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I am the Soul the body is born, it is a child. As it grows and time passes, it turns old and worn out. The body is a mass of paramanu pudgals. Every moment infinite paramanus from the body wear out and at the same moment, the same number of parmanus gets absorbed into the body from the atmosphere. This cycle is always on. The body also grows old on account of this cycle. Therefore, oldness is the situation of the body. With passing time, the body has to grow old.
The atma is ageless. Not even one space out of the infinite spaces of the atma, ever grows old. In the infinite past, there have been infinite births and deaths. The atma has gone from small to large and large to small bodies. With the expansion or contraction in the size of the bodies, the spaces in the atma too expanded and contracted, but not even in one space were there any loss or gain. Atma is a mass of space. Not even one pradesh - space separates from it. The same number of spaces, as there were of the atma, remains forever.
Thus the ageing occurs in the body and not in the atma. Atma is ajara.
Atma is amar - deathless, endless. Death occurs to the body, not to the atma. Atma does not die; it merely changes the body. It remains in the body until the time assigned is completed, that is to say, until the age that has been determined by the ayushyakarma bonded earlier is completed. With the completion of the ayushyakarma, the atma separates from the body and goes elsewhere. There it occupies another new body - in other words, atma has no death,
The jiva has a feeling of atma being the body. As a result, it carries the illusion that 'I have grown old, I shall die’. Believing the body to be the self, it mistakes the old age or the death of the body for its own growing old or death. That is why, with the onset of either old age or death, it begins to experience sorrow.
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