Go to Vanipedia | Go to Vanisource | Go to Vanimedia


Vaniquotes - the compiled essence of Vedic knowledge


Mortal (Conversations and Letters)

Conversations and Morning Walks

1968 Conversations and Morning Walks

Radio Interview -- March 12, 1968, San Francisco:

Prabhupāda: Yes, there are two different processes of acquiring knowledge. One process is to research oneself by his own endeavor, by his limited sense speculation. And another process is to know from the authority. Just like deductive process, we say, man is mortal. This knowledge is received from higher authorities, just like our teacher or parents, we understand that man is mortal. Another process is one can make research whether actually man is mortal.

Radio Interview -- March 12, 1968, San Francisco:

Prabhupāda: Yes, there are two different processes of acquiring knowledge. One process is to research oneself by his own endeavor, by his limited sense speculation. And another process is to know from the authority. Just like deductive process, we say, man is mortal. This knowledge is received from higher authorities, just like our teacher or parents, we understand that man is mortal. Another process is one can make research whether actually man is mortal.

Caller: Well, is there some kind of a spiritual signal you get within yourself that tells you this?

Prabhupāda: No, your question is what I am? So this what I am, you can search yourself by your mental speculation, that is one way. Another way to understand your position, from higher authority. So we take this process. We understand what I am from higher authority, Kṛṣṇa. Kṛṣṇa says that He is God, and He says, "All these living entities are My part and parcels." So we are component parts of the Supreme Lord. Therefore as the component part of machine is to cooperate with the full machine, so our duty is to cooperate with the Supreme Lord. That is our identity.

1969 Conversations and Morning Walks

Room Conversation with Allen Ginsberg -- May 11, 1969, Columbus, Ohio:

Allen Ginsberg: (to Peter) Do you want to sing "Tears Up"? (singing:)

Whate'er is born of mortal birth

Must be consumed with the earth,

To rise from generations free,

Then why have I to do with thee?

The sexes sprung from shame and pride,

Blow in the morn, in the evening die,

But mercy change death into sleep
The sexes rose to walk and weep.
The mother of my mortal part

With cruelty did'st mould my heart,

And with false self-deceiving tears,

Did'st bind my nostrils, eyes and ears

Did'st close my tongue in senseless clay
And be to mortal life betrayed.
The death of Jesus set me free
Then what have I to do with thee.

It is raised, a spiritual body.

Prabhupāda: He believes in spiritual body. That's nice. (laughter)

Allen Ginsberg: It's a,...

Prabhupāda: That is Kṛṣṇa Consciousness.

1971 Conversations and Morning Walks

Interview with Reporters -- November 10, 1971, New Delhi:

Prabhupāda: Yes. One must be brahma-niṣṭham, śrotriyaṁ brahma-niṣṭham. Tad vijñānārthaṁ sa gurum eva abhigacchet (MU 1.2.12). Abhigacchet means must. You must find out a guru who knows Kṛṣṇa. Otherwise there is no possibility of knowing Kṛṣṇa.

Reporter: So, sir, for we poor mortals it is very difficult to immediately, you see, to...

Prabhupāda: It is not a subject matter to understand immediately.

Reporter: (indistinct)

Prabhupāda: It is not subject matter to understand immediately. It is a science.

Reporter: Yes, a science.

Prabhupāda: It is a science, jñāna sa vijñāna. So you cannot understand a science in five minutes. That is not possible.

Reporter: Yes. So we were trying to understand... No. We have just come to understand you.

Prabhupāda: Yes. That was others you cannot understand.

1973 Conversations and Morning Walks

Conversation with Mr. Wadell -- July 10, 1973, London:

Prabhupāda: Well as soon as you say, "perhaps," "maybe," that is not... This has no meaning. Because it is not certain. You have no clear idea.

Mr. Wadell: But are there not things about which in the mortal life one can have no clear idea?

Prabhupāda: But if there is clear idea, why they should not take it? Why they should speculate "perhaps," "maybe"?

Mr. Wadell: But there are many things about which I cannot have any clear idea. I cannot...

Prabhupāda: No, you cannot have but if you get clear idea, why you do not take it.

Mr. Wadell: No, I mean even in the physical realm. I cannot at this moment conceive what it is like, say, to be in Sydney, in many cities in the world. There are many things, many bits of knowledge which I cannot have. I cannot be everywhere at once. I am here now. I do not even know what is happening in the place from which I have come.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Conversation with Mr. Wadell -- July 10, 1973, London:

Prabhupāda: The same relationship. We are all sons of God. Therefore, simultaneously, we are one and different. As son, the ingredient, the same. But he is father, we are son, we are different. This is called the philosophy of acintya-bhedābheda. Bheda means different, and abheda means one. So simultaneously one and different.

