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

Discussions with Syamasundara dasa
Charles Darwin



Śyāmasundara: So there are only two species.


Karandhara: The demons and the devas.


Prabhupāda: This consciousness is coming through so many species, animals, then they're trees, they have no consciousness, but there is living..., the soul is there.


Śyāmasundara: I'm still trying to understand what you mean by the species of human life. It's not clear to me. I don't understand what you mean by the different species of human life.


Prabhupāda: By culture.


Śyāmasundara: By culture.


Prabhupāda: Yes. One class of human being...


Śyāmasundara: But everyone is looking for money. You said the field worker is not the same as, or is the same as the carpenter, because they're both looking for money.


Prabhupāda: Yes. But one who knows how to earn money very easily, and one may not know. That is culture. That is culture. One man is sitting in one place earning daily one lakhs of rupees.


Śyāmasundara: So big industrialists and field workers are two different species of men.


Prabhupāda: Not species, class. Jāti.


Śyāmasundara: Jāti. So when you say 400,000 species of human life...


Prabhupāda: It is difference of culture.


Śyāmasundara: It's different from what we think of as species.


Prabhupāda: Culture.


Devotee: It's not species in the bodily...


Karandhara: So the angle of vision is not from the bodily, it's from the closeness of the soul to Kṛṣṇa consciousness, as far as they're able...


Prabhupāda: Unless you accept soul and consciousness, there cannot be question of culture.


Śyāmasundara: But when the scientists say "species," they mean different types of bodies.


Prabhupāda: Yes. We say 400,000 different forms of body, so human body, just like Negroes, they are also human beings, and you are also human beings. So this, scientists will say they are all one species, human being. But we say that Negro culture and the Āryan culture is different.


Śyāmasundara: They also say their bodies are different, Negroid bodies or Caucasian bodies, or Oriental bodies...


Prabhupāda: Then you can say species. Species and the different bodies.


Śyāmasundara: Species means different bodies. too


Prabhupāda: Yes.


Karandhara: So the consciousness, the body, or my form, it's pertaining to my consciousness, the development of my consciousness.


Prabhupāda: Yes. You and your brother may be of the same type of body; there may not be a different, same type of consciousness.


Śyāmasundara: But you just said, for instance, the industrialist and farmers are two different species of men, but there could be a Negro industrialist...


Prabhupāda: I already said that. Why don't you listen? Species, definition of the scientists is different from ours. We say class.


Śyāmasundara: I'm trying to understand, because you said class but then you also said bodies. Negro bodies are different from white Caucasian bodies.


Prabhupāda: Maybe difference of bodies. But that does not...; therefore our classification on the basis of soul. The soul is equal. In spite of different types of body, the soul is one. There is no change of the soul. Therefore in the Bhagavad-gītā it is said that he does not see the species or the class or definition. He sees one: paṇḍitāḥ sama-darśinaḥ [Bg. 5.18]. Paṇḍita, one who sees to the (indistinct), the soul, he does not find any difference of these species or (indistinct). This is our point.


Karandhara: So Darwin and similar material scientists, they have no information of the soul, but yet they're...


Prabhupāda: There they're missing the whole point.


Karandhara: But they're trying to find out information for themselves, and for others around them, but not knowing who they are, they're drawing on a material platform which is infinite, or at least infinite as far as their capacity to understand. So not only will they never be able to understand the material, the construction of the material arrangement, but at ultimate issue it has no pertinence, anyway. It doesn't mean anything.


Śyāmasundara: No. It does mean something if you accept that forms are evolving from simple to complex. That means that we can expect in the future that mankind will even be of a more superior nature than they are now.


Prabhupāda: Forms are... One form is superior than the other form. (indistinct) you said.


Karandhara: That possibility is also there. We know that by performances of certain types of sacrifices you can become, and go to the demigod planet...


Prabhupāda: That difference is that one apartment is better than the other apartment. Material.


Śyāmasundara: They would say that from the lowest apartments we are evolving to the better apartments.


Prabhupāda: Yes. So according to your position. Just like if you... There are different apartments: first-class apartments, second-class apartments, third-class apartment. But as you are fit to pay the rent or price, then you are allowed to enter in the apartment. The apartments are already there—first-class, second-class, third-class. They are not evolving.


Śyāmasundara: They say all living things on this earth are evolving in that way, from lower to higher. In the history of the earth...


