Bhakti Shastri (051) Bhagavad Gita Chapter 02 Text 18 to 21

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hare krishna dasmai krishna malai namaha hare krishna welcome back to our bhagavad gita discussion today we will discuss from 2.18 onwards yesterday we discussed 2.17 avinashita padavidhi lets move to the next verse now antavanta ime deha nityasyokta sharirinaha anashinopramenyasya dasmadhyudhyasvabharata antavanta ime deha this deha this body ime deha is antavanta it is going to end bound to end nityasyokta sharirinaha but that which is inside the body sharirinaha earlier the word was used dehi so now it is sharirinaha that is nityasyokta sharirinaha anashinopramenyasya so that is indestructible anashinopramenyasya and it is immeasurable that means what is the point how does the preceding lead to the conclusion therefore fight actually the body is bound to be destroyed the soul is indestructible so therefore you will not be able to save the body even if you avoid fighting and you will not be able to destroy the soul even if you fight so therefore that which is the essential nature which is unchangeable don’t bother don’t worry yourself don’t work yourself unnecessarily into a frenzy caused by anxiety based on thinking that you will be able to save the soul or you will be able to save the body you won’t be and don’t think that you will destroy the soul because you won’t so both ways, so Prabhupada explains the purport that actually antavantai me deha the body may perish in one day immediately or it may be after 100 years it’s a question of time only there is no chance of maintaining it indefinitely so all of us we are born with a death sentence on our head there is material existence itself is a prison in which all of us have a death sentence on us we are all sentenced to death so the only thing is we don’t know when the death sentence is going to come how long we are to live we don’t know just as some product may come with all products come with expiry date this body also comes with expiry date the only thing is that we don’t know when is the expiry date but it is there it can come the next moment it can come after a year it can come after 30-40 years but we are all going to die now there is an interesting word over here aprameyasya aprameyasya means immeasurable so what does immeasurable actually mean now earlier Srila Prabhupada has quoted in the previous purport itself that that actually there is the soul which is one ten thousandth of the tip of a hair so now immediately after Prabhupada quotes that aprameyasya comes up over here so aprameyasya essentially means that actually it is not subject to material measurement so it is not material and it is not materially measurable there are dimensions so it does have dimensions but those dimensions are not material though they are spiritual dimensions because the soul itself is spiritual so aprameyasya here refers to it is so small that it just can’t be measured by our instruments of perception and it is just immeasurable so the immeasurableness is not just because of smallness definitely smallness is one factor but along with that it is because of its spiritual nature so aprameyasya and tasmadhi now what is the relation of aprameyasya with the context of indestructibility the point is that aprameyasya it is so small that even if Arjuna shoots hundreds of arrows at a person now we see in the Bhagavatam that Vishwapitama was lying on a bed of arrows there were so many arrows that it was difficult to put a finger through those arrows so you had so many arrows but none of those arrows penetrated the soul so it is continuing the point that the soul is so small that no weapons will be able to hit it so aprameyasya so the aprameya is given to further the point of indestructibility we discussed in the previous verse 2.17 how heena sarvam idam tatam so Ramachari explains that the soul pervades everything it is consciousness pervades everything and actually nothing can destroy so the same point is being continued over here the soul is indestructible so in one sense Krishna has given a call for action in the previous verse so tasmad yudhyasvabharata the instruction will come again so whenever scriptures talk scriptures can have multiple tones when Krishna is speaking dehinusminitha dehe so that is more of educational inside the body there is a soul and a wise person does not lament so that means there is information over there and there is also an indirect suggestion an indirect instruction that you should also not lament but that is not direct so certain statements in scriptures are direct instructions this is what you should do so for example na sato vidyate bhavo na bhavo vidyate sada of the not eternal there is no cessation of the temporary there is no endurance there is no direct instruction in this but itam sitiksasvabharata therefore I do not tolerate this is an instruction 2.14 is instruction similarly here 2.18 is tasmad yudhyasvabharata is instruction so instructional statements are most important for sadhakas the informational educational statements they are also important because they enable us to understand Krishna to understand the philosophy better from the practical point of view the instruction statements are most important just like a doctor may give a lot of information about the disease if you have got some lung infection so the pulmonary infection is there basically then this is ok the infection is over here and this may happen in the future this is how it is likely to have been caused this is all this these are the different ways in which this infection can affect the body all this information is important but the most important for the information of the patient is what should we do what should I do ok take this medicine