Mr. Wadell: May I ask you another question, which is, I have a mortal father, a man, who you know my parents, father and mother. Do you think that my father is in any way different in his parentage of me from God in His parentage of me.

Prabhupāda: No, everyone. Not only your father, your grandfather, your, or grandson, the same relationship: simultaneously one and different... Because we are spirit soul and God is the supreme soul. All the souls have come, emanated from Him. He is the supreme soul and Paramātmā. The exact word used in the Vedic language, Paramātmā, Parabrahma, Parameśvara. This word param. Param means supreme.

Conversation with Mr. Wadell -- July 10, 1973, London:

Prabhupāda: Insufficient.

Mr. Wadell: ...of mortal things which are in our experience, and we apply those to something beyond the purely mortal realm, and sometimes the descriptions we use are to be taken only to a certain extent. They are useful as illustrations but they are not to be taken as necessarily a fact. I think this has misled many people when they think about God, that we use a description and it's rather like what we talked about to begin with, the question of names.

Prabhupāda: Question of?

Mr. Wadell: Names. Yes, I wrote my name for my friend here, and we joked as we came in about how this name should be pronounced. And, of course, it depends how people, how well people know me, which name would apply to me. But I want to go one further than that and I want to say that to know a name or a large number of facts and to be able to make a large number of statements about people is not the same as really knowing this person. And this is our difficulty as I see it in relating ourselves to God, that although we make many statements about Him which are often picturesque ones. We say that He is almighty, that He can, in our religion, move mountains or all sorts of separate statements like that. If you take all those statements together, they wouldn't really describe him at all sufficiently.

Prabhupāda: Now, suppose one man is engineer. So if I address him "Mr. engineer," what is the wrong?

1974 Conversations and Morning Walks

Room Conversation -- February 13, 1974, Vrndavana:

Prabhupāda: That is the special...

Dr. Kapoor: It is as much Kṛṣṇa's responsibility to remember us in times of adversity, as it is ours to remember Him. But we are mortals and we are likely to forget Him.

Prabhupāda: (Hindi).... Śraddha-śābde viśvāsa (kahe) sudṛḍha niścaya kṛṣṇe bhakti kaile sarva-karma kṛta haya (Cc. Madhya 22.62). Śraddha. Our Vaiṣṇava philosophy (Hindi) śraddhā-śābde viśvāsa, full faith, viśvāsa, or sudṛḍha niścaya. (Hindi) Kṛṣṇe bhakti kaile sarva-karma kṛta haya. If one becomes dovetailed in the service of the Lord, Kṛṣṇa, then everything is done nicely. Śraddha-śābde viśvāsa sudṛḍha niścaya.

Dr. Kapoor: And people are really astounded to see śraddhā, especially śraddhā and guru in your disciples. That is the one thing that is clear to everybody.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Room Conversation with Irish Poet, Desmond O'Grady -- May 23, 1974, Rome:

Prabhupāda: Yes, that is negation. Then you must say also what you are.

O'Grady: I am a mortal human being, a member of the animal kingdom.

Prabhupāda: No human being is immortal.

O'Grady: Mortal, mortal, mortal.

Prabhupāda: Mortal.

O'Grady: That which dies, rots and is forgotten.

Prabhupāda: That is some conception, mortality. Mortal? Mortality is not absolutism. So long you are mortal, you are not on the absolute platform because you are actually immortal. That is stated in the Bhagavad-gītā, na jāyate na mriyate vā kadācit. Find out. Na jāyate na mriyate vā kadācit.

O'Grady: But is there anything wrong with accepting the fact that you are mortal, you die, you rot and you become nothing?

Prabhupāda: No. That is the polluted conception. Actually you are immortal; you do not die. That is your position. Read this verse.

Room Conversation with Irish Poet, Desmond O'Grady -- May 23, 1974, Rome:

Nitāi:

na jāyate mriyate va kadācin
nāyaṁ bhūtvā bhavitā vā na bhūyaḥ
ajo nityaḥ śāśvato 'yaṁ purāṇo
na hanyate hanyamāne śarīre
(BG 2.20)

"For the soul there is never birth nor death. Nor, having once been, does he ever cease to be. He is unborn, eternal, ever-existing, undying and primeval. He is not slain when the body is slain."

