Śyāmasundara: So we can predict that everyone will...
Prabhupāda: Oh, yes. Everyone will be. Somebody sooner, somebody later.
Śyāmasundara: So that the purpose of the life force then is to eventually go back...
Prabhupāda: Just like when a man becomes a prisoner, he will be freed, he'll be a free man at the end of his term, and within this term he is simply kicked by the police, so that he may not come back again to prison house.
Śyāmasundara: But we can't predict that the process of punishment will have permanent effect, can we? Can we predict that? Many prisoners leave the prison, but some come back.
Prabhupāda: No, there is no permanent effect because we have got little independence. There is nothing as permanent. You can misuse your independence at any time.
Śyāmasundara: And come back.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Otherwise there is no meaning of independence. Independence means you can do this, you can do that. "All right. Whatever you like."
Śyāmasundara: His conception of the soul, which he calls elan vital in French language, means the vital impulse.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Vital..., this is living force, vital force. (indistinct), it is never addressed. God has (indistinct) for the mind, for the intelligence, for the body, God has (indistinct).
Śyāmasundara: Is it (indistinct) in the same quantity in every body, in every living body?
Prabhupāda: Yes. Yes. Same quantity. The same measurement: one ten-thousandth part of the tip of the hair.
Śyāmasundara: I mean the energy, the amount of energy.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Yes. That much, that spiritual energy is everywhere, in the ant or in the elephant.
Atreya Ṛṣi: Prabhupāda, you mentioned the size of the soul, and this size seems to connote a physical size. Now, my question is: in the spiritual world, size, it seems that it is a material concept, it is a relative thing, distance...
Prabhupāda: Material size and spiritual size is not the same. Spiritual size is permanent; material size is changing.
Atreya Ṛṣi: In other words, how could you measure the spiritual phenomenon with something like one-thousandth of the tip of the hair? Hair is material.
Prabhupāda: No. Because you have no spiritual vision, therefore you have to be understood by material example.
Atreya Ṛṣi: That's an example.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Atreya Ṛṣi: And also Śyāmasundara Prabhu was asking about predicting about spiritual life. What is the qualification of the person who can make such predictions?
Prabhupāda: He must be Kṛṣṇa's representative, one who knows Kṛṣṇa. That's all.