Guest: Swamiji, you mentioned that death is actually sleeping for seven months?
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Guest: Is this provided you take on a human form of life?
Prabhupāda: Not necessarily.
Guest: If you take on a dog's body then it's still seven months?
Prabhupāda: Not seven months. I am speaking from the human point of view. But that consciousness is, I mean to say, subdued for a few days, a few months, then you get another body. Again consciousness is there, and you begin your work. Even you get human form of life, but if you do not utilize it properly, then what is the use of getting human form of life? That is the defect, but there is no training. There are so many university departments, but there is no department for understanding what is the soul or what is God. No department. This Bhagavad-gītā teaches this department of knowledge. Beginning. From the very beginning. The Bhagavad-gītā is begun from the understanding that Arjuna was spoken by Kṛṣṇa, aśocyān anvaśocas tvaṁ prajñā-vādāmś ca bhāṣase (BG 2.11). "My dear Arjuna, you are talking like a very learned man but," gatāsūn agatāsūṁś ca nānuśocanti paṇḍitāḥ, "but actually one who is learned man, he does not bother about this body either dead or alive." This is not the subject matter, to supply the necessities of body. This is not the subject matter of study for a learned man. In other words, the whole world is absorbed in the study of this body only. So there is no learned man according to Bhagavad-gītā. Aśocyān anvaśocas tvaṁ prajñā-vādāmś ca bhāṣase (BG 2.11). That you are talking Actually, so many learned men, M.A., Ph.D., with university qualification, they are talking so much, but as soon as they are asked, "Do you know what is the soul?" They stop. Yes?