa. No. King Ugrasena, Prabhupāda. Not Kṛṣṇa. King Ugrasena. The statement is that King Ugrasena had four billion personal servants. Now, we have gone and tried to spread to the scientific community. And if we say to them, "There was a king whose name was Ugrasena. He had four billion personal servants," they laugh and say, "What did they do for toilets? What did they do for food? Where did they live?"
Prabhupāda: So you want to preach this particular portion and no other portion?
Devotee (1): No. We want to... We want to know if the story has an allegorical meaning rather than a literal translation, or that King Ugrasena who was a man who lived five thousand years ago and had four billion bodyguards, or whether the stories within the Bhāgavatam, apart from some of them being actual, are allegorical stories. Such as the story of Kṛṣṇa and Balarāma chopping off the the eighty-eight...
Prabhupāda: All right. You can give up that portion. You can take other portion.
Devotee (1): But then because so many things they have to accept on faith without knowing, it then weakens their faith as to what they should accept and why should they accept Kṛṣṇa, who they can't see any more than King Ugrasena's four billion bodyguards.
Prabhupāda: Don't accept. Don't accept.
Devotee (2): But we want them to accept. The point is, if we say to a scientific man, "There was four billion," and if our statement is wrong...
Prabhupāda: But our position is that if some portion we cannot understand, it is our incapability.
Devotee (2): That is all right. But since we are...
Prabhupāda: That's all. Unless we have got this faith we cannot use these Purāṇas. In the Purāṇas there are many such statements.
Devotee (2): Yes, but we just want to understand.
Prabhupāda: Why? They don't believe. What is the use?
Devotee (2): Well, because we also want to know how did they have four billion personal servants just so that we'll be able to convince them and also...
Prabhupāda: If a king has four billion servants, so it is not very astonishing. Why do you think that a king shall have only four servants?
Devotee (2): Well, there's only two billion people on the planet right now.
Prabhupāda: That's all right.
Devotee (2): So where did they all go?
Prabhupāda: I say you don't believe, you don't take it. Why you are insisting on that point? If you don't believe, you don't take it. If you don't believe the whole book or the whole society, then who forbids you?
Prabhupāda: Sun is situated in the middle of the universe. (break) ...diameter of the universe is four billion or forty million? (break) Sun is situated 200 billion from the circumference of the universe. But the earth is between the sun and the circumference. Therefore it appears to be almost correct, 93 million. Apart from these differences, these people say there was no civilization before two thousand years?
Harikeśa: Three thousand.
Prabhupāda: Three thousand. (break) ...this knowledge is there in the Bhāgavatam, which was written in words five thousand years ago, but the knowledge was known millions and millions of years.
Prabhupāda: That is the foolishness. Fools are very persistent.
Brahmānanda: I was reading that in order to go to the moon, it took ten years and the cost was 25 billion dollars.
Prabhupāda: Just see how foolish they are. And again they are trying. Punaḥ punaś carvita-carvaṇānām (SB 7.5.30). Chewing the chewed. This is their business. Horrible civilization.
Kāśīrāma: Mistaking suffering for happiness.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Ambarīṣa: They are always trying to look for the bright side, but there is no bright side.
Prabhupāda: Just like north of Sweden, there is no sunrise?
Prabhupāda: So where is bright side? Where is bright side? Vedic injunction is tamasi mā jyotir gama: "Don't remain in this darkness; go to the bright world." Jyotir gama. (break) ...to create some bright side. He will not be allowed to enjoy it. He will have to die. So where is your bright side? (break) ...for preparing?
Brahmānanda: For the moon? 25 billion dollars.
Prabhupāda: So again I am trying to go another planet. Where is the guarantee that it will be successful?
Brahmānanda: On the contrary, if they failed once, then we should think that they would fail again.
Prabhupāda: Yes. That is animalism. A dog is coming, and you show him some stick or beat him. He will go away for the time being. Again he will come. That is dog. He doesn't get lesson by one. Therefore it is called punaḥ punaś carvita-carvaṇānām (SB 7.5.30). Repeating the same thing again and again. That is animalism.
Prabhupāda: How many million? (laughter)
Jayatīrtha: You can see light years away. Many, many, many millions of miles with the big ones.
Prabhupāda: They can see four billion?
Jayatīrtha: Maybe not four billion.
Prabhupāda: Then it is imperfect. The radius, what is called, radius?
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Diameter?
Prabhupāda: Diameter is four billion miles, universe.
Tripurāri: One universe.
Prabhupāda: One universe. This is the smallest. Four-headed Brahma. (break) ...all universes taken together, that is one-fourth energy. And three-fourth energy is spiritual world. Ekāṁśena sthito jagat (BG 10.42), one part. (break) ...asat koṭi-yojana, one yojana equal to eight mile. And one koti means ten million. So fifty into eight, two hundred, into..., ten into ten million..., it comes. I have calculated four billion. How many millions make a billion?
