Prabhupāda: Just like a child gets another body, boyhood. The boy gets another body, youth. The youth gets another body, old man. Similarly, when this body is not useful, then he gets another body. Tathā dehāntara-prāptiḥ (BG 2.13). As we experience dehāntara, different types of body, we are getting one after another, similarly the soul is immortal; he'll get another body. Now here it is not mentioned what kind of body. "Another body." The "another body" means, there are 8,400,000 different types of body, so he can enter any one of them according to his karma. That will be selected by higher authorities. Just like I do not know here; in India, in New Delhi, the Indian government, they give, I mean to say, house, accommodation, to the government servant. So there are different types of houses: for minister one type of house, for secretaries for one type of house, for the clerks one type of house. So according to the position, a house is offered. So our . . . we are acting here according to our resultant action of the activities, we get next birth. That is under the control of material nature. (aside) You find out, kāraṇaṁ guṇa-saṅgaḥ asya sad-asad-janma-yoniṣu. Kāraṇaṁ guṇa-saṅgaḥ asya.
Paramahaṁsa:
- puruṣaḥ prakṛti-stho hi
- bhuṅkte prakṛti-jān guṇān
- kāraṇaṁ guṇa-saṅgo 'sya
- sad-asad-yoni-janmasu
- (BG 13.22)
"The living entity in material nature thus follows the ways of life, enjoying the three modes of nature. This is due to his association with that material nature. Thus he meets with good and evil amongst various species."
Prabhupāda: Now, the material nature has got three modes: goodness, passion and ignorance, and mixture. So we are associating with the modes of material nature, and according to that nature we are manufacturing our next body. This is the . . . so in the material world we are infecting several types of quality of the nature. Not everyone is on the same quality. Just like these boys, they are being trained up under certain quality. They're not going to the restaurant, they are not going to the liquor shop, they're not smoking, they're not eating meat, they have no illicit sex. They are being trained up. This is a quality. And another man is going to the liquor shop, to the brothel, so many other things. They're not of the same quality.
Jesuit: What is it all leading to? What does it all lead them to? A state of liberation from material things?
Prabhupāda: Yes, there are two . . . now in the human form of life, we have got two selection. I think in the Bible also it is said that one goes to hell, one goes to heaven. So we have got two selection, either to the path of hellish condition or to the path of back to home, back to Godhead. This is human life. It is, in Sanskrit word, it is called pravṛtti-mārga, nivṛtti-mārga. Nivṛtti-mārga means stopping the material way of life and go to the spiritual world, back to home, back to Godhead.
Jesuit: Does that mean that the things such as—you mentioned smoking and alcohol and sex and meat—that all those things are material and therefore bad?
Prabhupāda: Yes.