To understand Kṛṣṇa is very difficult job. Manuṣyāṇāṁ sahasreṣu kaścid yatati siddhaye (BG 7.3). Out of many millions of persons, one is endeavoring to make his life perfect. But they do not know what is perfection of life. So yatatām api siddhānām. Siddhi means to understand that "I'm not this body. I don't belong to this material world." That is siddhi. Siddhi. Everyone is under the impression that "I'm this body." "I'm Indian," "I'm American," "I'm Hindu," "I'm Muslim," "I'm Christian"—bodily upādhi, designation. He does not become free from the designation. The other day we were talking on Mr. Huxley(?) I think. He was talking of philosophy, but He was thinking, "I'm Englishman. I do this like that." So this bodily concept of life is there although he's philosopher. What kind of philosopher? Philosopher begins when there is no more bodily conception. What is that? Sarvopādhi-vinirmuktaṁ tat paratvena nirmalam (CC Madhya 19.170). So this kind of philosophy has no meaning, because how a dog can become philosopher? That is not possible. A human being can become philosopher. So long I'm on the bodily concept of life, I'm in the line of cats and dogs. So how we can become philosopher? There is no question of. But they're philosophizing, means bluffing, and similar men, he's thinking, "I believe." You believe or not believe, the law will go on.
Thomas Huxley
Lectures
Srimad-Bhagavatam Lectures
"I'm not this body. I don't belong to this material world." That is siddhi. Siddhi. Everyone is under the impression that "I'm this body." "I'm Indian," "I'm American," "I'm Hindu," "I'm Muslim," "I'm Christian"—bodily upādhi, designation. He does not become free from the designation. The other day we were talking on Mr. Huxley(?) I think. He was talking of philosophy, but He was thinking, "I'm Englishman. I do this like that." So this bodily concept of life is there although he's philosopher. What kind of philosopher? Philosopher begins when there is no more bodily conception. What is that? Sarvopādhi-vinirmuktaṁ tat paratvena nirmalam (CC Madhya 19.170). So this kind of philosophy has no meaning, because how a dog can become philosopher? That is not possible. A human being can become philosopher. So long I'm on the bodily concept of life, I'm in the line of cats and dogs. So how we can become philosopher? There is no question of.
Philosophy Discussions
Śyāmasundara: It seems like these two philosophers have two different viewpoints. The first one, Huxley thinks that man can take nature into his own hands and mold his own evolution.
Prabhupāda: That is nonsense.
Śyāmasundara: Whereas this philosopher thinks that we should just..., that the vital force is guiding everyone and is creating its own evolution, that we should just drift in the course of things and the vital force will determine history or will determine our future.
Prabhupāda: Yes, yes, it is hospital. Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement means curing the disease. That is described in Nārada-bhakti-sūtra, sarvopādhi-vinirmuktaṁ tat-paratvena nirmalam (CC Madhya 19.170), nirmalam. Nirmalam means purified. So when he becomes free from all this designation... The designation begins with this body, and the body accidentally born in Europe, he thinks, "I am a European." Born in America, "I am an American." Born in a Christian family, "I am Christian." He is born in Hindu family, "I am that." That is all misconception. His real position is that "I am part and parcel of Kṛṣṇa, eternal servant." Then he is free from all. That is, that is beginning of..., that is brahma-bhūtaḥ, beginning of spiritual life. So nothing, not that a man can be made to God. He is not God; he is part and parcel of God. He has to simply understand his position. That is mukti. He is working under different impression, that "I am this body." Just like the other day with, concerning the philosopher Huxley.
Śyāmasundara: It seems like these two philosophers have two different viewpoints. The first one, Huxley, said man can take nature into his own hand and mold his own evolution.
Prabhupāda: That is nonsense.
Śyāmasundara: Whereas this philosopher thinks that we should just..., that the vital force is guiding everyone and creating its own evolution, that we should just drift in the course of things and the vital force will determine history or will determine our future.
Hayagrīva: This is Thomas Henry Huxley. Huxley felt that the main difference between man and the animals is the ability to speak. Now, is...
Prabhupāda: That is the beginning of another nonsense. Everyone speaks in his own language. What does he..., what he means by speak?
Hayagrīva: But isn't speech, which is the articulation of the intellect, the primary difference between man and the animals in the sense that is it not through words that one can come to understand God?
