Morning Walk, July 12, 1975

Svarūpa Dāmodara: One of our Godbrothers asked why the inductive knowledge is so successful, especially to scientists.

Prabhupāda: Inductive knowledge always unsuccessful.

Svarūpa Dāmodara: But science finds out these laws and so many things. So to some extent it’s working.

Prabhupāda: No, they can extend… Just like inductive knowledge is like this: You study man. You see first man dies, second man dies, third man dies. In this way, you can go to hundred or thousand man. But I can say that “You might not have seen that man who does not die.” I can challenge that. You cannot say… Simply by studying hundred thousand man, you cannot say that all men die. I can challenge that “You have not seen the…, beyond that. So how you can conclude like that?” There may be somebody. As you say “May be,” we can say “May be somebody who does not die.” [laughter] What is the answer?

Svarūpa Dāmodara: That argument is different, though, from the way the science does. For example, they work so hard…

Prabhupāda: The science does… They conclude something, and next man changes. So that is your science. So how you can make a conclusion?

Svarūpa Dāmodara: But how so many things are working under the laws…?

Prabhupāda: Working, that’s all right. You have seen that so many people are dying. That’s all right. But I am challenging that you have not seen the next man who does not die. That you cannot answer.

Svarūpa Dāmodara: For example, they find the laws of motion, Newton’s laws of motion. They utilize that concept in shooting rockets. And they use exactly some mathematical formula and apply it.

Prabhupāda: That’s all right, but sometimes the shooting of the rocket missing.

Svarūpa Dāmodara: No, what we are saying is that the law that they find out by their own effort is working…

Prabhupāda: So your effort is limited. How you can conclude?

Svarūpa Dāmodara: So inductive knowledge is true to a certain limit.

Prabhupāda: Certain extent, that’s all. It is not conclusion.

Svarūpa Dāmodara: But to a devotee, though, there is nothing like inductive knowledge, because knowledge gives by Kṛṣṇa. So it must be deductive.

Prabhupāda: Deductive always. And that is easier. Kṛṣṇa says that “I come as death and take away everything.” So we know that nobody can be immortal; everyone must die. Simple conclusion.

Brahmānanda: We don’t have to test it, because Kṛṣṇa says it.

Prabhupāda: Yes. You take that…

Ravīndra-svarūpa: We could never know ourselves unless we knew all cases.

Prabhupāda: No, we do not require to know. We hear from Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Person. That is perfect.

Devotee: That’s our logic. You said that once.

Prabhupāda: Yes, that is our logic.

Gurudāsa: But also you said once that we feel it. That is our proof. That we feel…

Prabhupāda: No, feel, you may wrongly feel, because you are imperfect. That is not good argument. Our argument is that the message is coming from the most authorized personality; therefore it is perfect. And we receive guru-paramparā. That is our process. Evam paramparā-prāptam imaṁ rājarṣayo viduḥ [Bg 4.2]. 

The rājarṣis, means very, very big, big, stalwart persons, they accept it. Just like Arjuna gives evidence that “I accept You. You are Parabrahman.” So he, next line, he says, “It is not that I am saying. But big, big personalities like Vyāsadeva, he has said. Nārada has said. Asita has said. And You are personally saying, so I have no doubt.” This is our process. 

Devotee: Śrīla Prabhupāda, we can go up there.

Prabhupāda: Hmm. 

[break] …Upendra, Upendra has not come? 

[break] …knowledge is always imperfect.

Devotee: How about jñāna-yogīs?

Prabhupāda: Jñāna-yogīs, they are also imperfect.

Devotee: Their knowledge is speculative.

Prabhupāda: Yes. Anyone who is speculative on the strength of his own knowledge is imperfect. Because we are imperfect, speculation is imperfect.

Ravīndra-svarūpa: The same criticism that you made of induction was also made by John Stuart Mill and Bertrand Russell, but they became skeptics. They said, “Therefore there’s no knowledge at all.”

Prabhupāda: That is another nonsense. That is also speculation. [laughter] “Because I have failed, therefore there is no knowledge.” This is also imperfect, because how I can conclude like that? I am imperfect. I cannot decide this way or that way. So that is also. Vedic knowledge says that a conditioned soul has got four defects: illusion, mistake, imperfectness and cheating. Any conditioned soul. Even Brahmā, he is receiving knowledge from Kṛṣṇa. Tene brahma hṛdā ya ādi-kavaye [SB 1.1.1]. Ādi-kavi means Brahmā. He is the most perfect person within this universe, Lord Brahmā. So he is also receiving knowledge from Kṛṣṇa. Any conditioned soul, beginning from Brahmā down to the ant, they are defective in four ways: illusion, mistake, imperfectness and cheating. They know that “I am imperfect.” Just this Darwin. He knew that he is imperfect, and he cheated so many persons—by false theory, which he cannot explain. He simply gives, “Perhaps millions of years’ gap…,” this, that. That is not knowledge. So the imperfect person is prone to become a cheater. So we should not take knowledge from the cheaters. What do you think?

Svarūpa Dāmodara: We should take knowledge from Kṛṣṇa.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Svarūpa Dāmodara: And Prabhupāda.