Harikeśa: A thousand. (break)
Prabhupāda: Sun is situated in the middle from this circumference, two billion up and down. And the moon is situated above the sun, 1,600,000 miles. How they can go to the moon?
Devotee: They think the moon is closer than the sun.
Prabhupāda: They may think, but we are thinking in this way. Who is right?
Prabhupāda: No, they take all these stars as sun. But that is not fact. Sun is one. In each universe there is one sun in the middle. In this universe in the middle, from the circumference, 200,000,000,000's, no, two billion.
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Two billion.
Prabhupāda: And above the sun there is moon. Then Mars, then Venus, like that. 1,600,000 miles above, above, above.
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: So the moon is further away than the sun.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Therefore I say they have never gone to moon. Never gone.
Hṛdayānanda: What is that? Rahu. (break)
Nalinī-kaṇṭha: They say that they can see stars trillions of miles away.
Rāmeśvara: No, billion.
Prabhupāda: Billion. So zero is there, and one is there. You add together. Then the value will increase. Otherwise you remain zero. And because the so much material opulence is zero, therefore the hippies are disappointed. It is zero. What they will do with the zero?
Devotee (2): Śrīla Prabhupāda, our parents in America teach us that we ought to be doing good things for other people. Should we be engaged for our fellow people?
Prabhupāda: But that you do not know, how to do good to the people. Just like a diseased man. The doctor has ordered that he should starve. But if you go in the hospital and you take sympathy with the starving patient, "Oh, you are starving for the last three days," if you give to him some food without the permission of the physician, then you will be punished. So he may think that "Oh, here is a starving man. I must give him some food." But you are liable to be punished. So first of all learn how to do good to others. So that is described here. Tasyaiva hetoḥ prayateta kovido (SB 1.5.18). To bring him to the knowledge of self-realization, that is good. If you can distribute knowledge to bring him back to his consciousness, original consciousness, that is real welfare activity.
Prabhupāda: Kṛṣṇa is truth. Without Kṛṣṇa, everything is untruth. Truth is one. Just like zero is zero. And it is added with one, then it is ten. It is truth. So zero is zero always. Hundred million times zero—it is zero. But when there is one, immediately value increases. So without Kṛṣṇa, all this material advancement, they are all zeros. But if you bring Kṛṣṇa, then it... that increases value-ten, hundred, thousand, tens of thousands, like that, million, billions. Because the one is there. So bring Kṛṣṇa, and then everything will be value. Otherwise, all zero. You may be proud of so-called material advancement. It is zero, because it will not save you, because tathā dehāntara-prāptiḥ: (BG 2.13) you have to change your body. So you have earned so much millions and billions of money. That's all right. But you have to go empty-handed. The money will remain here. You cannot take that money within the tomb. That is not possible. Then it is zero.
Prabhupāda: Then Kṛṣṇa will see: "Oh, he has done so much for Me. Let him come." Otherwise zero. What is the value of your skyscraper building and billions of dollars in the bank? You cannot take it with you. And this is called māyā. You cannot take it with you; still, you are struggling hard day and night. This is called māyā. Not a single farthing you will be able to take with you, and still, you are simply happy. They are called "asses." Just like asses, they have so much big burden, but nothing of the burden belongs to him. Mūḍha. They are called mūḍha, asses. For nothing happiness, which he will never be able to take with him. What do they say? They are doing it for next generation.
Guest: Posterity.
Prabhupāda: He is not interested for himself. He is interested for his generation, which he will kill as soon as he's rebellious. Just see the argument.
Devotee (1): Prabhupāda, should everyone move to the temple?
Prabhupāda: Why?
Prabhupāda: This is our product, to produce for the animal, (indistinct). So the animal eats it and he gives you milk. He's not eating (indistinct). He gives you the nicest food, full of vitamins. And you can prepare from milk hundreds and thousands of so many palatable things. That is civilization. And this is not civilization: "Because cow is so potential, so let me eat the cow." "Guru is so sattvic, spiritual; let me eat guru. Then I will be..." (laughter) This is philosophy. Cow is so full of vitamin, valuable. But civilization is that "Why should you eat the animal? Take the milk." What is this milk? Milk is nothing but the blood. So civilization means let the cow live, and you take the milk, which is nothing but blood. When the mother feeds the child with milk, wherefrom the milk comes? Milk comes from the blood of the mother. Therefore the mother is supplied nutritious food so that she can produce milk for the child. Similarly, cow is mother. What is this philosophy, "Kill the mothers and eat?" "Kill the child and eat?" What is this nonsense? Such crude things are going on in the name of civilization. You are manufacturing billion motor cars, and you cannot manufacture your food? God has given you so much land. This is not civilization.
Prabhupāda: When I go that building, United Nations, I see how they are wasting money. Yes, I see.
Gopāla Kṛṣṇa: They have a very big budget, United Nations, billions of...
Prabhupāda: Big, big. So many publications, so many big...
Indian man (1): They make everybody un-united.
Prabhupāda: Huh? Yes. Disunited.