Hayagrīva: It is the oldest.
Prabhupāda: ...mother of all language, and one who speaks in Sanskrit, he is only perfect, all other animals, according to his theory. But Mr. Huxley does not speak in Sanskrit.
Hayagrīva: Well, we'll see. He read quite a bit. I don't know if he read in Sanskrit or English, but he read quite a bit of the Vedas.
Prabhupāda: No, why does he say that the language, he gives that...
Hayagrīva: Probably not.
Prabhupāda: ...everyone has his language. It does not mean that the animals have no language. They have got their own language. The birds have their own language, the Englishmen have their own language, the Indians have their own language. So there are different varieties of life, and each one has his own language.
Hayagrīva: Although Huxley was called...
Prabhupāda: Language is not the important. The education is important. A developed human being can take real education, while the animals are not able to take. That you can define. It is not the question of language. Knowledge can be imparted, in particular knowledge, a language, just like we are imparting Vedic knowledge in English. So it is not the language, it is the knowledge. But the animals cannot take the knowledge of God.
Hayagrīva: Huxley, although an evolutionist, and although he was called Darwin's bulldog, he differed with Darwin, especially on the theory of the survival of the fittest. He believed in the survival of those who are ethically the best.
Prabhupāda: That is..., that can be said fittest. "Best" and "fittest," where is the difference?
Hayagrīva: He says the strongest, the most self-assertive, tend to tread down the weaker.
Prabhupāda: First thing is what do they mean by survival?
Prabhupāda: (laughs) Now what do you think, individually?
Hayagrīva: Oh, I..., he said Huxley looks on civilization as something of an attempt to give order to nature. "Civilization might be defined as a complex ethical understanding between men enabling as many men as possible to survive."
Prabhupāda: No, that is not possible. Nature is so strong that either you become Huxley or Einstein or somebody else, you must die. That is nature's law. You cannot dictate nature. The nature will go on dictating to you; then you must die. That is the... There is no question of survival under the regulation of the material nature. There is no... When you go above the dictation of the material nature, then you survive.
Hayagrīva: Well, Huxley is typically British. He wrote in...
Prabhupāda: He is a British or Frenchman?
Hayagrīva: Huxley, no, he was English, Englishman.
Prabhupāda: Oh.
Hayagrīva: He says, "By the Ganges ethical man admits that the cosmos is too strong for him..."
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Prabhupāda: Either you be Englishman or Frenchman or this man, you cannot survive. You have to succumb under the dictation of the superior nature. That is explained in the Bhagavad-gītā, that—I think Huxley read Bhagavad-gītā; he does not know-that,
- prakṛteḥ kriyamāṇāni
- guṇaiḥ karmāṇi sarvaśaḥ
- ahaṅkāra-vimūḍhātmā
- kartāham iti manyate
- (BG 3.27)
This kind of conception, that "I shall survive, I am Englishman," this is a false egotism and bewildered soul. Whatever he may be, Englishman or this man or that man, he must die. That is the law of nature. So intelligent man first of all makes provision "How I shall not die." That is real business of human being.
Hayagrīva: Huxley did appear to have..., to adhere to the doctrine of transmigration. He says, "The doctrine of transmigration constructs a plausible indication of the ways of the cosmos to man. Every sentient being is reaping as it has sown, if not in this life then in one or other of the infinite series of antecedent existences of which it is the latest turn." In Evolution and Ethics he writes about brahman and ātmān and liberation. He says, "The earlier forms of Indian philosophy agreed with those prevalent in our times, and supposing the existence of a permanent reality or substance beneath the shifting series of phenomena, whether of matter or of mind, the substance of the cosmos was brahman, that of individual man ātmān, and the latter, that is ātmān, was separated from brahman only by its..."
Prabhupāda: That is also not. He is not separated. He is, brahman and ātmān, they are existing, co-existing, and that is explained in the Bhagavad-gītā in the chapter "Kṣetra and Kṣetrajña." The body is the field, and the ātmā, individual soul, is the owner of the field or the worker in the field. So it is also said there is another owner, kṣetra-jñaṁ cāpi māṁ vidhi. As the individual is working in the body, similarly, there is another soul working in the body.
Prabhupāda: Yes. So our idea is(?) that is Mukunda.
Hayagrīva: So Huxley has no idea that, of the, of this.
