Capacity (Conversations)

Expressions researched:
"capabilities" |"capability" |"capable" |"capably" |"capacities" |"capacity"

1968 Conversations and Morning Walks

Interview -- February 1, 1968, Los Angeles:

Interviewer: What effect to the followers does chanting give? I heard from one that it transports them to a utopian type situation. I wondered if you could elaborate on that a little more.

Prabhupāda: Which situation?

Interviewer: Utopian-like, where there is no harm, no..., all is good, and...

Prabhupāda: Yes. Now, this our process is chanting. It is very innocent. If you sit down and chant with us, you have no loss, no harm, but there is great gain. You see? By chanting, you gradually cleanse your heart and you can realize what is God. That is the greatest gain. Human life is meant for knowing God. The animals, they cannot know, although the bodily demands of the animal and the human being are the same. The animals, they sleep; man also sleeps. Animal, they eat; man also eats. The animal, they are also afraid of some enemy; man is also afraid of some enemy. The animals, they mate with the opposite sex, and men also do that. But what is the special significance of man? He can understand about God, but the animal cannot. Therefore if a man does not take to this understanding, he is no better than animal. A man who has no God consciousness or Kṛṣṇa consciousness, he is no better than animal because he has no other business than the four principles of bodily demands. So that is also prevalent in animal kingdom. Therefore this is a privilege for human being, to understand about God, and as such, in every human society there is some sort of religious principle. This religious principle means to understand God. Either you take it, Christianity or Judaism or Hinduism, every religion is trying to understand God according to their capacity. So without this understanding, means Kṛṣṇa consciousness, human life is as good as animal life.

Room Conversation -- July 16, 1968, Montreal:

Prabhupāda: Expert means whatever he is doing, he must do it very nicely That's all. Suppose you are sweeping this room. You can do it very nicely, to your best knowledge. That is expert. The people will say, "Oh, you have very nicely done." Any work you do, do it very nicely. That is expert. Don't do it haphazardly. To your best talent, to your best capacity, try to finish it very nicely, whatever it may be. You are entrusted with some work. Do it nicely. That is expert. If you think that you are unable to do that work, then whatever work you can do, you take. But do it nicely. That is expert. Don't imitate. "Oh, I have no capacity to work in that way, but I want to imitate. Oh, he is doing that. I shall do that." Don't do that. That is not expert.

Press Interview -- December 30, 1968, Los Angeles:

Prabhupāda: Yes. You are accepting something better.

Journalist: Better. That's, yes. Not by just biting your tongue or your lip saying, "I won't touch it, I won't touch it." There is a substitute.

Hayagrīva: You have a capacity for enjoyment, and you're not going to give up something... It's very human not to give up something unless you have something better. So the case is that you have to get something better than what you want to give up...

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Journalist: How long have you been here, sir?

Prabhupāda: I came here in September 1965, and then I was little indisposed in May 1967, I think. Then I went back to India. Then again I came back in December 1967, just one year past.

1969 Conversations and Morning Walks

Room Conversation With John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and George Harrison -- September 11, 1969, London, At Tittenhurst:

Prabhupāda: (laughs) We can have so many connection with Kṛṣṇa, as friend, as servant, as parents, as lover, whatever you like. Ye yathā māṁ prapadyante tāṁs tathaiva bhajāmy aham (BG 4.11). You cultivate that consciousness, how you like Kṛṣṇa. He is prepared to accept you in that capacity. And that makes a solution of all problems. Here nothing is permanent, nothing is blissful, and nothing is full of knowledge. Here... This year we held examination on bhakti-śāstrī, and here is the answer of a girl, Himavati. She has written very nice. I have read it. So we are training these boys and girls to Kṛṣṇa consciousness according to the Kṛṣṇa science. Anyone can take advantage of it. It is a very nice thing. So you also try to understand, and if it is nice, you take it up. You are after something very nice. Is my proposal unreasonable? (chuckles) You are all intelligent boys. Try to understand it.

1970 Conversations and Morning Walks

Room Conversation -- November 7, 1970, Bombay:

Prabhupāda: There is no question of "should be." When Kṛṣṇa says, "I'll give you protection," why "should be"? You don't believe in Kṛṣṇa. He says, ahaṁ tvaṁ sarva-pāpebhyo mokṣa (BG 18.66). You are doubtful about Kṛṣṇa's capacity. That means you do not know Kṛṣṇa. Yes.

Guest (9): But in a part of one form...

Prabhupāda: What is that?

Guest (9): To understand Kṛṣṇa...

Guest (2): He means that is beyond his capacity, to understand Him.

Prabhupāda: What is the difficulty? Kṛṣṇa says, "I am everything." Why don't you accept Him? That means you want to understand Kṛṣṇa in your own way. Why you are becoming intentionally unable?

1971 Conversations and Morning Walks

Room Conversation -- August 17, 1971, London:

Prabhupāda: That "I cannot understand," this understanding.

Haṁsadūta: Then you have to give up. Then just simply love Kṛṣṇa.

Prabhupāda: Yes. This is real understanding, that "Kṛṣṇa cannot be understood. Simply let me love as far as possible, as I can, whatever is my, in my capacity." That is perfection.

Revatīnandana: Yes. But still, we deal with this philosophy for...

Prabhupāda: Yes. On the whole, as Kṛṣṇa says, we can understand that. That's all. You cannot understand Kṛṣṇa fully. It is not possible.

Room Conversation -- August 17, 1971, London:

Prabhupāda: That's it.

Haṁsadūta: That's a fact and that's all. And we serve Kṛṣṇa. In the material sense, people try to understand a thing without, by inspecting it.

Prabhupāda: Without knowing his capacity. He has no capacity, still, he wants... And when he's caught that "You have no capacity," "No, I am trying. I am trying." He won't say that "I have no capacity."

Śyāmasundara: Or "I will understand."

Prabhupāda: "I will understand."

Śyāmasundara: "In the future."

Room Conversation with Dr. Karan Singh, -- November 25, 1971, Delhi:

Dr. Singh: But is it not necessary today for each person to have..., for example, he's got to have his..., he's got to have knowledge of the dharma. He's got to have the capacity to act...

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Dr. Singh: ...of the kṣatriya.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Dr. Singh: He's got to have the capacity for commerce and trade and (indistinct), for example.

Prabhupāda: Yes, that...

Dr. Singh: Can't we all be combined in a single person rather than dividing them into four, at least in the present age?

1972 Conversations and Morning Walks

Room Conversation with John Griesser (later initiated as Yadubara Dasa) -- March 10, 1972, Vrndavana:

Prabhupāda: Not that because the Chinese man eats something else other than I eat, that does not mean that I am very much... (break) Therefore, we have to prepare ourself what kind of body we are going to have next. That is human civilization. But they do not believe in the transmigration of the soul. They do not believe in God. They do not believe in anything. Simply just like animals. This life—eating, sleeping, mating—do it to your best capacity. That is Kali-yuga. They have no knowledge, neither they are interested to know. Mandāḥ. And even they become little interested of spiritual..., a hodgepodge, no clear idea. Mandāḥ sumanda matayo (SB 1.1.10). And unfortunate, harassed in every field of life. And hy upadrutāḥ. And over and above everything, they are always disturbed by external enemies. This is the position of Kali-yuga. And this life shortened, duration of life. So how they can advance by following the regular Vedic process? It is not possible. Harer nāma harer nāma harer nāma (CC Adi 17.21). No car?

Room Conversation -- April 2, 1972, Sydney:

Prabhupāda: "There are certain prescribed methods for employing our senses and mind in such a way that our dormant consciousness for loving Kṛṣṇa will be invoked, as much as the child, with a little practice, can begin to walk. One who has no basic walking capacity cannot walk by practice. Similarly, Kṛṣṇa consciousness cannot be aroused simply by practice. Actually there is no such practice. When we wish to develop our innate capacity for devotional service, there are certain processes which, by our accepting and executing them, will cause that dormant capacity to be invoked. Such practice is called sādhana-bhakti.

Room Conversation -- April 2, 1972, Sydney:

Prabhupāda: The process is there. By electricity, immediately he comes. Is it not be possible? Process is there that he has to come or you have to go. But by electricity, it is shortened. Similarly, the working capacity is going there, but it is so shortened and perfect, you see, "Oh, it has come automatically by nature." (indistinct) The process is so nice and short. That is real explanation. Process is there. You cannot say that... It appears like miracle because your brain cannot accommodate how quickly all these things come. You have got poor brain, you cannot accommodate. You are thinking, "If I have to..., I have to paint this, simply painting I have to take so much time."

Room Conversation -- April 2, 1972, Sydney:

Prabhupāda:

ekale īśvara kṛṣṇa, āra saba bhṛtya

yāre yaiche nācāya, se taiche kare nṛtya

(CC Adi 5.142)

Kṛṣṇa is so kind. As Māyāvādī philosopher you want to do something, Kṛṣṇa will "All right, dance in this way. Dance, all right dance. You talk like this." Kṛṣṇa gives him capacity to talk. Otherwise, he cannot talk even. So Kṛṣṇa gives him intelligence, counterargument: "All right, let the rascal speak as he likes." Therefore, yāre yaiche nācāya, He is allowing to dance everyone as he desires. But He says that "You give up all this nonsense, you simply surrender unto Me." That is His verse. Otherwise, if you want to dance, "All right, I give you facility to dance." The karmīs are dancing. "All right, dance." The jñānīs are dancing. "All right, dance. Go on speculating, but you will never understand Me."

Śyāmasundara: But He is always playing the tune, Kṛṣṇa?

Prabhupāda: Hm?

Śyāmasundara: Kṛṣṇa is always playing the tune by which everyone is dancing?

Prabhupāda: No. You wanted to dance like this, He is giving facility. He is not in agreement with you.

Room Conversation -- June 29, 1972, San Diego:

Prabhupāda: If you are incapable of raising yourself to the standard of becoming spiritual master, that is not your spiritual master's fault, that is your fault. He wants, just like Caitanya Mahāprabhu said, āmāra ājñāya guru hañā (CC Madhya 7.128), By My order, every one of you become a guru. If one cannot carry out the order of Caitanya Mahāprabhu, then how he can become a guru? The first qualification is that he must be able to carry out the order of Caitanya Mahāprabhu. Then he becomes guru. So that carrying out the order of Caitanya Mahāprabhu depends on one's personal capacity. Āmāra ājñāya guru hañā. Acceptance of Caitanya Mahāprabhu as Kṛṣṇa, that is there in the śāstra, in the Upaniṣads, in Mahābhārata, in Bhāgavata.

Ātreya Ṛṣi: How are the references made?

Prabhupāda: Hm?

Ātreya Ṛṣi: What references are given, Śrīla Prabhupāda?

Prabhupāda: You will find all this in the Caitanya-caritāmṛta, references from Upaniṣads, from Bhāgavata. Caitanya Mahāprabhu never said that I am Kṛṣṇa. But the devotees, you know Sanātana Gosvāmī, corroborated. You know that? You have read that?

Room Conversation -- August 1, 1972, London:

Devotee: This is the only society where Kṛṣṇa is the owner of everything.

Prabhupāda: And all my assistants, they are also working in that capacity. If I would have been proprietor, then they would not have been interested.

Devotee: Hm.

Prabhupāda: I would have collected the money and used for my sense gratification. Then nobody would help me.

Devotee: I think the English milk is better than American milk, isn't it?

Prabhupāda: I think so. It is from Holland.

Conversation with Bajaj and Bhusan -- September 11, 1972, Arlington, Texas, At Their Home:

Prabhupāda: So Arjuna was fighter and he helped Kṛṣṇa in this fighting activities and thus he became a great devotee. Kṛṣṇa certified, bhakto 'si priyo 'si: (BG 4.3) "You are My dear, very dear friend and devotee." So it is not that one becomes a devotee simply by renouncing the world and coloring the dress. But in any dress, in any capacity, one can satisfy Kṛṣṇa if His cause is served. If you apply your engineering talent in Kṛṣṇa's service. Suppose we have to construct a nice temple of Kṛṣṇa. So if you apply your talent to engineering just like in India we have got very wonderful temples, so then your engineering becomes perfect. Similarly, if some business is done, if you apply your business administrative talent... Just like we are doing some business, Spiritual Sky.

Room Conversation -- October 27, 1972, Vrndavana:

Prabhupāda: As soon as the energy is gone, there will be trouble. That Govindajī's temple, that man lost everything because he was cheating. If this man is also cheating, then he will also. Our Tīrtha Mahārāja is cheating, then what is his...? He got so many things but he could not do anything. Now he is after these buildings, that's all. Otherwise, what is his credit? He is not a good preacher. He was at the head of Caitanya Maṭha. How much duty was..., heavy duty he had to preach. But he has no preaching capacity. (indistinct)

Gurudāsa: Preaching gives that spiritual energy.

Prabhupāda: Yes. So one must be qualified to preach. If he is a cheater, how he can preach?

Gurudāsa: If he's preaching, the qualification will come.

Prabhupāda: Yes. If he is sincere, then his capacity will increase. Otherwise, if he wants to cheat, then it will decrease.

Gurudāsa: So what is the purpose for very large temples in India? Just for the...

1973 Conversations and Morning Walks

Room Conversation -- February 26, 1973, Jakarta:

This human life is meant for understanding the Absolute Truth. Otherwise, what is the difference between cats and dogs and human beings? If simply eating, sleeping, and sex life, and defend is the business of human life, then these things are there in the animal life also. They also eat. They also sleep. They have also sex life, and they also defend according to their capacity. We defend with atomic bomb and they defend their own nails and claws. The different spirit is there. So that is not the aim of human life. The aim of human life—this opportunity's given by nature to have a human form of life—is to understand God. Nobody can deny—unless he is a crazy fellow—the existence of God. That is not possible. There must be. I may know it or not know it, it doesn't matter. Therefore religion means to understand God and to awaken your dormant love for God. This is religion.

Morning Walk -- April 28, 1973, Los Angeles:

Prabhupāda: So who is giving the pushing? The living entity, driver. A big truck is being pushed: kata kak kata kak kata kak kata kak, one after another. Similarly the whole creation, Kṛṣṇa is giving the pushing. Then one after another, one after another, one after another working. You see. mayādhyakṣeṇa prakṛtiḥ sūyate sa-carācaram (BG 9.10). That is stated in the Bha... mayādhyakṣeṇa. Kṛṣṇa gives the pushing first. Then everything comes, one after another. But His pushing capacity is so perfect that everything is coming out perfect, perfect, perfect, perfect. Just like Kṛṣṇa says: bījo 'haṁ sarva-bhūtānām (Bg 7.10). "I am the seed of everything created." Now take the seed of the banyan tree. Kṛṣṇa has created. He says, "I am the seed." Now you sow the seed. A big tree will come out. Big tree will come out. Not only big tree. Many millions of seeds will come out of it. And each seed, again big tree. So the original seed, Kṛṣṇa, pushes. Then one after another, one after another, one after another... So you are simply observing when the things are coming into existence by such pushing. But you are trying out, trying to find out who is the original pusher. That you do not know. That you do not know. Who has originally pushed this energy? That you do not know.

Morning Walk -- May 4, 1973, Los Angeles:

Prabhupāda: But population is reducing, it is increasing. You take the statistics, the world population is increasing, it is not decreasing.

Svarūpa Dāmodara: It is increasing, but not as fast as the...

Prabhupāda: Anyway it is increasing; it is not decreasing. And besides that, there is no such restriction among the birds and beasts. How you can make more for... A cat, a dog, a hog, this birth—one dozen children at a time. And twice in a year. So increasing population is more there, they have got more capacity. So they are not fasting.

Svarūpa Dāmodara: They are saying that because of our medical science, the number of deaths are decreasing. The number of births are increasing and death the rate is decreasing because of medical science.

Prabhupāda: Due to medical science, death is...?

Brahmānanda: Decreasing. People are living longer.

Morning Walk -- May 12, 1973, Los Angeles:

Prabhupāda: Jīva-jātiṣu. Jīva-jātiṣu. That means the evolution means from one form to another. The forms are already... Jātiṣu. Their facilities, they are already there. The living entity is simply transferring himself. The same example: One man is transferring himself from one apartment to another. That apartment is first-class, second-class, third-class. Just a person has come from a lower class apartment to a first-class apartment. The person is the same. Now, according to his karma or according to his capacity of payment, he has got a good apartment. This is... Bhramadbhiḥ. Bhramat means wandering, wandering. Not that they... Evolution means developing. Is it not?

Morning Walk -- May 12, 1973, Los Angeles:

Prabhupāda: So let us cooperate. Then the people will be happy. That is acintya-śakti. If a poor man cannot spend ten dollars and if a rich man immediately spends million dollars, he becomes surprised, "How it is possible? How it is possible?" It is like that. We have got the capacity of not even ten dollars. We are thinking of millions and trillion dollars. Adara vapari yahan khabor.(?) You know this? Adar, adar, adar means ginger. A ginger merchant, he is asking, "When the another ship will come?" Ginger is never purchased ship loaded. You take little ginger. If you have got one bag of ginger, then it will be sold in three years. So adar vapari yahan khabor. (?) What you have got to do with ship, shipment? You just carry one bag or ten sheer(?) or ten kilos... That's all. So these rascals, they are adar vapari, and they are taking account of where is that ship.

Svarūpa Dāmodara: I've noticed that there is a misunderstanding in the definition of living and the non-living among the scientific communities.

Prabhupāda: What is their definition?

Conversation with Sridhara Maharaja -- June 27, 1973, Navadvipa:

Prabhupāda: No, Prabhupāda appreciated anyway.

Śrīdhara Mahārāja: Anyway.

Prabhupāda: But here there is no appreciation.

