"Very Expert In Misinterpreting"

Mayapura, April 2, 1975


Pancadravida: ...take the chemicals and combine them together in a test tube so that a soul can enter into that and...

Prabhupada: God is not your father's servant, that He will arrange to bring the soul. You are God's servant.

Pancadravida: So you're... Cannot be done, then?

Prabhupada: No. If you bring, you can bring soul by some arrangement, then we shall think that you are better than God. But you are rascal. You are thinking like that. You cannot do that. God will not agree to send a soul to your arrangement. You should always remember that you are servant of God. God is not your servant. That is knowledge. [Break]

Gurudasa: Jaya.

Prabhupada: Eh?

Pancadravida: I just wanted to ask that question.

Prabhupada: Thank you. Don't try to make God your servant. That is foolishness. You must always agree that "I am servant of God."

Pancadravida: Because in the class that... I asked that question because we're saying, well, there's no question of creating life. We're agreeing that the soul already exists. But can the scientists... If a scientist claims he'll create the conditions in which a soul will enter, do we accept that premise, and I thought, "No, because that's giving them much too much ground," that if we say that, then by their definition, they can say, "I am creating life. I don't want to argue over the existence or not of the soul, but I'll arrange all the chemicals for you."

Prabhupada: Where is that chemist? Where is that chemical combination that, I mean to say, grows a soul, generate a soul? Even if you have got the chemicals, you cannot do it.

Pancadravida: Whether it's true or not, somebody was claiming to me that the scientists are creating primitive forms of life like enzymes and things like this because enzymes show... Enzymes are produced by life. They show certain living tendencies. The scientists claim they are able to create enzymes.

Prabhupada: So what is the credit? The enzymes are being naturally created, and the soul is there. So what is his credit? The arrangement is already there automatically, the secretion between the man and the woman, and they mix together, emulsified, and the situation is created, and the soul comes there. The soul is injected through the semina of the man. It is already arranged. So what is your credit?

Pancadravida: Well, they say the credit is that "We are doing these things in the laboratory without the presence of the soul. They are not being produced by any living organism."

Prabhupada: :Eh?

Pancadravida: "They are not being produced by any living organism."

Prabhupada: No, no. That is your, your foolishness. Living organism is there. Just like we find something... The same argument, vrscika-tandula-nyaya: "Vrscika, the scorpion, is coming out of the heaps of rice." That... It does not mean the rice is produced the scorpion. That is foolishness. Rice, the heaps of rice, it does not create any scorpion. We have to get down here?

Tamal-krsna: Yes.

Prabhupada: Four sources of life: anda-ja, udbhi-ja, jarayu-ja and sveda-ja. Sveda-ja. The sveda-ja means just like these bugs. Wherefrom the bugs in the bed come? Is there any laboratory arrangement?

Pancadravida: No.

Prabhupada: So why these rascals do not understand? The bugs come from the perspiration. So in the perspiration, there is all chemicals, and the bug is coming. Now, where is their chemical? Who has put here chemical? This grass is coming. How it is coming? It is so...

Pancadravida: The chemicals are coming from the perspiration.

Prabhupada: No, no. That is another.

Pusta-krsna: Seed.

Prabhupada: There, that the, this grass is coming out of the earth. Wherefrom it is coming? Who has put the chemicals? And the eggs of the birds, they are produced in the womb of the birds, and from there the life is coming, the bird is coming. Where is the chemical?

Pancadravida: Well, that's just a complex chemical reaction. We can't explain it yet...

Prabhupada: But "Can't explain" -- that means you are fool. You remain fool. Don't try to expose yourself, nonsense. You are a rascal number one; you remain rascal number one. When the neck is caught up, he says, "Yes, it is complex. We shall see in the future." Why "future?" What about now?

Pancadravida: Well, a hundred years ago we couldn't make this movie camera either. But now they are producing easily.

Prabhupada: That's all right. But you cannot do this business. This is an art. Hundred years ago, people could not produce electricity by mixing two wire.

