Philadelphia, July 14, 1975
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Prabhupada: Both sides forest.
[break] Now in America there is no sufficient men to live in all these places,
to cut, clear it and make cottages and utilize the land for producing. There is
no sufficient men, I think. And where there is overpopulation, why not invite
them to come here? That they will not do. [break] ...has given sufficient land
for all the people, but we have made artificial national area, will not
allow.Guru dasa: In India this would all be utilized for
living.
Prabhupada: Yes. These places also should be allowed to the people who are overpopulated. No visa, no immigration. The whole world is simply mismanaged for want of Krsna consciousness. Pramattah, the word used, pramattah, mad. Nunam pramattah kurute vikarma: [SB 5.5.4] "All people mad and engaged in misdeeds only for sense gratification." [break] ...this room?
Ravindra-svarupa: I don't know, Srila Prabhupada. Now it is just used for garbage.
Prabhupada: [break] ...all like this, jungle?
Ravindra-svarupa: Yes, all along this creek there's a forest like this. This has been done in Philadelphia all along the river, and this huge area of land has been set aside. It's like this. No one can use it except to take walks. [break]
Svarupa Damodara: The question that I wrote to Srila Prabhupada, the answer that Srila Prabhupada gave me was that the cells in the body and the jivatma that resides in the heart, they are different living entities. But my understanding was directed to the relationship between the two, the jivatma in the cells and the jivatma in the heart, how they are related, how they...
Prabhupada: They are separate identity.
Svarupa Damodara: But it looks like, though, in the material body the one cannot exist without another. They look like interdependent.
Prabhupada: That may be, but still, they are individuals.
Ravindra-svarupa: When the jiva in the heart dies, then all the other cells in the body also have to die.
Prabhupada: No.
Ravindra-svarupa: No, they don't. But when the body decays, doesn't everything...
Prabhupada: No. Dead body so many germs come out.
Ravindra-svarupa: Oh.
Prabhupada: How it comes?
Svarupa Damodara: But that is different, though. When a body dies, then there are many germs from outside that...
Prabhupada: Living entities within the body, they come out, hundreds and thousands. They have not died. Suppose in this jungle there are so many living entities. If I die, what has got to do with them?
Svarupa Damodara: But science tries to understand what is life and in order to do that they just want to understand what is cell. Because science tries to understand what is life, and in order to do that they just want to study what is the cell because cells are the smallest living units of life. That is their understanding. So once they understand what a cell is, then they know what life is. That is their aim. So if the cells and the jivatma within the heart, they are different and they are independent, then they cannot conceive of just having a jivatma in the heart.
Prabhupada: That... The particular jivatma who has been given this body, he is living in the heart.
Ravindra-svarupa: But according to the scientists, our body is made up of little cells just like a brick wall is made up of so many individual bricks. Each... Like in one piece of skin there is...
Prabhupada: That's all right. That is body. Just like I live in a house. The house is made of so many bricks. But I am not brick.
Ravindra-svarupa: But they say that...
Prabhupada: "They say!" They are foolish, we always say. Because I am living in a house consisting of so many bricks, it does not mean that I am brick.
Ravindra-svarupa: But is each cell an individual living entity?
Prabhupada: That I do not know. What do you mean by cell? But there are many living entities within this body. That we know.
Svarupa Damodara: That is different from the concept of cell. there are many living entities like germs...
Prabhupada: So concept of cell is the cell is just like bricks. Matter and spirit, two things are there. Either it must be matter or must be spirit.
Ravindra-svarupa: But it's seen that the scientists, they can take some skin from your body and by putting in different solutions can keep that skin itself alive for such a long time. They have taken the heart of a chicken out of the chicken's body and then kept it beating for so many hours even though that heart was away from the main chicken. Or they take some other tissue and keep it alive. So they say that each cell is an individual living being.
Prabhupada: So we have no objection.
Ravindra-svarupa: That is all right. So there is a spirit soul in every...
Prabhupada: No, no. All right or not all right I don't say. But if they say like that, we have no objection
Svarupa Damodara: So the understanding to find out what life is is just to study what a cell is. That is their... They say that cells are composed of these molecules.
Prabhupada: What is the position of the cells when the man dies?
Svaupa Damodara: The cells are dead. The cells that compose the body, they are dead. There are may be new living entities coming from different parts, but the cell that composed the human body is dead. They cannot reproduce anymore.
Prabhupada: So what is your proposal? That cell is life?
Svarupa Damodara: Yes.
Prabhupada: So can you develop life from the cells? As you said that you take the skin and you keep, so take the cells and develop into life.
Svarupa Damodara: That's called culturing of the cells. They can culture it.
Prabhupada: That's all right. Whether you have done it.
Ravindra-svarupa: Well, they have that process called cloning?
Svarupa Damodara: No, no, this is the culture. That means take a cell from a living tissue, and you culture it and you supply the sufficient nutrients. Then theoretically they will grow forever. They will divide. They will...
Prabhupada: So they will grow to a human being?
Svarupa Damodara: Not a human being, but the cells just divide.
Prabhupada: Then an ant, an ant?
Svarupa Damodara: No.
Prabhupada: Then what is this? (laughter)
Svarupa Damodara: (laughing) But the cell is still alive.
Prabhupada: But you said that as soon as the man dies, they also die.
Svarupa Damodara: That is what my question arose, how these, the relationship between the jivatma in cells and the jivatma in the heart.
Prabhupada: The jivatma... If the cells are living entities, then why do they not remain? Just like other living entities, they remain in the body and they come out. Even the man who has died, he is not there, but the other living entities are there.