Prabhupāda: That also may be accepted, because just like at certain period, people are constructing a certain type of apartment, next stage they construct a different type of apartment. That can be accepted. But the apartment itself is not evolving; the evolution is taking, of the apartment, on the desire of something else.


Śyāmasundara: On the desire of something else.


Prabhupāda: Yes.


Śyāmasundara: So just like...


Prabhupāda: That they do not know.


Śyāmasundara: Oh, I see. Just like...


Prabhupāda: They say simply the apartment is changing.


Śyāmasundara: Just like if it suddenly got cold, the spirit soul would desire to be warm so he would evolve a body with hair.


Prabhupāda: Yes. That we say. That is our..., according to the mentality at the time of death you get another apartment. But the apartment is already there.


Śyāmasundara: I see. So if conditions suddenly change...


Prabhupāda: Change of mind.


Śyāmasundara: ...a new apartment would arrive on the scene because the...


Prabhupāda: Not will arrive, it is already there.


Karandhara: Simply awarded.


Prabhupāda: It is already there.


Karandhara: The material nature has it in its closet...


Prabhupāda: Yes. "If you want this, come on, here."


Karandhara: ...that, that dress...


Prabhupāda: "If you want this, come on here." It is already there.


Śyāmasundara: And then all the others will die out and that new one will begin, because the...


Prabhupāda: Everyone will die. Everyone will die means change his apartment. Now at the time of changing apartments... Suppose I am here, I have to change another, so I can select my apartment, what kind of apartment I shall have. But that apartment is already there. I'll have to simply make arrangement, that's all. It is not that I am creating that apartment.


Śyāmasundara: The elements, material elements, ingredients are already there.


Prabhupāda: Already there.


Karandhara: The possibilities are unlimited so it's not possible to make such a close...


Prabhupāda: And that apartment is fixed up 8,400,000. Now you can enter into any apartment. Or it is to be ascertained that you cannot think beyond this. Just like a hotel owner, he has got different types of apartments, and he knows the customer cannot think beyond it. So any customer wants, "I'll give this apartment." So by nature's way there are 8,400,000's of apartments. You simply change according to your mentality: "I want this," "All right. Come on."


Karandhara: There's a range. To go back to the...


Prabhupāda: It is, apartment is not evolving. I am evolving in this sense that I am changing one apartment to a better apartment. The better apartment is already there.


Śyāmasundara: To go back to this survival of the fittest theory, supposing we are all here and the water comes, like you said. Supposing one of these persons in Los Angeles has the ability to breathe in water, somehow or other he can breathe under water...


Prabhupāda: So we have no objection.


Śyāmasundara: So he survives; everyone else...


Prabhupāda: He survives means... He survives means that even if he's dead, that does not mean that the species is dead. There is another human being in another part of the world.


Śyāmasundara: I accept that, but I mean I want to...


Prabhupāda: So you say that because he does not survive, the whole species is extinct.


Śyāmasundara: No. But he survives..., one man survives because he is able to breathe in the water.


Karandhara: But how is he able to breathe in the water?


Śyāmasundara: Because he's adapted, he's mutated somehow.


Karandhara: But what has been that selective principle that he's adapted?


Śyāmasundara: According to you, you say it's his desire.


Karandhara: But the selective, active principle...


Prabhupāda: But the fact is that you do not find anyone that one can breathe within the water.


Śyāmasundara: No. That's only an example.


Prabhupāda: But you should give example which is proper.


Śyāmasundara: All right. There is a fish called a lungfish, which... Most fish have gills, they breathe underwater with their gills, they extract oxygen from water. But there's one fish in Africa that has developed lungs, so that, because it lives in an area where the water sometimes goes away, so it must be able to breathe oxygen from the air. So they say out of millions of fish in that water, one happened to have a pair of lungs, so he survived.


Prabhupāda: So we say that means he was already existing. We say there are 900,000 of species of fishes. He may be one of them, that's all.


Śyāmasundara: So the selective principle is there, but all species are already there.


Prabhupāda: Already there, existing.


Karandhara: The selection will simply be dictated by... The so-called observance of selection is just the circumstance. The water's going away, so...


Prabhupāda: The selection of the species of life. I can select. From fish, I can become man; from man I can become fish.


Śyāmasundara: So that fish desired to survive in that condition.


Prabhupāda: Yes.


