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

Discussions with Syamasundara dasa
Charles Darwin



Prabhupāda: That you do not know. That you do not know. Not that he knows. Because we cannot accept that. Nobody has said that they have excavated down the bottom of the sea. But you also said that bottom may be opened at one, some time. So unless it is opened, your experiment is insufficient.


Karandhara: Even if you were to grant that the first life forms on this planet were simple one-celled life, that does not mean that more complex life did not begin earlier on other planets. The theory is not aborted. It may be you can discount the possibility of...


Prabhupāda: The whole thing is that Dr. Frog, famous story. He comes to this country, Dr. Frog's understanding. He has studied the three-feet-wide well, and he says he is satisfied with that. He has nothing to do with the Atlantic Ocean. But Atlantic Ocean is also a reservoir of water, and that well is also a reservoir of water. But (there is a) vast difference. So we take knowledge of who has created Atlantic Ocean. Therefore our knowledge is perfect. What do you say?


Śyāmasundara: I just want to try to cover this from every angle so that Darwinists will not be able to argue. Today I'd like to find out how they date earth layers, how geologists find...


Prabhupāda: No. Your geologists have given, "It may be millions of years ago." They say like that.


Svarūpa Dāmodara: They estimate.


Prabhupāda: Estimate.


Śyāmasundara: They estimate, but there must be some basis for their estimation.


Karandhara: They don't even agree amongst one another. They argue. I attended college with scientists, and they argue amongst one another. They don't agree on their own scientific evidence.


Śyāmasundara: But at least they all agree that there is several million years old, many millions of years old, at least.


Karandhara: No. Not necessarily.


Śyāmasundara: The Pleistocene two hundred million years...


Karandhara: Just an assembly of fools. You can get all the fools to agree on the same thing. It doesn't make anyone...


Śyāmasundara: Well I still want to find out how they...


Prabhupāda: Kṛṣṇa nāma koro bhai ar sab niche, parai gab pap nahi yoni ache piche (?). Our real problem is birth, death. All these scientist, they could not solve any of these problems, neither they could answer. Maybe Darwin's cam(?) has died. They could not stop death. Kata choto dayana na mari meri jao (?).


Śyāmasundara: Tomorrow we can discuss ethical evolution, how ethics evolved. That is also part of his doctrine.


Prabhupāda: Ethic morality?


Śyāmasundara: How morality is also a product of evolution.


Prabhupāda: We change morality within six months. The most immoral man, you can make the most moral man within six months. This is practically happening.


Śyāmasundara: It also helps the fittest to survive.


Prabhupāda: You may not be fit, but we can make you fit.


Śyāmasundara: That's what I mean. If you become moral you become fittest to survive. That is also his theory, doctrine.


Prabhupāda: Yes. So that we can do within six months.


Śyāmasundara: He says that at some point a man who had developed sympathy for others, he was able to survive because he would cooperate with them to survive when others were killing each other, like that. So gradually morality also evolved. Tomorrow maybe we should finish Darwin. [break]


Prabhupāda: An animal is put in some certain atmosphere, he adjusts. But there are different types animals. Just like we see while walking (in) severe cold, we try to adjust by covering. Others, the birds, the skylark, the so on, they do not adjust.


Śyāmasundara: His finding is that new types of species will come out, which will be better adapted. The swans, if it becomes too cold, they will die.


Prabhupāda: They are better than us, than human being?


Atreya Ṛṣi: What the theory is Prabhupāda is that, for example, if there are many, many swans living in one place, those who cannot adjust will be extinct after many, many years, and those who can adjust will live. In effect, what he tried to prove was that Kṛṣṇa's law, nature's law, is perfect. But he was missing Kṛṣṇa. In other words, what the proof is very scientific, but it is lacking.


Prabhupāda: Yes. He is adding zero, without one.


Atreya Ṛṣi: That's right, Prabhupāda.


Prabhupāda: Therefore the value remains zero. He couldn't find the one, so that the value of the zeroes at once increases.


Atreya Ṛṣi: But there are some great scientists like Newton who studied many, many, many years and made many, many theories and then they gave it up when they realized that they couldn't go further. Newton, at a very early age, like forty-three I think, went to a monastery.


Śyāmasundara: We discussed Newton's philosophy.