Śrīdhara Mahārāja: He's representing, he's representing the mission, he thinks. He thinks so, but he's so poor in his preaching capacity that he cannot accommodate any other in his camp than him and Vinohe(?). I heard a story of Maharashtra. In old days, there was a good king who encouraged the paṇḍitas very much. And he had got in his assembly a scholar, one Balarāma. He always looked after this, that. No paṇḍita can have any entrance to that Mahārāja. And he professed himself to be, he is the biggest paṇḍita in the land. So once Kālidāsa... At the time of Kālidāsa. Kālidāsa, when he heard, then he found a plan. And went to that paṇḍita, that "I a poor brāhmaṇa. I want some, some sort of money from the king. You are all in..."

Prabhupāda: Recommend.

Room Conversation with David Wynne, Sculptor -- July 9, 1973, London:

Prabhupāda: He has got so subtle power that it is working, but we are seeing that it is automatically being done. But He's working. He's working. Just like we work. To paint one flower, we require a brush, color and so many things. Similarly He also requires. But His requirement are supplied so quickly that we see, "It is being automatically done." That is the... Because He's so perfect and unlimited that His working capacity we cannot follow. These are explained in the Upaniṣads, that God has no leg, but He can go so fast that nobody can compete with Him. These are the statements the Upaniṣads, that He goes so fast that nobody can compete with Him, nobody can go with Him.

Conversation with Mr. Wadell -- July 10, 1973, London:

Prabhupāda: No, bread is material. Bread is material. To maintain your material body, you require material bread. But spiritual body does not depend on material bread.

Mr. Wadell: Could we go back to the relationship between you or all of us and God? What my own experience has suggested to me is that the language which I use and the language which has been used by others to describe what we think Him to be is not really capable of accomplishing this very difficult task. It is an impossible task in fact because we are describing something which is so immeasurably greater, more difficult to understand fully. We can have a relationship, but I find it, the language which we use, is of...

Prabhupāda: Insufficient.

Mr. Wadell: ...of mortal things which are in our experience, and we apply those to something beyond the purely mortal realm, and sometimes the descriptions we use are to be taken only to a certain extent. They are useful as illustrations but they are not to be taken as necessarily a fact. I think this has misled many people when they think about God, that we use a description and it's rather like what we talked about to begin with, the question of names.

Room Conversation with Two Buddhist Monks -- July 12, 1973, London:

Buddhist Monk (1): Much about it, yes.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Buddhist Monk (1): I was here in 1952, and somewhere in '60 as well. I have been travelling eighteen years in nearly a hundred countries and trying to give a little good will. Of course, I am just one man, and within the capacity of one person, and this boy joined me in New Zealand about one and a half years ago. A few bridges have been made. Every religion that is not lived, according to us, fails the purpose of religion because religion should be a way of living.

Room Conversation with Lord Brockway -- July 23, 1973, London:

Lord Brockway: Oh, yes, I mean men in the human aspect. Men and women are the sons and daughters, the children of God. I would say two things about that, that I think that those who sincerely have that conviction can be inspired to serve the coming of the brotherhood of mankind, but in experience I would not limit it to those who have that experience. And I find in life that many people who do not have religious convictions at all have a humanist conception which leads them to be very active for peace in the world, a human brotherhood, compassion, and all those characteristics which you have described as the capacities of those who share your religion. And in life they will express that even if they have the deeper recognition which you have described. I think the third thing that I would say about what you have said is this: it may be, I do not know, that there is a form of life after death. I don't know. I think if there is, the best preparation for it is service to one's fellow human beings in our present life.

Prabhupāda: Yes, but one thing is...

Lord Brockway: Yes?

Prabhupāda: ...that whatever service you render, because this world is of three qualities, the service will be, of course, of three qualities: goodness, passion, and ignorance. These are described there.

Garden Conversation with Mahadeva's Mother and Jesuit Priest -- July 25, 1973, London:

Prabhupāda: No, I am talking generally, not of him, that everything must be, there must be division. Just like naturally we have got division. The whole object is to keep the body fit, but there is division: the head division, the arm division, the stomach division, and the leg division. So similarly, there must be four classes of men in the society: the intelligent class of men, the administrator class of men, the productive class of men, and the laborer class of men. Everything is required. But not that the intelligent class of man has to learn the business of the laborer class of men. That is not required. Just try to understand. The laborer class of men, they are required. But one who is intelligent class, he, he cannot be trained up as laborer, ordinary laborer in the factory. That is mistake. He must work according to his capacity. If he's intelligent, he must be preacher, he must be God conscious. He would educate people that "This eating, sleeping is not all. There is God. You should understand. You have got a relationship with Him. If you want to have better life next, then you must become God conscious, you must be sinless." These things are required in the society. (loud noise of jet going over). What is the use of talking?

Garden Conversation with Mahadeva's Mother and Jesuit Priest -- July 25, 1973, London:

Prabhupāda: In this way. So we invite anyone, everyone, without any distinction, without any discrimination. He may be Christian, he may be Hindu, he may be Mohammedan. "Come on. Live with us, and learn how to love." That is our mission. We say, according to our Vedic description,

sa vai puṁsāṁ paro dharmo

yato bhaktir adhokṣaje

ahaituky apratihatā

yayātmā suprasīdati

(SB 1.2.6)

If you actually want peace of your mind, then you must try, you must learn how to love God. So our preaching is... It doesn't matter, whatever religion you are following, it doesn't matter. If you have achieved this aim, how to love God, then your system is first-class. That's all. That is our question. Sa vai puṁsāṁ paro dharmo yato bhaktir adhokṣaje (SB 1.2.6). Bhakti, means love of God. How much you have learned to love God, that much we want to know. We don't say that "You are Christian, you become followers of Hindu rituals or Mohammedan rituals." No. You remain in your position, but just try to love God to the best of your capacity.

Room Conversation with Cardinal Danielou -- August 9, 1973, Paris:

Prabhupāda: No, no, no.

Cardinal Danielou: It is necessary that the grace of God help the...

Prabhupāda: Yes. By the help of God, he can revive. That is stated in Caitanya-caritāmṛta...

Cardinal Danielou: Because man is, himself, is not capable to attain...

Prabhupāda: No.

Cardinal Danielou: ...the divinity.

Prabhupāda: By the help of Kṛṣṇa...

Cardinal Danielou: (aside in French)

Prabhupāda: By the help of God, and by the help of master, spiritual master...

Cardinal Danielou: Yes, yes. Spiritual master.

Room Conversation with Cardinal Danielou -- August 9, 1973, Paris:

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Cardinal Danielou: Yes. I think it is the character specific of Christianity, the importance of the person of Jesus. Jesus is the perfect model, you know, of the virtues, and it is apply the model on the savior because we think that Jesus is not purely man. He is a manifestation of God. God is gone amongst us to help the man to find Him. We know that the man research God, but his capacity of find, and is necessary that God come to help the man to find Him.

Bhagavān: We call that guru.

Cardinal Danielou: Yes. And Jesus, Jesus is this. So I am very, very glad to meet you...

Prabhupāda: May, may I ask you one question? Jesus says: "Thou shalt not kill." So why Christian people are killing?

Room Conversation with French Journalist and UNESCO Worker -- August 10, 1973, Paris:

Prabhupāda: No. No. Helping. Just like when there is some pain in my leg. My brain is working how to cure it. It is helping. It is not exploiting. Similarly, my brain wants to go somewhere to see something. My leg is helping to carry me there. Just like you wanted to see me. Your brain said that: "I must see this man." Your leg carried you. This is cooperation. You have got some capacity. You do it for the benefit of the society so that he may become Kṛṣṇa conscious. This, this plan is perfect socialism. Socialism, socialism means everyone is working for elevation of everyone to Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Because that is the highest perfection of life.

Room Conversation with French Journalist and UNESCO Worker -- August 10, 1973, Paris:

Yogeśvara: He says that only resolves the problem for a few years.

Prabhupāda: That is nonsense. We don't believe it. That is not...

Yogeśvara: Why. Why is it that this program...?

Prabhupāda: Why do they think that it is for few years?

Yogeśvara: He's thinking that the Earth is not capable of providing enough...

Prabhupāda: What does he know about Earth? His knowledge is not sufficient. He, he's speaking like a woman who saw in the marketplace in the morning thousands of people have gathered, and she began to cry: "Where I shall give place to these men?" So her son came: "My dear mother, don't cry. You come in the evening. We shall find some solution." So when she came in the evening, there was nobody.

Yogeśvara: You can translate that story? (French) (to Prabhupāda:) She went there to buy her foodstuffs?

Room Conversation with Banker -- September 21, 1973, Bombay:

Prabhupāda: No, everyone should work. Our Vedic philosophy is that everyone must work. But there must be division of work. Just like in your body there are different parts. The head department, the arms department, the belly department, and the legs department. These are different parts. So all these departments must work for the total benefit of the body. That is our philosophy. Nobody should sit idle. But he must work according to his capacity. Brain must work for giving direction. Hand must work for giving protection. Belly must work for supplying food, energy. And leg must work for carrying the body. So similarly the society must be divided: the brain of the society, the arms of the society, the belly of the society and the legs of the society. That will make perfection.

Room Conversation with Banker -- September 21, 1973, Bombay:

Banker: According to the scientific finds of Dr. Alexander Leaf of Harvard Medical School, it is impossible to lengthen life infinitely, physically, because the cell is not capable of regenerating itself more than fifty times.

Prabhupāda: Yes, that we admit. But we are not material. We are spiritual. That is...

Banker: Correct. You are not talking about the physical.

Prabhupāda: Ah. Physical is my outward dress. Just like your coat, if it becomes old enough, there is no more possibility to use it. You have to throw it away. You have to take another coat.

Morning Walk -- December 3, 1973, Los Angeles:

Svarūpa Dāmodara: That is why the scientists are saying that God didn't give us everything so that we can make very happy.

Prabhupāda: Then God is there. Accept. Then why do you say there is no God? Then God is life. Then everything comes from life. You have to accept. That is our proposal. If they accept that "God has not given us the capacity," then they are intelligent. They are accepting God.

Karandhara: Well, they say, "God hasn't given us everything because we are not able to live forever here."

Prabhupāda: Why? That means God is controller. You are controlled. You admit this.

Yaśomatīnandana: If these people are allowed to live forever then they will make this place more than a hell, worse than hell.

Morning Walk -- December 10, 1973, Los Angeles:

Svarūpa Dāmodara: Then how fortunate He is is beyond our thinking capacity.

Prabhupāda: Eh? Yes. Because... Therefore acintya. How great He is, how great fortunate He is, that you cannot think of, you cannot estimate. That is called acintya. Acintya means I cannot conceive, I cannot estimate. Not only I, any big personality within this universe. Just like Brahmā says, "The others may say that he knows you, but so far I am concerned, I do not know you." That is inconceivable. Brahmā, the greatest personality within this universe, he also admits that "Others may say that he knows what You are, but from my personal experience, I say I do not know anything." We can simply partially see.

Morning Walk -- December 11, 1973, Los Angeles:

Prabhupāda: Yes. And Bombay is the best center.

Yaśomatīnandana: I'm being very enthused when you say these things to...

Prabhupāda: Yes. There is great field to conquer, and you are educated and intelligent, capable. You have got qualification, you can do this very good work.

Yaśomatīnandana: We think that it may be impractical to go in the politics or like that. But then when you say so firmly, all the whole..., immediately our eyes get open, you see? "Yes, actually, this is possible."

Prabhupāda: Why not possible?

Yaśomatīnandana: What is impossible for a Kṛṣṇa's devotee?

Prabhupāda: Yes.

1974 Conversations and Morning Walks

Morning Walk -- January 10, 1974, Los Angeles:

Svarūpa Dāmodara: Śrīla Prabhupāda, what is the Vedic explanation of the working principle of the brain, how our brain is working.

Prabhupāda: Brain is working, because you living entity, soul, is there. Just like I am typing, and he is typing. I have got the latest mechanical, improved typist, and he has got old, bygone age typist, similarly, according to our karma, capacity, Kṛṣṇa gives us facility. So brain is that facility. Kṛṣṇa gives us. Not that... So far the brain substance is concerned, a dog's brain and your Professor Einstein's brain is the same. His brain, same. But because Professor Einstein is advanced in knowledge, he is working differently. Otherwise, when Einstein, the soul is off from the body, and the dog is off from the body, you will see the brain, equally the same. So this, your scientists, they do not know.

Morning Walk -- March 12, 1974, Vrndavana:

Hṛdayānanda: You are expert manager.

Prabhupāda: A child does not want to go to school, but it is the duty of the parent to send him to the school by some way or other. So that is government's duty, that a man should be employed according to his capacity. There should be no unemployment. That is very dangerous position of the society. Now this unemployment question is very strong all over the world. They'll plan that "This government is not good. That system is not good. He's not good." And he'll do nothing. He'll personally do nothing. Just like the hippies, they criticize everyone, but he'll not do anything. It is all... These descriptions are there in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. We are going too far? Employed... (break) ...from the government to utilize this land. You see? So much. Everywhere you'll find. Everywhere you'll find. Who was with me in London?

Devotee: Yeah. Last time, last summer?

Prabhupāda: Letchmore Heath.

Morning Walk 'Varnasrama College' -- March 14, 1974, Vrndavana:

Prabhupāda: Business means if you have got extra grains or extra foodstuff, you can sell where there is necessity, there is want. That is business. We are not going to open mills and factories and... No. We are not going to do that. That is śūdra business. The real business is that you produce enough food grains, as much as possible, and you eat and distribute. That's all. This is business. He does not require any so high technical education. Anyone can till the ground and grow food. Is it difficult? This is the business. The first thing is that everyone, man and animal, especially the cows, they must be properly fed so become very stout and strong. Cows will supply milk, and man will work hard, without being suffered by dysentery. He must work hard. Any capacity. Work as a teacher or work as a kṣatriya, work as a ploughman. Or work as general assistant. He must work. Everyone should be employed. And his employment will be provided from any of these groups, according to his capacity. Either as a brāhmaṇa, or as a kṣatriya, or as a vaiśya, or as a śūdra.

Room Conversation -- March 20, 1974, Bombay:

Guest: What I was saying apart from all that... In my personal capacity, not as a lawyer, as a life member,... But as a life member, I can help on the police commissioner also.

Prabhupāda: Eh?

Guest: In writing, I can help on the police commissioner.

Prabhupāda: Yes, let him come.

Guest: Whatever I have written it, giving my personal shape, I can write him and I can discuss the problem with him as a life member of our (indistinct).

Prabhupāda: No, not as our lawyer.

Guest: That... No, I say...

Prabhupāda: On your personal capacity. Yes.

Guest: I say...

Prabhupāda: Yes, as a public man, as a person, you can do that.

Morning Walk -- March 24, 1974, Bombay:

Prabhupāda: So the position is constitutionally I am servant, but at the present moment, being conditioned by the material nature, I am giving service to my senses. Hare Kṛṣṇa. But if I give service to the master of the senses, Hṛṣīkeśa... Because senses, they are not independent. They are also dependent. Suppose I am now moving my hands, but if the master of my hand, Kṛṣṇa, paralyzes it, no more moving. Neither I can renovate the moving capacity of my hand. Therefore I am not master. Although I am claiming I am master of my hand, master of my leg, but actually I am not. The master is different. Therefore Kṛṣṇa's another name is Hṛṣīkeśa, master of the senses. Therefore the service should be transferred. Hṛṣīkeṇa hṛṣīkeśa-sevanaṁ bhaktir ucyate (CC Madhya 19.170). We have engaged our senses for different purposes, but when we engage our senses for the service of the master of the senses, that is called bhakti.

Morning Walk -- April 1, 1974, Bombay:

Prabhupāda: Yes. It doesn't matter whether a brāhmaṇa, kṣatriya, or vaiśya, śūdra. If you are conscious that "I have to satisfy the Supreme Personality of Godhead according to my capacity of work," then he'll not fall down. He'll not fall down. (break) ...fall down from the position, then it is dead society. It is not living society. At the present moment. Yes. If you don't find actual brāhmaṇa, don't find actual kṣatriya, don't find actual vaiśya, so all śūdras. And there is no guide. Therefore chaotic condition. (break) ...ship without rudder? What is called? Yes. They do not know what is the aim of life. Ask any leader.

Morning Walk -- April 6, 1974, Bombay:

Acyutānanda: In the last part of Kṛṣṇa Book, Mahā-Viṣṇu says that Arjuna is of the capacity of Nara-nārāyaṇa. So they are avatāras also.

Prabhupāda: Yes, yes.

Acyutānanda: But as Arjuna he acts as an ordinary jīva?

Prabhupāda: Yes, there are different types of śaktyāveṣa avatāra. So when an ordinary jīva is specially empowered, he is called śaktya aveṣa avatāra, śatktyaveṣa avatāra, vibhūti. Yad yad vibhūtimat sattvam. He is living entity, but especially empowered. Just like for certain business I give sometimes somebody power of attorney, that "He will do this. He will sign for me." Like that. He is also one of the disciples, but for particular purpose, he is given the power of attorney. In this way when a living entity is empowered specifically to do something, that is called śaktyāveṣa avatāra.

Morning Walk -- April 17, 1974, Bombay:

Prabhupāda: Even in summer it is not possible.

Girirāja: (reading:) "...cannot safely walk a city street or sleep without fear of burglars and the government has fallen far short of the actual standard of a legitimate administration." (break)

Prabhupāda: We are criticizing strongly in our paper. (break) ...command a position. If you manufacture government like that, it will never be capable.

Girirāja: "But it's said in all authentic, revealed scriptures, wherein it is declared that the purpose of civilized human life is to live together in peace and harmony so that everyone can advance progressively in spiritual life." (break)

Prabhupāda: ...purpose of life. But they do not know what is the purpose of life. They have taken the idea of cats and dogs, simply sense gratification. Now, where, how there will be good government. (break) ...all leniency to the Mohammedans to get vote. That's a fact. (break) Mahābhārata, anywhere, or Rāmāyaṇa, you'll never find a woman is elected on the topmost post.

