Prabhupāda: Mr. President, Rotarians, Ladies and Gentlemen, I thank you very much for your kindly inviting me to speak before you on the subject matter, "The Present Need of the Human Society."
At the present day . . . according to our Vedic calculation, this is called Kali-yuga. Kali means disagreement and fighting, kālaḥ. So in this age, a slight disagreement will cause some fighting, some misunderstanding. And practically, this is the age of misguidance; therefore it is called Kali-yuga.
So in different Purāṇas, the symptoms of Kali-yuga is described. Śāstra. Śāstra means tri-kāla-jña. Śāstra is not ordinary book. Therefore our Vedic literatures are known as apauruṣeya, "not written by ordinary human being." Ordinary human being, who is called, according to śāstra, conditioned soul, they are conditioned by so many, nature's law.
So the imperfectness of the conditioned soul are described as that a conditioned soul is sure to commit mistake. However great he may be, he'll commit mistake. And . . . "To err is human," they say. And he may be illusioned. Not may be, he's illusioned. Illusioned means accepting something for something else. Just like we accept this body, material body, as self.
That is the conception of the general people at the present moment, especially. "I am this body." "I am Indian," "I am American," "I am brāhmin," "I am śūdra." Like that. Bodily conception of life. This is illusion. Actually, I am not this body. But because we are lacking knowledge, imperfect, insufficient knowledge, therefore we are accepting this body as self. This is called illusion.
And the other imperfection is that we have got a cheating propensity. Cheating propensity means I do not know something definitely, but I present my theories as if I know perfectly. This is cheating. And the last is imperfectness of the senses. All our senses are imperfect. Take, for example, the eyes.
We see under certain condition: when there is light, sunlight or electric light, we can see. We cannot see what is beyond this wall. We cannot see which is very long-distantly placed. We cannot see even the nearest, eyelid. Therefore our seeing power is conditioned. Similarly, all other senses.
So we cannot have perfect knowledge by our imperfect senses. But at the present moment, especially in this age, we are accepting so many philosophers, scientists, although we know that their senses are imperfect. This imperfectness is increasing. We are not becoming liberated from imperfectness, but we are increasing, due to this Kali-yuga.