Purpose of the Movement is to know who is the driver of the car.
In the afternoon the religions editor from Associated Press, Mr. George Orwell, visited with a photographer. They were both in their fifties, experienced and respectful. It was Mr. Orwell's second attempt to meet Srila Prabhupada. He had once gone to the old Brooklyn temple, but failed to get an audience. This time he was highly successful. The interview was intense and enlivening. Prabhupada expressed himself with flair, conveying his message with his hands and eyes as well as his voice, while Mr. Orwell listened intently and scribbled in his note pad on the corner of the desk.
Mr. Orwell opened the exchange by saying that many people felt ISKCON members were being denied the opportunity to work in the outside world. Thus their contribution to society was being lost. He asked how His Divine Grace felt about that.
Prabhupada said that people misunderstood the platform on which devotees actually worked. People in general were working on the dead platform and the devotees were working on the living platform. The body is always dead, having value only when the living force is present. Therefore it is the life, the soul, that is important, not the body.
Mr. Orwell was sincerely trying to follow what Srila Prabhupada was saying, but he found Prabhupada's accent, as well as the subject matter, a little difficult to tune into. To help him understand, Prabhupada used the analogy of a car and its driver. He explained that the soul in the body was like the driver in the car. It was the driver that was important; the car only had value when the driver was present. Similarly, the important thing was to concentrate on the activity of the soul, not the body.
The analogy eluded Mr. Orwell's comprehension for a while, but by repetition Prabhupada got his point through. Once Mr. Orwell accepted that there was a difference between the two, Prabhupada concluded that knowledge of the car without knowledge of the driver was useless.
Mr. Orwell derived an answer to his original question by extrapolating that we were rejecting the body. "Well, since this dichotomy appears to be the case, I mean that the Movement is sort of cut off from the world in general, does that not deprive the world of the service, of the usefulness of these people?"
Srila Prabhupada corrected him. "First of all, if you do not understand what is the Movement, then how you can give your verdict like that? First of all, try to understand what is this Movement."
"What is the purpose of the Movement, Your Grace?"
"Purpose of the Movement is to know who is the driver of the car."
Mr. Orwell was still a bit adrift. He hadn't fully grasped how to apply the analogy and Prabhupada's switching back and forth between the analogy and the subject continued to confuse him. He knitted his brow and asked, "To know who is the driver of the car?" he asked.
"Of the car," Prabhupada confirmed.
"And who is that?"
"That we are contributing. People are in ignorance about his own identification, who is he. He's thinking he's dead body. That is misconception."
Mr. Orwell was still lost. "There's no way to identify the driver of the car then."
Srila Prabhupada smiled. "Just see, it is so difficult subject matter. I am speaking to you, still you feel difficulty. We say the car and driver. If you understand this analogy, so who is important? The driver is important, the car is important. Both combined together giving a service?the car is moving. But if they are separated, who is important?the car is important or the driver is important?"
Mr. Orwell was trying hard to understand. "I don't know how I'm going to get the point you're making across. If the car and the driver are separated, the car is useless and the driver is a person. The driver is always important."
Prabhupada's eyes lit up. Now it seemed he was grasping his point. "Yes, yes. Driver is always important, within the car or without the car."
But Mr. Orwell was not quite there. "Within or without the car," he repeated. "And if he's a chauffeur driving a carload of people, then he becomes less important. The people are primarily the ones that are important, that are in the car."
Everyone laughed. It wasn't easy getting through.
Prabhupada patiently explained that if the car had no driver, it was useless, but the driver was always important, with or without the car.
Bali-mardana prabhu mediated, helping to make Prabhupada's words comprehensible to his visitor. "In other words, the soul is important, with this body or without this body. But the body without the soul is simply fertilizer. Like you said, it's dead, useless. So our mission is to educate people about the driver, about the soul within the body."
"And people are generally working on the body," Prabhupada added. "And we are working on the driver of the body. That is the difference."
Now Mr. Orwell got it. "Working on the driver of the body, on the spirit. Right?"
"Yes." Prabhupada smiled. "On the spirit soul. And because they do not know what is the difference between the soul and the body, they cannot understand what is our contribution."
