Prabhupāda: So what is your answer, that you cannot understand Kṛṣṇa, as Kṛṣṇa says, without bhakti?
Pañcadraviḍa: Well, we're . . . They might answer that that's all right for understanding Kṛṣṇa, but the highest state is to merge with God, and then there's no more living entity, no more God. Everything becomes one.
Prabhupāda: That means you have become more than Kṛṣṇa. One who states like that, he has become more than Kṛṣṇa.
Viṣṇujana: Yes, they believe that.
Pañcadraviḍa: Not more than Kṛṣṇa. Same as Kṛṣṇa.
Prabhupāda: Oh, he's not . . . He does not know what is Kṛṣṇa. Kṛṣṇa says that "My dear Arjuna, you, Me, and all these soldiers, they existed before, and they're existing now, and they will exist in the future." So where is merging? Merging is suiciding. It is a spiritual suicide. Disgusted with these material affairs . . . Just like sometimes a man, being disgusted with this material world, he commits suicide, so this merging is also a kind of suicide.
Pañcadraviḍa: But Brahman always exists.
Prabhupāda: Eh?
Pañcadraviḍa: Brahman always exists. We're not . . . we're not saying that Brahman stops existing. So these, the living entities . . .
Prabhupāda: Yes, again they will come.
Pañcadraviḍa: They're all Brahman. So they will continue to exist. Brahman doesn't stop existing.
Prabhupāda: Everything exists. For the time being, he may merge; then again he'll come to enjoy this material body. Āruhya kṛcchreṇa paraṁ padaṁ tataḥ patanty adhaḥ (SB 10.2.32). Patanty adhaḥ. Even they become merged into the existence of Brahman, again they come back because there is no āśraya. Just like these air . . . airplanes or the jets. They have invented very good machine, eighteen thousand miles per hour, going very high, but there is no place. They come down again. That is a fact. What is the use of going so high, eighteen thousand miles per hour, and travel and then again come back? Why do you take unnecessary trouble if you cannot stay there? You migrated from Europe and other countries to America. You got shelter. You stayed there. That colonization was successful. But if you are going to colonize in the moon and there is no place to stay, then why you are spending so much money unnecessarily? What is this foolishness? And they have stopped now. So in this way they are trying to merge into the Brahman effulgence, but where to stay? They can stay in the Brahman effulgence as minute particle of soul, but the soul wants ānanda, so what is ānanda there? So when they cannot get ānanda, real ānanda, then again—"It was better to live in the material world." They come back again. That is statement of the śāstra. Āruhya kṛccheṇa paraṁ padaṁ tataḥ patanty adhaḥ. They may go very high, same way as the jets are going, but there is no shelter. Shelter is the lotus feet of Kṛṣṇa. Without shelter, they cannot remain there, and because by nature he wants ānanda . . . Suppose if you remain in the sky for many, many years, would you feel very comfortable? Then you have to come back again. What is the use of being falsely proud—"Now we have invented the machine. We can go eighteen thousand miles per hour and up in the sky"? That's all right, but what is the benefit out of it? Without ānanda, without society, friendship and love, you cannot be happy in the vacant sky. Then you'll have to seek again—"Give me some shelter. It is all false."
Madhudviṣa: Śrīla Prabhupāda, a question arose the other day in class if there was a difference between Brahman-realized yogī and a Māyāvādī.
Prabhupāda: Hmm?
Madhudviṣa: Someone like the Kumāras . . . Were the Kumāras, before they became attracted to Viṣṇu, were they Māyāvādīs?
Prabhupāda: Not Māyāvādīs.
Trivikrama: Impersonalists.
Prabhupāda: Impersonalists.
Madhudviṣa: What is the difference between an impersonalist and a Māyāvādī?
Prabhupāda: Very little difference, but still, there is difference.
Trivikrama: Māyāvādīs are offenders.
Prabhupāda: Māyāvādīs means they are speaking that "Everything is māyā; Kṛṣṇa is also māyā." And impersonalist means they are thinking that "To merge into the Brahman effulgence is better than to keep our personal identity."
Satsvarūpa: Śrīla Prabhupāda, this Professor Dimmock was going to arrange a Vaiṣṇava conference at which we were going to attend. You yourself was going to be invited with many professors. But I received a report from one of the professors that when they tried to contact other professors, none of them wanted to come because they said, more or less, that we are like fanatics, and we wouldn't actually discuss things in a philosophic way, that we would just use the conference to proselytize. So in this way, they're rejecting us from . . .
Prabhupāda: What is the harm? Let them reject.
Satsvarūpa: We don't need them.
Prabhupāda: Our business will go on, and there will be many Professor Dimmocks who will support us. And they are doing that.