VERSE 22 OF SAMKHYA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF KNOWLEDGE

THE HOLY GITA

CHAPTER TWO

SAMKHYA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF KNOWLEDGE

VERSE NUMBER 22:

Text in Transliteration:

vaasaamsi jeernaani yathaa vihaaya

   navaani grhnaati naro ‘paraani

tatha sareeraani vihaaya jeernaany

   anyaani samyaati navaani dehi

Text in English:

   As a man casting off worn-out garments puts on new ones, so the embodied, casting off worn-out bodies enters into others that are new.

COMMNTARY BY SWAMI CHIDBHAVANANDA:

   It is only after the procurement of new clothings that man rejects the old worn-out ones. The snake develops new skin from within and then casts off the slough. Even so the jeevatman mentally assumes a new form before dissociating himself from the old body. In other words his mental make up does not die along the gross body. It is called the subtle body and it persists with its innate tendencies and dispositions. This is the core of the Jivatman and he survives the death of the physical frame. He then chooses to develop another gross body in a womb suited to his attainments.

Swami Chidbhavananda quotes from Sri Ramakrishna as follows:

 “The snake and its slough are not one and the same. Even so the Atman and the body are different,   one from the other.”

COMMENTARY BY DR. S. RADHKRISHNAN;

The eternal does not move from place to place but the embodied soul moves one abode to another. It takes birth each time and gathers to itself a mind, life and body formed out of the materials of nature according to its past evolution and its need for the future. The psychic being is the vijnaana which supports the triple manifestation of the body (anna), life (prana) and the mind (manas). When the gross physical body falls away, the vital and mental sheaths still remain as the vehicle of the soul. Rebirth is a law of nature. There is an objective connection between the various forms of life. Cp. Katha Upanishad I, 6. “Like a corn a mortal ripens and like corn is he born again.”

Embodiments seem to be essential for the soul. Is it then right to kill the body? The world of concrete existence has a meaning.

Comments by the blogger:

Let us start from the start! Is it only a worn-out clothes cast away by men. While the impecunious men go around in India with a loin cloth and a length of cloth to drape their midriff in hot climatic conditions, the fashionable rich buy clothes every now and then to show off, even when their wardrobes are busting with costly clothes! Thus, so many clothes lie unworn and not becoming worn-out either.

It’s not a case of nit picking. It is a philosophical question to ask if the atman or soul leaves or casts off only the old body before entering into another new body? The answer is NO! Even a little baby dies. Even a youth in his/her prime dies. Even a new-born baby dies. And there is always a case of the still-born babies! So, how to explains this at the altar of this one sloka alone?

In the Holy Gita, there are all-contained individual slokas or verses which we may take as our beacon light and form around our actions, and live by that one self-contained sloka or verse. For example, the verse number 7 of samkhya yoga or the yoga of knowledge( the present chapter) which goes like this:

“My nature is weighed down with the taint of feeblemindedness; my understanding is confused as to duty. I entreat you, say definitely what is good for me. I am your disciple. Do instruct me who have taken refuge in you.”

Arjuna begs his Lord and friend in this manner, after surrendering himself at the feet of Sri Krishna!

The commentary of Swami Chidbhavananda ends like this:

“He who seeks to make a sacred study of the Bhagavat Gita and he who desires to translates its tenets into action will do well to chant this verse every time and to evoke in himself the attitude of self-surrender seen here in Arjuna. IT IS A PRAYER COMPLETE IN ITSELF.”

There are an umpteen number of verses which are self-contained and self-explanatory, either to form our complete prayer, or to serve us a model for a new and enriched lifestyle.

At the same time, there are verses that flow one after the other and form a group to give an idea a complete view. The Truth is but one, but it is many faceted. The revolving particles inside the atom can either be seen as a streak or point of light. In both ways they have been photographed! How can one Truth be both a streak and a point of light! So, though the Truth is one, it has many faces and facets. Hence so many religions in this world! They all are about the one and only proclaimed and accepted GOD! To put it otherwise, GOD is one, but there are many religions and paths to attain Godhood for Man!

Ok, now how can we understand the new born baby’s death or the case of a still-born baby?

There is a story or anecdote I read a long time back in the WEEK magazine. An young mother of a deformed child relates her experience in public places where she wheels through the traffic and across the road with her grown up boy in wheelchair. She relates her experience that while almost all the passers by commiserate with her beautiful boy who is deformed most of them are helpful too. As and when the wheelchair has to be pushed onto the raised platform from the level of the road whenever she crosses the road in her city, generally passers by give her a hand in pushing the wheelchair. But mostly, the city folks are shy in doing it, while the village folks who have come to the city have no such trouble as shyness or embarrassment! And at one day, a holy man saw her with the boy in wheelchair and uttered, “Those with good and sound limbs have to elect and select to desist from sin. But some souls come here embodied in such crippled condition, so that they need not commit any sin, at the same time work out the balance of their karmic effect. So don’t despair on his account. He would not come here after this birth!”

This anecdote should do for the question why some people die young and in the prime of their lives. And the still-born has already attained moksha or heaven or emacipation having worked out its karma in the womb itself!

This need not necessarily the only explanation for the ones dying young. But, the body is cast off the moment it becomes useless and the embodied is ready to take the next body for furtherance of the working out of the karma.

This sloka or verse is just a continuation of the Lord’s adumbration about the eternal nature of the atman or soul and the perishable nature of the body!