Morning Walk -- April 20, 1974, Hyderabad:

Prabhupāda: Oh, then it is all right. Then that's all right.

Mahāṁsa: (break) ...very impressed because we have nāgara-kīrtana all over the place.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Mahāṁsa: And if they are impressed, they can, when our construction starts, they will be very willing to also give a very huge donation. They are capable of...

Prabhupāda: How many people are going altogether?

Mahāṁsa: About fifteen devotees.

Prabhupāda: That's nice. So we have to go by plane?

Mahāṁsa: No, we will go by bus.

Morning Walk -- April 20, 1974, Hyderabad:

Prabhupāda: Now you take it, and by chemical you create the taste. Why don't you? Therefore, unless God is there, you cannot do that, or God's sanction, you cannot do that. This is reasonable understanding of God, apart from seeing God. And because the taste is there—Kṛṣṇa says-therefore God is there. According to your capacity, you have to see God like that. You cannot see immediately Kṛṣṇa, with dvi-bhuja muralī, playing on flute. That you have no capacity. You have to see God like that. So when the rubber stamp is going to be delivered?

Room Conversation with Richard Webster, chairman, Societa Filosofica Italiana -- May 24, 1974, Rome:

Prabhupāda: This is going on. And people are suffering. How it is possible to purchase? Suppose India's income, the average income, is very poor. Suppose one man earns ten rupees a day, and if he has to purchase ten rupees simply rice for the family, ten..., what for others? Then he becomes dishonest. He wants to earn money by taking bribe in his own capacity. So bribing has become a custom. Anywhere you go, unless you bribe, you cannot get release. And they say that "Whatever salary we are getting, that is not sufficient. Our extra earning is by taking bribe." And now in the Western countries also the difficulty is arising. I do not know whether you are already, I mean to say, aware that so many boys, they are becoming hippies. They are reluctant to do anything.

Morning Walk -- May 28, 1974, Rome:

Prabhupāda: And they have developed a civilization on that animal propensities, means "I am this body, and the best use of my life is to gratify senses." This is animal. "I am this body." Body means the senses. "And to satisfy the senses is the highest perfection." This is their civilization. So you have to introduce real human civilization. You should not be surprised, an animal, in different shapes, in different capacity, comes out. After all, he is an animal. The basic principle is animalism. Because he is thinking, "I am this body..." As the dog is thinking, "I am dog, very stout and strong dog," so another man is thinking, "I am big nation." But what is the basic principle? A dog is also thinking on the basis of his body, and this big nation is also thinking on the basis of body. So there is no difference between this dog and this big nation. The only difference is that human being, by nature's gift, he got better senses.

Morning Walk -- May 29, 1974, Rome:

Dhanañjaya: Actually, they don't live in there. No one lives in these buildings. These are office buildings. Even they don't live there. They simply work.

Prabhupāda: That is also living, for eight hours daily. We don't condemn, but our proposal is that you have got higher intelligence. Utilize it for higher purpose. The construction of dwelling place, it is known even to the birds and the beasts. The mouse also knows how to live within the earth. They make a hole. According to their capacity they make there. The birds also, they make their nest also, to live comfortably. So this intelligence there.

Dhanañjaya: Also the ants.

Morning Walk -- May 29, 1974, Rome:

Satsvarūpa: ...also based on karma, that one man is meant to have more than another of material things? Is that an argument against...?

Prabhupāda: Is there any difficulty to understand? As soon as you say you become manager, that means his karma is better. Where is the difficulty to understand it? Why you appoint one man manager and one man worker? His capacity of karma is better. So where is the difficulty to understand? Better karma, better reward. It is going on.

Haihaya: The communists asked to us what we do for the starving people.

Morning Walk -- May 29, 1974, Rome:

Prabhupāda: So what he has done for me? I am starving. I cannot take beef. I want rice, but you cannot supply me. That I have seen. One Madrasi gentleman was bringing rice for me. It could not be purchased in the market. There is no fruit. So if I want fruit and rice and if you give me beef, it is as good as if I want bread, if you give me stone. So where is the capacity to satisfy the starving? I am starving for rice. You cannot give me. Why do you propose like that, that you can satisfy the starving man. You cannot do that. You are talking nonsense. Can you satisfy everyone? Somebody is starving for knowledge. So how you can... This bluff will not satisfy him.

Room Conversation with Mr. C. Hennis of the International Labor Organization of the U.N. -- May 31, 1974, Geneva:

Yogeśvara: We find that in our society, all of our men, in whatever particular capacity of work they have, are now hundred times more productive than they were before they came to Kṛṣṇa consciousness because now they have found peace of self, and therefore they are in a better position to execute their prescribed duties successfully.

C. Hennis: Are you saying that they do more work?

Yogeśvara: Yes.

Prabhupāda: No. Do work intelligently. Not that to be very hard-working like ass, without any intelligence. Just like ass is the most hard-working animal, but it has no intelligence. You see? So we don't want that. We want working with intelligence. That is difference.

Room Conversation with Mr. C. Hennis of the International Labor Organization of the U.N. -- May 31, 1974, Geneva:

Prabhupāda: Yes. Any sane man will admit it. Cow is giving milk-mother. And bull is producing food—he is father. And they are being killed? Is that human society? How they can be happy? There is no possibility. Regularly they are maintaining slaughterhouse especially for the cows and bulls. Why don't you slaughter the dogs and hogs and eat if you are meat-eater? There are many meat-eaters who eat dogs. Dog is useless. You can eat. Hog is also useless. They are eating also dog and hog, everything, whatever they...

Yogeśvara: His point was that they can... He was thinking that man has the capacity for resolving his own problems. Simply we have to come together and organize.

Prabhupāda: That is United Organization. Why do they not think all these things?

Yogeśvara: There is no direction.

Room Conversation with Prof. Regamay, Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Lausanne -- June 4, 1974, Geneva:

Prabhupāda: So you cannot understand the goloka-nāmni nija-dhāmni tale ca tasya, the Goloka-nāmni planet, where it is. We do not know where is or how many planets are in this material world. (break) ...seeing very, very distant, ninety-three million miles away. But we have got little heat and light, we are satisfied. You see. But if you have got the capacity to run on..., just like they are trying to go to the moon planet, go to the sun planet... Actually it is a fact, this planet is in your front. Where can you go? Why? Why is it impossible to go? It is material. So you cannot go even the material planets, what to speak of the spiritual planets. So for them, this, this much knowledge, "Sunshine is light." That's all. Nothing more. They cannot understand with their poor brain.

Morning Walk -- June 5, 1974, Geneva:

Prabhupāda: Just like the same fight, battlefield, but because it was done for Kṛṣṇa, Arjuna is accepted, bhakto 'si priyo 'si me: (BG 4.3) "You are My devotee. You are My very dear." But what did he do? His business was to fight. He fought, that's all. But fought for Kṛṣṇa. That is the secret. He did not change his fighting capacity as a warrior. But he changed his mentality. His mentality was that "Why shall I kill my kinsmen?" But Kṛṣṇa wanted, "Oh, that's all right." So therefore service is for Kṛṣṇa. That's all. Not for his sense gratification. Karmī means sense gratification, and bhakta means Kṛṣṇa's sense gratification. That is the difference.

Morning Walk -- June 6, 1974, Geneva:

Prabhupāda: Eh?

Guru-gaurāṅga: Their nice standard of living will be lost.

Prabhupāda: No, why? The standard of living should be one: plain living and God consciousness. That is the disease. Everyone wants to enjoy this material world to his best capacity. Therefore we divide. They don't want to live in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Material consciousness. Enjoyment of the senses. And that is the cause of their suffering. Only on account of this sense gratification, they're creating different mentality, and, after death, they're getting different body. That they do not know. Kāraṇaṁ guṇa-saṅgaḥ asya sad-asad-janma-yoniṣu. One is trying to associate with the goodness, brāhmaṇa, brāhmaṇa qualification, he'll be promoted, and one who is trying to imitate, "I shall be as powerful as the tiger," he'll be degraded. It is nature's law.

Morning Walk -- June 8, 1974, Geneva:

Prabhupāda: Eh?

Devotee: I was taught in religion that God... That is His nature, not that I can't see Him, but He is a person. But that I can't see Him because He's invisible spirit.

Prabhupāda: Invisible. That means you have no eyes to see. Even if He is spirit. That's all right. But invisible means you have no capacity to see. That is the meaning of invisible. That I cannot see. So you're disqualified, that does not mean He's dis... not visible. He's visible but not to you because you have no eyes to see Him. That we also say. Therefore we have to prepare the eyes to see. That is religion. I cannot see at the present moment that does not mean I shall stop (indistinct). I must prepare myself how to see. That is real intelligence.

Room Conversation with M. Lallier, noted French Poet -- June 12, 1974, Paris:

Prabhupāda: It is not possible, but he's trying to do that. That is the disease. Just like in your country, Napoleon, he tried his best to use whole Europe to be controlled by him. So he made some attempt, but he is finished now. The Europe is there, but he's gone away. Similarly, it is just like... The example is: Just like a fly wants to enjoy the fire. He comes with force there, and he is finished. Similarly, in this material world, every, all living entities, they're trying to enjoy. With great force, they are coming. And different capacities, they try to enjoy, but they themselves become finished. The things remain where it was. So so many living entities... Exa... The example, the fly is very proper. So many flies are coming, (makes sound:) "Phut! Phut! Phut! Phut!" in the big fire. You have no experience here?

Room Conversation with Professor Durckheim German Spiritual Writer -- June 19, 1974, Germany:

Prabhupāda: So I am always inexperienced because my power of understanding is very little. Therefore I must get experience from a person who is perfect. Then my experience is perfect. Just like a child does not know what is this. he asks his father, "What is this, father?" Father says, "My dear child, it is microphone." The child knows it, "microphone?" That knowledge is perfect, although his capacity is imperfect. A child is imperfect, but because he gets the knowledge from the perfect father who knows what it is, when he speaks "a microphone," he speaks rightly. This is perfect process of knowledge: You approach the perfect person and get knowledge, and that is your perfect experience. Personally, I may be, you may be, not perfect.

Room Conversation with Professor Durckheim German Spiritual Writer -- June 19, 1974, Germany:

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Professor Durckheim: And from this level the heaven opens to those who didn't understand what the heaven means. They thought it was behind the clouds. You see, there is a natural way to look at God, and this natural way to look at God is lost as soon as people go through the rational mind. And then there is no other way out but to have a personal initiated experience. We talk about initiation. When people are capable to go through a certain death and to discover another level, and only... And so, the great wisdom which you are talking about, I am sure that it also touches people on two levels. There is the ordinary man and he might believe, but there is a deeper level where things start to change yourself, to transform yourself in deeper experiences.

Prabhupāda: Yes. That is... That is the beginning of instruction in the Bhagavad-gītā. The beginning of knowledge...

Morning Walk -- June 20, 1974, Germany:

Haṁsadūta: According to the mental condition at the time of leaving this body.

Prabhupāda: But what is the process?

Satsvarūpa: The subtle body carries the soul.

Prabhupāda: Yes. That is the main point. The subtle body carries the soul. Just like in dream, we are carried by the subtle body and placed in different condition. But so long this body is capable of working, I come to this body. My dream is over, and I come back to this body. And death means that this body, being useless, instead of coming to this body, I go to another body. This is transmigration. Just like when you vacate an apartment, then you do not come back in that apartment, but you enter another apartment. Is it clear?

Haṁsadūta: Yes.

Prabhupāda: Anybody can understand. I am coming, going, but when it is a question of vacating, I go out of the apartment, but I never come back again. I will enter another apartment. "The soul enters another body" means enters the womb of another mother. And there the suitable body is created and again mother delivers the child.

1975 Conversations and Morning Walks

Morning Walk -- February 3, 1975, Hawaii:

Bali Mardana: It is riskier to stay outside.

Prabhupāda: Oh, yes. Otherwise why you are opening so many centers and making arrangement that "We shall provide you with shelter, with food. These are the facilities. You live here, do whatever is your capacity. Don't sleep, but work." This is our teaching. Satāṁ prasaṅgāt, this is also, and Rūpa Gosvāmī says, sato vṛtteḥ sādhu-saṅge sadbhir bhaktiḥ prasidhyati: "If you live with the association of sādhu, devotee, then it will be quickly fruitful." And if you live with these ordinary men, then whatever you have got will be finished very soon. There is another verse. It is said there that it is preferred to live within the cage surrounded by fire than to live with the nondevotees. It is preferred.

Bali Mardana: Or with those who are too much attached to women also.

Morning Walk -- March 4, 1975, Dallas:

Prabhupāda: Karma means working. Avidyā-karma-samjñānya tṛtīya. So here you have to work. Without working, you cannot get your... The things are ready, but you will have to work. So they have increased the working capability. That is civilization. Just like in the prisonhouse you have to work. Eh? So they think this working is civilization. This is avidya. So therefore they have created more work. From early morning, five o'clock, till ten o'clock, simply working. They do not know that "This working is our punishment." But because ignorant, they think that "Working is life." This is called ignorance.

Room Conversation with Reporter -- March 9, 1975, London:

Prabhupāda: No, you require... First thing, you require to eat. So Kṛṣṇa says that annād bhavanti bhūtāni (BG 3.14). Produce sufficient grain, food grain, so that both the animal and the man, they will eat and become robust, stout, and strong. And they will be capable of working. So that is the first thing. But who is producing food grains? They are producing motor tires. When there is scarcity of food, will these motor tires help us? We shall eat motor tires? This is going on, so-called industrialization, producing unnecessary thing which is not required, and they are neglecting producing food grains.

Conversation with the GBC -- March 27, 1975, Mayapur:

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: The reason I'm bringing this up is because, heretofore, the BBT has been managed by one or two trustees, and the point is that maybe it is best that it be managed by the GBC.

Prabhupāda: So that... First of all manage these things. Then you will, it will be included in the trustees. First of all show your capacity that you have managed these things very nicely, these two things. Why there should be complaint? How you can solve it? And why the temples should be maintained by collection of the BBT? It is meant for printing and constructing temples. Why should (we) violate the purpose of the Trust? So first of all you manage these two things. Then, if you want, you can come. If the problem remains the same, then what is the use of increasing heads?

Atreya Ṛṣi: What is obvious is that Prabhupāda's interference has always come because we have not done our jobs right.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Atreya Ṛṣi: He would very much like to...

Morning Walk -- April 7, 1975, Mayapur:

Prabhupāda: No. Body will have finished when you are liberated. Otherwise, one after another, another body, that's all. Childhood body is finished, you have got another body. But in a childhood body there were senses, and still you have got senses. The body may change, but the senses will continue. Even in the small ant, for sense gratification, they gather as soon as there will be grain of sugar immediately. They have got the same senses. Just like you run after something according to your estimation very big, for them that one grain of sugar is very big. So they are also running after sense gratification. So anybody, viṣaya karuṇa sarva dakṣaya, whatever body you may get, the senses will be there, and you'll enjoy, according to your capacity.

Conversation with Devotees -- April 12, 1975, Hyderabad:

Prabhupāda: ...any language, you should submit, and you should feel that, that "I am worthless. My Guru Mahārāja has given this chance to serve Kṛṣṇa, to offer Kṛṣṇa... My Lord, I am worthless. I have no capacity to serve You. But on the order of my Guru Mahārāja, I am trying to serve You. Please do not take any offense. Accept whatever I can do. That's all. That is my request." That mantra is sufficient. Kṛṣṇa says in the Bhagavad-gītā, yo me bhaktyā prayacchati. Kṛṣṇa never said that "One who offers Me with Sanskrit mantra." Yo me bhaktyā prayacchati. Real thing is bhakti, feeling: "How to serve Kṛṣṇa? How to please Him?" That is wanted. Not to see that you are a very good scholar in speaking in Sanskrit or English or... That is not... Always feel that "I am worthless, but I have been, by the grace of my Guru Mahārāja, I have been given the chance. So kindly accept whatever little service I can give. I am offensive. So kindly excuse me." In this way be humble, meek, and offer your feeling, and Kṛṣṇa will be satisfied. Not that you have to show how you can speak in Sanskrit language.

Conversation with Devotees -- April 12, 1975, Hyderabad:

Prabhupāda: Anāśritaḥ karma-phalaṁ kāryaṁ karma karoti yaḥ, sa sannyāsī (BG 6.1). Anāśritaḥ kar... Everyone is expecting some good result for his sense gratification. That is āśritaḥ karma-phalaṁ. He has taken the shelter of good result. But one who does not take shelter of the result of activities... It is my duty. Karyam. Karyam means "It is my duty. Doesn't matter what is the result. I must do it sincerely to my best capacity. Then I don't care for the result. Result is in Kṛṣṇa's hand." Karyam: "It is my duty. My Guru Mahārāja said it, so it is my duty. It doesn't matter whether it is successful or not successful. That depends on Kṛṣṇa." In this way, anyone, if he works, then he is a sannyāsī. Not the dress, but the attitude of working. Yes, that is sannyāsa. Karyam: "It is my duty." Sa sannyāsī ca yogī ca. He is yogi, first-class yogi. Just like Arjuna.

Conversation with Governor -- April 20, 1975, Vrndavana:

Prabhupāda: They may be very strong, our tiger and elephant, but they have no capacity to accept any education. Then?

Brahmānanda: "But in human society, even though one may be a low-grade member of the society, he can be trained up to be purified as a first-class brāhmaṇa. It only requires training. Therefore, manava-dharma means to impregnate a human being with spiritual knowledge. A human being must be educated spiritually. That means he must know that he is not this body.

Conversation with Governor -- April 20, 1975, Vrndavana:

Brahmānanda:I hope you will give your serious consideration to my suggestions, and I am prepared to cooperate with you to my best capacity if you think my suggestions are right."

