SHYMASUNDAR: I'll read you some of their predictions. They're very frightening. They say by 1980—that's eight years from now—that they will be able to create synthetic life in the form of artificial viruses which will be used to cure some forms of genetic diseases. Artificial life. In eight years they say they will have artificial life.

PRABHUPADA: And that artificial life?

SHYMASUNDAR: Small viruses or living organisms, very small. But by the year 2000 they say they will be able to keep...

PRABHUPADA: 2000!

SHYMASUNDAR: Yes. That's twenty-eight years from now. They say that they will be able to deep-freeze embryos, that means unborn babies, as insurance against nuclear holocaust and for interplanetary colonization. In other words, they can send these unborn babies in frozen form to other planets and have an arrangement for them to be born and grow in the spaceship and then go out.

PRABHUPADA: Don't waste your time with these rascals.

SHYMASUNDAR: They'll have an artificial and mechanical baby factory, effective control of most human defects. Single-celled life will be created from chemicals off the shelf. They can make intelligent animals to do menial work. And then in seventy-eight years they say that they will be able to regenerate...

PRABHUPADA: Just like there was Pan American, they were selling tickets for going to Chandraloka [moon]. Reservation.

ATREYA RISHI: Prabhupada, is it possible that man could ever make even a one-celled living being?

PRABHUPADA: Even if he makes, what is credit there? Cells are already there. What is the question of making?

SHYMASUNDAR: All they're doing is creating the conditions for the jiva to enter, actually. Isn't it?

PRABHUPADA: Whatever their proposal, these things are already there. So even they can create something, xerox copy, what is the credit?

SHYMASUNDAR: But then they'll have control over it. That's their...

PRABHUPADA: No, no control, because you are beginning from something on which you have no control. So where is your control?

SHYMASUNDAR: "From now on I am the master. I can create more Einsteins. I can create many Einsteins."

PRABHUPADA: But first of all keep Einstein living. Why he is dying?

SHYMASUNDAR: That's on their program too.

PRABHUPADA: That's on their program—that is is another foolish thing.

SHYMASUNDAR: Postponement of death by at least fifty years...

PRABHUPADA: So what is the profit? After fifty years he has to die. Stop, stop death, then that is credit.

SHYMASUNDAR: They say they will be able to take out someone like Einstein's brain when his body dies and keep it alive, a disembodied brain, and use it like a computer.

PRABHUPADA: All right. Whatever. No. All rascals, fools. As if in the brain there is the thing. What is this brain? It is a material substance, what is there, lump of matter.

SHYMASUNDAR: Just like they can take a heart out of a living being and they put it in a machine and keep it alive and then they transplant it to some other person.

PRABHUPADA: The same intelligence, yasyatma-buddhih kunape tri-dhatuke [Srimad-Bhagavatam 10.84.13], they're trying to find out life in this lump of matter. That is their defect.

SHYMASUNDAR: They'll spend so many billions of dollars, and years of work.

Material body animated by the living entity, just as a machine is running under the control of an operator

PRABHUPADA: The same example. Just like computer machine. They do not find that the machine is made by a brain which is different from this material. But he's trying to find out a brain from this. This is their childish... The brain is different from machine. The machine is lump of iron. And the one who is working with the machine is a different from the machine. That they do not know. That they do not know. That is their defect. Now what is this computer machine will do unless there is a worker in the computer room, highly salaried man?

SHYMASUNDAR: Unless it's plugged into the wall it doesn't work.

PRABHUPADA: Lump of matter, iron, that's all. But that they do not know. They are so foolish and rascal. Then they're trying to find out... This is same childishness, that "I'm trying to find out the singer within the box, within the box." It is like that.

SVARUP DAMODAR: Actually the proposals that they made here is of very speculative type. It's just a projection that can be made by their own speculation.

PRABHUPADA: That's all. It is simply mental speculation.

SHYMASUNDAR: They haven't even come near to these things yet.

PRABHUPADA: They'll never come.

SVARUP DAMODAR: Mostly scientists are digging up, trying to find out something when they get some very basic preliminary ideas, they speculate so much, hypothesize this, so on—"In such and such time I'll be able to make such and such things." Every scientist does like that. Ultimately it is all, it is always...

PRABHUPADA: Failure.

SVARUP DAMODAR: Something on the way, something comes up.

PRABHUPADA: Then there, it has changed. It has changed. The circumstances have changed.

SVARUP DAMODAR: The materials they work with are very, very delicate—the substances that they are handling, the cells of the the microorganisms. They are also subjected to different changes, without knowing anything. So, but they're taking that things are thus perfect, presuming results based on their perfect thinking, what they have learned is infallible.

PRABHUPADA: Therefore our shastra says these classes of men are no better than cows and asses. Sa eva go-kharah [SB 10.84.13]. Go-kharah means cows and asses. We take them like go-kharah, cows and asses. They may speculate, but we take them, "You are no better than asses and cows."

SHYMASUNDAR: They work very hard for a little morsel of grass.

PRABHUPADA: Yes. That's right. Some fools will give them credit, and that credit is given by such class of men: dogs, hogs, camels and asses. No good men. Krishna conscious men will never give them anything. But men like dogs, hogs, asses and camels will give them. Samstutah purushah pashuh, this they are. Shva-vid-varahoshtra-kharaih samstutah [SB 2.3.19]. Samstutah means eulogized. This class of men will be eulogized by whom? By dogs, hogs, camels, and asses. No Vyasadeva will give them credit; no Narada will give them credit; neither Krishna will give them credit, nor followers of Krishna consciousness will give them credit. Because they have a criterion to know what kind of man he is. They have got shastra [authoritative scripture], and from the shastra it is understood that one who is accepting this body as the self, he is no better than cow and ass. That is our culture. He has not still found out that the worker of the machine is different. This body is just like machine. May be composed of highly mechanical arrangement, electronic parts and this and that, so many things, but after all, it is a machine! And this machine must be worked by somebody. He must be living. He is not machine.

SHYMASUNDAR: They can't create a machine that will act like a human?

PRABHUPADA: No, no. Even if it can act, still it has to be worked. Unless I push the buttons, you cannot work. That they are missing. Just like you say that computer machine is the same, or so many things, but as soon as you say that "I want this," immediately. But you have to push the button. This machine is working when I push this plug into the electricity.