Isolate

Expressions researched:
"isolate" |"isolated" |"isolating" |"isolation" |"isolationists"

SB Canto 2

SB 2.10.2, Translation:

To isolate the transcendence of the summum bonum, the symptoms of the rest are described sometimes by Vedic inference, sometimes by direct explanation, and sometimes by summary explanations given by the great sages.

SB Canto 3

SB 3.26.2, Purport:

When one is fixed in the understanding that he is part and parcel of the Supreme Soul and that his eternal position is to serve in association with the Supreme Lord, he becomes self-realized. This position of rightly understanding oneself cuts the knot of material attraction (hṛdaya-granthi-bhedanam). Due to false ego, or false identification of oneself with the body and the material world, one is entrapped by māyā, but as soon as one understands that he is qualitatively the same substance as the Supreme Lord because he belongs to the same category of spirit soul, and that his perpetual position is to serve, one attains ātma-darśanam and hṛdaya-granthi-bhedanam, self-realization. When one can cut the knot of attachment to the material world, his understanding is called knowledge. Ātma-darśanam means to see oneself by knowledge; therefore, when one is freed from the false ego by the cultivation of real knowledge, he sees himself, and that is the ultimate necessity of human life. The soul is thus isolated from the entanglement of the twenty-four categories of material nature. Pursuit of the systematic philosophic process called Sāṅkhya is called knowledge and self-revelation.

Philosophy Discussions

Philosophy Discussion on Hegel:

Śyāmasundara: Another way of looking is that Hegel considered that his predecessors were abstract philosophers, in other words they were isolating or severing from the whole into parts and that each part was static, not moving, but he saw that the truth is dynamic, it is always changing that these dynamic or that these isolated factors, he called them moments, momentums, that the total of moments was a moving force, that truth was actually dynamic and always changing, not static.

Prabhupāda: That we can understand from our personal self, that I am the soul, I am existing, and the bodily features changes, changes. Then it is changing, therefore it is material. And the spirit soul, it is existing in all conditions. That is the difference between spirit and matter.

Philosophy Discussion on Hegel:

Prabhupāda: Yes. Yes, that is possible. Now, let us talk of this philosopher. If you bring so many questions then we cannot do it.

Śyāmasundara: His idea was that the truth is in the sum of all moments, he called the organic theory of truth. The truth is not static or composed of isolated segments or parts, but it is the sum total of everything and it is constantly changing. So he says that these phenomena or facts of nature or these moments, they are progressing in an evolutionary process according to a course which is prescribed by a universal reason or the world spirit, weltgeist. That the world spirit is unfolding itself through phenomenal events.

Prabhupāda: That means... This is another nonsense proposition. According to the universal reason. So wherefrom the reason comes unless there is a person? That he does not know.

Philosophy Discussion on Henri Bergson:

Hayagrīva: In Creative Evolution Bergson writes, "We may conclude then that individuality is never perfect and that it is often difficult, sometimes impossible, to tell what is an individual and what is not, but that life nevertheless manifests a search for individuality as if it strove to constitute systems naturally isolated, naturally closed." A search for...

Prabhupāda: (aside:) You have given the key?

Hayagrīva: What does he mean by "search for individuality"? Isn't the individual always there?

Prabhupāda: It is no search. We are individual, always. This is stated in the Bhagavad-gītā in the Second Chapter, that we are individual now, we are individual..., were in the past, and we shall continue to remain individual in future. So the individuality is always there, but the living entity, we, we are not as big as Kṛṣṇa. Our intelligence is very meager, is very small, so, so therefore we forget what is our real constitutional position. So to bring to our original constitutional position the..., Kṛṣṇa and His instructions are there. The individuality is always, past, present and future, but when we forget Kṛṣṇa, make our own plan, then we suffer, and when we utilize our individuality properly, little independence, and follow Kṛṣṇa's instruction as His servant, then our life is perfect.

