Prabhupāda: They will be visible in due course of time.
Śyāmasundara: What he was telling me was that the table itself has a jīva soul, that the table is a person.
Prabhupāda: No no.
Revatīnandana: So that's what I was asking. 'Cause I said, "Does the table have a jīva soul?" I was trying to ask that question.
Śyāmasundara: That's what completely threw me off. I thought, "Oh..." That means the table is a person, this is a person, this is a...
Prabhupāda: A particular jīva soul was in that body. Then it is also proved that every jīva soul is individual. Although they are living combinedly, everything is individual.
Revatīnandana: Well, doesn't... That's all right then. Now the...
Prabhupāda: But that one jīva soul was prominent. He was visible. Others were in dormant condition. This proves that every individual soul is separate from the other; still, they can remain together. Just like the sunshine, they create... a small shining particles, combined together, molecules. So everything is combined spirit particles.
Haṁsadūta: Everything that we see around us, everything.
Prabhupāda: Everything. Sarvam idam khalv idaṁ brahma. Everything is Brahman. But when they are covered, that is called material exis...
Śyāmasundara: Each jīva is...
Prabhupāda: Just as sunshine is not covered, it is called cloudy. But this light, whatever light you are seeing, that is also sunshine. That is not different from the sunshine. And above the cloud, there is bright. So matter means when it is covered by something, it is matter. That covering is unconsciousness. That covering is also created of the sunshine, by the same energy. And then, by the same energy it is dissipated also. So the conclusion is living being, when it is covered by ignorance, that is material.
Revatīnandana: But this, the body itself is sort of a manifestation of ignorance.
Prabhupāda: Yes. When the ignorance is gone, then you have got spiritual body.
Revatīnandana: Then I know that I am not this body. Then I know that I am not this body. Now, the question is...
Prabhupāda: Then I am not ignorance.
Revatīnandana: Then there is some distinction, between the nature of the soul and the nature of the body.
Prabhupāda: That distinction is inconceivable. You cannot make clear distinction. Therefore it is called acintya.
Revatīnandana: The distinction between the soul and the body?
Prabhupāda: Yes. Everything. We distinguish matter and spirit. That distinction is inconceivable by you. You cannot make a clear distinction. Therefore it is called acintya bhedābheda tattva, inconceivable one and different, simultaneously.
Śyāmasundara: When you said that, once before, that the cells, all the cells in our body, each one is a living entity with a small body. Each one of those living entities covers itself with ignorance?
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Śyāmasundara: It takes a small body made out of matter.
Prabhupāda: But that body means ignorance. Śarīra avidyā jāla. This body is nothing but a network of ignorance.
Śyāmasundara: So then myself, I organize all these smaller cells. I organize them into my big body.
Prabhupāda: Whatever it may be, when you are covered, that is material. You try to understand. Covered by something. The same example. The sunshine is there, it is covered now. That covering also creation of the sunshine. So therefore the covering has no separate existence. Originally, the sunshine is everything. Is it clear?
Śyāmasundara: So how do I create matter that is my body? How do I create...
Prabhupāda: You are creating. You are creating actually.
Śyāmasundara: By eating and...
Prabhupāda: Whatever it may be. By your energy you are creating. This body is my creation. Just like I am the soul, I am here within this body. So I cut my hair; it is again growing. I do not know how I am creating, but I am creating. My nail is growing—I am growing, I am creating. But I do not know. That is ignorance.
Revatīnandana: Sometimes people ask...
Prabhupāda: These questions are not to be discussed in public. These are very higher understanding. For public should be, "This is matter, this is spirit." That's all.
Revatīnandana: Yes, but one of the devotees asked me one time, "Why it is that when the body is dead that the fingernails continue to grow."
Prabhupāda: That is nonsense. Never grows.
Revatīnandana: Huh? They just play like that. And observe.
Prabhupāda: It decomposes.
Revatīnandana: But they say hair continues to come out sometimes from dead bodies.
Prabhupāda: Sometimes.
Śyāmasundara: I think you said once ... You answered that sometimes the fan turns a little bit after the plug.
Revatīnandana: Yes. Mechanism, bodily mechanism has pulled the plug. That's what I said. Some material mechanism is still functioning like a machine.
Prabhupāda: It has stopped, but maybe just like the fan is stopped, but still moving. Like that.
Revatīnandana: So there are many different manifestations of energies. It is the oneness that they're all Kṛṣṇa's energies. But there is also diversities.
Prabhupāda: Therefore we say acintya bhedābheda. You cannot clearly distinguish. It is one and different, at the same time. It is spirit and not spirit. You have to take it like that.
Śyāmasundara: Somehow or other, we create our own ignorance.
Prabhupāda: Everything is like that. Everything is spirit but at the same time, not spirit. Just like Kṛṣṇa says in the Bhagavad-gītā, mat-sthāni sarva-bhūtāni (BG 9.4), "Everything is in Me, but I am not there." How is that everything is in Kṛṣṇa? How Kṛṣṇa is not there? He says like that.