Prabhupāda: I said, I said this, that Kṛṣṇa is therefore called Mukunda.
Hayagrīva: You said that.
Prabhupāda: Yes. I think this is my statement.
Hayagrīva: Yes. No, this isn't Huxley.
Prabhupāda: Huxley said...
Hayagrīva: Huxley says, "This salvation of liberation from karma was to be attained through knowledge and by action based on that knowledge." The supernatural, in our sense of the term, is entirely excluded.
Prabhupāda: Yes. We are acting under certain designation, that just like Mr. Huxley said a few minutes before, that "We are Englishmen." So this is designation. So, so long you will work under designation, there is no freedom. Because under false impression that "I am Englishman," "I am Frenchman," "Let me work in this way," that means you are entangling himself, yourself into some other way, so that today you are Englishman, next day you may be Frenchman or dog's man, that you are entangling yourself. But when you give up this designation, that "I am no man, no other's man, but I am Kṛṣṇa's man," then you will save yourself.
Hayagrīva: Now there is one interesting point that Huxley makes in Evolution and Ethics. He tries to tie in the theory of karma with the theory of evolution.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Hayagrīva: He writes in this way: "In the theory of evolution the tendency of a germ to develop according to a certain specific type, for instance of a kidney bean seed to grow into a plant having all the characters of Phaseolus vulgaris," that is a kidney bean, "that is its karma. The snowdrop is a snowdrop and not an oak tree—and just that kind of snowdrop—because it is the outcome of the karma of an endless series of past existences."
Hayagrīva: The, Huxley, it was Huxley who coined the word "agnostic," as the opposite of gnostic, of church history. The word gnostic is "one who follows in the gnostic tradition of church history."
Prabhupāda: According to Vedic, nāstika word is there, nāstika.
Hayagrīva: Gnostic.
Prabhupāda: Nāstika means who does not believe in the Vedas.
Hayagrīva: Ol, this is different: gnostic.
Prabhupāda: Nāstika, it is gnostic.
Prabhupāda: We say "without any authority."
Hayagrīva: When Huxley became a Darwinist he rejected a supernatural God and the Bible. In For Argument from Design... He believed in, previously he believed in a Christian God as the designer, but he believed that Darwin's theory gave this Christian conception its death blow. He did not accept a pantheistic God, like Spinoza did, as being identical... Excuse me. He did accept a pantheistic God, like Spinoza did, as being identical with nature. That is, he saw God as nature, and he believed in the divine government of the universe. He believed that the cosmic process is rational, not random...
Prabhupāda: How it becomes rational?
Prabhupāda: That is his defect. The nature is dead body, matter. So how it can be rational? Just like this table is a dead wood. How it can be rational? That is nonsense. The carpenter is rational, who has made the wood in the shape. So he says the nature is rational. Nature is dead matter. How it can be rational? Therefore there is a rational being behind the nature. That is God. This, the wood, is dead. The wood, out of its own accord, cannot become a table. The carpenter is shaping the wood into table. That is rational. Therefore behind the dead nature, the rational being is God. That is explained in the Bhagavad-gītā. I think Mr. Huxley is supposed to have read..., understand he has given some comment on the Ramakrishna Mission Bhagavad-gītā, but he has not studied Bhagavad-gītā thoroughly.
Prabhupāda: Oh.
Hayagrīva: That's Aldous, Aldous Huxley.
Prabhupāda: Uh-huh.
Hayagrīva: And this is Thomas Henry Huxley.
Prabhupāda: Oh.
Hayagrīva: It's a very famous English family of many...
Prabhupāda: So anyway, we...
Prabhupāda: So this Thomas Huxley, how he says that the nature has rational, has knowledge? We don't find. A dead stone, maybe big mountain, but has it got rationality? How does he say that the nature has rationality? What is the basis?
Hayagrīva: Well, it's the pantheistic, it's the same pantheistic contention that God is..., God is impersonal and made the tree grow.
Hayagrīva: Well, it's the pantheistic, it's the same pantheistic contention that God is..., God is impersonal and made the tree grow.
Prabhupāda: Maybe. "Impersonal," "personal," that we shall consider, but God is sentient. He is all-pervasive. That is accepted. Mayā tatam idaṁ sarvam (BG 9.4). That's all right. But God is not like the dead matter, who has no sense. We don't find the dead matter has got rationality. The rationality behind the dead matter is God.