Pancadravida: Yes.

Prabhupada: That is an art. It is artist's... What is called? Craftmanship. Hundred years, could not produce motor car. But that does not mean you have become God, you rascal.

Pancadravida: :Well, isn't God just a craftsman also? He's just an...

Prabhupada: Yes, He is everything. He's everything -- but not a fool like you. That's all.

Madhudvisa: Srila Prabhupada, is there a jiva, is there a spirit soul in every sperm cell, or does that...? Does the spirit soul only come to a particular sperm cell, or is there one in every sperm cell, and the condition isn't right, so then it dies before, I mean, it leaves before it actually forms a body?

Prabhupada: Yes. The sperm, generally in every sperm there is spirit soul. But sometimes we put checks. The contraceptive method means putting check. Just like you pollute the milk. Then it loses his strength. So similarly, there are other circumstances which checks the sperm to inject soul. [Break] ...exposing themselves that they are rascal number one. That's all.

Pusta Krsna: It's a little slippery, Prabhupada. We'll go around here.

Sruta-kirti: It's all right here.

Prabhupada: I'll do. Mudhas. They are mudhas, means rascals, and they're exposing more and more that yes, they are mudhas. And another set of rascals, what is called, recognizing that "Yes, take this degree." Avyapare suvyaparam yo narah kartum icchati sa mudhah hanyate 'khilotpad iva vanarah.(?) Vanara means monkey. Monkey... One monkey... there was a woodcutter. What is called, woodcutter?

Paramahamsa: Carpenter.

Devotee: Lumberjack.

Prabhupada: Eh? Lumber...?

Sruta-kirti: Lumberjack.

Pancadravida: Cuts trees?

Prabhupada: No, no. Formerly, with saw, they used to make planks from big, big... What is that?

Madhudvisa: Sawmill?

Sruta-kirti: Carpenter.

Prabhupada: Not... Sawmill is now. Formerly they were doing it-hand.

Pancadravida: Carpenter.

Prabhupada: Not carpenter. All right, the man who used to bifurcate the big, big planks, and after finishing the business, he would put one, what is called, plug so that it may not again come...

Pusta Krsna: Join.

Prabhupada: Jam. Yes. So one monkey came. They monkey came. He, he began to, as his business, (makes sound "kut, kut, kut," and the plug was taken away and his half part of the body -- "Jam." And the... (Makes sound, monkey crying) "tahn, tahn, tahn, tahn." Who is coming to help him? He died. So this is not his business. He's a monkey. And he wanted to do that business. Similarly, these things are directly in the hands of God, and these monkeys are coming to get out the plug. So they'll die simply, that's all, like the monkey. They'll never be able to successfully produce soul and these things.

Madhudvisa: So couldn't the scientists say that it's God's will that when, when there is a...

Prabhupada: Now, now according to their theory, there was no human being. And from uncivilized man, they are becoming... They have taken to science, say, for last two hundred years. Before that, how things were going on without these rascals?

Madhudvisa: They say, "uncivilized."

Prabhupada: Eh? Uncivilized. And they are..., he was producing the soul, man? They're uncivilized? This, such nice... That is another exposal of their rascaldom.

Madhudvisa: They say modern man is living much more comfortably than he did two hundred years ago.

Prabhupada: Yes.

madhu: This is our advancement.

Prabhupada: What is that comfortable? What is the comfort? Give me the example of comfort?

Trivikrama: Air conditioning.

Brahmananda: Music

Madhudvisa: Cameras.

Pancadravida: Tape recorders.

Prabhupada: (Chuckles) These are comfortable?

Madhudvisa: Automobiles. Aeroplanes.

Pancadravida: Well, they enable comfort. A person can lie down in his comfortable bed in his nice apartment and listen to music out of the wall.

Prabhupada: But what about his death, how he uncomfortably dying?

Pancadravida: Well, we can't change that.