Prabhupāda: This suggestion is to you also. (chuckles) And if you can do these things organizedly, certainly it will be beneficial to the whole human society.

Governor: Any elaboration of what you refer to as vānaprastha college?

Prabhupāda: No, varṇāśrama. Vānaprastha, just like we have got this building. Now, if somebody retires and engages himself in Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement, they are welcome. They can take prasādam and stay here. It is not possible at the present moment that gentleman will live in the forest. That is not possible. Then here is a place, Vṛndāvana, holy place. We have constructed this building, and people should take vānaprastha, or retirement, and may come here and live peacefully and cultivate spiritual knowledge.

Morning Walk -- May 10, 1975, Perth:

Prabhupāda: The priestly class, or the brāhmaṇas, they should be trained up to become truthful, how to control mind, how to control senses, and tolerant, and very learned, knowing God also—these things are required. They should be the first-class, ideal men. Similarly, the kṣatriyas, they must be fearless; they must be very boldly, face fighting the enemies; they must have the capacity to govern nicely so that people will not have any complaint against the government. In this way they should be trained up. And the mercantile class of man, they should produce enough food grains, not motor tires.

Morning Walk -- May 13, 1975, Perth:

Prabhupāda: Nescience, yes. That is pravṛtti and nivṛtti. Pravṛtti means sense enjoyment. And nivṛtti means self-negation. So when we say that "You shall not have illicit sex," and their inclination is illicit sex, so therefore it is revolutionary. They are materialistic persons. They want sex enjoyment to the best capacity-homosex, this sex, that sex, naked dance, all sexually inclined, pravṛtti. And we say, "Stop this," nivṛtti. They do not like it because āsura. Pravṛtti jagat. They do not know this is essential.

Room Conversation with Justin Murphy (Geographer) -- May 14, 1975, Perth:

Prabhupāda: So this is one way of life, that you enjoy your senses and create more miseries. This is one way of life. And if you want to decrease your miseries, then there is another life, which is called simple life. Simple life means you produce your food and you produce your cloth so you dress yourself nicely, you eat, yourself, nicely, keep yourself fit and glorify the Lord. This is one way of life. And the other way of life, that "We don't care for the Lord. Let us enjoy the senses to the topmost capacity and be happy..." So this way of life will never make you happy. You will simply go on struggling. This is one way of life. Another way of life, that the human life is meant for God realization...

Room Conversation with Justin Murphy (Geographer) -- May 14, 1975, Perth:

Justin Murphy: Hm, no.

Prabhupāda: So if a human being does not become inquisitive to understand what he is, in which way his progress should me made, then he remains a dog. The dog cannot do it. And we have got the capacity. If we neglect this facility and remain like a dog, simply engaged in eating, sleeping, sex, and defense, then we remain dog. Then again we become dog. The opportunity was given to us to understand the problems of life, how to solve. If you don't take this opportunity, facility, if you simply remain like dog, then we are next life... That also they do not understand, that there is next life. Do you believe in the next life? You, a person, do you believe in a next life?

Justin Murphy: No, I don't.

Room Conversation with Alcohol and Drug Hospital People -- May 16, 1975, Perth:

Prabhupāda: Tell him.

Paramahaṁsa: Well, Kṛṣṇa is the Supreme Lord, or the Supreme Soul, and we are all individual souls. So naturally we have an awareness of our relationship with Kṛṣṇa, or God. When we say God or Kṛṣṇa, we don't mean my God or your God, but we mean God, no matter which religion we're speaking of. So all of us naturally have a capacity to love Kṛṣṇa, or God, and we can awaken this relationship with Him. And when that is awakened, then all unwanted things disappear, because everybody is actually frustrated, looking for permanent happiness in this temporary world. But when we awaken our Kṛṣṇa consciousness then all of those frustrations disappear, and so all such problems like drug addiction become unnecessary.

Guest (2): How long does this process of withdrawal take?

Paramahaṁsa: He says how long does it take to stop taking drugs by the process of Kṛṣṇa consciousness?

Prabhupāda: If one lives with us at least for six months, he will give up.

Guest (2): Six months. And are there cases which relapse?

Paramahaṁsa: He says, "Are there cases of..., which relapse? Persons who begin to withdraw from drugs...?"

Prabhupāda: Maybe one in five hundred.

Morning Walk -- May 17, 1975, Perth:

Prabhupāda: Then? What is the use of this telescope? (pause) Nothing will be finished. God's resources are unlimited, but they will be finished. Making research, research, they will be finished. God's resources will not be finished, but they will be finished. Unnecessarily they have created necessities of life. In this way, in blind capacity, they... After fifty years where this big geographist is going? He does not know. And he is thinking what will happen hundred years.

Morning Walk -- May 19, 1975, Melbourne:

Prabhupāda: That's nice. That is wanted. Live here very nicely and go back to home, back to Godhead. Why should you die like cats and dogs? Die like a human being and be freed from all these material anxieties. But their determination is that they must live in this hellish condition. They do not believe in the next life. If they believe in the next life, then it becomes horrible. They want to avoid this question. "No, no there is no life. Enjoy to the best capacity now." Enjoy. We do not say that don't enjoy, but enjoy so that you may not be implicated. There is no harm having big house, comfortable life, but keep Kṛṣṇa, chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. What is the wrong there? Hm? Madhudviṣa Mahārāja, if they chant Hare Kṛṣṇa in these big, big skyscraper buildings, what is their loss?

Room Conversation with Two Lawyers and Guest -- May 22, 1975, Melbourne:

Prabhupāda: That is religion. That should be developed, that "Whether by my profession, by my business, by my talent, by my capacities..." There are different categories. "Whether I have pleased God?" Then it is successful. If you have pleased God by your legal profession—you are in a different dress—it doesn't matter. You are as good as they are whole time only serving God. Because their business is also to please God. Similarly, if you have pleased God, then even by practicing your law, you are as good as the saintly person. That should be the aim, "Whether I have pleased God with my professional duty or occupational duty?" That is the standard. Let people take up this. We don't say that "You change your position. You become a sannyāsī or you give up your profession and become bald-headed." No, we don't say that. (laughs) We are by nature. (laughter) So this is Kṛṣṇa consciousness, that you remain in your position, but see whether by your discharge of duties you have pleased God.

Room Conversation with Two Lawyers and Guest -- May 22, 1975, Melbourne:

Guest 2: In our society you are taught in school that if you try hard enough, you can become prime minister.

Prabhupāda: No, no, there is no harm. You become prime minister. But I say that not everyone is capable to become prime minister. That has to be. If one man is not capable and if he takes education to become, he will waste his time.

Guest 2: But once you have the idea in your head that you can be prime minister, you don't want to be a laborer.

Prabhupāda: Then you become. But if he is a loafer and he wants to become prime minister, then it will create havoc. Just like in America. He was not fit for the president's post. Nixon was elected. Then again he has to be dragged down. We say the fit man should go to become a particular...

Guest 2: Our system, I think is not very good. But everyone is taught this way in our system.

Morning Walk -- June 10, 1975, Honolulu:

Prabhupāda: Four kinds of generating process is there. So what they have studied? That germs come out perspiration, that is already accepted in the Vedas. Under certain circumstances the germs come by, what is called? Scientific name?

Siddha-svarūpa: I don't know.

Prabhupāda: Just like bugs, bed bugs. Due to your perspiration of the body, the bed being unclean, they come.

Harikeśa: So the capability was already there in like seed, and you just watered it.

Prabhupāda: Yes. Yes.

Harikeśa: So when they said they created life in this laboratory experiment, the capability...

Prabhupāda: But that also they cannot do. That also they cannot do.

Harikeśa: But the capability was there and they just watered it. They...

Prabhupāda: What is the capability?

Harikeśa: There was one of these four circumstances for life in that test...

Prabhupāda: Potency, that is potency.

Harikeśa: Yeah. And they just made the circumstance proper so that life came.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Room Conversation -- June 26, 1975, Los Angeles:

Prabhupāda: I cannot. If you cannot, I cannot also. Because you have been taught by me, if you cannot, then it is...

Devotee (2): We have also been taught.

Revatīnandana: I have read your books, and I have heard you lecture. And so many things they are asking, I am, have no capacity to answer them. But you must have the capacity because you know Kṛṣṇa. Therefore they want to ask you personally.

Devotee (1): So that is the...

Prabhupāda: So far I am not so able to answer. I admit my fault.

Devotee (1): Oh, so then that is...

Prabhupāda: I cannot answer.

Devotee (1): I understand. Okay? But they are saying, the general conception of you is that because you know Kṛṣṇa...

Prabhupāda: You can... You...

Morning Walk -- June 27, 1975, Los Angeles:

Prabhupāda: Everything, we have got enough facility. We are not going to rent anyone, anyway, any room. We shall utilize it for our purpose only, receiving guest, organizing this book sale. That is my idea.

Jagadīśa: Thank you very, very much for asking me. I will go immediately.

Prabhupāda: You are capable. I know that. He is very capable. You know how to do business, yes. In India an educated man and big, big government officers, lawyers, they will purchase. We do not approach them. School, colleges, library, universities. After all, English language is still current in India. It is not stopped. So they will like to read their own literature in English. They made vigorous propaganda to replace English by Hindi. That has failed. That has failed. No gentleman cares to learn Hindi. (chuckles) At least I never cared. I know Hindi, not by diverting my attention, no. That is very important, no. Automatically whatever I learned, that's all. I am not in favor of that Hindi. Especially in South India, they are all... So by appointing some professional men also.

Brahmānanda: Some agents.

Morning Walk -- July 8, 1975, Chicago:

Prabhupāda: Four... Not four corners. Four sides.

Viśakha: And also with that in the center? Island?

Prabhupāda: No, island is not required. Make a program like that.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Take photos.

Prabhupāda: And if possible, send them ideas and direction. Bhavānanda has gone. (break) ...convince them that they are doing very nice, to their best capacity, but they are doing it blindly. You are very good driver, but if you are a blind man, then how you will drive? You will create disaster. So we can open their eyes so that their good driving capacity will be properly utilized. A good driver, blind, what he will do? Ajñāna-timirāndhasya. Darkness, it will not help. The western method of seeing things—blind eyes. Actually, they are blind. They are trying to see things with microscope. First of all you are blind. What you will see? Microscope, this machine or that machine, but you are blind. That they do not know. (break)

Devotee: What should I do if I'd like to preach more and become free from my family entanglements?

Prabhupāda: Just teach him what to do. Tell him.

Morning Walk -- July 8, 1975, Chicago:

Prabhupāda: If you cannot earn money, then use your intelligence. There are so many intellectual work: publication, going to this officer, that officer. You, intellectually you try. And vācā, by words. If you cannot do anything, go anyone, anywhere and say that "Kṛṣṇa is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, just offer your obeisances." Finished. So where is the scarcity? You can serve Kṛṣṇa in any capacity-provided you want to serve. And if you want to engage Kṛṣṇa for your service, that is blunder. Then it is blunder. You cannot engage Kṛṣṇa to your service. The everyone is trying to engage Kṛṣṇa for his service. They are going to the church, "O Kṛṣṇa, give us our daily bread," that "You serve me. You give us our daily bread and serve me." And our proposition is, Yaśodāmayī, "Kṛṣṇa, You are playing all day. Come on! Take food first of all." This is service. They are going to Kṛṣṇa for asking daily bread. And here Yaśodāmayī is commanding, "Come here! If You don't eat, You will get lean and thin. Come on." This is Vaiṣṇava philosophy.

Morning Walk -- July 8, 1975, Chicago:

Prabhupāda: Yes. (break) ...for money, the money which will push them to hell. This is their intelligence. We have to give them intelligence, open their eyes. (break) ...angry first of all because mūrkhāyo 'padeśo hi prakopāya na śāntaye: "If you give good intelligence to the fools and rascals, they will be angry." But still, you have to do it. Just like when Nityānanda Prabhu went to Jagāi-Mādhāi to deliver them, they became angry and injured. So that is preacher. These rascals will be angry, will sometimes do harm to you, and still, you have to do it. That is preaching. Are you understanding what is preaching? Yes. You have to prepare like that. At all risk you have to preach. (break) ...world is full of rascals, and you have to educate them. So according to one's capacity let them preach, prāṇair arthair dhiyā vācā. But everyone can preach to some extent. There is no hindrance.

Morning Walk -- July 8, 1975, Chicago:

Jaga-jīvana: All classes of men should preach Kṛṣṇa consciousness?

Prabhupāda: Yes. First of all he must know what to preach. If he does not know what to preach, what he will preach? You have got a preaching capacity, provided you learn the art of preaching. But everyone can preach. That's a fact.

Devotee: What is to become of those devotees that leave ISKCON and take to breaking the regulative principles, and stop chanting sixteen rounds?

Prabhupāda: Explain.

Press Conference -- July 9, 1975, Chicago:

Prabhupāda: He does give you advice. If you take his advice, then you get perfect advice.

Reporter (5): What do the other classes do?

Prabhupāda: Other classes... The second-class, they are supposed to be administrator. They are very... They are also very strong. They do not go away when there is fighting. They have got a ruling capacity, and they are charitable. They have got seven qualifications. So... But he rules according to the advice of the first-class men.

Reporter (5): Then... Well, how about the third and fourth-classes?

Prabhupāda: Third-class means they should engage themselves, how to produce food and give protection to the cow. It is said...

Reporter (5): The cow?

Prabhupāda: Cow, yes.

Conversation with Professor Hopkins -- July 13, 1975, Philadelphia:

Prabhupāda: So any materialistic person, he is envious. It is not meant for the materialistic person. Those who are spiritually advanced, one who has understood that "I am not this body, I am spirit soul, my direct connection is with God, therefore my only business is to serve God." One who has come to this conclusion, he is called paramahaṁsa. Haṁsa means swan. A swan, it has got a quality that if you give the swan to drink milk mixed with water, she will drink the milk and reject the water. She has got the capacity. So paramahaṁsa means one who has taken the essence of the existence, Absolute Truth, he is called paramahaṁsa.

Prof. Hopkins: So you would see the Bhagavad-gītā then as accessible to a wide range of people, at an elementary level or beginning level, whereas Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam would be for more advanced, more advanced people.

Morning Walk -- July 24, 1975, Los Angeles:

Prabhupāda: Therefore you accept that you are small. You are not the great. God is great; you are small. So claim a small credit, don't claim as good as God. That is your foolishness. Because we are part and parcel of God, we have got capacity to do part and parcel, not the whole. So remain small, don't try to become big. Remain servant of God. Don't try to become God, that is foolishness. That is our philosophy. Tṛṇād api sunīcena taror api sahiṣṇunā. Remain humble and meek. You will understand God.

Room Conversations -- July 26, 1975, Laguna Beach:

Prabhupāda: I have seen many, spoiling father's money like anything, and the same man, when he is beggar in the street, he feels happy. I shall quote one statement of a very big man, politician, Mr. C.R. Das. So he died in 1925. He was about our father's age. So he was earning in those days fifty thousand rupees per month. Fifty thousand... our rupee or dollar is the same. Although exchange value is different, but the... Locally, the purchasing capacity is the same. So he and his wife were sitting on the corridor, and the wife was talking that "Why you are so morose always? You are earning like anything.

Room Conversation -- July 31, 1975, New Orleans:

Prabhupāda: Take hand's business, take leg's business, and combine them cooperatively. Then the body will be nice. If the leg says "Why hand will type? I shall type," that's not possible. "Legs, all right, you walk, and hands that you type." Then combine together. Then it will be nice. You cannot change the different capacities. There is God's law, nature's law. Let the man and woman combine together, live peacefully. The woman takes charge of the household affairs, the man may take charge of bringing money, and they meet together, have Deity at home, together chant Hare Kṛṣṇa.

Room Conversation -- August 21, 1975, Bombay:

Prabhupāda: No, what I learn from Kṛṣṇa I say. I don't say independently. That is not my business. That is Caitanya Mahāprabhu's instruction. (break) How? Āmāra ājñāya guru hañā tāra' ei deśa (CC Madhya 7.128). You deliver your village people and become a guru. Everyone is not going to be so big that he can go all over the world. But everyone can teach within his limit, within his family, within his community, within his village, within his town, within his district. As he is capable, he can increase. But everyone can become a guru and deliver the local people. How? Yāre dekha, tāre kaha 'kṛṣṇa'-upadeśa (CC Madhya 7.128). Then you are guru. As soon as you manufacture anything nonsense, then it is spoiled. That is going on.

Morning Walk -- September 30, 1975, Bombay:

Prabhupāda: Just like later on, the Gandhi's disciples became more than Gandhi, more than Gandhi. That's all. Gandhi planned village organization, and Jawaharlal Nehru planned industrialization. And everything failed. There is no money, and he wanted to establish industry like America.

Dr. Patel: But he did not understand economics, sir. What is money after all? Money is nothing but the labor transformed into materials. We had the huge labor of sixty crores of people. He was capable of transforming that labor into material unfortunately and...

Prabhupāda: Anyway, they changed the Gandhi's program.

Dr. Patel: That is what Gandhi understood, but he did not.

Prabhupāda: How he can understand? He wanted to utilize to become prime minister.

Press Conference -- October 2, 1975, Mauritius:

Prabhupāda: So this Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement means we are trying to eradicate this conception of life, bodily conception of life. The animals... An animal, he is also thinking, "I am dog," "I am cat," "I am cow," "I am ass," on account of this bodily concept of life. And if we human beings, we also remain in that bodily concept of life, then we are no better than the animals. So if we remain animals, there cannot be any peace. You bring a dozens of dogs, and if you keep them, they cannot be improved. They will remain as animal. They have no capacity. And if you ask them to live peacefully, it is not possible, because they are animals. Similarly, if we human beings, although we are not animals, but we are not being educated as human being, and therefore we remain as animal, so how there can be any peace? The animal eats; we eat.

