It has been said in Chapter 2 verse 20 of Bhagavad Gita-”The soul is neither born, nor does it ever die; nor having once existed, does it ever cease to be. The soul is without birth, eternal, immortal, and ageless. It is not destroyed when the body is destroyed.”
There was never a time when our ancestors did not exist and there will never come a time when they, or we cease to be. Hence proving that the body is materialistic and it dies but the soul remains alive till the end of time.
Life and death are two sides of the same coin. A human body is made up of mud before birth and it turns into mud after death. It is temporary and only a vessel for the soul to keep living and leave it’s footprints on the sand of time. It is mud that gets converted to vegetables, fruits, grains, lentils, and grass. Cows graze the grass and produce milk. We humans consume these edibles, and they transform into our body. So it is not an exaggeration to say that the body is created from mud. At the time of death, a body is either burnt, in which case it is converted to ashes and becomes mud. Or it is buried, in which case insects eat it and transform it into mud. Even the Bible states the same- “For dust thou are, and unto dust thou shalt return.”
Now the soul is bounded by three bodies- the gross body, the subtle body and the casual body.
Gross body- It consists of five elements of nature-earth, water, fire, air and space.
Subtle body-It consists of 18 elements- 5 life airs, 5 working senses, 5 knowledge senses, mind, intellect and ego.
Casual body- It consists of the account of karmas from endless past lives.
At the time of death, the soul discards it’s gross body and proceeds with the subtle and casual body. It is provided another gross body and to carry out it’s existence. A child is said to remember all the events from it’s past but in the course of time, his old memories are suppressed by the new ones and a new life begins. Besides, the processes of birth and death are so painful to the soul that a substantial part of the past memories are erased.
The only danger that exists is that the soul might not be able to get the human form in the next life and instead go into the lower species of life, such as animals, insects etc. There are 8.4 million species of life in existence. The species below human beings do not have intellect as we humans do. Yet they also perform commonplace activities such as eating sleeping defending and mating. If humans utilize their intellect merely for doing the above mentioned activities, it is a misuse of the human form. For example, if someone makes sleeping a goal of life, then God deems that a body of polar bear might be fit for the soul in the next life
We human beings, have heard this saying a number of times but we still grieve over a person’s death although it’s not the person we loose but the soul. The gross body is left behind lifeless and the subtle along with the casual body proceeds further. It’s the soul that contains the conscience and the intellect which governs a person’s behavior. Thereby, since the soul never dies, a person can never be lost. Our grief is over not being able to see the person again. We will never come to know in what form they will appear again in front of us with a new conscience and intellect having some traces of their past lives.
The cycle of life and death is endless. In a moment, both life and death are involved. If you notice properly, there’s life every time you inhale and there’s death every time you exhale. They both exist to fulfill each other. There’s life and death happening all the time. One who is aware of this fact will be aware that there is no such thing as Life and Death.
Life is Death and Death is Life.
