Bob: Ive asked devotees about how they feel towards sex in their relations, and I see the way they feel, but I cant see myself acting the same way. See, Ill be getting married at the end of this summer.

Srila Prabhupada: Hm-m?

Bob: Ill be getting married at the end of this summer, in September or August when I return to America. And the devotees say that the householders only have sex to conceive a child, and I cannot picture myself at all in such a position, andWhat kind of sex life can one lead, living in the material world?

Srila Prabhupada: The Vedic principle is that one should avoid sex life altogether. The whole Vedic principle is to get liberation from material bondage. There are different attachments for material enjoyment, of which sex life is the topmost enjoyment. The Bhagavatam says that this material world...

Bob: Attachment between man and woman?

Srila Prabhupada: Man and woman. So if you want to get liberation from this material world, then that attachment should be reduced to nil. Otherwise, simply further attachmentYou will have to take rebirth, either as a human being or as a demigod or as an animal, as a serpent, as a bird, as a beast. You will have to take birth. So, this basic principle of increasing attachment is not our business, although it is the general tendency. Grha, ksetra, suta [home, land, sons]. But if one can reduce and stop it, that is first class. Therefore our Vedic system is to first of all train a boy as a brahmacarino sex life. The Vedic principle is to reduce attachment, not to increase it. Therefore the whole system is called varnasrama-dharma. The Indian system calls for varna and asramafour social orders and four spiritual orders. Brahmacarya [celibate student life], grhastha [married life], vanaprastha [retired life] and sannyasa [renounced life]these are the spiritual orders. And the social orders consist of brahmanas [intellectuals], ksatriyas [administrators], vaisyas [merchants and farmers] and sudras [ordinary workers]. So under this system, the regulative principles are so nice that

even if one has the tendency to enjoy material life, he is so nicely molded that at last he achieves liberation and goes back home, back to Godhead. This is the process. So sex life is not required, but because we are attached to it, therefore there are some regulative principles under which it is maintained.

[chanting starts somewhere in the background, with exotic mrdanga drumbeats amidst laughing and the loud blowing of horns.]

Srila Prabhupada: It is said in Srimad-Bhagavatam that

Bob: What is that again?

Srila Prabhupada: This attachment increases. The material attachment involves thinking, I am this body, and because I have this body in a particular place, that is my country. And that is going on: I am American, I am Indian, I am German, I am this, I am thatthis body. This is my country. I shall sacrifice everything for my country and society. So in this way, the illusion increases. And under this illusion, when he dies he gets another body. That may be a superior body or inferior body, according to his karma. So if he gets a superior body, then that is also an entanglement, even if he goes to the heavenly planets. But if he becomes a cat or dog, then his life is lost. Or a treethere is every chance of it. So this science is not known in the worldhow the soul is transmigrating from one body to another, and how he is being entrapped in different types of bodies. This science is unknown. Therefore when Arjuna was speakingIf I kill my brother, if I kill my grandfather on the other side...he was simply thinking on the basis of the bodily concept of life. But when his problems could not be solved, he surrendered to Krsna and accepted Him as spiritual master. And when Krsna became his spiritual master, He chastised Arjuna in the beginning:

Bob: To reduce it over the stages of your life?

Srila Prabhupada: Yes. Reduce it. A boy is trained as a student up to twenty-five years, restricting sex life. Brahmacari. So, some of the boys remain naisthika-brahmacari [celibate for life]. Because they are given education and they become fully conversant with spiritual knowledge, they dont want to marry. That is also restrictedhe cannot have sex life without being married. Therefore in human society there is marriage, not in animal society.

But people are gradually descending from human society to animal society. They are forgetting marriage. That is also predicted in the sastras. Dampatye bhirucir hetuh: in the Kali-yuga [the present age of quarrel], eventually there will be no marriage performances; the boy and the girl will simply agree to live together, and their relationship will exist on sexual power. If the man or the woman is deficient in sex life, then there is divorce. So, for this philosophy there are many Western philosophers like Freud and others who have written so many books. But according to Vedic culture, we are interested in sex only for begetting children, thats all. Not to study the psychology of sex life. There is already natural psychology for that. Even if one does not read any philosophy, he is sexually inclined. Nobody is taught it in the schools and colleges. Everyone already knows how to do it. [He laughs.] That is the general tendency. But education should be given to stop it. That is real education. [There is a long pause, filled with the sound of bicycle horns, children playing, and throngs of people calling to one another]

Bob: Presently, in America, thats a radical concept.

Srila Prabhupada: Well, in America there are so many things that require reformation, and this Krsna consciousness movement will bring that. I went to your country and saw that the boys and girls were living like friends, so I said to my students, You cannot live together as friends; you must get yourselves married.

Bob: Many people see that even marriage is not sacred, so they find no desire to marry. Because people get married, and if things are not proper, they get a divorce so very easily

Srila Prabhupada: Yes, that also.

Bob:that some people feel that to get married is not meaningful.

Srila Prabhupada: No, their idea is that marriage is for legalized prostitution. They think like that, but that is not marriage. Even that Christian paperwhat is that? Watch?

Syamasundara: Watchtower?

Srila Prabhupada: Watchtower. It has criticized that one priest has allowed a marriage between two menhomosexuality. So these things are all going on. They take it purely for prostitution, thats all. So therefore people are thinking, What is the use of keeping a regular prostitute at such heavy expenditure? Better not to have this.

Syamasundara: You use that example of the cow and the market.

Srila Prabhupada: Yeswhen the milk is available in the marketplace, what is the use of keeping a cow? [Everyone laughs.] It is a very abominable condition in the Western countriesI have seen it. Here also in India, gradually it is coming. Therefore we have started this Krsna consciousness movement to educate people in the essential principles of spiritual life. It is not a sectarian religious movement. It is a cultural movement for everyones benefit.