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You are yourself authority. Now, if you say my views are not correct, I may be incorrect but I am following the predecessor

Expressions researched:
"You are yourself authority. Now, if you say my views are not correct, I may be incorrect but I am following the predecessor"

Conversations and Morning Walks

1971 Conversations and Morning Walks

You are yourself authority. Now, if you say my views are not correct, I may be incorrect but I am following the predecessor.
Discussion with Indians -- January 18, 1971, Allahabad:

Guest (3): Gītā jñāna itself is given by Lord incorporeal, not to Kṛṣṇa. Kṛṣṇa, it is told, at the time the jñāna was given had a body which became divya Vedānta(?).

Prabhupāda: Yes, that is your interpretation.

Guest (3): That is exactly what...

Prabhupāda: No, you say. Anyone who... Anyone... Whatever he says, he thinks like that, exact. That is another thing. But we know that Kṛṣṇa had no difference between His body and soul. He is absolute. Now, you are talking from the point of view that Kṛṣṇa's body and Kṛṣṇa's soul is different.

Guest (3): Ah, no... In every body...

Prabhupāda: That is not the fact. That is not the fact.

Guest (1): Sir, Kṛṣṇa could not the two...

Prabhupāda: No, no, you say, "could not," but we do not say like that. Now who will settle up this thing? You say, but I do not say.

Guest (3): If you say, "This is not the body..."

Prabhupāda: No, no, no. We are to speak on the Bhagavad-gītā. We are talking of Bhagavad-gītā. Kṛṣṇa says that mām ekam. He never says that "to My soul."

Guest (3): No. He says, "I am one."

Prabhupāda: Therefore He is one, both body and soul, one. That is one.

Guest (1): Swamiji, material aspect in your understanding, they are one?

Prabhupāda: Therefore He is nonmaterial. Therefore He has spoken... No, no, if you compare with Him ordinary man, then at once you become a mūḍha. Avajānanti māṁ mūḍhā. No, you say... This is the saying of Bhagavad-gītā. Avajānanti māṁ mūḍhā manuṣīṁ tanum āśritaḥ (BG 9.11). (Hindi) "Because I have taken this human form of life, the rascals, they think I am a human being." It is said in the Bhagavad-gītā.

Guest (2): I think... As my understanding of this aspect is concerned, He says, "When I adopt this medium through which I give this jñāna, mūḍhā-matī do not understand Me."

Prabhupāda: Yes. Now, mūḍhā-matī, how to understand?

Guest (2): "Cannot recognize Me."

Prabhupāda: Suppose I am mūḍhā-matī, so how I am to understand?

Guest (2): Yes, but Kṛṣṇa as a body form could be seen and could be recognized by people as such. So there was no question of not understanding him.

Prabhupāda: Thing is that whatever I have understood about Kṛṣṇa I haven't got to learn from you.

Guest (2): No, you don't have to learn from me.

Prabhupāda: Thank you.

Guest (2): But what you have to learn...

Prabhupāda: No, no, I am not speaking my own views. I have got my ācāryas, my teachers, Rāmānujācārya, Śaṅkarācārya, Madhvācārya. So it is all right. It is all right. I have got so many authorities. What authority you have got?

Guest (2): I am, myself, in my own senses...

Prabhupāda: Now, you are not authority.

Guest (2): I am not but my own...

Prabhupāda: I am following so many authorities. Then... Then there is no question.

Guest (2): I am only...

Prabhupāda: You are yourself authority. Now, if you say my views are not correct, I may be incorrect but I am following the predecessor. I am taking...

Guest (2): What is the difference there? Sir, I accept that.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Guest (2): Hundred per cent, you are very correct in saying what you have just said.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Guest (2): I want to understand that point of view. That is why I have come.

Prabhupāda: But this is the point of understanding. That I have already told you, in the Bhagavad-gītā, that if you want to understand, first of all you have to surrender.

Guest (2): Surrender to whom? Not to the ācāryas but to the...

Prabhupāda: First of all find out whom to surrender, then talk.

Guest (2): ...supreme ācārya

Prabhupāda: That's all right. If you think that you are not fit for my surrender, that's all right. But first of all you find out somebody where you can surrender; then talk.

Guest (1): To jñāna-datta Himself.

Prabhupāda: Yes, that's all right. If you surrender and if you get jñāna-datta, that is all right. So far we are concerned, if we do not surrender, if you do not surrender, then you simply waste our time, idle talk. This is not the process.