Prabhupada: Then what you can change?

Visnujana: But they can give you drugs to make death so that you don't feel it.

Madhudvisa: Yeah, you can die in your sleep.

Prabhupada: That is, means another death. You check death by death. That's all. These are all rascals. You are not yet convinced that these, they are rascals. That is your defect.

Pancadravida: I went to see my grandfather when he was dying. They said, "We have a nice arrangement. He's going to die in two weeks. Don't tell him. He'll die peacefully in his sleep." That was their arrangement.

Prabhupada: Coma.

Pusta Krsna: Many of the scientists actually believe in God, and they think that by experimentation, they'll come to understand God more and more.

Prabhupada: That is another thing. That we admire, that you are trying to understand God. But there is no God, and they are becoming God -- that is nonsense.

Ramesvara: Srila Prabhupada?

Prabhupada: Hm.

Ramesvara: Some people say that Darwin was paid by the British...

Prabhupada: Yes, I said.

Ramesvara: ...to make propaganda.

Prabhupada: Yes.

Ramesvara: Against religion.

Prabhupada: Not against religion. Against Indian culture.

Ramesvara: Against Indian cultu...

Prabhupada: Yes. Britishers made so many attempts that "Indians were uncivilized, and we have come here to make them civilized."

Ramesvara: So for colonialism.

Prabhupada: Yes. Just to... Because there are other powers, so they are envious that "Why these rascals, they occupy India?" So, so just to support this occupation, I mean to say, yes, occupation, and..., they made so many propaganda. Even during Gandhi's movement, they engaged one American woman to write a book "Mother India." "Mother India." "Mother India." So the... In... That "Mother India" is simply full of stories where there are so defects. Suppose a priest in the temple is attached with some woman, like that, so many stories like... So one Punjabi, what is his name? Gobha, (?) Gobha. He counteracted that book -- "Uncle Sam." (laughter) So these things are going on.

Madhudvisa: Is that where that name came from, "Uncle Sam"?

Prabhupada: Uncle Sam is the American word?

Trivikrama: Yes, yes.

Pancadravida: No.

Prabhupada: And he described the American life in so, mean, badly.

Pancadravida: Is there any...

Prabhupada: And Gandhi said, "This Mother India is the drain inspector's report."

Tamal-krsna: The drain inspectors?

Prabhupada: Yes. Sewage inspector report. These things will go on. So long people will remain in darkness about Krsna consciousness, these things, rubbish things, will go on. I'll find out fault in you; you'll find out fault in me. That's all. Because the basic principle of material civilization is envy. I do not like you; you do not like me. That's all. Envy. Everywhere, individually, nationally, socially, familywise -- everyone is envious. That is the material disease. And therefore in the Srimad-Bhagavatam it is said that dharmah projjhita-kaitavo 'tra paramo nirmatsaranam [SB 1.1.2]. Those who are interested in superfluous religious system, cheating system of religion... Just like the Christians, they say that "Christ has taken contract for all our sinful activities."

Trivikrama: Yes.

Prabhupada: This is cheating system. Once Christ advised that you, you should not act sinfully, and then he takes contract for all your sinful life. How cheating it is, directly cheating.

Pancadravida: Who was cheating?

Prabhupada: These so-called Christians. They say that "We are very weak. We can not restrain ourself from sinful activities, so we believe in Christ, and he has taken contract for suffering. That's all."

Trivikrama: "So let us go on sinning."

Prabhupada: Yes.

Pancadravida: Kill him again.

Prabhupada: Yes. This is their philosophy. And as they pass laws in the Parliament, similarly, these churches approve: "Yes, homosex is all right." Then it is all right. This cheating system is going on. Similar cheating system is the Hindus also. You'll find in Calcutta, in College Street, so many butcher house. And they have kept one goddess Kali that "We are eating Mother Kali's prasada." That's it. This is going on.

Brahmananda: Kali eats meat.