Prabhupāda: Sir Isaac Newton?


Śyāmasundara: Yes. Long ago, in Africa.


Prabhupāda: No, he was Englishman.


Śyāmasundara: No, but in Africa we discussed his philosophy.


Prabhupāda: He died at the age of twenty-three. His picture is there in Westminster Abbey.


Śyāmasundara: His tomb, his grave. He is buried there.


Prabhupāda: Westminster Abbey has become now a museum.


Śyāmasundara: Graveyard and museum.


Prabhupāda: People go to see, tourist.


Śyāmasundara: I think it cost us sixteen shillings for us to see. Remember we saw King (indistinct). So they're making some money.


Prabhupāda: Yes. For some period, Elizabeth to Queen Victoria, the English nation advanced in so many ways. They wanted to record it that they are the greatest nation in the world. But the basic principle was how to get money from outside in London. That was the basic thing. By advertising there... Actually by nature they are very impoverished. They have no sufficient food, even; their nature. And they wanted to be greatest nation. By nature they are not very much favored. Now they are coming again in the lap of nature.


Śyāmasundara: Darwin's theory about them would be that because their environment was not very suitable for farming or mining, no natural resources, therefore their brains developed and they were able to survive.


Prabhupāda: That we accept. That we accept, that we have to adjust things according to circumstances. That is acceptable. But finally, if God does not approve of it, it does not happen. Pratividhi. Pratividhi, counteraction. Tavat tanu-bhrtāṁ tvad-upekṣitānām. Pratividhi. We make counteractivities for adjusting things, but unless it is approved by the Supreme Lord, that adjustment also will not be very much helpful. Bālasya neha pitarau nṛsiṁha. Just like a small child, the nature's way is the parent has got affection to take care. At that time, if the parents do not take care, the child cannot live. But the parents' taking care is not all. If the child is condemned by the Supreme Lord, in spite of the parents taking care, it will not be happy, or it will not exist. Parents' care is natural. Generally it so happens by the parents' care the child is happy, but in spite of parents' care the child is unhappy, then you have to go to the Lord. Is it not? Just like when a man is diseased, the counteraction is physician, medicine. Generally it is expected by attendance of good physician or using good medicine, diet, the patient becomes cured. But it is also seen that in spite of all careful attention, scientific medicine, he dies. Then what is that?


Śyāmasundara: Darwin would say he wasn't well enough equipped to survive.


Prabhupāda: That is the deficiency, that you will not be well equipped if Kṛṣṇa doesn't wish you to survive. That means you will not be able to counteract with all the counteractions. You cannot.


Atreya Ṛṣi: In other words, Prabhupāda, nature's arrangements, you are saying is Kṛṣṇa's arrangement. In other words, when Kṛṣṇa wishes something it happens in a natural way.


Prabhupāda: Yes.


Atreya Ṛṣi: Not in an unnatural way, but in a natural way. But it is still Kṛṣṇa's desire.


Prabhupāda: Yes. This is all just like a child is protected by the parents, that is also natural. But in spite of his taking care, the child dies, suffers, that is also natural.


Śyāmasundara: Just like some children are born with blood disease or some incurable disease; the parents take all care, but they still have to die young.


Prabhupāda: Yes. So then it is to be understood that different natural laws are working, and they are working under one controller, and that is God. Just like we are taking so many services from this electricity current, but all this electricity current are working under one leader in the powerhouse, the resident engineer. From him, the original electricity current is coming, is generated. And we are utilizing the same current in different varieties, purposes. So then, just like electric current, the same electric current working in this machine, in a way; another machine another way. It may be contradiction, but the power is the same. According to the machine, the same example: one machine is cooler, one machine is heater, although the current is the same. Parāsya śaktir vividhaiva śrūyate svābhāvikī jñāna-bala-kriyā ca [Cc. Madhya 13.65, purport]. Everywhere God's energy is working as if natural.


Śyāmasundara: Just like a tiger's body and a deer's body—the tiger kills the deer, but the same current is working in both. One survives, one does not survive.


Prabhupāda: Nobody will survive. (laughter) This is called karma. This is activity. The body is the field of activity. You are given license to act with this body for some time. That's all. No question of survival. Nobody will survive. You can act for some time.