Philosophy Discussion on Henri Bergson:

Hayagrīva: He is speaking of men in general, everybody, all mankind.

Prabhupāda: All mankind, what does he mean all? Everyone is individual. What does he mean? This is not very good, intelligent.

Hayagrīva: Yes. He sees the material worlds as being isolated. He says, "There is then a bond between the worlds, but this bond may be regarded as infinitely loose in comparison with the mutual dependence which unites the parts of the same world among ourselves," excuse me, "which unites the parts of the same world among themselves. So that it is not artificially for reasons of mere convenience that we isolate our solar system. Nature itself invites us to isolate it." So this, this calls to mind the image of a prison house. The isolation of the world, as far as man is concerned, is isolation imposed by material nature on the conditioned.

Prabhupāda: He is isolated. He is thinking in the wrong way. Just like in the prison house every prisoner, every, every criminal is different from other criminal. So everyone has to suffer the consequence of his criminal activities, so every individual person is suffering or enjoying according to his past deeds. So there cannot be any combination. Then we forget the individuality. That is not possible.

Philosophy Discussion on Henri Bergson:

Hayagrīva: We feel, we feel isolation as individuals, and not only is there isolation as individuals but we feel isolated on this planet. Man cannot communicate with beings on other planets.

Prabhupāda: That is his imperfectness. What is the use of having communications with other planet? The other planets are also like these. They are individual persons. So what is the utility of communicating with the other planets? What is the utility? What does he mean by it?

Hayagrīva: Well, man has always had a desire-basically it's a desire for God—but a desire to communicate with something outside of this world, outside of this earth, something higher.

Prabhupāda: The higher principle is there, Bhagavad-gītā, Kṛṣṇa. Why does he not communicate with Him? Then he will, that will make him perfect. What is the use of...? Just like that a tree, it has got many leaves, many branches. So if one leaf communicates with other leaf, that will not help him. But if water is poured on the root of the tree, then everyone will participate, sarva hano 'cyutejyā. So if we communicate with God, Kṛṣṇa, then automatically we understand other things. Yasmin vijñāte sarvam evaṁ vijñātaṁ bhavati (Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad 1.3). Simply by knowing Kṛṣṇa we can understand everything.

Philosophy Discussion on Henri Bergson:

Prabhupāda: That's all right, but what benefit we will get? Suppose it is not very important thing. If you hear how the persons in other plant are talking, so what benefit we will get?

Hayagrīva: Is this isolation a characteristic only of the lower and middle planetary systems? In the higher planetary system, systems, is there so much isolation?

Prabhupāda: Isolation is always there. Even in this world there is isolation, even in animals. The birds, the crows, they remain together, and the swans remain together. So there is isolation between the swan and the crows. So this isolation will continue because everyone is under different modes of material nature. There are three modes of material nature. Multiply three by three, it becomes nine. Nine by nine, then it becomes eighty-one. So, prakṛteḥ kriyamāṇāni (BG 3.27). So according to the association of different qualities the isolation is there, but when they come to Kṛṣṇa consciousness, spiritual platform, so there is no more isolation. When everyone is engaged in the service of the Lord, there is no isolation.

Philosophy Discussion on John Dewey:

Hayagrīva: He says, "Use of the words 'God' or 'divine' to convey the union of actual with ideal may protect man from his sense of isolation and from consequent despair or defiance..."

Prabhupāda: That will never happen. The so-called unity of man by the imaginative process of so-called intelligent philosopher, it has never become possible, neither it will become possible, because every man has got little independence. So unless they are controlled, they will assert their independence, and by this imaginative process they cannot be united. That is another insanity. History has never proved this in the past, and it is not going on in the present, so naturally in the future it will not be possible. That is sane man's conclusion.

Philosophy Discussion on Plotinus:

Hayagrīva: So when the individual soul decides to withdraw, he becomes fragmented, isolated and weak, when he decides to withdraw from the, what he calls the palace of the King.

Prabhupāda: Withdraw, withdraw from the material world?