Guest (1): You have to treat the person with...

Guest (2): For seeking knowledge from him.

Prabhupāda: But you are not seeking knowledge. You have come to challenge it. You have come to challenge.

Guest (2): No, no, no... (several Indian men talk at once)

Prabhupāda: Now, you are saying that Kṛṣṇa says that incorporeal. But Kṛṣṇa says that "Anyone who thinks that I am incorporeal, that he is a fool."

Guest (1): Quite right. Lord Kṛṣṇa as such, if anybody calls Him incorporeal, he's a fool.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Guest (1): Because He has a body, He has taken birth from Devaki. And incorporeal does not...

Prabhupāda: Therefore the Kṛṣṇa says that one has to understand that what is Kṛṣṇa's birth. Janma karma me divyam yo jānāti tattvataḥ. So that tattvataḥ is not yo. Anyone who knows Kṛṣṇa actually, he becomes immediately liberated. Tyaktvā dehaṁ punar janma naiti mām eti kaunteya (BG 4.9). Anyone simply who understands Kṛṣṇa, he becomes immediately liberated. If you understood Kṛṣṇa correctly, then you are liberated person. You have nothing to ask from me.

Guest (2): It is what...

Prabhupāda: No, that's all. Then you are liberated person. You have nothing to ask from me. I am for those who are conditioned, but you are liberated, so you have nothing to ask from me.

Guest (4): Rest of us, we persons, go.

Prabhupāda: Then you are liberated; you have nothing to go. If you are liberated, then you have nothing to seek, knowledge.

Guest (5): Thank you for listening. Time and place. He's already said that.

Prabhupāda: Yes. If you are liberated, you have nothing to go anywhere because you know everything.

Guest (2): May I again submit with the honor that you have bestowed on me of having said that I am already liberated according to the version of Gītā...

Prabhupāda: If you have understood Kṛṣṇa, then you are liberated.

Guest (2): I still feel... I still feel...

Prabhupāda: Then you haven't got to seek knowledge.

Guest (2): I still feel that...

Prabhupāda: You be satisfied with yourself. You are liberated.

Guest (5): That means those who are to follow you are not liberated.

Prabhupāda: I am not follow... Er, I don't say, "Follow me." I say, "Follow Kṛṣṇa." Why...? Don't mistake that. I say... My vision is that Kṛṣṇa says, "Surrender unto Me." I say, "You and everyone, surrender to Kṛṣṇa."

Guest (5): That you make wherever you are spreading, not...

Prabhupāda: Well, that is my business. Where I am spreading or not, that is my business. But I am saying this, that Kṛṣṇa says you surrender unto Kṛṣṇa, "Surrender unto Me." I say, "Surrender unto Kṛṣṇa." Is there any difference?

Guest (2): (indistinct)

Prabhupāda: Is it not according to Gītā? Is it not according to Gītā? If I say, "Surrender unto Kṛṣṇa"...

Guest (5): ...if each and every person has an individual identity of (indistinct) soul above the body consciousness and unless you treat him as equal, there is little...

Prabhupāda: No, nobody... You cannot say... Even though they are equal, you can see equal but they are not equal. They are not equal. There are three guṇas, and in the Bhagavad-gītā that is analyzed, that "These persons are in the sattva-guṇa, these persons are in the rajo-guṇa, these persons are in..."

Guest (5): That is not personality of the ātmā, but the ātmā is everybody's soul.

Prabhupāda: That's all... First of all we have...

Guest (5): If you have potency to rise and go higher and higher...

Prabhupāda: You are not on the ātmā stage; I am not in the ātmā stage. You are in the bodily stage.

Guest (5): Both, body and soul, together...

Prabhupāda: Then if you are in the ātmā stage, then you have no argument with me. Paṇḍitāḥ sama-darśinaḥ (BG 5.18).

Guest (5): But argument, you have admitted that...

Prabhupāda: No, there is no argument. That will stop. Brahma-bhūtaḥ prasannātmā na śocati na kāṅkṣati (BG 18.54).

Page Title:You are yourself authority. Now, if you say my views are not correct, I may be incorrect but I am following the predecessor
Compiler:MadhuGopaldas
Created:08 of Apr, 2012
Totals by Section:BG=0, SB=0, CC=0, OB=0, Lec=0, Con=1, Let=0
No. of Quotes:1