Your authority is America and my authority is Sastra

Guest: I want to know one thing, Prabhupada. You have just said that on the Moon there is a cold atmosphere and there are still living entities there? You see? But what the Americans have said… Of course, they have sent men there, different rockets there, satellites…

Prabhupada: So I understand. Your authority is America, and my authority is sastra. That is the difference.

Guest: But they went to the Moon.

Prabhupada: That is the difference. That means your authority is America. You say through the words of the American. You have not experienced. Your position: you have no experience. My position: I have no experience. But you accept the Americans, authority, and I accept the sastra as authority. That is the difference.

Guest: This I want to know the difference, whether it is true or not.

Prabhupada: That is up to you whether you accept American or the sastra. That is up to you. But you cannot say because you have learned from America, therefore it is correct.

Guest: But they have revealed to the world that there is no living entity there, but the sastra says there are living entities on the Moon.

Prabhupada: Why? Reason does not say so. Why there is no living entity? We see living entity are everywhere. Why you say that there is no living entity?

Guest: But when these fellows have come to the Moon.

Prabhupada: These fellows… Therefore your authority are these fellows. These fellows will say something now, and after ten years they will change. These fellows are like that.

Guest: According to science it is said that…

Prabhupada: “According to science” means American science or Russian science. That’s all.

Guest: The sun, you see, is a ball of fire. Nothing can exist there, according to the laws of physics.

Prabhupada: No. We have got information—even in the fire there are living entities. Why? Because, in the Bhagavad-gita you will find. The constitutional position of the living entity is that it does not become burned. So how you can say that in the fire? What is the verse? In the second chapter there is the description of the living entity. Find out.

Discipe: Acchedyo?

Prabhupada: Acchedyo ’yam adahyo ’yam.

Disciple: acchedyo ’yam adahyo ’yam akledyo ’sosya eva ca nityam sarva-gatah sthanur acalo’yam sanatanah.

“This individual soul is unbreakable and insoluable and can be neither burned nor dried. He is everlasting, all-pervading, unchangeable, immovable and eternally the same.”

Prabhupada: So if he is all-pervading and if he is unburnable, then how it is possible that in the fire he does not exist? It cannot be burned, and it is everywhere. Sarva-ga. And we find also when we go on the sea beach — within the sand there is life. Now it is up to you to accept the authority of Bhagavad-gita or authority of the Americans. That is your… We follow the authorities of Bhagavad-gita. Adahyo ’yam: “It cannot be burned.” And from reason also, there is… In the water there are living entities; in the air there are living entities; in the earth there are living entities. So the material elements are five: earth, water, fire, air and sky. So if everywhere there is living entities, fire is also one of the material elements. Why not in the fire? What is the reason? And Bhagavad-gita says, adahyo ’yam: “It is never burned.” So why do you think like that, that in the fire there is no living entity? Therefore they have been described as blind. Andha yathandhair upaniyamanah. They are blind, and they are leading other blind men. But they do not know what are the laws of nature, how things are going.

Srimad-Bhagavatam 7.5.31
by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
Mauritius, October 4, 1975

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