Svarupa Damodara: So it seems that the cells are not independent. They are somehow controlled by the jivatma or the... Of course, Paramatma is controlling everything. But I know sometimes the cells that compose the body of a living body, it seems that they are not independent; they are dependent.
Prabhupada: That may be. But what about your cultivating living entities from the cells?
Svarupa Damodara: Yes, that can be done. That they have already done.
Prabhupada: "That can be done," you say everything. But you never done.
Ravindra-svarupa: They call it... You know that? They call it cloning?
Svarupa Damodara: Cloning is a different process, though. Cloning is just they take the life from the genes from different species and put this together and form a new species called hybrids of some living entity.
Ravindra-svarupa: The scientists say that the cells reproduce not by mating but by splitting in half...
Prabhupada: That is possible.
Svarupa Damodara: But once Srila Prabhupada told us, though, that I am in the heart and...
Prabhupada: I am an individual.
Svarupa Damodara: Yes.
Prabhupada: So that is my position. I live in the heart, and I go away. Other living entities may remain there.
Gurudasa: When a heart is transplanted does the soul stay in the heart?
Prabhupada: Yes.
Svarupa Damodara: I want to clarify another that Prabhupada told us that compared with the cells, I am a little bigger god, but the cells are smaller. Just like we are serving spiritual master. Similarly, the cells are serving. They have no choice in the...
Prabhupada: Yes. That is good idea. Yes.
Svarupa Damodara: So similarly, we were discussing with the Balavanta Prabhu one day about the... He was giving a nice example that in a kingdom where the king stays... Just like Srila Prabhupada's example: living in an apartment. Srila Prabhupada and disciples and many other living entities stay in the same apartment, but a person, an individual, who knows his position, is to serve the order of the head of the apartment. But somebody doesn't follow. He just goes away from the apartment. So Balavanta was asking what is the use of that? So similarly, when the cells... We can take out from one part of the body and can culture it, but what is the use? It produces, but actually it's not really behaving as it should. It has no value.
Prabhupada: Yes. They are just like machine parts. Parts and parcels, they are helping the whole machine work.
Svarupa Damodara: About Guru dasa prabhu's point, when the heart transplant, the soul stays in the subtle body. Is that sound?
Prabhupada: Yes. Soul is always staying in the subtle body, and the subtle body is left when he goes to God or kingdom of God.
Ravindra-svarupa: One thing I'm trying to understand is how is it that the soul wants different things and then the material body acts according to the desires of the soul? So there is a cause and thereis an effect. Normally all our cause and effect, we see one material thing causing another material thing to happen. But how is it the spirit causes? What is the connection that spirit causes matter to do so many things? The spirit is manipulating the matter, but how? How is that contact there?
Prabhupada: Contact? It is already in contact. You are in the material body. It is already in contact.
Ravindra-svarupa: But I don't understand how that contact is working.
Prabhupada: Contact is working under the direction of God. The individual soul desires, and God arranges to fulfill his desire with the help of prakrti.
Ravindra-svarupa: So when I want to move my hand, when I want to move this hand and so I will to move my hand, actually there has to be God involved in that action. Otherwise the hand won't move.
Prabhupada: Paralyzed.
Ravindra-svarupa: Paralyzed.
Prabhupada: When your hand is paralyzed what you can do?
Ravindra-svarupa: Do actually I don't directly do anything with matter. It is all Krsna's doing everything with the matter.
Devotee: "Man proposes, God disposes."
Prabhupada: Yes.
Ravindra-svarupa: Also I heard that also in every act of..., like if I want to blink my eyelid, also there is a demigod. What is the necessity of so many demigods? Why can't Krsna directly...
Prabhupada: That how you can know? You are not the director. Director knows how many assistants he requires. You cannot know... You are under the direction. You are not director. [break] ...not a mechanic he cannot understand why there are so many parts in the motor car. He is a fool. He doesn't know. But a mechanic knows that these things are required.
Guru dasa: If the soul cannot be burnt, why does the desire to be burnt in the material world there? Burnt, drowned...
Svarupa-damodara: Destroyed.
Prabhupada: He is not destroyed. When this body cannot work any more... Because this body is a machine. So a machine, if he does not move, then you, have to change to another machine.
Svarupa Damodara: The desire is not... Actually it is not burned; it just changed. The desire is changed to for a higher purpose. We have a choice between the subtle desires. Just change is the there from one to another.
Prabhupada: No, the same example: just like in a motor car you desire to go this side, but the machine is stopped, so you have to accept another motor car. It is like that, to fulfill your desire. After all it is a machine. Machine is matter. So it has got a time to work. When it is not working, then you change to another machine to fulfill your desire.
Guru dasa: If God, Krsna, desires the motor car to turn right, what makes the car turn left?
Prabhupada: Not Krsna desires. You desire. Krsna helps you. Krsna desires you give up all this nonsense and surrender to Him. Only He desires that. But if you don't do, you will desire so many things.
Svarupa Damodara: It remains a mystery to great thinkers that though the soul is pure by nature and transcendental, but somehow it is trapped in the subtle and gross body and...
Prabhupada: Because he desired. Krsna bhuliya jiva bhoga vancha kare. When he wants to enjoy this material world... In the spiritual world there is only one enjoyer. And in the material world everyone is a enjoyer. He is planning in his own way how to enjoy. That is material world. In the spiritual world the enj..., is Krsna, and all others is helping in His enjoyment. But in material world everyone is thinking, "I am enjoyer," and he is planning in his own way.
Devotee (1): Srila Prabhupada, modern philosophy is teaching that the forces of greed and lust and these things are greater than man, that actually... This concept that we are eternal, full of knowledge and bliss, they cannot accept that or understand that. They're thinking that the powers of evil are much greater, and we're just controlled by these things.
