Why would Prabhupada quote inauthentic books like the Aquarian Gospel?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna. Prabhupada never claimed that he was a biblical scholar. He never claimed that he has done an exhaustive study of Bible.
He learned Bible based on what he heard from the Scottish Church College. And most of the quotes which he uses from the Bible are from there. And Prabhupada did not learn Quran.
It was not taught there. And so, Prabhupada practically never quotes from the Quran. So, you know, an archaic, Prabhupada never claimed that he is omniscient.
So, based on the knowledge that he acquired, he gave certain arguments and principles. When that knowledge, which has come from Pratyekshana Luman, was turned out to be wrong, then Prabhupada said that don’t use these arguments. You know, there is that book, Dialectic Spirituality.
So, that book, now it’s a condensed version of it, is produced as Beyond Doubt and Illusion. So, Prabhupada’s original idea was that he wanted to show how the Krishna conscious philosophy is the highest philosophy. And there have been many western philosophers, in their own way, great philosophers.
So, Prabhupada wanted to show how their philosophy is inadequate and Krishna conscious is the upmost philosophy. So, there were some discussions. Shamsundar Prabhu had some discussions with Prabhupada.
Hayagriva Prabhu had some discussions. And they presented those philosophies. And Prabhupada responded to their philosophies.
Now, when the devotees were about to publish that book, at that time, Narendra Saru Prabhu has a doctorate in philosophy. So, they showed this book to him. And then Narendra Saru Prabhu wrote a long letter to Prabhupada.
He said, Prabhupada, actually, you know, these philosophers, their views only have not been presented properly to you. Because, you can’t blame Shamsundar Prabhu or Hayagriva Prabhu. They were not philosophy scholars.
So, they just took some standard philosophy reference and based on that they presented the arguments. So, what happened here is, that means Prabhupada wanted to counter the misconception of those philosophers. But then, to counter their misconception, those philosophers’ points have to be presented properly.
So, if their points are not presented properly, then their refutation will also not be proper. So, now, those who don’t know anything about those philosophers and those who don’t know anything about Krishna conscious philosophy, they may read this book and think, oh, so good, all philosophers are defeated over here. Krishna conscious philosophy is right.
But, if somebody is a serious philosopher, and that person will think, hey, you are actually misrepresenting. You are misrepresenting Socrates. You are misrepresenting Freud.
You are misrepresenting Kant. You are misrepresenting all these philosophers. Because, they never made these arguments.
The point here is what? That Krishna conscious philosophy can respond to their arguments also. But, their arguments have to be presented properly. If their arguments are not presented properly, how will Prabhupada respond properly? Because, he is responding to the arguments that are being presented to him.
So, when Ravindra Sarkar wrote this letter, Prabhupada said, don’t publish this book. He said, you study those philosophers, and then you present them to me, and then we will do another book. So, then they decided not to publish the book.
But, then there was some group of devotees who were outside ISKCON. They said, you know, we will present Prabhupada’s message. Prabhupada smashed all those philosophers.
We will present that. So, then that book was given to one philosophy scholar in America, and he said, this is an unscholarly punch on the nose. He said, two scholars are having a discussion, and when they are having a discussion, suddenly, you know, one scholar just picks up, and instead of having a scholar, he starts punching the other scholar.
He said, this is not a scholarly book at all. So, then, so that’s why that Dialectic Spirituality is a book. The BBT did not publish it.
Then they edited all those conversations, and then whichever arguments of those philosophers had been presented properly, they kept those arguments, and published a condensed version called Beyond Doubt and Illusion. So, why am I giving this example? To illustrate the point that Prabhupada himself was sensitive, that if he came to know that some argument had been presented wrong to him, he did not insist on carrying on with that argument, and continue with the counter-argument. He said, correct it and present appropriately.
So, an Acharya is not omniscient. The Acharya’s perfection is that the Acharya repeats the message of Krishna. So, once Jayadvait Maharaj, he was the editor of Prabhupada, and as editor, often he had to, you know, point out, you know, sometimes some grammatical mistakes were there, some different kinds of mistakes were there.
So, one time he asked Prabhupada, Prabhupada, if a pure devotee commits mistakes, if the spiritual master commits mistakes, how do we understand it? So, now we know one of the four defects is committing mistakes. So, scripture is free from those four defects. So, then Prabhupada said, pure devotee, the spiritual master never commits mistakes.
So, then, Jayadvait Maharaj, they were on a morning walk, the other devotee said to Jayadvait, no, he was not a Swamiji at that time, he was just a Brahmachari, keep quiet, don’t ask such impertinent questions. But he wanted to ask, he said, but Prabhupada, we see practically that the spiritual master sometimes quotes the verses wrong. So, there are many cases where Prabhupada sometimes seems to quote the verse wrong.
So, then he asked Prabhupada, Prabhupada, sometimes the spiritual master quotes the verses wrong. So, and then Prabhupada says, look at me, that is material vision. That is material vision.
Satsvarupa Maharaj was there, he was also an editor. So, Satsvarupa Maharaj says, so, Prabhupada, that means that our conception of the spiritual master’s perfection is wrong. He says, Prabhupada, yes.
See, the spiritual master is perfect, in that the spiritual master repeats the message of Krishna. So, in repeating the message of Krishna, in giving the essential siddhanta, the spiritual master is perfect. But it is not that the spiritual master has to be a perfect historian, a perfect geologist, a perfect grammarian, perfect in all fields.
It is not expected. See, what to speak of from a spiritual master, the Bhagavatam says, the Bhagavatam itself may have grammatical imperfections. In each verse there can be imperfection.
In each verse there can be imperfection, but still this sound will bring about revolution. Why? Because this sound is glorifying Krishna. And Prabhupada himself writes in his purport over there.
He says, our attempt to present this great literature in a foreign language will surely fail. Prabhupada doesn’t say it’s likely to fail, we’ll fail, he says. But still, after all, it is a science of technical, it is a spiritual science of technical values.
And we hope that people will focus on the essential message. And then Prabhupada gives the example of, if a house is on fire, other people go, even if they don’t know the language, they want, there’s a house fire, come out. So what is Prabhupada saying? Prabhupada is telling us, focus on the essence.
And he admits in the things which are in the context, there may be some mistakes. But the essence is what is important. And by focusing on the essence, we keep moving steadily onwards towards Krishna and we enable others also to go on towards Krishna.
Thank you very much.