SOME THOUGHTS ON THE BHAGAWAD GITA

[Guest guest]

Hari OMA question can be raised as to how the Atma is considered as immutable, not perishable and permanent (saswataha). The Lord answers this question in the Gita. He declares:

"The Self is not born,nor does it ever die;after having been,it ceases to be at any time;unborn, eternal,changeless and ancient(primeval),it is not killed when the body is killed."(Chapter 2, verse 20)

 

The Lord negates in the Self all the symptoms of mutability which are recognised and experienced by the body. We know that the body is prone to different changes and these modifications are the sources of all sorrows in every embodiment. Birth, existence, growth, decay, disease and death are the six changes that are common to all and are the common reasons for all pains in a mortal`s life. All these have been repudiated in the Self by the Lord to prove its immutability. The Self is the eternal factor that exists at all times. Things that have a beginning alone can have an end. Waves are born and they die away,but the ocean is not born with the waves, nor does it die away when the wave disappears. No birth,no death. The Atma is not something that has come to be born due to or because of the body in the way a child who was not existing before came into existence after the birth. The Self is unborn and

eternal,that is to say,birthless (Ajah)and deathless(Nityah). All the modifications which a body undergoes have been denied in the Self by saying it is unchangeable(saswataha). When the body is slain, the Self is not slain, just as when a wave is destroyed, the ocean is not destroyed or like the mud is not broken when the pot is broken. The Atma is not slain as it has no transformation and is not subject to any transmigration. Just as men cast off their worn-out clothes and put on new ones, so also the Self casts off worn-out bodies and enters others which are new. The ego-centric entity in man readily leaves its association with one set of equipments and selects another conducive envelopment for living as new set of its required experiences, in the same way as an individual changes his clothes to suit the convenience of the occasion. Death grins only those who have no understanding. It has no pain for those who understand

its implications and working. Just as changing dress is no pain to the body, so too, when the dweller in the body leaves the envelopment, no pain is possible; when one undresses it does not mean that he or she would ever live naked. So too, the embodied soul soon discovers an appropriate equipment from which to function so as to earn for itself new sets of experiences. The Lord seeks to assert that evolution and change are all for the body, mind and intellect and not for the Self which is perfect and changeless and needs no evolution in Itself.

 

(to be continued)

G.Balasubramanian