Śyāmasundara: Suppose I have an idea, tomorrow I want to go to Pittsburgh. So then I actualize my idea, tomorrow if I go to the airplane, airport, get a ticket...
Prabhupāda: But you have heard that Pittsburgh, there is a place, a substance, you may not have seen. So you are preparing to go to Pittsburgh means Pittsburgh is a fact. Not idea. You are not going to idea Pittsburgh, you are going to actual Pittsburgh. That you have known, therefore you are (indistinct). You might have not seen. Just like I came to New York. I never saw it. I got an idea, "It may be like this." But I was coming to actual fact.
Kīrtanānanda: Now I see your point.
Śyāmasundara: I see your point also but supposing then that I have an idea I'm going to a vacant place, a vacant land and build a house which has never existed before...
Prabhupāda: So you have seen other house, that you have got this idea.
Śyāmasundara: A new house.
Prabhupāda: That's all right, new house means you have seen other houses. Try to make a new idea. That's all.
Śyāmasundara: But originally, originally before there was ever any houses.
Prabhupāda: That doesn't matter. But you have seen another place, a house. (indistinct), we have seen, in that particular (indistinct).
Śyāmasundara: No, but millions of years ago before there was any house... Suppose I am the first man on the planet, there has never existed any other house, then I get an idea to build a house, does that idea precede the substance?
Prabhupāda: Yes, according to our philosophy, just like Brahmā. Brahmā, he created another universe in his previous birth, but in this birth he forgot. So therefore he underwent tapasya for one hundred years, is it not? It is stated. So it is called... Just like you know something, so you think (indistinct). This is like that.
Śyāmasundara: If I invent a new invention...
Prabhupāda: It is not invention. That I am seeking where I have kept a thing, that means it is there, I have not forgot.
Śyāmasundara: In other words it existed before.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Śyāmasundara: Just like I invent the television set...
Prabhupāda: Because you cannot invent anything which is not in the substance.
Śyāmasundara: Even if I invent, for instance I invent the atomic bomb...
Prabhupāda: There is no question of inventing. The atomic bomb, what is that, it is brahmāstra, it is already made. You are not inventing.
Śyāmasundara: Where does the idea come from?
Prabhupāda: From the origin.
Śyāmasundara: From our past lives?
Prabhupāda: From the origin, yes.
Devotee: (indistinct) one of the chapters of the Bhāgavatam, Śrīla Prabhupāda.
Prabhupāda: That is, that is, I have explained in Bhagavad-gītā that a yogī remembers in due course, past activities, and again he begins. Where he left it, from that point again he begins. Śucīnāṁ śrīmatāṁ gehe yogo bhraṣṭo sañjāyate (BG 6.41). He is given the chance.
Kīrtanānanda: So all ideas can be traced back to the original substance which is Kṛṣṇa.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Ahaṁ sarvasya prabhavo (BG 10.8). Therefore Kṛṣṇa says, "Everything from Me." Therefore if you get Kṛṣṇa, then you get all the substance. Yasmin vijñāte sarvam evaṁ vijñātaṁ bhavati (Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad 1.3). That is the Vedic statement. If you simply understand God, then you understand everything.