Room Conversation with Reporter of The Star -- October 16, 1975, Johannesburg:

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Capacity.

Prabhupāda: Capacity of the container. This is described in the Bhāgavata and the Caitanya-caritāmṛta also. Kṛṣṇa śakti vina nahe kṛṣṇa nāme pracāra: "Without Kṛṣṇa's special power of attorney, nobody can preach His name." Caitanya-caritāmṛta. So these rascals, Godbrothers, they are envious that... What he has written? Bon Mahārāja. Just see what kind of men they are. They are not even ordinary human being.

Morning Walk -- October 25, 1975, Mauritius:

Indian man: But the Jains(?) can stop this death...

Prabhupāda: Nobody is... Rascals and fools will that: "I'll not die. Tomorrow I shall die. (laughter) Tomorrow." This is rascal. These things will be done by the rascals. "I'll not die today. I'll die tomorrow." This is rascaldom.

Indian man: About religion, Swamijī. Religion is capable to stop death?

Prabhupāda: Yes. Here the... Tyaktvā dehaṁ punar janma naiti mām eti (BG 4.9). That is our proposal, to go back to home, back to Godhead. No more death.

Indian man: After death no death?

Morning Walk -- October 28, 1975, Nairobi:

Prabhupāda:So in jnani, those who are after knowledge, and inquisitive, they are better than this arta and arthārthī. But devotee is transcendental to all of them. They are neither arto, not distressed, nor in need of money. They do not want to speculate for knowledge or... They know, "Kṛṣṇa is the Supreme, and if I am part and parcel of the Supreme, it is my duty to serve Him to My best capacity." That is real bhakti. And those who are trying to exploit Kṛṣṇa for their, some material fulfillment of desire, they are not on the platform of bhakta. They are pious, not bhakta. A bhakta is above piety.

Morning Walk -- November 7, 1975, Bombay:

Gopāla Kṛṣṇa: They're going to have booths in Māyāpur.

Prabhupāda: Yes. That Tīrtha Mahārāja will not be able to show.

Gopāla Kṛṣṇa: Never.

Prabhupāda: He has no capacity.

Yaśomatīnandana: He will display only one Brahma-saṁhitā, that also by Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī.

Bhāgavata: So we will make a very nice book display. I will see that there is a very nice book display made with the Caitanya-caritamṛtas and the Bhāgavatams displayed. (break) ...the governor of Bengal, and he was quite congenial. He was friendly. And he agreed that if we contact him and make the proper arrangements he might come and see you there when you come to Māyāpur.

Room Conversation -- November 25, 1975, Delhi:

Prabhupāda: So in every center they must rise early in the morning. They must follow the regulative principles. They must attend class. Otherwise let them go out. We don't want. And if anyone wants to marry, first of all he must show that he has some earning capacity. Not that "Because there are so many girls, and I marry one to satisfy my senses..." I thought that boy was nice, and I heard all these stories. That is also another defect, that we have got young boys and young girls open for lovemaking. And brahmacārī means strictly prohibited to see the face of woman. But we cannot stop it. That is also another defect. Fire is good and butter is good, but when they come together everything become bad. Is it not? Fire is good, just like heat.

1976 Conversations and Morning Walks

Morning Walk -- January 16, 1976, Mayapur:

Bhavānanda: He weeds all of the hedges under Tapomaya.

Prabhupāda: So why they are drying? They should water it. (break) (Bengali) They are doing rightly. There are so many men. Why this should be not taken care of? (break) ...not indulge to give shelter persons—in the name of so-called japa they take advantage of free boarding and lodging. You should be very careful. Everyone should be, according to capacity, must be engaged to some work. Don't allow this stupidity. (break) ...plants are grown properly you get so many fruits. They are drying. There is so much space. You can get the sak and the fruit also.

Sudāmā: (break) We made vegetable from that stem.

Prabhupāda: Yes, it is very good vegetable. (break) ...and cycle.

Bhavānanda: That is one of our boys from Italy. He is working in the gośālā.

Prabhupāda: Oh. That is not utilized.

Morning Walk -- January 18, 1976, Mayapur:

Prabhupāda: If you play something wonderful they will accept you: "Oh, you are God." But he does not know that he cannot become God. That is not possible. Although he gets little fractional authority to puzzle others that he has become God.... Because people are fools, if he can produce little gold like this, they will be immediately amazed: "Oh, how powerful he is." They have no capacity to understand. If God is meant for making gold, why not worship the God who has made already millions of gold mines? Unlimited. There is no limit. Why this paltry god? They have no such knowledge. They are amazed.

Hari-śauri: They have to go to so much trouble as well just to achieve that little flickering...

Morning Walk -- January 21, 1976, Mayapura:

Prabhupāda: Yes. Madras is far better place than Nellore. (break) ...if we take charity from such fallen woman, then we have to share his sinful activity. Yes.

Gopāla Kṛṣṇa: So we should be careful from whom we accept charity?

Prabhupāda: Yes. But our Kṛṣṇa can eat even fire. If there is forest fire, Kṛṣṇa can eat. Unless He is able to eat others' sinful reaction, how He says, ahaṁ tvāṁ sarva-pāpebhyo mokṣayiṣyāmi (BG 18.66)? He is capable; otherwise how He can say like that?

Śāstrījī: Sva-rakṣita rakṣati yo hi garbhe.(?)

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Śāstrījī: (Sanskrit)

Prabhupāda: Yes. (break) Ask the grill men to come and prepare grills for all the windows.

Morning Walk -- February 5, 1976, Mayapura:

Prabhupāda: What is that dormant?

Hṛdayānanda: He has no more activity. He simply created, and now He has no more activity.

Prabhupāda: Well, "no more activities," that's all right, but He is active. Suppose I am walking. I may not walk half an hour. That means I have got the capacity of walking. That you cannot say, that my walk... Because I have now stopped walking, you cannot say that I cannot walk. Is another nonsense. How you can say "dormant"? He is active.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Dormant implies He was active.

Morning Walk -- February 12, 1976, Mayapura:

Prabhupāda: ...I am your friend, I am God, so you sleep, I shall do everything. In Russia like that. When Arjuna refused to fight He chastised him like anything. What is the anārya-juṣṭam? He's just like non-Aryans, talking foolish. People should clearly understand that we don't encourage laziness. We never encourage. According to your capacity, guṇa-karma-vibhāgaśaḥ (BG 4.13), you must work. Śarīra yātrāpi te na prasiddhyed akarmaṇaḥ, Kṛṣṇa says, "By not working, even if you cannot put on your body and soul together." Kṛṣṇa says like that.

Dayānanda: Isn't laziness one of the demonic qualities, Śrīla Prabhupāda?

Morning Walk -- February 26, 1976, Mayapura:

Hṛdayānanda: Yes.

Prabhupāda: Paying hundreds and thousands of dollars. Where is the...? He has lost all capacity, but still, he'll go. Still, he'll go. This is called punaḥ punaś carvita-carvaṇānām (SB 7.5.30). In the club, the son is also dancing with the girl, and the old father is dancing, and by chance, they come in contact. The Western civilization is for this, āhāra-nidrā-bhaya-maithuna, eat voraciously, and all become diabetics. They have got diabetes club, association. That means... What is this? Diabetes is the result of voracious eating. That's all. In old age it becomes very prominent because he eats voraciously, but he cannot digest. And all these foodstuffs becomes... What is called? Glucose?

Morning Walk -- March 12, 1976, Mayapur:

Prabhupāda: No. He is bestower. He gives everything. If anyone voluntary gives, that's all right. You should not ask. (break) ...instead of doing this. (Bengali) He said like that. "By showing the Deity to earn livelihood is condemned. Better become a sweeper, municipal sweeper, and sweep the road and earn money." He said like that. That is better, honorable. He is working and getting money, instead of making a good show of Deity and earn money. This is not required. If you want to earn money, go, work according to your capacity and earn money. Don't cheat people. That is Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī.

Morning Walk -- March 12, 1976, Mayapur:

Rādhāvallabha: This is only half of the temple pictures. The other half will go up today.

Rāmeśvara: And all the professor quotes will be up by tomorrow morning.

Prabhupāda: Very good.

Rāmeśvara: They'll fill the entire wall on the other side.

Prabhupāda: Do to your best capacity and Kṛṣṇa will help.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: There should be some border over here so that people don't accidentally fall into the box. Really. We have all kinds of kids coming around.

Morning Walk -- April 14, 1976, Bombay:

Gopāla Kṛṣṇa: It was a very nice procession.

Prabhupāda: Very good health.

Gopāla Kṛṣṇa: And they're doing it every day now.

Prabhupāda: Hare Kṛṣṇa. (break) ...intelligence and kṣatriya's executive power and vaiśya's productive capacity and śūdra's labor. This combined together makes the whole society perfect.

Dr. Patel: How this social order can be generated in India?

Prabhupāda: (to passerby:) Thank you. Hare Kṛṣṇa. Jaya.

Indian man: (Hindi)

Prabhupāda: The kṣatriya's duty is that everyone is religious. It doesn't matter whether he follows Muslim or.... That is kṣatriya's duty, not that to discriminate, "The Hindu religion is better than the Muslim religion. Muslim..." That is not the way. If everyone is religious, it doesn't matter whether he is Hindu...

Room Conversation -- April 20, 1976, Melbourne:

Mike Barron: No.

Prabhupāda: Then how do you say it is joking?

Mike Barron: Er, no, I.... The actual context.

Prabhupāda: The context is that if you cannot separate the living force, or the soul, from the body, then you are on the same position as the dog is thinking, "I am the body. I am a big dog. I can bark very loudly." And he's showing his capacity. And if we are talking big, big assembly, and in the same conception of life, that "I am this body," then where is difference?

Mike Barron: I cannot argue against that.

Prabhupāda: That is the point. That is the point. We have to understand this point. If we want to become more than the dog, you must find out in which sense we are more than the dog. That sense is understanding.... That is.... In Sanskrit word it is said, ahaṁ brahmāsmi: "I am Brahman. I am not this matter." That is knowledge. Actually knowledge begins from that point, that "I am not this body." Just like a big 747 plane is running on, but there is the intelligent pilot. If somebody says, "There is no pilot. It is flying automatically. The machine is supported," is it a correct?

Room Conversation -- April 22, 1976, Melbourne:

Prabhupāda: And what is your intelligence? You are using the intelligence for the same purpose. And what is the use of your intelligence?

Hari-śauri: It's just waste.

Prabhupāda: No, no. If animal has no intelligence, you have no intelligence. What you are doing more than the animals? That we are protesting, that "Why you should remain in the animal intelligence?" That is our propaganda.

Hari-śauri: If you can't prove yourself capable of taking use of better facility, then again you get less facility.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: You explained very nicely how these boys and girls, they will sit on the floor. What is the need to manufacture chair? So a civilization which is geared to unnecessarily increasing the necessities is simply glorified...

Garden Conversation -- June 8, 1976, Los Angeles:

Prabhupāda: Ignorance means completely lost of all independence. That is ignorance. Complete loss of, even little intelligence, all lost. In the modes of passion, there is little independence, and in the modes of goodness, he has got full independence whether to remain in the struggle for existence or go back to home, back to Godhead. Brahma jānāti iti brāhmaṇaḥ. That is real knowledge platform.

Hṛdayānanda: (reading:) "This material covering perishes, but his spiritual body manifests in its individual capacity. The following information is there in the Mādhyandināyana-śruti: sa vā eṣa brahma-niṣṭhā idaṁ śarīraṁ martyam atisṛjya brahmābhisampadya brahmaṇā paśyati brahmaṇā śṛṇoti brahmaṇaivedaṁ sarvam anubhavati.

Morning Walk -- June 21, 1976, Toronto:

Indian man (4): No, prabhu, supposing if we see...

Prabhupāda: You cannot help. First of all, you cannot help.

Indian man (4): Right.

Prabhupāda: If you can help, you can simply repeat the instruction of Kṛṣṇa. Otherwise you have no power to help. It is all concoction. Vivekananda, for the last hundred years-daridra-nārāyaṇa-sevā. He could not do anything. First of all you must know that you have no capacity to help.

Indian man (4): Right. That is true, prabhu.

Prabhupāda: Then why you propose to help?

Indian man (4): No, but prabhu, how far is it fair that if one is religious, say chanting and regulations and everything he is doing, and on the other hand, he doesn't behave as a good honest labor...

Prabhupāda: That good honest..., you have got some idea of good honest. But because he's chanting, he's all good.

Garden Conversation -- June 22, 1976, New Vrindaban:

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: "It is explained in the Second Chapter that the living entity is transmigrating from one body to another just as one changes dress."

Prabhupāda: This is transmigrating. He's put into this circumstances, so he gets this body. (break) ...in our society, he's living in a room, but if he has got some difficulty, he says... Then the authority gives him another room, "All right, you go there." This is transmigration. He must get a place according to his capacity, according to his quality. Go on reading.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: "This change of dress is due to his attachment to material existence. As long as he is captivated by this false manifestation, he has to continue transmigrating from one body to another. Due to his desire to lord it over material nature, he is put into such..."

Room Conversation -- June 24, 1976, New Vrindaban:

Prabhupāda: Yes. Kṛṣṇa consciousness does not mean to keep a set of men lazy, who cannot work. That is not Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Everyone must work to his capacity. Prescribed duties. They accuse us that we are escaping. Huh? What is that? We do not escape. We are always busy.

Devotee: Recently I had an opportunity to see a (indistinct) farm community, and I was talking to one of the boys there about Kṛṣṇa consciousness, and they said "You are under Swami Prabhupāda." They said, "We have never seen Prabhupāda smile." I told them that "Yes, birth, death, disease, and old age are nothing to smile about."

Garden Conversation -- June 27, 1976, New Vrindaban:

Hari-śauri: This Śrī Chinmoy is supposed to be this resident guru at the United Nations.

Prabhupāda: Whatever he may be, but we have got our own formula to understand.

Hari-śauri: He did a practical demonstration of what he said a person who is in touch with God can be capable of doing if he allows himself to become an instrument of God. So for eight months he painted continually, and he produced 27,000 paintings, and he said that this was proof that he was God realized.

Prabhupāda: Mauna, the word begins with mauna.

Garden Conversation -- June 27, 1976, New Vrindaban:

Dhṛṣṭadyumna: Śrīla Prabhupāda, it described a gradual process of realizing Kṛṣṇa, but does the devotee go through these levels of understanding Brahman then Paramātmā then Bhagavān? Does the devotee gradually go through these levels, or does he immediately realize Brahman when his service is perfect?

Prabhupāda: That depends on his capacity. (directing someone:) Just on the head of the...

Devotee (2): Mahārāja Kīrtanānanda said that our actual realization comes through our actions. So we are building this New Vrindaban we are, actually..., this is taken to be our preaching or our life and soul.

Answers to a Questionnaire from Bhavan's Journal -- June 28, 1976, Vrndavana:

Prabhupāda: Yes. Actually it is the way. That, I have already described it. It is not a sectarianism like Muslimism, Christianism or "Thisism..." Hinduism also now one of them. Actually, it is a way of life, varṇāśrama-dharma, how to become elevated to the spiritual platform. So that begins by the varṇāśrama-dharma, to select persons according to his capacity to different varṇas. Some of them selected, trained as brāhmaṇas. Some of them trained as kṣatriya, some of them as vaiśya, some of them as, remain... Those who cannot take any training, they are śūdras. So in the ways (indistinct) there must be social division not by birth, but by education. Cātur-varṇyaṁ mayā sṛṣṭaṁ guṇa-karma-vibhāgaśaḥ (BG 4.13). That we have lost. The so-called Hinduism they have lost. And because they did not follow real varṇāśrama-dharma, therefore India, so many renegades, Muslim became... Once they become Muslim, there was no reformation.

Answers to a Questionnaire from Bhavan's Journal -- June 28, 1976, Vrndavana:

Prabhupāda: Nobody can give clear conception of God. Can the Christians give? Then where is love of God? If you have no understanding of what is God, where is the question of love? Love is not fictitious. You cannot love air. You love a person, a beautiful person, a beautiful woman. If you say, "I love air. I love the sky..." Where there is question of love?There must be a person. So who is that person we want to love? But they have no personal conception of God, neither they can describe the personal beauty, capacity, strength, ṣaḍ-aiśvarya-pūrṇaḥ. There is no such description. So they have got the conception of God, but actually they do not know what is God. But religion means you must know God and love Him. That is religion. That is first class religion. Is that clear or not?

'Life Comes From Life' Slideshow Discussions -- July 3, 1976, Washington, D.C.:

Prabhupāda: When you become Vaiṣṇava, tad viṣṇoḥ paramaṁ padaṁ sadā paśyanti, you are hankering after Viṣṇu. Then your life is success. And to keep them dull brained, like these trees and mountains, that is the greatest disservice in the human society. They have got the capacity to become a brāhmaṇa, and they are keeping him just like a dull-brained mountain and tree. That we want to stop this. It is suicidal, suicidal to the human society. They have got the chance of becoming a brāhmaṇa, and they are keeping them as dull-brained trees and mountains. The modern civilization, most harmful civilization. Denying the facility. One has got the capacity to become a brāhmaṇa, and they are denying the facility, to keep him to remain like hogs and dogs. Whole day and night, work hard to find out some stool, and as soon as we get some stool, a little strength, then have sex without any discrimination. This is civilization.

Room Conversation -- July 5, 1976, Washington, D.C.:

Prabhupāda: So long. As soon as there is five thousand years, they will (indistinct). The Christian theory used to say that the world is flat. So what is the value of their words? There is no value. You do not try to compromise with others.

Svarūpa Dāmodara: No, we are not compromising with anybody.

