Nature of the Self
न जायते म्रियते वा विपश्चिन्
नायं कुतश्चिन्न बभूव कश्चित् ।
अजो नित्यः शाश्वतोऽयं पुराणो
न हन्यते हन्यमाने शरीरे ॥ १८॥
na jāyate mriyate vā vipaścin
nāyaṃ kutaścinna babhūva kaścit .
ajo nityaḥ śāśvato’yaṃ purāṇo
na hanyate hanyamāne śarīre .. 18..
The knowing Self is not born; It does not die. It has not sprung from anything; nothing has sprung from It. Birthless, eternal, everlasting and ancient, It is not killed when the body is killed.
Commentary:
Na jāyate: The soul does not really get born. It is not born. It is birthless. Mriyate vā vipaścin: This all-knowing soul never dies. Nāyaṁ kutaścin: It does not come from somewhere, because it is everywhere. Na babhūva kaścit: It does not become something else when it appears to be born. Ajo nityaḥ: It is eternal, unborn. Śaśvato’yam: Perpetual is this ancient reality. Purāṇo na hanyate hanyamāne śarīre: Even when the body perishes, it does not perish.
This is similar to a verse from the Bhagavadgita. Na jāyate mriyate vā kadācin nāyaḿ bhūtvā bhavitā vā na bhūyaḥ, ajo nityaḥ śāśvato’yaṁ purāṇo na hanyate hanyamāne śarīre (B.G. 2.20): If person imagines himself to be a destroyer, if he thinks that he is really a destroyer, and if a person who is apparently destroyed or killed feels that he is struck with death and destruction, neither of these know the truth properly. The impulsion, the Consciousness that is necessary for creative activity of any kind—creating or killing, or whatever it is—that Consciousness which is essential, without which the body will be deadened and no activity would be possible, that Consciousness which is finally responsible for good deeds and bad deeds, even the worst of deeds, that Consciousness is not involved in the goodness or the badness of the deeds. The killer does not kill, and the killed is not killed, because of the fact that the thing that is really responsible for making such actions possible cannot be killed, and is not killed, because it is Pure Consciousness. The sun in the sky, without whom we cannot do anything, good or bad, is not responsible for any good or bad in this world. Neither the virtues nor the evils of the world can manifest themselves if the sun is not to be there in the sky, yet the virtues and the evils of the world are not connected with the sun in any manner whatsoever. So is the case with the Atman that is responsible for anything that we are to do. The good action of charity or the worst action of killing, nothing is possible unless Consciousness is backing us up as an ocean of force behind us, but it does not get involved in this action of ours. Even as space is not involved in what is contained in the vessel and the sun is not involved in what is happening in the world, so also the universal Atman that is Consciousness is not involved in any action. Neither the killer nor the killed, appearing to be identified with this action and experience, knows the truth.
Swami Vivekananda Says —
This Self of man, Nachiketas, about which you seek to know, is never born, and never dies. Without beginning, ever existing, this Ancient One is not destroyed, when the body is destroyed.[Source]
If the soul is infinite and exists everywhere, as it must do, if it is a spirit, what is meant by its taking up bodies and passing through body after body? The idea is that the soul neither comes nor goes, neither is born nor dies. How can the omnipresent be born? It is meaningless nonsense to say that the soul lives in a body. How can the unlimited live in a limited space? But as a man having a book in his hands reads one page and turns it over, goes to the next page, reads that, turns it over, and so on, yet it is the book that is being turned over, the pages that are revolving, and not he — he is where he is always — even so with regard to the soul. The whole of nature is that book which the soul is reading. Each life, as it were, is one page of that book; and that read, it is turned over, and so on and on, until the whole of the book is finished, and that soul becomes perfect, having got all the experiences of nature. Yet at the same time it never moved, nor came, nor went; it was only gathering experiences. But it appears to us that we are moving. The earth is moving, yet we think that the sun is moving instead of the earth, which we know to be a mistake, a delusion of the senses. So is also this, delusion that we are born and that we die, that we come or that we go. We neither come nor go, nor have we been born. For where is the soul to go? There is no place for it to go. Where is it not already?[Source]