in the evening when I start getting cough do this this so like that this is most practically relevant and important for the patient similarly the scriptures give a lot of instructions but a lot of statements are there in the scriptures which contain a lot of information also but within that those statements which are in the mode of instruction they are called for action directly and they are especially important so now Krishna continues the same thought in the next verse by explaining how the body is once one understands that one is not the body then to lament for the destruction of the person is ignorance so so one who thinks this to be the destroyer one who thinks that the soul is destroyed both of them neither of them actually know the soul neither kills nor is killed so now in this verse it is easy to understand that the soul is not killed Krishna very clearly said that the soul is indestructible so now what is Krishna meaning here by saying that the soul is not the killer also obviously Arjuna is going to shoot the arrows and when Arjuna shoots the arrows at his opponents he is going to be the killer isn’t he so actually the statement has to be understood in context the previous verse was saying that the body is perishable so because the body is perishable the body is going to die by its own course in the course of nature the body’s destruction cannot be avoided so in that sense when the soul in the body gets separated at death the point is that that sort of separation was unavoidable and therefore if somebody thinks I am the killer then that is actually the I am the doer so this we will discuss more when we come to 3.27 in the Bhagavad Gita and further we will discuss about in the 5th chapter so here it is not that anybody can kill anyone and say actually I am I am not the killer no one is killed because the Atma is eternal actually Prabhupada will quote in the future verse that the scriptures do tell us that do not commit violence so here Krishna is talking about the overall pattern of material nature that the body is perishable destruction cannot be avoided and he is also talking about Arjuna’s Kshatriya duty he cannot flinch from his duty by flinching from his duty he will not be able to change the course of nature by the course of nature people have to suffer and die and one cannot change that by some adjustment by some change by dereliction of duty one cannot do that therefore why give up duty so Krishna continues the further argument by elaborating more on the soul yes so this is the next verse so Prabhupada quotes actually in this verse only this is not a categorical licence for killing indiscriminately not at all so Prabhupada says killing the body of anyone without authority is abominable is punishable by the laws of the state as well as by the law of the Lord now this is a frequently quoted verse now each of these lines has a significance the most important in the context of Arjuna is when the body is destroyed the soul is not destroyed the soul the spiritual being the part of Krishna the spark of consciousness that is so even when the body is destroyed the soul is not destroyed now the soul does not take birth the soul does not die what does it mean na jayate vriyate actually what do we mean when the soul is na jayate it has no birth and also the word that is used in the third line in 20c is ajo ajo is unborn so unborn and not taking birth they seem to be similar and what is the point when we say normally if we say that ok the child has not yet taken birth that means we would say the child does not exist or it would mean that the child exists in the womb but has not taken birth so what does what do we mean in this sense by soul being ajo actually the ajo refers to the soul not having come into existence at a particular time when we say something has come into birth that means it had an entry into existence at a particular time and if it has an entry into existence at a particular time then it may also have an exit at a particular time so the soul is just beyond the dimensions of time the soul is transcendental so ajo here doesn’t mean non-existence non-existent ajo essentially means over here it does not come to birth it does not come within time domain at any time it is always eternal and essentially in this whole section krishna is using the upanishadic strategy of naiti naiti naiti naiti what is this naiti strategy that when the upanishads and the philosophical seekers the jnanis or those inclined towards jnana they need not necessarily be jnanis only they can be devotees also who can use introspection and intellection to analyse so naiti processes naiti naiti am i this body no i am not the body the body is made up of air am i the air no i am not the air so who am i not this not this so by this process of philosophical negation gradually one comes to affirmation by negation of the material we pave the way eventually for the affirmation of the spiritual that is the process of philosophical introspection about our nature so krishna is using here basically the method of negation so he is saying na jayate namriyate aja so all the attributes that characterise the body those do not characterise the soul the soul does not take birth the soul does not die the soul is immeasurable the soul as we will see in the future indivisible impenetrable so basically all the things that apply to the body things don’t apply to the soul so krishna is using the method of naiti naiti not this not this to point out what the soul is indirectly so because there is a conflation conflation means mixing up of the body and the soul over here so that mixing up krishna is unmixing separating by first pointing out that whatever applies to the body does not apply to the soul na jayate that soul never takes