Did man go to the moon or not?
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The conversation was held Okay. So did scientists go to the moon or not did not go to the moon.
They have pictures. So all those pictures fake. And actually Prabhupada says that man did not go to the moon.
There are again this is there are multiple levels of reality even within material existence. So if you look at actually Prabhupada's statements he did not say only that man did not go to the moon. He did not say that but he also said other times even if they have gone to the moon what's so great about it.
And other times he has said that yeah they may have gone out of the earth but they went to some other place not to the moon. But overall if you look at his reasoning and his conclusion from that reasoning that we will see a significant difference in the world view that he is having and the world view that science has. His reasoning is that Chandraloka is a higher planet.
And his idea is that if I came from India to America I have to go through a long process to get a visa and after that I have to go through all the immigration and then I came. I cannot just gate crash into America. So Prabhupada's reasoning is that similarly we humans cannot gate crash into a higher planet.
So now based on this reasoning he is saying that man did not go to the Chandraloka. But overall the conclusion is if you see these three explanations he gave three possible alternatives they went somewhere else or they did not go to the earth always. Point was don't get so excited about it.
That was the essential thing. So let me go back to these two points once again. The point is that in material existence at different times material nature maya drags the conditioned soul's consciousness away from god through different things.
So for example there is a cricket world cup. Then at one time in India because India made it to the world cup finals so we rescheduled Adhyatara from Sunday to Saturday. Because people will not come at that time.
So the point is that at different times in material existence material nature will come up with different ways in which people's mind may get distracted from Vishnu. And then the Acharya has to the spiritual leader at that time have to do whatever it takes to get the conditioned soul's mind back to Krishna. So when Sri Prabhupada was preaching in the 1960s at that time there was such excitement about the moon landing.
There was a space race. It started from 1959 when Yuri Gagarin went out of the atmosphere in the first cosmos. And then it just moved on and it was feverish.
And Sri Prabhupada's point was even if they go to the moon what is the point? Even if they go to the moon what are they going to do over there? Eat, sleep, mate and defect? So why are you getting so excited about it? So his whole thrust of his reasoning was Sri Prabhupada he has not come to tell us whether man has gone to the moon or not. He has come to tell us how we can go back to Krishna. That is the thrust of his message.
But when people are so excited about going to the moon that they think there is no need to go to Krishna. Then Prabhupada strongly says it. Why are you getting so excited about it? So the point of that whole discussion of Prabhupada's statements on the moon is that don't get so excited about it.
Don't let it distract you from Krishna. So at that time the thoughts of thought of man going to the moon was what was distracting people from Krishna. Now today for many people if they hear we saying that man did not go to the moon that distracts them from Krishna.
How do you say that man did not go to the moon? There is so much evidence there. So the point is we should not get distracted from Krishna. That is the central thrust of our mission.
So today this issue if we highlight it too much we unnecessarily provoke people's minds and we create more obstacles in people coming to Krishna practicing bhakti. So we shouldn't just look at the statement of an acharya. We should also understand the purpose of those statements, the context of those statements and then see how we can serve the purpose of that acharya in present times.
Now specifically with respect to going to the moon, I started this answer by stating that the reality even material reality is multi-level. Multi-level means that is like if I have a computer and in my computer I can have two users. I can have a normal user and I can have an administrator.
And if there is an administrator then there are certain files which are there in the computer but they are not accessible to the normal user. The files are there but they are not accessible. So I may work on the same computer and I may look at the directory structure of the computer explorer but those files will not be seen to me.
Why? Because I don't have that level of access. If I am an ordinary user, I don't have access so I can't see those files. So like that I may use the same machine but I won't find those files.
So similarly with respect to Chandraloka and with respect to the moon that we perceive with our eyes. The moon that we perceive with our eyes is what we human beings with our specific level of karmic capacity are able to perceive. And we perceive that.
And physically speaking, yes we might create spacecrafts and we might go to the moon but when Prabhupada says that you cannot get crash into Chandraloka, what he is talking about is a higher planetary system. And that is something which we will not be able to access. What to speak of man going to the moon? Even if the devatas come to the earth, in the Ramayana in the Mahabharata, there are many incidents in the Ramayana, especially before Dashrath's Dashrath performs yajna to get the payasam by which his wives will become pregnant and then Ram will appear.
At that time, the sages tell him that when you perform a sacrifice the devatas come and accept the sacrifice. But if the devatas are especially pleased then they make themselves visible to us. So the point is, even if the devatas come to the earth, we will not be able to see them if we don't have the necessary access.
Going back to the example of the computer, if there is no access, there is no visibility. So what applies to the computer also applies to the moon. Even if man has gone to the moon, but still without the necessary karmic access, we will not be able to access Chandrabhuk.
So Srila Prabhupada's point was that the explorers, cosmonauts, have not explored the higher planets, have not reached the higher planets to Chandrabhuk. At the physical level of transportation, they may have gone to the moon and accessed the moon, but they have not accessed Chandrabhuk. So, rather than taking only one statement of Prabhupada, that man did not go to the moon, and trying to make that an absolute statement, and based on that trying to prove that all scientists claim to have gone to the moon are all wrong, our focus should be to understand the context, what Srila Prabhupada said, why he said, the point was, don't get distracted from Krishna by anything.
And we should see how that purpose can be fulfilled now. And that purpose was fulfilled by explaining what Srila Prabhupada meant about not accessing Chandrabhuk, and essentially his purpose was, don't get distracted from Krishna by anything. Does that answer your question?