Pṛthu-putra: You have written in one of your books that they are just becoming more flags instead of less.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Yes. They are increasing flags. Instead of one flag, they increasing flags. And they are trying for the last how many years? Thirty years?
Prabhupāda: Everything is there. The whole, what is called, radius, no, diameter, from one point to another of the universe is given there. Pañcāśat-koṭi-yojana. Pañcāśat means fifty, and koṭi means ten million. So fifty into ten million. Huh? 500,000,000. Pañcāśat-koṭi. And eight.
Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Four billion.
Prabhupāda: Four billion miles, the area, this way and that way. So if the distance is so vast then one planet situated some millions of miles away, it is not extraordinary. The whole area is four billion.
Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Yes. But it appears at least for... It appears that the moon is so close.
Prabhupāda: "It appears"—that is another thing. As soon as you say "appears," that means you have no knowledge.
Harikeśa: That's the next famous theory after the chunk theory.
Prabhupāda: It is simply waste of time even to talk with these fools.
Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: The governments are giving billions and billions of dollars...
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: ...in scientific grants.
Prabhupāda: All another set of fools, that's all. (Break) ...whole world is unhappy on account of being controlled by different set of fools. That is the calamity. If they say, "There are so many educated persons. They are controlling, and you are saying "fools." Why? Then what you will answer?
Harikeśa: "Kṛṣṇa says."
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Harikeśa: And if it's a different chemical, that means there's so many thousands and billions of chemicals. Yet they can't even find one of them.
Prabhupāda: They do not know even one of them.
Harikeśa: They don't even know one of them.
Prabhupāda: (laughs) And still you are proud. What is this nonsense? And supposing the chemical combination is there and is being administered in different way for different life, then who is making this arrangement? Somebody's there who is making arrangement. You cannot do that. Therefore we are inferior, He is superior. You have to accept. It is not that it is not existing. It is existing. So as you are trying to do something, somebody has already done it. Then what is your credit?
1976 Conversations and Morning Walks
Prabhupāda: They must decline.
Madhudviṣa: They are losing one billion dollars a year in donations because they cannot...
Prabhupāda: They have to starve, not a single paisa donation. By law should be prohibited. No donation should be (indistinct).
Pañcadraviḍa: They used to be very strong. Everybody had to give ten percent of their wages.
Prabhupāda: Oh.
Madhudviṣa: We can see just..., in our society that we have bought so many Catholic properties...
Prabhupāda: Hm.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Hari-śauri: Oh?
Prabhupāda: Four billion is the..., what is called?
Devotee: Diameter of the universe.
Prabhupāda: Diameter of the universe. Sun is almost in the middle.
Hari-śauri: So what is that distance that is given in the Bhāgavatam, then? It says 100,000 yojanas.
Prabhupāda: I don't think that is.... Moon that is far away from the sun, 1,600,000. (indistinct) fire in the sea, varuṇāgni. (indistinct) You know there is sometimes fire in the sea?
Devotee: (break) ...the universe was created five to ten billion years ago. Do we agree with their proposition, or...?
Prabhupāda: Hmm?
Devotee: They say that this universe was created five to ten billion years ago. Do we agree with that proposition, or...?
Prabhupāda: Where it was before? (indistinct) Or gas?
Devotee: Well, they basically have two theories. Either the "Big Bang" theory...
Prabhupāda: Theories! Don't take theories. Nonsense. Theory is speculation, nonsense. (laughter)
Prabhupāda: Let them increase. We don't care for it. We can maintain any number of population. Let them come and become Kṛṣṇa conscious. We're not afraid.
Hari-śauri: It appears from the Kṛṣṇa book that there were many billions of people more on this planet when Kṛṣṇa was here than there is now. And they had no problems then.
Prabhupāda: Not only that, we have got from history. They were begetting hundreds of children. There was no scarcity of food. And who is begetting now one hundred children? Ha? One or two or at utmost.... Utmost eight, ten. Wrong theory, population increasing. Rascal's theory.
Hari-śauri: It's just that they don't know how to manage nicely.
Prabhupāda: Ha?
Candanācārya: (break) ...country, build cities and then spend billions of dollars to make the city look like the country.
Prabhupāda: Carvita-carvaṇānām. Chewing the chewed, again and again. This is their position. (japa) (break)
Rāmeśvara: On the calendar it says it is Bhīma-ekādaśī.
Prabhupāda: Bhīma-ekādaśī, yes.
Rāmeśvara: So I've been told that if one fasts on Bhīma-ekādaśī, that it is like fasting on all the ekādaśīs. Is that true?
Prabhupāda: Yes. Ekādaśī is meant for fasting, either Bhīma or Arjuna. But we cannot fast, therefore we have to take little fruits and.... Otherwise, ekādaśī means fasting.
Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Forty percent of all the scientists in the world, the estimate is, are engaged in making weapons. And it said that since the end of World War II, six trillion dollars, which is six thousand billion dollars, have been spent on armament in the world.
Hari-śauri: In the West.
Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: The West, did it say?
