Dr. Patel: Sanātana is eternal. It is eternal religion. It is the religion of the soul and not of the body, dies. Soul is eternal, so religion is eternal. I am right, sir?
Prabhupāda: Yes. Sanātana means eternal.
Dr. Patel: So this dialectical materialism wherein Karl Marx said that it is a material reaction, chemical reaction in the material, which produces consciousness, it is a falsehood. It is the consciousness keeps the material going. So they will change their opinion now.
Guru dāsa: He's basing philosophy on Hegel, thesis and antithesis.
Dr. Patel: No, No, Hegel.... Yes, Engels, not Hegel.
Guru dāsa: Thesis and antithesis, and then synthesis.
Dr. Patel: Yes, yes.
Guru dāsa: But it's a false philosophy.
Dr. Patel: I mean Hegel did try to improve upon Karl Marx. Really material is important. When the person dies why the body should rot? They every day see.
Guru dāsa: Prabhupāda pointed out the other day that when someone dies, we have all the bodily fluids there, all the organs. Why can't we put it together and make life again?
Dr. Patel: That's right. So now they have started reading all these, our books. They will now make amendment on it. As you said, they will thesis, synthesis. The present practice of communism in Russia is much more diluted than what it was twenty, thirty years back.
Prabhupāda: It should be.
Dr. Patel: And it will be like India after twenty years.
Guru dāsa: The result is that the biggest problem in Russia is that no one comes to work-absenteeism.
Dr. Patel: That will be here also. I have been to Ceylon, sir. And in Colombo they are giving free ration to the people. I mean, the rice.
Prabhupāda: There is a story in Bengal. (Bengali) The woman had seven sons. The mother requested first son, "My dear boy, now I am going to die. Take me to the Ganges side." He said, "Why? You have got so many other sons, why you are requesting me?"
Dr. Patel: She was calling every one, and nobody took her.
Prabhupāda: And then second son, third.... Everyone said like that, and she died without Gaṅgā. Agar mā gaṅgā.(?) So this.... And everyone has to work. And he thinks that "Why I shall work? Let him work. No work today."
Guru dāsa: You tell the story about a man beating with a stick, and then the police constable came and said, "You have beaten him." "No, no, no. It was the stick that beat him, not me." (laughter) No responsibility.
Dr. Patel: No, but, you see, the sense of possession in human society is more important, because they have no sense of possession.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Dr. Patel: Even with all our philosophic and all our learning we have the sense of possession of this body which can't leave the moha in it. With all that, sir, then how can they do it?
Prabhupāda: No, higher than that, the sense that everything is possessed by God, that is perfection.
Dr. Patel: That's right, but...
Prabhupāda: But they are making.... Just like I possess something, now their possession is.... Now you possess something. We are not reaching the point of God. So it is expanded selfishness. It is not perfect. Perfection will come when they understand that everything is possessed by God. Then that is.... Īśāvāsyam idaṁ sarvam (ISO 1). When they come to that conclusion.
Dr. Patel: They have started doing. Even grammar is good. They have started studying Upaniṣad in earnest now. I read an article on that, Russian newspapers, studying the philosophy of Vedas and Upaniṣads. (break)
Prabhupāda: They said Rāmāyaṇa by Tulasī dāsa, translated in English, and it was finished within a week. They have got little sympathy for Indian culture.