Returning to the Eternal Religion 237

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 be-
cause 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. Develop-
ment 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 mani-
festation, the gigantic form of this material world, is also working ac-
cording 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 (bhitvd bhitvd praliyate).

The word bhdva means ‘‘nature.’’ There-is another nature, which
never dissolves, which is eternal. As jivas, spirit souls, we are also eter-
nal. This is verified in the Bhagavad-gitd [2.20]:

na jayate mriyate va kadacin

nayam bhitva bhavita va na bhityah
ajo nityah SaSvato ‘yam puradno

na hanyate hanyamane Sarire

“*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 maya, 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-bhita. When one realizes aham
brahmasmi, ‘*‘I am not this body; I am spirit soul, part and parcel of the
Supreme Brahman,”’ he attains what is called Brahman realization. As
