Prabhupāda: What is that?
Gargamuni: Why is this human form of life . . . why is this human life in such a diseased condition with war, pestilence and famine?
Prabhupāda: These are miserable conditions inflicted by material nature just to remind the conditioned soul that this conditioned life in the material nature is not for you. There is another place, where you can live very peacefully. Just like in the prison life there is always infliction of miseries.
If in the prison life one is comfortably situated, then he'll never go out, he'll try to live there. So these material inflictions of miseries reminds us that this place is not suitable for us. It is not our place. Our place is back to Godhead, back to home. Therefore these are the reminders that you must leave this place.
Gargamuni: Yes. Also, what is our true identity?
Prabhupāda: What is that?
Gargamuni: What is our true identity?
Prabhupāda: Actual identity?
Gargamuni: Yes.
Prabhupāda: Actual identity is that you are spirit soul, and this material body is your covering. Just like dress. Just like within dress, the real body is there. Similarly, we are within this material body. So we are taking more care for the dress and not for the body actually. But when a body is dead we can understand that there is something missing. That missing thing is the soul.
In the modern educational field there is no department of knowledge to understand that what is that missing part. There are so many theories, but they are not practical. Therefore we have to understand the soul and its constitution from authoritative scriptures like Bhagavad-gītā.
Then if we understand our identity actually. And in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam it is said that persons who are identifying themselves with this material body, they are not actually human being. They are counted amongst the asses and cows. So that is ignorance, or illusion.
Interviewer: Thank you, caller.
Gargamuni: Oh.
Interviewer: Now, I want to ask you something. You said we live in a bad world, but through our mind, our soul, we can escape.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Interviewer: Or through Kṛṣṇa consciousness. We're not solving anything, then, by doing that. We're sort of, in our own mind, we're running away.
Prabhupāda: Yes, that running away the best sol . . . suppose you are put in a prison house. The solution is to go out of it. If you want to make adjustment of the prison house, that is impossible. You may be a first-class prisoner or second-class prisoner, third-class prisoner, but you will remain a prisoner. But if you want freedom, then you must go out of the prison walls.