Суд над Бхагавад-гитой / Attempt to ban Bhagavad-gita

Discussions with Syamasundara dasa
Charles Darwin



Prabhupāda: Yes. Explain what is nature. That means insufficient knowledge.


Śyāmasundara: He simply observed there are mutations in nature. For instance, he thinks that perhaps at one time...


Prabhupāda: That means nature is working.


Śyāmasundara: Yes.


Prabhupāda: Nature is working, but he cannot explain how nature is working.


Śyāmasundara: At one time he says the one ape developed an opposing thumb so he was able to use tools, grasp things, so he became superior and passed that quality on to his offspring and that developed into man. Simply by...


Prabhupāda: Then when there is offspring, then the same question comes: "Why the monkey does not produce offspring—a man?" What is this nonsense?


Karandhara: Scientists often take the shelter of this premise, that it's not..., we don't..., we're not trying to find out. Whenever they're asked what is the original source, they say, "We're not concerned with that. We're concerned with just examining the phenomenon of that source."


Prabhupāda: Yes. That is childish. That is childish. Just like I have seen the phenomena, without man there cannot be singing. In the box there must be one man there. This is childish calculation, that's all. Phenomenal study means childish. A fan, in our childhood we will think that a fan is running, there must be some ghost who is running it. So this sort of phenomenal study is not scientific study. It is not scientific. (If) we don't find the original cause, that is not scientific.


Karandhara: That's what they're looking for. But because they can't produce a satisfactory answer, they have to say, "Well, we're not looking for that." They can't come forward with an answer.


Prabhupāda: Yes. That is, what it is called? Participia principeology, or something like that, that is called.


Śyāmasundara: (indistinct) in question.


Prabhupāda: That is not perfect knowledge.


Śyāmasundara: You must admit, though, being a scientist, that supposing you go down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, you see so many layers of earth going up thousands of feet, that the layers at the bottom are very, very old. You must admit, because the earth takes so many years to deposit soil. Even if it's only one million years, it's still very old. And in that lowest layer we find only evidences of simple...


Prabhupāda: So where is the lowest layer, he has gone? Where is it? Wherefrom it begins?


Śyāmasundara: The Grand Canyon is an example. That's a very deep canyon in the ground in Arizona.


Svarūpa Dāmodara: What happens if there was no human beings in that area so that they don't find any...?


Prabhupāda: Yes.


Śyāmasundara: Human beings aside, we still find...


Prabhupāda: Just like desert. Desert there is no human beings. If you dig the desert, what you will find?


Śyāmasundara: That's all right. It doesn't matter if it was ocean; still we find gradually the forms become more and more complex toward the...


Prabhupāda: But you cannot say where is the beginning and where is the end.


Śyāmasundara: No. That we can't say.


Prabhupāda: Therefore his knowledge is imperfect.


Śyāmasundara: He said that if we say the origin of species is the simplest form, one-celled...


Prabhupāda: How the species living force came in? What is the cause? How it is coming? Wherefrom the life begins?


Karandhara: It still evades the principal question of who is the creator. I can build a big house or I can build a small box. The point is, who is the builder? So it's evading the question of who... Even if everything started with a one-celled animal, what started the one-celled animal?


Prabhupāda: Yes. Wherefrom the one cell came?


Śyāmasundara: That they say. He says (it) comes from four different chemicals: oxygen, hydrogen...


Prabhupāda: Well, wherefrom the chemical came? They're not questioning. Who supplied the chemical?


Śyāmasundara: We still may be able to discover some day...


Prabhupāda: That means you are fool, that you are granted. As soon as you say "still," then you are fool number one. That is our...


Svarūpa Dāmodara: That's what the modern scientists are doing. They're trying to make life in a test tube. What they are trying to do, these so-called biochemists, at the present time, their goal is to make life in a test tube. So what they do is they are going to put so-called big molecules—they say DNA, dioxynucleic acid. This molecule is a necessary molecule for..., it's a lively thing. So they're going to make certain combinations of these molecules and put in the test tube and find out whether there is life coming out from the test tube, and then trying to prove how life was formed. But it's such a foolish idea that they will never be able to make the...


