Kīrtanānanda: That which is giving rise to your perception of something material is actually spirit. The cause of what you are perceiving is spirit. But what you are perceiving is material.
Prabhupāda: Just like gold. Now you have made an earring. You say it is earring but, it may be earring but it is gold. Another example is, just like earth, earth. So you may take dirt and make a pot. So, and a doll, so many things, varieties. So we say it is doll, it is pot, it is this, it is that, but that is also earth. Is it not?
Śyāmasundara: Yes.
Prabhupāda: And when it is broken, then it is again earth. In any condition it is earth.
Śyāmasundara: This pot and this brick, these are not images then, they are dirt, they are...
Prabhupāda: Then you make images. You make images, but when you make images, that is also earth. And when it is broken, that is also earth. And originally it is earth. Sarvam khalv idaṁ brahma. The three conditions: formless condition, form, and again, what it is called-merging. In three conditions it is earth. Aham evāsam evāgre, in the Bhāgavata Kṛṣṇa says, "I existed in the beginning of creation, I maintain the creation, and when the creation is broken, I exist."
Kīrtanānanda: But that's what the Māyāvādīs, they say that all of these forms, all form is māyā.
Prabhupāda: Yes, we say temporary, they say māyā.
Kīrtanānanda: So we also say that there is spiritual world full of form, and that is not-
Prabhupāda: Yes. That they do not know. That is their ignorance. We say wherefrom this form came, who gave this idea? The Vedānta says janmādy asya yataḥ (SB 1.1.1), the origin, from the original source it comes.
Kīrtanānanda: So the question is that, these forms that are here, are they actually eternal forms?
Prabhupāda: No. There is eternal..., this is not eternal. This is imitation. Perverted reflection. Reflection is not eternal. As soon as the condition is gone, there is no reflection.
Śyāmasundara: He says that they are not eternal but that the interaction of forms is an eternal process, that one form interacts with another...
Prabhupāda: They cannot explain it. The real is that this form is not eternal, but there is an eternal form. Just like the water. The form of the water on the desert, that is not fact, neither it is eternal. But there is eternal water. Otherwise wherefrom I get this idea here it is water. There is water. Now the presentation of water in the desert, that may be false. The Māyāvādī philosophers they do not know.