Prabhupāda: Paraṁ dṛṣṭvā nivartate (BG 2.59). The exact word is there, that if one gets good engagement, he can gives up bad engagement. But he cannot make it inactive. That is not possible, because soul is active. It is living. How he can make it inactive? That is not possible. Nirvāṇa means stop nonsense, but take to spiritual life. That is next, athāto brahma jijñāsā. Nirvāṇa does not mean to stop activities; to stop nonsense activities. Come to the real activity.
Dr. Ware: Well aṇiman, the word many people use for the soul, also means of course, life . . . (indistinct) . . . being animate. The two are synonymous.
Śyāmasundara: Just like you were saying a while ago that if you were in God consciousness, you need not wear a robe. That's also our philosophy. It's very practical. But your consciousness would be always serving Kṛṣṇa, always serving God, in whatever status of life. It isn't necessary to put on a robe first and then God consciousness.
Dr. Ware: But it helps some people.
Mensa Member: The soul is a very interesting concept, the soul as well, the fact that the soul is quantifiable, that it exists in a smaller part in the larger animals, and a higher part in a higher animals.
Śyāmasundara: No. It's the same size in all entities.
Mensa Member: Oh, it is, is it? But when we reach a point when we don't know whether there are living things or not, you know, the amino acids, and things like that or . . .
Dr. Ware: Well, I would take up that straight away, fundamentally, that it's perfectly correct to say it's the same size every . . . (indistinct) . . . has no size.
Prabhupāda: No. It has size. We cannot measure it.
Dr. Ware: That's what I mean. Therefore the word "size" is a misconception.
Prabhupāda: But that is not a scientific statement. Because you have no measuring instrument you cannot say it has no size.
Dr. Ware: Now, if what you say it has not got three dimension, but when we talk about size . . .
Prabhupāda: Yes, three dimension. It is said, it is estimated that ten . . . one ten-thousandth part of the tip of the hair.
Dr. Ware: (laughs) We could do better than that with a micron.
Prabhupāda: Then find out the soul, if you have got instrument.
Mensa Member: How many angels on the end of a pin?
Dr. Ware: In fact this is coming back to that . . . the analogy again.
Mensa Member: But the whole thing is so . . . (indistinct) . . . about this . . . (indistinct) . . . putting in Kṛṣṇa instead of Christ.
Dr. Ware: But the whole business, if you try to explain . . .
Prabhupāda: In geometry they say the point has no length nor breadth. But that is not fact. The point has length and breadth, but you cannot measure it.
Dr. Ware: Ah, but the mathematician would say that that isn't . . . the definition of a point is something that has no breadth or depth, but his purpose is working out his philosophy.
Mensa Member: (indistinct) . . . he'd say something entirely different. They'd say that the absolute point . . .
Prabhupāda: But if you magnify the point, you'll find there is . . .
Dr. Ware: But, coming back to . . .
Prabhupāda: It is a question of vision. With your present imperfect vision you do not see. When you take a magnifying glass you see, "Oh, there is length and breadth."