Mr. Orwell repeated Srila Prabhupada's words, writing them down in his note pad.
That done, Prabhupada then used another, interconnected analogy to expand the concept. "The car requires petrol and the driver requires nice food. So people in general, when they see that we are not giving petrol to the driver, they are surprised. They think that petrol is the food of the driver."
"In other words," Bali-mardana added, "to satisfy the body does not satisfy the person within the body."
"Therefore they misunderstand," Prabhupada said. " 'Oh, they are not giving petrol to this man for eating.' But the man's eatable is not the petrol."
Mr. Orwell didn't respond directly. Instead he said, "I would like to ask you another question, Your Grace."
But Prabhupada wouldn't let him move on without properly comprehending his example. "You have understood this point?
"Okay."
"No. Have you understood this point?"
Bali-mardana asked once more whether he had understood the analogy.
Mr. Orwell wasn't completely clear. Although he had said that people question the value of our activities, he hadn't quite related the second part of the analogy to that.
Prabhupada persisted until he felt Mr. Orwell got the proper idea. "The motor car without petrol cannot work; similarly, the driver without food cannot work. But the food of the driver and the power of the motor car?different."
Again, Bali-mardana translated. "The needs of the body and soul are different."
Prabhupada summed up. "So we are supplying the needs of the soul, and they are supplying the needs of the motor car; therefore they find difference. They are thinking, 'They are not supplying petrol to this man for eating.' That is the difference. The sum and substance is that if a person, the driver, if he thinks wrongly that he is the car, then his life is spoiled. He should know that he is different from the car. That is real knowledge. And if he identifies himself with the car, then he's a fool."
Mr. Orwell, while agreeing that spiritual qualities were important, was still trying to understand whether what Srila Prabhupada was saying translated into what might be considered useful action in the material world. Mr. Orwell asked Prabhupada what he thought about the Democratic party's convention in New York this week which will confirm their candidate for the coming elections. "What do you think of Jimmy Carter?"
Prabhupada had no idea who he was talking about.
"But that's part of what I'm thinking about, that you and your Movement tend to separate people from concern with what's going on in the world; like that's a presidential election and Jimmy Carter is the Democratic candidate. This is a disregard of what's going on in the world. Isn't that an example of it?"
Prabhupada didn't think so. "No, the thing is that there were many presidents before. What is this name of this, Ford? So what improvement you have done by having this president or that president? What improvement you'll make unless some false promise? That's all. What is the improvement? You have changed so many hundreds and thousands of presidents, but what is the improvement about spiritual knowledge?"
Bali-mardana explained that Srila Prabhupada always saw everything from the spiritual vantage point. "What is the improvement spiritually out of all these presidents? So therefore we do not care."
Prabhupada slightly corrected him. "We take care, but we take care more for the spirit soul than the body. That is our basic principle."
"But do you think most of the Hare Krishna members will vote in the election in November?" Mr. Orwell asked.
"Personally I never give votes," Prabhupada told him.
"Never voted. You're a citizen however, aren't you, a U.S. citizen?"
"I am permanent resident."
"Well, will they follow your example and not vote?"
"I do not know," Prabhupada said. "But our principle is that I vote for this man or that man, so what is spiritual benefit? That is our point."
Bali-mardana told him, "As long as the candidate is not God conscious it wouldn't make any difference which way we vote; but if he's God conscious, then we'll vote."
"Well, would he have to be in the Hare Krishna movement to be God conscious?" Mr. Orwell asked.
Srila Prabhupada replied that God consciousness was a great science. "You may take part in the Movement or not, but he must know the science."
"You mean the Bhagavad-gita; he must know that, or what?"
"Not Bhagavad-gita or anything. But he must ... Just like a book, mathematics, it may be written by different men, but one must be a mathematician."
"I think what Bali was saying is that if a Krishna consciousness member were running for an office, then you would get out and vote for him. That he would be God conscious."
"Yes, yes," Prabhupada said.
Mr. Orwell wondered if it was the eastern Hindu customs which made Krishna consciousness so attractive to young Westerners.