Prabhupāda: They are a set of fools. And going on under the name of scientists. Set of fools.


Svarūpa Dāmodara: On the other hand, the so-called physicist... His name was Heisenberg. He produced the concept of the theory of uncertainty, and he found out that certain physical rules that govern certain parts of the so-called universal system of rules—why the planets are moving around the sun, and why they have a repeated course and so on. But he did not know what was the answer. So he named the title of the theory, the Theory of Uncertainty. Based on that, there are so many groups coming up, but they found uncertainty itself, that implies that there is some...


Prabhupāda: Basic principle is uncertainty, and they're building on big, big buildings.


Śyāmasundara: Darwin calls it the missing link.


Prabhupāda: That missing link, let them learn from us. We can give him the missing link.


Karandhara: But ultimately they'll say it'll come down to we propose that Kṛṣṇa is the creator or that God is the creator, then they'll say "That must be proved to me." In other words, they want to fit God within their own empiric gaze. That will be their only satisfaction when they actually become able to circumvent God's existence and create a power by their own intelligence.


Prabhupāda: He has to admit that the theory of uncertainty is bogus, but everything is there, and that masking behind all these things there must be big brain. That one has to accept. Simply uncertainty, that is not a science. The certainty is that behind all these things there is a big brain. I do not know Him—that is a different thing—but there is a big brain.


Śyāmasundara: Darwin, he was not so much interested in those questions of origin and those things, but he was a botanist and a biologist, and he simply wanted to investigate how things evolved from one simple form to a more complex form...


Prabhupāda: That he cannot say, how the evolved. He captured something out of his imagination, but he cannot explain scientifically.


Śyāmasundara: From simple forms to more complex forms.


Prabhupāda: Yes.


Śyāmasundara: Well, he says that this happens through mutation.


Prabhupāda: But you do it in the laboratory by mutation, by combination.


Śyāmasundara: They can do that.


Prabhupāda: No. But he said that that is not possible.


Svarūpa Dāmodara: Śrīla Prabhupāda, they find that just like I said already, the basic elements of life—carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen...


Śyāmasundara: You know the theory, not theory but practical proof, that the genes can be mutated by bombarding with cosmic rays.


Svarūpa Dāmodara: Yes. That they prove by so-called... That's why the cancer... The example of that mutation is the cancer cell. They try to find out how cancer is caused in the body. They say that somehow the cell has been changed, and they say that it has been done by mutation, so they try to prove it in the laboratory by changing the structure of the cell, and that is called mutation. So they say why the cancer is formed because cancer is an abnormal cell, this is a normal cell. In answering why these elements are formed from these basic four chemicals-carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen—they try, they say that somehow this nitrogen and hydrogen, they combine forming ammonia. That is called ammonia, from nitrogen and hydrogen. They say somehow this has formed, and somehow, by combination of hydrogen and oxygen, water is formed. And somehow by combination of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, these so-called carbohydrates, or these are formed. But they say somehow these are formed, but they do not know how it is formed.


Śyāmasundara: But all that Darwin is interested in is in the evolution of species: how one type of body evolves to the other type due to the changing conditions, and that because he has evolved a certain body he is best adapted to survive in that condition so that his species survives. So the scientists have shown that by bombarding the cosmic radiation or radioactive elements, that a gene or cell can change, mutate, so a different kind of animal comes out. From one kind of mother a different kind of animal comes out.


Prabhupāda: But we say that different kind of animal is not beyond these 8,400,000 species.


Svarūpa Dāmodara: Actually this is not completely different animal. Some of these properties...


Śyāmasundara: A variation.


Svarūpa Dāmodara: Just a little change. But another point in that connection is that nature makes its own equilibrium, balance of all the species, and it could have been all a balance. That is why, when nature is balancing all the species, there is no question of making another species fresh or something. This has been already made. It has already been done by nature. What is that nature, you have to ask by going to the real nature, not this false nature.