Śyāmasundara: By survival he means species. The species will survive.


Prabhupāda: Any species. Nobody will survive. That is also false theory. Nobody will survive. Where is the species that is surviving?


Śyāmasundara: Just like horses. Horses, they have found in the fossils and millions of years ago, they say millions of years ago horses were there. Slightly different forms, but still they were horses.


Prabhupāda: So different forms, just like human beings, formerly they were very tall, and they are reducing their stature, and at the end of Kali-yuga they will be stature like this. So this is not change of the species. This is changing, just like your father is taller than you, is he not? Is he not taller?


Śyāmasundara: No. I'm taller than he is. But they say because our generation got better foodstuffs than our parents.


Prabhupāda: So therefore, according to circumstances, the stature is changing. It is not the species. It is the same human, but formerly the human being was taller, stouter; now they are reducing in strength, in stature, in memory, in duration of life, span of life, in mercy. That is stated in Bhāgavatam. They do not change every species.


Atreya Ṛṣi: This changing of human size also may be a scientific thing, scientifically because of our conditions, because of our state of consciousness and because of the conditions...


Prabhupāda: Yes. Under certain conditions, changing.


Atreya Ṛṣi: And we will be changing, and this change will... [break]


Śyāmasundara: ...research. They found that atomic particles vibrate at a certain frequency, a certain rate of vibration, and that elements such as lead, iron, all the different chemical elements, disintegrate gradually. The atomic particles vibrate out of the element and change the structure of the element gradually, and this is a constant—what they call—life of the element, and the constant number of years before it disintegrates into some other element. So this life they have measured, and they have a table or a chart, and by this half-life formula they can determine how old a rock is by how quickly the isotopes are disintegrating. So according to their calculation, the layers of the earth go down for many millions of years; and in those lower layers, millions of years old, there is either no form of life or very, very simple forms of life only. There is no evidence of any complex forms.


Prabhupāda: Bolo... (Bengali—to Svarūpa Dāmodara)


Svarūpa Dāmodara: The age of the rocks, by determining by scientific techniques, find how old the rock (indistinct) is, and how correct it is. So I asked (indistinct) of this department, Professor Roland, and he told me that (indistinct) such and such, I mean the rocks coming from the moon, brought by astronauts. They calculate that by this (indistinct) technique, they find that they are about three to fourteen million years old, these rocks from the moon, the moon samples. But that does not give the real age of the rocks. He told me that what you call the age means how long that crystal... For example they tried to find out the crystals like iridium and strontium crystals, that the method that they use is strontium iridium technique and so he told me that the age, this age, about three times three billion years old, that means that crystal containing that iridium model has crystallized for that long year, that gives the age. They do not know how long it has been there


Śyāmasundara: The rock is at least three billion years; maybe it's older.


Svarūpa Dāmodara: Yes, maybe older, but it does not give the exact age. We do not know.


Śyāmasundara: But the point is that they have determined that there are rock structures in the earth very, very, very, very old and that these contain no evidence of any complex forms of life. So that if there is a statement that there were higher forms of life millions of years ago existing on this planet, there has been no evidence ever found of that.


Prabhupāda: So why they're trying to find out evidence from the rocks, not from any other source?


Śyāmasundara: Well as civilizations come and go, they leave remains, evidence behind of their...


Prabhupāda: "Civilization goes" means? Where goes?


Śyāmasundara: Well, if people come and they...


Prabhupāda: Do they come, and they are still living? They are still there? Just like my great-grand..., great-grandfather was living. So I am his descendant.


Śyāmasundara: But where is he?


Prabhupāda: Where is he? You want to see him? Therefore you (indistinct).


Śyāmasundara: No. I want to find his remains.


Prabhupāda: You want to see my great-great-great-great-grandfather?


Śyāmasundara: But he must have left some remains.


Prabhupāda: I am the remaining. I am his descendant.


Śyāmasundara: But he made no tools, or he had no house?


Prabhupāda: Who said? You said. You said that there may not, but because my fore... I can make tools; naturally, my grandfather, he can make too. And what is there making tools?


Śyāmasundara: No. But why weren't there any tools left behind for us to find, remnants?


Prabhupāda: What?


Śyāmasundara: Why no remains of tools or other evidence of other men.


