14. Oh son of Kunti, the appearance of happiness and distress, and their disappearance in due course, are like the appearance & disappearance of summer & winter season. They appear from sense perception, and one must learn to tolerate them without being distressed.
Significance:
Happiness and distress come and go. And when one is being tossed around by them like a boat in a storm one can’t practice spiritual life. Practising discipline and determination help one in leaving the non-fulfilling materialistic state of existence.
15. Oh Arjuna, best among men, one who is not disturbed by happiness and distress and is steady in both is surely eligible for liberation.
Significance:
Not having acrivities intent upon reaching liberation from material encagement and enslavement, a person lives in vain and dies in vain. One is therefore most fortunate when one is done with material existence and very practically on ones way to reach total perfection of existence. As long as one is not liberated from illusion one gets new temporary bodies in the material universe, which is based upon ones state of consciousness at the time of death. God facilitates the temporary bodies. So when one lives like a pig and consequently dies like a pig one gets the body of a pig. In other words, one gets a suitable next temporary body, a body that suits your level of consciousness. This is part of God’s mercy unto the conditioned soul. So God is indeed all merciful on all levels.
16. Those who are seers of the truth have realised that of the material body, the asat, the that which is not, the non permanent, there is no endurance, it doesn’t last. And of the spirit soul, the eternal, there is no change. This they have realised by studying the nature of both.
Significance:
The world of change is the world of the deluded mind, the mind which is attached to all kinds of fragmented and isolated, ephemeral and ethereal, so called realities. Right from birth the body is dying, besides the fact you don’t take anything with you in your grave. A corpse lying in the ground is food for the worms and the insects, that’s all there is to it. And when the body goes up in smoke it enters the elements within in the sky. The law of conservation of energy certainly is also applicable here.
When one is fortunate and one comes to understand the non changing nature of the eternal individual spirit soul one also understands the principle of change, transformation. In that position one realises Brahman. Realisation of Brahman is also known as realisation of plurality within singularity, realisation of the the time/space/movement constant, the TSMc. In such a state of consciousness one has practical realisation of eternity. In fact, when one sees something in the observable reality which is not eternal one is wrong, one doesn’t understand the principle of “time” properly. So attachment to the world of the ever changing, which is a personal preference, causes the problem of illusion, body after body after body.
17. That which pervades the entire body you should to be indestructible. No one is able to destroy that imperishable soul.
Significance:
Consciousness, which is one of the characteristics of the eternal individual spirit soul, is spread all over the body. No one but you, besides God, knows what’s going on in your consciousness, in your thinking, feeling and willing. God is all knowing and is present in everyone’s heart, observes and allows. Based upon our desires in the material world for temporary objects, relationships, positions and environments God supplies us these lala lands, while remaining Himself untouched by them, like a lotus leaf untouched by water. One of the environments by which many people are bewildered these days is the climate. Instead of noticing the very hot temperature in their own bewildered minds they’re very busy in trying to control the incontrollable, apart from being busy with fear mongering. It is a fact, trying to manipulate the material world one is instantly being manipulated by it.
18. The material body of the indestructible, immeasurable and eternal living being is sure to come an end; therefore, fight, oh descendant of Bharata.
Significance:
The material body is the always on the move material mind which identifies with the birth/death machine, the body which comes into existence, grows, dwindles and vanishes. The eternal living being is being described as immeasurable since it’s eternal integrated fragmental part of the Supreme, Brahman, Krishna. The true self, the spirit soul, one can’t measure. Measurements in the material world are estimates and only have meaning by making comparisons. By practising yoga, however, everything gets absolute meaning, which is one of its beauties. In the material world it is the time factor which doesn’t allow for precision on the level of observing, analysing & concluding. One simply studies phenomena in the material world, that’s all. The spirit soul is analogically described in the Vedic scriptures as one ten-thousandth part of the upper portion of a hair point. It is also being described as atomic in size. This is done because also an atom one can’t measure since one can’t determine to distance between the nucleus of the atom and the particles moving around it. So the immeasurability of the spirit soul has got nothing to do with small or big. The eternal individual spirit soul, as well as God, the Absolute Truth, are beyond worldly measurements, however wonderful a ruler one may have or claim to be oneself. One can only get clear the spirit soul, the eternal true self, by practising yoga, by practising actual religion. One has to be strongly desirous for reaching unification within the Supreme, the Absolute Truth, and act upon it. That’s the only way to quit the eternal cycle of and death and reach total freedom of existence. Specifically having arrived in the human form of body you have a few short years, which may seem endless to some, to do so. The act of yoga, the act of actual religion, is the only functionally productive activity. Materialists are like the dog running behind its own tail, or like the rat in the rat race. They’ve got all kinds of gross physical activities and subtle mental activities, but they make no actual progress in life. Which of course is ones own choice. Krishna doesn’t say in the Gita you have to reach total freedom of existence otherwise you go to hell eternally. There is no eternal hell anyway since all positions in the materal universe, both the hellishly and heavenly positions, as well as everything in between, are temporary. Bhagavad-Gita 8.16 states: “From the highest planet in the material world down to the lowest, all are places of misery wherein repeated birth and death takes place. But whoever takes to my abode, oh son of Prtha, never takes birth again”.