Secrets of the Soul 8

dehino ’smin yatha dehe
kaumaram yauvanam jara
tatha dehantara-praptir
dhiras tatra na muhyati

“As the embodied soul continuously passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. A sober person is not bewildered by such a change.” [Bhagavad-gita 2.13]

Dehinah means the person who possesses this body. Like the Sanskrit word guninah, meaning a person who has some special attribute (guna), dehinah means the possessor of the body (deha). The implication is that we may temporarily possess this material body, but we are not its creator, proprietor or owner. We are simply the inhabitants.

Just like if you live in a rented house, the owner or proprietor is someone else. Everyone knows that the tenant is only the occupant of a rental property, a temporary resident, and the proprietor is a different person. The renter cannot claim proprietorship or ownership of the property.

So I am the spirit soul inhabiting this body. I am not the proprietor or owner; I am simply the resident or occupant of the body. Materialists are very attached to the body, but they do not understand that the actual proprietor of the body is the Supreme Personality of Godhead. God gives us a particular apartment, or residential situation, according to our capacity to pay rent. This is our position: we are only tenants in this body, and Kṛṣṇa is the actual proprietor or landlord.

Otherwise, why is everyone’s bodily situation so different? Everyone does not get a first-class body, like a beautiful movie star body, or a rich man’s body. A child born into a rich family is immediately rich. Another child born nearby at the same time is very poor. Why? There must be some intelligent arrangement according to the individual’s qualifications. Otherwise there is no reasonable explanation of why one person is born rich and another, poor.

This bodily inequality is the result of karma-kanda, the path of material cause and effect. It is not due to chance. One child with little qualification is given a low-class room, a cheap apartment, according to his lesser capacity of paying rent. And another child with better karmic qualification is given a very luxurious apartment, according to his greater capacity of paying rent.

Karma-kanda means that according to your karma, or previous lives’ work, you get a body exactly according to your qualification. So in each birth you get a particular type of body—as the child of a rich man or a poor man, a dog or a cat, or a tree or plant—according to your accumulated karma. This conception of the dance of material nature, karma-kanda is the key to understanding our material situation.

Kṛṣṇa says in Bhagavad-gita 2.12, “Don’t think we did not exist in the past or that we shall not continue to exist in the future. We existed eternally in the past, we are existing at present, and we will continue to exist in the future without any limitation.” The spirit soul is eternal, but takes one temporary body after another according to his qualification. If we increase our qualification, if we are able to pay more rent, we can transfer to a better apartment in the next life. Or if we cannot pay the present rent, then we have to move to a less expensive apartment. So we are eternal; we are simply changing bodies from one lifetime to another according to our karma. This simple concept answers so many difficult questions about spiritual life.

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