What are we? Are we the body or the spirit that is within the body? A simple answer to this simple question can be arrived at the death of a person.
When a person dies, the spirit, the soul, the atman escapes from the body, and that is death, because the body doesn’t change. The molecules, the organs, everything of the body remains intact, but something is still missing, therefore, we are cremated, we are burnt because we are not that body. If we were that body, we would not be destroyed. We would be preserved like the ancient civilizations did, but over the centuries, we have learnt that by preserving bodies, we achieve nothing because we are not the body. The body doesn’t come back to life.
Therefore, we are the spirit that lives within the body. The moment we understand this - our whole paradigm of life changes. Our perspective, our belief system, our philosophy changes because we realize, we may be in the body, but we are not the body. We may be in a body that’s constantly changing. Every moment our cells are being reborn, rejuvenated, recreated - we know that. Science has proved that the body doesn’t remain the same. The body keeps evolving, keeps changing and the whole body itself gets re-created every few years because the cells are being recreated by the natural process.
Let us not confuse ourselves about what we are. Let us be absolutely clear that we are the energy, the prana, the chi, the life, the soul, the spirit, the atman, whatever you call it.
And it truly doesn’t matter what you call it, what matters is that we are not the body, but the life that is within the body. We are the life that talks, the life that walks, the life that blinks, the life that eats, the life that laughs, the life that cries, the life that thinks, the life that loves, the life that prays; you are that life, that life force. You are that life force.
AiR