"Building Bridges" (SB 1.18.16)

TRANSCRIPT:  Srimad-Bhagavatam, Canto 1, Chapter 18, Text 16. “Building Bridges.” Potomac – September 23, 1991 / (701)

Group Chanting: 

Oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya

Oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya

Oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya

Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, Canto One, Chapter 18, Text 16 – Translation:  

O Sūta Gosvāmī, please describe those topics of the Lord by which Mahārāja Parīkṣit, whose intelligence was fixed on liberation, attained the lotus feet of the Lord, who is the shelter of Garuḍa, the king of birds. Those topics were vibrated by the son of Vyāsa [Śrīla Śukadeva].  

Please repeat:  

O Sūta Gosvāmī, please describe those topics of the Lord by which Mahārāja Parīkṣit, whose intelligence was fixed on liberation, attained the lotus feet of the Lord, who is the shelter of Garuḍa, the king of birds. Those topics were vibrated by the son of Vyāsa [Śrīla Śukadeva].  

Purport by Śrīla Prabhupāda:  

There is some controversy amongst the students on the path of liberation. Such transcendental students are known as impersonalists and devotees of the Lord. The devotee of the Lord worships the transcendental form of the Lord, whereas the impersonalist meditates upon the glaring effulgence, or the bodily rays of the Lord, known as the brahmajyoti. Here in this verse it is said that Mahārāja Parīkṣit attained the lotus feet of the Lord by instructions in knowledge delivered by the son of Vyāsadeva, Śrīla Śukadeva Gosvāmī. Śukadeva Gosvāmī was also an impersonalist in the beginning, as he himself has admitted in the Bhāgavatam (2.1.9), but later on he was attracted by the transcendental pastimes of the Lord and thus became a devotee. Such devotees with perfect knowledge are called mahā-bhāgavatas, or first-class devotees.

There are three classes of devotees, namely the prākṛta, madhyama and mahā-bhāgavata. The prākṛta, or third-class devotees, are temple worshipers without specific knowledge of the Lord and the Lord’s devotees. The madhyama, or the second-class devotee, knows well the Lord, the Lord’s devotees, the neophytes and the non-devotees also. But the mahā-bhāgavata, or the first-class devotee, sees everything in relation with the Lord and the Lord present in everyone’s relation. The mahā-bhāgavata, therefore, does not make any distinction, particularly between a devotee and non-devotee. Mahārāja Parīkṣit was such a mahā-bhāgavata devotee because he was initiated by a mahā-bhāgavata devotee, Śukadeva Gosvāmī. He was equally kind, even to the personality of Kali, and what to speak of others.

So there are many instances in the transcendental histories of the world of an impersonalist who has later become a devotee. But a devotee has never become an impersonalist. This very fact proves that on the transcendental steps, the step occupied by a devotee is higher than the step occupied by an impersonalist. It is also stated in the Bhagavad-gītā (12.5) that persons stuck on the impersonal step undergo more sufferings than achievement of reality. Therefore knowledge imparted by Śukadeva Gosvāmī unto Mahārāja Parīkṣit helped him attain the service of the Lord. And this stage of perfection is called apavarga, or the perfect stage of liberation. Simple knowledge of liberation is material knowledge. Actual freedom from material bondage is called liberation, but attainment of the transcendental service of the Lord is called the perfect stage of liberation. Such a stage is attained by knowledge and renunciation, as we have already explained (Bhāg. 1.2.12), and perfect knowledge, as delivered by Śrīla Śukadeva Gosvāmī, results in the attainment of the transcendental service of the Lord.

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

[5:11]

Translation:

O Sūta Gosvāmī, please describe those topics of the Lord by which Mahārāja Parīkṣit, whose intelligence was fixed on liberation, attained the lotus feet of the Lord, who is the shelter of Garuḍa, the king of birds. Those topics were vibrated by the son of Vyāsa [Śrīla Śukadeva].

So, Prabhupāda has given some description of different classes of devotees and the nature of the liberated state of existence. So, it’s described that there are jīva souls. Jīva souls are in two different basic conditions of life. There are those who are absorbed in the material energy. Their consciousness is oriented toward enjoying material nature. And there are those who are aiming to become freed from material bondage. Those are two basic categories of the jīva souls.