birth now the concept of soul is there in most religious traditions however this concept is quite quite hazy for example in the abrahamic religions abrahamic religions are judaism, christianity and islam they talk about the soul but when they talk about the soul their talk is mostly they are almost as if referring to the soul using the soul as a reference to as a metaphorical reference to our non material essence that means that there is something essential that is non material as a metaphorical reference to our non material essence so the soul is not often taken literally as an entity now of course within the abrahamic religions also there are many different denominations we all have their own ideas but prominently the there is not much self knowledge in these scriptures and in the overall tradition also so the soul the reference to the soul comes but it comes more as a reference to our as a metaphorical reference to our non material essence the bhagavad gita and the vedic literature in the other hand they treat the soul as a ontological higher dimensional entity ontological means pertaining to the nature of existence pertaining to reality as it is so the soul is a literal higher dimensional entity there is a thing called a soul so of course it’s not a thing it’s a conscious being but the point is we can use thing to refer to beings also it is not just some hazy conception it’s an actual being actual object so there the reference to the soul as a metaphor metaphorically we can see that for example somebody say love god with all thy heart all thy mind and all thy soul so now when we say all thy soul what are we referring to here now actually there is the heart gets its consciousness from the soul the heart gets its emotions from the soul the body gets energy from the soul so put your so love god with all thy soul what is it referring to actually here the soul is being referred to in a metaphorical sense so put your entire being, your essential being put it all into and we may also use this in our our deitary languages devotees also so the metaphoric use of the word soul in a metaphorical sense is not wrong for example when we say put your heart and soul in doing service so now what do we mean over here put your heart and soul so first of all when we use this word the heart itself we are referring to metaphorically metaphorically it is not that I have to take my heart out of my chest and put it in the service here when we refer to the heart we are not referring to the biological heart that beats and circulates blood all over the body we are referring to the metaphorical heart which is the seat of all emotions so put your heart in doing service means that put all your emotions do the service with your emotions as Krishna will say aham sarvasya pravam atah sarvam pravartate iti matva bhajante bhav bhajante mam budhah bhava samanvita with emotions that is 10.8 and similarly 15.19 also it says yo mam eva samudh janati purushottama sa sarva vid bhajati mam sarva bhavena sarva bhavena with all emotions so the heart refers to the seat of emotions metaphorically not the biological heart similarly when we put your heart and soul in doing service the soul also refers to metaphorically as the seat of consciousness so put your consciousness into it put your essential being into it put your everything into it so we may also use the soul the word soul sometimes in a metaphorical sense so for example when we say I put my soul I put my soul into that project so now what does it mean it’s not that there is some project over there I took the soul out of the body and put it over there so here sometimes as devotees also we may use the word my soul now philosophical point is I am not the body I am the soul that is correct but there are times there are occasions when we can also use my soul the reference to my soul we can use because the it’s a conventional usage and it is our essential being or our entire being we can when we put into something I put my soul into that so that is with respect to general understanding of the soul concept of soul in various traditions now we discussed earlier how the broad religious tradition in the world can be classified into two there are the Abrahamic religions and the Dharmic religions the Abrahamic religions Judaism, Christianity, Islam they are often history centred there is some specific event that happened in history and centred on that for example Moses taking the selected people from Egypt to the promised land in Jerusalem or Jesus appearance and his resurrection or Mohammed’s coming they are history centred the Dharmic religions are say Buddhism, Jainism Hinduism Sikhism they focus more on that they also historical events are there and they are significant but they are more a search for the principles of Dharma understanding the universal principles that underlie the universe and harmonising with those principles that is the focus of the Dharmic religions so now in the Dharmic religions if you see Buddhism has a peculiar conception their concept is there is reincarnation but there is no soul so in a sense if you consider that Christianity accepts soul but does not accept reincarnation they consider there is only one life we will discuss that a little bit later whereas Buddhism accepts reincarnation without soul now we wonder if there is reincarnation what reincarnates? what is it? there has to be something which goes from one body to another so actually they say no no no actually there is no such thing which goes from one body to another because there is no such thing existing right now also they say what our sense of I-ness is just a residue of the flow of consciousness so the flow of consciousness just keeps moving and because the flow of consciousness keeps moving