(Tutankhamun's tomb, Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, Cairo)
"Karmīs means those who are working day and night very hard for getting some material benefit so that he can enjoy sense pleasure. These are called karmīs. The karmīs also, not only they want to enjoy in this life; next life also they want to go to the heavenly planet. Just like this morning we were talking, that dead body in Egypt and some other places. They keep the body so their body will go to the heavenly planet and he will enjoy. But clearly it is the bodily concept of life. The sane man will see that 'The body is lying there. Well, when he has gone to the heavenly planet?' If he accepts that the body is there, then something has gone to the heavenly planet. Then you will have to accept soul. Otherwise, how you can say that he has gone to heaven or some...? No. If you mean 'he' means this body, the body is in the coffin, so how it has gone to heaven? Then you have to accept that the living entity who was within the body, he has gone to heaven. That is reasonable. So that means you have to accept next birth.
So if you think that he has gone to heaven, then he may go to hell also. Because if the soul is departed from the body, now according to his karma... That is right philosophy. That is Vedic philosophy. Kṛṣṇa says, dehāntara-prāptiḥ. Tathā dehāntara-prāptiḥ (BG 2.13). You have to change this body. As you have changed already several times, similarly, after death you will also get another body. So this is a fact, that soul is there, and soul is changing the body, and therefore the question of hell and heaven or something else may come. This is sane. Not that the body is going to the heaven. No, no. This is foolishness. Anyone can, any man with common sense, can understand, 'Where the body has gone? It is rotting here.'"
(Srila Prabhupada Lecture, Los Angeles, July 10, 1974)
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