So, becoming free from material bondage is liberation, or mokṣa, which Śrīla Prabhupāda is referring to here. So, at one level, there is merely the idea of liberation. On an intellectual level, one can consider the basic idea of the soul as something distinct from the material energy, and one can imagine some condition in which the soul could become free from entanglement in material energy. So that's liberation on the conceptual platform. However, a person who understands certain ideas about liberation is not necessarily liberated. He merely has some ideas. So, this can apply both to impersonalists and to devotees. One can simply have the idea of liberation. Actually, the idea has to come before the practical realization. So, Śrīla Prabhupāda also distinguishes here between the impersonalists and personalists. So, there’s the question of what the state of liberation really consists of. 

So, one conception is that the liberated state must be, in some sense, the opposite of the materially conditioned state. One sees that in the materially conditioned state there are variegated forms and activities and so forth. One sees that there is personal existence: there are people walking around with bodily shapes, and they have names and egos and so forth.  So, one sees that that is going on in the material world So, one can then imagine that: Well, a liberated state would be one in which one gets away from this material condition. So, that would mean entering into a state of consciousness which is the opposite somehow of the material condition, which would mean that there would be no variegatedness. You wouldn’t have people with bodily shapes and so forth. You wouldn’t have names, forms, and so on. So, this is the idea of negation of material aspects of reality in an attempt to come up with some sort of conception of what a liberated state would be like. So, there’s even a technical name for that; it’s called neti neti, which means not this and not that. This is a very common process of thinking. For example, in medieval Christian tradition the same thing was there, and they called it via negativa, which is the same thing as neti neti.  So, that’s one idea.

[10:10] 

Then there’s the idea that there’s something called the brahmajyoti, which one hears about – a kind of effulgence or light, which is somehow beyond the material existence. So, by combining these two lines of thought – the idea that there’s this thing called the brahmajyoti plus the idea of negating variegated form – you come up with the concept that liberation means to leave the state of variegated form and enter into a uniform condition of oneness, which is somehow associated with light, with this brahmajyoti. So, that’s the conception of impersonal liberation.  So, there’s a lot one can say about this. This concept is very popular. One thing about it is that it’s compatible with practically any other concept that you may have. You can always suppose that, beyond the world as you conceive of it, there could be this state of undifferentiated light that you could somehow enter into. One could imagine this. This state of light does not provide any direct evidence of its existence within the material world. Actually, those who delve into the impersonal philosophy would argue that it couldn’t do so because any evidence that it gave of its existence would have to be variegated evidence, that is, it would have to have form. And, as such, that would simply be material, and it wouldn’t actually be this impersonal reality that one speaks of. 

Looking at it in a more sophisticated way, you could see that this impersonal reality couldn’t actually be light after all because light, after all, is a variegated material phenomenon, which is the opposite of dark – so you have duality there. So, this brahmajyoti couldn’t really be jyoti, and so you couldn’t expect it to give any evidence of itself. So, therefore, in particular, this impersonal conception is completely compatible with, say, modern scientific ideas, simply because it’s compatible with any ideas whatsoever. So, it’s compatible with scientific ideas, in particular. So, this idea of impersonal liberation is very popular, and it’s intellectually respectable. You will find many people at universities, for example, who accept some form of impersonal philosophy. Very often they acquire this from some society promoting advaita-vedānta, and so on and so forth. And you can also see that this impersonal concept is pervasive in practically all different forms of religion. I have just been looking into some descriptions in the Catholic tradition of appearances of the Virgin Mary. It was very interesting. There were – I won’t go into the story because, actually, in this class I’m supposed to tell you about something else. So I’m getting to that subject as fast as I can, but there are different topics that come up here. So, anyway, this was interesting. 

There was an event in which some young children have this vision of the Virgin Mary  Anyway, at a certain point, to make a long story short, she opened up her hands over the children, and beams of light came out from her hands and bathed the children in this light. And the children realized that this light was full of God. That was the phrase that was used. And they went into some sort of state of ecstasy. So, there you have the brahman idea – brahmajyoti, to be specific – a light that conveys some realization of God. So, it was interesting to note that that was the only, let’s say, explicit form in which God entered into that whole story, which I’m not going into, of this visitation of the Virgin Mary. God appeared there as light. So, even in Christianity, in areas of Christian mysticism and so forth, it’s the same thing. You have this brahmajyoti idea.  