Prabhupada protested that Krishna consciousness was neither eastern nor Hindu; it was a science, and for everyone. "We do not belong either to the Hindus or Christian or Jewish. We belong to Krishna or God. Krishna means God."
"Yes, but you use the Hindu scriptures."
"That is another thing," Prabhupada said. "But the subject matter is the same. You say the sun in the sky as s-u-n, 'sun.' And we say in India surya, S-u-r-y-a. So the name may be different, but the object is the same."
Mr. Orwell rephrased his question slightly, still searching for a definitive understanding of whether Krishna consciousness was part of society or separate, whether it was contributing something positive or depriving its members of participation. "In other words, do you think the India?originated religion serves its particular purpose in Western society? Is it of particular value in a rather technological society, the Hindu tradition?"
Prabhupada patiently reiterated the premise on which he was working. "Generally speaking, everyone everywhere is identifying his body as the self. It does not mean East or West. This is ignorance. Wherever there is ignorance one identifies himself with the body. It may be in the East or in the West; it doesn't matter."
"Well, can a self exist without a body?" Mr. Orwell inquired.
Prabhupada confirmed that the self could indeed exist without a body.
"I mean you say that people identify themselves, the body as the self."
"Yes."
"And that this is ignorance to identify the self with the body. But does that mean a sort of rejection of the body as unimportant?"
"Not rejection," Prabhupada corrected. "Again, you come to the ... "
"But the body is important to the self isn't it?" Mr. Orwell interjected.
Prabhupada agreed, repeating his driver and car analogy, trying to convey to his interviewer that the importance of the body was dependent on the presence of the soul.
Mr. Orwell was trying hard to get the point, but even though he said he understood this, he still couldn't figure out how the combination worked. "In keeping with that analogy, can the self exist? Does the self exist without the body in this world?"
"Yes, oh, yes."
"In this life?"
"Yes. Life is always there."
"As a spirit apart from the body."
"Yes. That is the ideal life," Prabhupada told him. "That is the goal. When the soul lives without this material body, that is his liberated life." Prabhupada then used another analogy. "Just like the criminal, he can live within the jail and without the jail. But he's thinking wrongly that without jail he cannot live. But his life without jail is real life."
Mr. Orwell picked up the meaning of this analogy much quicker than the first one. "What you're saying is that this life is a jail, and that really the goal is another life. Right? I mean that this life is an evil prison."
Prabhupada was happy to get through so quickly. "Yes, yes, now you have understood. This is not a desirable life, to live in the jail, conditioned."
But Mr. Orwell's conclusion of it was the same. "Well in other words, in a sense, that is to reject, or at least to repudiate, this life, this world."
"Not repudiate," Srila Prabhupada corrected him, "to understand."
Mr. Orwell nodded. "That it is not a good life."
"It is not a good life, and the whole material world is false identification with myself."
"Well, is it important to try to improve this life so that it won't be a prison?" Mr. Orwell asked.
"Yes, improve," Prabhupada said, however his definition of improvement differed from Mr. Orwell's. "Improve, to understand that I am not a person of the jail; I am a person of freedom." He told him that if a person lives too long in jail he starts to think that he cannot live without it.
"Well, I hope we all get out of it sometime, somehow, someway, either here or there," Mr. Orwell joked good humoredly.
"But we are trying to educate the prisoners that 'Your life is not perfect within the jail. Your life is perfect without the jail.' This is our education," Srila Prabhupada said. He added that because the devotees are not doing jail work like the other prisoners, they are therefore misunderstood. "Just like a man has gone to jail. He's giving education to the prisoners, 'My dear brother prisoners, this life is not good. You become honest, don't come to the jail.' So other prisoners, they are working hard, they are hammering on the bricks, they think that 'This man is not hammering on bricks, he's talking only.' "
"In other words you think people should get away from what they're doing in the world," Mr. Orwell responded. "That they really shouldn't concentrate so completely on the world."
"No," Prabhupada said. "So long you are in the jail, you have to work according to the principle of the jail. But you must know that jail life is not good."