Prabhupāda: That is it. That is the position of the soul. So when there is mortality, that is not perfect stage. And when he attains the stage of again immortality... Because actually he is immortal.

O'Grady: Actuality is immortal.

Prabhupāda: Yes, yes.

O'Grady: Hm, not bad. Because actuality has to do with effect.

Prabhupāda: Yes. The actuality is immortal. He never takes birth.

1976 Conversations and Morning Walks

Room Conversation -- April 23, 1976, Melbourne:

Prabhupāda: Yes. That's right, but what Jesus Christ says?

Devotee (4): What does Jesus Christ say? What is Jesus Christ saying? What are his instructions?

Guest (3): Well, Jesus Christ, we believe that when he lived as a mortal man, he organized the church, and the people followed him...

Prabhupāda: What is the instruction?

Guest (3): The instructions to Joseph Smith was, well, in a ten-year period of time, from 1820 to 1830 many things happened to Joseph Smith. One thing was that he was visited by an angel called Moronai, who lived fourteen hundred years earlier in the Americas, and he was a prophet, and he wrote a book and sealed it away, and it was written on gold plates. Joseph Smith translated this ancient work of Egyptian hieroglyphics into English, and it was called the Book of Mormon after a great prophet.

Prabhupāda: So what is the message?

Guest (3): Well, the message is that the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is the kingdom of God.

Prabhupāda: So what is the church of Jesus Christ?

Morning Walk -- June 4, 1976, Los Angeles:

Prabhupāda: If some horses can fly in the sky, what your imagination will check it?

Rāmeśvara: But they say that the planet is so heavy and so big it is not possible for a mortal...

Prabhupāda: That's all right. The planet is.... How it is floating in the air?

Rāmeśvara: They have an explanation for that.

Prabhupāda: No. You do not know the explanation. There are so many other things. Just like we say there is ocean of milk, ocean of liquor, ocean of oil.

Rāmeśvara: No, all of that they take to be...

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Mythology.

Rāmeśvara:...imagination.

Prabhupāda: But why? Your imagination. You have not gone throughout the whole universe. You cannot say. You are imperfect.

Room Conversation -- July 7, 1976, Baltimore:

Prabhupāda: That is imperfect. Inductive knowledge is always imperfect. Deductive knowledge is perfect if it is taken from the authority. Suppose man is mortal. So inductive process is that you examine every man whether he's mortal or immortal. So suppose you have seen millions of men, and they are all mortal, they die. Then your conclusion is man is mortal. But I can say you have not seen a man who does not die. I can say that. So this inductive knowledge will remain always imperfect. It will never be perfect, because your examination is limited. So I can that say you have not seen the person, man... Suppose if I say you have not seen Vyāsadeva, he's immortal. You have not seen Aśvatthāmā, he's immortal. So how this scientific research can be perfect, inductive? It is never perfect. Because you may be missing somebody who is immortal. Then your conclusion is wrong. There is no scope of studying all the living beings. There is no such scope. You have limited scope. So your seeing power is limited. How you can decide from the limited seeing power?

1977 Conversations and Morning Walks

Room Conversation With Son (Vrindavan De) -- July 5, 1977, Vrndavana:

Prabhupāda: "Probably," "perhaps." Why Darwin's theory is full of this "perhaps," "probably," "millions of years"? What is this nonsense knowledge? Is that knowledge? A mortal man is suggesting "millions of years" and "perhaps," "probably." And that's science. I never liked this.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Never.

Prabhupāda: That is my disease.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Even in your school days. How did you feel about when they taught Darwin when you were in school?

Prabhupāda: We were never taught. But in our college days one professor, Dr. Kalidas Nahan(?), he was sometimes speaking in relation with history, "pre—historic age," that. But I did not take it very seriously. He was speaking about some anthropology. But he was very... No, historians, they must be very intelligent. And they must refer to this Darwin's theory.

Correspondence

1947 to 1965 Correspondence

Letter to Raja Mohendra Pratap -- Cawnpore 13 July, 1947:

He is better realized when He by His causeless mercy agrees to descend in this mortal world but he He is never realized by the partial speculations of the empiric philosophers however systematic and long-termed it may be.

7) Sri Krishna is the Personality of Godhead and is the Summum Bonum Cause of all Causes proved by fact and figures in the statement of Bhagavad-gita, but He reserves the right of not being exposed to the sensual speculations of the empiric philosophers.

8) One should therefore surrender unto Him if one wants to know Him as He is and that is the real process to approach the Infinite by the infinitesimals.

