Gita 02.18 – The immeasurability of soul points to its non-literal non-metaphorical measure

Consciousness in the soul. Thank you. Antavanta ime deha, yityasyokta sharirnaha, anashino prameyasya, tasmad yutyasya bharata.

2.18 Bhagavad Gita. Antavanta ime deha. Or Arjuna ime deha.

This body is antavanta. It is bound to be destroyed. It is designed to be destroyed.

Antavanta. Yityasyokta sharirnaha. But, yityasya, opposite of antavanta is that it does not have anta.

That is nitya. Uktaha, it is said, is the sharirnaha, the possessor of the body, the embodied. Further, anashino, it is imperishable, indestructible, aprameyasya, immeasurable.

Tasmad yutyasya bharata. Therefore, oh Bharata, therefore, oh Arjuna, fight. So, now here, what exactly is Krishna saying? Antavanta ime deha.

He is stating that the body is temporary, whereas the soul is eternal. That is in the A and B, which has been said earlier. Now, the fresh detail that he adds in this verse is aprameyasya.

And then there is the first explicit call within the Gita to Arjuna to fight. Tasmad yutyasya bharata. Let's discuss, let's focus on these two points.

Aprameyasya. So, what exactly has that soul's immeasurability got to do with the context? It at first glance might seem to be an irrelevant detail. We are talking about life and death, about matter and spirit.

And then suddenly, what is the point of saying that the soul is immeasurable? And more importantly, we know elsewhere the scriptures do view a measure of the soul also. So, what exactly does immeasurable mean? Firstly, the relevance and the meaning. So, firstly, the relevance is that actually, now immeasurable is beyond measurement.

That can be in two ways. One is that it is so big that it cannot be measured, or it is so small that it cannot be measured. Both are beyond measurement.

So, beyond measurement can be in the upper extremity or the lower extremity. Now, the soul is on the lower extremity of measurement. Now, the point is, there is the verse which Prabhupada would sometimes quote, keshagra, shatabhagasya, shatadhakalpitasya.

Keshagra, that there is the tip of the hair, shatabhagasya. If we divide that into shata, hundred parts, take that tip of the hair, divide it into hundred parts, shatadhakalpitasya, and further divide it into hundred parts, then what we get is the size of the soul. Now, at one level, this seems to be like a very precise mathematical measure, one ten thousand fraction.

But then, no, the fraction is given precisely, but the thing of which it is given as a fraction is not very precise. Tip of a hair. Now, how do we define, how do you quantify the tip of a hair? Now, how big is the tip? Is it that when we cut the hair, the smallest cuttable part we call as the tip, but then what will be the smallest cuttable part will vary depending on what instrument we use for cutting also.

So, therefore, the point is, when it is at one ten thousand, the tip of a hair is, the really emphatic point is that it is very small. So, it is so small that it is practically beyond measurement. Now, so, the fact that the literal measure, literal measure is itself not given, but it is a, it is a, it is given in relative terms, underscores that actually, the point is not to pin down the soul to a particular literal measure, but the point is to convey the extreme smallness of the soul.

Now, so, is this use is metaphorical? Well, it is somewhere in between literal and metaphorical. You know, metaphorical in one sense is non-literal, but metaphorical also in another sense means that the thing itself has no reality, but it is not like that. So, just like when we say Kurukshetra war, is it metaphorical? Well, it can be taken metaphorically, but it is not metaphorical or literal.

It is metaphorical and literal. The Kurukshetra war can and does refer to a historical battle that took place and it can also refer to the inner battle that takes place in our consciousness. So, beyond that, or similar to that, when we talk about the soul here, it can refer to the, the point is that is it literal? Now, as I mentioned, because the measure itself not given literally, the tip of a hair is a relative term.

So, it cannot be taken as a statement of literalness. But at the same time, the soul should not be reduced to merely some abstract, intangible, impersonal, non-quantifiable, just a spark of spirit or something like that. The soul is a unit of consciousness, is a person who is manifested presently in a BJ form.

And as such, the soul is very much of a ontologically real entity. So, therefore, the saying that it is metaphorical is itself not a precise description, nor is saying that it is literal a precise description. So, you have to understand that from the literal point of view, there is a real soul who has real dimensions.

So, the spiritual arena is not bereft of dimensions. There are dimensions in the spiritual arena also, and the soul has dimension. But at the same time, that is to indicate it is not non-metaphorical.

But at the same time, the soul is beyond material dimensionality. The soul is beyond, so the emphasis when you talk Shaktabhagastya is that it is beyond material dimensionality. The point is not what the measure is, but the point is that there is a measure and that measure is so small that it's extremely difficult, it's almost impossible for us to measure it.

So, Aprameya conveys this point. It's not that the soul has no measure in itself, but for us to measure, it's nearly impossible. Now, we are limited not just by the limitedness of our sensory apparatus, but we are limited also by the inability of the sensory apparatus to perceive spirit.

And that's why it is Aprameyasya. And the Smadhyudhyasya means, therefore, you should fight over Arjuna, over Bharata. So, what is the relevance now? So, here we see the word Bharata is used for Arjuna.

It's Krishna speaking and he's using it to offer Arjuna. Earlier Sanjaya has used the word Bharata for Dhritarashtra. So, Tamuvacharashikeshaprahasannivabharata, senayorubhayor madde, vishidantamidamvacha.

So, 2.10. So, there Bharata was used to refer to Dhritarashtra. Now, Bharata in 2.18 is used to refer to Arjuna. Both are descendants in the Bharata dynasty.

So, the name can apply to both. Smadhyudhyasya. So, Krishna brings the philosophical discussion down to earth by giving a practical call.

So, yes, when you understand the soul's eternality, indestructibility, therefore, you should fight. Don't abandon your duty, but gird yourself, do the call of duty, to answer the call of duty by picking up your bow and fight. The Smadhyudhyasya.

Fight, for you who are belonging to an illustrious dynasty, fight. And in this way, we will see that this particular call to action comes repeatedly in this section, where Krishna doesn't leave philosophical knowledge to be a mere abstraction, but brings it down to a practical,.