


Srila Prabhupada explains transmigration of the soul and how we perceive it happening.
June 19 1974 Germany
Prabhupāda: Yes. What is transmigration? Transmigration means the first body you lose; you enter a second body, a third body, fourth. So your childhood body is not existing. Therefore you are in different body.
Satsvarūpa: Well, that example can be understood, but for the materialist, he doesn’t see how it applies to afterlife, one takes another body.
Prabhupāda: Why, why he does not?
Satsvarūpa: Because he can’t perceive. He can perceive that he has changed from child to old man, but he can’t perceive what is going to happen after death. So who knows?
Prabhupāda: But he cannot perceive that we, at night we change this body and go to another body when we dream? He cannot perceive? Your body, this body, is laid down on the bed, and you go away, and you are thinking that you are in Europe and America or in the sky or so many things. So what is that?
Satsvarūpa: Yes, while its happening he can’t perceive it.
Prabhupāda: But that is happening. He is seeing. He is a man. He is seeing. Why he cannot perceive? What is the difficulty? What is the answer, anyone?
Mādhavānanda: He is in illusion.
Prabhupāda: Illusion. You are seeing an illusion? Some tiger is coming. You are crying, “Save me, save me.” It is illusion. This body is also illusion. But you are affected. That means you are experiencing. How you can say that you are not perceiving? And when in dream you see your beloved or woman and man, there is no, nothing such thing, but still, there is discharge. Why? Why you are not perceiving? How you can say that you are not perceiving. It is perceiving. What is the answer? You are perceiving every night…
Satsvarūpa: Yes, in dreams.