Prabhupāda: You present your own as it is Bhāgavatam, try to explain them to your best capacity scientifically. If you bring this, bring that... All of them are imperfect. So what is the use of wasting time with something which is imperfect?

Svarūpa Dāmodara: We want to demonstrate that those points are imperfect.

Prabhupāda: Huh?

Svarūpa Dāmodara: We want to demonstrate, though, that those points are imperfect.

Conversation with Prof. Saligram and Dr. Sukla -- July 5, 1976, Washington, D.C.:

Mr. Loomis: Is it better to have a human body as a machine to use than a cat's body?

Prabhupāda: Certainly, in the sense that you can utilize for higher purposes. Just like you have got this human form of body. Therefore you are sitting here to hear me. The dog has no such facility. The dog has got the same legs, hands or mouth and tongue, and so on, so on, in a different way. But it has no capacity to hear about spiritual advancement of life. Therefore the human body should be engaged not simply for sense gratification. Kāmasya nendriya-prītir (SB 1.2.10). Find out this verse. Jīvasya tattva-jijñāsā. This is the business, tattva-jijñāsā. Tattva-jijñāsā means to inquire about the Absolute Truth. That is the only business.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Kāmasya nendriya-prītir labho jīveta yāvatā (SB 1.2.10).

Evening Darsana -- July 6, 1976, Washington, D.C.:

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa:One has to understand the position of prakṛti (nature), and puruṣa (the enjoyer of the nature), and īśvara (the knower who dominates or controls nature and the individual soul). One should not confuse the three in their different capacities. One should not confuse the painter, the painting and the easel. This material world, which is the field of activities, is nature, and the enjoyer of nature is the living entity, and above them both is the supreme controller, the Personality of Godhead. It is stated in the Vedic language: bhoktā bhogyaṁ preritaraṁ ca matvā sarvaṁ proktaṁ tri-vidhaṁ brahmam etat. There are three Brahman conceptions: prakṛti is Brahman as the field of activities, and the jīva (individual soul) is also Brahman and is trying to control material nature, and the controller of both of them is also Brahman, but He is the factual controller."

Prabhupāda: Therefore, He is called Param Brahman. Sarvaṁ khalv idaṁ brahma. Everything is Brahman, but He is Param Brahman. That is accepted by Arjuna, paraṁ brahma paraṁ brahma pavitram.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: "In this chapter it will also be explained that out of the two knowers, one is fallible and the other is infallible; one is superior and the other subordinate. One who understands the two knowers of the field to be one and the same contradicts the Supreme Personality of Godhead, who states here very clearly that 'I am also the knower of the field of activity.' One who misunderstands a rope to be a serpent is not in knowledge."

Room Conversation With Scientists -- July 6, 1976, Washington, D.C.:

Prabhupāda: For a particular soul.

Svarūpa Dāmodara: Now my point, coming to this complex form, now matter it is understood easily in terms of science, when matter is associated with life, then comparing this...

Prabhupāda: Then the matter works. Otherwise it has no working capacity. Yayedaṁ dhāryate jagat (BG 7.5). The material world is working on account of the presence of the spirit soul.

Svarūpa Dāmodara: From here, from this experience, we are extending that the spiritual world is, spirit itself is...

Prabhupāda: It's different from material world.

Svarūpa Dāmodara: Complex.

Evening Darsana -- July 7, 1976, Washington, D.C.:

Bill Sauer: Well, I could interpret that in another way, not having any background—you'll have to excuse my ignorance—that we are the tool of eternity. We are, through our technical capabilities, the ability to spread life so far among so many billions of stars that there will be eternal life, there will be eternal spirituality.

Prabhupāda: But there is eternal life.

Bill Sauer: But when this planet sits for a billion years at a thousand degrees Fahrenheit, what we know as life will be destroyed.

Prabhupāda: Anything within this material world will be all destroyed. But there is another nature, that is being described. Paras tasmāt tu bhāvo 'nyo 'vyakto 'vyaktāt sanātanaḥ (BG 8.20).

Room Conversation -- July 7, 1976, Baltimore:

Prabhupāda: That is the nature. You cannot solve the problem. You will create problem. If you don't live natural life, then you will create problem. Just like the other than creatures, other than human beings, they have no problems, because they are living naturally. So our human beings should also live natural life. Then his only problem is birth, death, old age, and... That he will be able to solve. That is the difference. The birds and beasts, they are living natural life, but they have no capacity to solve the problems. They are living a natural life. But the human being has the capacity to solve the problems. Real problem is birth, death, old age and disease. But they do not touch the real problem. Hmm? They avoid it because they cannot solve it.

Evening Darsana -- July 13, 1976, New York:

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: ...of the human society. But actually it's one body, one entity already, simply that with different activities that we have to perform. The example is given, mukhe bāhūru pāda-ja: That there is the head; there's the arms; there's the belly, the abdomen; and then there is the legs. And all of them are part of the same body. So you might say that the legs are removed from the head, or that the head is removed from the stomach, but actually it's all one body and it works together. But the head gives direction to the whole body, how to act properly, so that the benefit is there to be derived. So Śrīla Prabhupāda is creating a class of brāhmaṇas, or heads of human society, who can give direction to the whole sphere of human activities so that they can become successful in human life. So in reality, we're not trying to create farmers, we're trying to create brāhmaṇas. But our farming communities are, so to speak, an example, an ideal example how human society can live: some people in the capacity of preachers, some people in the capacity of farmers, how so many activities can go on—various occupations—but all of them can be God-centered. So in reality, these people, they're farmers, they're out there on their tractor, they can jump off their tractor at any moment and preach the highest philosophy, because actually they're brāhmaṇas. They (are the) intelligent class of men. So it's one entity. The basic principle is that modern society is neglecting to train up—especially young men, you can see that in spite of so many universities throughout the world—these young men are being trained up how to become women-hunters and debauches. Going to the bars, going to the gambling houses, and they are supposed to be educated people. So real education is how to train up one to have ideal character, to become a brāhmaṇa.

Guest (1): Thank you.

Prabhupāda: Our men's productive. There must be food production, otherwise how the society will live. That is also a requirement. Good direction required, good government required, good production required, and good worker required. You can explain that there is no understanding of spiritual life. That they are missing the opportunity of human life.

Morning Walk -- July 20, 1976, New York:

Prabhupāda: They are all rascals, therefore I say. They have no common sense, all rascals, dull. By eating meat they are... They may be like tigers or dogs, but they are not human beings. They may have strength of a tiger or barking capacity like a dog, but they are not human being. Useless. They cannot be used for anything human benefit, useless. We should take them like that, that "You may be a tiger, you may be a lion, you may be a dog, but you are not a human being. We do not accept you." A tiger is very powerful than ordinary human being, but that does not mean that a tiger is useful than the human being. That is not the way. (break) ...I ask, natural answer you gave, "Because it is disconnected with the mother." That is natural answer. Then how you can say the life has come from matter? Immediately you are captured. Can you say like that, that life has come without life? And they are making us believe like that.

Room Conversation -- July 27, 1976, London:

Prabhupāda: "I shall fight, give my all best, and Kṛṣṇa will be satisfied." So that.... Arjuna for his personal, he did not..., decline, but when he saw that "Kṛṣṇa wants it? All right." That is kṛṣṇa-prema. "Never mind I shall be aggrieved by killing my kinsmen, but Kṛṣṇa will be satisfied. That's all right." This is Kṛṣṇa philosophy. We cannot find this philosophy in the material world that "I shall work, and so many will be satisfied." That is not possible. "If I work, I must be satisfied." So these communists, they will work according to.... Everyone will show that "I have no capacity." So the production will reduce. And they'll have to beg.

Room Conversation -- July 31, 1976, New Mayapur (French farm):

Prabhupāda: Oh, yes, everything is devotional. Śravaṇaṁ kīrtanaṁ viṣṇoḥ smaraṇaṁ pāda-sevanam (SB 7.5.23), there are varieties. We are not Māyāvādī, impersonalists, finished, all business. It is not like that. So whatever business is going on in our movement, everything should be taught according to the capacity, boys or girls, it doesn't matter. Some department is suitable for the boys, some department are suitable for the girls. In this way, they should be trained up. But everyone should be trained up to give service. That is Gurukula. And brahmacārī, this sex impulse should be controlled. That ruins the whole character. Our big, big sannyāsīs are becoming victimized.

Room Conversation -- August 3, 1976, New Mayapur (French farm):

Prabhupāda: But when you speak of so many things, that millions of years there were germs and germination, now they are trying to come out, and it is all vacant—these are all bogus, we don't accept. Talking too much. In Bengal it is called yatap(?) When the same child speaks something too much, "Ah, stop." To the extent of his capacity, that's all right. But if you talk more than that, then you are rascal. So they are doing that now. Because they have got some electronic success, or they have manufactured some jet plane, or these, they are now thinking "Now we have owned over the whole world situation." That is nonsense. They are thinking like that: "Now we have control over the world world." That is yatam,(?) speaking more than their capacity. And so far we are concerned, we don't talk anything, except what is mentioned in the books. That's all. We remain always foolish. And as foolish men, we do not talk. We simply talk what is mentioned by Vyāsadeva, by Śukadeva Gosvāmī. That's all.

Room Conversation With French Commander -- August 3, 1976, New Mayapur (French farm):

Bhagavān: How you can go from two lines to three pages.

Prabhupāda: I can go more. (laughter) But I have made shortcut. Kṛṣṇa is unlimited. So He can be described unlimitedly. But we have no unlimited patience.

Translator: He is explaining that there are so many things to understand about Kṛṣṇa, but we do not have the capacity to understand always. But he feels that at one point, when the soul is pure, these things will be understood automatically, but because we are very far, these commentaries are needed to bring us closer to Kṛṣṇa.

Prabhupāda: Yes, this is the first study of Kṛṣṇa. ABCD. When we learn Bhagavad-gītā, then we can have some glimpse of idea of Kṛṣṇa. Then we go further in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam.

Room Conversation -- August 8, 1976, Tehran:

Prabhupāda: Similarly, He possesses all the strength, He possesses all the beauty, He possesses all knowledge, and He is the renouncer also, the most exalted renouncer. Although He possesses so many things, He is renounced. Just like this universe is the property of God, but He has given to you, all the living entities. "Now you wanted to enjoy, enjoy it to your best capacity." He doesn't interfere. "All right, you go on." And we are trying to enjoy this material world to our best capacity. Just like in Iran, you are trying to enjoy by exploiting the oil. Similarly, somebody is exploiting. It is all God's property. He doesn't interfere. "All right, enjoy." This is renouncement. His property, He does not come to interfere.

Evening Darsana -- August 9, 1976, Tehran:

Prabhupāda: Allah. So if Allah cannot hear, then what is the use of offering prayers? If we are offering prayer, so Allah must hear it. Then He will be pleased upon you. So if He has no capacity to hear, then what is the use of your prayer? This is the logic. He must have capacity to hear what I am offering, prayers, "My Lord, Your Lordship is so great You have created this universe," or "You are maintaining so many...," these things are there. So what is the purpose? That appreciating the uncommon activities of the Lord. This is prayer. What else? What do they mean by prayer? What is the meaning of that prayer?

Evening Darsana -- August 9, 1976, Tehran:

Nava-yauvana: Prabhupāda, some people confuse the chanting with the...

Prabhupāda: Every people must be confused, because he has no training. Not some people. You say, "All people." Then it is all right.

Atreya Ṛṣi: This is one sort of confusion that he wants to explain.

Prabhupāda: You should know everyone is confused. If you have got capacity, then you make him peaceful. Otherwise, you expect everyone is confused. It is a different life. Unless one is very, very fortunate, he cannot understand it. So confusion is natural. There is not the question of some people or other, everyone is confused. They do not know what is spiritual life, what is spirit. Everyone is thinking, "I am this body." So how he'll not be confused? The very beginning is confusion. So long one is confused with this bodily conception of life, he's called in the śāstra animal. The animal is always confused.

Evening Darsana -- August 11, 1976, Tehran:

Prabhupāda: Do you agree or not? If a human being is not interested to know about God, then he's dog. This is our first charge. Now let the agnostic refute. Hmm? In human life... There are varieties of living entities, so many. The trees are also living entities, but it is standing, it has no other capacity. The birds are there, they're little improved, they're flying, they can move from one tree to another, but they have no capacity to inquire about God. There are so many insects, they are also living entity, but they do not inquire about God. It is only human being, he can inquire. That particular facility is given.

Room Conversation About Mayapura Construction -- August 19, 1976, Hyderabad:

Jayapatākā: Yes, I think Gargamuni has seen. Gargamuni is giving him some help. He printed one Orissan book, and he gives him sometimes some books and help. He is fixed up, that Gaura-Govinda.

Prabhupāda: He's fixed up. That's nice. Let him translate in Orissa and, if possible, in Hindi. And give him few devotees. Then he'll be encouraged.

Jayapatākā: I think he has got two or three devotees now. This man himself is a pretty capable worker. He's somewhat like Prabhu Swarupa, only a little older, little more mature. He's about forty-five or so. He's been able to collect about, what I can see, about fifty thousand rupees for one nātha-mandira. And he has a couple thousand people. I heard from the Gauḍīya Maṭha. They say they have big utsavas there. Every year two three thousand people come.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Jayapatākā: So he's a capable...

Prabhupāda: Manager.

Jayapatākā:...manager in his own right. He wanted to meet you.

Prabhupāda: So let us cooperate with him. You take it. And he is there. In the meantime, our men may be trained up.

Jayapatākā: He's invited us to come. He has some festival coming. Then we can just go...

Room Conversation -- September 5, 1976, Vrndavana:

Prabhupāda: ...Sannyāsī should go on preaching, preaching, preaching, preaching. Practically, I was sitting here in Vṛndāvana, in Rādhā-Dāmodara temple. So at the age of seventy years, nobody goes out. At least from Vṛndāvana nobody goes at the age of seventy years. But Kṛṣṇa asked me. I thought that I must go, Guru Mahārāja wanted it, Caitanya Mahāprabhu... Let me try. So if I had not gone then this institution would not have developed. So this is practical. Mahataḥ nirvicaraṇam.(?) Mahātmā, they must move. So when there is absolute necessity they may stay. Otherwise, they must move. Move on, move on, move on, move on, move on. No staying. That is principle. No staying. I am this old age, I cannot move... My... I... So many... Still I am traveling all over the world. I am simply interested that whatever I have done, it may not be vanquished in my absence. Let me go and encourage them. Otherwise, I have no capacity to move now. But still I am moving. Only for this purpose. Girinaṁ grhna-cetasam.(?) So a sannyāsī must move. A sannyāsī must not stay anywhere more than three days. That is the principle. So he was moving, but his moving is creating disturbances here. Therefore I have stopped. And besides that, a temple is nirguṇa. A sannyāsī is forbidden to stay anywhere else, but in a temple he can stay for more than three days provided there is business. Otherwise, there is no necessity. So this is the exclusion(?).

Room Conversation -- September 5, 1976, Vrndavana:

Prabhupāda: No, solves or not solves, we shall see later on. But this is the principle. This is the principle. Solution, if we do not become very simple servant of Kṛṣṇa, problems will increase. It will never be solved. If you have got any other desire than to serve Kṛṣṇa, then the problems will increase. It will never decrease. Therefore bhakti begins, anyābhilāṣitā-śūnyam (Brs. 1.1.11). No other purpose than to serve Kṛṣṇa. This is only purpose. Ānukūlyena kṛṣṇānuśīlanam (CC Madhya 19.167). So our only business is how to satisfy Kṛṣṇa. Kṛṣṇa in His original status as Kṛṣṇa, and in His other status as Caitanya Mahāprabhu, and in both ways, He's insisting to preach. That is a very important business. Neither Caitanya Mahāprabhu nor Kṛṣṇa has recommended that you become a great devotee and sit down in a place and talk big, big words and simply eat and sleep. Kṛṣṇa has never said. That is not Kṛṣṇa's neither Caitanya Mahāprabhu's business. That is not required. Boro boro bado bado phet lanka mata kore het.(?) "Big, big monkey, big, big belly, Ceylon jumping, melancholy." There are very many big, big bellies in Vṛndāvana, but if they're asked to preach Caitanya Mahāprabhu's mission all over the world—melancholy. Melancholy. Big, big monkey, big, big belly. So you have taken a very great mission that world preaching, that is very, very nice decision. So you have got buses and you have got capacity. You do this. And one in Germany, one in India, come and go, come and go. What do you think?

Room Conversation -- September 6, 1976, Vrndavana:

Prabhupāda: This is tapasya. It is very strong power, this... Therefore Bhāgavata said that this power, sex power, is there in the hogs. They have no discrimination between mother, sister, daughter. And simply busy. The example is given. This capacity is there in the hog. Are you hog? How example is given. Do you like to remain like a hog? One should be saintly. Yes. Then where is the difference, I'm a human being? I am treating like hog. Therefore this very example. Nāyaṁ deho deha-bhājāṁ nṛloke kaṣṭān kāmān arhate viḍ-bhujām (SB 5.5.1). This is for the hogs. This hog civilization is going on as human civilization. That is the difficulty. Whole world is hogs and dogs. Big, big United Nations. And what are the assembly? Hogs and dogs. The politicians, as soon as he gets some time for relax, immediately he becomes hogs.

Room Conversation -- September 9, 1976, Vrndavana:

She's living with her husband underneath a tree. Never claims, "My dear husband, if you cannot, I can make one." There is a story about that. That, "People criticize us. All right, let us have some house." So Lord Śiva, Durgā, both of them capable to do anything. So they constructed a very nice gold house. "Now we shall live." So there is new house entering ceremony. So one Gargamuni was invited as brāhmaṇa. Many other brāhmaṇas. So they began to eat so much... That story I'm now forgetting. Then whatever stock they have finished, when, after eating, when they wanted, "Give us dakṣiṇā." Because after eating there is... So Lord Śiva, where shall I get everything? I have finished." Then they became puzzled what to do.