Prabhupāda: What is the use of tools? Tools are used for the carpenters, and we are not carpenters.


Śyāmasundara: But if there were high forms of men living...


Prabhupāda: Then he's (indistinct) with the carpenters, not the philosophers.


Śyāmasundara: ...they must have lived in cities.


Prabhupāda: My forefathers were philosophers. They did not require any tools.


Śyāmasundara: They required no houses?


Prabhupāda: No. Even they required, they called some carpenter and they did it.


Śyāmasundara: Yes. My point is that there...


Prabhupāda:Because there is no tools, therefore there is no civilization?


Śyāmasundara: But tools, not... Houses or anything that men have to use, there should be some remains left behind when their civilization...


Prabhupāda: What is remains? Remains means just like the coal, that is the remains.


Śyāmasundara: Coal.


Prabhupāda: Yes.


Śyāmasundara: Coal is the remains of trees, plants...


Prabhupāda: Yes. This is the remains.


Svarūpa Dāmodara: Coal, oil, petroleum.


Śyāmasundara: That means there was some evidence that there were... If we look in coal beds we find remains of trees that were very simple, no complex forms of trees. Now trees are much more complex.


Prabhupāda: Complex or simple, it doesn't matter. There were trees.


Svarūpa Dāmodara: Actually, the coal doesn't say whether the tree was complex or not.


Śyāmasundara: No, but they find impressions from leaves and the carboniferous age, they find that the remains of trees, plants, twigs, all very simple forms like our (indistinct). Today they're more...


Prabhupāda: Our evidence is intelligence, not with tools and (indistinct). Our evidence is intelligence. We find, we get Vedic information by disciplic succession-highly intelligent. So that is our evidence. Not the tools.


Śyāmasundara: The Scripture. The evidence which is written and spoken in...


Prabhupāda: Yes. And that is coming by śruti, by hearing. Just like Vyāsadeva heard from Nārada, Nārada heard from Brahmā, millions and millions of years ago. If you take, according to our calculation, Brahmā's age, Brahmā's one day we cannot calculate. It is now some, so many millions of years past, and still it is not even Brahmā's one day. So many millions of years. Because in Brahmā's one day seventy-two..., fourteen, fourteen Manus come and go. And each Manu's age is seventy-two millennium. One millennium means 4,300,000's of years. So such seventy-two millennium makes complete one Manu's life, and there are fourteen Manus in Brahmā's one day. So millions and trillions and billions of years, that is not very astonishing to us, because it is not even one day of Brahmā. That Brahmā was born, and intelligent philosophy is still existing from the date of Brahmā's birth. Brahmā was first educated by God. That is our calculation. So we get in the Vedas such intelligent information; therefore we understand that our forefather was very, very learned(?).


Śyāmasundara: For instance, the Sanskrit language was so perfect...


Prabhupāda: Yes, Sanskrit language, everything, wonderful. So we are not carpenters, that we have to find out tools. We are brāhmaṇas.


Śyāmasundara: So if the earth is so old, for instance, it could have undergone many transformations...


Prabhupāda: Yes. That doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. After one day of Brahmā there is devastation. So Brahmā lives for one hundred years according to his calculation. So each day there is devastation. So so many devastation passes in one month of Brahmā, then such twelve months makes one year, and such hundred years will be. So there is no calculation of devastation, how many devastations. In Brahmā's one day it is calculated 5,400 Manus are born in one month of Brahmā. So our calculation is like that. We are not very much amazed of hearing millions and trillions. It is nothing. In our historical reference is billions and trillions of years. They are nothing.


Śyāmasundara: So even though several million years ago they find no evidence in the rocks...


Prabhupāda: That does not mean that there is no civilization. That is their imperfect knowledge.


