The World as Virtual Reality (SB 9.2.10-14)

TRANSCRIPT:  Srimad-Bhagavatam, Canto 9, Chapter 2, Text 10–14. “The World as Virtual Reality.” Philadelphia – August 26, 1993 / (703)

Chapter two: I’ll read up to that text, and then we’ll go through that text responsively… because we have listed here 10 through 14. What did you do, up to nine last time? Because that has a purport.

Response:  Yes.

And so, okay. I’ll first read texts 10 through 13. Text 10:  

evaṁ śaptas tu guruṇā

pratyagṛhṇāt kṛtāñjaliḥ

adhārayad vrataṁ vīra

ūrdhva-retā muni-priyam

Translation:  

When the hero Pṛṣadhra was thus cursed by his spiritual master, he accepted the curse with folded hands. Then, having controlled his senses, he took the vow of brahmacarya, which is approved by all great sages.

How, when he was trying to kill the tiger. Okay, texts 11-13:

vāsudeve bhagavati

sarvātmani pare ’male

ekāntitvaṁ gato bhaktyā

sarva-bhūta-suhṛt samaḥ

 

vimukta-saṅgaḥ śāntātmā

saṁyatākṣo ’parigrahaḥ

yad-ṛcchayopapannena

kalpayan vṛttim ātmanaḥ

 

ātmany ātmānam ādhāya

jñāna-tṛptaḥ samāhitaḥ

vicacāra mahīm etāṁ

jaḍāndha-badhirākṛtiḥ

Translation:  

Thereafter, Pṛṣadhra gained relief from all responsibilities, became peaceful in mind, and established control over all his senses. Being unaffected by material conditions, being pleased with whatever was available by the grace of the Lord to maintain body and soul together, and being equal toward everyone, he gave full attention to the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Vāsudeva, who is the transcendental Supersoul, free from material contamination. Thus Pṛṣadhra, fully satisfied in pure knowledge, always keeping his mind on the Supreme Personality of Godhead, achieved pure devotional service to the Lord and began traveling all over the world, without affection for material activities, as if he were deaf, dumb and blind.

So, text 14 translation:  

With this attitude, Pṛṣadhra became a great saint, and when he entered the forest and saw a blazing forest fire, he took this opportunity to burn his body in the fire. Thus he achieved the transcendental, spiritual world.  

Please repeat: 

With this attitude, Pṛṣadhra became a great saint, and when he entered the forest and saw a blazing forest fire, he took this opportunity to burn his body in the fire. Thus he achieved the transcendental, spiritual world.  

Purport by Śrīla Prabhupāda:  

The Lord says in Bhagavad-gītā 4.9:

janma karma ca me divyam

evaṁ yo vetti tattvataḥ

tyaktvā dehaṁ punar janma

naiti mām eti so ’rjuna

One who knows the transcendental nature of My appearance and activities does not, upon leaving the body, take his birth again in this material world, but attains My eternal abode, O Arjuna.” Pṛṣadhra, because of his karma, was cursed to take his next birth as a śūdra, but because he took to saintly life, specifically concentrating his mind always upon the Supreme Personality of Godhead, he became a pure devotee. Immediately after giving up his body in the fire, he reached the spiritual world, as mentioned in Bhagavad-gītā (mām eti), as a result of his devotional situation. Devotional service performed by thinking of the Supreme Personality of Godhead is so powerful that although Pṛṣadhra was cursed he avoided the terrible consequence of becoming a śūdra and instead returned home, back to Godhead. As stated in Brahma-saṁhitā (5.54):

yas tv indra-gopam athavendram aho sva-karma-

bandhānurūpa-phala-bhājanam ātanoti

karmāṇi nirdahati kintu ca bhakti-bhājāṁ

govindam ādi-puruṣaṁ tam ahaṁ bhajāmi

[5:21]

Those who engage in devotional service are unaffected by the results of their material activities. Otherwise, everyone, from the smallest microbe up to the King of heaven, Indra, is subject to the laws of karma. A pure devotee, being always engaged in the service of the Lord, is exempt from these laws. 

om ajñāna-timirāndhasya

jñānāñjana-śalākayā

cakṣur unmīlitaṁ yena

tasmai śrī-gurave namaḥ 

 

śrī-caitanya-mano-'bhīṣṭaṁ sthāpitaṁ yena bhū-tale

svayaṁ rūpaḥ kadā mahyaṁ dadāti sva-padāntikam

[Translation]

With this attitude, Pṛṣadhra became a great saint, and when he entered the forest and saw a blazing forest fire, he took this opportunity to burn his body in the fire. Thus he achieved the transcendental, spiritual world.