Hayagrīva: When he decides to withdraw from the spiritual realm, from the governance of the high King.

Prabhupāda: Spiritual wrong?

Hayagrīva: Spiritual realm, the spiritual kingdom.

Prabhupāda: Kingdom. Yes. That is his falldown. When he decides to give up the spiritual life, he falls down in the material life, and that is the beginning of his material tribulations. And so long he will maintain a tinge of material happiness, the nature's life, that he has to accept, a type of material body, and there are varieties. So in all condition the spirit soul remains the part and parcel of the Supreme Lord, but according to the different body he gets different circumstances. A dog is thinking, on account of the dog's body, that he is a dog. A man is thinking that he is a man on account of the human body. The same thing—an American is thinking, because the body has been gotten from America, he is thinking "American." That similarly an Indian, a Hindu, Muslim, Christian, all these designations, due to the body. So when he understands that "I am not this body," this is spiritual education. That "I am different, I am part and parcel of God," then he becomes liberated, impersonally. And when he makes further advancement, and he comes to the platform of understanding the Supreme Truth as the Supreme Person, Kṛṣṇa, and he engages himself in Kṛṣṇa's service, that is his actual life. Kṛṣṇa, in the spiritual world, in the Vaikuṇṭha planets, in the Goloka Vṛndāvana planets, so they can be promoted to any one of them—in the Vaikuṇṭha planets or Goloka Vṛndāvana planet. Then he is happy as associate of Kṛṣṇa. He can enjoy life eternally.

1972 Conversations and Morning Walks

Room Conversation -- October 27, 1972, Vrndavana:

Prabhupāda: No. If that steel, cement, and bricks are meant for preaching, then it is all right. But if there is difficulty, then sometimes we become absorbed in steel-cement. Steel-cement is not bad, provided it is meant for preaching. That is also spiritual. Nirbandhe kṛṣṇa sambandhe yukta-vairāgya. But because we are materialistic, sometimes steel and cement attracts us more than Kṛṣṇa. So this Bombay affair is giving me a little depression. Because so highly thought of, now these people they do not want to stay there. Just like this Mahaṁsa, Dinanātha, they do not wish to return. Something has to be done.

Gurudāsa: Actually it is not only one or two isolated cases.

Prabhupāda: There are many. I have studied all of them.

Gurudāsa: If it was one or two isolated cases, one can think maybe it is personal difficulty, but it is many cases.

Prabhupāda: No, this is due to mismanagement. It is due to mismanagement. Proper leader.

1973 Conversations and Morning Walks

Room Conversations with Sannyasis -- March 15, 1974, Vrndavana:

Pañcadraviḍa: In your lectures you emphasized two aspects must be there, jñāna and renunciation. So some knowledge is there, but that part of the difficulty is that with most of the devotees in every temple in India, is that they have not renounced these dirty things completely. They still are attached to sense gratification even on gross levels. So whether a sannyāsī or anybody interferes with their sense gratification, they tend to not oblige because they are attached to doing things the way they want. And they think because they are in a foreign country here, a long way from America where the standards are very rigid, that they can do any manner of nonsense and nobody will check them. And if you try to correct them, then they will only do it behind your back. We have seen this, with the sweet shops, with rising early, anything that interferes with them doing as, exactly as they please, they don't want to oblige. And this is in Calcutta, this is in Bombay, and it's happening here in Vṛndāvana. It's not something that's isolated here to the palace, but the devotees all over, they are just behaving on the level of sense gratification, end that's why there is so much rajas guṇa in the temples. So much rajas guṇa.

Prabhupāda: This is a fact. So how to correct it. If you do not correct yourself, how you can correct?

Morning Walk -- April 19, 1973, Los Angeles:

Karandhara: They say if they isolate certain amino acids, it's almost like...

Svarūpa Dāmodara: They're almost like components of protein.