Svarūpa Dāmodara: Actually, our so-called modern scientific stories, knowledge is so empiric it's now (indistinct) on complete proof. It is always stands to have objectionable work, sides; so it is not perfect at all. Just like from Śrīla Prabhupāda's book on the Easy Journey to Other Planets, Śrīla Prabhupāda mentioned the discovery of the anti-proton, by the scientists who got the Nobel Prizes in 1959, and Prabhupāda gives all information from Bhagavad-gītā, anything, is already there; Prabhupāda has said it. They say anti-proton... They just discovered the anti-proton, but they still think it is some matter, that is not..., they say anti-proton but still they think that it is connected with matter. But Prabhupāda said it is not matter, it is spirit. Differentiation between matter and anti-matter. Matter is material thing; anti-matter is spirit or (indistinct). So Prabhupāda comments so nicely about the so-called modern scientists to do further research on this concept of anti-matter. Perhaps they will come to an understanding about the spirit, they come to a point. Our knowledge is what you call a modern scientific findings or evidences always subject to changes also...


Prabhupāda: This must be changing because the instruments by which we acquire knowledge, they are imperfect. So by our so-called research and sensuous acceptance of knowledge, that is never perfect. It cannot be perfect.


Śyāmasundara: Just like they say that the rate of disintegration of the atomic particles of an element is constant. But it may not be constant; perhaps in earlier times it was faster or slower, there are so many possibilities.


Prabhupāda: Yes. So the so-called scientists and philosophers who do not follow the system of (sic:) ascending knowledge, knowledge received from higher authorities, they are not perfect. They cannot have any perfect knowledge, either research work with the blunt imperfect senses. They will not... So whatever they say, we take it as imperfect-dream. And when Kṛṣṇa says that "I enter into the universes," viṣṭabhyāham idaṁ kṛtsnam ekāṁśena sthito jagat [Bg. 10.42]. Now the weightlessness of the planets, the scientists describe in so many ways, but that is not very perfect. What is the cause of weightlessness? I have, what is called, (indistinct).


Śyāmasundara: That because of the orbits, different orbits of the planets cause weightlessness.


Karandhara: Centrifugal force.


Prabhupāda: Centrifugal.


Śyāmasundara: When planets go around the sun they go in such a speed, that there is no mass.


Prabhupāda: So, but who has set on the speed? How the speed is going on? That is not explained. But we have got our explanation. Kṛṣṇa says that "I enter into each and every universe and planet, and I keep them floating." That is understandable. Just like we have, in our childhood we used to, I mean to say, fly paper balloon by forcing into it some camphor smoke. Did you do it? We did this in our childhood. Such a big paper balloon, and then you take camphor, so much, and we struck up and burn it, and camphor is burning, it is producing too much—what is called—black smoke; and it becomes big, big smoke, it goes, very nice. So if the camphor smoke entered into the paper balloon can fly it, then God cannot fly all the universes by entering into it?


Svarūpa Dāmodara: Another example is lot of these astronauts going to the moon, and sometimes they are afraid, they call the transition from the earth's gravitational force and the moon's gravitational force, there is a layer, this transition from one to another it is very critical. So they said that when the, these rockets or these Apollo instruments either go up or go down, they have to go to a certain angle, very specific, and if the angle is slightly changed, so they'll be either circulating the moon or either they'll be circulating the earth. They'll never be able to come down or go up, but they'll be floating like... There's no control.


Prabhupāda: Without any control.


Śyāmasundara: Because where the two gravitational pulls meet, there is a certain force. If you don't pass through it at the right angle, then you are caught in it.


Svarūpa Dāmodara: If you are not going right in the angle, say for example he has to go..., he's coming down so he has to go at 45-degree angles, slanting; he has to go 45-degree angle, but it changed by mistake, say 47 degree angles, then it will never come down. He'll be just circulating around, floating.


Prabhupāda: So, in the (indistinct) stage, we are dependent on the laws of nature, and we still, we are declaring we are free from any control. We are making our own proposition and theories.


Karandhara: They're always saying their conquest over nature.


Prabhupāda: But where is the conquest of nature? Now if there is a mistake of two degrees, you have to go round forever. What is the independence? Vikathante. The exact word used in this connection in the Bhāgavata, that these people talks all nonsense, vikatha. Under the influence of illusory energy they have become mad, and they are talking all nonsense.


Śyāmasundara: I didn't know we were going to have a class today, but for the next class I wanted to read that article about heredity, genetics, how they think that they might be able to reproduce life in the future.


Prabhupāda: Again "in future."


Śyāmasundara: I have that article, I want to read it and study it first. I wasn't prepared for today.


Prabhupāda: The future... Any fool can say "In future I shall prove." Then what is the difference between scientists and the fool? "Trust no future, however pleasant."


