अव्यक्तोऽयमचिन्त्योऽयमविकार्योऽयमुच्यते | तस्मादेवं विदित्वैनं नानुशोचितुमर्हसि || 25 || |
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“The soul is said to be imponderable, unmanifested, and unchangeable. Therefore, knowing it to be so, you should not be sorrowful!”
Commentary
The soul dreams of the existence of the body. Soul is imponderable – cannot be known even if we think very carefully! For example, in your dream, you are not aware that you are a body that is asleep and having a dream. After waking up, you will know that you had a dream. Similarly, your body-linked awareness during the day cannot infer or ponder that you are a soul dreaming of this body. After waking up as a soul, you will know that you dreamt this body. Essentially in your dreams, you do not know that you are a body, and in the day you do not know that you are a soul. That is why Lord Krishna speaks of the soul as imponderable—beyond thought.
Soul is unmanifested! My consciousness that is functioning during the day as Nischalananda is absent in my dream during the night. In the dream, I am some absurd personality playing a role! Similarly my soul awareness is unmanifested or absent during the day in this body-bound consciousness.
Soul is unchanged! Whatever may be the nature of the dream, pleasant or terrible, your consciousness is unchanged after waking up. Similarly, the soul consciousness is unchanged even though it is dreaming of this changing body.
As the dreams are real during the dream, so this wakefulness is also real. Thus, thought and sensation/ feeling are not a part of the soul, but are the experiences of the ego consciousness in the dream.
Intuition is the bridge between the soul and the ego’s thoughts and sensations. If one can remain unidentified with thoughts and sensations, and without being unconscious, for a sufficient length of time, he will know through the development of intuition the nature of the soul. When one is thus perfectly calm, neither thinking or sentient, nor unconscious, yet knowing he exists—a keenness of joyful being in which the thinking, thought, and thinker have become one (unity of the knower, knowing, and known)—therein is the soul’s consciousness.