Prabhupāda: Yes. Prabhupāda is giving you the same knowledge, that’s all. There is no question of cheating. I have received this knowledge from Kṛṣṇa, and you take this. That’s all. My business is finished.

Kīrtanānanda: Things equal to the same thing are equal to each other.

Prabhupāda: Yes, that is the duty. Paramparā system means the spiritual master shall not give anything which is not spoken by Kṛṣṇa. That is Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s… Yāre dekha, tāre kaha ‘kṛṣṇa’-upadeśa: “You become guru under My order.” “But I do not know anything nicely. How can I become guru?” “No, you have no botheration. You simply take Kṛṣṇa’s word and say, and you become guru.”

āmāra ājñāya guru hañā tāra ei deśa

yāre dekha, tāre kaha ‘kṛṣṇa’-upadeśa

[Cc Madhya 7.128]

If the child says to another man, “Father said, ‘This is this,’ ” then he is perfect. He has learned from the father, and the father is perfect, then whatever he says, it is perfect. Why should he take so much botheration? So our process is that, that we become guru not like that rascal Guru-ji. No. We speak whatever Kṛṣṇa has spoken. That’s all. Of course, we try to impress upon you with your reason, logic, but we shall speak the same thing, not anything else. Kṛṣṇa says, “I am supreme”; we say, “Kṛṣṇa is supreme.” That’s all. Where is the botheration? I haven’t got to find out by my logic and induction whether Kṛṣṇa is supreme. That I have already done. So Kṛṣṇa is supreme. There is no doubt about it. Now, whatever Kṛṣṇa says, it is all right. That’s all.

Svarūpa Dāmodara: That saves a lot of time.

Prabhupāda: Yes, that is intelligence. That is intelligence. These, all these rascals, they are unnecessarily wasting. Śrama eva hi kevalam. Simply they are wasting time, that’s all. That is stated in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam,

dharmaḥ svanuṣṭhitaḥ puṁsāṁ

viṣvaksena-kathāsu yaḥ

notpādayed ratiṁ yadi

śrama eva hi kevalam

 [SB 1.2.8]

You are executing your duties as scientist or as anything, but if you don’t have faith in the words of viṣvaksena, then you are simply wasting your time.

Svarūpa Dāmodara: That’s one of the chapters in our book that Mādhava is working, that inductive knowledge, there is nothing like inductive knowledge. It’s all māyā; it’s illusion.

Prabhupāda: Yes, it is illusion. 

[break] …Western countries it is full of inductive knowledge. That’s all. 

[break] Dr. Radhakrishnan used to say, on sarva-dharmān parityajya mām ekam [Bg 18.66], “It is too much.” [laughter]

Svarūpa Dāmodara: He died just a few months ago.

Prabhupāda: Yes, he died, and brain fag. All his knowledge, last five, six years—he could not recognize his own men even.

Gurudāsa: When we went to see him, he hardly could speak.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Svarūpa Dāmodara: Because of his inductive knowledge.

Prabhupāda: That’s all. He became a victim of the Western people. Because the Oxford University was paying him very nicely, he became a servant of the Western thought. [break]

Svarūpa Dāmodara: …in the evolutionary cycle, the transmigration of the soul, we were inquiring whether there’s any specific details in the Vedas about the step-by-step transmigration of the spirit, of the soul.

Prabhupāda: Yes. From the aquatics to the plants, and then insect, then bird, then beast, then human being.

Svarūpa Dāmodara: Then it’s the same with the Darwin’s Theory.

Prabhupāda: Darwin has taken from here, and he has tried to explain in a hodgepodge way so that he may get the credit, that’s all.

Ravīndra-svarūpa: The plants have more consciousness, manifest consciousness, than aquatics?

Prabhupāda: Huh?

Ravīndra-svarūpa: That plants and grass, they are more conscious than aquatics.

Prabhupāda: Yes. That is also mentioned in the Bhāgavata, about different animals, how they are conscious, developed.

Svarūpa Dāmodara: In the Bhāgavata, in the later chapters, Śrīla Prabhupāda? Not up to the present Fourth Canto that…

Prabhupāda: Fourth Canto there is, how one animal is more conscious than the other.

Ravīndra-svarūpa: Yes.

Devotee: Prabhupāda, did you say that trees have the ability to see and hear in the Bhāgavatam?

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Devotee: How is that?

Prabhupāda: Just like a vulture, he has got more seeing power than you. Is it not?

Devotee: Yes. He sees the carcass, you give the example, from way up.

Prabhupāda: Yes. [chuckles] But he can see only the carcass.

Svarūpa Dāmodara: That is also acintya-śakti of the vulture. He can see… He has special eyes.

Prabhupāda: No, it is acintya-śakti for us, but Kṛṣṇa has given different power to different animals. For us it is acintya, not for Kṛṣṇa.

Svarūpa Dāmodara: Not for…?

Prabhupāda: For Kṛṣṇa there is nothing like acintya. Therefore we have to take knowledge from Kṛṣṇa. [break]

Balavanta: …the Vikings first discovered America, they said.

Brahmānanda: From Scandinavia came, before Columbus.

Balavanta: But Mahābhārata describes all the continents even way before that, doesn’t it?

Prabhupāda: Yes. [end]