so that just as it moves in this life so they say there is not even a soul right now so it is just a stream of consciousness that is moving forward and that stream of consciousness continues to exist in the next life also so they accept reincarnation without soul now what is it that reincarnates? that is a question that has stymied Buddhist thinkers for millennia now but essentially their idea is the soul there is no such thing as soul Anattavada their philosophy is called as now there is amongst Buddhist scholars also a debate where Buddha actually taught like this the Buddha because he rejected the Vedic scriptures at that time we have discussed earlier how because at that time meat-eating was very prominent so to stop people from meat-eating he said can’t you see so many animals are being killed how can you allow meat-eating like this to stop meat-eating but the Vedas say this forget the Vedas so what was the idea to reject the Vedas because people had misunderstood the Vedas and they had they had shuttled down reduced the broad Vedic programme to a small narrow programme of material gratification with justification of the Vedas so he said reject the Vedas now without the Vedas it is very difficult to know anything about the absolute truth very clearly that’s why when Buddha taught his teachings were eminently practical he did not go into metaphysics much so for example at one time some person came and asked him are you a god? he said no are you an angel? no are you the supreme? no he says like that we asked that person was trying to understand Buddha’s identity who are you? he said I am awake I am awake that was all that he said another time somebody asked him is the soul different from the body or same as the body? is the soul same as the body? he remained silent is the soul different from the body? he remained silent and finally that person got exasperated and went away and one of his prominent disciples asked him why did you not answer the question? he said that person was asking questions based on the platform of ignorance so either way whatever I would speak that only reinforced the ignorance therefore I decided not to answer so Buddha mostly avoided metaphysical answers he focused on morality so Buddhism is basically like a it is sattvic culture that was the right thought right words, right action so try to bring people to goodness so that eventually they can receive Vedic wisdom and attain transcendence so it is in that sense a pre-theistic religion pre-theistic so some people think that Buddha is a metheist but the explicit atheist rejection of God was not taught by Buddha, do not take rejection of God just don’t talk about God focus on morality, focus on practical action for improving your behaviour and he neglected, he just neglected metaphysical issues but subsequent thinkers in the Buddhist tradition they imported a lot of concepts which were not originally there in the teachings of Buddha, so one of them was atheism and another of them was the rejection of the soul so Buddhism emerged from Hinduism, of course the word Hindu was not there at that time but Vedic tradition that Buddhism emerged as a rebel tradition which rejected the discriminatory caste system which rejected Vedic authority and established itself as an independent body of thought now in their quest to establish philosophical autonomy, philosophical autonomy means yes we have a distinct philosophy we are not just an offshoot of Hinduism so they tried to come up with various ideas and one of the ideas that they came up many of the Buddhist thinkers was Anattava, that there is no soul at all so they say Hindus believe in a soul, we don’t believe in a soul, that’s how they tried to divorce themselves from Hinduism in a philosophical way also culturally in some ways it was a rebellion against Hinduism that rejected the caste system, rejected Vedic authority and philosophically they came up with this idea, so it’s a very unsustainable idea, now for example they give the example that now when we see a flame a candle, to our vision the candle’s flame remains the same, but actually there is no same candle’s flame, the candle’s flame is constantly changing changing, changing, changing so the candle’s flame is just changing, changing, changing and when the candle is about to get extinguished at that time this candle’s flame is transferred to another candle’s flame and then also the candle’s flame keeps changing, changing, changing so just as the flame is constantly changing but appears to be the same similarly our consciousness appears to have a continuity but it keeps changing constantly so however, see this is a misunderstanding is a misapplied example, the Bhagavatam gives this example also in the 11th canto and it gives the example to demonstrate, to drive home the point that we are different from the material world and the material world in the material world everything is changing so now I see this wall I see this table, that’s continuous but actually things are constantly changing, changing, changing changing, changing, so we if we look at a microscopic level, matter is always in a state of flux, there is energy being matter is being created, matter is being destroyed so at the material level everything is constantly changing material things are changing and that is a fact, so there is change but there is an illusion of continuity because of persistence of vision just like when a person is moving a, say a lighted candle or lighted torch, moves round and round and round at a half-hour speed then it appears to arise as if there is a circle, why? because our eyes, whatever we see a few moments ago, that persists in our vision and because of that persistence of vision, what we have seen earlier continues to stay there