Śyāmasundara: Just like Darwin first investigated some islands off of Peru, Galapagos Islands, and he found different species of life that exist there that don't exist anywhere else, so that they must have evolved...


Prabhupāda: That means that he has not seen all the species, because he has not traveled all over the universe.


Karandhara: Deductive. It's a deductive conclusion.


Prabhupāda: Yes. He has seen one island but he has not seen the whole creation.


Syamasundara: No.


Prabhupāda: Then? How he can fix up. There may be many others he has not seen.


Śyāmasundara: But the only thing that I want to get at is...


Prabhupāda: The only thing he has has studied, this earthly planet...


Śyāmasundara: ...how the bodies change.


Prabhupāda: ...but there are many other millions of planets, he has not seen all of them. He has not excavated, dug the depth of all the planets, so how he can conclude that this is all? He has not seen everything, neither it is possible for him.


Śyāmasundara: But according to the conditions, different conditions on this planet, natural conditions, certain animals...


Prabhupāda: Yes. But he has not seen different conditions in different planets. Suppose the sun planet, the condition is fire. So how life can exist in the fire, he has no knowledge.


Karandhara: You point out in the introduction to Śrī Īśopaniṣad that deductive conclusions are always imperfect because you have to be able to deduce everything in order to come out to the right conclusion. Just like if you live in a village where everyone is only five feet tall, you may deduct that everyone in existence is only five feet tall; but if you go to the next village you may find someone six feet tall. So you have to search out every village and see every person before you...


Prabhupāda: That is not possible for you. How many millions of villages are there?


Śyāmasundara: No, but see, we're talking about two different things now. He is talking about the doctrine of natural selection or survival of the fittest...


Prabhupāda: But natural selection, that means that is not his selection. Natural selection.


Śyāmasundara: Natural selection.


Prabhupāda: So nature is more powerful than him. So he has not studied nature.


Śyāmasundara: He studies how the bodies change in nature.


Prabhupāda: No. He has not studied. He has studied in a particular place only. But nature means, when you speak of nature, suppose you have studied within this planet, but in nature means there is millions of universes, but he has not studied them.


Śyāmasundara: So you say the doctrine of natural selection is not...


Prabhupāda: Natural selection is there, but how the natural selection is working, he does not know that.


Karandhara: In a sense we know from Vedic information that the species from one end from the smallest germ up to the highest demigod, they are progressively more advanced. So anyone can come along and take out a small eclipsed portion of that sequence and propose the theory that the species is advancing, but that gamut, that range, perspective of higher and lower is existing, but not that it's evolving...


Prabhupāda: It is already there. I am simply changing place, transmigration. That is our theory-transmigration.


Śyāmasundara: But you still haven't answered satisfactorily...


Prabhupāda: Just like you are traveling in a train. There is first class, second class—that is already existing. But if you pay more, you come to the first class. You cannot say, "Now the first class is now created." It was already existing. So their defect is that they have no information of the soul. The soul is transmigrating. The forms are already there. The soul is transmigrating from one apartment to another apartment. That they do not know.


Śyāmasundara: But still I'm not convinced that if we make geologic investigations all over the world, not just the Grand Canyon or here or there, but in many parts of the world we always find the same thing, that the...


Prabhupāda: But if you say that you have studied all over the world, I say you have not studied all over the planet. That is still defective.


Śyāmasundara: Let's just confine it to this planet.


Prabhupāda: No. Why should you confine it? Nature is not only within this planet.


Śyāmasundara: Because you said that millions of years ago there were many complex forms of life existing on this planet.


Prabhupāda: No. Not on this planet; maybe anywhere. It is when you say nature, nature is not confined—what is called—limited within this planet. That you cannot say. When you say nature, this material nature, there are millions of universes and millions of planets in each and every universe. If you have studied... Suppose you have studied this planet; that is not sufficient knowledge.


Śyāmasundara: So, but you said before that millions of years ago there were complex forms of life on this planet: men, horses, animals, elephants...


Prabhupāda: Yes. Yes.


Śyāmasundara: But from hundreds of different sources of this...


