ATMA BODHA 32

 

                                                                ATMA BODHA 32

                      “DEHA ANNYATWAD-NA—ME   JANMA-JARA-KARSYA LAYADAYAH

                        SABDADI VISHSYAI—SANGAH  NIRINDRIYATAYA  NA CHA”

“I AM OTHER THAN THE BODY AND SO I AM FREE FROM CHANGES LIKE BIRTH, WRINKLES, SENILITY, DEATH etc. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH SENSE OBJECTS LIKE SOUND AND TASTE. IT IS BECAUSE   I HAVE NO SENSE ORGANS.”

“ The Self is unmoving, indivisible; it is wiser than thought. The senses never reach itas it is ahead of them and in it does the moving spirit support the activities of man.”

“He pervades all things; He is radiant, incorporeal, invulnerable and sinewless; He is pure and untouched by evil;  He is the seer, wise, all pervading and self existing----He has disposed all things rightly through endless years.” ( Isavasya Upanishad)

The SELF is the Eternal Substratum of the entire world and it is the established fact. In the following six stanzas, Sankara,  elucidates the process of negation of the body, mind and intellect. It is to facilitate one to experience finally the SELF as the sole illuminator of all objects. The distinction between the body and Soul or Self is affirmed by Sankara in this stanza. If I am not the body, the merciless sorrows and pleasures and the vicissitudes the body undergoes are also not mine. The endless transformations that the body undergoes in the terrestrial world ---- birth (jayathe), growth ( vardhate)  decay ( kshiyate),  and death (layathe)  in the pilgrimage from birth to death --- all belong to the physical body and not to the SELF or SOUL as IT is unborn!

When “ I “ the SELF, am unborn  where is the question of death to “ME?” It is now clear that no other changes like birth, growth and senility and old age etc can  ever affect or come to “Me.” But unfortunately man confuses and identifies body for theSelf or soul and suffers untold miseries. He thinks that the torments and silly pleasures experienced are of the Self and not the body. He is under the grip of illusion or maya and mistakes the right as wrong and wrong as right. Common man has no capacity to discriminate and distinguish between the Body and the Soul. If I mistake any of these as mine it is the tragic error of the limited ego in me suffering from body consciousness.

When I am other than the body I am unattached to the sense objects as well. What am I if I am not the physical body or the sense organs? A zero?A non entity?  In short, I am the Consciousness that illuminates the entire dead world of matter in and around me---the Absolute One, the unattached  Immutable Spirit that revels everywhere!