So, [unclear] here deals with the descendents of Manu. So this is actually related to the whole question of the origin of human beings because these persons, such as Pṛṣadhra, are sons of Vaivasvata Manu. So they’re living on the earth, and they are human beings. However, Vaivasvata Manu is the son of Vivasvān, who is the sun-god. So, the body of Vivasvān is not constructed in the same way as a human body. His body is built so that he can live in the sun.  In fact, he’s the source of energy in the sun globe. So the body of Vivasvān, Śrīla Prabhupāda has pointed out, is predominantly made of the fire element. So if he appeared here on the earth and exhibited his full energy, then he’d burn up the earth, as a matter of fact. So nonetheless, Vivasvān has a definite body, basic human bodily form, and one of his sons was Vaivasvata Manu. So, he had several different sons, and, of course, that’s the… they are being discussed in this part of the Bhāgavatam. One of his sons was Ikṣvāku, who is the founder of the dynasty of kings called the Sūrya-vaṁśa. 

So, another one is Pṛṣadhra. So the story of Pṛṣadhra is being mentioned here. So it’s interesting to see that he’s living on the earth in human form. He was being asked to apparently guide the cows by his spiritual master, and accidentally he killed a cow, taking it to be a tiger  And so let’s see, his guru was Vasiṣṭha, in fact, who is a great ṛṣi. And so, Vasiṣṭha cursed him to become a śūdra. So this was not a very good thing for him. So in due course of time, according to this karma, Pṛṣadhra would have taken birth as a śūdra. And, in that case, he probably would have committed more sinful activities due to association as a śūdra, and thus, he would have become more and more entangled in material existence. Of course, even as a kṣatriya, there was danger of becoming entangled in material existence. And you can see from the fact that he accidentally killed the cow that there’s this kind of danger at all times in the material world. Basically, material existence is extremely dangerous because one thing can lead to another. Because of accidentally killing the cow, you become a śūdra; and then as a śūdra, you associate with someone who’s a drunkard, let’s say, and then you also become a drunkard; and then you wind up taking an even more degraded birth; and eventually you wind up in some hellish condition of life. So, that can happen to people. 

[10:27]   

And in fact, we can see even within one human life, people can become degraded very easily. First a person may start out in a very auspicious situation in life, and through bad association they take to intoxication with drugs, illicit sex, and so forth, and they wind up in a very degraded condition. So, if a person degrades their consciousness, their next body will be chosen appropriately. So, the situation in the material world is indeed dangerous. So this Pṛṣadhra apparently understood that, and he took the opportunity of being cursed by Vasiṣṭha to completely terminate his material existence by becoming a devotee of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. So of course, one interesting point is that, at the very beginning of the dynasties descending from the sun-god, there was knowledge of devotional service to the Supreme Personality of Godhead. So that knowledge was there in the beginning. Periodically, that knowledge is reinstated in human society, but, in the course of time, the knowledge tends to be destroyed as a result of material developments. And so, periodically, Kṛṣṇa makes arrangements for knowledge of devotional service to the Supreme Lord to be introduced into human society. So, Pṛṣadhra took to this. And this involved controlling his senses, giving up everything except what is essential for maintaining the body, and meditating on the Supreme Lord. So, it says, he gave… 

…being unaffected by material conditions, being pleased by whatever was available by the grace of the Lord to maintain body and soul together, and being equal toward everyone he gave full attention to the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Vyāsadeva.  

So another factor here is this phrase “being equal to everyone.” So another problem that can occur in the matter of pursuing devotional service is that one will become entangled in difficult inter-relationships with other persons. So one can quarrel with people and so forth. So Pṛṣadhra also avoided that – he simply related to everyone with equanimity. And so he was able to focus his mind on Kṛṣṇa. So, when he had attained an advanced devotional state as a result of doing this, it says here that he took the opportunity to leave his body in the forest fire. The indication is that he didn’t try to save himself.  