[15:15] 

So, anyway, going one step further, the basic philosophy of Kṛṣṇa Consciousness is that the Supreme Absolute Truth is a person. And, furthermore, there’s a hierarchy of forms going from material form, as we experience it, on up to transcendental form. So, the basic idea there is that, from the original absolute form, which would be Kṛṣṇa, different other forms are expanded. This, of course, is a very complex story also. There are the expansions of Viṣṇu tattva, śakti tattva, and so forth. On the transcendental level there are many categories of expansions of Viṣṇu. So there’s a variegated spiritual world, there’s Goloka Vṛindāvana and Vaikuṇṭha – all kinds of activities are going on there. These spiritual realms are characterized by form and variety, but at the same time, the form there is not material. The forms of Viṣṇu are eternal. In fact, time does not exist in the spiritual world in the sense that we think of it. Past, present, and future are not there in the spiritual world, but, at the same time, there are pastimes. So, how can there be pastimes if there’s no passage of time? But there’s a different kind of time, a kind of time in which you have things happening, but nothing passes away. There’s a nice description of that in the Brahma-saṁhitā.  

So in addition to the spiritual world, there’s the material world. So, in the material world there are also manifestations of form, but here you have a new element, namely time, which has the property of creation and destruction. Time has the three phases of past, present, and future.  So, the future is always coming into the present through the process of creation, and whatever there is at present is always going into the past through the process of destruction. So, the principles of creation and destruction give you past, present, and future. So, they’re characterized by the three modes of nature: goodness, passion and ignorance.  In the spiritual world you have goodness, purified goodness, or viśuddha-sattva. And, in the material world, there is also goodness, but there are two additional elements that are not available in the spiritual world, namely this passion, which corresponds to creation, and ignorance, which corresponds to annihilation, or destruction. So, that’s the situation, then, in the material world.  In the material world, everything is changing. It’s coming into being and going out of being continuously. Sometimes this is happening in a gradual and peaceful way, as happens as you gradually get older, day by day. And, on other occasions, it occurs in a more abrupt and violent fashion. For example, an atomic bomb could go off and wipe people out or something like that.  But, either way, you have this process of creation and destruction. 

So the Bhāgavatam is explaining this whole situation of both the material world and the spiritual world. The basic aim of the Bhāgavatam is to explain the relationship between what we actually see, which is material, given that we are conditioned souls, and the transcendental reality of Kṛṣṇa. In order to be devotees of Kṛṣṇa, you have to understand what Kṛṣṇa is, what His position is. To understand that, you have to understand Kṛṣṇa in relation with what we see and experience. It’s one thing if you imagine the absolute to be something totally inconceivable and beyond all concepts that can be formed, but in the case of Kṛṣṇa consciousness, that is not the situation. As far as Kṛṣṇa consciousness is concerned, there’s actually a continuum between the world as we know it and the spiritual world. Of course, there’s the old Christian statement that man is created in the image of God. And, in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, we have the same idea, actually.

This human form is ultimately existing because Kṛṣṇa has this form. This is an imitation of Kṛṣṇa’s form, made out of clay. Just as you can make a manikin that you can put in a store window, which is an imitation of the human form, it’s not a perfect imitation. The manikin is more limited than this human form that we have because, for one thing, all it can do is stand there; and it’s actually hollow, made of little plastic tubes. But, basically, it’s an imitation of the human form. So, similarly, this body, these human bodies that we have, are not like Kṛṣṇa’s body.  They’re not sat-cit-ānanda. They’re made of perishable substances, molded temporarily. But it’s an imitation of Kṛṣṇa’s form, and this imitation is there. Well, there are a number of aspects to it.  I’d better not get into all of that.  

[21:15] 

Moving on towards the point that I’m supposed to talk about: As I was saying, the important point about the Bhāgavatam is that it’s explaining the relationship between these forms we see in this world and the transcendental forms in the spiritual world. Now, that brings you to the point that it’s somewhat hard for people in modern society to understand the descriptions in the Bhāgavatam because there’s a competing world view, which is very prominent in modern society which is being provided by science. So, nowadays, science is explaining to us the nature of the world. Science is confronting this world of variegated form and categorizing everything, classifying it, and explaining what it is, how it works, and where it came from. So, this is the traditional role of religion. In particular, this is the role that is played by the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. The Bhāgavatam is explaining what the world is, how it works, where it comes from. However, the way that the Bhāgavatam explains it opens up the door of liberation for human beings because, in particular, the world has a doorway, so to speak, that opens up to the spiritual world. The world is so-constructed that it is possible to go from the material state of consciousness to a purely spiritual state of consciousness. Liberation is actually possible. The spirit soul can become free from this material state of existence and go to Vaikuṇṭha, or Goloka Vṛindāvana. So, the Bhāgavatam is explaining the world in that way so as to open the door of liberation for the conditioned souls. 

