October 3, 1972, Los Angeles
Svarūpa Dāmodara: When I came here, I was walking and I saw big house and the restaurants. So I didn’t know what… So I asked somebody, “Oh, this is just [indistinct].” And afterward I found out it was some food made out of…
Devotee (2): Meat.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Yes. But I thought in the other sense that it may be dog’s meat. [break] …neighbor from Poona—he was also from Calcutta; he was about fifteen years senior to me, he came little later than I—he thought… One day he came to me and he said he took a hamburger in the restaurant.
He said that hamburger is not made out of beef. He said it is made out of ham. So he said he had hamburger. He came to me and he said. I said, “So you have taken beef?” So he said, “No, it is not. It is ham.”
Prabhupāda: Now many Indians are taking beef. Most. In London, all Indians they take beef. The schoolchildren, they take beef.
Jayatīrtha: They don’t remember their culture.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: When they come here, they change everything, most of them.
Devotee (2): I run into many Indian people, many young boys going to school, on saṅkīrtana, on holidays. They don’t want to try to understand Bhāgavata philosophy.
Prabhupāda: Indian student?
Devotee (2): Some students, they are going to colleges for higher learning.
Prabhupāda: He was inquiring that why we ask no meat-eating. They [indistinct] that why we ask no meat-eating. That Dr. Bernhard, he was asking.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Dr. Benford?
Prabhupāda: Benford. [break] …before me never dared to ask people to stop meat-eating. Rather, they learned how to eat meat. Vivekananda was eighty years ago, he came. He learned how to eat meat. Instead of teaching Vedānta, he learned how to eat meat.
Jayatīrtha: In the Vedānta Society temple in Santa Barbara, they were offering chicken soup…
Prabhupāda: Yes. Prasādam.
Jayatīrtha: …to the Goddess Kālī an offering, and then they were distributing it as prasādam.
Prabhupāda: In the name of Vedānta.
Jayatīrtha: Vedānta means the goal of knowledge, but they are making an end of knowledge.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: I read in the newspaper that in the next five-year plan, they are planning to spend about thirty-two billion rupees for education, the greatest for ten years. They said that there were so many mistakes for the last ten years in introducing the basic education that everybody said there is no success. So they are planning another thirty-two billion rupees from 1974 onwards.
Prabhupāda: What education? To eat meat and beef.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Yes.
Prabhupāda: That education. And no restriction of sex even amongst the leaders. Yes.
Jayatīrtha: And all advanced contraceptive methods.
Prabhupāda: This Jawaharlal was implicated with his sister, and some say with his daughter also, and he was the prime minister. This is their position. In our Indian system, education is mātṛvat para-dāreṣu: every woman except your own wife, all mothers. That is education. Mātrā svasrā duhitrā vā [SB 9.19.17].
[One should not allow oneself to sit on the same seat even with one’s own mother, sister or daughter, for the senses are so strong that even though one is very advanced in knowledge, he may be attracted by sex.]
Either your mother or sister or daughter, you don’t live together alone. These are education. And they’re freely advocating sex life. What is the [indistinct] difference? In India they’re doing, so many leaders. “[indistinct], natural necessity, it can be done.” The leaders are speaking while doing that. No discrimination, just like hog. No discrimination. [break]
Jayatīrtha: …in Īśopaniṣad that modern-day educational system means culturing avidyā.
Prabhupāda: Yes, avidyā.
Jayatīrtha: So they’re spending so much, so many billions of rupees, simply to culture ignorance.
Prabhupāda: Making rogues and guṇḍās and hippies. That’s all. The science is manufacturing atom bomb, and philanthropy is becoming hippies. This is the result of education. They are manufacturing compounds, strong contraceptive method, infallible contraceptive method. Suffering only. What is the time now?
Jayatīrtha: [indistinct] minutes to seven.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: So this propensity will increase in this Kali-yuga.
Prabhupāda: Yes. [break]
Jayatīrtha: …so many riots by the students at the university there that the shopkeepers in the local area are suing the State because the windows have been broken so many times, and so much merchandise has been stolen by the students, they think the State should pay them back.
Prabhupāda: Yes, they must. The State must be responsible. What the State reply?
Jayatīrtha: Well, they’re having to litigate in court over it. The State doesn’t want to do it. So this university there is one of the most famous universities in the whole country. They spend so many millions of dollars to maintain it nicely.
