Bill Sauer: I believe the spirit of life lives on totally in this marvelous planet earth, but I feel the spirit has to be carried and nurtured and improved in the body. So I feel we have to carry the bodies, the material bodies, to the other planets to allow the spiritualism to live there also.
Prabhupāda: That is in the material world. If you want to stay in the material, then you change the material body just suitable for a particular place, atmosphere. But we have got our spiritual body. That spiritual body, without any material covering, you can transfer to the spiritual world.
Bill Sauer: You believe you can transmit that to other planets?
Prabhupāda: Yes. We have to transfer, because we are giving up this body. So you must accept another body. So either in this planet or in other planets or as human being or less than human being... There are 8,400,000 types of body. You have to accept one of them according to your karma. Karmaṇā daiva-netreṇa jantur dehopapattaye (SB 3.31.1). How the next body is developed, that is depending on our work. If we work like demigod, then we go and get the body of demigod. And if we work like dog, then we get the body of a dog. Nature's. Kāraṇaṁ guṇa-saṅgo 'sya sad-asad-yoni-janmasu (BG 13.22). According to activity and association of the modes of material nature, we get, up and down, different varieties of body. Some of them are low grade, some of them are high grade. That depends on our association with the modes of nature. Nature's work is going on. Just like if we contaminate some particular germs of disease, that disease will develop and we have to suffer. Similarly, by our contamination or association with the guṇa, qualities of nature... There are three qualities, goodness, passion and ignorance. So we have to know how to associate. If we associate with the goodness, then we are elevated to the higher planetary system, deva. And if we associate with passion, then in the middle, just like human being. And if we associate with ignorance, then go down like animal, trees, plants, like that.
Bill Sauer: How is the spirit held in the system till it finds a new body?
Prabhupāda: Body, that I have explained, that you are associating with some modes of material nature. So according to that association, you'll get next body. Just like, I have already explained.
Bill Sauer: Is that immediately after one dies you transfer to another body, or later?
Prabhupāda: Yes, body is changing every moment. That is the beginning of Bhagavad-gītā lesson.
- dehino 'smin yathā dehe
- kaumāraṁ yauvanaṁ jarā
- tathā dehāntara-prāptir
- dhīras tatra na muhyati
- (BG 2.13)
Every body... Just like a child is changing his body to boyhood, boy is changing his body to youthhood, kaumāraṁ yauvanaṁ jarā. The young man is becoming old man. Similarly, when the body is no more endurable, then you get another body. Na hanyate hanyamāne śarīre (BG 2.20). This body is being destroyed, we are not destroyed. We living entities, we are nityaḥ śāśvato 'yam. We are eternal. The proof is given that the child is growing, getting the boy's body. That means the living entity is there, he has changed bodies. When a child is grown to become a boy, the father, mother do not think that "My child is no more existing." He knows "My child is existing, but in a different body." This is common sense. So we shall exist, we existed in the past, we are existing now and we shall exist in the future, but in a different body. (break)
Bill Sauer: ...in theses that we..., nature tolerates us. We are part of the tree of life, this is the tree of the animal kingdom. And since there is no way that the animal or plant can escape this planet in the body form, but we are here to support this new tree, the tree of technology, the tree of the fourth kingdom, which started out as the animals lived very simply and became more complex until we finally developed a means to launch the seeds of our civilization from this planet to others. We are a special creature which has been given special brain power, special power, which we have abused many times, by the way. But special power in order to create space arks to take, not just humanity, but really an ark of the totality of life to another planet, to, hopefully, hundreds of planets. Because sooner or later this planet will be destroyed by the sun.
Prabhupāda: Other planets also will be destroyed.
Bill Sauer: Pardon?
Prabhupāda: Other planets also will be destroyed.
Bill Sauer: Other planets? There couldn't be enough cosmic disaster to destroy a hundred planets at once.
Prabhupāda: Bhūtvā bhūtvā pralīyate (BG 8.19).
Bill Sauer: Our star will eventually turn into a red giant, will incinerate this earth. Other stars, the astrologers have found, or astronomers, excuse me...
Prabhupāda: You find out that verse? (Sauer laughs) Paras tasmāt tu bhāvo 'nyo 'vyakto 'vyaktāt sanātanaḥ (BG 8.20).
Bill Sauer: The... Many stars in this galaxy are far less stable than our star. Our star has been stable now for five billion years. Many stars are not stable that long, and we're kind of living on borrowed time.
Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa:
- paras tasmāt tu bhāvo 'nyo
- 'vyakto 'vyaktāt sanātanaḥ
- yaḥ sa sarveṣu bhūteṣu
- naśyatsu na vinaśyati
- (BG 8.20)
"Yet there is another nature, which is eternal and is transcendental to this manifested and unmanifested matter. It is supreme and is never annihilated. When all this world is annihilated, that part remains as it is."