Śyāmasundara: I see.


Prabhupāda: Therefore there is a greater law. Just like the hotel people, he has got experience. The customers come and they want this sort of facilities. So he has made all the facilities here to receive all kinds of customers. Similarly, this is God's creation. He knows how much a living entity can think of, so He has made all these species. If he thinks like this, "Come on, here," nature will, "Yes." Prakṛteḥ kriyamāṇāni guṇaiḥ karmāṇi [Bg. 3.27]. Nature is offering facility, "Yes, come on." God, Kṛṣṇa as Paramātmā within the heart, He knows, He wants this. He wants this, immediately nature, "Give him this apartment," and nature offers, "Yes. Come on. Here is apartment." This is real explanation.


Śyāmasundara: So I understand that, and I'll accept that, but the one thing I'm still puzzled on is that there's no geological evidence that in former times on this planet there were more complex forms...


Prabhupāda: Why you are taking geological evidence as final? Why you are taking that? That is final?


Śyāmasundara: But it's logical...


Prabhupāda: What logic? Science is progressing. You cannot say that this is final.


Karandhara: Scientists couldn't deny; they could just say that we haven't found any evidence.


Prabhupāda: Yes.


Śyāmasundara: But until there's something that disproves it to me, then I must accept it, because it..., because it's logical.


Karandhara: But that's a false platform. I'll conclude on the basis of my limited knowledge because I don't have the perfect knowledge. That's an abortion of the whole scientific...


Śyāmasundara: Yes. All right. You can say that I've never seen a purple man, so there must be no such thing as a purple man. You can say that, but as far as I can operate within my practicality, there are no purple men. I've never seen one; no one has ever seen purple men. So isn't this logical?


Prabhupāda: Purple men?


Śyāmasundara: I'm just using it as an example.


Prabhupāda: What is that purple men? But you have not also seen, why you are speaking like that?


Śyāmasundara: I'm using it as an example of an exception.


Prabhupāda: No, no. What, you are scientist, what you have never seen, why you are thinking of like that? That is my point.


Śyāmasundara: I'm using it as an example of an exception...


Prabhupāda: Why example? Why you give a fictitious example which you have no experience?


Śyāmasundara: All right. So let's say no one has ever seen a...


Prabhupāda: No, no. That is another thing. You cannot say which you have never seen, at least. Because yours is experimental, I may say, but you at least, cannot say like that.


Śyāmasundara: I have excavated in all parts of the world, and every time I go to the...


Prabhupāda: No. You have not excavated all parts of the world. That is another nonsense. You have not done this.


Śyāmasundara: Well, on seven continents I have excavated...


Prabhupāda: But that seven continents is not the whole world. That is our charge. That you are claiming that you have excavated all. We say no, not even an insignificant portion. So your knowledge is limited. (indistinct) they say the same (indistinct), Dr. Frog. Dr. Frog is limited within the three-feet well. If he says "I have seen everything," that is not acceptable.


Śyāmasundara: But at least in thousands of places they have bored into the earth or dug into the earth, and they've found...


Prabhupāda: Yes. Thousands of places is not this finishing, the whole planet.


Karandhara: They're always coming up with something new. They're having to revise their theory. Just like that pamphlet. They had to revise the whole theory about Carbon 14 because they found a new factor in the deterioration in the element which they never before considered...


Prabhupāda: This experimental knowledge is always imperfect. Because they are experimenting with imperfect senses, therefore they must be imperfect. Our source of knowledge is different. We do not depend on experimental knowledge.


Śyāmasundara: Let us say that the remains of every animal, every living entity that has ever been found in the ground...


Prabhupāda: That is also a limited space. You cannot say you have excavated a portion of the earth and that is all. You cannot say.


Śyāmasundara: So far, anyway.


Prabhupāda: So far means that is not all. That is, so far, as soon as it is so far, that is not all.


Śyāmasundara: But, so surely we must be practical and say that every...


Prabhupāda: Practical means...


Karandhara: We can only operate on things that we have...


Prabhupāda: Practical means which is beyond your knowledge, beyond your capacity, that is impractical. So nothing is practical.


Śyāmasundara: How can I theorize there were other or higher forms...


Prabhupāda: You theorize partially, as far as. That is not perfect(?).


Śyāmasundara: If I accept your knowledge, how can I theorize that there were higher forms of life millions of years ago if I have never found any evidence and I have searched...


