Did Prabhupada’s servant bloop because he couldn’t deal with the moon issue?
So there is a long past time that there was Draupad's servant who could not accept that man had not gone to the moon. And then afterwards he left. And then sometimes he said that because he did not have faith, because he did not accept the principle of acceptance of a man, that is why he left.
This causes conflict. Actually, the Leela Amrit is a biography of Prabhupada. And no biography by its very nature can be exhausting.
So I was in New York. I had wanted to meet Satsvarupa Maharaj. So Satsvarupa Maharaj himself is now working on editing a few things.
He is quite old. So he is delegated it to some other people. So there were things which were, there is a background of particular devotee.
There are many things which may not be known. Satsvarupa Maharaj had, Prabhupada departed and immediately after that he had to write that book. So one thing that came to be known later is that it is another incident that happened.
That this particular, Prabhupada's servant was observing Prabhupada very carefully. And actually he was around sometimes critically. So he saw once there was this young girl Saraswati.
So Prabhupada was playing with her. He was just increasing grandfatherly affection for her in his heart, for him in her heart. So then, so Prabhupada had been given a garland.
And there was a flower coming out. Prabhupada took that garland and gave it to her. And she did not know what to do.
She just opened her mouth. Prabhupada put the flower in her mouth. And she just smiled and she was very happy.
So he observed this and he said, what is this? Sanyasi is playing with a girl like this. Now it was, you know, it was just a grandfather and a daughter. So from that point of time, he started developing doubts.
And his issue about the moon, that was a surface. And that was, so this whole background later on, he told other devotees. But at that time, Saraswati did not know about that.
So because he could not accept it, that is why he left. But that was only the surface. So there are other issues.
And that is why he left. So now we do not have to make that issue of the moon landing into a big issue of conflict. Because Prabhupada himself writes in the Ishopanishad that there are three ways that one can go to the moon.
One is by, after we, if we have done punya, then the next life we go to the moon in a higher body. Another is that people by yogic powers, they can travel through mystic means. And third is, he says, by spacecrafts.
So within the Vedic context, we see that there are people who have gone through the higher levels of reality also. And Prabhupada's point is completely different. Prabhupada's point is that the Chandra Loka is a higher planetary system.
And there people cannot trespass without the requisite karmic qualifications. So now, Sadaput Prabhu has explained in Vedic cosmology, Vedic cosmography. It is one of his important books.
Sadaput Prabhu was a prominent devotee scientist, Dr. Vichairao Thomsen. And he says that, if we consider the point of Chandra Loka being a higher planetary system. So, Chandra Loka is, if it is higher, it is not made of the kind of matter that we have.
It is a higher planetary system. In the Devatas, whenever it is said that they come to the earth, quite often, even in the yogic sacrifices are performed, and after the sacrifices are performed, the Devatas come here. Often, they accept the fruit of the sacrifice without being visible to people.
So, if their body, if the Devata's body is made of subtle matter, then even their planet may not be made of subtle matter. It's not that you have a subtle body and you need a gross chair for sitting on a subtle body. No, everything will be a subtle matter over there.
So, Chandra Loka is, it is a heavenly system. Because it is heavenly, it is very different. So, even when we talk about the various kinds of oceans that are there in the Kanto cosmology, ocean of this, ocean of that, that is not like the gross physical ocean that we talk about.
So, if Chandra Loka itself is a subtle thing, then how is it that, then how is the moon visible to us? So, that is explained by one of the Sri Vaishnava Acharyas. He says that many of the planetary objects that are described in the Kanto cosmology, they require a certain qualification to see. And that is why we may not able to see them.
But the Chandra is something which we need for astrological calculations to calculate proper tithis, to do proper activities. And that is why although we do not have the qualification to see, we are granted that vision. So, what we see is not the moon that we see in the sky, that is not the complete Chandra Loka.
That is simply some kind of projection of Chandra Loka that we are allowed to see for our purposes. Our purposes means for astrological calculations. That means, there is Chandra Loka which is a subtle planet, made of subtler elements.