There are other cases where things like that have happened. For example, there’s the story of Vṛtrāsura. Vṛtrāsura – this is also a story of the curse, actually – he had, in his previous life, this personality was King Citraketu. So, the story is that King Citraketu had some fantastic number of queens – he was one of these exceedingly opulent kings – but he wasn’t able to have a son, so apparently he was sterile. And this was not very good because a person following the varṇāśrama-dharma in the role of a king should definitely have a son in order to continue the dynasty of kings, and also the son will be able to perform the śrāddha ceremony for the father after his death. And as a result of that he becomes saved from the consequences of bad karma.  So, he wanted a son but couldn’t get one. 

[15:32]

So finally, let’s see, what was it… I think it was Aṅgirā Muni. One of those – was it Aṅgirā? – came to him, and in due course gave him the benediction to have a son. So, he obtained a son from one of his queens. As a result, the others became jealous and poisoned the son. So he died, and the result was that there was incredible lamentation. King Citraketu became totally devastated by the fact that his son had died. The queens who had poisoned him also were crying and everything, so as to keep up a good front.  

So then, Aṅgirā Muni came back, and I think he was accompanied by Nārada, wasn’t he? I think Nārada Muni came with him at that point and explained to him the full principle of devotional service to the Supreme Lord. And, at this point, Citraketu was willing to listen because he was in a state of material lamentation. He wasn’t thinking at that point of material enjoyment, whereas, previously he was so attached to the idea of having a son that the concept of devotional service would not have been particularly appealing to him. So at this point, in which his material fortunes took a definite downturn, he had the good fortune of receiving instruction in devotional service, and so he took advantage of that. And, as a result, he was actually able to obtain the darśana of Lord Saṅkarṣaṇa, and he became a great devotee. However, then, the thing that happened with him was that he was traveling around the universe in a vimāna. Interestingly enough, he was accompanied by women, but they were all chanting the holy names of the Lord. So, his karma was still manifest in that sense, apparently. 

But in any case, he came into the region of Lord Śiva and saw that Pārvatī, or Durga, was sitting on the lap of Lord Śiva, and so he made some joking remark about this – how Lord Śiva was attached to his wife or something like that  And this wasn’t actually intended as an offense. And Lord Śiva wasn’t offended, but Pārvatī was definitely offended by this, so she cursed him that he would become an asura. And actually King Citraketu accepted the curse – he didn’t become greatly aggrieved and start crying or anything like that. But he accepted the curse, and in due course he was born as Vṛtrāsura. So the story there is that, let’s see, well, Indra had been getting into some trouble. You may have heard about Indra. He’s the [audio gap] the devas, so, he occupies an extremely opulent position. So because of his great material opulence, even though he’s a devotee of Lord Viṣṇu, he has a tendency to fall into some unfortunate material activities. And so, on this particular occasion, he had killed his guru. His guru was the son of a demigod named Tvaṣṭā. Tvaṣṭā, being rather angry at this, performed a sacrifice in which he summoned up from the fire of sacrifice a being who would become the enemy of Indra. So, in pronouncing the mantra to summon up this being, he, unfortunately, mispronounced it slightly, and instead he summoned up a being of whom Indra would be the enemy. So, this was Vṛtrāsura. So it’s interesting that powerful beings can be summoned up from fire if you know how to do it.  

[20:16]

Actually, there’s a system behind this – the virtual reality concept as applied to the universe.  Has anyone here heard of virtual realities? Who hasn’t? Okay, anyway. A virtual reality is a world created in a computer. What you do is set up programs which calculate everything that goes into a particular environment. For example, consider this room. You could have the computer calculate the shape and form of every different item in the room – this microphone, pillars, the ceiling fans, everything. And then you have a sensory hookup, so that the senses of a person are channeled into the sense of a body within that environment. So the person sees as though he’s in that body. So, the way it’s done right now is rather crude. Basically, the person wears goggles which have TV screens that come in front of the eyes so that… then the computer is programmed to compute the scene from the point of view of the eyes in this body inside the virtual reality. And those images are placed on the TV screens, so the person sees what he would see if, in fact, he was in that virtual body. So, the… then apparatus is set up so the movements of the person’s head and his arms and his hands and so forth are recorded by the computer and used to control the movements of the virtual body. So, the result is, when he turns his head, what he sees is what he would see if he was in the virtual body and he turned his head. Or when he reaches out with his hand, what he feels is what he would feel if he was reaching out in the virtual environment in that virtual body. So this creates the illusion that you're in the virtual body. So – and it works pretty well. 

