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Chapter 2
Ajah:-This soul is never born, so it is called 'Ajah' viz., unborn.
Nityah:-The soul is eternal. It does never decay in the least
while the bodies and senses decay and lose their strength.
Sasvatah:-The soul is constant and changeless.
Puranah:-It is ancient and primeval. Generally a thing which becomes old does not grow, it rather perishes. But the soul neither grows nor perishes.
Na hanyate hanyamane sarire:-The soul is not slain even when the body is slain. Lord Krsna means to say that the body undergoes six modifications because it is perishable while the soul is imperishable.
Here in these verses Lord Krsna has made such a distinction between the body and the soul, as is rarely found anywhere else in the Gita.
Arjuna was grieved after thinking about the death of his kinsmen in the war. So Lord Krsna wants to explain to him that the soul is not killed even when the body is slain, so he should not grieve.
Appendix:-Our (of the self) nature and the nature of the body are quite different. We (the self) are not attached to the body, are not mingled with the body. The body is not attached to us, it is not mixed with us. Therefore at the death of the body we are not affected at all. By now we have passed through innumerable bodies, but what difference did it make in our entity (existence)? What loss did we sustain? We remained the same—'bhutagramah sa evayam bhutva bhutvll praliyate' (Gita 8/19). Similarly at the death of the body we'll remain the same.
As hands, feet and nose etc., are organs of the body, likewise the body is not an organ of the self. That which flows and varies is not an organ[1] (of the imperishable) as phlegm and urine etc., flow and an ulcer (boil) varies, so they are not organs of the body. Similarly the body which flows and vanes is not an organ of the self.
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