Prabhupāda: This is the evidence. This is the evidence. You have to see through the evidence, because there are, in the evolution there are so many species of life, say 8,400,000, they are all existing now. They are all existing now. Therefore why should I conclude that millions of years they did not exist?


Śyāmasundara: You say they are all existing now, but I don't see the dinosaur. There are no dinosaurs on this planet.


Prabhupāda: That is not the denied. Dinosaur you may not have seen, it may be existing some other... Neither I have seen the 8,400,000 different species of, different forms of life. But my source of knowledge is different. Your source of knowledge is different. You are experimenter with imperfect senses. I am taking from the perfect who has seen, who knows things. Therefore my knowledge is perfect. Just the same example: I am receiving knowledge from my mother, "Here is your father," and you are trying to search out where is your father. You don't go to the mother, but you are searching out. So therefore, however you may search, your knowledge always will be imperfect.


Śyāmasundara: And your knowledge says that millions of years ago there were higher forms of living entities on this planet.


Prabhupāda: Oh, yes. Because our Vedic information is that the first creation is the most intellect, that is the most intellectual personality within this universe, Brahmā. So how we can say..., how we can accept your theory that intellect develops? We are receiving Vedic knowledge from Brahmā, so perfect. So that is the evidence. The first creature was so perfect.


Karandhara: You are accepting authority anyway. We are accepting Darwin's authority that he went to these islands and found these animals. How do we know he went to the islands and found the animals?


Śyāmasundara: Because you can go there now and find them; they are still there.


Karandhara: But you have to go there to make, to make your point and deduct it. [break]


Svarūpa Dāmodara: ...when it will be cause of all his existence, survival for the fittest, but he is not going into the, who posed this, how it has been done, how it is going to that theory, so his theories are not complete.


Prabhupāda: His theory, it is not science. It is suggestion, guess.


Śyāmasundara: They call it "doctrine of natural selection," not theory.


Prabhupāda: Doctrine. So doctrine, doctrine should be fact, but Darwin's theory, so far... It is called Darwin's theory...


Śyāmasundara: It's not called theory, it's doctrine. It should be doctrine.


Karandhara: What they mean by doctrine is that they can't agree on it and say it's fact. That there's so many short-comings that they will call it a doctrine but they won't call it fact. That's practically the whole story in scientific research: the real scientists, they never call anything a solid fact; it's always a theory or a doctrine because they never find a perfect enough conclusion which takes into account everything and perfectly reconciles...


Prabhupāda: What is that uncertainty? What do you call that?


Śyāmasundara: It's called Theory of Uncertainty. Heisenberg's Theory of Uncertainty.


Prabhupāda: That is also theory.


Śyāmasundara: Yes. That has to do with atomic particles.


Svarūpa Dāmodara: Accepting the (indistinct), early in 1900 when they find out the smallest particle in the atom, it was a theory; it was accepted for about ten, twenty years.


Śyāmasundara: That was long before, in Greek times, Democritus.


Svarūpa Dāmodara: But the real theory started by Darwin, that was accepted for several years, but later on, with new advancement, his theory changed. His theory became disproved, that "What you are saying, it is not right, it is not final." So theories can change. So same thing, Darwin's theory is also changing.


Śyāmasundara: But his impact upon the thinking of the world so completely changed the whole conception of...


Prabhupāda: That is now changing again. So what is the use of that, such change?


Śyāmasundara: Well, you have to investigate, because he is important for our...


Prabhupāda: No. That's all right. We will investigate; and a theory which changes, it will change, that's all. It is not a fact. The sun rising is a fact. It cannot change.


Śyāmasundara: Still, you say if there were high forms of, say Brahmā, in Brahmā's time or millions of years ago, there were also other high animals besides men?


Prabhupāda: All I say is that all kinds of different classes of forms were existing, since the creation.


Śyāmasundara: On this planet there were higher forms?


Prabhupāda: Why are you taking this planet? We are talking of the whole creation. In the creation everything is there.


Śyāmasundara: If you expect me to understand this, I have to see it on this planet.


Prabhupāda: That is not knowledge.


Karandhara: Possibly there were and possibly there weren't.


Śyāmasundara: You tell me that Rāma and some other higher creatures lived on this planet so many millions of years ago, so I can expect some day to find evidence of that?


Prabhupāda: The evidence is the authority, Vedic literature.


