Man guest: Your Grace, there is an industrial revolution going on in India. What is . . . (indistinct) . . . impact on the spiritual side . . . (indistinct) . . .?
Prabhupāda: Well industry, in your country also going on, but in spite of all industry and big, big universities, why your young men are becoming confused? Why? Why the universities are producing hippies? Eh?
I, I, when I was walking in a park in London, I saw so many young men, they are lying down on the ground. English boys, young men, why he is lying down on the street and park with the background of the British Empire? Why? Can you explain?
Man guest: Perhaps they are searching for something.
Prabhupāda: Why searching on that way, lying down on the street? (laughter) So India is imitating that thing. It is not very good thing. India has lost its own culture and now imitating industrialists. So they do not see what has happened to these industrial countries.
They do not see. They are simply thinking that, "Overnight we shall become like Americans and we shall be happy." But what the Americans are doing there? Why they are producing hippies? What is the remedy?
The conclusion is this industry or this or that will never make you happy unless you become God conscious. If you introduce God consciousness in industry, that is another thing. Otherwise:
- bhagavad-bhakti-hīnasya
- jātiḥ japas tapaḥ kriyaḥ
- aprāṇasya hi dehasya
- maṇḍanaṁ loka-rañjanam
- (CC Madhya 19.75)
Aprāṇasya hi dehasya: just like a dead man, a dead body, he should decorate it nicely. What is the value of this decoration? Similarly, the so-called economic development: decorating this dead body, without knowing what is the thing which is within the body that makes it moving. There is no knowledge, simply decorating the dead body.