Room Conversation -- September 11, 1976, Vrndavana:

Dhanañjaya: Actually so many Indians in their house they're keeping just like dolls. They are not worshiping regularly. They're keeping on the mantlepiece or on the side.

Prabhupāda: In this way be encouraged and in full capacity do business and get others.

Dhanañjaya: There was one boy who just came from Italy and he's expert in wood carving.

Prabhupāda: That's all right.

Press Interview -- October 16, 1976, Chandigarh:

Prabhupāda: So these things can be understood in the human form of life. The cats and dogs, they cannot understand. If we want to educate the cats and dogs that "My dear dog, you are not this body. You are different from this body. You are spirit soul, Brahman," he has no capacity to understand. And a human being, however fallen he may be, if he is educated, he can understand about the position of spirit soul and how to become free from this material bondage. So in India we have got immense Vedic literature for understanding this business of the soul. And in human form of body, if we do not take care of the spiritual portion of our life, then we are making suicide.

Room Conversation with Dr. Theodore Kneupper -- November 6, 1976, Vrndavana:

Prabhupāda: No, no. You, as a philosopher, you can understand that there is supreme controller. Can you deny it?

Dr. Kneupper: I would... Only with great difficulty, it seems to me.

Prabhupāda: Yes, it is... You cannot deny. But they foolishly deny it. Therefore they are rascals. So how you can convince the rascals the right way? If you give me a dozen of dogs, can I convince him that what is God?

Dr. Kneupper: Hardly. They have no capacity to understand.

Prabhupāda: But they have no capacity. The modern civilization, we are creating dogs and hogs, so how they will understand God?

Dr. Kneupper: Do you think there will always be a few who understand?

Prabhupāda: Certainly. Unless one... But if there is a class of men, ideal, who understands God, then people will follow. We require one moon. Then the darkness will be dissipated. But if in the millions of stars, what is the use? So they are creating millions of rascals, not one sane man, the modern civilization, the so-called philosophers, so-called scientists. Don't mind. This is the fact.

Room Conversation -- November 24, 1976, Vrndavana:

Prabhupāda: Change is no rectification. If somebody is not working he should be trained up. Changing is another... If he is a fool, another fool will come. What will be the difficulty? You see? Change, of course, sometimes required but if you constantly change, the man is not trained up. That practice is not good. If somebody is not doing satisfactorily, then he should be trained up that "You should like this." And if you immediately change another that, that is not actually solution because all our workers, they are not accustomed to certain type of duty. They are devotee, after all. So still, we have to do something, so one man requires little training. But whatever capacity he has got, he is posted, so immediate change, that is not very good management. Let him be reformed and whatever inability he has got, he should be instructed and he should be... And this, all of a sudden change, simply go on changing, nobody... "Rolling stone never gathers moss." A "rolling stone" policy is not good.

Press Conference -- December 16, 1976, Hyderabad:

Prabhupāda: Therefore question is just simplified, that... Therefore we establish temple: "Here is Kṛṣṇa." That's all. If you say that "Kṛṣṇa is all pervading. Why shall I come to the temple?" And why not in the temple if He's all-pervading? But you say, "No, I am not going to see in the temple. I shall see outside in the sky." Then you don't see. Otherwise Kṛṣṇa is everywhere; why not in the temple? What is that argument? He is here also. But according to my capacity I can see temple, Kṛṣṇa, very easily. So Kṛṣṇa says, man-manā bhava mad-bhaktaḥ. You come daily to the temple and see Him and think of Him. There is no...

Room Conversation with Indian Man -- December 22, 1976, Poona:

Indian man: That is the biggest problem. (laughing)

Prabhupāda: That is.

Indian man: The body comes, then the soul. But that part is, I don't...

Prabhupāda: First of all, you have understood that unless you are capable of training your child not to die, you should not become a father. First of all, you have to accept this principle. Then how to save the child from death, that is next question. Let us go step by step. Your question was what is the good sex life, the answer is given here.

Indian man: Answer is very complicated.

Morning Walk -- December 30, 1976, Bombay:

Prabhupāda: At least 25% to the relatives and 25% for personal. And 50% for Kṛṣṇa. This is the system. So this is called dānam. Kṛṣṇa also says kuruṣva tad mad-arpaṇam. "If you want to give in charity, give it to Me." Kuruṣva tad mad-arpaṇam. Dadāsi yat. "If you have got some capacity to give something, give it to Me." He never said to daridra-nārāyaṇa. I do not know how they manufactured these things. Kṛṣṇa says, "Give it to Me." He's not daridra. He's Nārāyaṇa, but He's not daridra. The principle is to give to the richest Nārāyaṇa, not daridra-nārāyaṇa. But these rascals misinterpret that daridra has become Nārāyaṇa. How daridra can become Nārāyaṇa? This is going on.

1977 Conversations and Morning Walks

Morning Walk -- January 4, 1977, Bombay:

Dr. Patel: Bug.

Prabhupāda: Ha, just like ordinary insects. He is also living entity. He is enjoying in his own capacity, he's enjoying. Vidhi-mahendrādiś ca kīṭāyate yat-kāruṇya-kaṭākṣa-vaibhava-vatāṁ taṁ gauram eva stumaḥ. "It happens so by the little fragmental mercy of Caitanya Mahāprabhu. Therefore I offering my obeisances unto you." Prabodhānanda Sarasvatī. Durdāntendriya-kāla-sarpa-paṭalī protkhāta-daṁṣṭrāyate viśvaṁ pūrṇa-sukhāyate vidhi-mahendrādiś ca kīṭāyate yat-kāruṇya-kaṭākṣa-vaibhava-vatāṁ taṁ gauram eva stumaḥ(Caitanya-candrāmṛta 5). This is Caitanya Mahāprabhu's mercy. A little mercy will render all this. So what he will do now that he has not said?

Letter to Russian -- January 5, 1977, Bombay:

Prabhupāda: Yes. And here, if we make closet or on the wall. We can keep anywhere, all the verandas, all these rooms, four walls, keeping books, book stock. Make vigorous propaganda by advertising, "Read Hare Kṛṣṇa literature. Hare Kṛṣṇa is wonderful." In this way advertise. Hindi, English, Bengali. I can give suggestion; you do it. Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa... We are getting paper now, government paper. Money is there. Now we have to print very intelligently, and even it is not immediately sold, we can keep stock. (pause) (break) "Cultivate seriously spiritual life. Welcome. Come here. Live with us. We have got enough place." They want that sense gratification in the old age, when the senses are no more capable, still.

Room Conversation -- January 7, 1977, Bombay:

Prabhupāda: Early... When it will be late, then it will be not done. Immediately do it. When I am giving him, it must reach timely to save the situation. So go and do this first. (break) This is our latest publication. (break)

Indian (1): They should see the Almighty. They should repeat it. They should recite the name. Physically, they should be strong and stout and be the brothers of everyone. There should be a brotherhood. Gopāla Prabhu has got some grasping capacity. He can understand something. We know the principles in the life according to Bhagavad-gītā, Mahābhārata, Rāmāyaṇa, Bhāgavata.

Prabhupāda: Saṁsiddhiṁ paramāṁ gatāḥ.

Indian (1): Sve sve karmaṇy abhirataḥ saṁsiddhiṁ labhate naraḥ. Sve sve karmaṇy abhirataḥ. That means everyone must be firm.

Prabhupāda: Tam abhyarcya. Not only simply dṛḍhatva, but karmaṇā tam abhyarcya. Otherwise it is zero. Karmaṇā mānavaḥ tam abhyarcya. If you give up that tam abhyarcya, then it is useless. So where is that abhyarcya?

Room Conversation -- January 10, 1977, Bombay:

Prabhupāda: Not only that, if he makes bill for the paper, then he has to pay sales tax.

Gopāla Kṛṣṇa: Yes. Also the income tax will say, "Your sales were so high," so he doesn't want the paper account to come under that. So what I'm saying, Śrīla Prabhupāda... The demand for our books is there. And like BBT Los Angeles sells a Bhāgavatam to the temples for $3.50, and we are selling it for $1.45. And that includes our profit already. Our real cost is 90 cents, 95 cents. So we can expand our printing capacity here. As I discussed with you last week, there's one machine from England that Usa Printers wants to import. And if we give him a loan... It will be his machine. He'll give us documents, and he'll pay back interest every month. In two years he'll pay back the whole money plus interest, which will be higher than what the bank gives us.

Prabhupāda: Is that all right?

Rāmeśvara: What is the bank rate?

Gopāla Kṛṣṇa: The bank rate's about 12%. We'll do higher than the bank rate.

Prabhupāda: No, no, no.

Gopāla Kṛṣṇa: No.

Prabhupāda: Bank rate is not less than 16%.

Conversation and Instruction On New Movie -- January 13, 1977, Allahabad:

Prabhupāda: That was my asset, his blessing. And I was thinking that "His, this mission must be done very nicely." Although I was not capable to do anything, I was thinking like that. So desire was there and maybe blessing was there. Yes. There was no question of qualification.

Rāmeśvara: But still, after ten years the Gauḍīya Math still has not learned.

Prabhupāda: Hm? They cannot. They... Those who are intelligent, they are making something, Śrīdhara Mahārāja and others. But this man was envious, this Tīrtha Mahārāja, because... He advertised that he is the only favorite student of Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī. (laughs) But spiritually he was empty. Materially he was capable, how to manage things. But spiritually he was zero. That Prabhupāda also knew and everyone knows. He had no spiritual understanding. Materially he helped Guru Mahārāja how to organize. Therefore he liked him, that "This man is expert manager."

Rāmeśvara: We have devotees like that. We also have devotees who spiritually have trouble coming to the programs and even chanting, but still, they like to give them service, so we engage them anyway.

Room Conversation on 1976 Book Scores -- January 16, 1977, Calcutta:

Prabhupāda: No, no, this Back to Godhead.

Rāmeśvara: 750,000. It is averaging like that.

Prabhupāda: So the first attempt was only 20,000. I calculated. Anyway, Kṛṣṇa is giving us all facility. Let us utilize it to the best of our capacity. We have no other ambition. We want to see that everyone may accept the Supreme Personality of Godhead and be happy. This is our mission. We have no other ambition, not to make any cost-profit. But when we see that so many people are reading Kṛṣṇa book, that gives us very good encouragement. Otherwise what...? Two capatis we can get anywhere.

Rāmeśvara: We wrote in the newsletter to the Society that even though our movement is being attacked is so many ways, the best counterattack is through book distribution.

Room Conversation -- January 21, 1977, Bhuvanesvara:

Prabhupāda: It was written for this purpose. People are suffering by their concocted culture, suffering. And Guru Mahārāja wanted this. Actually it is his mission, Caitanya Mahāprabhu's mission. But I am... I have tried sincerely. I am not qualified, but only qualification is that I tried to do the best. That's all, that much qualification. I had faith in their program, and I thought, "I shall try my best, whatever capacity I have got." That's all. Yasya deve parā bhaktir tathā deve tathā gurau (ŚU 6.23). Little confident that "Why? If Caitanya Mahāprabhu wants it, my Guru Mahārāja wants it, why it will not be successful? Let me try." That's all. Mukhaṁ karoti vācālaṁ panguṁ laṅghayate girim: "A dumb man can become orator." (laughs) It is like that. I never thought that they will praise so much. What it is possible? Mukhaṁ karoti vācālam. (laughs) "A dumb man can become orator, and a lame man can cross over the mountain." Yat kṛpā tam ahaṁ vande śrī-guruṁ dīna-tāraṇam. By the mercy of guru it is possible. So these are not stories. They are fact. That is spiritual life. All right.

Room Conversation -- January 21, 1977, Bhuvanesvara:

Rāmeśvara: Yes. Then the professor and the head of the Department of Bengali and the dean of the faculty of Fine Arts and Music at the University of Calcutta says, "The world, tormented by psychic troubles like avarice, hate, and other baser qualities of the mind, will never escape from utter annihilation of the soul unless it finds refuge in His Divine Grace. I have particularly read some portions of this English translation of Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta, and I think this book is capable of saving mankind from the clutches of māyā. I have no doubt that the ISKCON will lead the world to the path of divine grace."

Gargamuni: He's a very big scholar, too. He's a Ph.D.

Prabhupāda: No, all of them Ph.D.'s. All...

Rāmeśvara: And here, Dr. Jagadish Sharma. He's the author of nineteen books, a very well-learned man. He says, "The work done by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda toward the revivalism of Hindu culture and civilization is unsurpassable. His Holiness has done a great service to Indian culture by reinterpreting the concept enshrined in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. This edition of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam will go a long way to help the scientists in rediscovering phenomena of the universe which is yet to be discovered. The thoughts of this Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam radiate to anyone who sees it. This book helps to brighten the gloomy and dark clouds which are covered by the nuclear fear and the apprehensions of society."

Room Conversation with Two Indian Guests -- January 27, 1977, Jagannatha Puri:

Prabhupāda: So the atheist class, they see, "Here is a wooden... Oh, what is the Jagannātha made of? Wood or stone?" They're seeing wood and stone. Similarly, Vaiṣṇavas also they're seeing, "a American," "European." They are blind. They have no capacity to... Therefore śāstra says, "Don't think like that, nārakī. If you think like that, then you become hellish." Because he has no vision, he's warned only, that "Don't do this. It is very dangerous." Arcye viṣṇau śilā-dhīr guruṣu nara-matir vaiṣṇave jāti-buddhiḥ. "Don't do it." Because he cannot see as it is, he has not elevation, but he is warned, "Don't think like that." Kaniṣṭha-adhikārī, he has no such vision.

Morning Walk -- January 29, 1977, Bhuvanesvara:

Bhāgavata: When you're finished reading this book you should throw it away.

Hari-śauri: 'Cause you don't actually need it.

Satsvarūpa: And that philosopher of this philosophy, Camus, he said, "Don't try to lead me because I may not want to follow you, and don't follow me because I am not capable of leading you. Just walk beside me and be my friend." So he said by writing his books he was not trying to lead other people but just trying to free them from following falsely any absolute philosophy.

Prabhupāda: Then he has to follow you because by taking your instruction I shall stop following others; that means I'll have to follow you. So what is the benefit? Instead of following others, I have to follow you? My following is there. That is not stopped.

Satsvarūpa: They claim they don't want to be leaders, but actually they do.

Prabhupāda: That means rascal. What he says, that is contradictory. That means rascal.

Morning Walk -- February 1, 1977, Bhuvanesvara:

Prabhupāda: That is still less intelligence, still less intelligence. Kartāham iti manyate.

Svarūpa Dāmodara: Because life is something which is beyond experimental knowledge...

Prabhupāda: That means they do not know. Say that, "beyond experimental knowledge" or "beyond your capacity."

Svarūpa Dāmodara: Still, they are hesitant to say that.

Prabhupāda: That is their poor fund of knowledge. A gentleman will accept, "Yes, we do not know." But they, in round about way, in order to keep their position, they'll bluff. That is most dangerous, bluffing.

Svarūpa Dāmodara: That's the difficulty.

Room Conversation -- February 10, 1977, Mayapura:

Prabhupāda: ...how such gṛhastha. It is never recognized.

Jayapatākā: You are actually the only one preaching there. You're the only one who has showed any preaching capacity.

Prabhupāda: No self-interest—that is the difference. I wanted to serve. That is the difference. But now it is clear. None of them, they want to serve. They want to make one establishment so that they can eat and sleep. Of course, there is some preaching, but if, there is, preaching is the purpose, why they should separate? That is not the purpose. The purpose is that "I must have some separate establishment as ordinary karmīs they have got their separate establishment." Preaching is not that, neither they can preach with enviousness. So, what to do?

Jayapatākā: In any case, he has not yet accepted, and it will take sometime to build your house.

Conversation on Roof -- February 14, 1977, Mayapura:

Prabhupāda: No, no. "To protect the Human Rights." Keep this name. What is human right? That we can explain. The human right is: here is an opportunity to understand God. So this society is giving that knowledge. If you don't give the human being the right of understanding God, then he's animal. You keep him as animal. The animal doesn't require, neither it is capable of understanding what is God, what is his relationship with God, what is his duty. He cannot understand. It is the only human being who can understand. And if you keep him in ignorance like dogs and hogs, that's a great harm to the human society. He got the opportunity. You don't give him; you withdraw the opportunity.

Room Conversation -- February 17, 1977, Mayapura:

Prabhupāda: Why he said dhīra, sober, cool-headed? These rascals are cats and dogs. They are not civilized, even big, big professors, they say, "Swami, after finishing this body, everything is finished." Has he got brain? And they're Communist leader. Identifying with this body. This is the actual platform of that body, dehātma-buddhiḥ. And they're described in the śāstra as no better than the asses. So next point will be that where you think beyond your capacity, we begin our education from there, seeing the... Our education begins from that. First of all try to understand what is spirit. Then it will... And our whole process is how to transfer one person from the material platform to the spiritual. Therefore they are thinking "brainwash." The fools, they cannot understand where our education begins. Where they have failed, we begin from there.

Room Conversation -- March 24, 1977, Bombay:

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Yes, Śrīla Prabhupāda. Oh. Someone else is going to have to read it. You can read it. You should take note if Prabhupāda makes some comments for replying back. Take note.

Guest (1):" Oṁ gurave namaḥ. Hare Kṛṣṇa Hare Kṛṣṇa. Jaya Śrīla Prabhupāda... (Hindi) " (break).

Prabhupāda: Make them all Kṛṣṇa conscious by distributing my books, literature. And both of you are capable. Youthful energy, sincere devotee, fully Kṛṣṇa conscious. Para-upakāra. Not to keep the poor human society in ignorance. Others may cheat for livelihood, but we are not going to do that. We have no problem for livelihood. Yato yato yāmi tato nṛsiṁhaḥ. What is that verse?

