Bill Sauer: Well, in the natural world and in the cosmos, nothing is stable. Life only survives all the things that can cause it to perish by mobility, by moving. A coconut tree on one island drops its seeds in the ocean to float for thousands of miles to wash up on another shore, so that if that island is destroyed it will have life on another island. The seed blossom of a plant is the way the plant survives. It sends its seeds off to other meadows to assure its survival. The premise here is that humanity arrived in nature very recently. We are part of nature, but we arrived very recently to give life on earth the same mobility, the same chance to survive. Among the hundreds of other planets in the universe, as a dandelion does in seeding other meadows, as a coconut palm does in surviving on other islands—the coconut palm does not know that there are other islands, but yet it launches its seeds to the unknown currents of the ocean—I believe it is our duty to launch our seeds, our space arks, launch those seeds to the unknown gravitational currents of the stars and find the hundreds of other planets that are out there, so that there cannot be enough cosmic disasters to cause life to perish. And it was meeting two or three of your people at the airport, and I asked them about—at the Washington National Airport, I think it was Meena and Mary Davis, and Sarvabhauma I believe—and I said "What about your philosophy?" He said, "We talk about living on other planets." Boy, (laughs) right away I got very interested. And I believe people have had visions of life to other planets because I believe that's our destiny, and that is our reason for existence in nature. I've been interested in the Kṛṣṇa movement. You'll say why? I'm a materialistic type, why am I here? (laughs) You have an interesting philosophy that... You see, not all of us can be building space arks, not all of us can leave the earth, and we should not be using up all our material resources, destroying all other life unnecessarily. And I think that we have to adopt a life style that is a little simpler, that we would enjoy life on this earth, where most of us have to stay, with lesser material requirements. Secondly, I believe we are going to have to have a different type of society on a space ark if we're going to have maybe a hundred years to two hundreds years going to another star. The traditional societies that we are familiar with may not be able to survive the social pressures. Maybe this type of an environment-Is this communal, would you say?—I think it's going to have to be some type of communal environment to survive this kind of a trip. So this is my interest in the Kṛṣṇa movement. I think they seem to have the visions of going to other planets, which I think is our only reason for existence.
Prabhupāda: Yes, that is, I was discussing. Yānti deva-vratā devān (BG 9.25). You can go to the higher planetary system where the devas, the demigods live. Their duration of life is very, very big. Our six months is equal to one day there. Such ten thousands of years they live. But they die. It is not permanent. But the duration of life is very big, the standard of life is very high. These are the advantages. But there is death, old age, disease; birth, death, old age and disease. But if you transfer yourself in the spiritual kingdom, then tyaktvā dehaṁ punar janma naiti (BG 4.9), then you don't get any more material birth there. That is because we are eternal, we living entities. We do not die. Na hanyate hanyamāne śarīre (BG 2.20). After giving up this body we do not die actually; we accept another body.