Modern science also has an explanation of the world. But, in the scientific explanation of the world, there is no such thing as a doorway to liberation. That doesn’t exist. It doesn’t even enter into the conceptual picture that modern science is providing. Modern science is giving a total description of reality based on matter. I could go into detail on that, actually. Just yesterday, I was talking with this one devotee about this Stephen Hawking, who is a somewhat famous scientist. Well, Stephen Hawking has been trying to add some finishing touches to the Big Bang theory. So, what are those touches? Well, the trouble with the Big Bang theory is that it has a singularity at the beginning. This is a point where all the laws of space and time break down. And, unfortunately, it occurs right at the beginning of the whole thing. In other words, if you go backwards in time, looking at the Big Bang theory, the universe should be shrinking because they say the universe is expanding. 

So, if you imagine going back in time, the universe is shrinking, getting smaller and smaller. But everything is occurring according to the laws of physics, as you go back further and further, until you get right to the very beginning. At that point, everything breaks down because everything shrinks to a literal point. There’s no volume; there’s no distinction between particles; there’s no space. Everything totally collapses. So, it’s a bit of a problem if, at the very beginning, you’ve broken down. It’s like, you’re going to start on a journey in your automobile, but the automobile is broken-down before you start. You’re told that 10 seconds after you start that the car will work just fine. In fact, one second after you start it will work just fine. The only trouble is that, at the moment you start, it’s broken, so you can’t get anywhere. So, the Big Bang theory is like that. It can’t get started. So, that’s a bit of a flaw. And Stephen Hawking has been trying to repair the theory. And so, he came up with a way of doing it in which, as you go back in time towards the beginning of the Big Bang, time sort of swerves around mathematically, and you wind up going forward in time again. You can’t get back to the beginning the way he has it set up. So, that eliminates the problem. The beginning is sort of snipped out. So he does it in a sort of tricky mathematical way. He says: going back to the Big Bang is like talking about going north of the North Pole. You know, if you keep going north and you just keep on going, you’ll wind up going south again. If you just go over the North Pole, then you’re going south on the other side. So, he has it set up like that.  

[26:33]

One point that he made was that, if we allow the Big Bang to have a beginning, then you must ask: Well, what’s on the other side of the beginning? And he said, by definition that’s God, and he didn’t like that idea at all. So, his idea was to eliminate God. Basically, that’s the aim in modern science, and scientists have been very successful in doing that. They’ve created a very convincing picture. Now, one thing they’ve done to make this convincing picture is they have shown that all of these religious scriptures are wrong in all kinds of different ways. The idea is that wherever the scripture tells you about something that you can actually see or measure, it’s wrong, and we can show that. So, then, if that’s true, why should we believe the religious scripture when it tells you about something totally beyond your senses, something completely transcendental? Every time the religious scripture tells you about something that you can see, the scripture is wrong. So, should we believe that it’s right about things that you can’t see? So, that’s the basic position presented by modern science. That’s how science has eliminated religion. It’s a very convincing argument. People buy it all over the world. They buy it in India also, in all the universities and so forth. And, you’ll hear people in India saying: We’ve had enough of religion in this country. This is what has held us back. Look at all this poverty. If only we could get rid of religion and have science, then the problems would be solved. So, this is the viewpoint that people have accepted. So, it is quite a convincing argument.  

It is, however, a false argument because although science, as it exists today, can do a lot of things, there are what you might say are some riders attached to the bills being passed in the scientific legislature, if I could make an analogy. You may know that, in Congress, if you want to pass some legislation which isn’t popular, then what you do is you write that legislation into another bill which you know is going to pass because it’s very popular for some reason. Then, when that bill is passed, your unpopular legislation gets passed along with it. It’s a standard trick that is used in Congress. So, in science, a similar thing has been done. Everyone knows that certain things in science work. For example, radios work, computers work, automobiles, airplanes, and so forth, and so scientists have been able to understand something about the world in a way that is practical and realistic. So, what they do then is attach onto their exposition of all these things that work certain theories that actually don’t work. But you accept the theory because of all the things they’ve done that do work. Basically, that’s what’s going on in science.

