The Soul

Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2, Verse 23

नैनं छिन्दन्ति शस्त्राणी नैनं दहति पावकः|
न चैनं क्लेदयन्त्यापो न शोषयति मारुतः||

nainam chindanti shastrani nainam dahati pavakah
na cainam kledayantyapo na shoshayati maarutah

it is not harmed by weapons, not burned by fire
cannot be wet by water, nor dried in air

The first time i heard this verse, it was sung in the form of a song by KJ Yesudas in his rendering of this chapter from the Bhagavad Gita. For a long time, through my teens, we went through our morning rituals listening the melodious assembly of un-understandable words. All it mattered to me at that time, was it helped soothed a stressful mind. Much later, after i knew how to recite these words and verses, i set about to understand, what i was saying. I did, however, the profoundness of this verse struck me much later when i was listening the chanting on TV, after the assassination of Indira Gandhi.

Listening to a lecture by Chinamayananda a little after, i remember him trying to explain the concept of the soul as the life in the body. He sighted the parlance in India, where people referred to a dead person as simply the 'body'. The reference was to the fact, once dead, the body was soulless, and therefore just the remnant shell used by someone.

Our body is made of cells, and other organs that simply cease to function, when dead. When life departs the body, the body starts decaying, since otherwise functional organs have stopped. Why? Where inside the body, does life exist ? How come over a million years since life was first created, and thousands of years since humans started walking around the earth, these cells and organs have not evolved their own survival mechanism? They still seem very attached to this 'life' or soul as some of us call it. When this soul departs, these organs have no defense mechanism.

What is a soul ? Where does it come from ? Where does it go ? Who does it owe allegiance to ? Who controls it ? How does it know its time to come or go ? Why does it leave otherwise perfect bodies ? Why does it stick around in ones that are shriveled and motionless with broken bones ?