Prabhupada: Therefore they are fools. When a man's lusty desire is very strong, he commits, what is called, rape, and he becomes complicated in criminal activities. Kama esa krodha esa rajo-guna-samudbhavah. Why one is forced to do that? The cause is lusty desires, anger, greediness. So we are thinking we are master of this material world, but actually you are servant of these desires, kama, krodha, lobha, mohah. And that is maya. He is acting as servant, but he's thinking, "I am master." That is maya, which is not the fact. Just like yesterday we were discussing that the women, they are acting as instrument of men, and they are thinking, "We have equal rights." A man is utilizing her for his own purpose, and she is thinking "I am equal."
Ravindra-svarupa: I think you really surprised them when you told them that this women's liberation is just a trick by the men just to increase the class of prostitutes, available prostitutes.
Prabhupada: Free prostitutes. You go to a prostitute; you have to pay. Here they have arranged in such a way that free prostitute loitering on the street, and you can enjoy any one. This is their plan. They are rendered into beggar, and they are thinking equal rights.
Devotee (2): Srila Prabhupada, what does it mean that the soul is immovable?
Prabhupada: Immovable? Where it is?
Devotee (2): It states this in Bhagavad-gita.
Prabhupada: What is this? What is the verse?
Devotee (2): I don't know exactly. It's in the Second Chapter. Krsna's describing the nature of the spirit soul to Arjuna. Does anyone know that verse?
Nitai: Sthanur acalo 'yam...?
Prabhupada: Immovable in this sense: when he is fixed up in a certain body, then he is immovable from that body. Acalo 'yam sthanuh, sthanuh. Just like we're speaking of transplanting the heart. That does not mean you move the soul. That is immovable.
Devotee (3): Srila Prabhupada, the pure devotee's spirit soul is not trapped by the gross and subtle bodies?
Prabhupada: Yes, when he is liberated by devotional service. Sa gunan samatityaitan brahma-bhuyaya kalpate [Bg. 14.26].
Devotee (4): Prabhupada, when we try to explain to people that our philosophy of Krsna consciousness is authoritative and is coming from undisturbed men, learned men, that our spiritual master is not an ordinary man, what does it mean that he is not an ordinary man?
Prabhupada: He is not moved by the rascal scientist. (laughter) All rascals are moved by the so-called scientists.
Svarupa Damodara: Srila Prabhupada... (laughter)
Prabhupada: (laughing) The scientist is angry.
Svarupa Damodara: The soul is trapped as well as untrapped in the material body...
Prabhupada: Because he wanted to be trapped.
Svarupa Damodara: But sometimes it is also untrapped. But sometimes he is also free.
Prabhupada: No, by nature, he is not mixed up with these material things, but he is entrapped by his free will. Just like we are staying here. We are not bound to stay here, but we have come here. Nobody has forced us to come here.
Svarupa Damodara: So is that philosophy, simultaneously one and different...
Prabhupada: Yes.
Svarupa Damodara: ...that acintya-bhedabheda is also applicable in the case of...
Prabhupada: No, soul never mixes with the matter. Now I have come here, I am not mixed up with this jungle.
Svarupa Damodara: But it looks like it...
Prabhupada: It looks like. That is another thing. Asango 'yam purusah. The Vedic injunction is" "The purusa, the soul, is never complicated or mixed up with this." Because just like oil and water, it never mixes. The oil keeps its separate identity in water.
Svarupa Damodara: Yes. But if you put in a body, though they cannot be mixed, but they can stay together. Like in a chemical laboratory we take a test tube. In the test tube I can mix two solutions like, for example, mercury and water and oil. They will not mix, but they will stay in the same test tube. But a man who knows about the art of separating those three mixtures can do it very nicely.
Prabhupada: Yes. Similarly, soul does not mix with the matter and by this art, transcendental knowledge, you can become out of it.
Svarupa Damodara: So that's why we need a process and someone who knows the process of.
Prabhupada: The process is bhakti-yoga. Sa gunan samatityaitan: [Bg. 14.26] "Anyone who has taken to this bhakti-yoga," mam ca vyabhicarini bhakti-yogena yah sevate, "he immediately becomes free from the mixture of these three gunas." Sa gunan samatityaitan brahma-bhuyaya kalpate [Bg. 14.26]. "He again revives his Brahman nature." Aham brahmasmi. Brahma-bhutah prasannatma: [Bg. 18.54] Then he understands that 'I have no connection with these all nonsense things. I am brahma-bhutah.' "
Devotee (4): Prabhupada, we're in this material world, in this human body, we're having to work with this intelligence, with mind, material things. So there is a group of philosophers that say that actually because we're a product, our mind, the way we're thinking now is a product of our upbringing and our past, that actually we have no free will, but we're forced to think and act in a certain way.
Prabhupada: Why you are forced?
Devotee (4): Because of conditioning.
Prabhupada: Then that you have to admit that you are conditioned by some authority. When you are put into jail, you cannot act independently. You have to act according to the jail superintendent's order.
Devotee (3): Prabhupada, is our desire to be eternal, blissful and full of knowledge...
Prabhupada: Now let me finish. You will never be able to understand if you jump over like that. Let one thing be understood.
Devotee (4): So he admits he's conditioned, but still, there's no free will. He says, "Yeah, so I'm in the prison. I'm imprisoned. I'm conditioned."
