Pradyumna: "The Vedas contain regulated principles of knowledge covering social, political, religious, economic, military, medicinal, chemical, physical and metaphysical subject matter and all that may be necessary to keep the body and soul together."
Prabhupāda: Just like in the Vedas there is direction how to prepare by chemical process gold. That is also there. Gold, there is a suggestion that you mix three metals, namely nickel, copper and mercury, you'll get gold. This direction is there. And many persons, saintly persons, yogīs, they know how to prepare it, and they do it. So in that way they meet their expenditure. They prepare gold. The chemical knowledge.
Go on.
Pradyumna: "Above and beyond all this are specific directions for spiritual realization. Regulated knowledge involves a gradual raising of the living entity to the spiritual platform, and the highest spiritual realization is to know that the Personality of Godhead is the reservoir of all spiritual tastes, or rasas."
Prabhupāda: So this is called pravṛtti and nivṛtti. Pravṛtti means the living entity has come here to enjoy this material world. This is called pravṛtti. And the other side is nivṛtti. Nivṛtti means become detached to material life. So long he'll be attached to the materialistic way of life, there is no question of liberation. He will be more and more entangled. According to his mind, he will get a particular type of body, material body. And there are 8,400,000 species of body.
So as soon as one gets the body, he becomes under the laws of the material nature, and the material nature means under the laws, stringent laws, threefold miserable condition, that will continue. Therefore the Vedic literature, they gives us opportunity to gradually renounce. Pravṛttir eṣā bhūtānāṁ nivṛttis tu mahā-phalām. That is a pravṛtti, inclination. But a Vedic student is trained up in such a way that ultimately he becomes renounced or detached from this material entanglement.
Go on.
Pradyumna: "Every living entity, beginning from Brahmā, the first-born living being within the material world, down to the insignificant ant, desires to relish some sort of taste derived from sense perceptions. These sensual pleasures are technically called rasas."
Prabhupāda: The ants, perhaps you know it, they love very much intoxicants, and therefore they are after sugar. Sugar has got properties intoxication. Wine is made from sugar, from molasses. So the ants, they want to be very much intoxicated.
So this intoxication is not only in the human society—in the animal society, in bird society, in beast society. Loke vyavāyāmiṣa-madya-sevā nityā hi jantor na hi tatra codanā (SB 11.5.11). Vyava . . . vyavāya, sex intercourse, vyavāya; āmiṣa, meat-eating; madya-sevā, intoxication—they are there everywhere, not only in human society. This is the pravṛtti.
Now the actual knowledge, actual education, means to detach them, not to increase that. But at the present moment the civilization is they are increasing this desire. Everyone has got this desire. But . . . that is called civilization: "Eat, drink, be merry and enjoy." No. The human life is meant for being trained up to be detached.