Hayagrīva: That's it on Huxley.
Hayagrīva: Like, like Aldous Huxley, he feels that if happiness isn't possible through not doing anything, in the not too few dis..., in the not too distant future, the motivational and emotional conditions of normal daily life will probably be maintained in any desired state through...
Prabhupāda: He can probably, perhaps...
Hayagrīva: ...through the use of drugs.
Prabhupāda: Oh, he is advocate of drugs.
Conversations and Morning Walks
1974 Conversations and Morning Walks
Prabhupāda: You should have studied because he's advertised as big scholar.
Dr. Patel: I studied the Puranian philosophy by Huxley. I think somebody must know, he was very good. He's stressed bhakti-mārga. Huxley, Julius Huxley.
Prabhupāda: Well, if he's a bhakti-mārga, then he would not have eulogized Ramakrishna.
Dr. Patel: He is wonderful.
Prabhupāda: He has eulogized Ramakrishna.
Prabhupāda: Yes, he has eulogized Ramakrishna, this Huxley. You know that?
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: No, I didn't know.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Ramakrishna was a first-class Māyāvādī.
Dr. Patel: Which Ramakrishna?
Prabhupāda: This Ramakrishna Mission.
Dr. Patel: You are a guru. So I don't want to contradict. I am going. (Hindi)
Prabhupāda: No, that is... Then you have got some selection of your own.
Yogeśvara: There is one Englishman named Aldous Huxley...
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Yogeśvara: ...who wrote a book called "Brave New Worlds", and in that book, he predicted something that's coming true now, that there would be a process of biologically screening babies so that men could be breeded like animals, like they breed animals. So they would take one strain of chromosomes and breed a class of men who would make perfect administrators, and then they would breed another class of men that would be perfect śūdras, and they would breed another class of men who would be perfect scientists.
1975 Conversations and Morning Walks
Dr. Patel: No, sir, but these great scientists like Huxley were all...
Prabhupāda: No....
Dr. Patel: They have realized the working of God in every atom, to tell the truth. It was so some fifty years back that the scientists did not believe in the existence and working of God, but they have much changed now.
Prabhupāda: That means they were foolish; now they are coming to be wise.
Dr. Patel: But they have died out, the previous generation. Now the new generation.
Prabhupāda: No, still there are, so many rascals.
1976 Conversations and Morning Walks
Devotee (2): Aldous Huxley liked to think of the idea that there's no controller, so that he could enjoy without the feeling of guilt.
Prabhupāda: Yes. That is the whole idea. Thieves and rogues, they think "If there's no government, then we can do whatever we like." Who is there of the thieves and rogues?
Hari-śauri: That description's given when after the brāhmaṇas killed King Vena, they saw a great huge dust cloud on the horizon from all the thieves and rogues rushing back into the kingdom (laughing) when there was no ruler.
1977 Conversations and Morning Walks
Prabhupāda: He's serious gentleman. That is wanted. Kṛṣṇa will help us.
Dr. Patel: Aldous Huxley is another, he's also very...
Trivikrama: He's dead.
Dr. Patel: He is dead. No? He is dead? How long?
Trivikrama: Since 1962.
Dr. Patel: I had no idea of it. I am reading his books thinking he is still alive.
Trivikrama: He's a Māyāvādī, anyway.
Prabhupāda: Who?
Prabhupāda: Who?
Trivikrama: Aldous Huxley.
Prabhupāda: Aldous Huxley. He is useless. Anyone connected with the Ramakrishna Mission is a useless. Immediately take it.
Dr. Patel: He was connected with Ramakrishna Mission.
Rāmeśvara: On one radio show they quoted from this Dr. Radhakrishnan that when you read Bhagavad-gītā you should not think that Kṛṣṇa is God. So then they say, "So even in India they reject this Hare Kṛṣṇa movement." They say "Look, this is the president of India. He is saying do not take Kṛṣṇa as God."
| Page Title: | Thomas Huxley |
| Compiler: | MadhuGopaldas, RupaManjari |
| Created: | 22 of Dec, 2011 |
| Totals by Section: | BG=0, SB=0, CC=0, OB=0, Lec=23, Con=7, Let=0 |
| No. of Quotes: | 30 |