Interviewer: Prabhu, we want to ask you some questions. It's a monthly magazine we have, Trans-India. It circulates northern . . . among Indian immigrants in North America and North American, Canadian friends of ours. You know ever since Swami Vivekananda came here in 1896 . . .
Prabhupāda: Ninety-three.
Interviewer: His first one was 1896, I think, his first visit.
Prabhupāda: No, 1893.
Interviewer: Ninety-three, I see, yes. Since then there has been a lot of interest in this country in Indian philosophy. Recent gurus have come, they have talked about meditation. My own view is that all of these things have influenced the American people, but in a kind of intellectual fad, a kind of fashion. And it seems to me that your intention and aim is not merely to cater to the mind, cater to reason, cater to the intellect, but to effect a kind of transformation of man himself. Is this why you have introduced a whole way of living, a whole way of life, is it? Am I right in suggesting that?
Prabhupāda: Yes. It is a different platform of life—a spiritual. Generally people are on the material platform, on the bodily concept of life, and the whole world is going on with that wrong conception of life. Actually, as soon as we think that we are this body, we are immediately on the platform of animal life. In the Bhāgavata it is stated, yasyātma-buddhiḥ kuṇape tri-dhātuke (SB 10.84.13). Anyone who is thinking, identifying himself with this body, and similarly with other references, yasyātma-buddhiḥ kuṇape tri-dhātuke sva-dhīḥ kalatrādiṣu bhauma-ijya-dhīḥ. In relation with body we think of family, community, nationality. In this way our civilization is dog civilization. That is not human civilization. Human civilization begins when one understands that he is not this body. Brahma-bhūtaḥ prasannātmā (BG 18.54). Ahaṁ brahmāsmi. Perhaps you have heard this word . . .
Interviewer: Yes.
Prabhupāda: . . . the Vedic mantra, "I am not this body. I am spirit soul." That is the beginning of Bhagavad-gītā. Dehino 'smin yathā dehe kaumāraṁ yauvanaṁ jarā (BG 2.13). Asmin dehe, within this body, there is the soul. So on account of presence of the soul we are transmigrating to different bodies, just like from childhood to boyhood. The body of a boy is different from the body of a child, but the same soul who was within the body of a child has now come within the body of a boy. And the same soul again, he will go in the body of a young man. And the same soul again will go in the body of an old man. And the same soul, when the body of old man is finished, then he enters another body. Tathā dehāntara-prāptiḥ (BG 2.13). So the soul is transmigrating from one body to another. A part of it we can see in this life: I was in the child's body, I was in the boy's body, I was in the young man's body, now I am an old man's body. Similarly, as my child's body being finished, I have entered into the boy's body—my boy's body being finished, I have entered young man's body, similarly, when this body will be finished, I shall enter another body, new body. That will be given to me by nature according to the mental condition at the time of my death. Yaṁ yaṁ vāpi smaran bhāvaṁ tyajaty ante kalevaram (BG 8.6). This is the law of nature.