The Self Does Nothing🔗

Our body is the temple of our soul. We should respect our body. We should look at our body with gratitude, not greed. We should thank our body, prakṛti for holding our spirit, our soul, ātma. Then, we will see a different dimension of our body.

Actually our soul is always in a state of bliss. It is always ecstatic. Our body is an embodiment of bliss. Whatever material things we think we need, whatever material comforts we think we enjoy, they are needed and enjoyed only by our body. Our soul does not need any of them.

Kṛṣṇa gives us a technique here. He says, when we watch our body enjoying the sense pleasures, when we watch only our body being associated with the external material comforts and not our soul, we see the truth. Just witness the body. Be aware of your body. Observe the body when it reacts to external things. You will notice a sense of separation from the body. You will see what your body is. You will see that your soul has nothing to do with the pleasures you are enjoying.

When you do this, you witness your body and mind as if you are an outsider. It is like watching a movie. When you watch a movie, you watch what happens on the screen. In the same way, when you watch your body and mind, you understand what Kṛṣṇa says. Only when you witness that the body experiences material pleasures and it is the body that does everything and the soul does not need anything, you see the truth.

Kṛṣṇa gives the great truth of advaita in this verse. He talks about collective consciousness. He says when we see the Supreme Soul in all living beings, we no longer see the separateness. We see everything as one single entity. We see the whole Universe as one single body, as one entity expressing the same truth of oneness.

We are all connected. Each and every living entity is connected to the other. Your thoughts affect the thoughts of the person sitting beside you. Whether or not you believe it, this is the truth.

You see, your individual

consciousness is like an onion. What do you see in an onion? There are layers over layers of skin. When you peel the onion layer by layer, what is there inside? Nothing! You are just like that onion. You think the onion is solid. Only when you peel, you see that there is nothing inside it. In the same manner, if you peel all the individual body-mind layers, you experience that you are the collective consciousness. Once you remove all the layers, you see that every entity around you has the same consciousness. Everything is the same.

From the beginning, from your birth, society starts creating new layers on you. In the process, the innocent, childlike nature that sees the Self in everything is slowly lost in us. As a child you do lots of things through which you connect to the Self. You do not know you are different from soil or earth. That is why you play with mud. But what do parents do? They scold you. 'Don't do this. Don't do that.' They say, 'You will get dirty. Your clothes will become dirty.'

We continuously impose societal conditions on the child. The child does not know what is dirty or what is clean. The child sees the soil just the same as the floor. He does not see any difference. He connects to the same energy when he plays on the dusty road or inside a clean house. Adults condition children to see the difference, the duality.

When we remove these conditionings caused by our body-mind association, we see that everything is pure consciousness. Only then we see that we are all the same. Only then we experience the space of non-duality, Advaita. That is what Kṛṣṇa says here. When we see that the Supreme Soul resides in each of us, we see that all of us are connected to each other. When we see this, we see the truth of living Advaita. We see that the whole Universe is the expansion of the same consciousness—tata eva ca vistāraṁ brahma sampadyate tadā (13.31). The whole Universe is the expression of the same truth.