Prabhupada: Kali does not eat meat, but it is the sastra's injunction that those who are unable to give up meat-eating, they may sacrifice one goat, not cow, one small animal before the goddess Kali, on amavasya (new moon) day, night, not day, and they can eat it.

Pancadravida: If it's offered, though, who accepts it? Whose prasadam is it? Who takes it?

Prabhupada: The prasadam is not... That meat is not taken by Kali, but it is taken by the witches and others, associates of Kali.

Brahmananda: In Srimad-Bhagavatam, you write that goddess Kali takes the prasadam of her husband, Lord Siva.

Prabhupada: Yes.

Brahmananda: So therefore she is vegetarian.

Prabhupada: Yes.

Madhudvisa: You were talking about enviousness, Srila Prabhupada. And we see that this even sometimes pervades in our own society.

Prabhupada: Because you have, you are not yet perfect. That means. You are not yet perfect. You are trying to be perfect. Now be perfect.

Madhudvisa: Is there a way, is there a specific way to counteract this bad quality of enviousness?

Prabhupada: And yes, just chant Hare Krsna. Cleanse your mind. All dirty things will go. Because you neglect to chant regularly, therefore the dirty things remain.

Pancadravida: One devotee was talking with a Mayavadi sannyasi, famous sannyasi. So he said that "Your desire to attain mukti, that is a material desire."

Prabhupada: No, we don't want mukti.

Pancadravida: Yes. So...

Prabhupada: Mukti flatters me: "Please accept me." We don't want mukti.

Pancadravida: So the devotee went on, "To want to become one with the Lord, that is material desire." So the Mayavadi, he answered, he said, "No, to want to remain separate from the Lord and enjoy rasa, or exchange, with Him, that is also material desire. Because you want to stay two, God and you, so you can be separate just so you can enjoy an exchange. That is also a desire."

Prabhupada: Therefore, because you have no brain, therefore you cannot understand the rasas with Krsna. That is spiritual; that is not material. Ananda-rasa. Ananda-cinmaya-rasa-pratibhavitabhih [Bs. 5.37]. That is the Vedic statement. There is cinmaya. In the spiritual world there is ananda. You... You have no knowledge. You, due to your poor fund of knowledge, you think that in the spiritual world there is no rasa; it is simply void, negation of this rasa. Just like a diseased man. He is practiced to drink bitter medicine and pass stool on the bed and so many inconveniences, so if some of his friends says, "When you'll be cured, you'll be able to pass stool in the lavatory. You haven't got to, haven't got to pass stool..." Then he shudders: "Again I have to pass stool after becoming cured? Again I have to eat? No, no, this is not good. Make it zero." He has no idea what is the meaning of passing stool in healthy stage. It refreshes the body. We get good energy. That he cannot conceive. He thinks that "If there is passing of stool again, then it must be the same suffering as I am undergoing now in this condition." So the Mayavadi's idea of spiritual life means negation of these material activities. But they have no idea that similar activities are there in spiritual life, but that is not material. That is their poor fund of knowledge. Therefore we are... You are not understanding Caitanya-caritamrta, the radha-krsna-pranaya-vikrtiv hladini-saktir asmat. That I am explaining for the last few days. That is not at all this material. So unless there is loving affair in the spiritual world, how here it is as perverted reflection? It is the reflection of the reality. The reality is there. That they cannot understand. That is also hinted in the Bhagavad-gita, that "There is another feature, or another nature," paras tasmat tu bhavo 'nyah [Bg. 8.20], "which is sanatana, is eternal." Here the rasas, on account of being material, they are flickering. But there, real rasa is permanent. Here the loving affairs between two parties finish as soon as the bodies finish. But there, there is no question of finishing. Increasing. Anandambudhi-vardhanam, increasing. Harer nama... [Break]...in reality, "what I am," that can be understood through devotional service, not by karma, jnana, yoga. But... Give this example, I mean to say, authoritative statement of Krsna, that bhaktya mam abhijanati [Bg. 18.55].

