Shrimad Bhagwad Geeta Shlok Blog -60
Shlok-13
देहिनोऽस्मिन्यथा देहे कौमारं यौवनं जरा । तथा देहान्तरप्राप्तिर्धीरस्तत्र न मुह्यति ॥ 2-13 ||
English Transcription
Dehinosminyatha Dehe Kaumaaram Yauvanam Jara | Tatha Dehaantarapraaptidheerastatra || 2-13 ||
Hindi Translation
Dehdhaari ke is manushya shareer me jaise ki balakpan, jawaani, or vridhawastha hoti hai, aise hi doosre sharir ki prapti bhi hoti hai. Is vishay me dheer manushya mohit ya vyakul nahin hota hai.
English Translation
Just as the embodied self passes through childhood, youth, and old age in this body, in the same manner, it will obtain another body. A wise man should not be confused about this at all, ever.
Meaning
In the previous Shlok, we saw how Shri Krishna talked about the difference between the mortal body and the immortal soul. He told how even if the body of Krishna, Arjun, and everyone around wasn’t present as Krishna, Arjun, and everyone else, they were present in some other form with their souls. Thus, even if they are not present in the body format later, they will have a presence in the form of their souls completing their tasks and then only retiring.
In this Shlok, he will be extending the same thing to talk about how the soul transfers from one body to another and how the journey proceeds naturally, even if humans do not want it to happen because aging is the only dynamic constant.
A body goes through childhood first when they are born as a child from the mother’s womb. Slowly, the child starts growing, and adulthood strikes. Along the same lines, the body slowly transcends into old age and then it retires after serving its purpose in that form. There are multiple cases where there is no age graduation because the person doesn’t live up to that long and it is because every soul is granted some time to spend on Earth.
Premature expiration of the body or death of the person is because that soul had already spent the designated time in the previous life and only finished off the last few time units, they are on the Earth as humans of some form. So if you see someone die early, it meant that their soul has found a way to travel back to heaven, to Vaikunth Dhaam, where every other soul is also stationed and they are completing the happiness and rewards they have earned their entire lives they have lived after making up for all the punishments they were destined to endure.
Thus, the way there is no crying or sorrow upon the fact that the person is aging with time, there also is no need for sorrow about the fact that the person’s body dies and reincarnates to fulfill its other duties.
In the micro perspective, there is birth, love, care, attachment, living, death, and sorrow in that same specific order. But in the macro perspective, it is birth, childhood, adulthood, responsibilities, roles, duties, death, reincarnation, time fulfillment, rebirth, death and this goes on till the soul hasn’t worked up every last bit of their duties.
Sometimes, there is a second life granted to the same soul as a reward or punishment. Thus, if there is someone who was about to be dead, yet not dead, maybe alive either because they had already done excellent Karma and their reward was to spend a little more extra time to love and be loved. The alternate reason can be that when the person was near dead yet not dead and they are granted extra life, it can be because the death was to happen unnaturally, unplanned or the soul was granted some more time not to love or be loved, but to suffer and endure the punishment of what wrong they did but never had the time to fulfill the punishments.
Shri Krishna here infers that as humans, we all have the micro approach to birth, living, and death but we all lack that one key approach to this, which is the macro approach to the entire cycle in entirety. Humans are not to be blamed for this because a person sees what they want to see and they understand what they want to understand. So if a person sees a child, they think like one. Upon seeing an adult, they think like one, and with elderlies, they think like elderlies.
In each such case, the person sees and understands things limited to their age and experience and this is why they even dream about the same things they have seen or their minds feel that they can understand. The only way to improve this is to read or know other people’s minds and break them down to the level that makes things easy for you to understand so that you can finally understand what someone else sees out of the same thing and then what they make out of it.
When Shri Krishna was telling all this Arjun, he said that there is a correct age for these things also. This is why a child is taught maximum things because then the canvas is empty and there is nothing written on it, so the more you tell him, the more he knows and the more he is in the learning and analyzing phase. With passing time, the mind starts having multiple ideas and thus the capacity to grasp something new reduces, and in old age, it is down to zero. When all this happens, and there is nothing new the brain can learn or teach the soul, it is time for the soul to now take all that and go to a new life to increase knowledge and know what was unknown so that they can again be of some use to the world.
Thus, no one is the same, and yet, everyone is the same. No one was ever there and will never be there and yet, everyone was always there and will always be there. This is very complex to understand and thus, Shri Krishna says that for everyone to come back on track, there is a lot of time needed and one life is never enough to imbibe and execute everything.
There can be a question here. If the soul knows so much, why the body never remembers anything when they are born? The answer to this is that there is a lot of pain when the person is born or dies. The pain makes the brain focus on more important aspects and it numbs everything else. While getting into a new life, the newborn experiences a lot of screaming and they cry because not only they were exposed to the hard reality of the Earth, but they were also exposed to the most difficult side of the people. The pain. Everyone is in pain, some are crying and some are enduring it to be on the verge of crying. During death also, the person goes through the pain of living a life not as per their terms and then the pain of not being able to do what they want. The pain of coming to the world and going from the world is too high and thus, the person does forget the lessons learned or memories gained previously. But deep inside, the soul knows it all and at required times, it keeps spilling some secrets for everyone to know and share.
Conclusion
Thus we all can say that the body wasn’t there before birth and won’t be there after death. In the present too, it is there but it is dying every unit of time because of the stress, tensions, and pains. When one age dies, another is born. It’s like a phoenix. Gets rebirth after death and will rise again for sure, might not exactly be in the same form, but will be back for sure. So if there is anything that is certain, it is the death and rebirth of the soul as and when needed.
That’s it for Shlok-13, Chapter-2 of Shrimad Bhagwat Geeta. We’ll see you tomorrow with Shlok-14, chapter-2. Till then, keep reading and stay happy.
