Bill Sauer: I've talked to your people, and I think there's pretty much agreement on the fundamental philosophical concept.
Dr. Sharma: There's something magnetic about it, something creative which comes from inside.
Prabhupāda: Where is our scientist?
Vipina: Svarūpa Dāmodara-could you get him?
Hari-śauri: I already sent somebody for him, Śrīla Prabhupāda. I don't think he's here.
Prabhupāda: He's not here.
Vṛṣākapi: They went to the Library of Congress today, Prabhupāda. They aren't here right now.
Bill Sauer: I think you put it better than I did. We do not destroy matter, we transmute it to energy, that's exactly correct. And it is the..., and in fire you are again transmuting material chemical energy into light. And when our light source goes out...
Dr. Sharma: And it surprising, I'm a scientist, I publish papers, now it is all coming together. It is after a long search which we are doing, the body systems, how to be coordinated. Endocrine systems and the nervous systems (indistinct) and that is coordinated through prāṇāyāma-yoga and the chanting. Basically indirectly is a straightforward...
Bill Sauer: Well, there, fundamentally, there should not be a difference between science and religion, really should not be.
Dr. Sharma: All scientists, all big scientists are the greatest religious people. I am at Berkeley right now. All Nobel Prize winners, they always say that all of our science, we cannot create a single leaf or a single flower, we feel so helpless.
Bill Sauer: You know Calvin?
Dr. Sharma: I was professor at UCLA.
Bill Sauer: Very good. See, he got his Nobel Laureate in explaining how the chemistry of light turns into life. So I passed my manuscript by him to make sure that he didn't run me out of town. So he agreed. He said it was rather novel. But I believe there is a fundamental truth that runs through the whole system, and I've read some of your comments in the magazines, and I think you are fundamentally in agreement.
Dr. Sharma: Prabhupāda, perhaps you can make commentary on this śloka,
- yā niśā sarva-bhūtānāṁ
- tasyāṁ jāgarti saṁyamī
- yasyāṁ jāgrati bhūtāni
- sā niśā paśyato muneḥ
Prabhupāda: The material civilization is the jāgrati for the materialistic person. But those who are spiritually enlightened, they think that these persons are sleeping. They got the opportunity of understanding God, and without understanding God, they are simply busy with the material body and its comfort and working hard day and night, and missing the point. And whereas the materialistic persons, they see these Kṛṣṇa conscious people, Hare Kṛṣṇa people, they are wasting their time by chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa and they are doing nothing. Just the opposite business. These people are seeing the materialistic persons, they are sleeping, not enlightened to the spiritual life; and these materialistic persons, they are seeing that these people, under some fictitious idea, they are spoiling their life without enjoying material facilities. Just the opposite.