Prabhupada: No, no, no. Free will... Just like a man commits theft by his free will. But when he is put into jail, then no more free will. He has to act according to the jail superintendent. But his beginning of jail life is free will. Nobody asked him that "You go to jail." But why he has come? He knows also that "When I am put into jail, I will lose all my freedom." He knows that. Still, he comes. Why does he come? He knows that. That is called ajnana. Mudha. That is called mudha. He knows; still, he does.
Svarupa Damodara: He is taking a chance.
Prabhupada: Yes, that means he is becoming implicated.
Svarupa Damodara: He thinks that maybe he will be free, that..., if sometimes there's also a chance that he will be caught.
Prabhupada: That is ajnana. As soon as he, "may be," that means ajnana.
Devotee (4): So that's why we originally fell down?
Prabhupada: Knowledge must be solid. There is no question "of maybe," no. Just like if you touch fire, there is no question of "maybe." It must burn you. You may think, "It may not burn," but that is your foolishness.
Ravindra-svarupa: So they think that they can enjoy material nature but not be implicated.
Prabhupada: Yes. Not implicated. He is already implicated. There is no question of maybe. Must.
Devotee (5):. So when we fell down from the spiritual world...
Prabhupada: Then you must suffer. There is no question, "maybe."
Devotee (5): When we fell down we were thinking, we could enjoy like that, in the same way?
Prabhupada: Yes, that is foolishness. And we are making our plan how to enjoy. That is our foolishness. And Krsna says "You give up all these nonsense plans. Come to Me."
Devotee (5): Is this example proper, that a son is being well taken care of by the father, but sometimes he's thinking, "I can enjoy more some other way?"
Prabhupada: Yes. Yes.
Svarupa Damodara: Srila Prabhupada, can I change the topic? Last, day before yesterday, morning, Prabhupada said that plants are more highly developed than the fish or the aquatics. But someone may ask what about the dolphins and the seals. They are regarded as very intelligent and highly developed.
Prabhupada: Every living entity has a particular type of intelligence which is greater than the other.
Svarupa Damodara: No, in the evolutionary cycle. Talking about the...
Prabhupada: No, evolutionary, cycle, the body may change, but every living entity has got a special advantage upon the others.
Ravindra-svarupa: What is the advantage of a tree, Srila Prabhupada?
Prabhupada: You see how they are standing there for five thousand years. You cannot do it. You cannot do it even for five minutes.
Svarupa Damodara: Actually the trees are absolutely necessary for the survival of animals.
Prabhupada: That is another thing. We say nothing is necessary, simply Krsna is necessary. That is material conception: "This is necessary. This is necessary." But Krsna says, "Nothing is necessary." Sarva-dharman parityajya [Bg. 18.66]. You are simply planning and becoming entangled with so-called "necessary."
Svarupa Damodara: But that is on the spiritual platform.
Prabhupada: You can create spiritual platform immediately. Sa gunan samatityaitan [Bg. 14.26]. If you fully engage yourself in devotional service, immediately you are above this material conception.
Svarupa Damodara: So the concept that the three modes of material nature, they're working all species, so it's not the...
Prabhupada: They are directing. Just like in the jail there are different departmental management, similarly, this management is required because you are in the jail. If you don't go to jail, the management may be closed. But you are thinking, "If I do not go to jail, how it will exist?" That is your business, say that "If we all become liberated, how this world will go on?" They say like that, as if it is very necessary.
Devotee (3): Srila Prabhupada, is the subtle bodies in the subtle world, are they made up of subtle atoms?
Prabhupada: Subtle body means subtle atoms. So if we are in subtle body, so whatever there is in the subtle body, everything is there.
Devotee (6): Prabhupada, sometimes on sankirtana we say that the human form of life is the highest because in this form we can understand God, and they say, "Well, what about the dolphins? You know, they've been doing experiments with the dolphins, and they've been finding out that the dolphins have their own conversations and things like that."
Prabhupada: So what they have done with the dolphins? They are talking only. What they have done? Simply theorizing. [break]
Prabhupada: (in car) ...improved anything.
Ravindra-svarupa: No.
Prabhupada: They are going on ciram vicinvan. Forever they are simply thinking, and no improvement has done.
Ravindra-svarupa: Of course, they promise that they will be able to do so many...
Prabhupada: That everyone can, a child can also promise. That is another thing.
Ravindra-svarupa: [break] ...the cells because they say that the cells are the fundamental unit of life and if they can understand even a very simple cell, then they think perhaps they can find the principles to understand everything living.
Prabhupada: Well, this "perhaps..."
Ravindra-svarupa: But they can't understand the cell.
Prabhupada: Yes. So their "perhaps," "maybe," is going on. And that will continue.
Ravindra-svarupa: Why does the living entity wish to speculate in this way?
Prabhupada: He has been given a special advantage to think of God, but instead of thinking God, he is thinking all these rubbish things, which he will never be able to fulfill. Misusing. The thinking power he is misusing.
Ravindra-svarupa: So this mental speculation or this "perhaps" and "maybe" is a misuse of his specific power to understand God.
Prabhupada: Yes, yes. Athato brahma jijnasa. The life, human life, is meant for enquiring about God, and God is explaining Himself about God. Instead of studying Bhagavad-gita very scrutinizingly, they are wasting time. "The cells, this, that, atom." That's all, wasting time Just like we are driving this car. So we can utilize it for going from one place to another. So there is no need of studying how the car is moving, how many parts are there.
Ravindra-svarupa: But still, people seem to have always a curiosity about these things.
Prabhupada: Yes. That curiosity is explained in the Bhagavad-gita that it is a machine and there are many subtle parts of the machine. So you have been given this machine. You utilize it properly. Why you are busy in studying the different parts? The different parts are there undoubtedly. But you cannot actually understand.