Karandhara: They're almost like little animals, little cells. Not quite but almost. So they say that because that matter is almost like a little animal, therefore there must be just one little missing link, one chemical you can add, they're trying to isolate it.

Prabhupāda: That missing link is kicking you. That missing... Here, you say, you take this missing link.

Svarūpa Dāmodara: They are trying to make babies in a test tube.

Prabhupāda: Eh?

Svarūpa Dāmodara: In a few years.

Prabhupāda: What is that test tube?

Svarūpa Dāmodara: In the laboratory, the chemical laboratory, biological laboratory, so they'll take the combinations of the male and the female....

Prabhupāda: Then where is the test tube? It is taken from the living entities.

Room Conversation with Malcolm -- July 18, 1973, London:

Malcolm: If he would then, when he is a grown person, recapture or re-feel the link to his reason for being, he must go back in his experience or thought to the point at which he cried to feel again the feeling of being lost. Now, the Western youth seem to have been forced to accept their position, and the position that they have accepted gives them no freedom to go back and find the point at which they felt the experience of the thing they had lost. So in their minds they would say, "There is something missing. There is no God. But there is a God. Yet I must find him with my mind." And then they know through the search that it is only going back through their own years of experience to the point at which they had lost that they will find it. But for the Westerner it clashes with his total Western heritage, the thing imposed him upon by his senses which is that he may not isolate himself from his community in order to go back. And the young people cannot move because this point holds them.

Prabhupāda: No. The young people, they are moving. They are coming to Kṛṣṇa consciousness. There is no check. Because they are western boys, there is no check. Just like they're all Europeans, Americans. So how they are coming to Kṛṣṇa consciousness? It doesn't matter whether Western, Eastern. Natural propensity is the same, either in the East or in the West. So it doesn't matter. That is not impediment. Anywhere, the science is... Just like your physical science. It is as good as in the West as in the East. For the East, there cannot be a different physical science. The same science can be taught in the East and the West.

1975 Conversations and Morning Walks

Morning Walk -- November 11, 1975, Bombay:

Prabhupāda: They are not scientists. They are rascals. I don't accept them as scientists. They, if they are putting forward theories every day, what kind of scientist? They are not scientist. Scientist means fixed up idea. It cannot be changed. (aside:) Hare Kṛṣṇa. That is scientist. (aside:) Hare Kṛṣṇa. Na hanyate hanyamāne śarīre (BG 2.20).

Harikeśa: Just consider how great they are. They've managed to isolate one little tiny electron and one little tiny positron, and then they send one one way, and they send one the other way, and then they meet and they smash.

Prabhupāda: So what is the benefit?

Harikeśa: But that's so difficult to do, you know. There are so many things get in the way.

Prabhupāda: So you can... Difficult to do, you can count ever... It is very difficult to count this sand. Can you count? It is very difficult. But you can waste your time in counting. (laughter) You are rascal; you can go on: "I shall count how many." But it is not possible. So that is rascaldom. Which is not possible, that we'll get. Now it is... Everyone knows there are some particles. Now you go on counting. Don't eat. Don't sleep. Go on counting. And śāstra says, ""Even if you are able to count this, you'll not be able to know God, even if you are able." This is not possible to count, but even if you become so expert that you can count one day, still it will be acintya tattva. That is... There is a verse that even one day you become the rolled sky... The sky is so big. You can roll it just like you roll up your bedding. And even if you can, all the atoms constituted, still you'll not be possible to know, understand God.

1976 Conversations and Morning Walks

Room Conversation and Reading from Srimad-Bhagavatam Canto 1 and 12 -- June 25, 1976, New Vrindaban:

Devotee (1): You say that we are losing the qualities of memory, strength, but they are experimenting where they can isolate genes of persons who have those qualities and put on...

Prabhupāda: But we have to see actually what is happening.

Devotee (4): They are also transplanting livers and hearts, increasing the duration of life.