Śyāmasundara: But Darwin is the one who introduced this whole concept that we are evolving towards something better.


Prabhupāda: That we accept. That we accept. Just like we are now in human form of life. Now we can go, can make our position better. Either we go in so many higher planetary systems or we go to Vaikuṇṭha.


Śyāmasundara: In terms of species actually living on this planet, he thinks that we have come up from apes, now we may go up to higher forms of men or species.


Prabhupāda: That is already... The apes are already there. You are also there.


Karandhara: Their idea is that if they can sufficiently understand this process of evolution and know its principles then they can control it, they can manipulate it to their own ends.


Prabhupāda: There is information.


Karandhara: They can produce their own eternal superhuman being. They know how...


Prabhupāda: Superhuman... Kṛṣṇa conscious people, they are superhuman being. They are (indistinct).


Karandhara: They had a big meeting recently in Europe of the foremost scientists, chemists, physicists and researchers, and they predicted that by the year 2050, the scientists will be able to make the superhuman eternal human being. Then they started asking themselves, "Well, who will decide? Who will play God? If we can make an eternal person or manipulate, who will decide?" What if they make a hundred Hitlers or some demoniac scientists who knows how to do this makes a hundred Hitlers. So even if their whole thing is (indistinct), they'll misuse whatever power they acquire by understanding the laws of nature. They've misused the atomic energy.


Prabhupāda: They can produce for human being, many (indistinct)?


Śyāmasundara: They call it the genetical xerox machine.


Karandhara: They can analyze someone's genes. Say they take my genes and analyze their chemical structure. They can reproduce that structure and make a hundred me's, just like me—the same brain, the same body, the same mentality, everything.


Prabhupāda: That's all right. But who made you? Just like I have written one letter; you can make a hundred copies. But I have written the letter. Similarly, there may be hundreds of copies of your personality, but who made you?


Svarūpa Dāmodara: (indistinct) about the genetic code (indistinct) concerned persons taking our material (indistinct) some people are more intelligent than others, like scientists, Einstein said he had a different brain than other people.


Prabhupāda: Our explanation is that from previous life he is modeled. That is coming. It's continuation.


Śyāmasundara: So Darwin said that also, that one's superior traits are passed on to his children, like that. And then the superior traits survive over the inferior traits, and so on.


Prabhupāda: And where he goes? After transferring to the children, where Mr. Darwin goes?


Śyāmasundara: He disintegrates into matter.


Karandhara: It's total materialism because there's no spirit, just a combination of material elements.


Prabhupāda: Then if you are going again to be mixed with the elements, then why you are bothering your head about your children?


Śyāmasundara: He's concerned on a social level...


Prabhupāda: In the beginning, in the beginning you are in the matter. By evolution you have come to, again you are going to the matter. So why you bother in the middle so much. After all, you are matter. In the beginning you are matter and at the end you're going to be matter.


Śyāmasundara: He's concerned that the society can be made better by this understanding.


Prabhupāda: So why do you concern with the society? You are going to be (indistinct). It may be better or no, but it doesn't matter.


Śyāmasundara: He had a vague idea that societies or species would evolve toward something better, so he wanted to help that evolution.


Prabhupāda: That is a fact, but not that Mr. Darwin's foolish theory that he is going to be matter. He'll remain spirit but another species of life, another form of life. That another form of life will decide whether you are degraded or elevated.


Śyāmasundara: Darwin passed on his traits to his son, Charles Darwin, and his son's great contribution to the world was that the moon was moving away from the earth at the rate of five inches per year. So what good is that knowledge?


Prabhupāda: What kind..., in what way you give such an evolution? It may be ten inches or five inches or (indistinct). That conclusion anyone can give. Any rascal can say anything, and what is the contribution? Just like modern day art. You just make your brush like this and it becomes art. You see?


Śyāmasundara: Relative values.


Prabhupāda: Relative values. Now you imagine what is there. This is the mentality.


Śyāmasundara: There's no absolute scale of value in the material world.


Svarūpa Dāmodara: They're speculating that the genes of these supposedly very intelligent people...