Prabhupāda: But I say, I say that it is still existing. The man is existing, the horse is existing, the snake is existing, the insect is existing, the trees are existing; why not millions of years ago?


Śyāmasundara: Because there's no evidence.


Prabhupāda: This is the evidence. This is the evidence. You cannot give the history of this planet. Now suppose the existence of sun, you cannot give history. The sun is existing millions of years ago. It is not that sun is created now. The sun is existing now, the moon is existing now, so why should not they come from millions of years also? The sun existing, and within the sun everything is existing. So if the sun is existing, then other things must be existing. That is my conclusion.


Śyāmasundara: They may be existing, but on this planet we have no evidence...


Prabhupāda: That doesn't mean... That means you limit your study in one planet. That is not full knowledge.


Śyāmasundara: I just want to find out for the time being about...


Prabhupāda: Why time being? If you are not perfect in your knowledge, then why should I accept your theory? That is my point.


Śyāmasundara: Well, if you make claims that millions of years ago there were complex forms of life on this planet...


Prabhupāda: Why you are... I never said on this planet. By nature's way everything is existing.


Śyāmasundara: So on this planet there were not complex forms of life millions of years ago...


Prabhupāda: So maybe; may not be. That is not of the point. The point is that everything is existing in the nature's way. The species, as we say from Vedic language, 8,400,000, fixed-up. So maybe in your neighborhood, in my neighborhood, it is, they have got..., they are fixed up. But you simply, if you study your neighborhood, that is not perfect knowledge.


Śyāmasundara: I accept that. But I want to understand that the theory of evolution is that...


Prabhupāda: Theory of evolution we accept.


Śyāmasundara: ...from simple forms of life, more complex forms evolve.


Prabhupāda: Yes. That's all right. But they are all existing still. They are not extinct. That is the point.


Śyāmasundara: All right. But on this planet, now if we could examine this planet...


Prabhupāda: Again you come to this planet. Why you are sticking to this planet?


Karandhara: Lord Brahmā, the most complex... From the Vedic information we find that the most complex living entity was first, and from him, he created all the variations. So from the most complex the most simple was evolved. Then if you have the wrong information, you could look at it and say it was the opposite, that from the most simple the most complex evolved. The sequence is there, and if you observe it in the wrong way, you may conclude it's going in the opposite direction.


Śyāmasundara: But in the Vedic scriptures...


Prabhupāda: The first creature is Brahmā, the most intelligent, the most learned.


Śyāmasundara: ...and he said, and you say that on this planet there were pastimes, for instance, of Lord Rāmacandra millions of years ago, with His men, His animals, His horses, deers, so many things. But in all of our evidences we find only at that time the most simple forms of life...


Prabhupāda: Your evidence... You will be satisfied with your evidence, but I have got my own evidence. Why shall I accept your evidence? You cannot force your evidence, your so-called evidence upon me. What is evidence? First of all you have to select, what is that evidence.


Śyāmasundara: Terrestrial, archaeological findings...


Prabhupāda: No. No. That is not evidence. That is not evidence.


Karandhara: If you find a bone, how do you know it's not...


Prabhupāda: That is imperfect. You have studied one portion of the creation. That is not evidence. In other portion of the creation there is different. But that is not evidence. Your study, your limited study is not evidence.


Svarūpa Dāmodara: So the evidence posed by Darwin's theory is not enough to explain...


Prabhupāda: Yes.


Śyāmasundara: Yes. I agree with that. It doesn't explain there is an evolution...


Prabhupāda: Evolution we accept. There is no quarrel about that point. But we say there are 8,400,000 species of life, evolution is coming through that. But you cannot give us any list that so many... We give real evolution, that there are 8,400,000 species of life, and the living entity coming through that. [break] ...evolution is taking from here to here, and how many there are? You cannot say. You simply say "missing," "something missing," "something is added," all vague.


Śyāmasundara: That admitted, but...


Prabhupāda: If you admit that you are imperfect in knowledge, then it is no use citing scripture. There will...


