Prabhupāda: Yes. Second chance means you have to change your body. Now, according to your desire you get another body. That body is not guaranteed that you shall get a human body. It may be . . .
Bill Faill: If you've been bad enough, you might finish . . .
Prabhupāda: No, that . . . this I have already told you. There are 8,400,000 different forms of life. So you can enter any one of them, according to your mental condition. We are under the control of the material nature. The material nature is being conducted in three modes: goodness, passion and ignorance. So just like three colors: yellow, red and blue. Now you mix—three into three equal to nine, nine into nine equal to eighty-one. So these modes of material nature is being mixed up. Therefore there are so many varieties of life. So if we transcend this coloring platform of material nature, we come to the pure consciousness. Then we stop this repetition of birth and death in different forms of life. And if we do not that, then there is chance of going down or going up. There are different planets. If you cultivate the modes of goodness, then you are promoted to the higher planetary system, higher standard of life. And if you don't improve or don't go down, then you may remain in the present stage. But out of ignorance, if you still degrade, commit sinful activities, violate the laws of nature, then we go down again—the animal life, the plants' life, like that. But again we have to evolve, evolutionary process, by nature's . . . so it may take many millions of years.
So therefore a human being must be responsible that, "I have got this opportunity to get out of this cycle of birth and death and different forms of life, and let me properly understand God and what is my relationship with God and act accordingly, so that if we understand what is God, then we go back to home, back to Godhead."
Bill Faill: What can an ordinary man do? I mean the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement involves shaving the head and wearing the saffron robe. What can the man who is caught up in family life do?
Prabhupāda: This saffron robe is not very essential, or cut the hair, but it creates some good situation, mental. You see? Just like a military man, when he is dressed properly he gets some energy to feel like a military man. But it does not mean that unless you are dressed, you cannot fight. It does not mean. So God consciousness can be revived in any condition, without any check. But these conditions are helpful, helpful. Therefore it is prescribed that, "You live like this," "You dress like this," "You eat like this," "You do like this." These are convenient. These are convenient. So they are not essential. At the same time, if we take to these processes, then it will be helpful.
Bill Faill: Yes. One can be a student of Kṛṣṇa consciousness while going about a normal daily life.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Bill Faill: Do you think Transcendental Meditation is beginning to help a lot of people?
Prabhupāda: They do not know what is meditation. They are . . . simply it is a farce. That is another cheating process by the so-called svāmīs and yogīs. They do not know what is meditation. Do you know what is meditation? You are asking me the question, but do you know what is meditation?
Bill Faill: Just a stilling of the mind, trying to sit in the center without swimming either way.
Prabhupāda: So what is that center?
Bill Faill: Oh, I don't know.
Prabhupāda: Then? Why you are asking me? You do not know. So everyone does not know what is meditation, and they talk very much "meditation." This is going on.
Bill Faill: Isn't it a starting point?
Prabhupāda: These bluffers, they say "meditation," but what is the subject matter of meditation they do not know. Simply bogus propaganda. You see?
Bill Faill: Not even beginning to get people thinking right?
Prabhupāda: No. Meditation means this: dhyānāvasthita-tad-gatena manasā (SB 12.13.1), mind saturated with God consciousness and thinking of God. But if you do not know God, then where is the meditation?
Bill Faill: So it's a long . . . something you have to learn.
Prabhupāda: No, it is very nice, but at the present moment in the name of meditation, simply cheating and bluffing going on. They do not know what is the subject matter of meditation. Besides that, in this age, mind is so agitated that you cannot concentrate. I have seen the so-called meditation. They are regularly sleeping and snoring. They do not know. Yes. This is going on. So unfortunately, in the name of God consciousness or this self-realization, so many not-standardized methods are being presented by the so-called bluffers without any reference to the authoritative books and knowledge, Vedic knowledge. It is another type of exploitation.
Bill Faill: What about some of the other schools that have grown up, people like Ouspensky and Gurdjieff and people who've brought a message similar to yours to the West in the past?
Prabhupāda: That we have to study particularly whether it is standard. Otherwise they may speak so many things, but if they do not know what is the standard . . . just like medical science or any science, that is one. It cannot be different because it is spoken by different men. That is not one. That is not science. "Two plus two equal to four," this is a science that is true everywhere, not that because it is spoken by somebody else it becomes "two plus two equal to five" or "three." No. That is . . .
Bill Faill: No. Some other people, do you feel, possibly have had the truth as well, have they?
Prabhupāda: It is very difficult to say.