And there is a gross projection of that which is what is visible to us. And that gross projection does not have everything that Chandra Loka has. It is simply a projection for our perception, for our decision making.
So, this projection which is there, that is accessible by human vision and that may be accessible by human locomotion. So, that may be accessible by human locomotion means that we may go using a, we may travel in three dimensional space using a machine and go to what we call as moon. And the moon is a projection of Chandra Loka.
Moon is not the same as Chandra Loka. It is a projection of Chandra Loka which is within three dimensional space, which is perceivable for us. So, Chandra Loka itself as a complete heavenly planet, that is something which is not perceivable for us.
It is made of a different matter, different kind of matter, which is actually not visible to us. So, we do not have to make the moon landing into an issue. Prabhupada s point is simply that we cannot trespass into higher planetary systems without the requisite karmic qualifications.
That is valid. We cannot go to Chandra Loka. We cannot go to Chandra Loka without the adequate qualifications.
But moon, which is simply a three dimensional projection of Chandra Loka, that is something which we can access. We may have access to it, we may access it in future using greater technology. That does not make any difference because we, wherever we go, even if we are able to go to Vattashutra Chandra, even if somehow human beings manage to go to Swarga, it is not that with our eyes we will be able to see anything in Swarga.
Because everything in Swarga is made of subtle matter. So, this is the point which Prabhupada is making is simply that we should not get, there are other passages also. One thing that happens within our moment is sometimes we take one position of Prabhupada and make that the absolute position.
This is what Prabhupada said. But if we analyze all the statements of Prabhupada on the moon landing, the statements fall in three broad categories. One is they never went to the moon.
Second is they went out of space, but they went somewhere not to the moon. Third is they went to the moon, but they did not access the moon. For that Prabhupada's example, if some extraterrestrial lands in the middle of the Sahara desert and then look all around, probe all around and say there is no human being here and they go back and say the earth is uninhabited.
So, they have not accessed the earth at all. So, basically Prabhupada has made all the three kinds of statements and there is no need to lock Prabhupada to one position saying that Prabhupada said man did not go to the moon. Prabhupada did not say that.
Now, for Prabhupada that was not a very consequential thing. We see right in the introduction of Bhagavad Gita, Prabhupada writes, so man has labored a lot to raise himself to the moon, but he has not labored to raise his consciousness. And if he raises his consciousness, there is so much more benefit.
So, here Prabhupada is taking a completely non-confrontational attitude towards the moon landing. He is not saying man did not go to the moon, he says he labored very hard to go there, but labored for this purpose also. So, again we have all these three positions, whether man did not go out of the earth itself or man went out of the earth, but not to the moon.
Man went to the moon, but did not access Chandra Loka. These are all three statements made by Prabhupada. And using our intelligence in our particular situation, we can present whichever position is best.
So, there is no need to make it into a conflict issue. So, some devotees may love to make it into a conflict, but that is not necessary. Now, there are, I met Bhaktisiddha only once and he said that, that book Life comes from Life, which was basically a conversation of Prabhupada with him and some other devotees.
So, he says that, that is a private conversation of Prabhupada with him and with his trusted disciple. He says, I never like to distribute that book to scientists, because Prabhupada is not speaking to scientists over there. So, the point is that we do not have to, we do not have to reduce Prabhupada to his most confrontational position and think this is what Prabhupada is.
Many times devotees when they want to quote something about Prabhupada, they want to find the most sensational thing and that catches attention in classes. And that catches attention in classes and that catches attention in classes, that is what gets circulated and that is what we think is Prabhupada's position. But Prabhupada was a very, was a profound individual and he took different positions at different times.
So, the confrontational sound bites may have sensational appeal and they may attract a certain kind of people. But Prabhupada did not only speak like that. There are many other things also Prabhupada spoke and we have to have a balanced understanding so that we can represent our founder Acharya properly and represent properly the tradition that he brought to us.
Does that answer the question? Thank you very much.