Indian man: But you are just in the line or you...
Prabhupāda: Yes. All the ācāryas established hundreds and thousands of temples. So I am establishing all over the world. What did in India I am doing all over the world. Now just see how they are...
Indian man: Each ācārya differed in interpretation of religion and approach to it. You diff... Śaṅkara and Vallabha say...
Prabhupāda: There are two sections, the impersonalist and the personalist. The personalists are the Vaiṣṇavas, and the impersonalists are the Māyāvādīs. So far the spiritual life is concerned, there is no difference. There is no difference. Just like Śaṅkara. Śaṅkarācārya said that brahma satyaṁ jagan mithyā. The spiritual life is reality. And this is nonreality. But we say that this is duḥkhālayam aśāśvatam (BG 8.15). Kṛṣṇa said. We are follower of Kṛṣṇa. "This is a place of suffering. And if you come to Me then your suffering ends." So this world is condemned either by Śaṅkarācārya, or others, everyone. But the modern rascals, they have taken this world as everything. Therefore they are in ignorance. Do you follow? They have taken this world, this life of fifty years or sixty years, at most hundred years, as reality. These rascals have no knowledge that we have life after annihilation of this body. Tathā dehāntara-prāptiḥ (BG 2.13). Who knows it? Bring big, big men, big, big politician.
Indian man: What about so many saints who are preaching yoga and religion all over the world?
Prabhupāda: Anyone who does not know the science, they are not saint. They are cheaters. If they do not know the science, what is spiritual life, what is material life. So their speaking is simply cheating. Therefore we should state the standard, Bhagavad-gītā, the ācāryas. In the Bhagavad-gītā it is said ācāryopāsanam. Take the ācāryas, Rāmānujācārya, Madhvācārya, even Śaṅkarācārya. So there must be standard. It is... Some of them are manufacturing some spiritual life. Just like Vivekananda did, daridra-nārāyaṇa-sevā. Is there any such word in our Vedic śāstras? Daridra-nārāyaṇa? Nārāyaṇa has become daridra? One has to worship daridra-nārāyaṇa.
Indian man: You don't agree with what has been preached...
Prabhupāda: Why shall I agree? Because there is no such thing in the śāstra. Is there word, any word, in the whole Bhagavad-gītā, daridra-nārāyaṇa-sevā?
Indian man: No, but what Ramakrishna Paramahaṁsa...
Prabhupāda: Ramakrishna, how he become paramahaṁsa if he does not know the śāstra? That is the difficulty. Everyone becoming self-made guru, self-made avatāra, self-made saint. That is the difficulty. Without any reference to the authentic śāstra.
Indian man: So it's a very revealing thing, you deny Ramakrishna Paramahaṁsa...
Prabhupāda: I don't deny. You accept, you accept. My point is unless it is authoritatively mentioned in the śāstra, we reject.
Indian man: But śāstras were written thousands of years ago. Life might have changed.
Prabhupāda: That's all right. In the śāstras it is not said that after passing of many years the śāstra becomes obsolete. This is another ignorance. Śāstra is not like that. You write some mental speculation and after some years it changes. That is not śāstra. Śāstra is this... Just like the Bhāgavata was, five thousand years ago it was it was written... And the symptoms of Kali, Kali-yuga is written there in the Twelfth Canto.