Ravindra-svarupa: We're going to take a picture, Srila Prabhupada.
Prabhupada: All right. (end)
Prabhupada: Yes. These places also should be allowed to the people who are overpopulated. No visa, no immigration. The whole world is simply mismanaged for want of Krsna consciousness. Pramattah, the word used, pramattah, mad. Nunam pramattah kurute vikarma: [SB 5.5.4] "All people mad and engaged in misdeeds only for sense gratification." [break] ...this room?
Ravindra-svarupa: I don't know, Srila Prabhupada. Now it is just used for garbage.
Prabhupada: [break] ...all like this, jungle?
Ravindra-svarupa: Yes, all along this creek there's a forest like this. This has been done in Philadelphia all along the river, and this huge area of land has been set aside. It's like this. No one can use it except to take walks. [break]
Svarupa Damodara: The question that I wrote to Srila Prabhupada, the answer that Srila Prabhupada gave me was that the cells in the body and the jivatma that resides in the heart, they are different living entities. But my understanding was directed to the relationship between the two, the jivatma in the cells and the jivatma in the heart, how they are related, how they...
Prabhupada: They are separate identity.
Svarupa Damodara: But it looks like, though, in the material body the one cannot exist without another. They look like interdependent.
Prabhupada: That may be, but still, they are individuals.
Ravindra-svarupa: When the jiva in the heart dies, then all the other cells in the body also have to die.
Prabhupada: No.
Ravindra-svarupa: No, they don't. But when the body decays, doesn't everything...
Prabhupada: No. Dead body so many germs come out.
Ravindra-svarupa: Oh.
Prabhupada: How it comes?
Svarupa Damodara: But that is different, though. When a body dies, then there are many germs from outside that...
Prabhupada: Living entities within the body, they come out, hundreds and thousands. They have not died. Suppose in this jungle there are so many living entities. If I die, what has got to do with them?
Svarupa Damodara: But science tries to understand what is life and in order to do that they just want to understand what is cell. Because science tries to understand what is life, and in order to do that they just want to study what is the cell because cells are the smallest living units of life. That is their understanding. So once they understand what a cell is, then they know what life is. That is their aim. So if the cells and the jivatma within the heart, they are different and they are independent, then they cannot conceive of just having a jivatma in the heart.
Prabhupada: That... The particular jivatma who has been given this body, he is living in the heart.
Ravindra-svarupa: But according to the scientists, our body is made up of little cells just like a brick wall is made up of so many individual bricks. Each... Like in one piece of skin there is...
Prabhupada: That's all right. That is body. Just like I live in a house. The house is made of so many bricks. But I am not brick.
Ravindra-svarupa: But they say that...
Prabhupada: "They say!" They are foolish, we always say. Because I am living in a house consisting of so many bricks, it does not mean that I am brick.
Ravindra-svarupa: But is each cell an individual living entity?
Prabhupada: That I do not know. What do you mean by cell? But there are many living entities within this body. That we know.
Svarupa Damodara: That is different from the concept of cell. there are many living entities like germs...
Prabhupada: So concept of cell is the cell is just like bricks. Matter and spirit, two things are there. Either it must be matter or must be spirit.
Ravindra-svarupa: But it's seen that the scientists, they can take some skin from your body and by putting in different solutions can keep that skin itself alive for such a long time. They have taken the heart of a chicken out of the chicken's body and then kept it beating for so many hours even though that heart was away from the main chicken. Or they take some other tissue and keep it alive. So they say that each cell is an individual living being.
Prabhupada: So we have no objection.
Ravindra-svarupa: That is all right. So there is a spirit soul in every...
Prabhupada: No, no. All right or not all right I don't say. But if they say like that, we have no objection
Svarupa Damodara: So the understanding to find out what life is is just to study what a cell is. That is their... They say that cells are composed of these molecules.
Prabhupada: What is the position of the cells when the man dies?
Svaupa Damodara: The cells are dead. The cells that compose the body, they are dead. There are may be new living entities coming from different parts, but the cell that composed the human body is dead. They cannot reproduce anymore.
Prabhupada: So what is your proposal? That cell is life?
Svarupa Damodara: Yes.
Prabhupada: So can you develop life from the cells? As you said that you take the skin and you keep, so take the cells and develop into life.
Svarupa Damodara: That's called culturing of the cells. They can culture it.
Prabhupada: That's all right. Whether you have done it.
Ravindra-svarupa: Well, they have that process called cloning?
Svarupa Damodara: No, no, this is the culture. That means take a cell from a living tissue, and you culture it and you supply the sufficient nutrients. Then theoretically they will grow forever. They will divide. They will...
Prabhupada: So they will grow to a human being?
Svarupa Damodara: Not a human being, but the cells just divide.
Prabhupada: Then an ant, an ant?
Svarupa Damodara: No.
Prabhupada: Then what is this? (laughter)
Svarupa Damodara: (laughing) But the cell is still alive.
Prabhupada: But you said that as soon as the man dies, they also die.
Svarupa Damodara: That is what my question arose, how these, the relationship between the jivatma in cells and the jivatma in the heart.
Prabhupada: The jivatma... If the cells are living entities, then why do they not remain? Just like other living entities, they remain in the body and they come out. Even the man who has died, he is not there, but the other living entities are there.
Svarupa Damodara: So it seems that the cells are not independent. They are somehow controlled by the jivatma or the... Of course, Paramatma is controlling everything. But I know sometimes the cells that compose the body of a living body, it seems that they are not independent; they are dependent.
Prabhupada: That may be. But what about your cultivating living entities from the cells?