Prabhupāda: So whatever they may do, things will happen like this. This is a fact. Can they increase the duration of life? People, can they make any scientific discovery that no man will die less than hundred years? Is there any such discovery?

Answers to a Questionnaire from Bhavan's Journal -- June 28, 1976, Vrndavana:

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: This next question is rather interesting. Question sixteen. "Is it not possible for all sections of Hindus, be they Advaitans, Dvaitans, or viṣiṣṭādvaitans, to come together instead of remaining isolated as warring factions?"

Prabhupāda: Yes. Dvaita and advaita. This is the process of Caitanya Mahāprabhu, to bring all the dvaitas and advaitas in one platform. To understand that he is essentially servant of God. The Advaitas, they are wrongly thinking that he is God himself. That is wrong, or not the proper way of thinking. How you can become God? God is ṣaḍ-aiśvarya-pūrṇam, full with six opulences, all-powerful, all-strenght, all-beauty, all opulent. So this is artificial, to think to become God. And... This is Advaita. And Dvaitas, they think that one is different from God, God is separate from the living entity. But actually, from the Bhagavad-gītā we understand that God is always the Supreme and the living entities, they are subordinate. And in the Vedas also it is said, nityo nityānaṁ cetanaś cetanānām (Kaṭha Upaniṣad 2.2.13). Both of them are living entities, but God is the chief. The difference between the two, that God maintains other living entities. Eko yo bahūnāṁ vidadhāti kāmān. That is a fact. We are maintained and God is the maintainer. We are predominated, we are not independent, and God is predominator. But because the predominated living entities, they are part and parcel of God, therefore in quality they are one. This is acintya-bhedābheda, one and different. The living entity is one in the sense because he is part and parcel of God. So if God is gold, the living entity is also gold. That is one in quality. But god is great and we are minute, small. In that way we are different. Now, Caitanya Mahāprabhu has enunciated acintya-bhedābheda, inconceivable, simultaneously one and different.

Morning Walk -- July 5, 1976, Washington, D.C.:

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: The thing is that the scientists may isolate some cockroaches in a box, and they will watch the cockroaches secrete eggs and this or that or whatever—I don't know exactly how the cockroaches...

Prabhupāda: Not, give up cockroach. There are many other living entities, they come from perspiration. Take for..., bugs. Bugs, they come from perspiration. Many, many come by fermentation.

Hari-śauri: Yes, but it seems that form of the bug must come from the form of another bug.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Hari-śauri: So it's very difficult to understand how it comes from perspiration.

Prabhupāda: The form is coming directly. Why from another? The form is, the birth is coming directly.

Morning Walk -- August 14, 1976, Bombay:

Dr. Patel: They have in Bengal this Standard Pharmaceuticals of Bengal, been able to isolate penicillin from cow dung, and they have a big plant in Calcutta producing penicillin from cow dung. It's stated, you know, how cow dung was considered sacred. Perhaps we did not know that, but by experience.

Prabhupāda: Before this, one Monmohan Gosh, Dr. Monmohan Gosh, he was pathologist in medical college. He proved the antiseptic properties of gobara. He was Dr. Gosh's friend. So he was working in his laboratory also. I know. Long ago.

Dr. Patel: And in gomūtra, sir, there are so many hormones coming, and a big sample of hormones which can be resynthesized as human hormones. That is why gomūtra is being drunk.

Prabhupāda: Gomūtra is good medicine for liver disease. If you drink urine of...

Dr. Patel: Yes, it is proved scientifically so many hormones and by-products and hormones which can be resynthesized into human hormones, modern science.

Indian: (Hindi)

Dr. Patel: That's right, gomūtra is considered sacred by we people that we put a drop in the newly born child's mouth.

Prabhupāda: Pañca-gavya, gomūtra is one of the parts. Pañca-gavya.

1977 Conversations and Morning Walks

Morning Walk -- January 9, 1977, Bombay:

Rāmeśvara: That is their charge, that it is too extreme. They say we isolate the devotees from the real world. We don't let them read newspapers, we don't let them...

