Bhagavad Gita 15.10

[Paramananda das]

Text 10

utkramantam sthitam vapi bhunjanam va gunanvitam vimudha nanupasyanti pasyanti jnana-caksusah

Translation

The foolish cannot understand how a living entity can quit his body, nor can they understand what sort of body he enjoys under the spell of the modes of nature. But one whose eyes are trained in knowledge can see all this.

Commentary by Srila Prabhupada

The word jnana-caksusah is very significant. Without knowledge, one cannot understand how a living entity leaves his present body, nor what form of body he is going to take in the next life, nor even why he is living in a particular type of body. This requires a great amount of knowledge understood from Bhagavad-gita and similar literatures heard from a bona fide spiritual master. One who is trained to perceive all these things is fortunate.

Every living entity is quitting his body under certain circumstances, he is living under certain circumstances, and he is enjoying under certain circumstances under the spell of material nature. As a result, he is suffering different kinds of happiness and distress, under the illusion of sense enjoyment. Persons who are everlastingly fooled by lust and desire lose all power to understand their change of body and their stay in a particular body. They cannot comprehend it. Those who have developed spiritual knowledge, however, can see that the spirit is different from the body and is changing its body and enjoying in different ways. A person in such knowledge can understand how the conditioned living entity is suffering in this material existence. Therefore those who are highly developed in Krishna consciousness try their best to give this knowledge to the people in general, for their conditional life is very much troublesome. They should come out of it and be Krishna conscious and liberate themselves to transfer to the spiritual world.

Commentary by Sri Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakur

Do we not realize at all when we go from the body, reside in the body and enjoy pleasures while in the body? Persons with no intelligence (vimudha) do not recognize when the jiva is leaving the body, residing in the body or enjoying the present sense objects with the senses (gunavitam). But men of discrimination (jnana caksusa) observe this.

Rudra Vaisnava Sampradaya: Visnuswami Sridhara Swami's Commentary One may wonder do not all humans recognise the atma or immortal soul  within as distinct and different from the physical body? Lord Krishna is  addressing such a query here. The bewilderd and deluded do not recognise the atma residing within the etheric heart of their own physical body is  experiencing prakriti, the material substratum pervading physical  existence through the gunas, the three modes of material nature by  utilising the senses. Hence they are incapable of perceiving the atma  departing from the physical body and likewise cannot perceive that the atma exists equally in all jivas as well. But Lord Krishna  confirms that those realised in spiritual intelligence can perceive the atma.

Brahma Vaisnava Sampradaya: Madhvacarya Madhvacarya's Commentary How one does not perceive and how one is able to perceive is examined by Lord  Krishna.

Sri Vaisnava Sampradaya: Ramanuja Ramanuja's Commentary The word vimudha used by Lord Krishna means the ignorant, the fools,  those who misconceive the outer, corporeal body to be the atma or  immortal soul and who do not perceive that the atma is conjoined with  matter, bound to limited conditions of space and time in various forms of  existence as jivas or embodied beings exist. Such bewildered jivas  never can detemine how the atma enters or how it departs with an embodied  being. Neither can it ascertain how although abiding within it is distinctly  different from the jiva nor understand how the atma is  experiencing that which the jiva enjoys. Yet those who are jnana-caksusah or endowed with spiritual wisdom and enlightened  realisation can perceive the atma existing in its essential nature within  their own etheric heart and within the etheric heart of every jiva.

Kumara Vaisnava Sampradaya: Nimbaditya Kesava Kasmiri's Commentary Those who are ignorant and unevolved are not able to discriminate between the atma or immortal soul and the physical body. Hence lacking the spiritual  intelligence they are completely oblivious of the reality that the atma  is distinctly different from the body and the senses even though it is  experiencing the senses when dwelling within the body, or when transmigrating  from the body or when entering a new body as human, demigod or animal due to the  influence of the gunas or three modes of material nature and the  resultant tribulation of karma or reactions to actions. But those with  spiritual intelligence, possessing the eye of wisdom acquired through devotion  and knowledge of the Vedic scriptures as taught by the Vaisnava spiritual  preceptor will naturally realise both the eternal atmaand the  transcendental Supreme Lord in reality as having no material qualities in any  respect.

Comment : Prahladananda Maharaja has given a lecture on this sloka: http://vimeo.com/45984999