Svarupa Damodara: Yes, that can be done. That they have already done.
Prabhupada: "That can be done," you say everything. But you never done.
Ravindra-svarupa: They call it... You know that? They call it cloning?
Svarupa Damodara: Cloning is a different process, though. Cloning is just they take the life from the genes from different species and put this together and form a new species called hybrids of some living entity.
Ravindra-svarupa: The scientists say that the cells reproduce not by mating but by splitting in half...
Prabhupada: That is possible.
Svarupa Damodara: But once Srila Prabhupada told us, though, that I am in the heart and...
Prabhupada: I am an individual.
Svarupa Damodara: Yes.
Prabhupada: So that is my position. I live in the heart, and I go away. Other living entities may remain there.
Gurudasa: When a heart is transplanted does the soul stay in the heart?
Prabhupada: Yes.
Svarupa Damodara: I want to clarify another that Prabhupada told us that compared with the cells, I am a little bigger god, but the cells are smaller. Just like we are serving spiritual master. Similarly, the cells are serving. They have no choice in the...
Prabhupada: Yes. That is good idea. Yes.
Svarupa Damodara: So similarly, we were discussing with the Balavanta Prabhu one day about the... He was giving a nice example that in a kingdom where the king stays... Just like Srila Prabhupada's example: living in an apartment. Srila Prabhupada and disciples and many other living entities stay in the same apartment, but a person, an individual, who knows his position, is to serve the order of the head of the apartment. But somebody doesn't follow. He just goes away from the apartment. So Balavanta was asking what is the use of that? So similarly, when the cells... We can take out from one part of the body and can culture it, but what is the use? It produces, but actually it's not really behaving as it should. It has no value.
Prabhupada: Yes. They are just like machine parts. Parts and parcels, they are helping the whole machine work.
Svarupa Damodara: About Guru dasa prabhu's point, when the heart transplant, the soul stays in the subtle body. Is that sound?
Prabhupada: Yes. Soul is always staying in the subtle body, and the subtle body is left when he goes to God or kingdom of God.
Ravindra-svarupa: One thing I'm trying to understand is how is it that the soul wants different things and then the material body acts according to the desires of the soul? So there is a cause and thereis an effect. Normally all our cause and effect, we see one material thing causing another material thing to happen. But how is it the spirit causes? What is the connection that spirit causes matter to do so many things? The spirit is manipulating the matter, but how? How is that contact there?
Prabhupada: Contact? It is already in contact. You are in the material body. It is already in contact.
Ravindra-svarupa: But I don't understand how that contact is working.
Prabhupada: Contact is working under the direction of God. The individual soul desires, and God arranges to fulfill his desire with the help of prakrti.
Ravindra-svarupa: So when I want to move my hand, when I want to move this hand and so I will to move my hand, actually there has to be God involved in that action. Otherwise the hand won't move.
Prabhupada: Paralyzed.
Ravindra-svarupa: Paralyzed.
Prabhupada: When your hand is paralyzed what you can do?
Ravindra-svarupa: Do actually I don't directly do anything with matter. It is all Krsna's doing everything with the matter.
Devotee: "Man proposes, God disposes."
Prabhupada: Yes.
Ravindra-svarupa: Also I heard that also in every act of..., like if I want to blink my eyelid, also there is a demigod. What is the necessity of so many demigods? Why can't Krsna directly...
Prabhupada: That how you can know? You are not the director. Director knows how many assistants he requires. You cannot know... You are under the direction. You are not director. [break] ...not a mechanic he cannot understand why there are so many parts in the motor car. He is a fool. He doesn't know. But a mechanic knows that these things are required.
Guru dasa: If the soul cannot be burnt, why does the desire to be burnt in the material world there? Burnt, drowned...
Svarupa-damodara: Destroyed.
Prabhupada: He is not destroyed. When this body cannot work any more... Because this body is a machine. So a machine, if he does not move, then you, have to change to another machine.
Svarupa Damodara: The desire is not... Actually it is not burned; it just changed. The desire is changed to for a higher purpose. We have a choice between the subtle desires. Just change is the there from one to another.
Prabhupada: No, the same example: just like in a motor car you desire to go this side, but the machine is stopped, so you have to accept another motor car. It is like that, to fulfill your desire. After all it is a machine. Machine is matter. So it has got a time to work. When it is not working, then you change to another machine to fulfill your desire.
Guru dasa: If God, Krsna, desires the motor car to turn right, what makes the car turn left?
Prabhupada: Not Krsna desires. You desire. Krsna helps you. Krsna desires you give up all this nonsense and surrender to Him. Only He desires that. But if you don't do, you will desire so many things.
Svarupa Damodara: It remains a mystery to great thinkers that though the soul is pure by nature and transcendental, but somehow it is trapped in the subtle and gross body and...
Prabhupada: Because he desired. Krsna bhuliya jiva bhoga vancha kare. When he wants to enjoy this material world... In the spiritual world there is only one enjoyer. And in the material world everyone is a enjoyer. He is planning in his own way how to enjoy. That is material world. In the spiritual world the enj..., is Krsna, and all others is helping in His enjoyment. But in material world everyone is thinking, "I am enjoyer," and he is planning in his own way.
Devotee (1): Srila Prabhupada, modern philosophy is teaching that the forces of greed and lust and these things are greater than man, that actually... This concept that we are eternal, full of knowledge and bliss, they cannot accept that or understand that. They're thinking that the powers of evil are much greater, and we're just controlled by these things.
