So this is common-sense understanding. People do not understand it, very nice common sense, that the body is changing but the soul is there. Exactly the same example: the mother knows that, "My boy, my child, although he has changed body, now he is grown-up, say, fifty years old, but my child he is. He is my child." Where is the difficulty to understand? Anyone can understand. But people do not believe in the transmigration of the soul. Yasyātma-buddhiḥ kuṇape tri-dhātuke (SB 10.84.13). This kind of education, what is the value? The real knowledge begins when we understand that we are not this body, material body; I am different from body.
- dehino 'smin yathā dehe
- kaumāraṁ yauvanaṁ jarā
- tathā dehāntara-prāptir
- dhīras tatra na muhyati
- (BG 2.13)
This is our position. Then, when we understand that, "I am not this body; I am spirit soul," ahaṁ brahmāsmi, then real knowledge begins. Otherwise, so long we are in the bodily concept of life, we are animals, because animal cannot think that the animal is not the body.
So first education should be given to the students that he is not this body; he is spirit soul. And because he is spirit soul, he has got a different business than to maintain this body. Maintenance of the body, that is being done by the cats and dogs also. They also take care of the body very nicely. They fight, struggle for existence to . . . they fight to keep the body fit. The tiger also, he fights. He secures his eatables by fighting. Similarly, this struggle for existence to get things for eating, sleeping, mating and defending, that is current in the animal society also.