Chapter 2 - Verse 20

He is not born; no such change of condition as birth takes place in the Self. Nor does He die; this denies the last change of condition called death.—‘Ever’ should be construed with the denial of every change, thus: He is never born, never dies, and so on.—For, the Self, having once existed does not afterwards cease to be any more. In ordinary parlance he is said to die who, having once existed, afterwards ceases to be. Neither does the Self come into existence, like the body, having not existed before. Wherefore He is unborn. For, he is said to be born who, having not existed, comes into existence. Not so is the Self.

Wherefore He is unborn. And because He does not die, He is eternal. [Though, by the denial of the first and the last changes, all changes have been denied, yet it is thought necessary to directly deny the intermediate changes, in the words ‘unchangeable,’ etc., so as to imply the absence of all such changes of condition as motion, though not specified here.] He is unchangeable: He is constant, not subject to the changes of condition known as decline (apakshaya.) Having no parts, He does not diminish in His own substance. As devoid of qualities, He does not diminish by loss of a quality. He is primeval. not subject to the change known as growth (vriddhi) as opposed to decline. For, that which increases in size by the accretion of parts is said to grow and to be renewed. As devoid of parts, the Self was as fresh in the past (as He is now or will be in future; i.e., He is ever the same); He never grows. And He is not slain when the body is slain : He is not transformed when the body is transformed. To avoid tautology, slaying is interpreted to mean transformation : the Self is not subject to transformation.

This verse teaches the absence in the Self of the six* bhava-vikaras,—of the six vikaras or changes of condition to which all bhavas or beings in the world are subject. The passage, on the whole, means that the Self is devoid of all sorts of change. Hence the words in the previous verse, “both these know not aright.”

Such as birth, existence, growth, transformation, decline, and destruction.

The enlightened man has to renounce works

Having started (in ii. 19) the proposition that the Self is neither the agent nor the object of the action of slaying, and having stated in the next verse the immutability of the Self as the reason for that statement, the Lord concludes the proposition as follows :—