Devotee: Śrīla Prabhupāda? Why God gave to man free will if He knew the man would fall down in the material world?

Prabhupāda: If you have no free will, then you are a stone. The stone has no free will. You want to be stone? Then you must be, must have free will. But don't misuse your free will. But don't try to become stone. That is not life.

(Lecture--------New Mayapura).

Devotee: That independence, if he exercises that independence from now on, forever, Kṛṣṇa knows exactly how that independence is going to be used forever?

Prabhupāda: Kṛṣṇa?

Devotee: Well, the living entity has independence: now he may be liberated, then he may be conditioned, then he may be liberated, then he may be conditioned.

Prabhupāda: No. Kṛṣṇa has given you liberation. Now you misuse your liberation, you become entrapped.

(Philosophy discussion).

Kāśirāma: Śrīla Prabhupāda, why do we have this rascal propensity?

Prabhupāda: Hm?

Kāśirāma: Why do we have this rascal propensity?

Prabhupāda: Because you are rascal. That is the only reason. Because you are rascal.

(Morning walk--------Mayapura).

Devotee (4): Śrīla Prabhupāda, you say in your books so many times that somehow or other we have fallen into this material world due to our enviousness or our independence.

Prabhupāda: Many, there are many reasons.

Devotee (4): I can't seem to get a grasp on this at all. If we in our original constitutional position as part and parcel of Kṛṣṇa, and in that position, that original position of full knowledge and full bliss and being in our eternal nature... Now I have some experience of how strong this material energy is and how māyā works somewhat, but if I had known this and had this full knowledge, then I would have had this knowledge of how māyā works and how I might fall.

Prabhupāda: You read the life of Jaya, Vijaya, Hiraṇyakaśipu, Hiraṇyākṣa? They were Kṛṣṇa's doorkeepers. How they fell down? Did you read it? Did you read the life of Hiraṇyakaśipu or Hiraṇyākṣa?

(Evening Darshan---------Washington, D.C.).