Prabhupāda: That is your real world, but you do not know what is reality. Your real world is this body. But this body is not real. That, you rascal, you cannot understand. Your reality is this body, but body not real.

Rāmeśvara: Even if this world is not real, temporarily it's real.

Prabhupāda: Temporary, yes. So I am eternal. I must associate with eternity. Why shall I..., temporary. Suppose if somebody comes in India, American, that is his temporary residence. Why shall I accept India as everything? Similarly this body is another India or for Indian, American. It is temporary, asann, asat. Asann api kleśada āsa dehaḥ (SB 5.5.4). This body is temporary. That you have no knowledge. Why shall I be attached to the temporary things? I am the owner of the body, I am reality, so I must realize myself. Self-realization. This is self-realization, that "I am not this body, I am pure soul, Brahman." Ahaṁ brahmāsmi.

Conversation on Train to Allahabad -- January 11, 1977, India:

Rāmeśvara: In regards to brainwashing, they claim that our life-style tends to take the devotee and isolate him from the world.

Prabhupāda: Yes. We hate to mix with you. No gentleman tries to mix with loafers. In England still, the rich quarter is different from the poor quarter. Is it not?

Hari-śauri: Not so much. It was though, formerly, very strongly.

Prabhupāda: Yes. Aristocratic will never live... Even in America, they don't like to live with the blacks.

Rāmeśvara: No.

Prabhupāda: (aside:) That child...? So that separation... Crows will not like to live with the ducks and white swans. And white swans will not like to live with the crows. That is natural division. "Birds of the same feather flock together."

Conversation on Train to Allahabad -- January 11, 1977, India:

Rāmeśvara: No. But this is their argument, that the standard in America is that you become learned in different fields: science, music, art, literature. But in our Hare Kṛṣṇa movement we are isolating all these things and simply reading one set of literature-Kṛṣṇa.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Rāmeśvara: And therefore our people cannot speak about art, music.

Prabhupāda: Yes. We want to stop your nonsense. That is our mission. Those who are intelligent, they have taken. And you also take. It will take some time.

Rāmeśvara: Another big argument is regarding the children. They say that "You believe in free choice. So suppose the children grow up and they want to go to college. But you have not sent them to a public school. Therefore they are not eligible for going to college."

Prabhupāda: No, it is... They are saved from becoming like you or hippies. You'll become hippie after going to the college, so they are saved. You'll become naked and you'll have, like cats and dogs, sex on the street. But these children are saved.

Conversation on Train to Allahabad -- January 11, 1977, India:

Rāmeśvara: They say that brainwashing means that when you deprive a person of sleep, of food, you isolate him from the rest of the world, you have him chant something over and over again many times, in this way you can get control of his mind, and then whatever you want, he will do, just like a robot.

Prabhupāda: You first of all said that we are depriving with food. Where is this?

Rāmeśvara: This is their argument...

Prabhupāda: This is their argument...

Rāmeśvara: ...that we only let them eat twice a day, and even then, not only is there no meat, but there is very little protein.

Prabhupāda: That depends on him. If he likes to eat that kind of food, you have no right to enforce upon him. Then you are going to enforce upon him. There are different persons; they like different types of food. And food must be according to his own taste.

Conversation During Massage -- January 23, 1977, Bhuvanesvara:

Rāmeśvara: It's called Angola. And the Americans were trying to support the opposing side. But the public in America has got such a bad taste from Vietnam that they became what they call isolationists.

Prabhupāda: They have become hopelessly, what is called, unsuccessful in Vietnam.

Rāmeśvara: Yes. So they're very, very reluctant. So they withdrew public support, and the government had to withdraw, and the country was lost.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Rāmeśvara: America, it seems, is becoming very weak.

Prabhupāda: Means if they have got strength, if they have got strength they can attack Russia. I've said that. But they have no moral strength. Drunkard, illicit sex, they have no mental determination, cannot.