Prabhupāda: Yes. Prabhupāda is giving you the same knowledge, that's all. There is no question of cheating. I have received this knowledge from Kṛṣṇa, and you take this. That's all. My business is finished.
Kīrtanānanda: Things equal to the same thing are equal to each other.
Prabhupāda: Yes, that is the duty. Paramparā system means the spiritual master shall not give anything which is not spoken by Kṛṣṇa. That is Caitanya Mahāprabhu's. . . Yāre dekha, tāre kaha 'kṛṣṇa'-upadeśa: "You become guru under My order." "But I do not know anything nicely. How can I become guru?" "No, you have no botheration. You simply take Kṛṣṇa's word and say, and you become guru."
- āmāra ājñāya guru hañā tāra ei deśa
- yāre dekha, tāre kaha 'kṛṣṇa'-upadeśa
- (CC Madhya 7.128)
If the child says to another man, "Father said, 'This is this,' " then he is perfect. He has learned from the father, and the father is perfect, then whatever he says, it is perfect. Why should he take so much botheration? So our process is that, that we become guru not like that rascal Guru-ji. No. We speak whatever Kṛṣṇa has spoken. That's all. Of course, we try to impress upon you with your reason, logic, but we shall speak the same thing, not anything else. Kṛṣṇa says, "I am supreme"; we say, "Kṛṣṇa is supreme." That's all. Where is the botheration? I haven't got to find out by my logic and induction whether Kṛṣṇa is supreme. That I have already done. So Kṛṣṇa is supreme. There is no doubt about it. Now, whatever Kṛṣṇa says, it is all right. That's all.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: That saves a lot of time.
Prabhupāda: Yes, that is intelligence. That is intelligence. These, all these rascals, they are unnecessarily wasting. Śrama eva hi kevalam. Simply they are wasting time, that's all. That is stated in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam,
- dharmaḥ svanuṣṭhitaḥ puṁsāṁ
- viṣvaksena-kathāsu yaḥ
- notpādayed ratiṁ yadi
- śrama eva hi kevalam
- (SB 1.2.8)
You are executing your duties as scientist or as anything, but if you don't have faith in the words of viṣvaksena, then you are simply wasting your time.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: That's one of the chapters in our book that Mādhava is working, that inductive knowledge, there is nothing like inductive knowledge. It's all māyā; it's illusion.
Prabhupāda: Yes, it is illusion. (break) . . .Western countries it is full of inductive knowledge. That's all. (break) Dr. Radhakrishnan used to say, on sarva-dharmān parityajya mām ekam (BG 18.66), "It is too much." (laughter)
Svarūpa Dāmodara: He died just a few months ago.
Prabhupāda: Yes, he died, and brain fag. All his knowledge, last five, six years—he could not recognize his own men even.
Gurudāsa: When we went to see him, he hardly could speak.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Because of his inductive knowledge.
Prabhupāda: That's all. He became a victim of the Western people. Because the Oxford University was paying him very nicely, he became a servant of the Western thought. (break)
Svarūpa Dāmodara: . . .in the evolutionary cycle, the transmigration of the soul, we were inquiring whether there's any specific details in the Vedas about the step-by-step transmigration of the spirit, of the soul.
Prabhupāda: Yes. From the aquatics to the plants, and then insect, then bird, then beast, then human being.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Then it's the same with the Darwin's Theory.
Prabhupāda: Darwin has taken from here, and he has tried to explain in a hodgepodge way so that he may get the credit, that's all.
Ravīndra-svarūpa: The plants have more consciousness, manifest consciousness, than aquatics?
Prabhupāda: Huh?
Ravīndra-svarūpa: That plants and grass, they are more conscious than aquatics.
Prabhupāda: Yes. That is also mentioned in the Bhāgavata, about different animals, how they are conscious, developed.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: In the Bhāgavata, in the later chapters, Śrīla Prabhupāda? Not up to the present Fourth Canto that. . .
Prabhupāda: Fourth Canto there is, how one animal is more conscious than the other.
Ravīndra-svarūpa: Yes.
Devotee: Prabhupāda, did you say that trees have the ability to see and hear in the Bhāgavatam?
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Devotee: How is that?
Prabhupāda: Just like a vulture, he has got more seeing power than you. Is it not?
Devotee: Yes. He sees the carcass, you give the example, from way up.
Prabhupāda: Yes. (chuckles) But he can see only the carcass.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: That is also acintya-śakti of the vulture. He can see. . . He has special eyes.
Prabhupāda: No, it is acintya-śakti for us, but Kṛṣṇa has given different power to different animals. For us it is acintya, not for Kṛṣṇa.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Not for . . .?
Prabhupāda: For Kṛṣṇa there is nothing like acintya. Therefore we have to take knowledge from Kṛṣṇa. (break)
Balavanta: . . . the Vikings first discovered America, they said.
Brahmānanda: From Scandinavia came, before Columbus.
Balavanta: But Mahābhārata describes all the continents even way before that, doesn't it?
Prabhupāda: Yes.