The Song of God Almighty

by Swami Krishnananda

5: The Nature of the Self

XIII. 1, 2

This body is the field of work,
Within it is the lord of deeds;
This master ensouling all fields
Is also Universal Soul.

II. 11-25

This soul dies not, it always is,
No one eternally is damned;
In past, present and future lives
This soul without a tinge of taint.

The soul discards redundant forms,
As one abandons worn-out clothes,
For improved conditions ahead
In search of freedom bodiless.

What is cannot become a naught,
What is not never can exist;
Knowers of reality's core
Behold the quintessence of things.

All-pervading is deathless soul,
None can destroy or hurt the self
Which defies destruction and change;
It's above Time and Space and Cause.

The forms perish as processes
Duration-gripped and localised;
But soul that enshrines forms and shapes
Is unrelated, processless.

No soul is born, no soul does die;
Embodiments get remodelled,
Since evolution is the name
Of advance towards True Selfhood.

Eternal, unborn is the Self
Which's called the soul when it abides
In finite centres, bodies, forms;
In truth it is the Self of all.

Earth, water, fire and air do not
Affect the soul or self ever;
The soul involved in body's aches
Imagines that it, too, is grieved.

Uncleaved, unwetted and unburnt,
Unwithered is the Source of all,
Glory immortal, Omniself,
Omnipresent and Omniscient.