View source for Our reality is God realization. There are different stages, I mean to say, direct perception, then receiving knowledge from authority, then personal experience between the two, then above that transcendental, and then, I mean to say, spiritual

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[[Category:Transcendental]]
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[[Category:Pages Needing Audio - SHARMISTHA]]
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<h2>Conversations and Morning Walks</h2>
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<h3>1975 Conversations and Morning Walks</h3>
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Our reality is God realization. There are different stages, I mean to say, direct perception, then receiving knowledge from authority, then personal experience between the two, then above that transcendental, and then, I mean to say, spiritual. In this way we have to go, step by step.
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[[Vanisource:751008 - Interview - Durban|751008 - Interview - Durban]]
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Prabhupāda: That's all. That's all. It is going on like that. They have no standard method. We are presenting the standard method. This is Bhagavad-gītā As It Is. As it is, without any malinterpretation, we are presenting as it is. This is standard.

Bill Faill: Yes. If you begin dressing things up, they change. And the size of the movement now? Is it a growing movement, Kṛṣṇa consciousness?

Prabhupāda: Oh, yes, it is very much growing. You will be surprised that we are selling these books . . . we have got about fifty books like this, and every library, college, professor, universities, they are very much appreciative of this, because there was no such literature existing. This is the new contribution to the world.

Bill Faill: Now this American, Alpert, he came to a state of God consciousness, but he was very, very heavy on drugs. This can't be right, taking a drug.

Prabhupāda: Alfred? Just speak.

Harikeśa: He was one of the associates of Timothy Leary.

Prabhupāda: Alfred Ford?

Harikeśa: No, no, no.

Prabhupāda: Then?

Harikeśa: What is his first name?

Bill Faill: Alpert was his second name, and then he took on, you know, an Indian name.

Prabhupāda: Oh, then he is speaking of Alfred Ford.

Harikeśa: No, no, no. He is one of the people who were first into that LSD thing, and then he took up meditation in India.

Prabhupāda: Timothy?

Harikeśa: Yes. Leary was his associate. And then this other man, he took up this meditation and started to become . . .

Prabhupāda: That is also bogus. That is also bogus.

Bill Faill: I didn't like the idea of that. The book was very impressive, but I just thought, "This isn't right. You shouldn't have to lean on drugs."

Prabhupāda: No. That is . . . anything . . . if drugs can help God realization, the drug is better, I mean to say, more powerful than God.

Bill Faill: Which isn't possible.

Prabhupāda: Then how we can accept that? Drug is a material thing, chemical composition, and how it can help one, God realization? That is not possible. This is a kind of intoxication and hallucination, but it is not God realization.

Bill Faill: Do you think that the great mystics down the ages have actually seen this spark? This is what . . .

Prabhupāda: What do you mean by mystic?

Bill Faill: Well, there seem to be chaps who've had some very odd experience and always remembered it and found it very difficult to put it down in words.

Prabhupāda: Mystic means something jugglery? What do you mean by mystic?

Bill Faill: Well, it's just the name they seem to give to people who've had an experience of another level of reality.

Prabhupāda: Yes. So yes, that . . . we don't say mystic. Our reality is God realization. There are different stages, I mean to say, direct perception, then receiving knowledge from authority, then personal experience between the two, then above that transcendental, and then, I mean to say, spiritual. In this way we have to go, step by step. We have to come to the point, to the spiritual platform. So, so long we are on the bodily concept of life, our understanding is sense gratification because body means the senses. And then, if we go still up, then we can see that mind is the center of sense activities. We take the mind as the final, and that is mental platform. Then, from mental platform, we come to the intellectual platform. Then, from intellectual platform, we come to the transcendental platform.

Bill Faill: To the trans . . .

Prabhupāda: Transcendental platform. And from transcendental platform, we come to the spiritual platform. These are the stages. So in this age, because people are so fallen, and in the śāstra a special recommendation that give the people directly spiritual platform. That direct spiritual platform is chanting of this holy name of God, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare. So if we cultivate this practice on the spiritual platform, then immediately we realize our spiritual identity and God, and we become very quickly successful.

Bill Faill: So in a sense, what a lot of people are saying today is that we must look inwards rather than outwards into the world of the senses.

Prabhupāda: Yes. Inward means that you are spirit soul; you are not this body. But if you keep your bodily concept of life, then where is inward? It is outward only.

Bill Faill: It's just another way of looking out.

Prabhupāda: No. That means it is simply talking. It has no realization. Unless you understand that you are not this body—you are spirit soul—there is no question of inward. That we have to study first of all, whether I am this body or I am something within this body. That is inward. But that they do not understand. There is no education in the school, college or university. Everyone is thinking, "I am this body." You see? Just like in this country, everywhere: "We are South African. They are Indian. They are this. They are this. They are this." So whole bodily concept, the whole world . . . "I am American," "I am Indian," "I am German." So this Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement means it starts when one is above the bodily conception of life. Then the starting begins.
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