s instructions so that we can advance. When we attain the platform of human life, we have the alternative to refuse God's instructions. Lower life forms do not have the power to refuse.
Hayagriva dasa: You have just said that whatever grows has a soul, including the grass.
Srila Prabhupada: Yes, in a dormant stage. For instance, a child has a soul, but it is not yet developed because the body is not yet developed. According to the body and circumstances, the soul acts.
Hayagriva dasa: Descartes equated the mind, the higher mental processes, with the soul. He believed in an incorporeal, immortal, human mind, which has been mysteriously injected somewhere into the body.
Srila Prabhupada: No, the mind is not the soul but an instrument through which the soul acts. The mind is rejecting and accepting according to the dictations of the soul. Although I walk with my legs, I do not consider myself to be my legs. Although I think with my mind, I am not my mind. Some philosophers identify the mind with the self, and this is a mistake. Intelligence is subtler than the mind, and the mind is subtler than the senses. The gross senses can be seen, but the center of the senses, the mind, cannot be seen. Therefore it is called subtle. The mind is guided by the intelligence, which is even subtler. The background of that intelligence is the soul. The mind is the instrument by which we think, but that instrument is not "I."
Hayagriva dasa: For Descartes, animals are mere machines that react. He felt that they have no souls or minds, and hence no consciousness at all, and the basis for this view is ratiocination, language. In other words, because they have no language, they simply act as machines.
Srila Prabhupada: They have languages, but you do not understand them.
Hayagriva dasa: Scientists claim to be able to communicate verbally with dolphins.
Srila Prabhupada: That may be, but Krsna was speaking with everyone, even with the birds. When one gopi went to the Yamuna to bathe, she was surprised to see that Krsna was speaking with the birds. Because Krsna is God, He can understand everyone's language. That is a qualification described in the Nectar of Devotion as vavaduka. When a human being can understand many languages, he is called a linguist. Another name for Krsna is vavaduka, which indicates that He can understand everyone's language, even the languages of the birds and bees. That is the potency of God.
Syamasundara dasa: Descartes considers five basic ideas to be inherent within every man, ideas which every man knows without having to verify. One is that God is innate to us as our own soul.
Srila Prabhupada: Yes, this is because we are part and parcel of God. For instance, in the material world, everyone knows that he has a father. This is common knowledge.
Syamasundara dasa: Secondly, it is impossible for something to originate out of nothing; every effect must have a cause, and therefore there is a cause of everything.
Srila Prabhupada: Yes, we have discussed this. That ultimate cause is Krsna. We do not accept the Mayavadi philosophy because they philosophize in a negative way to try to make the ultimate truth zero.
Syamasundara dasa: Thirdly, it is impossible for a thing to exist and not exist at the same time.
Srila Prabhupada: Who protests this? Who says that something can exist and not exist simultaneously? Who is he trying to refute?
Syamasundara dasa: He is not refuting anyone. He says that this is an innate idea that we know for certain without having to verify.
Srila Prabhupada: This body is a temporary manifestation, and this soul is always existing. Eventually, this body will not exist, but the owner of the body is eternal and existing eternally. If something is a temporary manifestation, we can say that it is simultaneously existing and not existing. On the material platform, everything is existing and not existing because it is temporary. For instance, we are existing in this room right now, but at the next moment we may not be existing. The whole cosmic manifestation is like that. As stated in Bhagavad-gita:
nasato vi