2-12

न त्वेवाहम् जातु नासम् न त्वम् नेमे जनाधिपाः ।
न चैव न भविष्यामः सर्वे वयमतःपरम् ॥ १२ ॥

na tvevAham jAtu nAsam na tvam neme janAdhipAH |
na caiva na bhaviSyAmaH sarve vayamataHparam || 12 ||

जातु [jAtu] At any point in time, न [na] it has never been that अहम् [aham] I नासम् [nAsam] did not exist. त्वम् न [tvam na] It has never been that you did not exist. इमे जनाधिपाः न [ime janAdhipAH na] It has never been that all these kings did not exist. अतः परम् चैव [ataH param caiva] Even in future, न [na] there will never be a time when सर्वेवयम् [sarvevayam] any one of us न भविष्यामः [na bhaviSyAmaH] do not exist.

The Self is separate from the environment and your body. The Self is ever-lasting. So is the Lord.

The Lord continues- There has been no time in the past in which I, the controller of everything, have not existed. I was always in existence. You and all the people you see before you-who are knowledgeable and skilled in their own fields, are similar. There has been no point in time when you did not exist. You always existed.

There will be no point of time in the future as well, in which we will not exist. We will always exist.

There is no doubt that I, the Lord of everything, am ever-existing. In the same way, there is no doubt that all of you are ever-existing as well.

Is there anything other than the observable universe?

In this Shloka, Krishna is explicit that all of us exist distinctly. He also makes it clear that there is something to us, other than our body.

This is not as obvious as it sounds, when we ask ourselves who we are. Our body is put together from atoms that are part of the universe. In time, every atom in our body would be exchanged. So, everything just seems to be a part of the physical universe, where distinctions like ‘you’ and ‘me’ are not real and purely made for convenience. Within such a belief, our consciousness seems to be an imaginary concept in the physical universe.

Is the universe only an effect of the law governing it?

It is improbable that the organized complexity of the universe came into being on its own. There must be a supreme law that keeps the order in the universe – a law from which all other laws are derived. This law would be knowledge and everything else would be its manifestation.

As an example, the law of gravitation deals with the attraction between two masses. It is just knowledge. The earth’s revolution or something falling on the ground are its manifestations, they aren’t really different forces.

Likewise, the supreme law that governs the whole universe would be knowledge and the rest of the universe - including us - would just be its manifestations. Again, distinctions like ‘you’ and ‘me’ wouldn’t be real. Our observation of the physical universe is insufficient to determine this reality - the supreme law must allow us to find it, since it governs everything in the universe.

Let’s be free of doubt in our journey to realization.

Krishna is the supreme law. In this Shloka, He states that we are distinct. He also states that we have always been present and will always be - though we see that everything in the universe keeps integrating and disintegrating.

This brings a fresh set of questions - Since Krishna is supreme, He has full control over us, so we are a part of Him and are completely under His control. Why should we suffer the consequences of our actions, since none of those actions are ‘ours’? What are we?

This is where Krishna starts to clarify - starting with this Shloka, concluding in 18-66. To grasp this clarity in a coherent way, we must have no doubt about the fact that we are distinct from the Lord and distinct among ourselves - though we may not know what exactly we are.

In the following commentary, Ramanujacharya picks up alternate interpretations of Krishna’s clarification in this Shloka and knocks them off, so we are left with no doubt in our journey to grasp and embrace His teaching.

We are distinct from the Lord. Each of us is distinct as well.

Thus, the Lord, as the owner of everything, is distinct from others, who are themselves distinct from one another - The Lord Himself has stated this fact in the Shloka. While clarifying to Arjuna, the Lord uses the phrases ‘I’, ‘you’, ‘all these people’ and ‘we’. The opinion that they are actually the same and only appear to be separate due to some reason is incorrect - the distinction has been clarified by the Lord.

The distinction clarified by the Lord is also stated in the scriptures as a natural way of being:

In the श्वेताश्वतर [zvetAzvatara] , 6-13 and कठोपनिअहत् [kaThopaniahat] , 5-14 , it is said: ‘The Lord is the One permanent, conscious being who grants the wishes of the many permanent, conscious beings’.

Is there any possibility that the distinctions are a figment of our imagination?

What if these distinctions are imaginary and we believe them to be real, due to ignorance? This doesn’t hold - The Lord is supreme and these are His statements. If the Lord were to be the only real entity without any attributes, unchanged and permanent, ignorance doesn’t happen.

So, the Lord’s statement that we are many and are distinct from the Lord couldn’t have been made in ignorance.

What if knowledge and ignorance coexist in the Lord, who remains unaffected by that ignorance? The analogy given to illustrate this possibility is that of a burnt piece of cloth or paper, left undisturbed. Though it may have retained its shape, it doesn’t have its original function. However, this doesn’t hold either. For example, a mirage makes the illusion of water.

However, once we know that a mirage can do that, we will not reach out to fetch water from it or initiate any action based upon such an illusion again. In the same way, if all distinctions were due to ignorance and such ignorance was resolved, there wouldn’t be a situation in which the Lord would explain these distinctions to Arjuna.

There’s no possibility of the Lord being under the influence of ignorance at some point in the past, as mentioned in the scriptures:

मुन्दकोपनिशत् [mundakopanizat] , 1-2-6 says: He is aware of everything and knows everything.

श्वेताश्वतर [zvetAzvatara] , 6-8 says: The Lord’s strength is described in many ways. Such strength is His by nature, along with knowledge, strength and His activities.

In 7-26, the Lord says: I know the beings whose time has passed, who are present now and those who will be in the future. However, there isn’t anyone who knows Me.

If indeed the Lord is the only one and the rest are imaginary, the Lord would know that and so would the people He teaches. Then whom will the Lord teach that there is only one? Everyone else would be imaginary.

What if there is only one and it appears multiple - like reflections? Arjuna, receiving the teaching, is like a reflection of the Lord. Any sane person wouldn’t look at his own reflection on a shining surface and clarify these distinctions to it.

What if the Lord has the knowledge and is still limited by past ignorance? That doesn’t hold either, let’s see why.

Having knowledge and still being limited can be illustrated with an analogy - Suppose there is someone who sees two moons due to a defect in his vision. Even after he knows that there’s only one moon, he can still see two moons. However, the defect in his sight doesn’t cause any harm anymore.

This analogy doesn’t hold in case of Krishna. There’s no possibility of any defect returning. If at all a teacher has the complete knowledge that there is indeed a single Lord and nothing else is real, there’s no possibility for him to explain anything to anyone - because they don’t exist. If the teacher doesn’t have such complete knowledge, he cannot teach anyway. If the teacher is imaginary, then his teachings are also imaginary. If the purpose of the teaching was to get rid of ignorance, it applies to the teachers as well. If at all these distinctions are due to ignorance and if the teacher is free of such ‘ignorance’, whom will he teach?

No, we don’t need to doubt our existence in our journey of realization and worship.

Considering what Krishna said and the contradictions that come from alternate interpretations, we are distinct from the Lord and we are distinct from one another. This is real, not ignorance.

Next, the Lord describes what we are.