Prabhupāda: In India, no money. They can't.... (laughs) They have no sufficient money to eat even. Still they are spending more than fifty percent, fifty-four percent.
Hari-śauri: They estimate there's four hundred thousand so-called scientists working on armament.
Prabhupāda: Working on?
Hari-śauri: Armament. Weapons. Weapon development. Defense. They call it defense measures.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Now understanding these basic differences, to study the origin of life has some meaning. But scientists studying the origin of life, they have no idea about these fundamental differences. So they claim that life actually is a manifestation of matter. In other words, life comes from molecules. They call it "molecule to man" theory. That we will see in the next slide. Now in this slide the molecules is called primordial chemical soup. Now these chemicals are supposed to be formed from simple, reduced substances like water and ammonia and carbon and hydrogen compounds. They are called hydro-carbons. Now these somehow, under the action of ultra-violet radiation or cosmic force, they combine together and form these amino acids. Now these amino acids, in due course of time, form the polymers called proteins. And similarly, several polymeric compounds develop and, given a long period of time, we've shown there chance and given a long period of time, then it's going to bring life, it's going to give life. That is the fundamental background of the scientific study of origin of life. This is what they have proposed. These molecules, somehow they combine, given enough length of time, billions of years as the time period, and then it's bound to happen. They say, given enough length of time...
Prabhupāda: Provided he lives billions of years. But he's finished within fifty years. (laughter) And his theory remains. The rascal cannot remain more than fifty years, and he's talking of billions of years. This is the defect. Who will see after billions of years? He is finished within hundred years. These are theories only. We see practically. Egg appears like chemical combination, but if you give, proper fermentation will come, fermentation?
Prabhupāda: It comes within few days. Why billions of years? Why should we wait for billions of years? This is nonsense. We see practically a bird can give birth to a child within few days, within a week. Why should we wait for billions of years? What kind of scientist you are? (laughter) Proposing to wait for millions... You nonsense. Who's going to accept your foolish theory? We see practically that within a week, and you say billions of years. Nonsense, stop that. Tell them, "You are nonsense, stop. Don't expose yourself any more." We see here, practically, within a week the life comes. Suppose the egg is a chemical composition. It is, it is chemical composition, that's a fact. But it gives life within a week. Why shall I wait for billions of years? Just see their foolishness. And this is being accepted as scientific.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Yes, actually it is taught in all schools. There's a book called Molecules to Man. It's written by a very famous biologist, and it has been taught in school, saying that you come like this, from molecules, now you become human beings.
Prabhupāda: Now what...? Leave aside man. Molecules to chicken. How it is done? What is their answer?
Prabhupāda: Why shall I give them? Here I see. Within a week, I get.
Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: They'll ask, though, "Where did the first egg come from?"
Prabhupāda: First, second, no. We see that... They say you have to wait, give the molecules chance, hundreds of billions of years, then you'll see life. But I'm not going to live for billions of years, neither scientist is going to live. But here I see practically that a small egg, it gives life within one week.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Life?
Prabhupāda: Life from egg, chicken. It gives life within week. So why shall I wait for millions of billions of years? You show, you make some combination of chemical and show that life is coming within a week.
Prabhupāda: Yes, it is wrong. We can see, even a layman can see. No question of mathematician, a layman can see, here within a week we see life, why shall I wait for millions of billions of years?
Rūpānuga: Śrīla Prabhupāda, it is described in the Vedas that life begins as a pea size. In the body, the womb of the mother, the human life is only pea size, emulsification, and then in nine months it develops into this very small series of chemicals and everything, into a full body.
Prabhupāda: No, no. In the Bhāgavata it is stated that life symptoms begins after five days.
Rūpānuga: And consciousness in seven months.
Rūpānuga: Their trick is that they say it has already happened. Over the past four and a half billion years the time has taken place for this complex form of life to evolve. So they say it has already happened.
Prabhupāda: That's all right, we differ in the time. You say millions, billions, and we say seven days.
Vipina: But they'll say that it's able to happen in a couple of days because it's taken billions of years.
Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: The basis of their philosophy is that there's no intelligence behind it, therefore everything is chaotically going on, and by possibility it develops. But our philosophy is that there is intelligence, it can immediately happen.
Prabhupāda: We see practically. The egg theory, we can see practically. It doesn't require millions of years.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: So we want to completely wipe out this theory.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Prabhupāda: Hare Kṛṣṇa. That is mathematics.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: That's longer than Brahmā's life.
Sadāpūta: So mathematics shows that chance alone would never begin to produce the things that go into life, because this, say, is just for one protein, but it's estimated in the simplest cell that they experiment with that there are some three thousand proteins. This is what they estimate. And in a human, in a single cell of the human body, they estimate three hundred thousand, or even three million. It's just an estimate. But it shows that chance is completely unrealistic. Now the scientists will say that both chance and natural laws somehow mysteriously go together in what they call natural selection to produce living structures. In the next slide, this is also a calculation, and it shows that that is not correct either, at least as far as the mathematics goes. What this says is suppose you look at the earth and you're going to wait four point five billion years—that's what they estimate is the age of the earth—and ask what is the chance of finding a given organized structure.
