The world is transient and keeps on changing. Our body is continuously changing from birth to old age and ultimately, everyone dies. Our emotions and thoughts also change with time. People around us change and material objects are created and destroyed. World is going through continuous cycle of creation, maintenance and destruction. Self or the sense of I in us is eternal. Self(atma) is eternal (sat), full of knowledge (chid) and full of happiness (anand). Even the body dies, self is imperishable and can never die or be affected by any physical
entity. Self does not go through any modification and change even though world around us is changing. It can never be burned, cut or harmed in any way. One may feel incompleteness in this
world but in reality, the self is complete and filled with infinite
happiness. Body keeps on changing and self, the sense of I, remains same amongst all these changes. After death, the new body is accepted or atma remains in its transcendental state ending the cycle of birth and death. In fact, the self is just a witness to all the changes in
this world i.e. events or actions happening in nature. Bhagavad Gita explains our life to be similar to the movie. The self (I, atma or soul) is
the Witness (Sakshi) and the Seer (Drashta). Like the movie, all
material objects including gross and subtle bodies are witnessed or seen
by the self. We
experience happiness and distress, victory and defeat, praise and
critic, and profit and loss. Like a movie, these are just projections
of the mind and our self remains untouched or unaffected by these
projections.
The eternal reality (self) is called at SAT in Gita and the perishable and transient projected reality is called as ASAT. Due to illusion (maya), self considers itself as the product of matter and body. There is sense of "me" to body and the sense of "mine" towards material objects. This identification of self as body is illusory and unreal. The discrimination between eternal reality and perishable projected reality need to be accepted.
