The Actual Self

The real self of a sentient being (jiva) is an eternal servant of the Supreme Lord Sri Krishna, as he is the outcome of the marginal potency of the Supreme Lord Sri Krishna. Potency should remain for the possessor of potency, so jivas are the servants of Sri Krishna.

Everything depends upon the proper identification of the self. If there is a mistake in determining what the self is, there will be a mistake also in the determination of the actual necessity of the self. If the necessity, goal of life, is wrongly determined, the means to achieve it will also be wrong. So, all efforts will be futile. It is essential to have clear and correct knowledge of the self. If anybody considers the physical body to be the self, the necessity of the body will be his necessity; he will surely endeavour to get the requirements of the body. If he considers subtle body to be the self, he will naturally try for mental and intellectual development. If anybody realises that the real self is neither the physical body, nor the subtle body (composed of mind, intelligence and perverted ego), it is beyond these two, it is a particle of eternally existing blissful principle (anu-saccidananda), he will surely try for spiritual development.

In fact, nobody, whether a theist or an atheist, considers this physical body to be the person. If anybody burns a dead body in the cremation ground, buries it in a burial ground, or arranges for its being devoured by beasts, he is not prosecuted. The conscious entity having the quality of thinking, feeling and willing, whose existence and non-existence make an individual human being, person and non-person, respectively, is the real self. That eternally existing conscious principle is designated as atma or Soul. In the Gita, Lord Sri Krishna says atma has got no birth, as such no death, it does not repeatedly originate and die, it is eternal, it existed in the past, it is existing now and will exist in future. With the death of the body atma does not die.