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To introduce you to yourself, the great world teacher, Lord Krishna - jagatguru, master of the science of yoga, the fullest manifestation of the supreme divine reality, poorna avataara, as they call him - gave you a self-introduction. It is that wonderful, marvellous, great, little scripture, confined within eighteen chapters and a total of 700 verses, containing the very quintessential teachings of the Jnanakand of the Vedanta, the Upanishads. The quintessence, the essence of the teachings of the Upanishads in that wonderful. teaching gives you an introduction to yourself.
Ajo nityah shaashvato yam puraano na hanyate hanyamaane shareere. (Gita, 2.20) What are you? You are the unborn, eternal, permanent, beyond time entity, imperishable, immortal. If the body is there, if the body is not there, it does not matter, it does not affect you. You are an unborn being, for death is only for that which is born. For the unborn atman, there is no death, because it is never born.
In these stirring, vibrant words, in this great declaration, Lord Krishna wanted you to awaken to your own spiritual reality, the truth of your essential being. Your essential being is pure divinity. Your temporary state of forgetfulness has made you move away from the center of your self awareness and get involved in a state of identification with temporary, added, limiting adjuncts; like the five organs of action, five pranas that operate within the body, certain currents of vital life force, the five inner organs of cognizance and the fourfold inner instrument of cognition.
You have identified yourself with these factors which do not constitute yourself. They constitute non-self. It is to make you aware of this and to teach you how to constantly discriminate between your true self and that which is your nonself, between your essential reality and the limited adjuncts of your bodies, that you have been given these instruments just to function on this earthly plane. The earthly plane is a physical, material, gross plane of life, so you want a physical, material instrument in order to act here; hence the body, with hands and feet and limbs and other things.
You are essentially above and beyond the rest of the other living species of beings. They are not endowed with the power to think, reason or feel. That is your speciality, that is your uniqueness, that is why you are the crowning glory of God's creation; that is why you are superior to all other forms of life,
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