Prabhupāda: The superhuman being is already there in what we call demigods. Brahmā, Viṣṇu, Maheśvara, Indra, Candra, they are superhuman beings, already there. What he will make? Let him make one ant first of all. Let me see that you have made one ant; then talk of superhuman. You have not been able to create even an ant, so how do you dare to say superhuman. It is all foolishness.


Karandhara: According to modern information, man now is living longer, is more healthy and is more well off than ever before.


Prabhupāda: That is another nonsense. I have seen my grandmother lived ninety-six years, but I don't expect I shall live ninety-six years. My father did not live more than eighty-one years; so gradually the span of life is decreasing. They are not healthy enough. Decreasing means they are not getting proper food or proper bodily comforts; therefore they're decreasing their life.


Śyāmasundara: Their statistics are so open to error there's no way they can say...


Karandhara: They baffle the population. Everyone believes "Now I'm living longer. I have more chances to live a healthy life than ever before." They think this is what this modern society gives him, a chance to live longer.


Śyāmasundara: By discovering new medicines and new techniques to improve our health.


Prabhupāda: So where is the medicine which stops disease? You are discovering medicine, and many new diseases are coming out, so where is the stopper?


Karandhara: That's supposed to come. That is the promise.


Prabhupāda: Promise, a fool can promise anything. And...


Śyāmasundara: And instead all they do is...


Prabhupāda: That is a different thing.


Śyāmasundara: ...add more wars.


Svarūpa Dāmodara: President Nixon has made a promise that very shortly this cancer disease should be cured. So he has allotted a lot of money for the coming few years and he is giving to all scientists (indistinct). He is saying he is going to stop this death from cancer, but...


Prabhupāda: Suppose he stops death from cancer. Can he stop death at all?


Svarūpa Dāmodara: Not at all.


Prabhupāda: Well then? What is it? He'll direct some other disease come?


Śyāmasundara: If Darwin's theory is correct, some new form of cancer will evolve which will survive...


Prabhupāda: Why? Any disease will be (indistinct). You can check the disease. Therefore our conclusion is that however scientifically you advanced you make, you cannot stop birth, death, old age and disease. That is our conclusion. So why should we waste our time for that purpose? We are utilizing our time, and after giving up this body we may go back to home, back to Godhead. That is our business. But everyone has to give up his body. Mr. Darwin and his company will give up this body like cats and dog. We shall give up this body for higher elevation of life. Therefore our philosophy is better, far better than all these things.


Śyāmasundara: There's a corollary to his theory of evolution that our standards of morality have also evolved from primitive stages. For instance, in a group, within a group of apelike creatures who were normally fighting with each other for dominance, one may develop the quality of sympathy for someone else. So by that sympathy he cooperates with the other person and together they survive when the others die. So that evolution of sympathy, morality, love, compassion—the good qualities of the human being—have evolved due to necessity, evolution, survival of the fittest.


Karandhara: The thing is this whole perspective of evolution... There doesn't have to be a sequence, that one came before the other. They all were there.


Prabhupāda: Yes.


Karandhara: Just like you take a ray of the sunshine that's in this room. It's come from the sun, but simultaneously it's occurring with the sun. It's not there as a sequential evolution of that particle...


Prabhupāda: The sunshine, sunshine... Just like sunshine. You can collect time according to the sunshine. The morning sun shining is called 6 a.m., and then 7 a.m., 8 a.m., 9 a.m., like that. The shine. But this 6 a.m. shining will be somewhere else also, although here it is 8 a.m.


Śyāmasundara: That's a relative measurement.


Prabhupāda: So the sunshine is existing always the same. It is relatively understood by others. Otherwise sun is fixed up in his position and is shining all over the world.


Śyāmasundara: The speed of light is constant also, it is said.


Prabhupāda: Yes. It does not change as it reaches. When it may reach, it is already there.


Śyāmasundara: It takes one particle of sunlight eight minutes to travel from the sun to here.


Prabhupāda: That may be, but the sun's...


Svarūpa Dāmodara: This constant can be taken (indistinct) astronomy (indistinct).


Prabhupāda: Anyway, the sunbeam, the sunshine, is always (indistinct). How it is constantly coming? Just like heat and the fire. The heat is always coming out of the fire, always.


Karandhara: According to a point of observation, there may appear to be a sequence, or a beginning or an end or an evolution...


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