Hṛdayānanda: Ito nṛsiṁhaḥ parato nṛsiṁho yato yato yāmi...

Prabhupāda: Tato nṛsiṁhaḥ. Everywhere is Nṛsiṁha there. Wherever I go, there is Nṛsiṁha, so where is my problem? We have no problem.

Room Conversation -- March 26, 1977, Bombay:

Hari-śauri: A death sentence with hard labor.

Prabhupāda: Try to understand the philosophy more and more. Read Bhagavad-gītā and Bhāgavata. And to your best capacity try to learn. Then you will get power more and more.

Hari-śauri: Even if we have no facility, if we are sincere, everything comes.

Prabhupāda: Facility will be given. He has everything. Our father is not impotent. He is potent. The overpopulation theory, it is wrong. If the father has given birth to so many children, He knows how to provide them.

Interview with Mr. Koshi (Asst. Editor of The Current Weekly) -- April 5, 1977, Bombay:

Mr. Koshi: But how many people have the capability. As you say, they are jumping up and down.

Prabhupāda: Yes. So it is not for... You see. When we talk of diamond, it does not mean that everyone will be able to purchase it. But there must be the diamond. Because there is no customer, very many customer, diamond should be abolished?

Mr. Koshi: No.

Room Conversation about Harijanas -- April 10, 1977, Bombay:

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Right, it can be reversed.

Prabhupāda: It is not that you shall remain... Then, māṁ hi pārtha vyapāśritya ye 'pi syuḥ pāpa-yonayaḥ (BG 9.32). If you accept Kṛṣṇa consciousness, even you are born in low-grade caste or family, you can be elevated. That is to be done. What is done is done. Now we can elevate from this position. That is our capacity.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: (reading) "There are no authentic answers to these questions."

Room Conversation -- April 10, 1977, Bombay:

Prabhupāda: That is the duty of ācārya. Otherwise he is not... Not that three dozen ācāryas in Māyāpur. Each one has a temple and a few dozen... Not few dozen—one dozen disciples. Bring some rice and eat. They are ācārya. That day I said that, khāi laya khasi bhaja,(?) then everybody became angry. Collecting some money, taking to the holy place, collecting fifty rupees and keeping twenty rupees and spending thirty rupees. This is... In this way they are making livelihood, ācāryas. They say, "Whatever is in our capacity, we are doing." The capacity means when they are speaking that the cockroach is as good a bird as the Garuḍa. Cockroach is also a bird and Garuḍa is also a bird.

Morning Conversation -- April 11, 1977, Bombay:

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Everyone is going to him now. (pause) "The aim and object of the 42nd constitutional amendment was stated to be to establish the supremacy of the legislature, but in fact it was designed to establish the absolute authority of the executive as personified by the Prime Minister, according to Mr. C. K. Dapteri, former attorney general of India. Mr. Dapteri said, 'Everyone knows that misuse to which the power of preventative detention has been put in the last eighteen months. It is not necessary to recall or relay instances. But the power itself is so easily capable of being put to wrong use that it is unsafe to leave it in the hands of the executive government.' "

Prabhupāda: This will be amended now.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: "Explaining one of the main objects of the 43rd amendment, he said that the articles... He said that the 43rd constitution amendment bill was significant in that it sought to remedy the excesses permitted by the previous ministry.

Room Conversation with Ratan Singh Rajda M.P. 'Nationalism and Cheating' -- April 15, 1977, Bombay:

Prabhupāda: And if you kill, then wholesale will be killed. No... There will be no candidate for learning. You have to kill everyone. That will be at the end, Kalki-avatāra, simply killing, bas, finish. They'll have no capacity to understand. Nowadays there are... They cannot understand this philosophy. But there are some, they are trying to understand. But at the end of Kali-yuga there will be no brain to understand or to hear all these things. Mleccha. That is mleccha. Mleccha means they are so unclean, unstandardized, they have no brain. That is Europe, America. That's ... Mleccha. Kill animals. Eat. Mleccha, they are, according to Vedic, untouchable. If you touch, then you infect.

Room Conversation Meeting with Dr. Sharma (from Russia) -- April 17, 1977, Bombay:

Guest (1): They have to preach very secretly. They have to do very secretly.

Prabhupāda: Yes. So that is very awful life. Terrorism. This is not good life.

Guest: You are allowed to go freely, or there are restrictions for your movement?

Prabhupāda: No. We are not making any publicly movement. But that boy, in his private capacity, is reading Bhagavad-gītā. So it has to be done like that, privately.

Dr. Sharma: Well, if only a book has got to be introduced into Soviet Union, it has got to be approved by the government. Otherwise it cannot go in for circulation. So they are listed (indistinct) ask somebody, Minister of India, Consulate of India, asked for this, or the Indian Embassy to do it in Moscow.

Prabhupāda: No. Just like the librarian. That library has ordered. So that will be discussed.

Second Meeting with Mr. Dwivedi -- April 24, 1977, Bombay:

Prabhupāda: He is... Īśvaraḥ paramaḥ kṛṣṇaḥ sac-cid-ānanda-vigrahaḥ (Bs. 5.1), anādir ādir... Anādi. (Hindi) You have got so exalted knowledge in India. You have kept it packed. And you are going to beg from others? Take this knowledge of Bhagavad-gītā and assimilate it, make your life successful, and distribute it throughout the whole world. That I want. (Hindi) Knowledge, real knowledge, is in India. (Hindi) Therefore Caitanya Mahāprabhu said,

bhārata-bhūmite haila manuṣya-janma yāra

janma sārthaka kari' kara para-upakāra

(CC Adi 9.41)

Indians, they are fortunate. They have got their birth in Bhāratavarṣa. The knowledge is here. So assimilate this knowledge. Make your life successful and distribute it to persons outside India. That is paropakāra. That is real paropakāra. That is real sevā. But sevā, no. It is dayā. The sevā cannot be used. Sevā means offered to the superior. And to the inferior, if you want to do something, that is dayā. There are words. Sevā is only capable to accept, Kṛṣṇa. Sevonmukhe hi jihvādau svayam eva sphuraty adaḥ (Brs. 1.2.234).

Talk with Svarupa Damodara -- June 20, 1977, Vrndavana:

Prabhupāda: Or very...

Svarūpa Dāmodara: She said yes. She actually felt the necessity, and she was actually praising a lot about Kṛṣṇa consciousness, that such things are being discussed in our Kṛṣṇa consciousness society, and she had a great hope that this can be pushed on and the philosophy can be very accepted in the scientific community. So I request her also to help us in different capacities. She can write articles, we can publish in this journal, Sa-vijñānam. We can print it and publicize more on the presentation of Vedic scientific knowledge. So like that, I want to generate some momentum among the leading Indian scientists.

Prabhupāda: Hm. Do.

Svarūpa Dāmodara: It will be very helpful. And I think it is also their responsibility, duty.

Prabhupāda: Great duty, great respons...

Conversation with Svarupa Damodara -- June 21, 1977, Vrndavana:

Prabhupāda: You are God—limited. Limited God. You cannot maintain. Therefore you are limited. You can become God within your family, within your office, within your kingdom. You are not Supreme God. To a limited extent you are God. Because you have got the quality of God, so according to your capacity, within limited jurisdiction, you may be God. So dictionary is there. Vedic assertion is there. Logic is there. Science is there. Prove. Then your education will be successful. Avicyutaḥ arthaḥ kavibhir nirūpitaḥ. When you can prove this, then the meaning of your education will become... Avicyutaḥ arthaḥ kavibhir nirūpito yad-uttama-śloka-guṇānuvarṇanam (SB 1.5.22). To glorify the exalted position of God, that is... Is it clear?

Room Conversation with Mr. Myer -- July 2, 1977, Vrndavana:

Mr. Myer: Once one takes up a certain life...

Prabhupāda: ...to set up things, how to come...

Mr. Myer: ...even one is slipping...

Prabhupāda: So do nicely. And as far as our capacity is there, kṛṣṇārthe akhila-ceṣṭaḥ. Prāṇair arthair dhiyā vācā śreya-ācaraṇaṁ sadā. Janma-sāphalyam... Etāvaj janma-sāphalyam. Do it. Do this. Prāṇair arthair dhiyā vācā śreya-ācaraṇam. This is..., should be... This should be the motto, how we engage our life, our money, our intelligence, our words, to improve Kṛṣṇa consciousness. That is success. Varṇāśrama-vibhāgaśaḥ saṁsiddhir hari-toṣaṇam (SB 1.2.13). What is that verse, beginning?

Akṣayānanda: Ataḥ pumbhir dvija-śreṣṭhāḥ...

Prabhupāda: Eh?

Discussion about Bhu-mandala -- July 5, 1977, Vrndavana:

Prabhupāda: Therefore tad viddhi praṇipātena paripraśnena sevayā (BG 4.34). There is no other. Submissive. (break) Guru. Tasyaite kathitā hy arthāḥ prakāśante. The author is revealed to him. Yasya deve parā bhaktir yathā deve (ŚU 6.23). Otherwise not. So do it as far as possible to your capacity. But things are inconceivable. You cannot adjust within the limitation of your understanding. That is not...

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: That's... We're trying to impose some preconceived idea onto this. As soon as that happens, this knowledge is blocked. Because the whole attitude shouldn't be like that. One should come out of service and devotion, not with some mental, materialistic speculations.

Room Conversation With Son (Vrindavan De) -- July 5, 1977, Vrndavana:

Prabhupāda: Seventy years old, I was here in Vṛndāvana, and I came. For ten years I worked! Now see. All over the world I have got hundreds of buildings like this. I am the same man. At least one hundred temples we have only by working ten years. So there must be capacity, there must be endeavor, there must be good fortune. Then everything will be... It is not that you simply desire and it will drop from the sky. That is not possible. Hm? Arjuna fought the Battle of Kurukṣetra. Kṛṣṇa never advised him, "No, I am your friend.

Room Conversation With Son (Vrindavan De) -- July 5, 1977, Vrndavana:

Prabhupāda: And Kṛṣṇa is merciful. He gives him... The two things required. Utsāhān dhairyāt niścayāt tat-tat-karma-pravart... If you have no capacity, you cannot expect to become very rich or learned, or very... That is not possible. It is not your capacity. Just like within this land there is gold, but you have to dig it. That is mine. And if you smell, "Ah, there is gold here," will you get gold? You are fortunate. You have got a place. Here is gold. But you have to dig it. You have to work. "No, I shall smell, and gold will come." That is not... So don't be worried. You'll be allowed to stay here. But I cannot transfer the property to your mother's name. Then your brother will spoil. And otherwise you are... I am not going to lease them.

Room Conversation With Son (Vrindavan De) -- July 5, 1977, Vrndavana:

Prabhupāda: I went to... You know. So in what way I went? With a tin box and some literature. And how I have come back? You rascal, you have no eyes to see. You have seen how I went and how I came back. This is practical. I worked for this. I labored for it. It all depends on one's capacity. Otherwise immediately I'll give you charge. You cannot do here anything. So you'll get this letter. That's assurance. (Bengali) Keep it as document. That's all. I'll stamp it. All right, I shall meet again with you. Give him that.

Room Conversation-Recent Mail -- July 14, 1977, Vrndavana:

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: "They have a mission to develop this whole area, Southeast Asia, for book distribution." He sent a team of three men to develop Southeast Asia, and they've opened an office in Bangkok. "Their program includes: 1) government recognition of our books, 2) sales to universities and colleges, 3) acceptance of our books by leading scholars, and 4) sales of encyclopedias to Hindus. All of Southeast Asia will be developed for book distribution. We pray for your blessings in this..."

Prabhupāda: Yes, Kṛṣṇa's blessings are there upon you. He is dictating the organizing capacity. Do it very nicely.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: He says, "Pālikā, being the manager, is very active and happy and busily engaged in keeping all the files properly."

Prabhupāda: Now she has got right appointment. She's very intelligent girl. And give her proper assistance. She can do very nice work.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: He says, "So far, I have credits of over three lakhs of rupees with BBT in our first year of distribution." He's given over three lakhs business.

Room Conversation -- August 10, 1977, Vrndavana:

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Gone.

Prabhupāda: Rotten.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: It's a wonder how they take so many of Your Divine Grace's books.

Prabhupāda: No, they have got the capacity. Jīvera svarūpa haya nitya-kṛṣṇa-dāsa (Cc. Madhya 20.108-109). It has to be awakened by process. They've lost everything, but it can be revived.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: We shouldn't give them a choice. We should insist that they revive it. Prabhaviṣṇu, according to that letter, it seems like in Bangladesh there's a very good reception.

Prabhupāda: Everywhere.

Room Conversations Bangladesh Preaching/Prabhavisnu Articles by Hamsaduta -- August 11, 1977, Vrndavana:

Prabhupāda: Have you invented something that man will not die? Then it is approved. They are dying. You have given facilities to die earlier. That is atomic energy. There is no energy which can save him—"No more death." Is that improvement? By nature one dies natural death, and you have accelerated-many millions of people can be killed by this atomic weapon. So what is your achievement? Save millions of people.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: He says, "Mentally deranged intellectuals are capable of expatiating on their hallucinations."

Prabhupāda: So who is mentally deranged?

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: He says we are. He says, "And they often become founders and preachers of diverse types of religious cults."

Room Conversation -- October 4, 1977, Vrndavana:

Prabhupāda: Is there any difficulty?

Girirāja: There's no difficulty. They are... They appear to be... Actually they're not really capable to manage this bank on their own, so...

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Another grievance is that we have been asking them to give us interest on our savings accounts here. We have about ten savings accounts. And for about one year now they have not given interest because now they say that the rule is that for anything above two lakhs of rupees they don't give interest. And they showed a law from the..., bank law saying that they didn't have to give interest for money in a savings account beyond two lakhs. So I explained to them that every bank in India that we bank with does give us interest.

Room Conversation -- October 8, 1977, Vrndavana:

Prabhupāda: And money, spend for Kṛṣṇa—for Kṛṣṇa's palace, for Kṛṣṇa's temple, for Kṛṣṇa's worship, gorgeous, as gorgeously as... Not for false... This is the human civilization. And to organize this, varṇāśrama will help you to divide the society—brāhmaṇa, kṣatriya, vaiśya—as there is division in the body. That will help. Don't waste human form of body for sense gratification. I wanted to introduce this. Now I have given you ideas. You can do it. You are all intelligent. For Caitanya Mahāprabhu's para-upakāra... So you do good to others. Not exploit others. Any human being who has been bestowed by this body has the capacity to chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. Give them chance and make situation favorable. Is that clear?

Room Conversation With Svarupa Damodara -- October 15, 1977, Vrndavana:

Prabhupāda: That's nice.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: And the bank manager said he was... I think he's one of the top men in the bank. He's completely disgusted—these were his own words—with how they have arranged things here, and he's going to completely redecorate this office, putting in rugs and full furniture and waiting facilities, and make it a first-class office. He says he cannot understand how this has been allowed to go on like this in the name of Punjab Bank. And he's having a new manager brought here who has been trained in Delhi, a younger man who is a little bit more capable of making proper decisions and acting in a nice way. And every single request...

Prabhupāda: But the defect is that here the head manager does not know English.

Room Conversation -- November 3, 1977, Vrndavana:

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Back rest. (break) "...with your permission we would like to come and visit you sometime later this year, as it has now been so long since I have had your personal association." Do you give him permission to come visit you?

Prabhupāda: Why not?

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: He says, "I am a fallen wretch, but I am hoping and praying to the best of my capacity that your health will improve." (break) Would you like Bharadvāja to sing a little?

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: You can sing now. (break) The kavirāja will be coming back to take us there. Better that we follow his advice and let this medicine work a little while, see if you get some strength, and let him come and take us there as he promised he would do. There is no reason why we should jump ahead. As we have placed ourself under a competent kavirāja, better we take his advice as long as we don't find it to be harmful.

Room Conversation -- November 6, 1977, Vrndavana:

Prabhupāda: Kavirāja has no telephone.

Bhakti-caru: Yes, Śrīla Prabhupāda, he has one. He has telephone at home and in his chamber also. But when we rang up, he was not at home.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Therefore we thought it best not to lose any more time but to call Adri-dhāraṇa, because he's proved to be very capable person—he was living with the kavirāja when he was here—and we want Adri-dhāraṇa to bring the kavirāja personally anyway.

Room Conversation -- November 8, 1977, Vrndavana:

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: That's one point about... Actually, I simply asked him for the name of his bank and the bank account, but he doesn't seem to want to give that at this point. Seems to have some other idea. Very legally worded letter. "3) Panchashil. I do not stay there, albeit my daily visits. Once I have read somewhere, not the copy sent by you, this draft conveyance, and this is a bunkum." He calls it a bunkum. Are you familiar with that word, Śrīla Prabhupāda? I think it means like a hoax or something. "The wordings are incoherent and contradictory. The assigners, promoters, are described as overlord. The lessers, superlord, and assignees, purchasers, have been reduced to a transient resident, if not fugitive debtor. In my opinion, causes are there for criminal prosecution against the promoters. Without capable and competent lawyers' help, this legal matter should not be handled. Until then, keep it in abeyance. Your all the papers as mentioned..." I sent him a copy of the scheme, Śrīla Prabhupāda, as well as a copy of the draft... "All of your papers, as mentioned, are sent herewith back to you." He didn't choose to keep them. "While awaiting the bank's comments, I beg to remain respectfully yours, M.M. De." He says, "The enclosures are sent under ordinary post to avoid heavy postage in this cover." He decided to send them by a separate post because it would have been a few extra paisa.

Prabhupāda: Unless the bank confirms, he does not take it seriously. Is it not?

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: That's more or less what he's suggesting.

Prabhupāda: So let the bank confirm. What is the harm? Hm? The bank is not going to confirm?