Prabhupāda: "Dharma (in the form of bull) asked: Madam, are you not hail and hearty? Why are you covered with the shadow of grief? It appears by your face that you have become black. Are you suffering from some internal disease, or are you thinking of some relative who is away in a distant place?" Actually, the cows . . . when I was in New Vrindaban, our Kīrtanānanda Mahārāja purchased one cow without calf. (children talking)
Devotee: Children have to go out.
Prabhupāda: Yes. So that cow was actually crying, because the calf was taken away for slaughtering. It is not that they have no soul, they cannot understand, they have no feeling, but they are helpless. Everything is there. The butchers, the cow slaughterer, or their supporters, they say wrongly that the animal has no soul. This is a rascal philosophy. Why animal has no soul, the question should be.
Here Yamarāja is addressing the cow as amba, mother. "Why you are so unhappy, from your face it appears?" So Yamarāja was foolish man, that he is addressing a cow as mother? This is civilization. It doesn't matter one is appearing as a cow or a man or a dog or a demigod or a civilized man, uncivilized man. One who knows that the soul is there . . . unless there is soul, how Yamarāja is asking the cow, "It appears that you are very much bereaved. So what is the cause, mother, of your bereavement?"
So this culture, that Yamarāja is asking an animal, mother . . . without any soul? No. Everyone has soul. The rascals, they do not know it. One has to become paṇḍita. Paṇḍitāḥ sama-darśinaḥ, in the Bhagavad-gītā it is said. So those who are actually learned, they know. They know that one may be a living entity, one may be a tree, one may be an animal, one may be a cow, one may be an elephant, one may be a learned brahmin scholar, one may be a caṇḍāla, untouchable—everyone is a soul. Paṇḍitāḥ sama-darśinaḥ.
- vidyā-vinaya-sampanne
- brāhmaṇe gavi hastini
- śuni caiva śva-pāke ca
- paṇḍitāḥ sama-darśinaḥ
- (BG 5.18)
Paṇḍita, one who is learned, he knows that all of them, animal, trees, plants or human being or demigods, everyone is the spirit soul. Now they are simply encaged in different bodies according to different karma.
The soul, part and parcel of God, wanted to imitate God's supremacy, and they wanted to enjoy. But in the spiritual world there cannot be second enjoyer. The only enjoyer is Kṛṣṇa. Bhoktāraṁ sarva-loka . . . bhoktāraṁ sarva-yajñānāṁ sarva-loka . . . (BG 5.29). He is the supreme proprietor, supreme being. In the dictionary you will find "the supreme being." "Supreme being" means nobody can be equal to Him, nobody can be greater than Him. That is . . . means supreme. So how one can become an imitator of Kṛṣṇa? That is not possible. That imitation is possible here in this material, because they are all rascals. So one rascal may claim that, "I am God," imitation, but as soon as he claims like that, any intelligent man knows that he is a rascal. That's all. That very assertion will establish that he is a rascal.