Mahātmā: There was one boy in Berkeley, and he worked for a company that would record facts and figures, and he said every year the Navy would pay this company something like sixty thousand dollars and would give them their theories that they knew were wrong, and this company would supply false facts and figures to coincide with the theories—make up facts that would support their false theories.
Prabhupāda: What is that false theory?
Hṛdayānanda: They want to take money, so they say that, "We need so many things, you have to give us money from the government to buy new weapons," this and that, so they make up false things for money.
Prabhupāda: Befool.
Rāmeśvara: Child is born dead means defective body.
Prabhupāda: Hmm?
Rāmeśvara: It just means it is defective.
Prabhupāda: That is, rascal—that his soul is not there, therefore defective. The body is already defective, your body, my body, but it is effective only so long the soul is there.
Devotees: Jaya!
Prabhupāda: The body is always defective. Either child's body or your body or my body, it is always defective without the soul, and it is effective with the soul. This is the conclusion. Therefore Arjuna was chastised by Kṛṣṇa that "You are giving stress on the body. This kind of conception is for the fools." Aśocyān anvaśocas tvaṁ prajñā-vādāṁś ca bhāṣase (BG 2.11): "You are talking like a very learned man, but a learned man knows always that this body is defective, either living or dead." The same body. Dead means the soul is not there, and living means the soul is there. The two condition, effective and defective, is depending on the soul. And soul is important. You have to understand what is that soul. That is knowledge. Tattva-jñānārtha-darśanam (BG 13.12). To understand the truth, what is the truth there, that without something this body is dead, no more value, and with that something the body is so valuable. So one who is intelligent, he'll try to find out what is that truth.
Dr. Wolfe: Prabhupāda, I told a friend—he's been a friend over the years—I tried to bring it home to him that we are not our body, and he said: "Oh, yes, and I cannot get away from the physical idea that I am this," and I said, "Your father is very sick now, and he may die at any time," He is very fond of his father, "and when the father is dead and lying there on the floor and after few days he begins to smell," I asked him, "is that still your father?" He had no answer for that.
Prabhupāda: Nobody can answer. They simply falsely argue. They are therefore less intelligent. Mūḍha. If he was intelligent, then he would immediately accept the Kṛṣṇa's teaching, beginning with dehino 'smin yathā dehe kaumāraṁ yauvanaṁ jarā (BG 2.13). On account of the soul, the body is changing, kaumāraṁ yauvanaṁ jarā. The body is sometimes child, sometimes boy, sometimes young man, sometimes old man, sometimes diseased, sometimes healthy. All these terms are there on account of presence of the soul. If the soul is not there, then it is simply a lump of matter, and it is going to be compost/composed into matter again, and then it will smell. Either you'll have to throw it for being eaten by the vultures or you can bury it under some ceremony or you can burn it. Three . . . what is called? Pariṇāma, transformations. Either as stool or as ash or as earth. Those who are burying, the bodies gradually becomes earth; those who are throwing, the vultures eat, the jackals, dogs eat and it turns into stool; and those who are burning, it turns into ashes. Three transformations, this beautiful body.