Prabhupada: Therefore they are fools. When a man's lusty desire is very strong, he commits, what is called, rape, and he becomes complicated in criminal activities. Kama esa krodha esa rajo-guna-samudbhavah. Why one is forced to do that? The cause is lusty desires, anger, greediness. So we are thinking we are master of this material world, but actually you are servant of these desires, kama, krodha, lobha, mohah. And that is maya. He is acting as servant, but he's thinking, "I am master." That is maya, which is not the fact. Just like yesterday we were discussing that the women, they are acting as instrument of men, and they are thinking, "We have equal rights." A man is utilizing her for his own purpose, and she is thinking "I am equal."
Ravindra-svarupa: I think you really surprised them when you told them that this women's liberation is just a trick by the men just to increase the class of prostitutes, available prostitutes.
Prabhupada: Free prostitutes. You go to a prostitute; you have to pay. Here they have arranged in such a way that free prostitute loitering on the street, and you can enjoy any one. This is their plan. They are rendered into beggar, and they are thinking equal rights.
Devotee (2): Srila Prabhupada, what does it mean that the soul is immovable?
Prabhupada: Immovable? Where it is?
Devotee (2): It states this in Bhagavad-gita.
Prabhupada: What is this? What is the verse?
Devotee (2): I don't know exactly. It's in the Second Chapter. Krsna's describing the nature of the spirit soul to Arjuna. Does anyone know that verse?
Nitai: Sthanur acalo 'yam...?
Prabhupada: Immovable in this sense: when he is fixed up in a certain body, then he is immovable from that body. Acalo 'yam sthanuh, sthanuh. Just like we're speaking of transplanting the heart. That does not mean you move the soul. That is immovable.
Devotee (3): Srila Prabhupada, the pure devotee's spirit soul is not trapped by the gross and subtle bodies?
Prabhupada: Yes, when he is liberated by devotional service. Sa gunan samatityaitan brahma-bhuyaya kalpate [Bg. 14.26].
Devotee (4): Prabhupada, when we try to explain to people that our philosophy of Krsna consciousness is authoritative and is coming from undisturbed men, learned men, that our spiritual master is not an ordinary man, what does it mean that he is not an ordinary man?
Prabhupada: He is not moved by the rascal scientist. (laughter) All rascals are moved by the so-called scientists.
Svarupa Damodara: Srila Prabhupada... (laughter)
Prabhupada: (laughing) The scientist is angry.
Svarupa Damodara: The soul is trapped as well as untrapped in the material body...
Prabhupada: Because he wanted to be trapped.
Svarupa Damodara: But sometimes it is also untrapped. But sometimes he is also free.
Prabhupada: No, by nature, he is not mixed up with these material things, but he is entrapped by his free will. Just like we are staying here. We are not bound to stay here, but we have come here. Nobody has forced us to come here.
Svarupa Damodara: So is that philosophy, simultaneously one and different...
Prabhupada: Yes.
Svarupa Damodara: ...that acintya-bhedabheda is also applicable in the case of...
Prabhupada: No, soul never mixes with the matter. Now I have come here, I am not mixed up with this jungle.
Svarupa Damodara: But it looks like it...
Prabhupada: It looks like. That is another thing. Asango 'yam purusah. The Vedic injunction is" "The purusa, the soul, is never complicated or mixed up with this." Because just like oil and water, it never mixes. The oil keeps its separate identity in water.
Svarupa Damodara: Yes. But if you put in a body, though they cannot be mixed, but they can stay together. Like in a chemical laboratory we take a test tube. In the test tube I can mix two solutions like, for example, mercury and water and oil. They will not mix, but they will stay in the same test tube. But a man who knows about the art of separating those three mixtures can do it very nicely.
Prabhupada: Yes. Similarly, soul does not mix with the matter and by this art, transcendental knowledge, you can become out of it.
Svarupa Damodara: So that's why we need a process and someone who knows the process of.
Prabhupada: The process is bhakti-yoga. Sa gunan samatityaitan: [Bg. 14.26] "Anyone who has taken to this bhakti-yoga," mam ca vyabhicarini bhakti-yogena yah sevate, "he immediately becomes free from the mixture of these three gunas." Sa gunan samatityaitan brahma-bhuyaya kalpate [Bg. 14.26]. "He again revives his Brahman nature." Aham brahmasmi. Brahma-bhutah prasannatma: [Bg. 18.54] Then he understands that 'I have no connection with these all nonsense things. I am brahma-bhutah.' "
Devotee (4): Prabhupada, we're in this material world, in this human body, we're having to work with this intelligence, with mind, material things. So there is a group of philosophers that say that actually because we're a product, our mind, the way we're thinking now is a product of our upbringing and our past, that actually we have no free will, but we're forced to think and act in a certain way.
Prabhupada: Why you are forced?
Devotee (4): Because of conditioning.
Prabhupada: Then that you have to admit that you are conditioned by some authority. When you are put into jail, you cannot act independently. You have to act according to the jail superintendent's order.
Devotee (3): Prabhupada, is our desire to be eternal, blissful and full of knowledge...
Prabhupada: Now let me finish. You will never be able to understand if you jump over like that. Let one thing be understood.
Devotee (4): So he admits he's conditioned, but still, there's no free will. He says, "Yeah, so I'm in the prison. I'm imprisoned. I'm conditioned."
Prabhupada: No, no, no. Free will... Just like a man commits theft by his free will. But when he is put into jail, then no more free will. He has to act according to the jail superintendent. But his beginning of jail life is free will. Nobody asked him that "You go to jail." But why he has come? He knows also that "When I am put into jail, I will lose all my freedom." He knows that. Still, he comes. Why does he come? He knows that. That is called ajnana. Mudha. That is called mudha. He knows; still, he does.
