The Spiritual Import of the Mahabharata and the Bhagavad gita : Ch-10. Part-6.

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Chapter 10: The Imperishable Among All that is Perishable :


Part-6.



The internal self of man, the hidden soul of all things, is called adhyatma.

The deepest essence of anything, for the matter of that, is prakritiatman or adhyatma; the essential nature of a thing is adhyatma.

Our essential nature, our irreducible minimum characteristic of Being—that is adhyatma.

It is the basic essence of all things, the Selfhood that is at the basis of even phenomena.

The individual is not the body; it is not the mind.

These cannot be called adhyatma, because they are not svabhava, our essential nature.

Our basic characteristic is not exhausted in this bodily manifestation.

What we think in our mind is not ourself, because our thoughts vary from day to day, from moment to moment.



There is a non-varying, permanent feature in us—that which enables us to identify ourselves as a continuity of individuality. While thoughts change and ideas differ, we do not change.

Right from childhood onwards, up to the age we have attained now, we have been maintaining an identity of individuality.

This identity of ours is not because of the thoughts that we think, or the body in which we are encased.

The bodily self changes, thoughts differ, as I mentioned, but we do not change.

Therefore we are the same thing today that we were many years back as a child, for instance.

Swami Krishnananda

To be continued  ....



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