in the eyes and that’s how we perceive a few things, but perceive that as a circle of fire, not just one torch of fire, so similarly because of persistence of vision we see this material world as continuous, this is what Bhagavatam also says, but the important point is, taking one step backward is that there is a continuous observer who sees things as continuous so similarly, yes when we talk about the soul, the mind and the body, so the soul the consciousness when it expresses itself in material world, it’s constantly changing but there is a seat of consciousness, there is a source of consciousness which is continuous and that is very important to understand that, what is the difference between consciousness and soul? the soul is like the locus of consciousness, locus means focal point, the centre from which, so it is the root of consciousness R O O T, root it is the root from which consciousness is coming out so, now in the candle example, the candle is the source of the flame but that is incorrect because the body is not the source of consciousness the soul is the source of consciousness and the body is being material so the material has no capacity to produce consciousness the body is the soul of the body is simply the root through which the consciousness is being expressed in the world so the material manifestations of consciousness are temporary, they are changing, so for example our moods change, so what we thought, the kind of thought that we have, they keep changing, but I as the person remain the same and now, in this way when we think about it, there is the body is changing and when the consciousness is expressed to the body, that is also changing but the person who is the observer the person who is the source of consciousness that person remains the same so why are we discussing all this over here we are discussing how there are various misconceptions that come up about the soul and the Bhagavad Gita gives the clearest clear conception so, in the Christian tradition for example, they have the idea that the soul is semi-eternal now what do we mean by semi-eternal actually their conception is in the Christian tradition again, reincarnation was originally accepted, there are references to reincarnation in the Bible also, not explicitly but implicitly so, there are many prophets who are considered to be reincarnations of previous prophets and similarly, Jesus talks about reincarnation for example, there is a blind person and Jesus asks the disciples so, ok, why why is this person born blind is it because of this person’s wrong misdeeds or is it because of the parent’s misdeeds so then, when Jesus when this discussion is going on between Jesus and the disciples so at that time Jesus in that particular case says that actually neither actually that person’s blindness is meant to demonstrate the glory of God and then the blind person gets eyes so now the point over here is Jesus does not reject the idea that that person could have done something wrong and when would that person now there are two possibilities that are presented before Jesus that that person did something wrong or the parents did something wrong now in that specific case Jesus removed the blindness of the person but is it that the blindness will be removed for everyone no so what Jesus demonstrated was an exceptional case of mercy but what about the universal occurrences of blindness what is the reason for that so Jesus does not answer the question on a philosophical level over here but what he does say is very what he does not say is also important now he does not refute the idea that a child the person could have been responsible now how would the person have been responsible if the person is born blind what could the person have done to actually be born blind what could have done you know put the legs in a karmically wrong way inside the mothers womb folded the legs the wrong way there is nothing that the person could have done so the whole idea is that there is reincarnation is a general word there is pre-existence and there is afterlife so this is our present existence so reincarnation includes pre-existence and afterlife also so afterlife means that when we die after that life continues that is called afterlife and pre-existence means before we are born even at that time life continues to exist we continue to exist so in the Christian tradition pre-existence is not accepted as it is now but as I said Jesus does not reject outright the possibility that the person could have done something wrong so when did the person do something wrong that was in pre-existence pre-existence means in the life earlier to this life so in that sense certainly we can say reincarnation is not incompatible with the Christian tradition with Christian wisdom although it may not be accepted today Satyaraj Prabhu one of his scholarly devotees has written a book called The Reincarnation Controversy in which he gives a detailed account of how the concept of reincarnation was banished from Christian beliefs during the rule of Constantine and due to the political due to a complex web of theopolitics means politics connected with religion so basically Christianity after it was started and at that time the Roman Empire was ruling Europe as well as the parts of Jerusalem, Israel they had more or less their rule over there and the part where Jesus was born also so Gethsemane and all those places now the Christians started preaching and as they started preaching and spreading many of them were persecuted by the Romans however around 4th century for first 2-3 centuries many Christians were terribly persecuted but by the 4th century the Roman Empire itself collapsed not just because of external attacks but because of internal decay and then at that time