Prabhupada 0975 - We are Small Gods. Teeny, Sample gods
730408 - Lecture BG 04.13 - New York
We can float one sputnik in the sky, and we take so much credit that we have become very, very great scientists. We don't care for God. This is foolishness. Foolish person will say like that. But one who is intelligent, he knows that God is floating millions and trillions of planets in the sky, and what we have done in that comparison? This is intelligence. So we have become very much proud of our scientific knowledge, and therefore, at the present moment, we defy the existence of God. Sometimes we say that "I have become God now." These are foolish statements.
You are nothing in comparison to the intelligence... He's also intelligent. Because we are part and parcel of God, therefore we can study what is God if we simply study ourself. Just like if you study a drop of sea water, if you analyze chemically, you'll find so many chemicals in that drop. So you can understand what is the composition of the sea. The same composition. But in greater quantity. That is the difference between God and ourself. We are small gods, we can say, small gods. Teeny, sample gods. Therefore, we are so much proud. But we should not be proud because we should know that all our qualities are taken from God. Because we are part and parcel. So originally all these qualities are there in God.
And therefore Vedānta-sūtra says what is God, what is the Absolute Truth? Athātho brahma-jijñāsā. When [we] inquire about God, about the Absolute Truth, the answer is immediately given: janmādy asya yataḥ SB 1.1.1. The Absolute Truth is that from whom everything comes, everything emanates. So everything is coming from God. He is the original source of all supplies. Now what is our position? There are innumerable living entities. Nityo nityānāṁ cetanaś cetanānāṁ (Kaṭha Upaniṣad 2.2.13). That is Vedic information. God is also a living entity, like us, but He's the chief living entity. And we are also living entity.
Just like one father. Father may have got twenty children. Twenty sons. Formerly, they used to have one hundred sons. Now the fathers have no such power. But in the, up to five thousand years ago, King Dhṛtarāṣṭra gave birth to one hundred sons. Now we are... We say, we are saying that we are overpopulated. But that's not the fact. At the present moment, where there is the question of overpopulation? Now how many of us giving birth hundreds of children? No. Nobody. But formerly, a father could give birth to one hundred children. So there is no question of overpopulation. And even there is overpopulation, we get information from the Vedas: eko bahūnāṁ yo vidadhāti kāmān. That one chief living entity, God, He can maintain innumerable living entities.