# The Nature of the Soul *On the eternal soul - its nature, characteristics, and relationship with God* --- ### The Spirit Soul Is Never Born > Actually, I am a spirit soul. That is explained in the beginning of Bhagavad-gītā, that the spirit soul is never born or is never dead. He continues his life even after the destruction of this particular type of body. This body is only a flash, for some years only. But it will be finished. It is being finished by degrees. Just like I'm an old man of seventy-three years old. Suppose if I live eighty years or a hundred years, these seventy-three years I have already died. That is finished. Now a few years I may remain. So we are dying from the date of our birth. That is a fact. — [[spoken/1968/681202bg.la|Bhagavad-gītā 7.1, Los Angeles, 1968]] --- ### The Soul Cannot Be Burned > This is the distinction of the soul being spirit. You take anything of this material world, they can be burned. It is the question of temperature only. Even iron is being burned, any metal, any hard thing, stone is being burned, everything is being burned. But here it is said that soul cannot be burned. So does it mean that it is stronger than iron and stone? But it is very fragmental, minute, atomic portion. But it cannot be burned. — [[spoken/1968/681014bg.sea|Bhagavad-gītā 2.23, Seattle, 1968]] --- ### Eternally Individual > If it is not cut, cannot be cut, then how I have become fragment, that I am not cut fragment; I am eternal fragment? That is confirmed in the Fifteenth Chapter, sanātanam, eternal. Try to understand. Just like you take a paper, you cut into pieces. That is cut. But here it is said that the spirit cannot be cut. Then how we have become fragments, pieces, different individuals? That means we are eternally so. We are eternally individual. — [[spoken/1968/681014bg.sea|Bhagavad-gītā 2.23, Seattle, 1968]] --- ### Consciousness Is the Symptom > Consciousness is eternal. Consciousness is eternal, and consciousness is the symptom of the soul. Soul is eternal. When the soul takes shelter in the matter, then the matter develops, not that that combination of matter, you can produce soul. That is not possible. If that would have been possible, then there are many great scientists and many scientific laboratories, especially in your Western countries, in Europe and America, but nobody could produce a single living being in the laboratory, scientific laboratory. That is not possible. — [[spoken/1966/660328bg.ny|Bhagavad-gītā 2.48, New York, 1966]] --- ### Qualitatively One, Quantitatively Different > If we falsely claim that "I am also the supreme consciousness," that will be a false claim. We are not actually the supreme consciousness. Qualitatively, we are one. Qualitatively, we are one. The supreme consciousness and my consciousness is qualitatively one. But quantitatively, the supreme consciousness is different from individual consciousness. Individual consciousness is limited, and the supreme consciousness is unlimited. — [[spoken/1966/660408bg.ny|Bhagavad-gītā 2.55, New York, 1966]] --- ### The Minute Particle > Now, this particle, the particle is so small that it has been calculated that one ten-thousandth part of the upper portion of the hair is the measurement of the soul. Now, we cannot even imagine, but supposing that the point, if that point has got so much energy that it is playing wonderful things—everything is being manufactured by the brain of that small particle—now you can just make a proportion: then the full one, how much wonderful things He can do. — [[spoken/1966/660325bg.ny|Bhagavad-gītā 2.44-45, New York, 1966]] --- ### Eternity, Bliss, and Knowledge > So the whole idea is that I have to get out of this material contact and reinstate myself in the pure spiritual life so that I shall be free from all miseries. Because spirit soul, as it is, in its pure form, it is sac-cid-ānanda. It is eternal, it is blissful, and it is full of knowledge. — [[spoken/1966/660418bg.ny|Bhagavad-gītā 2.58-59, New York, 1966]] --- ### The Same Soul in All Bodies > The soul is changing dresses: sometimes this human form of body, sometimes the cat's form of body, dog's form of body, tree's form of body, beast form of body, demigod form of body, in this way. The same soul. Tathā dehāntara-prāptir dhīras tatra na muhyati. So try to understand this. This is the basic principle of spiritual knowledge. If you understand yourself, then you understand God very easily. Because we are part and parcel of God. — [[spoken/1971/710913bg.mom|Bhagavad-gītā 2.13, Mombasa, 1971]] --- ### Why We Cannot See the Soul > Anything material, it will burn, it will be cut into pieces, it can be dried up, it can be moistened. Because we cannot see the soul, so Kṛṣṇa has explained in a negative definition what is the characteristic of the soul: nainaṁ chindanti śastrāṇi nainaṁ dahati pāvakaḥ, na śoṣayati mārutaḥ. Like that. — [[spoken/1974/741010sb.may|Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 1.8.30, Māyāpur, 1974]] --- ### Master of the Body > So you have to understand yourself that you are not this body. Whole impediment, whole, meaning, choking of your progress, is due to this body. So you have to separate yourself from this body. Simply separating, I mean to say, theoretically will not do. You have to keep yourself, keep yourself always separate, always separate as master of this body, not as servant of this body. That should be your aim of life. — [[spoken/1966/660325bg.ny|Bhagavad-gītā 2.44-45, New York, 1966]] --- *10 quotes from Śrīla Prabhupāda on the nature of the soul* [[wiki/quotes|Back to Quotes]]