[30:02]  

However, this isn’t obvious. It’s not a simple matter because scientists have put their case together very effectively, and after all, they’ve been working on it now for about 300 years. And there are quite a large number of scientists who have been working on it for this entire period of time, especially within the 19th and 20th centuries. But if you look at the different theories that are prominent within modern science, you’ll find all kinds of things that are not actually correct.  There’s the theory of evolution, for example. Now, the theory of evolution is the replacement for the creation theory, if we can call it that, which you’ll find in the Bhāgavatam. The scientists will say that life developed gradually from matter over a long period of time and so forth. So, in the Bhāgavatam, there’s a different description that is given. According to the Bhāgavatam version, Viṣṇu first created a very highly developed life form within the nascent universe, and this was Brahmā. And then from Brahmā, other living beings were expanded. And, gradually, in a series of descending expansions, different types of living entities were developed until, finally, you wind up with the living beings on the earth: human beings, plants, animals and so forth. So, it’s a series of expansions coming down from Brahma. So this is the Vedic description.  

If you look at – just to take this theory of evolution as an example – the theory itself has many different defects, which you can understand by examining the theory, and that’s a whole subject that I won’t go into.  But even if you point out these defects, and you show that theory is incorrect, then there’s the question about showing positively that the theory of creation, if you like, presented in the Bhāgavatam is correct. Well, you can show that there’s a lot of empirical evidence that supports the picture given in the Bhāgavatam. This evidence is not something you will tend to learn about if you go to school and study science because the scientists, in fact, cannot deal with this evidence. But, nonetheless, there is a great deal of empirical evidence that supports the basic picture of creation given in the Bhāgavatam. 

Just to very briefly mention one category of evidence, there’s something broadly called psychic healing, or mystical healing. There’s a huge amount of empirical data on this. But, basically, what it involves is the power of the mind, or at least, somebody’s mind, to repair the body. So there are all kinds of various striking examples in which, for example, a person was on the verge of death from some very severe disease – advanced cancer or something like that – and suddenly they were completely cured. Their body was put back together again, basically. And how was this done? What was the agency? Well, if you look at the evidence, you’ll see that, basically, there’s a good case to be made that some subtle agency involving consciousness and intelligence was responsible for reconstructing or repairing the ailing gross physical body. So if this kind of thing is possible – and you can make a case for this; I’m not going to try and go into that here, but there’s all kinds of evidence that you can present – then it is likewise possible that the bodies could have been built in the first place by some subtle agency. And that, in fact, is precisely what the Bhāgavatam is telling us – that the gross bodies were produced from more subtle types of bodies. Actually, the present human gross bodily forms are descended from the forms of demigods. – that’s the description given in the Bhāgavatam. These demigods came from the Prajāpatis, the Prajāpatis came from Brahmā, and so on and so forth. So, an empirical case can actually be made so that, if you look at the evidence, you see that it makes sense.

[35:10]   

Now, initially, this seems perhaps strange to people. But evidence of something new always seems strange when you first hear about it. But the case can nonetheless be made. Actually, many different things that are proposed by modern science also sounded very strange when they first came up. There was a time… well, there are so many different things one can describe there. So, this is one example, dealing with the origin of life. Also, to take another thing in the Bhāgavatam, the idea that there’s a soul – this is very basic. Modern science completely denies the concept of a spirit soul that survives the death of the material body. There again, you can show on the one hand, that science is not able to explain consciousness in terms of the brain. That’s a whole subject you could go into. On the other hand, you could show that there’s a lot of evidence which backs up the Vedic version, namely, that there is a soul. For example, there is empirical evidence for reincarnation, people remembering past lives and so forth. So the basic point then is that you can make a realistic case for the validity of the basic worldview that is presented in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. And that involves showing that the worldview being presented in modern science is not completely correct. It’s not to say that it’s completely wrong, but the important point is that modern science is adopting certain theories, very important theories about the nature of reality, which are, in fact, incorrect. 

