Returning to the Eternal Religion
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nihilated. When all in this world is annihilated, that part remains as it is.”
In this material nature, everything is created, it stays for some time, produces some by-products, dwindles, and finally vanishes. Our bodies are created at a certain moment by sexual intercourse. The semen of the father emulsifies and takes a pea form, and the living entity, or soul, takes shelter in that form, and because it takes shelter, it develops hands, legs, eyes, etc. This development is complete in the seventh month, and in the ninth month the human being comes out of the womb. It is because the soul is present that the child develops. If the soul is not present, there is no development, and the child is born dead. We can take this dead body and preserve it in chemicals, but it will not develop. Development means change of body. All of us have had baby bodies, but those bodies are no longer existing. The body of a baby develops into the body of a child, and that body develops into the body of a boy, and that body develops into a youth’s body, which eventually turns into an old man’s body. Finally the body completely vanishes. The whole cosmic manifestation, the gigantic form of this material world, is also working according to this same process. It is created at a certain point, it develops, it is maintained, and at a certain stage it is dissolved. That is the nature of the material world. It is manifest at a certain interval, and again it vanishes ( bhūtvā bhūtvā pralīyate ).
The word  bhāva  means “nature.” There is another nature, which never dissolves, which is eternal. As  jīvas , spirit souls, we are also eternal. This is verified in the  Bhagavad-gītā  [2.20]:
na jāyate mriyate vā kadācin nāyaṁ bhūtvā bhavitā vā na bhūyaḥ ajo nityaḥ śāśvato 'yaṁ purāṇo na hanyate hanyamāne śarīre
“For the soul there is neither birth nor death. Nor, having once been, does he ever cease to be. He is unborn, eternal, ever-existing, undying, and primeval. He is not slain when the body is slain.”
Just as God has no birth or death, we spirit souls can have neither birth nor death, but because we think, “I am this body,” we consider that we are born and that we die. Such thinking is called  māyā , or illusion, and as soon as we get out of this illusion of identifying the soul with the body, we attain the stage called  brahma-bhūta . When one realizes  ahaṁ brahmāsmi , “I am not this body; I am spirit soul, part and parcel of the Supreme Brahman,” he attains what is called Brahman realization. As