What is the true nature of the self?
1. Who am I? Am I the face, which I see in the mirror? Or the self lies hidden beyond the reflection?
In the morning the mirror showed me a face, the same face, which is standing now in front of you. Is it really the same face? The heard and the beard are growing and with every second of time we are becoming one second older. Science is proving that all body cells are being completely changed in a certain period of time. We can see that also the body is being changed during one’s lifetime –the baby evolves into young man and adult, finallydegrades into an elder, but I am always the same. I change my mind,but I am always the same. Who is this unchangeable I?
As “Bhagavad Gita, As It Is” (2.16)states: the soul exists, I am the eternal soul and the body is different from the soul:“Those who are seers of the truth have concluded that of the nonexistent [the material body] there is no endurance and of the eternal [the soul] there is no change. This they have concluded by studying the nature of both.”2.What is the nature of the self and the relation between the body and the soul? The body is a material object, being born and dying, evolving and changing and the soul is the eternal spirit, unchangeable and ever-‐existing.The soul is the driver of the body vehicle. As the driver may increase his driving skills up to becoming the fastest or safest driver of his kind, similarly the true evolution is the evolution of the consciousness, which is the symptom of soul. The soul is the conscious living being inside the body and the symptom of life as Krishna speaks to Arjuna in “Bhagavad Gita” (2.20): “For the soul there is neither birth nor death at any time. He has not come into being, does not come into being, and will not come into being. He is unborn, eternal, ever-‐existing and primeval. He is not slain when the body is slain.”3.What happens after the body is being slain?Every vehicle is going through the cycle of life -‐birth and death: a car is being produced in a factory, in the first years the owner drives it very fast without the need of maintenance, afterwards it need to be maintained and finally must be recycled. And the driver has to change the vehicle. Similarly as “Bhagavad Gita” (2.22) states, the soul reincarnates in different bodies after the body becomes unusable:“As a person puts on new garments, giving up old ones, the soul similarly accepts new material bodies, giving up the old und useless ones.”4.“The individual soul is unbreakable and insoluble, and can be neither burned nor dried. He is everlasting, present everywhere, unchangeable, immovable and eternally the same.”(“Bhagavad Gita” 2.24)Personal experience is different from theory. Please listen to one real story: my grandmother left this world 4 exactly years ago and my father was sitting with her in the final hours and chantedVedic Mantras. Her body was old and powerless and when she left I was outside the house. Suddenly i felt a wave of happiness and bliss in my heart, feeling that someone was hugging me very soft. Although the separation brought sadness in my heart for the lost connection with the personality of my grandmother, I wasn’t feeling sad for the loss of the body, which became very quick cold and lifeless.“Bhagavad Gita” (2.25): “It is said that the soul is invisible, inconceivable and immutable. Knowing this, you should not grieve for the body.”Pleasesend her your blessings, wherever she is!Bhagavad Gita” (2.26): “If, however, you think that the soul [or the symptoms of life] will always be born and die forever, you still have no reason to lament, O mighty-‐armed.”
