Śyāmasundara: So all new things are created out of necessity?
Prabhupāda: New things means I create a necessity, and then, according to the plan of the necessity, the thing is there. Just like dictaphone. I feel inconvenience to dictate or the secretary has no time to take my dictation. So I may feel that "If I keep record of my dictation, the secretary will take it later on according to his convenience." So therefore the invention of a dictaphone.
Śyāmasundara: Yet many philosophers would say that this is the reason that religion has come about, that man feels a necessity for God, so he invents God.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Not invents. He knows God. This is natural. Just like if a sane man is there, so who is the original father? Huh? Just like I have got a father. Everyone knows. My father has a father. His father's father's father... Then who is the original father?
Śyāmasundara: So he can invent his original father.
Prabhupāda: No. He can simply know by this philosophical research who is the original father. And the Vedānta-sūtra also says, "God is He who is the original father of everything." Janmādy asya yataḥ (SB 1.1.1).
Śyāmasundara: In a sense, the man is not really inventing a chair either. There is already an idea of chair previously existing. He's just discovering it, something which already exists. Is that correct?
Prabhupāda: Yes, in that sense, that I am feeling the necessity of armchair. My predecessors, they might have felt that chair, they invented. But at the present moment, my predecessor is also gone, the chair is also gone. So invention means the things which I create that was not in existence. That is called invention?