Dr. Singh: Srila Prabhupada, what about heart transplants? We know that the spirit soul is within the heart. But nowadays doctors can replace an old heart with a new one. What happens to the spirit soul in each heart? Does the person who receives a new heart also get a new personality?
Srila Prabhupada: No.
Dr. Singh: Why not?
Srila Prabhupada: Suppose I get up from one chair and go sit in another chair. Does my personality change? I may change my seat, but does that mean I have changed?
Dr. Singh: But the heart is changed, and the heart contains the spirit soul.
Srila Prabhupada: The Vedas describe the heart as a sitting place for the soul. So when they transplant hearts, they simply change the soul's seat. The same soul remains. If they could prove that by changing the heart they have increased the patient's duration of life, then that would prove they've caught the spirit soul. But they cannot increase the duration of life, because people have acquired their bodies by a superior arrangement. You have this body, and you must live within it for a certain period. If you simply change one of the parts of your body, that will not help you prolong your life. That is impossible. The doctors think that by changing the heart they will increase the duration of life, but that is not possible.
Dr. Singh: So a heart transplant is a kind of artificial transmigration of the soul from an old heart to a new one?
Srila Prabhupada: Yes, it is something like that. Krishna explains in the Bhagavad-gita (2.13):
dehino 'smin yatha dehe
kaumaram yauvanam jara
tatha dehantara-praptir
dhiras tatra na muhyati
"As the embodied soul continually passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. The self-realized soul is not bewildered by such a change." Changing hearts is just a change of material bodily organs. The heart is not the real source of life, and therefore changing the heart does not prolong the duration of life.
Dr. Singh: Yes, most heart transplant patients live only a very short time after the operation. But is it ever possible to transplant the soul from one body to another?
Srila Prabhupada: Sometimes certain yogis can do that. They can find a better body and transfer themselves into it.
Dr. Singh: When the doctors perform a heart transplant, they take a heart from someone who has just died and exchange it for a weak heart in someone else's body. Does the soul from the dead heart change places with the soul in the weak living heart?
Srila Prabhupada: No. The soul has already left the dead heart. There is no question of bringing in another soul.
Dr. Singh: Let me see if I understand you correctly. When the doctors remove the heart of a man who has just died, the soul has already left his heart. Then, when they transplant his dead heart into the body of the patient, the patient's soul passes into the transplanted heart.
Srila Prabhupada: Yes. The soul is destined to live in a particular body for a certain number of years. You may change whatever part of the body you like, but you cannot change the duration of the life of that body.
Dr. Singh: So the heart is just a machine - an instrument?
Srila Prabhupada: Yes. It is the sitting place of the soul.
"While decorating the body with tilaka, we give protection to the body by chanting twelve names of Vishnu. Although Govinda, or Lord Vishnu, is one, He has different names and forms with which to act differently." SB 10.6.27-29 Purport ACBSP
