Journalist: You think we pay too much importance to money?
Prabhupāda: Yes, everybody, yes. They do not know what is culture of life. They simply want money, that's all.
Journalist: Do you think we have too much for our needs?
Prabhupāda: You are creating your needs. You are not too much in need, but you have created so many artificial needs.
Journalist: Such as what?
Prabhupāda: Everything. Suppose this boy is sitting down. Now I am sitting in a very nice couch. So it is not absolutely necessary that couch is required. But for getting this couch, we had to spend so much energy. So similarly, unnecessarily we have created so many things and going on. That I was going to say, that we come to the human form of life by nature's way. Now what is our duty? Our duty is to make further progress. But instead of going further progressively we are again going to become monkeys and dogs. This is our position.
Journalist: What about other artifacts of civilization like television and motorcars...
Prabhupāda: Yes, it is very good, just like we also use motorcar, but not for fashion. Suppose if we go for preaching. If we can go by car quickly, we take advantage of the car. We have got many cars for preaching work. So everything is good, provided it is used for progressive goodness. (coughs) That our mistake is that when... Now listen, there is the mistake in Darwin's theory also. He has no information that the evolution is taking place, of the body, by the desire of the soul. That he does not know. Just like sometimes people were happy and living in a small cottage. Now they are making big, big skyscraper building. So what is the difference? The cottage and this... The cottage is not becoming the skyscraper building but the man who was living in the cottage, by his desire the skyscraper building is coming. Similarly the evolution means the soul within the body desires a certain type of body and he gets it. Not that the monkey body has developed into human body.
But the soul within the monkey's body desired a human body, and he has got it. This is the process of evolution. The Darwin's theory, this knowledge is lacking. If he is thinking that the cottage has become big skyscraper building, that is not the fact. The owner of the cottage desired to have a skyscraper building, therefore he, from the cottage he transferred to the skyscraper building. It is due to the owners.
Journalist: In that case, if we go on developing, we stay in the skyscraper, or the skyscraper gets bigger.
Prabhupāda: Yes. The skyscraper is not impediment, it is not impediment. If you remain in the skyscraper and develop your spiritual consciousness, you can do that. But the unfortunate thing is that we are too much absorbed in constructing the skyscraper building, forgetting our real business. That is the defect.
Journalist: What about sex and drugs, sex and alcohol.
Prabhupāda: Sex, yes, alcohol, we condemn any kind of intoxication, all our students are forbidden illicit sex. We don't say, "No sex," but "illicit sex," we forbid. Similarly we forbid meat-eating. We don't say that "Don't eat," we simply say that "don't eat meat." You can eat other things, just like we are eating so many nice things.
Journalist: Why not meat?
Prabhupāda: Because it is sinful, you are killing all animals. Your Christian religion says, "Thou shalt not kill." Why you are killing?