Śyāmasundara: But what I want to know is that...


Prabhupāda: ...evolution we admit. But your evolution theory is not perfect. Our evolutionary theory is perfect.


Śyāmasundara: But it appears that the evolution is from simple to complex.


Prabhupāda: That we admit, simple. That we admit. There is no difference. But you cannot say what is the simple and what is the complex, and what are the... You say something missing. That is evasive. Why you should be missing if you are in knowledge? You must say this thing is missing, that you have no knowledge.


Karandhara: It's just an axiom, that if any part of the knowledge is perfect, then the whole knowledge is perfect. If you have any part of the truth, you have to have the whole truth in the highest sense. So if their theory is at all correct, and any of the premises are solid, then why it doesn't conclude itself by its own logical deduction? Why it would always have to allude to something missing, some missing factor?


Prabhupāda: Jīva jātiṣu. The Padma Purāṇa says jīva jātiṣu, so different species of life. And they give: from this, this; from this, this; from this, this. Then, just like it is said that from bird's life the beast's life comes. Now the beasts, this category is of three millions types of beasts.


Śyāmasundara: Just like they find evidence of large bird, pterodactyl, which has beastlike properties. It has legs also, and they say from that kind of bird evolved a more beastlike, like you say, beasts.


Prabhupāda: Just like we say that kṛmayo rudra-saṅkhyakāḥ pakṣiṇāṁ daśa-lakṣaṇam. From the insect life the bird's life developed. That we see practically. One have becomes flies, butterflies. In the grass, worm becomes a butterfly. That is, there is evidence.


Śyāmasundara: But at that time were there only insects existing?


Prabhupāda: No. Everything was existing.


Karandhara: That's not evolution of the species, it's evolution of the soul through the existing species.


Prabhupāda: Transmigration from one body to another. The bodies are already existing.


Śyāmasundara: For instance, they say that during the Ice Age, when there were..., the earth became very cold, and there were great ice formations in Europe and America, that this animal they call the mammoth-it's an elephantlike animal but it had long, very long hair for warmth-suddenly this species appears. Does it mean that that body existed always somewhere else, but it just suddenly appeared in order...


Prabhupāda: Yes, yes.


Śyāmasundara: ...to live here in that environment?


Prabhupāda: Yes.


Karandhara: What if it is indeed a different species? What do they qualify as a difference in species? I mean, like one man has lots of hair on his body and one man doesn't. That doesn't make him a different species necessarily.


Śyāmasundara: Yes. But in this case, elephants always lived in tropical. They were living in hot climates, and suddenly they had to adapt to the cold.


Prabhupāda: No. Again, just like we have got experience with the change of season, different animals are also produced, with the change of season. But it is not that they are coming new. They are already existing.


Śyāmasundara: They're appearing.


Prabhupāda: Yes.


Karandhara: Appearing and disappearing according to the seasons.


Prabhupāda: Yes. Just like this Los Angeles City, there is a havoc of flood from the ocean and all men die. That does not mean extinct; the men are there somewhere else. You cannot say that human species is now extinct, because your study is limited.


Śyāmasundara: Supposing one man is particularly adapted, and he is smart, intelligent, and he survives when everything else is killed...


Prabhupāda: That he may survive, that we don't disagree.


Śyāmasundara: But he would say that that man passes on his superior traits to his children, and it's another species.


Prabhupāda: No. He survives, but many other men like him, they are existing somewhere. He may survive of this catastrophe, but that does not mean that other men are all extinct. You cannot say that. In these circumstances this man may survive or may not survive, but man is existing somewhere else.


Śyāmasundara: And another example, for instance there is a dog called the Pekinese dog. It was made by man, it was developed by men. They took a certain type of dog and crushed it's jaws in so many instances until eventually that trait was passed on naturally to its children...


Prabhupāda: But he is still, it belongs to the dog species. We are speaking of dog species.


Śyāmasundara: But it's a new type of dog. New type. Never existed before that, here.


Prabhupāda: New type, that will not exist also. Because it has been artificially made, it is existing now; now it will not exist again.