Pancadravida: I didn't speak with him. Another devotee did.

Prabhupada: Eh?

Pancadravida: Another devotee spoke with this person.

Prabhupada: So what is your answer, that you cannot understand Krsna, as Krsna says, without bhakti.

Pancadravida: Well, we're.... They might answer that that's all right for understanding Krsna, but the highest state is to merge with God, and then there's no more living entity, no more God. Everything becomes one.

Prabhupada: That means you have become more than Krsna. One who states like that, he has become more than Krsna.

Visnujana: Yes, they believe that.

Pancadravida: Not more than Krsna. Same as Krsna.

Prabhupada: Oh, he's not... He does not know what is Krsna. Krsna says that "My dear Arjuna, you, Me, and all these soldiers, they existed before, and they're existing now, and they will exist in the future." So where is merging? Merging is suiciding. It is a spiritual suicide. Disgusted with these material affairs... Just like sometimes a man, being disgusted with this material world, he commits suicide, so this merging is also a kind of suicide.

Pancadravida: But Brahman always exists.

Prabhupada: Eh?

Pancadravida: Brahman always exists. We're not, we're not saying that Brahman stops existing. So these, the living entities...

Prabhupada: Yes, again they will come.

Pancadravida: They're all Brahman. So they will continue to exist. Brahman doesn't stop existing.

Prabhupada: Everything exists. For the time being, he may merge; then again he'll come to enjoy this material body. Aruhya krcchena param padam tatah patanty adhah. Patanty adhah. Even they become merged into the existence of Brahman, again they come back because there is no asraya. Just like these air, airplanes or the jets. They have invented very good machine, eighteen thousand miles per hour, going very high, but there is no place. They come down again. That is a fact. What is the use of going so high, eighteen thousand miles per hour, and travel and then again come back. Why do you take unnecessary trouble if you cannot stay there? You migrated from Europe and other countries to America. You got shelter. You stayed there. That colonization was successful. But if you are going to colonize in the moon and there is no place to stay, then why you are spending so much money unnecessarily? What is this foolishness? And they have stopped now. So in this way they are trying to merge into the Brahman effulgence, but where to stay? They can stay in the Brahman effulgence as minute particle of soul, but the soul wants ananda, then again -- "It was better to live in the material world." They come back again. That is statement of the sastra. Aruhya krcchena param padam tatah patanty adhah. They may go very high, same way as the jets are going, but there is no shelter. Shelter is the lotus feet of Krsna. So without shelter, they cannot remain there, and because by nature he wants ananda... Suppose if you remain in the sky for many, many years, would you feel very comfortable? Then you have to come back again. What is the use of being falsely proud -- "Now we have invented the machine. We can go eighteen thousand miles per hour and up in the sky"? That's all right, but what is the benefit out of it? Without ananda, without society, friendship and love, you cannot be happy in the vacant sky. Then you'll have to seek again -- "Give me some shelter. It is all false."

Madhudvisa: Srila Prabhupada, a question arose the other day in class if there was a difference between Brahman-realized yogi and a Mayavadi.

Prabhupada: Hmm?

Madhudvisa: Someone like the Kumaras... Were the Kumaras, before they became attracted to Visnu, were they Mayavadis?

Prabhupada: Not Mayavadis.

Trivikrama: Impersonalists.

Prabhupada: Impersonalists.

Madhudvisa: What is the difference between an impersonalist and a Mayavadi?

Prabhupada: Very little difference, but still, there is difference.

Trivikrama: Mayavadis are offenders.

Prabhupada: Mayavadis means they are speaking that "Everything is maya; Krsna is also maya." And impersonalist means they are thinking that "To merge into the Brahman effulgence is better than to keep our personal identity."