Bill Sauer: Well, I could interpret that in another way, not having any background—you'll have to excuse my ignorance—that we are the tool of eternity. We are, through our technical capabilities, the ability to spread life so far among so many billions of stars that there will be eternal life, there will be eternal spirituality.
Prabhupāda: But there is eternal life.
Bill Sauer: But when this planet sits for a billion years at a thousand degrees Fahrenheit, what we know as life will be destroyed.
Prabhupāda: Anything within this material world will be all destroyed. But there is another nature, that is being described. Paras tasmāt tu bhāvo 'nyo 'vyakto 'vyaktāt sanātanaḥ (BG 8.20).
Bill Sauer: But the spirit is manufactured in the body, is it not, sir?
Prabhupāda: Yes, spirit is, but there is a spiritual world also, where you don't require this material body, you remain in your spiritual body.
Bill Sauer: But if there is no bodies left, they are all burned up, there's no spiritual development.
Prabhupāda: (laughs) No, that is not the fact.
Bill Sauer: So you need to take the bodies somewhere so that... (laughs)
Prabhupāda: No, so long you are in the material world you need to take a material body, but if you are in your original spiritual body, then you remain in the spiritual world.
Bill Sauer: Well, I believe there is a matrix of creation, a spiritual... Technical people call it an electromagnetic world, where I'm sure a lot goes on that we are unaware of, but I believe the... It's like one product of the fourth kingdom is the automobile. And that has it's spiritual world. Automobiles, if you destroyed all the automobiles, there are still blueprints around, there are still things that can manufacture other automobiles. But the trial, the improvement, the development the automobile has to take place as an automobile... Likewise, I think the spiritual improvement, the improvement of...
Prabhupāda: Automobile, automatically the automobile does not develop. When a man, a person, develops the design, that is a question of development. But the automobile as it is, it does not develop. It is matter. When matter is handled by a spirit soul, then there is change. Otherwise there is no change.
Dr. Sharma: Perhaps I can give you a scientific explanation. I'm a scientist. According to science every cell is changed within twelve years. Every single body's cell is changed.
Bill Sauer: It's continuous, yes.
Dr. Sharma: It's a continuing process, by the molecular process, all right? And Gītā says: vāsāṁsi jīrṇāni yathā vihāya navāni gṛhṇāti naro 'parāṇi (BG 2.22). Just like you change the old clothes to new clothes-it's an exact word-to-word translation.
Sauer: We're a continually changing image, right.
Dr. Sharma: The body changes. Now the concept of God, according to the scripture, is infinite. With our finite mind, we cannot comprehend the infinite. Because the finite can only comprehend a finite portion of it. Just like when I was a child, my concept of God, the infinity, was a certain portion of infinity, but it changes. So long you are comprehending the material part of an infinity, you are only comprehending a small part, and consequently, when the body changes or the soul changes, you will never be able to comprehend the material and the transition of the material to another planet, because there is no way you can comprehend the totality of the God's manifestation. In the Eighteenth Chapter, when the virāḍ-rūpa is given, he cannot comprehend the whole māyā. And the idea of transporting body or material is just a very small, finite portion of the total infinity, which no one can comprehend. This is what Prabhupāda is...
Bill Sauer: I agree. What we are, are the resulting images of the power of creation. We are the evidence that there is a creative power.
Dr. Sharma: And consequently, since we are only a manifestation of the total power...
Bill Sauer: That's right, we are a manifestation, an image of it.
Dr. Sharma: That's why you cannot... An electric bulbs, when they are turned on and off, the light is there, but it is very hard to say where the electrons are flowing into, which...
Bill Sauer: Well in our case, our electrons are flowing from one place, the sun, and the imagery in your magazine is just beautiful. It shows the imagery of the man and the sun, and what we are, scientifically, as you know, (devotees laugh) we are images of sun energy, and this is where electrons come from. And when the sun goes out, we go out, unless we go to another star where there is another sun.
Vipina: Bill, could you explain to Śrīla Prabhupāda how you think life is created?
Bill Sauer: How it is created?
Vipina: Yes.
Prabhupāda: Who is the creator?
Bill Sauer: Well, there is a creative force. The power of life is light, and you say (laughs) Godhead is light, nescience is darkness. I believe it, it's trite and very true, in my understanding.
Vipina: He thinks everything comes from light, Śrīla Prabhupāda.
Bill Sauer: Now all the religions refer to God as light. Most of the religions, and science agrees. Light is that very fugitive bit of energy that allows life to be possible.
Prabhupāda: Unless there is fire, wherefrom the light comes?
Bill Sauer: From the fire in the sun.
Prabhupāda: Yes, therefore the fire is the source of light.
Bill Sauer: That's the source of light, yes.
Prabhupāda: So as soon as you say light, you must find out the source of light.