Prabhupāda: What is that, salt? Salt example was . . . explain.
Yogeśvara: What was your point?
Desmond O'Grady: I'm saying it's difficult to argue about one kind of situation in terms of another kind of situation when the nature of the problem or the nature of the result is different, you know.
Prabhupāda: No, the kinds or varieties may remain, but sometimes the varieties help. Just like if you bring varieties of flower in a vase, it becomes very beautiful, but they are all flowers. So you have to become flowers. So even in varieties there is unity of beauty.
Desmond O'Grady: Yes, I accept that, of course.
Prabhupāda: Yes. So that is . . . (break)
Ātreya Ṛṣi: . . . there's a great difference between that and what we know today as Christians. They're designations. We are not talking . . .
Prabhupāda: That is another point. The thing is that Christ came to preach the message of God. So therefore, to become actually Christ conscious means God conscious.
Desmond O'Grady: God conscious, exactly. And to become God conscious means . . .
Prabhupāda: Kṛṣṇa conscious.
Desmond O'Grady: To become self conscious.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Desmond O'Grady: To be conscious of who you are yourself.
Prabhupāda: Yes, yes. God consciousness includes self consciousness. But self consciousness is not God consciousness. God consciousness includes self consciousness, but self consciousness is not God consciousness.
Desmond O'Grady: Well, it may be.
Prabhupāda: No.
Desmond O'Grady: You may achieve recognition of the God that's in yourself, of that aspect.
Prabhupāda: When you are God conscious . . .
Desmond O'Grady: Without being pantheistic, you mean?
Prabhupāda: Just like if you come in front of the sunlight, the sun consciousness is there, which includes your personal conscious. You also see. In the darkness you cannot see. At night you do not see even your hands and legs. But if you come in front of the sun, or light, then you see the sun and see yourself. So without the sunlight, without God consciousness, self consciousness is incomplete. But God consciousness makes self consciousness very clear.
Desmond O'Grady: Well, a lot of young people that we meet in our teaching profession, we don't try to teach them any kind of didactic salvation. But we do try to direct them towards an awareness of what is best and what is most beautiful in them and what is most spiritually nourishing in the world about them, in so far as the system allows us. And I speak of my friend Michael and we here. And the one condition or emotional state—because very frequently the students are not mature enough to be in a spiritual condition; they are in a emotional condition rather than a spiritual one—what we are faced with is the basic question of "Who am I?" "What is it all about?" "Why am I here?" "Why should I be here?" "Who are you, and who the hell are you to tell me what to think or what to read or what not to read? Why should I read Shakespeare? Or why should I read Saint Augustine? Or why should I listen to Mozart? I prefer Bob Dylan," and these kind of questions which seem to emanate from a very disillusioned state of mind, an insecurity, an uncertainty, and a lack of credibility in the total structure of things as they are. And so we're frequently faced with not just directly having to answer these questions, as I said, didactically answering them by saying in a catechismic sort of way, "Who am I?" "You are . . ." "What am I doing here?" "You are doing this here," which one can do, of course, also.
Prabhupāda: So . . .
Desmond O'Grady: And so, rather than present the kind of answers that one could present if one was trained in oneself originally . . . and one who is first of all trained, then one has to untrain oneself, and then one trains oneself from that experience basically. This is my way of seeing it. And then one tries to help others through this course with the same process. Do you think that we should tell them more directly, or . . . I mean, the basic question is how to handle the problem of modern education? That's the basic question.