108 THE SCIENCE OF SELF-REALIZATION

which means ‘‘those who have lost their sense.”” That is also further ex-
plained in the Bhagavad-gita [7.23]:

antavat tu phalam tesam
tad bhavaty alpa-medhasam
devan deva-yajo yanti
mad-bhakta yanti mam api

‘*Men of small intelligence worship the demigods, and their fruits are
limited and temporary. Those who worship the demigods go to the
planets of the demigods, but My devotees reach My supreme abode.”’
The rewards given by the demigods are temporary because any material
facility must act in connection with the temporary body. Whatever
material facilities one gets, whether by modern scientific methods or by
deriving benedictions from the demigods, will be finished with the body.
But spiritual advancement will never be finished.

People should not think that we are preaching a sectarian religion. No.
We are simply preaching how to love God. There are many theories
about the existence of God. The atheist, for example, will never believe
in God. Atheists like Professor Jacques Monod, who won the Nobel
Prize, declare that everything is chance (a theory already put forward
long ago by atheistic philosophers of India such as Carvaka). Then other
philosophies, such as the karma-mimamsa philosophy, accept that if one
goes on doing his work nicely and honestly, automatically the result will
come, without need for one to refer to God. For evidence, the propo-
nents of such theories cite the argument that if one is diseased with an in-
fection and takes medicine to counteract it, the disease will be
neutralized. But our argument in this connection is that even if one gives
a man the best medicine, he still may die. The results are not always pre-
dictable. Therefore, there is a higher authority, daiva-netrena, a supreme
director. Otherwise, how is it that the son of a rich and pious man
becomes a hippie in the street or that a man who works very hard and
becomes rich is told by his doctor, ‘‘Now you may not eat any food, but
only barley water’’?

The karma-mimamsa theory holds that the world is going on without
the supreme direction of God. Such philosophies say that everything
takes place by lust (kama-haitukam). By lust a man becomes attracted to
a woman, and by chance there is sex, and the woman becomes pregnant.
There is actually no plan to make the woman pregnant, but by a natural
sequence when a man and a woman unite, a result is produced. The