to bring back basic morality the Roman Emperor adopted Christianity as the official religion when he adopted Christianity as the official religion it was a remarkable change in the fortunes of Christianity after having survived for 4 years the persecuted religion it certainly became the religion in power and it’s tragic that then Christians started doing to others the same thing that were done to them they started persecuting all the other people who had beliefs different from them so heathens, Jews all these people they were severely persecuted in the next 1000-1500 years when the Roman Catholic Church had tremendous political power there were inquisitions which were held inquisition means any person who had heretical beliefs for example there was a thinker called Bruno and Bruno talked about the immortality of the soul and just because he talked about the immortality of the soul he was burned alive so that was the inquisition so of course this is all accretion, accretion is additional discussion our primary discussion right now is that how the idea of eternality of the soul was banished from Christianity of reincarnation, not just eternality in the sense that pre-existence also and multiple incarnations so at that time when the Roman Emperor accepted Christianity the primary focus was not on philosophical fidelity not on accurately following Christianity, his was the primary focus was political expediency political expediency means what was convenient the king wanted to maintain the rule and for that people needed to have some basic morality and that was what the morality was there among Christians and that’s why he adopted Christianity but his idea was that if you told people that you have many chances then people will become lax in following morality and what was following morality essentially meant following the laws of the king because the king was considered to be the representative of God, so the pagan Roman Empire had now become the Holy Roman Empire and the Holy Roman Emperor was considered to be the representative of God here, so then the king wanted people to follow him and he taught, it’s a long history, he said that give them one life or give them eternal hell and that will make sure they follow the laws they’ll fear God and they’ll follow the laws of God so basically there are it’s quite a significant amount of evidence which shows how during the councils of the church systematically the ideas that supported the sections of the the scriptural sections and the traditional references which supported reincarnation were purged out or were downplayed and were anathemized anathemized means they were declared as anathemized, there was a there’s a very prominent Christian thinker called Origen, he was Augustine considered to be the most prominent among the early Christian thinkers and Origen was the second most, almost second almost just one few runs below Augustine and he had talked about reincarnation but he was anathemized, he was his teachings were declared as deviant and his especially teachings about the reincarnation of the soul were also denigrated and rejected that’s how in Christianity the idea of the soul has become rejected, now the problem with this is once this idea, not of the idea of the soul, the idea of reincarnation has become removed, so now what happens when the concept of reincarnation is exiled then there are several serious issues that come up, for example, the inequities of this world can’t be explained you know, why this person is born blind and this person is born with eyes there’s no explanation for that, it just becomes arbitrary this is the way things are and this is the way you have to accept them so if you understand that there is a past life and people get their consequences for what they have done in the same life as well as in future lives, then we understand that it is we who are responsible for our choices and by making better choices we can create a better future for ourselves, so accepting God’s goodness becomes difficult when God is seen as partial and arbitrary some people are given eyes, some people are not given eyes, why like this? it is very difficult to explain that, some people are born with, born in wealth, some people are born poor why? all such things become very very difficult to explain so when you are talking about the soul and the reincarnation of the soul it’s all very related you know, if there were a cricket match in which the team started two teams are starting the match and one team, their score at the starting itself is 200 and our team’s score is 0, we say what is going on here? why does this team have a score of 200? now there are two possibilities, one is that the people who have organised the match, they have only fixed the match, they want this team to win, so they have given that team a score of 200 and the other possibility that scoreboard works by chance somehow, by chance that scoreboard has come 200 now, both of these alternatives are very unsatisfactory so what does it mean? what we are talking about is, why is one person born blind, one person is born with eyes one person is born in poverty, one person is born in wealth, so this is like one person is having 0 score, another is having a 200 score, so imagine now if, in our day to day life when we act, we don’t expect we don’t act as if things work randomly, if a student studies, student gets knowledge and student gets marks so the first idea is that scoreboard is just working by chance, so then what will be the point of the game? a batsman, just a fast bowler, then the batsman accurately swings and hits a sixer and he finds that at the scoreboard, the score becomes minus six what will be the point of playing left like that? so even in something as recreational not