So, the result of this is that, once you’re hooked up with the virtual reality system, you seem to be in a body in this virtual reality, but that’s not actually your body. So, you have the illusion that you’re a particular body, but actually you aren’t.  So, the point then is, actually, we’re already in a virtual reality; namely, this material universe. In fact, it’s even described in the same way because this material universe is referred to as the world of māyā, and māyā means illusion. Well, “virtual” in “virtual reality” means that it’s an illusory reality; it doesn’t really exist. However, although it doesn’t really exist, the computer exists which is used to create the virtual reality. If you didn’t have that computer, then you couldn’t have the virtual reality So similarly, this world of illusion, or māyā, is created by, you could call, the ultimate super-computer, which is Kṛṣṇa’s external energy. So this external energy generates all these illusory forms, and the senses of the conditioned souls are linked up with temporary bodies created out of this illusory energy of Kṛṣṇa – mama māyā duratyayā. So, Kṛṣṇa says this energy of mine is extremely difficult to overcome. So actually, you can see, if you had a person projected into a virtual reality generated through the computer, it would also be rather difficult for the person to overcome that because he would be stuck in it.  

[25:00]  

Actually, if the person was completely hooked up with the virtual reality, then any movement he made with his body would simply become a movement of the virtual body in the virtual reality.  So there would be no way to get out, because how would you get out? There is no exit door from virtual reality into this reality. Everywhere you go, you’re just in the virtual reality, and conditions could become unpleasant there. It might be interesting at first, but then you might get into difficult situations. This would be an excellent method of torturing people. Anyway, so the point then is, actually, we are in virtual reality right now. So, I started the virtual reality discussion when I came to this point of creating bodies out of fires by pronouncing mantras, because one may tend to think that sounds pretty fantastic. I mean, how would that work? But one thing you can see with computers is that, just with even an ordinary computer, you just type in a command and hit the return key and immediately all kinds of things start happening with the computer.  Like, if you’re running WordStar, you type WS, hit the return key, and now the WordStar processor comes up, and you can edit your files or whatever. So, that means that, with computers, mantras are effective. That is, by producing a certain word, the whole system responds in a very definite way. So the universe is also set up like that because, in fact, this universe, you could say, is like the ultimate supercomputer. 

And just as a computer has a programmer, so this universe also has a programmer. Actually, there’s a series of programmers who work at different levels within the universe. So actually, Mahā-Viṣṇu is the ultimate programmer for all the different universes, and he has his assistants.  In this universe, Lord Brahmā does a lot of the programming, you might say. He’s the systems analyst for this universe and so on. So, one of the consequences of this is that words can have an effect, assuming that you have the appropriate password or status. With a computer, actually the way many operating systems are set up, before you can use the system, you have to type in an appropriate password, which is supposed to be secret. Normally, this password is only given to a person who has obtained some access to the computer. For example, you may have to pay a large sum of money, and then you obtain access. Or, maybe you will be on the student body of the university, and because you’ve signed up for a certain programming course, then you get so many hours access to the computer at a certain level and so on. So the access to the computer can be at various levels. There would, say, be student access in which you can use it for a certain number of hours a week, and you have access to certain files only, and then, the professor will have much greater access to the computer. And then, the person who is in charge of the whole computer facility will have access to all the files. He can do anything. In fact, in the Unix operating system, he’s called the super-user.  

So, I think, whoever designed this Unix operating system probably knew something about Kṛṣṇa consciousness. It could happen. Because that position corresponds to the Supersoul in the universe. The Supersoul has total access to the whole system. Different demigods have partial access. Persons who acquire mystic powers, they would be like, say, a student who gets reasonably high level access. And then persons of bad karma, who don’t have much power, have an extremely limited access to the operating system. So this demigod, Tvaṣṭā, had a fairly high level of access. So he was able to create bodies simply by pronouncing mantras. And it’s not that the word itself just creates the body, but, by speaking the appropriate word, because he had the appropriate access to the system, the system would go into action, according to the… ultimately, to the potency of Lord Viṣṇu, and the appropriate body would be created. Of course, if you do this, you have to give the right instruction, and Tvaṣṭā, in fact, mispronounced the mantra slightly. So the result was that an extremely powerful body was produced with the destiny that Indra would be the destroyer of this body, instead of this body being the destroyer of Indra. 