"Well, are your Krishna members out of jail?"
"Just like some of us are working like the hammer man, breaking bricks with hammer, but that does not mean he does not understand. So long one is in the jail, one is not in freedom; he has to work like that by force. But that is not his proper work; he has got a different work outside the jail or in his freedom life."
"Well, what people are saying about the members of the Krishna society is that they are not doing the jail work."
"That I have already explained. The prisoner who is hammering the bricks, he's thinking that this man is simply instructing that you have a different life outside the jail, he's not hammering on the brick. Therefore he is surprised, 'How is that he is not hammering like me?' "
"In other words, he's not participating in jail life. What's he doing?"
"He's educating," Prabhupada said.
"He's educating them to what? That this jail life is no good?"
"Yes."
Although Mr. Orwell seemed to appreciate this analogy, he still could not see beyond the mundane. Accepting the physical world as a prison, he nevertheless held fast to his misconception that one's duty in life was to remain there. "Well when you get through with talking, instructing the man hammering the bricks, is he going to lay down his hammer, too?"
"No, he doesn't require," Prabhupada said. "You try to understand. At least he must know that 'This hammering is not my business; it is my punishment.' That is knowledge. When a prisoner understands that 'This hammering business is not my real business, it is my punishment.' "
"Isn't that a rather negative way to look at the work?"
"Why negative? It is the fact," Prabhupada said. "That is the positive understanding. Why do you take negative? If you are suffering and if you say, if I say, 'Don't suffer,' is that negative or that is positive? It is positive. But they are rascals, they are taking as negative."
"Why is work in the world necessarily suffering? It has a mixture of pain and joy but it's negative to look on it as useless work," Mr. Orwell said.
"Therefore they are envious of the Krishna conscious men. They see that 'These people, they are not hammering like us.' So therefore they are thinking that there is no contribution of hammering. They think the hammering is the real business."
Mr. Orwell laughed. "That's pretty good. I think people understand the analogy. They think hammering is the business. What do you think is the business?"
"Our business is to educate them that 'Your hammering business is not your life. Your freedom is real business.' "
The mention of freedom struck a chord with Mr. Orwell. He questioned Prabhupada about organized opposition to movements like ours in America. "I'm sure you've heard or read about these claims by these parent groups that claim that the Hare Krishna movement members are, ah, sort of controlled by intensive indoctrination? Brainwashed they call it. You know, by getting up and having the two hours or three of chanting in the morning, and prayer beads constantly, and the group life; that they're sort of controlled, and denied their freedom. What do you say about that?"
"It is due to misunderstanding," Prabhupada said. "They do not understand what kind of preaching, what kind of education we are giving. We are giving education how to become free from the hammering business in the jail. They think hammering business and keep oneself within the jail is the real life because they have been accustomed to that. And when we speak that 'Hammering or to keep within the jail is not your real business; your real business is freedom,' naturally they find contradiction; they think that we are doing something against their business. That's the difficulty."
"But in other words do you think, is there not something to this idea of being spiritually controlled or spiritually directed?"
"It is not controlled," Prabhupada told him.
"Well, what would you call it?"
Prabhupada used the same argument as before. Then he gave another example. "When the physician says to a patient that 'Don't eat like this, then you will increase your diabetes. Don't eat this, don't eat starch, don't eat sugar.' So people may think he's simply giving negative, but that is his positive life. They misunderstand."
Finally satisfied he had understood Srila Prabhupada's answers, Mr. Orwell moved onto other topics. He asked about Srila Prabhupada's tour schedule, wondering if he would be back in the States. "I mean you aren't leaving this country for good. You're a permanent resident, right?"
"Who said?" Prabhupada asked him, wondering how he got the idea he wasn't coming back.
"I don't know, I just heard that somewhere."
"How can I answer this?" Prabhupada said. He laughed, humorously adding, "Somebody madman must have said it." He then explained that he was always touring.
"Where is your main home?" Mr. Orwell enquired.
"My home is back to home, back to Godhead. That is my real home. That means every temple is my home."