Prabhupāda: First try to point out as many as you can. And our view is they are wholesale mistaken. They are imperfect, speculating.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: There's one strange point here about calculating this that dawn of Brahmā about two billion years old. Now strangely these geological calculations, they also claim that at that time the first free oxygen in the air appeared, first time. The beginning there was no free oxygen. We can accept that? (laughter) Now from here, anyway, this is the basic point, that once this oxygen appeared, free oxygen, then the living entities began to appear slowly. That is the whole theory of this chemical evolution. The results for the chronology is just put it that dawn of Brahmā is two billion years old?
Prabhupāda: Rascals, how they are cheating people.
Rūpānuga: Such a big hoax. They have spent billions of dollars for such a hoax.
Prabhupāda: Now you consider whether I am right or wrong. The moon planet is also Arizona. (laughs) All their business asset is there.
Rūpānuga: So one of the things we want to do is expose this cheating. Should we expose this kind of thing directly like this, or should we indirectly deal with it?
Prabhupāda: No, you do scientifically. I give you the hint. (laughter)
Svarūpa Dāmodara: If we say that, they will be mad at the...
Prabhupāda: Give psychology. Say "Who asked him about Arizona? Why he is speaking Arizona?" That means they are in Arizona.
Prabhupāda: All bluff.
Yadubara: According to the Bhāgavatam, the sun is also 93,000,000 miles away from the earth?
Prabhupāda: That is we shall see later on. It is about. The whole diameter is 4 billions. And sun is situated almost in the middle. It is my firm conviction that they did not go to the moon. Neither they'll be able to go to the Mars as they have planned it.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: But their scientists would be mad...
Prabhupāda: They are mad already, they're talking all nonsense. Already they're mad.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: They're studying all the rocks from the moon.
Prabhupāda: Rascals. What they will get? They studied the rock. And they have found one crack in the whole moon planet, and there's no living being?
Prabhupāda: You find out that verse? (Sauer laughs) Paras tasmāt tu bhāvo 'nyo 'vyakto 'vyaktāt sanātanaḥ (BG 8.20).
Bill Sauer: The... Many stars in this galaxy are far less stable than our star. Our star has been stable now for five billion years. Many stars are not stable that long, and we're kind of living on borrowed time.
Bill Sauer: Well, I could interpret that in another way, not having any background—you'll have to excuse my ignorance—that we are the tool of eternity. We are, through our technical capabilities, the ability to spread life so far among so many billions of stars that there will be eternal life, there will be eternal spirituality.
Prabhupāda: But there is eternal life.
Bill Sauer: But when this planet sits for a billion years at a thousand degrees Fahrenheit, what we know as life will be destroyed.
Prabhupāda: Anything within this material world will be all destroyed. But there is another nature, that is being described. Paras tasmāt tu bhāvo 'nyo 'vyakto 'vyaktāt sanātanaḥ (BG 8.20).
Bill Sauer: But the spirit is manufactured in the body, is it not, sir?
Prabhupāda: Yes, spirit is, but there is a spiritual world also, where you don't require this material body, you remain in your spiritual body.
Bill Sauer: But if there is no bodies left, they are all burned up, there's no spiritual development.
Prabhupāda: (laughs) No, that is not the fact.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: That's like chemical evolution. Million years it will happen.
Prabhupāda: Billion.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Yes, in a million years.
Prabhupāda: Then the answer is the chicken is better than you. He can give you life within seven days. Dr. Chicken is better... They are shameless. Not ordinary, because ordinary a human being will become shameful to speak something nonsense. But they are shameless. In that Bengali, duḥkhānvita(?) One man, one ear was cut off. So in order to hide his cut-off ear he was keeping this side to the river side and this side to the habitation side. So then again his two ears were cut out. Then there is no question of hiding. Both of them were cut out. So these people are duḥkhānvita. When both the ears cut out, there is no shame. They will go on talking all nonsense. Because they are accepted. So many millions of years have passed in the history, nobody could do that, and they are giving hope that life will come after millions of years. Why million? Here is a chicken, he can give life within five days. What credit you'll get after millions of years? But they are duḥkhānvita.(?)So shameless they can speak such nonsense and still pass on as scientists. Tibocham,(?) I think.
Rūpānuga: What is the discussion then?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Oh, some will, you know, "I have done this experiment, and this looks very possible that about four billion years ago there was some chemical that, ah, get life."
Rūpānuga: So if we go there, there will be a big fight. (laughs)
Svarūpa Dāmodara: It will be very interesting if we can throw some mathematics. (laughs)
Prabhupāda: No, you can challenge them with this, that "Why don't you prepare a chemical egg and give it to the incubator and let life come? If you cannot do that, then don't talk nonsense." This is simple thing. Analyze, take a sparrow's egg, small, analyze what chemicals there are, and combine in the same way. Why they do not do that?