as serious as real life, even in something as recreational as a sport, we understand that there is cause and effect connection ok, play this, this and this will happen do this, do this, this will happen now on the other hand, if we see in real life, there is no correlation between what we do and what we get then it’s a doctrine of helplessness now I hit sixer after sixer after sixer, just my score gets negative, negative, negative another person just just defends the ball from hitting the strums and that person’s scores keep increasing, that would be absurd so we don’t operate in life like this and life doesn’t work like this, so what we act the results come to us accordingly so the Vedic wisdom so the idea that things are happening by chance in the world, some people are born wealthy, poor or blind because of just bad luck that makes a doctrine of helplessness on the other hand the idea that there is a God who is biassed that’s even worse the idea that actually there is God who makes things go wrong, why? so when that is asked actually we can’t know why that is the idea so it is the will of God and we just have to accept the will of God so all this makes things very complex so all these ideas that there is a God but God arbitrarily decides, some people are born blind, some people are born with eyes, some people are born poor, some people are born wealthy this makes God appear discriminatory so it’s like the team the match organiser only giving extra marks to one team some people say oh we cannot understand the will of God yes that is fine we cannot understand the will of God in specific situations but there has to be some broad understanding of God otherwise how will we develop love for God if God is so arbitrary to do anything for anyone how do we actually understand what God is what God is doing and how can we develop love for a person who acts in arbitrary ways so actually when faced with these two alternatives that everything happens by chance, there is no God in control and God is in control but God acts arbitrarily both are unacceptable but it becomes very difficult to stomach the idea of an arbitrary God and many people even if they have inclinations towards believing in God they prefer atheism because things are happening by chance that’s a much more intellectually acceptable alternative so which is actually correct so actually there is a third alternative it’s possible that one team’s score is 200 another team’s score is 0 why? because this is the second innings in a previous innings a team has got a lead and that lead is being reflected over here similarly one person is born wealthy as compared to another person because that person has done something good in the previous life and the past life karma is coming over to this life so there is a controller things are not happening by chance but the controller also doesn’t act arbitrarily in time the controller acts based on an understanding there are laws operating and the controller is basically overseeing the operating of those laws so the controller is not arbitrary so we get what we deserve according to the way we act we get the results so this is actually a very sanity restoring and hope engendering understanding sanity restoring because things are not just insane there is arbitrary chance or there is arbitrary god no no no there is order and god is overseeing the order it restores sanity and it engenders hope how it engenders hope because we understand that actually god is in charge and if I act properly now I can create a brighter future for myself so all this we are discussing right now to talk about how the knowledge of the soul and its reincarnation has a positive effect on life on our conception of life because when we think of ourselves just as lumps of matter who are going to be destroyed it reduces life to meaninglessness so that was the context so in the christian idea, not in all christian most christian denominations they have the idea that the soul is semi-eternal semi-eternal means there is also many christian different ideas but a prominent idea is the soul is once created so every time a man and a woman unite at that time the soul is created because there is no concept of reincarnation so there is no pre-existence every time the man and woman unite at that time the soul is created and after the soul is created the soul has one lifetime so then after that if in that one lifetime the soul accepts jesus as saviour then the soul will go back to god to to live happily otherwise that soul will go to hell forever and burn in the fires of hell so this raises serious questions about god’s kindness so what happens to all the people who are born in such a place that they never get to hear about jesus they all go to hell and why? just because they are born in a particular place? why did god make them born over there? there is no previous life so there is no rhyme and reason why they should be born in a place where they never get a chance to know about god and they go to hell or for that matter what about souls all the souls who lived before jesus came they never heard about jesus because jesus came after them so how will they be delivered so further it raises questions one time i was travelling in a train with a christian so this christian started arguing that jesus is the only way i said fine if jesus is the only way then what happens to we were discussing about meat eating so then the topic came up i told jesus apropos that thou shalt not kill so why do we kill animals he said actually that doesn’t refer to human beings i said it’s not said like that over there it’s a generic instruction thou shalt not kill he said if you are concerned about killing then why are you so concerned about animals why don’t we talk about the stopping