[30:40]

So Citraketu, because he had been cursed by Durga to become an asura, his soul and subtle body was placed in this body generated by Tvaṣṭā. So there’s a universal management system which places souls in appropriate bodies. And you can see that this has to be quite a sophisticated system because consider the number of bodies that are dying at any given moment. So every time a body dies, the soul and subtle body and that body had to be placed in some new body. So at the same time, you can consider the birth rate throughout the entire universe. Bodies in different forms are continually being born, so that means souls have to be supplied. So there’s a continual transfer of souls from bodies that are dying to bodies that are being born, and this has to be done according to the karma of those souls. So, it’s quite a complex managerial problem. So, there are demigods who are involved with this. So, Citraketu’s soul and subtle body was placed within the body of Vṛtrāsura, and so he now became Vṛtrāsura. So Citraketu, though, was a pure devotee. And because he was a pure devotee, even though he was in the body of a demon, he still had devotional consciousness. So it turned out, though, that he was the leader of the asuras. And so, the natural thing that you do, if you’re the leader of the asuras, is that you attack Indra, who is the leader of the demigods.

Because it seems that for hundreds of millions of years there have been cosmic battles between the devas and the asuras. It’s the ultimate Star Wars scenario. So, actually, some of these science fiction ideas actually come from the Vedic literature, ultimately. They come from various routes. Some of them come into European folklore and so forth, and they wind up in modern day science fiction. But, ultimately, they’re coming from the Vedic literature. So, for thousands and millions… hundreds of millions of years, the forces of light have been battling the forces of darkness. So it’s the battle of the devas and the asuras, so this is going on. Periodically, there are consequences down here, on the earth. For example, occasionally, when the asuras have been defeated in the heavens, they have decided to get revenge by trashing the earth planet.  

This has happened a couple of times. For example, on one occasion, the Dānavas were defeated in the heavenly planets, and they instituted a program of coming to the earth at night. Actually, they set up a base within the ocean, and they would come out at night and kill saintly persons – persons trying to engage in religious practices. So, they would go to  at night and kill all the monks and sages and so forth. And what they would do, it was described, they would drain all of the fluids out of the body, and also the marrow from their bones, and just leave a desiccated corpse, which would be found during the morning. So they were pursuing this policy. And people were becoming horrified by this. In fact, it was described that people were heading for the hills. Some people were even living behind waterfalls, it was described, in order to hide, but it didn’t help. So anyway, ultimately the demigods had to come and intervene and deal with the problem.  

[35:10] 

Hmm, that leads to yet another story; namely, the story of the draining of the ocean. Going back to Vṛtrāsura – Vṛtrāsura, who was actually King Citraketu, engaged in a battle with Indra, and he actually forced Indra to kill him. This was the starting point for this story because Pṛṣadhra took advantage of the forest fire to get rid of his body because he knew, at that point, he would go back to Godhead. And there was nothing further to do with his body in this world, so he took the opportunity to eliminate it. So Vṛtrāsura did a very similar thing. He attacked Indra and forced Indra to kill him. Now, the ironic thing that happened there was that Indra understood from what Vṛtrāsura was saying that Vṛtrāsura was actually a pure devotee. So, naturally, at this point, when Indra realized this, he didn’t want to kill him. But Vṛtrāsura forced him to do it anyway, and also chastised him for being such a materialist because Indra had, in fact, gotten into considerable trouble due to his material activities  So Vṛtrāsura gave him a thorough-going lecture on the evils of material activities, and then forced Indra to kill him with his thunderbolt weapon. And, as a result of that, because Indra had killed a pure devotee, he really got some bad karmic consequences. So, these are some of the difficulties involved in being Indra.  

So, anyway, I guess I’ll tell you what happened with those demons that were coming out at night and killing people. They were hiding in the ocean and had a base underneath the sea, so the demigods came down to deal with the situation. And they said: Well, we have to drain the ocean in order to gain access to these demons. So they approached the sage, Agastya Muni, and he, at their request, drank the ocean. So, the ocean was removed, and then they were able to attack the Kāliya Dānavas – that was the particular group of asuras who were engaged in these activities. The problem then was that the ocean was gone, so they asked Agastya Muni to restore the ocean. But he said: I’m sorry, I can’t do that.  I’ve digested that water.  So, you’ll have to find some other expedient for restoring the ocean. So, I just thought I’d mention that story. Ultimately, the ocean was restored when the Ganges came down to the earth – that is described. 

