Is he the same person ?
This was a comment made on a Facebook post. One of my cousin posted his photo on the Facebook and one of his friends who saw him after a long time was surprised that the person he knew before and now looks so much different. So much so that, he looked like a completely different person. So, is it a different person?. Yes and notify we ask the person that if he is the same person or different, he will firstly look at us, as if are you gone nuts or something?. Then, he will reply would be something like, ‘ Yes, I am changed over the time.I now have a new body which is different to the one which I had when I was a baby.But, I can still remember some incidents or memories of my childhood’ (generally from 4 to 5 years onwards).I did meet one person who told me that he actually remembers when he was a 1 year baby.
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| A Baby |
Science tells us that, the body is always changing.As per science a human body consists of 50 to 100 trillion cells and each day about 3 billion cells are killed and similarly new ones created.
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| Bhagavad Gita 2.13 Translation |
This verse from Bhagavad Gita succinctly conveys the same message,
“Chapter 2 Text 13
dehino smin yatha dehe
kaumaram yauvanam jara
tatha dehantara-praptir
dhiras tatra na muhyati”
So, to come back to the title of the article, “Is he the same person?”. The answer depends on what you consider a person to be.If one considers the skin,bones, hair as ‘A person’ they are no longer the same because they have already been replaced so many times in the life time of a person.So the body is changing every moment manifesting as a child, youth, old man.But,inspite of all these changes, there is somthing that does not change and remains constant.In Bhagavad Gita, that changeless, non material or spiritual spark is called as the spirit soul. What happens at the time of death is that sub-atomic particle called Soul changes its body to that of another.In the saame section of Gita, it is explained that, just like a person changes his clothes and puts on new garments, the soul changes its bodies to various species of life, depending on the fruits of its past karma or actions. This process of changing bodies or transmigration of soul is called as reincarnation.As explained in Bhagavad Gita,just like an air carries the aroma, a living entity carries with it, the different conceptions of life which means, its desires, likes, dislikes, particular nature to different bodies.So when a person dies, his consciousness lives on and carries forward some of the memories, behaviours tendencies, even phobias etc.
This most important message from this section of Bhagavad Gita is about Soul, Reincarnation and transmigration of Soul answers so many questions or connects the dots which don’t normally make sense of. When we start to learn and understand this science of Soul and incarnation, we start to see things from a higher perspective and that empowers our future life. The most important distinction one can make out is that we are all spirit souls and different from the material body.
