Kathy Kerr: Do you advocate, then, that one deny the body? Like comforts and so forth, in order to . . .
Prabhupāda: No, why deny the body? Just like you are putting some type of dress. So dress is not unimportant. But real importance is you, the person. So where is that education about the real person? They are simply engrossed with the dress. This is going on. Such kind of mentality is there even within the cats and dogs. He's also thinking "I am this body." If a human being does not understand this fact, that he is not this body, he is changing his body, but he is spirit soul, then he is no better than the cats and dogs. We do not want to keep the human society in the category of cats and dogs. We want to raise them to the real understanding of the identification. That is our mission. It is neither Hindu religion or Muslim religion or . . . this is science.
Kathy Kerr: I notice all your followers obviously dress similarly and so forth.
Prabhupāda: We cannot get many followers. Because everyone is under this impression, "I am this body." And to get him released from this conception is not so easy job. So we cannot expect many thousands and millions. Only selected fortunate people will understand it. But everyone can understand it. It is very simple thing. But the modern education has made them so dull brain, they cannot understand, neither do they try to understand. That is the difficulty. Matter, subject matter, is very simple thing. I am changing bodies, but in spite of my change of body, I am the spirit soul existing. This is the first understanding. Na hanyate hanyamāne śarīre (BG 2.20), that I am not dead on account of my body being finished. My childhood body is finished, my boyhood body is finished, my youthhood body is finished, but I am existing. I can remember that I was in such body, I was in such body, in such circumstances. When I was a child I was talking like this, I was jumping like this. But because that body is finished, I cannot do that. Now I have got a different body, I cannot jump like a child. This simple truth. But I know that I was jumping. That is not dream; that's a fact. But we are educated in such a foolish way that we cannot understand this simple truth. That has to be amended. Otherwise, there is no question of enlightenment in the human society.