Bob: What is the "we" that has to change? What is constant between one life to the next?
Prabhupāda: That is soul. That is soul, "I", what you are speaking, "you", what I am speaking, identification, ātmā, or soul.
Bob: My soul is different than your soul?
Prabhupāda: Yes. You are individual soul, I am individual soul.
Bob: But you have removed yourself from karmic influences. If I was to remove myself from karmic influences, would our souls be the same or different?
Prabhupāda: Soul is the same. Just like you are under certain conception of life at the present moment. Just like your these countrymen. They were under certain conception of life. But by training they have taken another conception of life. So the ultimate training is how to become Kṛṣṇa conscious. That is perfection.
Bob: If two people are Kṛṣṇa conscious, is their soul the same?
Prabhupāda: Soul is always the same.
Bob: In each person. In each person is it the same?
Prabhupāda: Yes. (break) Soul, as spirit soul, pure soul, they are all equal. Even in animal. Therefore it is said, paṇḍitāḥ sama-darśinaḥ (BG 5.18), means those who are actually learned, they do not see the outward covering, either human being or animal.
Bob: Oh, then they are all equal and the same, or just equal? Are they equal and the same, or are they just equal?
Prabhupāda: No, equal and the same. Qualitatively and quantitatively.
Śyāmasundara: I thought there was also a difference.
Prabhupāda: Huh?
Śyāmasundara: Isn't there also individuality and difference?
Prabhupāda: Their individuality becomes different in accordance with the development of consciousness.
Śyāmasundara: Oh. The soul before the development of consciousness...
Prabhupāda: Yes. So therefore, when one comes to Kṛṣṇa consciousness, then there is no difference. (break) Because their aim is at that time how to... (break) ...and that is nice.
Bob: But they are the same because they are flowers.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Bob: In that sense.
Prabhupāda: Same. That is acintya-bhedābheda philosophy. That everything is one and different simultaneously.