Chapter 2, Verse 20
na jāyate mriyate vā kadācin
nāyaṁ bhūtvā bhavitā vā na bhūyaḥ
ajo nityaḥ śāśvato ‘yaṁ purāṇo
na hanyate hanyamāne śarīre
This is not born, nor does it die, nor is it a thing that comes into being once and passing away will never come into being again. It is unborn, ancient, everlasting; it is not slain with the slaying of the body.
This part is so wonderful. Krishna says that the soul was never born: we can’t even say that we are born from God. All we can say is, “We come out of Him.” The soul is never born, nor does it die. Krishna is saying that the soul is not something which is passing by or has modifications with birth and death. Death doesn’t have any grip on the soul: even birth doesn’t have any grip on the soul. It is ever-free.
Modifications are only for the body. Krishna says that all that is “passing away will never come into being again,” meaning that what one has gone through before, it won’t happen again. These modifications, these changes which happen to the body, once they are finished, they are gone! You were a baby, then you are middle age, then you get old: can you reverse the process? No, you can’t. But the Atma, is separate from that.
There are the six modifications which the body goes through: birth, becoming, growth, transformation, decay, and destruction. These modifications have nothing to do with the soul. The soul is ever-free from them, “It is unborn, ancient and everlasting.” ‘Unborn’: the soul was never born. We can’t say that the soul is born from God. No, it came out of God. You can say that you are born from someone, like a child is born from the mother. But the Atma is an everlasting image of God, an ever-lasting drop of Himself. It was never born. It is everlastingly present inside. It’s not something which is separate from God; it’s eternally a part of God Himself – whether one thinks about it or not, whether one is aware of it or not. ‘Ancient’: the soul is beyond time. We can’t say, “You are a young soul,” or “You are an old soul.” You hear this very often in the esoteric world. “This person is an old soul, he is very wise.” But this kind of wisdom is based on the outside, or what one hears, or perceives only with the mind. Here Krishna is reminding Arjuna that the soul is eternal – it’s not young or old. It doesn’t decay. Usually when the body dies, it decays, is destroyed and is finished! The soul doesn’t go through these kinds of transformations. It is everlasting; it is never destroyed. Even if the body is slain, the soul is not.
Here Krishna again explains that even if you cut the body, nothing will happen to the soul. Again and again, He is repeating this to remind Arjuna that the Satchitananda is inside of him. But here, Krishna is not using the word ‘God’. He is not using the word ‘Paramatma’. He will use these words later on. Here He is just trying to reason with Arjuna and explains that within this body, there is something greater, which we call the Atma. That is why the yoga of Chapter 2 is called the yoga of the Self. The only thing that you have to do is to realise the soul, the Atma, the Self. This body has been only given to you to realise this truth.
Bhagavad Gita
