Jay Warner: I do have one question. How can one establish faith in the principle of reincarnation? How can one come to believe in it?
Prabhupāda: Incarnation of God?
Devotees: Reincarnation, transmigration.
Prabhupāda: That is very simple thing. That is stated in the Bhagavad-gītā. Now, you were a child. That's a fact. Were you not a child?
Hṛdayānanda: You were a child before.
Jay Warner: Yes.
Prabhupāda: Where is that body?
Jay Warner: Where is the body of the child?
Prabhupāda: Yes. You were a child. Where is that body?
Jay Warner: It has grown into a man.
Prabhupāda: Grown, or it is changed? The same thing. But that child, that body, is no more existing. Is it not?
Jay Warner: Yes, it is gone.
Prabhupāda: The body may vanquish, but you are going through. That is incarnation. The child body is vanquished; it is no more existing. Either you say grow or I may say it has changed, that body is finished. Is it not?
Jay Warner: Yes.
Prabhupāda: But you are still existing.
Jay Warner: I still feel that I am myself.
Prabhupāda: Yes. That means you were in the child body and you are in this young man's body. So you are existing, but the body has changed. What is the difficulty to understand?
Jay Warner: Where is it difficult to answer?
Devotees: (all at once) What is the difficulty to understand?
Prabhupāda: You are.... When the child's body, that body, is no more existing, you are in a different body.
Jay Warner: The difficulty for me reaches the moment, retroactively, before the moment of birth, or past the moment of death. How can one come to have faith that there is life after one leaves his body?
Prabhupāda: This is the proof. A child may not understand that there is, after his childhood body, there is another body, boyhood body or youthful body. He may not understand. But that is the fact. If the child says, "There is no more body. This is the final body," that is not the fact. He is going to get another body which is boy's body, young man's body, old man's body. Similarly, you may believe or not believe, you are going to get another body. The proof is that you have no more the child's body; you have got a different body. The common sense reasoning.
Jay Warner: That is true. But the difficulty for me is that although my spirit wants to believe in transmigration, the scientific upbringing that was inculcated in me from a child has a hard time...
Prabhupāda: What is that scientific?
Jay Warner: Through empirical evidence, through evidence...
Prabhupāda: This is evidence. I ask you to show me your childhood body. Where it is? Can you show? That is finished. So if the childhood body finished, you get another body, boyhood body. Similarly, the conclusion should be that after this body—I am old man; it will be finished—then I'll get another body.
Jay Warner: That makes sense.
Prabhupāda: Very common sense. But we are so dull-headed we cannot understand.