Rūpānuga: It's too hard.
Rāmeśvara: They get special contracts, concession rates, and they are able to get their men appointed to important government positions. Also, in the national government, the government of the United States has to always borrow money from banks. There is something called National Debt. Hundreds of billions of dollars they owe the banks, the United States government, to support all their different programs.
Prabhupāda: National Debt.
Rāmeśvara: National Debt. So then the banks are able to use their power to get favors. "Oh, you want to borrow money? Then you must give me some favor." It's common knowledge.
Hari-śauri: Everyone's trying to blackmail everyone else.
Rāmeśvara: Some people say that there is a worldwide conspiracy of bankers, that they can control any government. They can cause a depression. They say that the bankers caused the depression in the 1920s, 1930s, just to increase their power.
Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: The scientists wanted to find out how long it would take before life appeared on this island in the middle of nowhere. So they were thinking it might take thousands of millions and billions of years, because there had been no life there to begin with. But they found that within one year it was full of so much plants, vegetation.
Prabhupāda: Just see, how rascal they are.
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: That should disprove all of their theories.
Prabhupāda: They speak all... That the egg will take millions of years and the chicken is bringing within five days. So why these rascals do not transfer their doctorate title to the chicken (laughter) instead of bluffing other rascals that "We are doctorate"? They should be ashamed to keep their doctorate. "Now let us transfer to the chicken; within five days there is life." Huh? What do you think? Am I right or wrong?
Prabhupāda: So how can I believe you? If you don't believe Kṛṣṇa, shall I have to believe you?
Rādhāvallabha: They have calculated that as soon as you come within a certain amount, a billion miles of the sun...
Prabhupāda: That is you. That is you, not Kṛṣṇa. That is the difference between you and Kṛṣṇa.
Rādhāvallabha: (break) Across the river, there was reports from many people that one ship landed from another planet.
Prabhupāda: Huh?
Prabhupāda: Simply for... But you rascals you cannot understand how they are speaking rascaldom.
Hari-śauri: No, I can see now. I've been with you so long I can understand now.
Parivrājakācārya: They have sent this one ship to Mars at a cost of one billion dollars. They are making these tests.
Hari-śauri: Now there's a second one going around as well. That's Viking 1 that's on there now, and they have another one, Viking 2, that's designed to orbit.
Pradyumna: Vikings were names of pirates. Viking means pirates. Pirate's a thief. Vikings, they used to be thieves. They named their spaceship Viking. (laughs)
Prabhupāda: (break)...the idea going to the other planet? Colonization or what?
Prabhupāda: ...and we don't smoke even. We don't spend a paisa even for sense gratification.
Jagadīśa: They're squandering billions of dollars.
Prabhupāda: Yes. And they, you spend money for cigarette, for cinema, for restaurant, unnecessarily. We don't spend a farthing even, for all this purpose. Simply we take little rice, cāpāṭi, that's all. And still, you are culprit?
Hari-śauri: They, in the papers report that, that we spend very lavishly for the Deities, but for ourselves we eat only very simply.
Prabhupāda: So is it not credit? We spend for God. We are servant of God. We want to see God gorgeously situated, and for us we have no comforts, we don't care for any comfort. We simply spend minimum just to keep the body and soul together, that's all. This is our principle. We don't spend a farthing for our sense gratification. This should be noted down if some case is there, this should be presented. We don't go to restaurant, we don't go to cinema, we don't spend lavishly for dress or something else, no. Neither for furniture (laughter). Eh? If you sit down in a, a pad is that faulty?
1977 Conversations and Morning Walks
Prabhupāda: No, no, so-called poor.
D. D. Desai: That's it. Because the other day when I was reading Howard Hughes and his billion-dollar life, and then also Poli(?), I can say this much, that some of our poorest of Indians are far better off than these gentlemen.
Prabhupāda: Yes, culturally we are better off. Materially, we are certainly very poor. But because we are culturally advanced, even the actual poor man, he does not feel that he is in poverty.
D. D. Desai: Yes, that is the case. That is... There is a basic grace in poverty.
Prabhupāda: That is...
Prabhupāda: Then, sixteen thousand, sixteen millions He can have. Why, if He's unlimited? What is wrong there? If He's unlimited, why sixteen thousand? If He marries sixteen million, sixteen billion, still, it is not sufficient. Otherwise there is no meaning of unlimited. Why you restrict God to sixteen or one? God is under your restriction, and He's still unlimited? That means you do not know what is God. You do not know what is God. You are mistaken.
Rāmeśvara: But very often they will say, "It is not a question of religion that we are concerned with. It is a question of brainwashing and mind control. Your chanting so many hours a day, it's hypnotizing."
Prabhupāda: So, what is to you? That is my business. Why do you bother yourself?
