May 4 1973 LA
Devotee:We develop our attraction for Hare Kṛṣṇa; we lose our attraction for sex life.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Bhaktiḥ pareśānubhavo viraktiḥ… That is the sign of advancement of bhakti. If you don’t be… I was explaining this. If you don’t be detached to these material things, then you should know that you are not advancing in spiritual life. If you have got still attachment for these nonsense material things, that means you are not advanced. Just like if you are eating, and if you are not getting health, that means you are eating nonsense. Eating must result in good health. That is eating. Eating does not mean to fill up the belly with all rubbish things. Eating means that you become healthy, nice eating.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Understanding that in the spiritual world… In the Vaikuṇṭha planets, we get that all the inhabitants are four-handed forms of Nārāyaṇa?
Prabhupāda: Yes, exactly like Nārāyaṇa. Their bodily features… Just like here, you cannot distinguish by the bodily feature who is President Nixon, who is a common man. You cannot distinguish by the bodily feature. Similarly, there also, you cannot distinguish who is a common man and who is Personality of Godhead. They are like that.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: But still, there are plants and all the living entities in the Vaikuṇṭha…
Prabhupāda: They know. Because they have full knowledge, “He knows here is God. Although he is four-handed, I am four-handed, but here is God.” Because there is full knowledge. That is the difference. Here we are selecting some rascal as God, because we have no full knowledge. There, in the Vaikuṇṭha planets, although the common citizens and God is of the same feature of the bodily, but they know, “Here is God, the Supreme.” He has got special signs in the… Yes, that’s all. Just like the king or the president, we may make mistake. We may accept somebody as “Here is president.” No. But the associates of the president, he knows. They know that “Here is president.” Similarly, there is no question of mistake there. Four kinds of defects of material life—to commit mistake, to become illusioned, to cheat, and imperfection of the senses—these things are not there. Everyone’s senses are perfect. When he sees God, he sees perfectly. He does not mistake. He is not illusioned. And there is no cheating and there is no imperfection of the senses. There is no mistake. These are spiritual life.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: So all the living entities are completely satisfied.
Prabhupāda: Certainly. Because they are in the spiritual life. That is real life. Here it is covered. There is no such season as winter season, as summer season. Always spring. Ānandamayo ‘bhyāsāt (Vedānta-sūtra 1.1.12), simply ānanda, blissful life of knowledge. What do they know, the scientists, about the spiritual life?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: There is no…,
Prabhupāda: No information, no research. That kūpa-maṇḍūka, this frog in the well. That’s all. They have no information of the Pacific Ocean. They are researching within the well. That’s all. They have no information even of this material world. What do they know about the so many planets, so many, huge outer space? What do they know?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Almost nothing.
Prabhupāda: Nothing. Not even of this planet, what to speak of other planets. And still, they are proud. “Nobel Prize.”
Svarūpa Dāmodara: If they know that there is definitely a blissful world, spiritual world, they would not work this hard.
Prabhupāda: Yes, why? Just like Lomaśa Muni. Lomaśa Muni, his duration of life is that when one Brahmā dies, one hair from the body falls. So in this way, when all the hairs of his body will fall down, he will die. He has such a great length of… So he was standing on the side of a sea and chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa. So Nārada Muni approached him, “Why don’t you make a small cottage here?” He said, “How long I shall live? (laughter) Ah, standing will do. Let me finish my bead…(?)” Just see. And here they’ll live for twenty years and making skyscraper building, (makes sound:) “Doc, dong, doc, dong, doc, dong.” (laughter) Does not calculate that “I shall live for twenty or thirty years.”
Svarūpa Dāmodara: That is not guaranteed also.
Prabhupāda: That is also not guaranteed. Why I am taking so much trouble? They are so foolish persons. Therefore Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura says, anitya saṁsāre moha janamiyā jīvake karaye gādhā. This so-called scientific education means people become more attracted with this temporary world and he works very hard, just like an ass. Ass, the example of ass is because the ass does not know what is his interest, but works very hard. Therefore ass example is given. Ass, he carries the washerman’s cloth, tons, but not a single cloth belongs to him. He is naked. And still he is working. He does not know, “Why I am working for the washerman, carrying so much load?” That sense he hasn’t got. He thinks that “Washerman gives me to eat some grasses.” Although grasses are all over. That is ass. That is ass. So these scientific research workers, they are asses. He does not know that “I shall live for thirty years. So what is the use of my research work?” But intelligent man will say, “Let me utilize this thirty years to prepare for my next life.” That is intelligence. But they. But they have no idea of the next life.