Anubhavananda Saraswati has said that that the two most important ideas to under

stand in spiritual life are freedom from identifying with our body and the reali
zation that there is only one Soul that expresses through many bodies.
These two pieces of ultimate Wisdom can be found in the Bhagavad Gita XV.7 & 8 i
f they are read accurately. Krishna tells Arjuna that it is the One, the one con
troller (Ishvara) of everything, that takes the appearance of forms in individual
beings. We are in fact the One that has manifested Itself as temporal appearance
s of individuals. In other words, our belief that we are individuals is founded
in our ignorance and delusion. There are no individuals. There is only the appear
ance of individuals which express and experience for the One through mind and the
sense apparatus, Prakriti s GUNAS.
Muni Narayana Prasad expresses this in his commentary on Bhagavad Gita IV.9 whic
h says that the One takes birth through karma, It s creative urge. Those who know
the true nature of karma as the creative urge of the One, are no longer bound in
to repeating cycles of death and birth. When we realize that our essential natur
e is that One pervading All and residing always within us, then we cease to feel
that we are individuals. such a person may be said to have left identity with the
body. He has realized that he is that immortal Reality. It is only our insistenc
e on identifying with our body, the data-collecting vehicle which we inhabit for
a short period of time, that binds us into Samsara, the ocean of death and birt
h.
As we come to shift our identification with the body and our current small ego-s
elf individuality back into the One, which is our Source and the sole eternal im
mutable immeasurable Real, we are Liberated. The enlightened know we are not the
Doer because in the ultimate understanding, we never exist to Do anything. There is
only the One and TAT TVAM ASI, Thou art That !