Karandhara: There's a kind of Indians, when the babies are young they put a board on their head so that (indistinct) like that.


Śyāmasundara: But now this dog is produced naturally, with its face like that.


Karandhara: But it's still a dog.


Prabhupāda: The dog species.


Śyāmasundara: But it's a new species of dog.


Karandhara: Well, they may call it a new species, but according to Vedic definition it isn't a new species.


Śyāmasundara: What did you just define by species? You mean different types of men, you say...


Prabhupāda: The species, definition of species according to biology is different. We say species means jāti, human race.


Śyāmasundara: So four hundred thousand species of humans.


Karandhara: Different levels of consciousness?


Prabhupāda: Yes. Different levels of consciousness.


Śyāmasundara: I see.


Karandhara: And within any species there can an infinite variety of variations of that one species. Just like...


Prabhupāda: Just like the scientists, their species is different. Just like we are making division that 400,000 different types of men. They will say this is one species.


Śyāmasundara: So would you say, for instance, someone who is less intelligent or more intelligent than I am is in a different species?


Prabhupāda: Less intelligent or more intelligent does not make any species, because suppose you have got five children, one is less intelligent, more intelligent.


Śyāmasundara: He was just saying levels of consciousness determine the species.


Prabhupāda: Yes. This is levels of consciousness, that just like we divide the human society: some men are brāhmaṇas, some men are kṣatriyas, some men are vaiśyas, that can be found at any time.


Śyāmasundara: Those are species?


Prabhupāda: They are not species, according to their...


Śyāmasundara: They are types of men.


Prabhupāda: Yes. We said varieties.


Śyāmasundara: Then what is the different species of man, separate from me; for instance, what is another species that is different than I am?


Prabhupāda: I do not know exactly the species, but when we, [break] ...means jāti, manuṣya jāti.


Śyāmasundara: I mean what is an example of different species of man. What are they, for example, several species of men?


Prabhupāda: I say that species, this word is not applicable in that sense. In that sense, according to the scientists' species. But when we say species, class you can say. Classes.


Śyāmasundara: Classes. But what, give me an example.


Prabhupāda: Again, just like we are a class—Hare Kṛṣṇa class. Our mentality is different from others.


Śyāmasundara: Oh.


Prabhupāda: Therefore we are a class.


Śyāmasundara: So tribes, more like tribal distinctions?


Prabhupāda: We are not exactly tribal. Culture, by culture.


Śyāmasundara: By interest and culture. I see.


Prabhupāda: By differentiation of culture.


Śyāmasundara: Those are species.


Prabhupāda: Those who are Aryan, non-Aryan; just like I say, they are all human beings, but why you say one Aryan and another non-Aryan? It is difference of culture, that's all.


Devotee: Say, for example, there is the Caucasian race, the Negroid race, different races like that. If they are all living in the same... Say they all join Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement, then they are all the same...


Prabhupāda: But Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement is not on the basic principle of this body. It is basically on the soul; therefore you will find everyone same.


Śyāmasundara: But otherwise it goes...


Prabhupāda: Because it is culture. When one comes to the spiritual platform, there is no question. Even animal you can accept. Just like we worship Vajrāṅgajī, Hanumān. He's animal, but because he is devotee of Lord Rāmacandra, we worship him. But that doesn't mean we are worshiping animals.


Śyāmasundara: You mean like Bengalis are a different species than Gujaratis? Something like that?


Prabhupāda: No, no. Why do you mix, we have already explained? Our jāti means of the same culture. He may be Gujarati, he may be Bengali, he may be American.


Śyāmasundara: So, for instance, carpenters are different than field workers-like that, different interests?


Prabhupāda: Why different interest? The interest is to earn money. So you may earn money in some way, I may earn money in some way, he may earn money in some way.


Karandhara: So is the primary factor of the variation is how much advanced they are in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, and how least advanced they are in Kṛṣṇa consciousness?


Prabhupāda: Yes. Yes.


Link to this page: http://prabhupadabooks.com/g=160796&page=2