Learning the Science of the Soul 31

Mike Robinson: No, I wouldn’t.

Srila Prabhupada: Similarly, everyone is simply washing the ‘‘coat and
shirt’’ of the body, but forgetting about the soul within the body. They
have no information about what is within the ‘‘coat and shirt’’ of the
body. Ask anybody what he is, and he will say, ‘‘Yes, I am an English-
man,”’ or ‘‘I am an Indian.’’ And if we say, ‘‘I can see you have an
English or an Indian body, but what are you?’’—that he cannot say.
Mike Robinson: I see.

Srila Prabhupada: The whole modern civilization is operating on the
misunderstanding that the body is the self (dehdtma-buddhi). This is the
mentality of the cats and dogs. Suppose I try to enter England, and
you stop me at the border: ‘‘I am an Englishman,”’ you say, ‘‘but you are
Indian. Why have you come here?”’ And the dog barks, ‘‘ Rau, rau, why
are you coming?’’ So what is the difference in mentality? The dog is
thinking he’s a dog and I’m a stranger, and you are thinking you are an
Englishman and I am an Indian. There’s no difference in mentality. So if
you keep people in the darkness of a dog’s mentality and declare that you
are advancing in civilization, you are most misguided.

Mike Robinson: Now, moving on to another point, I gather the Hare
Krsna movement has some concern for areas of the world where there is
suffering.

Srila Prabhupada: Yes, we have the only concern. Others are simply
avoiding the main problems: birth, old age, disease, and death. Others
have no solutions to these problems; they are simply talking all kinds of
nonsense. People are being misguided. They are being kept in darkness.
Let us start to give them some light.

Mike Robinson: Yes, but apart from giving spiritual enlightenment, are
you also concerned for people’s physical well-being?

Srila Prabhupada: Physical well-being automatically follows spiritual
well-being.

Mike Robinson: And how does that work?

Srila Prabhupada: Suppose you have a car. So, naturally, you take care
of the car as well as yourself. But you don’t identify yourself as the car.
You don’t say, ‘‘I am this car.’ That is nonsense. But this is what people
are doing. They are taking too much care of the bodily ‘‘car,”’ thinking
that the car is the self. They forget that they are different from the car,
that they are a spirit soul and have a different business. Just as no one can
drink petrol and be satisfied, no one can be satisfied with bodily activities.
One must find out the proper food for the soul. If a man thinks, ‘‘Iam a
