A devotee can become anything.

Today is Bhima-nirjala Ekadasi. During his walk Srila Prabhupada continued to promote discussion on his thesis that God is the father and Nature is the mother. He argued that life cannot come from anything other than life as we can see practically that every living being has been generated from another. The seed is implanted from the father and the mother provides the suitable conditions for the living entity to develop a body. Using the tree as an example, he said that this principle applies to all forms of life. The seed comes from the tree and grows in the ground?thus there is a father and a mother. Even with the bugs and cockroaches, which are said to be sveda-ja, produced from perspiration, this is true. The perspiration is the condition supplied by Mother Nature for the body to develop in. The father is God Himself, who puts the living entity into that situation via His agent Yamaraja. It took me a while to grasp this concept, how something could be born from perspiration. When I told Prabhupada it was confusing, he laughed. "Confusing must be. How you can understand the subtle laws of God? You have dull brain, with cow dung. You cannot understand." During the course of the discussion Prabhupada confirmed that animals, like children, do not create karma because they are helplessly acting under the force of nature. The animals are souls suffering from previous sinful acts performed in the human life who are now being punished by birth in a lower species. They are receiving karma already created, like a prisoner in the jail who cannot do anything in the jail because he is strictly controlled. His duration of stay has already been decided by his previous acts and when his karma has been sufficiently mitigated by passage of time, he gets out. Similarly, the animals automatically move up through the different species, until they again come to the human form. Then again they can make choices which will either elevate them or degrade them. Duryodhana-guru raised a question about our own situation. "Srila Prabhupada, in Bhagavad-gita it is said sucinam srimatam gehe yoga-bhrashto 'bhijayate. So, for somebody who is now a disciple of the Krishna consciousness movement, are we to understand if he is not born in a family of devotees and if he is not born in an aristocratic family, that he was not a yogi in his past life?" "Past life, they had some good deeds," Prabhupada replied. "Therefore they have come to Krishna consciousness movement. It is called ajnata-sukriti. Besides that, whatever he may be in the past life, the Movement is there; it is open for everyone. Everyone can come and take advantage, despite whatever he did in his past life. It doesn't matter. If he comes and if he is fortunate, if he chants, then he becomes advanced." "This is Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu's special mercy?" Duryodhana-guru asked. "Yes," Prabhupada affirmed. The devotees like to take advantage of Srila Prabhupada's presence to clear up any philosophical turbidity they or others might have. Even having full faith in Srila Prabhupada and Krishna, there are many things which are virtually inconceivable until one is liberated, as we have seen over the last few days. So the walks, which are almost the only chance most of the regular devotees get to engage in any kind of conversational exchange with Srila Prabhupada, are peppered with a variety of different topics, some of which can be very revealing. This morning Bharadvaja prabhu asked something directly applicable to Prabhupada himself. "I understand, Srila Prabhupada, that the pure devotee can be as pervasive as Supersoul? By the mercy of Supersoul, he can be present in many places at once?" "Yes. By the grace of Krishna," Prabhupada told him, "a devotee can become anything." "So in other words," Duryodhana-guru asked, "that means the pure devotee can be omniscient?" "Everything," Prabhupada confirmed. "God is omniscient, so a pure devotee can be omniscient by the grace of God." During guru-puja Srila Prabhupada plays the gong. The devotees have supplied him a small gold-painted hammer with a decorative, jeweled handle. As the kirtana went on today he tapped the brass cupola-shaped gong, producing a vibrant, hollow tone as it rested against the asana's left front rail. Prabhupada has an elegant way of sitting, upright, not slouched, his head tipped slightly up, moving from side-to-side in time with the rhythm. His alert eyes and mien of concentration and sobriety give him a distinct, regal aspect; yet in his face there is a subtle blend of soft approachability which invites us, one and all. He is our supreme commander and at the same time, one of the troops.