Prabhupāda: Philosophy without any fact is mental speculation. What is the value of such philosophy? He has already practical value. According to person, your mentality, your personality may not agree with me. Then you have got different philosophy. And what is the practical use?
Devotee: This seems to have a similarity to the divisions of faith according to the three guṇas.
Prabhupāda: No. The philosophy is not faith. Faith is a different thing, and fact is different thing. Philosophy must be on the fact, not on faith. Faith may be blind faith. That is different thing.
Śyāmasundara: So he says we seek a universe which is appropriate to our predispositions. If we have a certain inclination we automatically seek to piece together the universe according to our, the way we see things, our perspective.
Prabhupāda: What is that, seeing?
Śyāmasundara: So that people who think differently about things, who have different inclinations and abilities, different perspectives, they will automatically see the world or the universe in a different manner.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Śyāmasundara: They will have different philosophies.
Prabhupāda: Yes. But that does not prove the fact. Different men have got different ideas of peace, that does not mean that is peace. Peace is a different thing. Peace is that which applies to everyone. That is peace. Not that because I think by drinking I shall be peaceful, therefore drinking is peace. No. And somebody thinks, "By doing this thing, I'll feel peaceful." No. There must be a standard of peace which will be applicable to everyone. That is real peace. We are talking of that peace.
Śyāmasundara: He sees that there are two basic or fundamental philosophical temperaments. The one he calls tendermindedness, which is exemplified by the rationalist, the idealist, the optimist, the religionist, and the dogmatist; and toughmindedness, or the empiricist, the materialist, the pessimist, the irreligious, the fatalist and the skeptic. He says that philosophers are of two types: tender minded and tough minded.
Prabhupāda: So this depends upon one's education. If one is educated, in one way he may become tender, and another man, if he is educated in a different way, he may be hard. But our proposition is that originally the soul is good. This tenderness and hardness, they are developed later on. But they are not standard. When you come to the platform of soul, there everything is good. In that platform, either tenderness or hardness, both of them are in the absolute. So our philosophy is that, as we understand from Bhagavad-gītā, that every living entity is part and parcel of God. So God is good, pavitra. Just like Arjuna accepts, paraṁ brahma paraṁ dhāma pavitram (BG 10.12). Pavitra means pure. But because we are part and parcel of God, therefore we are pure. The impurities are acquired by our contamination with this material world. So either you become tender or hard - that is impurity of this material world. So we don't give any credit to any person, either he is tender or hard. These are all material qualifications. When he is spiritually placed, then we give him, that he is now liberated, either from tenderness or from hardness. These are all material qualifications. One is hard, one is tender. So that is our material quality. Just like a disease. One is suffering from headache, one is suffering from indigestion, or one is suffering from fever. So one who is suffering from headache, he is thinking, "Instead of having a headache, if I would have suffered from indigestion it was better." You see? And the man who is suffering from indigestion, passing stool every three minutes, he is thinking that "If I would have suffered from headache instead of this nasty disease, I would have been all right." So these rascaldom, either tenderness or something, it is the same thing. It is our mental concoction that he thinks this is a better disease. It is not better. It is bad. Therefore it is explained by Caitanya-caritāmṛta, 'dvaite bhadrābhadra sakali saman, ei bhalo ei manda sab more ghara. 'Dvaite: when you are contaminated, diseased... I will give you one... I heard from one of my medical practitioners friend. So he told me that when he was a student in Calcutta there was a big professor, Colonel Megha, English professor. He was lecturing, and with in talking he said that in our country that seventy-eight percent of the students are infected with syphilis. Yes. So the doctor said as soon as he heard from Professor Megha, he said, "Horrible." And the doctor said, "Why you are saying horrible? In your country ninety-nine percent are suffering from malaria. So as a doctor you should take the disease. Why do you think that this is a horrible and this is not horrible? You are thinking that malaria is not horrible; syphilis is horrible. But in our country we think syphilis is not horrible and malaria is horrible. So as a medical practitioner you should consider the disease, not the aftereffects. Aftereffects of all diseases is suffering, either it is malaria or it is syphilis." So we should be concerned that this soul, pure soul, is affected by these sattva, rajas, tamaguṇa, material modes of nature, and he is suffering. So he should be given relief from this suffering, not that because one is contaminated by this sattva-guṇa, one is a brāhmaṇa, very nice brāhmaṇa, therefore that is, from a material point of view, the brāhmaṇa is better than a śūdra. But from the spiritual platform, either a brāhmaṇa or a śūdra, they are contaminated by this material nature, so they are suffering. That is explained in the Bhagavad-gītā. Brāhmaṇa is thinking, "Oh, I am so pure. I am learned." So that is, thinking "I am so, I am so, I am so..." he is not thinking that he is part and parcel of Kṛṣṇa, or God. Similarly, others are also thinking. So the fact is, so long as one is affected by these material modes of nature, his position is the same.