This is a continuation of a conversation between His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada and a guest, Dr. Christian Hauser, a psychiatrist, that took place in Stockholm in September 1973.
Srila Prabhupada: Darwin theorized that these material bodies' "evolve" the fish body changes into a reptile body, the ape body changes into a human body, and so on. This is nonsense.
Dr. Hauser: But somehow it is persuasive.
Srila Prabhupada: No, not at all. Take this apartment we are in now. In an hour or so you may go across the city to another apartment. So will it mean this apartment has somehow "evolved" into that apartment?
You, the spiritual person, the apartment dweller, simply have chosen to go from one material apartment to another. Not that this material apartment has "evolved" into that apartment.
Dr. Hauser: Yes, I can see what you mean.
Srila Prabhupada: Yes. Darwin's nonsense lies there. He claimed one apartment was changing into another apartment one apartment becoming a different apartment. Of course, that is not a fact. This rascal has left the whole world in spiritual confusion. Darkness.
Just try to understand how foolish Darwin was. This room cannot develop into another room. I, the dweller in this room, can go from this room to another room but the rooms are there already. This, in actuality, is the meaning of "evolution": from one lifetime to the next, the living soul moves from one, ready-made kind of material bodily dwelling to another. All the different kinds of bodies are there already ready-made.
Dr. Hauser: So one goes to a bigger and better apartment in the next lifetime,
Srila Prabhupada: Bigger and better or smaller and worse depending on his activities in this life. Not necessarily bigger and better. This is just more of the same nonsense.
Dr. Hauser: Well, through trial and error from one lifetime to another, I may be able to enter a bigger and better body on account of my increased intelligence.
Srila Prabhupada: Oh? For instance, you may have intelligence to desire a nicer garment, but if you have no money that is to say, no credit with the garment maker how can you get that nicer garment? You will have to accept something inferior.
So what we daily see in these various species these garments for the living soul is the soul's "evolution" from one kind of body to another according to his karma, his past activity. According to his credit or lack of credit with the garment maker, he may or may not get a bigger and better body.
Karmana daiva netrena: The Vedic literature instructs that if you want to go to a better condition of life, then you'll have to pay for it with godly activity. But God has already created that better condition of life it is there already. Not that this inferior condition somehow mysteriously changes into that better condition. That is merely Darwin's nonsense.
Take the condition of life on the moon. It is different from the condition of life on this earth. But the condition of life on the moon is already there. You simply have to transfer yourself from this planet to that planet through your activity. So Darwin's theory of evolution completely misses the point.
Darwin says that the material body is evolving. Such absolute nonsense. If the material body is evolving, then why at the present moment are the monkeys not producing human bodies? This nonsensical "evolution" where is the evidence? You have seen the monkeys in the zoo. Where is the evidence in the zoo that a monkey has produced a human being? Do you think this Darwinian business is all right?
Dr. Hauser: Yes, that life might have evolved into various forms this I'm fairly sure of. And also that the human being might not have existed about a hundred thousand years ago.
Srila Prabhupada: No. These various material forms have always existed, thanks to God's natural arrangement. The human form did not have to "evolve." It has always existed. Eternally. Thanks to God's natural arrangement.
Disciple: Recently, in Africa some scientists discovered skeletal remains that predated the "part-ape, part-man" creature they like to picture in their textbooks by hundreds of thousands of years. And these skeletal remains were completely human. They were the same as the remains of any modern man. So even though this information may never get into the textbooks, all Darwin's theories of evolution are demolished.
Srila Prabhupada: By now Darwin's nonsense has polluted everyone's thinking. So let us stay with this simple examples When I go from this apartment to another apartment, this apartment does not "evolve" into the other apartment. I merely move from one preexisting apartment to another.
The apartments are preexisting, and I, the living soul, the apartment-dweller, am preexisting. The apartments do not change; and I do not change. Only my location changes.
So Darwin merged the "I" the soul, the apartment-dweller with the body, the apartment. And he said the apartment somehow changes. This is his nonsense.
Dr. Hauser: Yes, I think he's only talking about apartments, not the apartment dwellers, and he's saying the apartments are changing.
Srila Prabhupada: Yes, that is his rascaldom. On account of Darwin and his modern disciples, people have lost sight of the very aim of this human life which is to free the spirit self from these lifetimes in so many tenth-class material apartments and to go back to the spiritual world and live forever with the Lord in full, everlasting happiness.
(To be continued.)