Karandhara: What other authority will you accept? If you dig up a bone and make a test with your own senses and accept that as an authority...


Prabhupāda: Bone authority. So you will be satisfied with your own authority. We have got our different... If you don't accept my authority, then I don't accept your authority.


Śyāmasundara: It would just seem if there were bones surviving for millions of years, why not cities, why not chariots, why not...?


Prabhupāda: Yes. During Rāmacandra's time there were chariots. Everything was there.


Karandhara: They have found pieces of chariots and pieces of cities.


Śyāmasundara: Not millions of years ago.


Karandhara: How do they know it's not millions of years ago? What is their test for proving?


Prabhupāda: That millions, that is also bogus. You see? In the human history there is no history more than three thousand years. They are talking of millions of years. Why?


Śyāmasundara: You are a scientist. What other ways do they date geological findings? How do they date them?


Svarūpa Dāmodara: Now it is Carbon 14 is the most reliable technique.


Śyāmasundara: Before they discovered that, how did they do it? They knew the Pleistocene, the Iocene, all these different ages. How did they date them?


Svarūpa Dāmodara: I do know how....


Karandhara: They all remain their own postulation according to their own sense impressions, and because the initial format is imperfect, the conclusion has to be imperfect. So knowledge always remains fallible and mutable, whatever basis they put it on. It is what they have derived out of their own sense impressions, imperfect.


Śyāmasundara: Yes, admitted, but I say that...


Karandhara: So dealing on a whole range of imperfection and deduction...


Śyāmasundara: Anyone can argue on that level and say anything, but what I want to know are the facts.


Karandhara: The facts are there, but you can accept the facts as Darwin presents them or as the Vedas present them or as anyone presents them.


Svarūpa Dāmodara: These are all controlled by the force of nature. For example, we do not find evidence, scientific evidence, so-called they've got from eight hundred thousand years ago. That does not mean anything. It is all subject to the course of nature. So maybe it just changed with the earth turning. (indistinct) That does not mean that it did not exist.


Śyāmasundara: If I'm a Darwinist; I'm still not convinced. Because you still haven't proven to me that the layers of earth that are far, far below are not millions of years old. You say that they may be newly formed, but...


Karandhara: They haven't proven that they are millions of years old.


Śyāmasundara: Well, I'm not a geologist...


Prabhupāda: My charge is that you cannot give history of human society more than three thousand years; how you speak of millions of years? That is my charge.


Śyāmasundara: Written history...


Prabhupāda: No. Suppose a child says that "Millions of years ago it happened like this," but I will say (to) the child, "You were born three years ago. How you speak of millions of years?" That is my charge.


Śyāmasundara: I don't know how geologists date earth layers...


Prabhupāda: They bluff everything.


Śyāmasundara: But even if, let's say the deepest layer is only five hundred years old, but still the ones on top are newer. So in the lowest layer, there are no chariots, cities...


Prabhupāda: We can rather believe the Bhagavad-gītā, who gives a description of one, twelve hours duration of life, millions of years. So we can believe such authority. You can actually gain...


Śyāmasundara: Just like when you are dreaming, you may think it's millions of years, and it's only five minutes. You wake up and you've only been asleep five minutes. even though it seems like millions of years.


Prabhupāda: And actually, according to modern scientists, the law of relativity, so everyone speaks with his relative knowledge. It is not perfect. Everyone speaks to his relative knowledge, that's all. Therefore we should accept knowledge from a person who is not within this relativity.


Śyāmasundara: There is also some scientific evidence that where there is land now, it was once water, and where there is water now, it was once land. That the oceans reversed...


Prabhupāda: Yes. That we accept.


Śyāmasundara: ...so it's quite possible that if there were great civilizations existing, that they are all, all remains are swallowed. There's no trace.


Prabhupāda: That is, everyday you see. One day we walk on the beaches, and the next day it is covered with water. That is not very difficult to understand. But when the covered with water portion you cannot experiment, how you can say what is there within? Has Darwin gone within the sea, layers, studied the bottom of the sea?


Śyāmasundara: Yes. Where it has become land. And you find that there are sea shells, sea animals, in the layer, in the next layer up more complex forms, in the next layer more complex forms...


Prabhupāda: I mean to say, but there is already sea. Has he gone down the sea and excavated the level of the sea, gone down?


Karandhara: Even if they discount...


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