Prabhupāda: No, no, this, this, this śravaṇaṁ kīrtanaṁ viṣṇoḥ, this śloka, was cited just little after the creation. That means millions and millions of years ago. Now, not recently. Many millions and billions of years ago. That is the oldest. Śravaṇaṁ kīrtanaṁ viṣṇoḥ smaraṇaṁ pāda-sevanam (SB 7.5.23). Whichever item you take, it is very, very... Just like this Parīkṣit Mahārāja. That is at least five thousand years ago. So where is the history of the human society in the Western countries? They cannot give history more than three thousand years.
Rāmeśvara: They think it is simply caveman.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Satsvarūpa: "Wait and give us billions of dollars. Research."
Prabhupāda: Yes, yes. Why shall I wait? Immediately necessary. You have no such power to evaporate the water and make into cloud and distribute. Very easily it is being done. Then why don't you accept somebody's doing that?
Satsvarūpa: If a scientist will accept there is God, then there is no harm in making scientific progress.
Prabhupāda: Then they will hear the words of God, Bhagavad-gītā. Then everything will be solved. Yajñād bhavati parjanyaḥ (BG 3.14). Then he will hear. They will chant Hare Kṛṣṇa and there will be rain.
Satsvarūpa: If we condemn everything they do, then they say, "All right, if you think we're nonsense, then don't use our printing press for your books."
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Yes. Just like, for example, NASA this, what is it? Aeronautics and Space Institute, they are applying a lot of grants especially to the study of the origin of life from chemicals and all these research schemes. They are spending billions of dollars. But once...
Prabhupāda: See. How foolish. Billions of dollars they are spending for a false thing, and they are educating. Durāśayā bahir-artha-māninaḥ. (chuckling) It is stated in the SB.. They're proposing something which is not the fact, which will never be possible. still, they'll do.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: In fact, there's one member from here from India, he's in Bombay, that Atomic Research Institute. He's one of the (indistinct) members in this study of the origin of life from chemicals. And if it's possible we would like to give a lecture there in the...
Prabhupāda: He is talking nonsense also?
Prabhupāda: Hare Kṛṣṇa.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: This professor of mine, he was very much against at the beginning of the theory. Then, when I gave this lecture, he invited me for home, in his home, and his wife supported our theory, so he came around, saying that "Yes, science says earth is only 4.5 billion years old, and there are so many defects. So they have to accept that "No, we cannot be correct." So people are coming around slowly.
Prabhupāda: Yes. (break) Kavirāja Gosvāmī says, śrī-kṛṣṇa-caitanya-dayā karaha vicāra, vicāra karile citte pābe camatkāra; (CC Adi 8.15) "Just see what kind of merciful is Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu, and if you consider it perfectly, you'll see it it wonderful." Vicāra karile citte pābe camatkāra. "Oh, here is Caitanya." Caitanya. Caitanya means living force. He says, vicāra, "Just try to understand by logic, by philosophy, by argument." That is vicāra. We are not following Caitanya Mahāprabhu blindly. That is not our position. Just like Arjuna. Arjuna argued with Kṛṣṇa in so many ways. At last, he accepted, "Yes."
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: The whole profession is crooked. She told that they have a cure for cancer. There's a cure for cancer. It comes from a natural herb available in South America. But the American Medical Association has forbidden the importation of this herb, because if they import it, then all of their cancer work is finished. And they're making billions of dollars doing cancer research. So they won't allow this herb to be imported. It has no bad effect, but they will not allow its importation. So one of our devotees, Jayānanda, you know he has cancer now.
Prabhupāda: Ācchā?
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Yes. Oh, he has very severe case of cancer.
Brahmānanda: They say he will die from this.
Mādhava: The scientists' answer? Well, immediately they would not say evolution, because it takes many billions of years to say evolution.
Prabhupāda: Evolution..., apart from evolution, when I dig a pond, water comes out. You don't touch, after few days, after few months, there will be fishes.
Mādhava: They would say there are eggs in the stream and...
Prabhupāda: Wherefrom the eggs came?
Mādhava: From another fish.
Prabhupāda: Wherefrom the eggs came?
Mādhava: From another fish.
Prabhupāda: ...sinful. And for this bluffing, they have spent millions, er, billions of...
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: It said thirty billion dollars just for that one episode. In the article the man says that many Americans already feel the same way he does, that it's a bluff.
Prabhupāda: From the very beginning I have said it is childish, 1958. I am not scientist. I have no... No, there are so many incidences. I never agreed, "It may be they have gone." They did not go.
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: He has very elaborately described how they faked everything. He gave in great detail how each part of the hoax was perpetrated. The thing is...
Prabhupāda: The Apollo, they were dying. They prayed to God. This is also artificial. Hm?
Prabhupāda: And the idea was to prove that Americans are better advanced in science than China and Russia. That was the only aim. Only for this purpose they spent three billions...?
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Thirty billion. And I think also it keeps the people loyal to their... It's the same idea. If you're the best, then the people automatically follow you. "If we're the best nation, then all of our citizens will follow us, respect us, loyal to the nation because the nation is the best in the world."
