Prabhupāda: Yes. Their story is: "As soon as there is form, it is māyā." They cannot think beyond that in their own terms. Because we have got this form, material body, so their generalization is "As soon as Kṛṣṇa or Viṣṇu, anyone, if He takes this form, then it is material." That is called māyā.
Dr. Patel: But He takes the form with the control over māyā. We take the form under control of māyā.
Prabhupāda: Yes. He is the controller of māyā. That they do not understand.
Dr. Patel: They don't understand what is divya-vigraha.
Prabhupāda: Yes. They understand slightly sac-cid-ānanda, but they cannot think of that sac-cid-ānanda-vigrahaḥ. Śāstra says īśvaraḥ paramaḥ kṛṣṇaḥ sac-cid-ānanda-vigrahaḥ (Bs. 5.1). That they cannot understand, being less intelligent. And Caitanya Mahāprabhu has explained, they cannot understand this. Māyāvādī haya kṛṣṇa aparādhī.
Dr. Patel: They are aparādhīs of Kṛṣṇa.
Prabhupāda: Yes. They, the Māyāvādīs, they are offender to Kṛṣṇa; therefore they cannot understand Kṛṣṇa. Aviśuddha-buddhayaḥ (SB 10.2.32). In other places it is said, aviśuddha-buddhayaḥ. Their intelligence is still unclean. Vimukta-māninaḥ. They are thinking that they have become liberated, māninaḥ, imposition, but actually
aviśuddha-buddhayaḥ. Their intelligence is not yet clear.
Dr. Patel: Clouded, cloudy.
Prabhupāda: Clouded, yes. Aviśuddha. Therefore confirms this. Because the aviśuddha-buddhayaḥ, it takes many, many lives to purify it. Bahūnāṁ janmanām ante (BG 7.19). When they come to the purified stage, then they surrender vāsudevaḥ sarvam iti sa mahātmā sudurlabha (BG 7.19). They... (break) ...to be aviśuddha-buddhayaḥ unless they come to the point of surrendering to Kṛṣṇa. And we are unintelligent persons. We do it immediately. Let us do it immediately. Why we shall wait for many, many births?
Dr. Patel: It is not that, sir. I think complete surrendering of our ego at the sacred feet of Kṛṣṇa.
Prabhupāda: Yes, and they cannot.
Dr. Patel: That is bhakti.
Prabhupāda: Yes, but they cannot do it.
Dr. Patel: Because they are egoistic toward the body.
Prabhupāda: Not only that. They think they are very intelligent, overintelligent. They do not take advice of Kṛṣṇa. They are so intelligent that Kṛṣṇa says sarva-dharmān parityajya (BG 18.66), Kṛṣṇa says, bhaktyā mām abhijānāti (BG 18.55), and still they will stick to their jñāna, yoga, karma. Kṛṣṇa clearly says that "You cannot understand Me by this process." Bhaktyā mām abhijānāti yāvān yaś cāsmi : (BG 18.55) "If you want to know Me in truth, then bhakti. Nothing else." And still, they will stick to those.
Dr. Patel: No, but I think they have not understood even Śaṅkarācārya. Śaṅkarācārya has composed stotras on Viṣṇu and... Bhaja govindam, bhaja govinda, govindaṁ bhaja mūḍha-mate.
Prabhupāda: Yes. They have become more than Śaṅkarācārya.
Dr. Patel: They have seen the...
Prabhupāda: Just like later on, the Gandhi's disciples became more than Gandhi, more than Gandhi. That's all. Gandhi planned village organization, and Jawaharlal Nehru planned industrialization. And everything failed. There is no money, and he wanted to establish industry like America.
Dr. Patel: But he did not understand economics, sir. What is money after all? Money is nothing but the labor transformed into materials. We had the huge labor of sixty crores of people. He was capable of transforming that labor into material unfortunately and...
Prabhupāda: Anyway, they changed the Gandhi's program.
Dr. Patel: That is what Gandhi understood, but he did not.
Prabhupāda: How he can understand? He wanted to utilize to become prime minister.
Dr. Patel: Internationally that happened.
Prabhupāda: Hare Kṛṣṇa. Jaya. Now the village program of Gandhi is lost.
Dr. Patel: Absolutely. But whatever he has got, he had a lot of vidhi-niṣedha...
Prabhupāda: And it is lost because it was not God-centered. It is lost.
Dr. Patel: But he was God conscious. I mean, I have been brought up in that camp. Gandhi was a saint. But these people could not follow him. They have not understood him well. Those people who understood him, they died out. They died out.
Prabhupāda: Now, now, Gandhi's āśrama, was there any temple for worshiping Kṛṣṇa? No.
Dr. Patel: They had a temple. My wife was brought up there in the āśrama.
Prabhupāda: There was a temple?
Dr. Patel: In the morning they had to say prayer to Deva. (?) Gītā-mandir they had. They had all the characteristics of a good saint.
Prabhupāda: Why not from the beginning? No, no, no. Gandhi did not believe in Kṛṣṇa. No, yes, he has written, that "I know..."
Dr. Patel: Not that the way we believe, but he did believe.
Prabhupāda: No. That means he is right and we are wrong.
Dr. Patel: We may be right. We may be right. Who knows? Many ways may be right. It is not only that one way be right.
Prabhupāda: Then how we understand who is right and who is wrong?
Dr. Patel: There cannot be only one way. There are many ways.
Prabhupāda: That is the defect. Therefore we present Bhagavad-gītā as it is, no other way.
Indian man (2): Gandhi was a politician.
Dr. Patel: He was not a politician. He was more a bhakta than a politician. He fell in politics. He was a saintly man turned into a politician. He was more a saintly man than a politician. He failed in politics. I have seen it.
Prabhupāda: No, he was studied by the governor of Bengal that "Either Gandhi is a saintly man amongst the politicians or he is a politician among the saintly persons." (laughter)