Svarupa Damodara: He is taking a chance.
Prabhupada: Yes, that means he is becoming implicated.
Svarupa Damodara: He thinks that maybe he will be free, that..., if sometimes there's also a chance that he will be caught.
Prabhupada: That is ajnana. As soon as he, "may be," that means ajnana.
Devotee (4): So that's why we originally fell down?
Prabhupada: Knowledge must be solid. There is no question "of maybe," no. Just like if you touch fire, there is no question of "maybe." It must burn you. You may think, "It may not burn," but that is your foolishness.
Ravindra-svarupa: So they think that they can enjoy material nature but not be implicated.
Prabhupada: Yes. Not implicated. He is already implicated. There is no question of maybe. Must.
Devotee (5):. So when we fell down from the spiritual world...
Prabhupada: Then you must suffer. There is no question, "maybe."
Devotee (5): When we fell down we were thinking, we could enjoy like that, in the same way?
Prabhupada: Yes, that is foolishness. And we are making our plan how to enjoy. That is our foolishness. And Krsna says "You give up all these nonsense plans. Come to Me."
Devotee (5): Is this example proper, that a son is being well taken care of by the father, but sometimes he's thinking, "I can enjoy more some other way?"
Prabhupada: Yes. Yes.
Svarupa Damodara: Srila Prabhupada, can I change the topic? Last, day before yesterday, morning, Prabhupada said that plants are more highly developed than the fish or the aquatics. But someone may ask what about the dolphins and the seals. They are regarded as very intelligent and highly developed.
Prabhupada: Every living entity has a particular type of intelligence which is greater than the other.
Svarupa Damodara: No, in the evolutionary cycle. Talking about the...
Prabhupada: No, evolutionary, cycle, the body may change, but every living entity has got a special advantage upon the others.
Ravindra-svarupa: What is the advantage of a tree, Srila Prabhupada?
Prabhupada: You see how they are standing there for five thousand years. You cannot do it. You cannot do it even for five minutes.
Svarupa Damodara: Actually the trees are absolutely necessary for the survival of animals.
Prabhupada: That is another thing. We say nothing is necessary, simply Krsna is necessary. That is material conception: "This is necessary. This is necessary." But Krsna says, "Nothing is necessary." Sarva-dharman parityajya [Bg. 18.66]. You are simply planning and becoming entangled with so-called "necessary."
Svarupa Damodara: But that is on the spiritual platform.
Prabhupada: You can create spiritual platform immediately. Sa gunan samatityaitan [Bg. 14.26]. If you fully engage yourself in devotional service, immediately you are above this material conception.
Svarupa Damodara: So the concept that the three modes of material nature, they're working all species, so it's not the...
Prabhupada: They are directing. Just like in the jail there are different departmental management, similarly, this management is required because you are in the jail. If you don't go to jail, the management may be closed. But you are thinking, "If I do not go to jail, how it will exist?" That is your business, say that "If we all become liberated, how this world will go on?" They say like that, as if it is very necessary.
Devotee (3): Srila Prabhupada, is the subtle bodies in the subtle world, are they made up of subtle atoms?
Prabhupada: Subtle body means subtle atoms. So if we are in subtle body, so whatever there is in the subtle body, everything is there.
Devotee (6): Prabhupada, sometimes on sankirtana we say that the human form of life is the highest because in this form we can understand God, and they say, "Well, what about the dolphins? You know, they've been doing experiments with the dolphins, and they've been finding out that the dolphins have their own conversations and things like that."
Prabhupada: So what they have done with the dolphins? They are talking only. What they have done? Simply theorizing. [break]
Prabhupada: (in car) ...improved anything.
Ravindra-svarupa: No.
Prabhupada: They are going on ciram vicinvan. Forever they are simply thinking, and no improvement has done.
Ravindra-svarupa: Of course, they promise that they will be able to do so many...
Prabhupada: That everyone can, a child can also promise. That is another thing.
Ravindra-svarupa: [break] ...the cells because they say that the cells are the fundamental unit of life and if they can understand even a very simple cell, then they think perhaps they can find the principles to understand everything living.
Prabhupada: Well, this "perhaps..."
Ravindra-svarupa: But they can't understand the cell.
Prabhupada: Yes. So their "perhaps," "maybe," is going on. And that will continue.
Ravindra-svarupa: Why does the living entity wish to speculate in this way?
Prabhupada: He has been given a special advantage to think of God, but instead of thinking God, he is thinking all these rubbish things, which he will never be able to fulfill. Misusing. The thinking power he is misusing.
Ravindra-svarupa: So this mental speculation or this "perhaps" and "maybe" is a misuse of his specific power to understand God.
Prabhupada: Yes, yes. Athato brahma jijnasa. The life, human life, is meant for enquiring about God, and God is explaining Himself about God. Instead of studying Bhagavad-gita very scrutinizingly, they are wasting time. "The cells, this, that, atom." That's all, wasting time Just like we are driving this car. So we can utilize it for going from one place to another. So there is no need of studying how the car is moving, how many parts are there.
Ravindra-svarupa: But still, people seem to have always a curiosity about these things.
Prabhupada: Yes. That curiosity is explained in the Bhagavad-gita that it is a machine and there are many subtle parts of the machine. So you have been given this machine. You utilize it properly. Why you are busy in studying the different parts? The different parts are there undoubtedly. But you cannot actually understand.
Ravindra-svarupa: We're going to take a picture, Srila Prabhupada.
Prabhupada: All right. (end)
>>> Ref. VedaBase =>
Morning Walk -- July 14, 1975, Philadelphia
© 2001 The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust International.
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