9) Sri Krishna is easily available by the religion of love i.e. by love and service as conceived by the damsels of Vraja who had practically no education whatsoever and much less any claim for high class birth right.

Letter to Jawaharlal Nehru -- Allahabad 20 January, 1952:

And we question each other and debate and quarrel and evolve any number of 'isms' and philosophies. As in the days of Socrates, we live in an age of questioning, but the questioning is not confined to a city like Athens: it is worldwide".

There are two ways of answering such questions, I mean the deductive way and inductive way. Mortality of man is established by either of the above ways. In deductive way we take it for granted from reliable source, "Man is Mortal." But in the inductive way we approach the same truth by our poor reasoning of "observation and experiment." By observation we can see that Gandhi dies, Fotilal dies, C.R. Das dies, Patel dies and therefore we conclude that man dies or, "Man is Mortal". Then again in the same deductive way when we reason that man is mortal, and find that Jawaharlal is a man and thus conclude that Jawaharlal is mortal.

Truth means Absolute Truth. Relative truth is conditional and when the conditions fail, the relative truth disappears. But Absolute Truth does not exist on conditions it is above all conditions.

Letter to Sri Padampat Singhania -- Kanpur 7 May, 1957:

The one is Deductive Process and the other is Inductive Process. In the Deductive Process we deduce the conclusion from the statement of higher authorities whereas by the Inductive Process we make a research in the truth by our own imperfect knowledge and induce a conclusion. Say for example if we want to know how man is mortal then we have to make a research in statistics of daily death occurrences. Rama dies, Syama dies, father dies, mother dies, he dies, she dies, etc. all these experiences may help us in the conclusion that after all man dies and therefore the conclusion man is mortal made. But the defect of this process of knowledge is that it may be that we have not seen a person who is still living even after some thousands of years. As soon as we get this information the whole conclusion that a man is mortal—is at once changed and we have to say that some men are mortal. In this way the research work of scientific thought are constantly changing because the very research work is done by person who is himself a condition by the four principles of mistake, illusion, cheating and imperfection. Therefore, the Deductive Process is more effective. Man is mortal we have heard it from very authoritative sources like the Vedas and we have accepted it.

1967 Correspondence

Letter to Rayarama -- San Francisco 14 December, 1967:

As soon as you finish the Gitopanisad business and the matter is handed over to the MacMillan Co. we begin on the Bhagavatam work without delay. Bhagavatam must be finished before my mortal body stops to work and your help in this connection will be very much helpful. You can stop for the time being the London scheme. Brahmananda is shortly going there and after his return, we may all go together to London and start a branch there in grand scale, so also in Amsterdam and in Berlin or Moscow. We have to save the world-people from the misconception of voidism and impersonalism. "The absolute is sentient Thou hast proved all impersonal calamity Thou has moved." These lines were presented by me to my spiritual master and He was highly pleased with me. Let me follow the same principle and my Guru Maharaja will bless me. I have always my good wishes and blessings for you all because you are cooperating in a great mission. Thank you.

1968 Correspondence

Letter to Sacisuta -- Montreal 17 June, 1968:

Bhismadeva was endowed with the power of leaving his material body at his will and his lying down on a bed of arrows was his own choice.' Did Bhismadeva get wounded by arrows at the battle of Kuruksetra, or did he simply chose to leave his mortal body and thus lay down for passing on a bed of arrows") Bhismadeva was surely wounded by the arrows of Arjuna. But wounding is not always the cause of death. In our own practical experience we know that many soldiers become wounded in battlefield, sometimes very severely, but still one is not dead—he recovers in the hospital. So Bhismadeva was certainly such severely wounded, but that was not the cause of his death. He preferred to lie down on the bed of arrows and all Pandavas and Krishna arrived there to see his passing away. So his passing away was just on his own will—that was the benediction given by his father. In the battlefield Bhismadeva also wounded very severely Krishna. He was a great devotee of Krishna.

1969 Correspondence

Letter to Syamasundara -- Los Angeles 15 July, 1969:

I have prepared a nice book, Krishna, and I want to print it in a deluxe edition. If some of your friends finance this publication, it will be a unique presentation to the world. This will contain Krishna's life from the beginning of His Appearance to His Disappearance from this mortal world. It will contain all of His activities throughout. It is full of philosophy, instructions, transcendental pastimes and artistic pictures.

Page Title:Mortal (Conversations and Letters)
Compiler:Rishab, RupaManjari, Mayapur
Created:23 of Dec, 2010
Totals by Section:BG=0, SB=0, CC=0, OB=0, Lec=0, Con=14, Let=6
No. of Quotes:20