Interesting point, though, is, according to a modern scientific understanding, it’s understood that the Mediterranean sea was once completely dry. Now, I don’t know if that corresponds to the same draining of the ocean, but what they’ve done is, with ships, they’ve dropped, basically, a hollow pipe down to the sea bottom, which takes a core of the strata on the sea bottom. And they found that all across the floor of the Mediterranean sea there are extremely thick salt deposits of the kind you find in deserts. So, the conclusion they come to is it looks as though the entire Mediterranean sea was a desert at one time. And also, when they look – when they use echo-sounding in the same Nile valley, they found there’s a tremendous canyon beneath the eluvial deposits in the Nile valley, bigger than the Grand Canyon, which would indicate that the Nile river was flowing through a huge canyon right down to the bottom of the Mediterranean at one time.    

[39:41]  

Also, I was checking not too long ago… I’m living in San Diego, so I happened to get some map showing the coast… showing the ocean floor off the coast of California. And it’s interesting that there are canyons going as far as two miles… to two miles depth off the coast of California. And the geologists analyzing that… well, there’s a book in which some geologists were trying to explain what could have been the cause of these canyons. And so they considered various possibilities and concluded the most likely explanation for the existence of these canyons is that they were cut by rivers. But since they go down to two miles below sea level, that means the ocean would have had to have been two miles lower at that time. So anyway, the point being there, that some of the fantastic things you read about in the Vedic literature might just turn out to be true. We actually live in a pretty fantastic world, and the conditions that we happen to see today have not always prevailed. At different times over many, many millions of years the conditions have been quite different.  

So I’ll stop there. Any questions or comments? Yeah?

Question:  [unclear]

Answer:  It disappeared?

Q:  Yeah.

A:  Does that mean that it just – its radio failed?  Or… 

Q:  [unclear]  

A:  Well, there are various possibilities. Now, the simplest, mundane explanation would be that one tiny little wire in the satellite – due, perhaps, to repeated heating and cooling or something like that – snapped, and, as a result, now the satellite doesn’t work. That would be one explanation. That can happen when you spend a billion dollars on a satellite, but I don’t know.  So now, another possibility is that someone removed it. Of course, another possibility is that they don’t have a satellite out there. The question is, what is the actual truth and how can you find out. It’s not so easy to find out the truth about some of these things. But, so, this was a satellite that was supposed to orbit Mars? Hmm, well, okay.  

Q:  [unclear]

A:   Prabhupāda had some doubts about that. Now, on the one hand, to get, let’s say, a metal object to travel over x number of millions of miles in space should be possible in principle. Because, if you get it going at a certain speed, then it eventually should cross the designated distance, assuming that you can aim it properly so that it gets to its destination. However, there are other factors involved in space travel. One is that there are other beings who have control over what is going on out in space, and they will not necessarily allow you to send something out there. Specifically, demigods are in control of the different things that are going on in outer space. That was the point made by Śrīla Prabhupāda. He made the point that, for example, to go to the moon planet, certain karma is required. So, if you don’t have the karma, then you won’t be allowed to go. It’s the same sort of thing that I was saying about the computer operating system. If you have paid enough money, then you can gain access to the computer, so you’ll be given a certain password, and then you can use it. Otherwise, you can’t do that. So Śrīla Prabhupāda made the point that the persons with bad karma would not be able to travel into the heavens and visit other planets and so forth. So, that was the point that he made. Apart from that, to cover the distance should be possible.  

Q:  [unclear]

A:  It is necessary to explain what the real truth is. That’s what you’re faced with, because that is, in fact, the basic problem with the modern scientific situation – that extensive propaganda is made that, quite frankly, contradicts everything in the Bhāgavatam. Not just… there’s not just the question of whether we went to the moon or not.  That’s one question, but practically every single thing that you can read in the Bhāgavatam is contradicted by modern science. So people are educated according to modern science. So then, naturally, when they read about these stories in the Bhāgavatam, including nearly everything that I was talking about in the class today, then they will tend to think [cuts off abruptly]