Destiny and Karma

Student: Some scientists argue that there are several souls within each body.

They use the earthworm as an example.

If you cut it in half, both parts will live.

They say this proves that two souls occupied the original worm's body.

Srila Prabhupada: No.

It is simply that a new soul has come to occupy the other half of the worm's body.

Dr.Singh: Must the spirit soul necessarily have a body--either spiritual or material? Srila Prabhupada: The soul already has a spiritual body, which the material body covers.

My material body grows upon me--my spiritual body--but my material body is unnatural.

The real body is spiritual.

I am accepting various bodies that are unnatural to my constitution.

My real, constitutional position is to be the servant of Krsna.

As long as I do not come to that position, I remain a servant of matter and get many material bodies according to the laws of material energy.

i get one body and then give it up.

I desire something else and again get another body.

This process is going on under the strict laws of material nature.

People think they completely control their destinies, but they are always under nature's law of karma: prakrteh kriyamanani gunaih karmani sarvasah ahankara-vimudhatma kartaham iti manyate "The bewildered spirit soul, under the influence of the three modes of material nature, thinks himself to be the doer of activities that are In actuality carried out by nature." (Bg.3.27) The source of this bewilderment is that the living entity thinks, "I am this body." isvarah sarva-bhutanam hrd-dese 'rjuna tisthati bhramayan sarva-bhutani yantrarudhani mayaya [17] In this verse the word yantra, or "machine," means that in any species of life, we are traveling in bodies that are like machines provided by material nature.

Sometimes we are moving to higher species, sometimes to lower species.

But if, by the mercy of the spiritual master and Krsna, one gets the seed of devotional service and cultivates it, he can become free from the cycle of birth and death.

Then his life is successful.

Otherwise, he has to travel up and down the different species of life, becoming sometimes a blade of grass, sometimes a lion, and so forth.