You don't have a soul — you are a soul!

Everyone has heard about the soul. But most people don't really have a good understanding of the soul. That is a cause of all kinds of misunderstanding, because the soul, or conscious living force, is who we really are. This amazing series of essays covers the most important aspects of the science of the soul: who and what the soul is, where he comes from, where his real home is, and his eternal relationship with God.

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In August and September 2006, I wrote a series of 32 essays on Bhagavad-gītā 2.13. This is such an important śloka that my spiritual Master Teacher Śrīla Prabhupāda spoke on it more than any other verse of the Vedas. Therefore I selected it as the theme for my podcast for almost two months. The complete series is presented in this book.

To attain happiness, spiritual advancement or anything worthwhile in life, we have to understand our real identity. How can we be happy if we don’t even know for sure who we are? Most people take it for granted that we are this material body. Even people who are ostensibly religious think, “I have a soul.” But this is not true; you don’t have a soul—you are a soul. This subtle shift in viewpoint is the difference between material and spiritual consciousness, the difference between illusion and reality, between misery and happiness.

The science of the soul is originally given by Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa in the Bhagavad-gītā. If one has not read, studied and understood Bhagavad-gītā, he cannot claim to be a civilized human being, because no other religious scripture or scientific literature in the world tells us who we really are. We advise everyone to read Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Bhagavad-gītā As It Is, which you can read online at our Vedic library at causelessmercy.esotericteaching.org

First, here is the original Sanskrit verse from Bhagavad-gītā:

dehino ’smin yathā dehe
kaumāram yauvanam jarā
tathā dehāntara-prāptir
dhīras tatra na muhyati

SYNONYMS

dehinaḥ—of the embodied; asmin—in this; yathā—as; dehe—in the body; kaumāram—boyhood; yauvanam—youth; jarā—old age; tathā—similarly; dehāntara—transference of the body; prāptiḥ—achievement; dhīraḥ—the sober; tatra—thereupon; na—never; muhyati—deluded.

TRANSLATION

“As the embodied soul continually passes in this body from boyhood to youth and then to old age, similarly the soul also passes into another body at death. The self-realized soul is not bewildered by such a change.” [Bhagavad-gītā 2.13]

The ślokas of Bhagavad-gītā are so full of meaning that one could write not only one book, but many books about each and every one of them. Similarly, one can read Bhagavad-gītā again and again, and it is always fresh with profound insights. This is because Bhagavad-gītā is spoken by Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, thus it is the essence of the inexhaustible Absolute Truth.