The meaning of "Immortality is not physically living, but knowing the immortal self, which is the consciousness [soul], is our true identity." If one has to live perpetually he would eventually lament his lot amidst the troubles, terrorism, calamities of life, and pray for death to come: one will never find enduring satisfaction in any form of existence unless one knows the truth of life and of the nature of life.
When one observes deeply the plants, he finds it rejects oxygen he accepts and takes only the carbon which he rejects. Thus part of him passes into the plant. One eats plants and the latter passes into him. Thus one and the same substance circulates in different bodies or forms. It is impossible to say what his-self is and what is not, when everything is self, which is the consciousness.
One cannot say that nothing exists; merely because he says all is illusion. But the fact is non-existence cannot be understood without knowing the meaning of existence. It is impossible to say anything of non-existence and use meaning as well as sound.
One can only say a thing does not exist there or here. While one is actually seeing the world, it would be madness to deny its existence. Illusion does not mean that. One see change, i.e. ideas come and go; experience shows that one thing changes into another, only ignorant people say that anything can become non-existent; so the whole world must remain existent in some way or other and cannot totally disappear.
The insoluble gap which exists for science between the physical sensation and mental awareness of it disappears for the Gnani because on inquiry he finds that they never saw a physical sensation, it was really a mental sensation.
Nobody has any experience nor is there any illustration in this universe that the mortal ever becomes immortal. In pursuit of truth one has to adhere to common experience only. How can one understand the meaning of death unless he takes something in this universe! One has never seen the invisible consciousness[ soul]. All he can say is that he has seen mortality of everything in this world because everything is mortal and remains so. Take anything: it is subject to change and destruction. It cannot be shown that any object has changed its nature, once one really knows the nature of things. Nothing has really been changed.
The world scene is constantly changing. The stars, moon and everything changes. Because of ignorance one is not aware of the fact that, he and his experience of the world can exist only in waking/dream. The waking/dream come and goes, therefore they are impermanent in their nature. Thus contents of the waking/dream have to be impermanent in their nature.
What is the meaning of this change? People ignorantly attribute mysterious power to illusion, but it is simply change in its true meaning. Illusion is that which appears as waking or dream and disappears as deep sleep.
People accept the fading of a flower without inquiry: only when he asks what has become of its vanished color he is asking the meaning of illusion. Where is the color which has faded from the flowers? Similarly with waking/dream experiences? Where is it is deep sleep or after death? This is the question of illusion.
If one says God has taken the dead, then he must show them as with Him. Who has seen that? Therefore it is a lie to say so: one must be truthful is a first condition in pursuit of truth, and not tell lies or imaginings which are the same as lies. Only when non dual wisdom dawns then one becomes aware what illusion is, where waking/dream go and what becomes of them.
