According to Lord Kapila’s Sankhya philosophy the sense of touch originates in the Supreme Lord. It is called sparsa. In a lecture in Mumbai on December 23rd 1974, Srila Prabhupada said: “When there is interaction of the three gunas, then this one mahat-tattva becomes divided into twenty-four catur-vimsati tattva. This is called Sankhya philosophy, to analyze and to study the twenty-four elements which is controlling the activities of the whole material world. That is called catur-vimsati tattva. What are they? Pancabhih. First the five elements, namely earth, water, fire, air, sky. This is pancabhih . Then next pancabhih , tan-matra, means rupa, rasa, gandha, sabda, sparsa. Form, rupa. Rupa means form; rasa means taste; sabda means sound; rupa, rasa, sabda-sparsa means touch; and rupa, rasa, sabda, sparsa, and… Gandha. So the sky is known by sabda, sound. This is tan-matra. This is… By sound, you can understand there is sky. If you clap, there is sound (claps). You understand there is sky. Sky is understood by the sabda. Then air is understood by sparsa. Just like electric fan is running, but even if I do not see it is running, because the air is touching my body, I can understand the air is there.”

Lore has it that when Bhaktivedanta Asrama was being created, diggers tried to sink a bore into the ground just opposite and near Govardhana Hill. But the diggers couldn’t drill through the strata. They thought they had encountered some kind of impenetrable rock formation. So they tried to sink the bore further away from the Hill, and were successful in finding an underground aquifer, which became a well for the ISKCON asrama. The purport: Govardhana Hill – which is now mostly underground — was the impenetrable rock formation the water drillers first came across.

Another word besides acintya for inconceivable is atarkya (Srimad Bhagavatam 10.13.57/purport. Srila Prabhupada nicely explains the meaning of inconceivable in the purport as follows: “Brahma was mystified about Krsna’s opulence (nija-mahimani) because this opulence was atarkya, or inconceivable. With one’s limited senses, one cannot argue about that which is inconceivable. Therefore the inconceivable is called acintya, that which is beyond cintya, our thoughts and arguments. Acintya refers to that which we cannot contemplate but have to accept. Srila Jiva Gosvami has said that unless we accept acintya in the Supreme, we cannot accommodate the conception of God. This must be understood. Therefore we say that the words of sastra should be taken as they are, without change, since they are beyond our arguments. Acintyah khalu ye bhava na tams tarkena yojayet: ‘That which is acintya cannot be ascertained by argument.’ People generally argue, but our process is not to argue but to accept the Vedic knowledge as it is. When Krsna says, ‘This is superior, and this is inferior,’ we accept what He says. It is not that we argue, ‘Why is this superior and that inferior?’ If one argues, for him the knowledge is lost. “This path of acceptance is called avaroha-pantha. The word avaroha is related to the word avatara, which means “that which descends.” The materialist wants to understand everything by the aroha-pantha – by argument and reason – but transcendental matters cannot be understood in this way. Rather, one must follow the avaroha-pantha, the process of descending knowledge. Therefore one must accept the parampara system. And the best parampara is that which extends from Krsna (evam parampara-praptam). What Krsna says, we should accept (imam rajarsayo viduh). This is called the avaroha-pantha. “Brahma, however, adopted the aroha-pantha. He wanted to understand Krsna’s mystic power by his own limited, conceivable power, and therefore he himself was mystified. Everyone wants to take pleasure in his own knowledge, thinking, “I know something.” But in the presence of Krsna this conception cannot stand, for one cannot bring Krsna within the limitations of prakrti. One must submit. There is no alternative. Na tams tarkena yojayet. This submission marks the difference between Krsna-ites and Mayavadis.”

This exchange took place in Los Angeles on January 3rd, 1969, when Srila Prabhupada was speaking in the temple on the first six verses of the fourth chapter of Bhagavad-gita As It Is. Devotee: Prabhupada? Does Lord Jesus Christ appear in the spiritual sky with the body he manifested on the earth? Prabhupada: Yes. Otherwise how there can be resurrection? Ordinary body cannot be resurrected. He appeared in his spiritual body, certainly. Jesus Christ told, if I remember, that “Lord, excuse these persons,” who were crucifying him. Is it not? He knew that “These rascals, they are killing me, but… They are offending certainly. So they do not know that I cannot be killed, but they are thinking that they are killing.” You see? But that was offensive, therefore he begged Lord to be excused because God cannot excuse the offenders of the devotee. He can excuse one who is offender to God, but if somebody is offender to the devotee, God never excuses. Therefore he prayed for them. That is devotee’s qualification. He prays for everyone, even for his enemy. And he could not be killed. That he knew. But those rascals, they thought they were killing Jesus Christ.

Scientists are proud that many so-called laws and measurements of science have been named after their “discoverers,” like Boyle’s law of gases, Newton’s laws of gravitation, Gause’s law, Roentgens, the Doppler effect (named after C.J. Doppler, Austrian physicist), the Mendeleyev periodic chart of the elements, and many, many others.

Sometimes ISKCON people think of Srila Prabhupada as omniscient in the sense that he knows how many atoms are in a particular iron molecule or how many hairs are on your head. He is sometimes said to know exactly what thoughts are in your mind at any time. What Sruta kirti, Prabhupada’s servant for over two years, has emphasized, is that Srila Prabhupada’s ‘omniscience’ was that he knew everything his spiritual master wanted him to know and everything his disciples needed to know. He had absolute faith that whatever the sastras and previous acaryas in the disciple line wrote, was absolute. This was his ‘miracle.’

Birth is the name of a popular film. I haven’t seen it, and don’t intend to, but it’s reported to touch on the subject of reincarnation. Transmigration of the soul is a phenomenon that has captured the imagination of many a screenplay writer. Ancient and modern wisdom on this subject has been made into feature films at a cost of up to 100 million US dollars each.

“Energy is dependent; so energy is imagined as a female and thus she has become qualified to be embraced by the supreme energetic. To make the truth more easily understood great sages have added ornamental language to their descriptions. Actually, Radha-Krsna is one Absolute Truth.” Tattva-sutra, 7, by Bhaktivinoda Thakura.

Krishna doesn’t grow. He’s timeless, eternal, perpetual, without beginning and without end. Everything in the material world, organic and inorganic, has a beginning and an end.

It’s easy to forget that Krishna actually PROMISES to reciprocate according to our degree of surrender. They key word Srila Prabhupada used in his translation was “accordingly.” The verse,BGAII 4.11, reads; “As all surrender unto Me, I reward them accordingly. Everyone follows My path in all respects, O son of Partha.”