Prabhupāda: That is admitted by others. Therefore the Britishers, they took shelter of the Americans when they were defeated in Europe. And the Americans, they have got a special leaning towards British. Mostly they came from British Isles. For colonization, Britishers are most forward.
Prabhupāda: Gopāla said.
Girirāja: Yeah. So I thought it would be better just to...
Prabhupāda: No, there is no question of.
Girirāja: Yeah. No, I agree completely. I mean, you're millions and billions of times greater than anyone, so there's no question...
Prabhupāda: No, apart from that, if one has no proper respect for a saintly person, he's useless man. You cannot have any benefit. Or neither he can derive any benefit.
Girirāja: Yeah.
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: From all sides.
Girirāja: Because he'll think he has nothing to learn, that he is already in the best position.
Prabhupāda: Another rascal. Andhā yathāndhaiḥ. He's a rascal, and he's appreciated by another rascal. This is going on.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Even the government is behind this research. NASA and federal funding government, they spend billions of dollars on this research.
Prabhupāda: Just see. Then what is the government? Another combination of rascals, that's all. They have no knowledge.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Some of them are also beginning to feel that...
Prabhupāda: Yes, that must...
Svarūpa Dāmodara: ...there is something wrong...
Prabhupāda: That must be.
Bhakti-Prema: Bhāgavata describes the height of Himalayas, eighty thousand miles.
Prabhupāda: No, about this earth globe.
Bhakti-Prema: About the earth it describes four billion miles.
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: That means Jambūdvīpa.
Bhakti-Prema: No, that means complete earth, four billion miles. That is eight lakhs miles, Jambūdvīpa.
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Four billion is the universe.
Bhakti-Prema: Bhū-maṇḍala.
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Bhū-maṇḍala. Oh, the Bhāgavatam describes Bhū-maṇḍala as earth.
Prabhupāda: Oh.
Yaśodānandana: Bhūmi.
Prabhupāda: So explained there. Then this question is solved.
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Yes. The whole Bhū-maṇḍala fell.
Bhakti-Prema: So the universe is round, and from bottom of the Garbhodaka ocean to top of Satyaloka there is four billion miles. Then the again, from east to west again is another four billion miles. Because Bhū-maṇḍala is situated in between the earth.
Prabhupāda: Explain. He'll explain.
Yaśodānandana: (background talking)
Bhakti-Prema: (background talking)
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: And that is salt water ocean, behind it.
Yaśodānandana: Salt water ocean goes all around.
Bhakti-Prema: All around.
Prabhupāda: He's giving very strong argument.
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: He says, "The Oxford Dictionary defines empirical as 'based on observation and experiment.' Observation and experiment is conducted with limited senses. Therefore the conclusions are naturally limited and imperfect. So in fact, the soul and the existence of God is quite beyond the power of Kovoor's observation. Why be so obstinate? This is common sense, a point anyone can understand. He says, 'It is the unique ability of man to engage in creative thinking that has made him succeed in his fight against the laws of nature.' This is a preposterous claim only a fool would make. Nature forces everyone to become old, diseased, and, lastly, die. Even the most powerful conquerors of the world are helplessly dragged off the stage of life by nature in the shape of all-devouring death. But perhaps Dr. Kovoor will be the first living being in the history of the world that will conquer over death. That remains to be seen. And lastly he says, 'Some of the marvelous achievements of mankind in recent years are the liberation of atomic energy, radio telescopy to reach millions of light years in space, landing on the moon, etc.' Everyone knows that the first thing scientists did when discovering atomic energy was to manufacture the atom bomb and promptly drop two of them on Japan, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, thus annihilating millions of innocent victims in a flash. It is certainly marvelous. (Prabhupāda and Tamāla chuckling) At the expense of untold billions of dollars and years of research and hard labor, scientists have gone to the moon, snapped a few blurry photos, and brought back a handful of rocks, declared to the world that 'There was nothing there, so now we will try to go to Mars.'
Prabhupāda: That means these four things can be secured by any poor man in any part of the world. There is no botheration for securing a piece of leaf, a piece of flower or a little water or a piece of fruit. Any poor man, or any rich man, can secure these. And the Lord says, patraṁ puṣpaṁ phalaṁ toyaṁ yo me bhaktyā prayacchati: "Anyone who offers Me these four things with love and devotion, I accept them." Why? Now, tad ahaṁ bhaktyā upahṛtam aśnāmi. "Because that is secured with sincere love for Me." The Lord accepts our love. You cannot see the Lord. He is far, far away, and still, He is also within us. Therefore His hands are not like our hands. When the Vedas describe, "The Lord has no hands," that means He has no hands like ours. His hand is so large that He can extend His hand in any part of His creation, millions and billions of miles away, everywhere. That is the specific significance of His body. So this is described here.
| Page Title: | Billions (Conversations) |
| Compiler: | Visnu Murti, RupaManjari |
| Created: | 06 of Sep, 2012 |
| Totals by Section: | BG=0, SB=0, CC=0, OB=0, Lec=0, Con=93, Let=0 |
| No. of Quotes: | 93 |