New Vrindaban Brijabasi Spirit

(Pusta Krishna was reading from the 13th chapter of Bhagavad Gita and Prabhupada was commenting. See the full conversation here.)

Pusta Krishna: It’s just like, say here’s a field, and it’s full of wood, so a farmer comes and he cuts down the trees and then he plants grain, and then it comes up as wheat. So he’ll say, “Well, God did not do it; I did it.” So his proposal is that under such circumstances how is the idea of God practical?

Prabhupada: So then practical is if God would not have given you this land, then where is scheme of tilling it? Can you till in the sky, in the air? Who has given you the land, hmm? You are very practical, but where you get the…? Can you manufacture this land? Can you? Then God comes, immediately. Where you get this water? Can you manufacture water? Where you get this air? Can you manufacture? Where you get this fire? Everything, there is God…

You grow bitter melon also here?

Devotee: We tried to this spring to grow it, but we can’t get the seed to sprout.

Prabhupada: You can get it from Mayapura?

Devotee: We got seed, but it won’t sprout.

Prabhupada: Oh, due to the climate.

Devotee: We don’t know. It is a very hard seed.

Devotee (4): Srila Prabhupada, perhaps the material scientists could help us make the seed sprout.

Prabhupada: Hmm?

Devotee (4): I was thinking earlier how a farmer can put the seed in the ground, but he cannot actually make the seed grow if it is not the will of Krishna.

Prabhupada: Yes. The situation is not favorable. That is the proof that everything is a living entity. If you put the seed… The seed is not the tree, but when you put the seed on the ground, if the situation is favorable, the particular living entity who has to take the form of that tree, he comes, and then it grows. That is the proof. Just like sex. It is not the secretion of the man and the woman. It creates a situation so that the soul may come and live there, and then there is pregnancy. It is not the matter. This is the proof…

Pusta Krishna: “Under the influence of material desire the entity is born sometimes as a demigod, sometimes as a man, sometimes as a beast, as a bird, as a worm, as an aquatic, as a saintly man, as a bug. This is going on. And in all circumstances the living entity thinks himself to be the master of his circumstances, yet he is under the…”

Prabhupada: Even in the stool, the worms in the stool, he’s also thinking “I have got so much stool to eat.” This same mastership. “I am the monarch of all I survey. I have got so much stool.” And you just take the worm from the stool, put it here: “No, no, no, here is my enjoyment.” This mastership mentality is there in Brahma, and the mastership mentality is there in the worm of the stool. This mentality you have to give up. Then you become liberated. That is liberation. The bondage is that mastership mentality. He’s servant, but he’s thinking falsely that he’s master. Just like your President Nixon. He thought that “Now I have become master of America, I’m president.” He forgot that he’s servant. As soon as the people wanted, dragged him down. That he forgot, that “I’m servant of the people.” So everyone is servant, but falsely thinking “I’m master.”