Srila Prabhupada Telling a Story “Become a Rat Again”

Before Prabhupāda’s arrival in Seattle, Upendra had written the head of the Asian department at the University of Washington, requesting a speaking engagement. The professor wrote back entirely in Sanskrit, knowing well that the boys would not be able to read his letter. Upendra gave the letter to Prabhupāda, who immediately translated it and answered the professor with a letter written in English, but quoting many Sanskrit verses. Prabhupāda concluded his letter, “I am sorry that we cannot reply in Sanskrit. Our process is not academic, but purely spiritual.” Prabhupāda had Upendra sign the letter as if he had written it himself.

Prabhupāda went out himself to speak in several colleges. At the University of Washington, he had Tamāla Kṛṣṇa give an introductory talk. Speaking directly what he had heard from Prabhupāda, Tamāla Kṛṣṇa spoke boldly about “so-called holy men or swamis who are cheating the public.” He took considerable care to demonstrate that “our spiritual master” is in complete agreement with Lord Jesus and the Bible. The Bible is bona fide, he said, but like a pocket dictionary compared to the unabridged.

“There is a need to hear a person like our spiritual master, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, speak,” said Tamāla Kṛṣṇa. He then read an article from the New York Daily News, headlined “Retreat for Priests Who Drink,” featuring a sanatorium that had been opened for some of the five thousand alcoholic priests in the United States. “I’m not saying that all priests are like this,” he said. “That’s not at all what I’m trying to get at. But the article goes on to say that alcoholism is not treated as a moral failure, but as a disease. But that’s absurd. It is a moral failure. These priests have the choice to drink or not to drink. They chose to drink and get drunk. These are men who are leading us back to God.

Prabhupāda listened from the orange cloth-covered dais where he sat in the auditorium. Tamāla Kṛṣṇa had stood and spoken, and now he joined the other saffron-robed men and the women in sārīs who sat at Prabhupāda’s feet. His voice echoing with amplification in the large hall, Prabhupāda spoke to an audience of over a hundred. He quoted the verse oṁ ajñāna-timirāndhasya, explaining that everyone in the material world is in darkness, and the spiritual master is he who opens our eyes with the torch of knowledge. If human society does not have the urge to come to the light by searching after God, then mankind is no better than the animals.

To illustrate the point that human society is in a precarious condition for lack of God consciousness, Prabhupāda told “a very nice story.”

“One rat,” he said, “was troubled with a cat, so he came to a saintly person.

“ ‘My dear sir, I am very much troubled.’

“ ‘What is the difficulty?’

“The rat said, ‘The cat always chases, so I am not in peace of mind.’

“ ‘Then what do you want?’

“ ‘Please make me a cat.’

“ ‘All right, you become a cat.’ But after a few days, the cat returned to the saintly person and complained that he was being chased by the dogs. The saintly person gave him the benediction, ‘All right, become a dog.’ Then the foxes chased the dog. The saintly person blessed him again, ‘All right, become a fox.’ Then the tigers chased him. The saintly person turned him into a tiger.

“And when he became a tiger,” Prabhupāda continued, “he began to stare his eyes on the saintly person, ‘I shall eat you.’

“ ‘Oh! You shall eat me? I have made you tiger, and you want to eat me?’

“ ‘Yes, I am a tiger and I shall eat you.’

“ ‘Oh,’ then the saintly person cursed him, ‘again you become a rat. Again you become a rat.’ So he became a rat.

“So our human civilization is going to be like that. The other day I was reading in your world almanac. In the next hundred years, people will live underground like rats. So our scientific advancement has created this atomic bomb to kill man, and it will be used. And we have to go underground to become again rat. From tiger again rat. That is going to be. That is nature’s law: daivī hy eṣā guṇa-mayī mama māyā duratyayā. If you defy the laws of your state, then you are put into difficulty. Similarly, if you continue to defy the authority, the supremacy of the Supreme Lord, Personality of Godhead, then the same result – again you become rat. As soon as there is atomic bomb, everything, all civilization on the surface of the globe, will be finished. So people may not like it. It may be very unpalatable, but the fact is like that.”

Prabhupāda explained that the God consciousness he was advocating was not a particular rigid religion like Christian or Hindu or Muslim, but it was universal. He explained the word dharma as one’s characteristic, that which cannot be taken away. The unalterable characteristic of the living entity, he said, is the tendency to love and do service, and that is our eternal religion.