Prabhupāda: Actual identity is that you are spirit soul, and this material body is your covering. Just like dress. Just like within dress, the real body is there. Similarly, we are within this material body. So we are taking more care for the dress and not for the body actually. But when a body is dead we can understand that there is something missing. That missing thing is the soul.
In the modern educational field there is no department of knowledge to understand that what is that missing part. There are so many theories, but they are not practical. Therefore we have to understand the soul and its constitution from authoritative scriptures like Bhagavad-gītā.
Then if we understand our identity actually. And in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam it is said that persons who are identifying themselves with this material body, they are not actually human being. They are counted amongst the asses and cows. So that is ignorance, or illusion.
Interviewer: Thank you, caller.
Gargamuni: Oh.
Interviewer: Now, I want to ask you something. You said we live in a bad world, but through our mind, our soul, we can escape.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Interviewer: Or through Kṛṣṇa consciousness. We're not solving anything, then, by doing that. We're sort of, in our own mind, we're running away.
Prabhupāda: Yes, that running away the best sol . . . suppose you are put in a prison house. The solution is to go out of it. If you want to make adjustment of the prison house, that is impossible. You may be a first-class prisoner or second-class prisoner, third-class prisoner, but you will remain a prisoner. But if you want freedom, then you must go out of the prison walls.
Interviewer: But I notice you have many . . . you seem to have a lot of young men who are part of your organization. These young men must face the material problems of today, like the Draft and Vietnam and everything.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Interviewer: Isn't it difficult to belong to Kṛṣṇa consciousness and exist in this world we must exist in?
Prabhupāda: Yes. The thing is that persons who are in Kṛṣṇa consciousness anywhere, even they are put into a very uncomfortable position, they are not suffering in the same way as ordinary man.
Interviewer: Oh. We have people who want to talk to you. Caller, you're on the air with the Swāmī on KGO.
Gargamuni: Thank you. Hello, Swāmījī?
Prabhupāda: Yes?
Gargamuni: What is the perfection of this life?
Prabhupāda: The perfection of this life is to understand oneself, what I am. This is the beginning. Why I am suffering? If there is any solution of this suffering? And there are so many things. These questions should be there. Unless a man is awakened to these questions, that, "What I am? Why I am suffering? Where from I have come, and where I have to go?"
Then he's considered on the animal level. Because animals, they have no such questions. It is in the human form of life these questions are there. And their answers are all there in the scriptures. So if we are inquisitive and follow the answers from authoritative sources, then the solution of life is there.