Mr. Orwell also asked Prabhupada what he thought about Judaism and Christianity. Prabhupada said that he didn't know because he hadn't studied them; but any religion, if it freed its adherents from the bodily conception of life, was first-class.
Mr. Orwell said that he didn't think they did that. He thought they considered the body important, and cherished the world.
Srila Prabhupada responded that such a conception was ignorance. He explained that he was attracting people from every religion and community because real knowledge is for everyone. Just as two plus two equals four is the same for everyone, and gold is gold for everyone.
Mr. Orwell asked who had the gold: just the Krishna consciousness movement, or are there other paths to spiritual enlightenment? Prabhupada replied that there were other paths, but they were not very elaborate. This prompted Mr. Orwell to ask if Krishna consciousness was elaborate.
Prabhupada indicated his bookshelf. "We are explaining this science in so many books. It is open to everyone."
A writer himself, Mr. Orwell was very impressed with Srila Prabhupada's output, especially when we told him another forty volumes were yet to come.
"Are all of these translations that you've made Your Grace? I don't blame you for sleeping only four hours a night. I tell you, just to produce a half a dozen books in a lifetime is quite a job, you know."
Prabhupada admitted, "It is very difficult. But I have already produced eighty books. And all world scholars, professors, universities, they are receiving so nicely."
Bali-mardana mentioned the standing orders from universities and libraries around the world and the hundreds of favorable letters and reviews.
Being the senior religions editor, Mr. Orwell had contact with scholars. He said, "What I've heard some Hindu professors say is that Hinduism is such a complex and profound religion and that the Krishna consciousness members are very superficial about it. They simply go through these disciplines and really don't involve themselves in the, they take a superficial version of Hinduism."
But Prabhupada wouldn't be baited. "That may be Hindu religion. But we do not belong to any religion. That may be true for the Hindu religion what the professor has said, but we do not identify with any religion. We are different from any religious system."
"But the scriptures are the same, the Vedic scriptures are Hindu scriptures."
Prabhupada corrected him, giving the etymology of the word Hindu. "Actually the Hindu, this name is given by the neighbor Muhammadans. There is a river called Sindhu. That river is still there, it is now in Pakistan. So outside the border of India, the Muhammadans, they used to call the inhabitants of the neighborhood of that river Sindhu, 'Hindu.' Because they pronounce s as h. So this is the origin. So 'Hindu' is a title given by the Muhammadan neighborer. It is not found in the Vedic literature. Real Vedic principle is called varnasrama, observing the principle of four varnas. So the Vedic civilization is called varnasrama-dharma, not Hindu dharma. This is later contribution of the so-called scholars."
That wound it up for Mr. Orwell. He was very happy with his interview and genuinely pleased to have met Srila Prabhupada. "It was good to catch you this time, and I hope to see you again."
Prabhupada replied, "So kindly put the matter properly, because people on account of their ignorance they misunderstand our Movement."
To make sure he got it right, Mr. Orwell did a brief double-check with Srila Prabhupada. "What are their main misunderstandings?"
"This bodily concept," Prabhupada said. "They are thinking that they are body. 'I am Muhammadan, I am Christian, I am American, I am Eastern, I am Western.' All bodily conceptions. Why they are thinking Eastern, Western? Everyone is human being."
"Well, what is it that they particularly misunderstand about the Movement?"
"They do not understand that we are talking on the spiritual platform and they are on the material bodily platform. Therefore they find contradiction. One has to be little sober to understand this Movement and what platform we are speaking. They are accustomed, on the same example, to hammering the bricks. And when they see others not hammering the bricks, they think they are different. They cannot understand that life can be without hammering the bricks. Karmis. In the Bhagavad-gita the word mudha, that has been explained by Visvanatha Cakravarti, karmis, these mudhas. They cannot understand."
Mr. Orwell was already on his feet and ready to go. He grinned. "I'm going to have to go back and hammer a few bricks," he said, laughing along with everyone. "It's been a pleasure. Thank you very much for your time."
Prabhupada was also laughing. "Give him prasadam. Thank you very much."
Reference: Transcendental Diary Volume 3 by Bali Mardan Dasa
Recently Added
Trending Today