Satsvarupa: Srila Prabhupada, this Professor Dimmock was going to arrange a Vaisnava conference at which we were going to attend. You yourself was going to be invited with many professors, but I received a report from one of the professors that when they tried to contact other professors, none of them wanted to come because they said, more or less, that we are like fanatics and we wouldn't actually discuss things in a philosophic way, that we would just use the conference to proselytize. So in this way, they're rejecting us from...

Prabhupada: What is the harm? Let them reject.

Satsvarupa: We don't need them.

Prabhupada: Our business will go on, and there will be many professor Dimmocks who will support us. And they are doing that.

Satsvarupa: We're not going to compromise to...

Prabhupada: No.

Satsvarupa: ...please them.

Pancadravida: This Professor Dimmock, he still supported us?

Satsvarupa: Yes, he... [Break]

Prabhupada: The Bhagavad-gita is read all over the world. So we can better talk on the principles of Bhagavad-gita. Our philosophy is we present Bhagavad-gita as it is, without malinterpretation. So we want to defy everyone who is malinterpreting Bhagavad-gita. So we have to follow the authorities. And Bhagavad-gita is accepted as authority. Otherwise, why they're reading so widely all over the world Bhagavad-gita? Why not come on this term? Why you catch up so many literature? If, on this basis, there is a conference, that will be profitable, that "If you accept Bhagavad-gita as authority or one of the authorities, so you cannot misinterpret the statement in the Bhagavad-gita." But the Westerners, they are very expert in misinterpreting even their own Bible. We say that if you interpret any sastra, either Bible or Bhagavad-gita, then it is no more sastra. It is your play toy. By so-called your rascal vote, without any reason and rhythm and rhyme, you can do everything.

Pusta Krsna: They sometimes say that because Bhagavad-gita was originally in the Sanskrit language...

Prabhupada: Yes.

Pusta Krsna: ...and that because now it's been translated into the English language, there is necessary interpretation.

Prabhupada: No. Therefore we are giving the original verse, word to word meaning.

Pancadravida: Some, some man argued that...

Prabhupada: Where is the interpretation necessary?

Satsvarupa: They say we interpret even in the word to word.

Prabhupada: Eh?

Satsvarupa: They claim that we interpret even in word to word.

Prabhupada: But how do you do? Just like dharma-ksetre kuru-ksetre [Bg. 1.1]. Interpret in different way this word, dharma-ksetre kuru-ksetre? It cannot be interpreted. And how do you dare to say that "We can interpret word to word." In the beginning, you cannot do it.

Pancadravida: They clam, then, unless you speak Sanskrit, you have to interpret Bhagavad-gita.

Prabhupada: No, that means if you are a nonsense, you better remain silent. Don't interpret. It is better not to talk than to talk nonsense. What is the meaning of that interpretation. If you do not know Sanskrit, stop speaking. Why do you make imagination?

Pancadravida: Well, their claim is you have to read the Gita in Sanskrit in order for it to be read as it is.

Prabhupada: Now, now, in the very beginning it is said, dharma-ksetre kuru-ksetre [Bg. 1.1]. Now interpret. What is your interpretation, dharma-ksetre? What is your interpretation, kuru-ksetre? Come on, in the beginning. They cannot interpret anything.

Santosa: In that verse, aparyaptam bhimabhiraksitam...

Prabhupada: Eh? Eh?

Santosa: That verse, aparyaptam bhimabhiraksitam.

Prabhupada: Yes?

Santosa: They make so many interpretations of that word, aparyaptam.

Prabhupada: How they can...? Aparya... It is... The other party says that "Bhima is not so expert fighter." He was speaking to Bhismadeva that "You are so nice, expert commander. Bhima is not so expert commander. Therefore even they have got some soldiers, they'll not be properly guided." This is the real meaning. How you can interpret? What is their interpretation?

Pusta Krsna: They are simply making excuses.

Prabhupada: Eh?

Pusta Krsna: But in the end they'll have to surrender to Krsna.

Prabhupada: Yes. (end)

>>> Ref. VedaBase => Morning Walk -- April 2, 1975, Mayapur