So, ultimately, for Kṛṣṇa consciousness to be accepted in the world by people in general, especially by educated people, it is necessary for this basic case to be made, that the Bhāgavatam is actually giving a correct description of reality, and that science, in certain respects, is giving an incorrect description of reality. As long as people are convinced that science is giving the correct description and the Bhāgavatam is wrong and is merely presenting old, medieval superstitions, then, of course, they’re not going to accept Kṛṣṇa consciousness. If they do want to turn to something spiritual at all, what they will do is turn to something impersonal. As I was saying in the beginning, the impersonal philosophies are compatible with science because you can always add an inconceivable Brahman to anything, whatever your viewpoint may be. But, when it comes to the philosophy of Kṛṣṇa consciousness, since Kṛṣṇa consciousness directly deals with form on every level and, in particular, deals with form on the material level – describing the creation, describing the structure of the universe, and so on and so forth– therefore, in order to make Kṛṣṇa consciousness actually acceptable to people in general, it is necessary to confront the scientific theories which are competing explanations of where all these variegated forms came from – what they are, how they work, and so forth.  So, the main point is that that can be done.

Now, what time is it, and are we going late, or – I don’t know what our time situation is.  

Question:  [unclear]

Answer:  Well, if we’re running late, I can stop this for some questions. What I’ve been saying is an introduction to some further material that I’m going to introduce, but the introduction is important also because, otherwise, one would ask why certain things should be considered. So, I’ll stop here. Tomorrow I’ll say some more also. Alright, yes, do you have a question?

[39:56]

Q:  [unclear]

A:  Hmm, yes.  

Q:  [unclear] 

A:  Well… it’s a process of development of ideas in a logical order. The question is: How does a person come to be able to, say, accept the Bhāgavatam, or understand it, to get out of this illusion. Of course, a person may have previous devotional activity and may very quickly become a very advanced devotee. We sometimes see that. A person will come to the temple and suddenly he’s very advanced in his devotional activities and understanding. That happens, and that’s due to the fact that the person had some previous devotional experience in another lifetime, but for many people that’s not the situation. So, the Bhāgavatam is giving an explanation in a step-by-step fashion. However, it is giving that explanation in the context of a total worldview which was prevailing in India traditionally over thousands of years, in which people understood quite a number of different things simply on the basis of their education as they grew up. For example, they, practically everyone, learned about the soul, and they weren’t being taught that there is no soul. Of course, there were some philosophers who (even in India) taught that there is no soul, but they were fairly much in the minority. They weren't so, so common. So, it’s a question of education in a step-by-step fashion.

So, at the present time, what science is doing is providing people with a certain education, which tends to bring them away from Kṛṣṇa consciousness. So, in order to make it easier for people to take to Kṛṣṇa consciousness, we have to change that educational situation. At least, we have to present an alternative which is fully worked out. Right now you could say that there’s an immense chasm or huge abyss, if you like, separating the picture of the world that the scientists have from the picture of the world that you have in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. There’s an enormous gap there. So, very few people on their own can cross over that gap. A person may get a copy of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam or Bhagavad-gītā. He opens it up, sees all kinds of really strange things there, closes it, and that’s all. He goes on with his life; he’s not able to jump over that huge gap. Well, we can make the gap narrower; we can make it easier for people. In fact, what we have to do is build bridges with well-paved roads on them so that you can cross over that gap easily. In fact, we even have to provide bus service across the bridges. Because this power of illusion is there, and it’s true. It even places the great demigods in illusion. But it’s also true that Kṛṣṇa sends his messengers to the material world in order to enlighten people, to bring them out of that illusion. 

So on the one hand, Kṛṣṇa is providing māyā, but He’s also providing transcendental knowledge, and, ultimately, the individual has to make his choice. But, at the same time, one doesn’t want to make it too hard for the individual to make that choice. So, right now, it’s rather difficult for the individual, say, in the United States, to choose Kṛṣṇa consciousness because it just, for most people… it’s incomprehensible. It just looks like some strange mythology, something…  Of course, socially, they’re also distanced from it, and that’s another whole aspect. So, the idea here is to build bridges, and one does this through explanation. And that can be done. When they think initially, well, the Bhāgavatam is giving a description of the world that’s so much different from the scientific description that you can never bring the two together. But as I’m, and I’m not trying to make that case here, I’m just saying that actually you can do that. There are all kinds of things that you can explain.