of abortion there are so many embryos babies that are being killed and they are unborn so you are against abortion he said yes of course it’s murder ok i said now see your idea is that soul has to take birth and soul has to accept jesus as a saviour and soul will go back to it jesus is the only way right so then what happens to the souls who are aborted they never got opportunity to come to know about jesus what will happen to them will they all go to hell actually they are unborn so they are innocent so they will all go back to jesus i said ok and what is the goal of life to go back to jesus to go back to god it’s ok now if all those are aborted they go back to god then why not abort everyone it’s a sure shot way that everybody will go back to god he said no no how can you do that it’s murder he said no what is the goal of life the goal of life is to go back to god now if we don’t abort people then they will take birth and they may not come to know about jesus or even if they come to know about jesus they may not surrender to jesus they may not accept jesus as their saviour then what will happen they will go to hell so if we abort people then we are guaranteeing that they will go back to god but if we don’t abort them and let them take birth then we are creating the risk that they will not go back to god and they will go to hell in fact so actually speaking this idea of only one life time it is filled with serious logical flaws that god gives only one chance and that also not a proper chance to everyone that one chance you get if you don’t accept jesus in this life then you are going to go to hell forever when ordinary parent gives more than one chance so what to speak of the supreme parent who is supposed to be supremely compassionate so this idea of ajah means that the soul is eternal so eternity normally means no beginning and no end but many christian theologians have a different understanding of eternal that eternity is no end the soul has a beginning but the soul has no end which is a peculiar idea but that is their idea the soul has a beginning but there is no end to the soul so such ideas are refuted by the bhagavad gita’s clear reference ajah ajah the soul is unborn so further when krishna says so what it indicates is so prabhupada translates this as the soul has not come into being the soul soul does not come into being and will not come into being what this essentially means is that the soul exists beyond the time dimension the concept of coming into being is used to refer to coming into the time dimension the soul is never inside the time dimension, soul is beyond the time dimension always now after describing this now there is some repetition and prabhupada explains that the repetition indicates the importance of the subject so in order for the subject to be clearly understood some points are repeated so the indestructibility of the soul is being repeated and prabhupada quotes a verse from the katha upanishad which is remarkably similar in fact the last two lines are entirely similar the first two lines are slightly different here it is here it is now vipashchin refers to it has consciousness or it has capacity to discriminate vipashchitaha will be a word that Krishna will use later on in the same chapter of the bhagavad gita in the siddha pragya section now this is the only line that is different so this indicates that we have similar verses in the bhagavad gita which are similar to the verses that are given in the upanishads the soul is conscious and prabhupada also explains that the soul does not undergo the six changes the body only undergoes changes it is eternally youthful and prabhupada quotes a similar verse like the two birds analogy that this is a famous analogy as we know that there are two birds anoranyam hatomahiyan atmasyanto nito guhayam tamakratupashchitivitashoka dhatuprasadamahim anapatmanam so there is there are two birds one bird is pecking at the fruits and then gets good fruits is happy and gets bad fruits is miserable the other bird is observing calmly and the observing bird is the super soul, the pecking bird, the eating bird is the soul, soul is trying to enjoy through the body and is suffering at times whereas sometimes rejoicing sometimes suffering, overall continuing on in the miserable material existence super soul is observing, if the super soul just turns around and turns towards the super soul and surrenders to the super soul the soul can become free from all miseries so this is talking about how the soul can regain its eternal nature reinstate itself in the situation in the life of eternity now next verse veda vinashinam nityam yenam ajamauvayam katham sa purusha partha kam ghateti hantikam veda vinashinam nityam veda avinashinam know that it is nityam avinashi and nityam yenam ajamauvayam same point as we talked about unborn and imperishable katham sa purusha partha kam ghateti hantikam so this is a rhetorical way of continuing and repeating the point that was made in 19th verse that a person neither kills nor is killed so kam ghateti hantikam so who is the killer and who is the killed? the atma is eternal the body is destructible therefore who is the killer of the indestructible soul? nobody the soul cannot be killed so therefore there is no killer and in this way Krishna is emphatically driving home the point that the soul is eternal so 2.13 introduced the concept of the soul as a specific being and now after talking about the soul as indestructible then from the next verse onwards Krishna will talk about how the soul continues to exist even in the next life so he will drive home the indestructibility of the soul further and then he will talk about the future how the soul gets a next body that we will discuss in our future class thank you.