Link to purport by A C Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada

Transcript of Bhakti-Shastri class on this verse by Chaitanya Charan

Bg 16.8

asatyam apratiṣṭhaṁ te
jagad āhur anīśvaram
aparaspara-sambhūtaṁ
kim anyat kāma-haitukam

Synonyms: 

asatyam — unreal; apratiṣṭham — without foundation; te — they; jagat — the cosmic manifestation; āhuḥ — say; anīśvaram — with no controller; aparaspara — without cause; sambhūtam — arisen; kim anyat — there is no other cause; kāma–haitukam — it is due to lust only.

Translation: 

They say that this world is unreal, with no foundation, no God in control. They say it is produced of sex desire and has no cause other than lust.

So asatyam apratiṣṭhaṁ te, this world is unreal and it is without any foundation.

jagad āhur anīśvaram, that it has no Ishwara.

aparaspara-sambhūtaṁ, it is created by mutual contact without any further cause.

kim anyat kāma-haitukam, it is because of lust only and there is no other cause.

So what is Krishna referring to here? He is moving from activity to mentality.

Previous verse talks about pravṛttiṁ ca nivṛttiṁ ca which is mainly activities but everything is defused together activity, mentality etc.

asatyam apratiṣṭhaṁ te, this world is unreal, this is generally quoted by Mayavadis, apratiṣṭhaṁ te means it has no foundation beyond, there are different approaches , some says this world is false some says this world is real but there is no foundation there is no supreme cause, some says, jagad āhur anīśvaram, there is not God beyond this world. 

So this world is unreal this world is foundation less and in this world there is no God in whose control this world is. These are different Godless ideas. Then naturally the question comes what is the purpose of this existence?

kim anyat kāma-haitukam, so it arisen from lust and it exist for lust only, this meant for fulfilling desires. Atheism is not new, there were always people who refuted God but some reforms and some continues with their rebellious nature. 

Sometimes people blames Britishers and Muslims invaders that is true but still problem were there always. Sanskrit has produced world’s largest atheistic literature. They mainly came from Buddism and Janism, they were rebel religion, they rebelled against Vedic authority. But Buddhism and Janism were atheistic without being grossly materialistic it is interesting normally we equate atheism with materialism (details can be get from the class Krishna Consciousness in world religion), so atheism were there at all the times, Buddhist and Janism were not odd with the main stream vedic culture, they also have renunciate they also have concept of regulation of material engagements so that one can pursue the reality of this world and one can understand the misery of this world and one needs to get out of this world if one wants to become free from misery. So Srila Prabhupada writes that Buddism, Janism and impersonalism understands that this world is a place of misery and trying to enjoy this world increases the misery. And we have to get out of this world and what is beyond this world there is a difference in opinion in that, so atheism is there throughout the history but in modern time atheism has been intellectually glamorized. And this glamor of atheism has been stolen from science. Athism has dressed up in scientific grab, many people think that to be scientific means to be atheistic actually science is just a tool for acquiring knowledge and that tool can be used positively to go towards God and that tool can be used negatively to go away from God, science is basically study of nature, from this study one can infer about the absolute controller or one can reject about the absolute controller, 

asatyam apratiṣṭhaṁ te
jagad āhur anīśvaram

Pre Newton mainstream was theistic but when Newton proposed law of gravity laws of motion then the idea came as ok when there are laws for governing nature there is no room for God, so one idea came that God may be a creator but not the controller i.e. deism this continued till Darwin’s time and Darwin proposed theory of evaluation, Darwin also said that evidence of this theory is extremely flimsy but he said future research will find the evidence, so if we think about the survival of fittest then Darwin’s theory is unfit to survive. 

So not only the evidence is flimsy but the theory itself is flimsy, so this became tool for negating God by atheistic. And it became widely accepted. So this way atheism got scientific glamor and theism got the position of unscientific. But it is not. Science is a tool and many scientific accepted acceptance of God by using this tool. In atheism there is no basis of right or wrong. So there is no next life, there is no higher ups then I can do whatever I wanted to do, and if I am clever and powerful to get away with it then who can stop me? I am perfect. That is the idea comes up. So atheistic thinking is there is nothing wrong, I can enjoy in whatever way I like there is nothing wrong, so that is how immorality comes up. So after this flood gate of immorality are opened, 1859 was the time Darwin wrote his book after that in 50 year Sigmund Freud came along with theory of sexuality the perverse theory where he said everything is just based on sexuality and when he sexualized everything he projected religion like a decease and he said we have to become sexually free whatever sexual urges are there we have to act on them when he was a child he was having sexual attraction towards his mother which he couldn’t act on because of social arrangements, so he has extrapolated this based on his experience and said actually all boys have sexual attraction towards his mother and all girls have sexual attraction towards her father and because people were not allowed to act on the sexual attractions so there are so many problems which come up in the society. So he said actually everything is based on sex kim anyat kāma-haitukam. Now we understand that sex is a predominated force in material life but the idea that everything is reduced to sexuality that is perversion of reality. So again this became a scientific glamour there are no rule and regulation for enjoyment. So now we have so many problem divorces, children outside marriage and whole society became extremely troubled because of this. And the whole result is that people are suffering more and more.

Purport: although the demons say that life is a dream, they are very expert in enjoying this dream.

So although they say that the world is false but they wanted to enjoy it they don’t want any regulation. So if this world is false why they wanted to get entangled in this world they wanted to become disentangled.

So is this world a dream? It is a dream in the sense it is temporary. Matter is the energy of Krishna and we cannot wish away from this material world there is a process to be followed to get out of this material world. So like the dream is temporary and should not be taken seriously similarly this world also.

End of transcription.