What is the meaning of Bhagavad Gita verse 2.16?

Those who are seers of the truth have concluded that of the nonexistent [the material body] there is no endurance and of the eternal [the soul] there is no change. This they have concluded by studying the nature of both. Bhagavad Gita 2.16

This verse seems enigmatic and mysterious at first glance like some of the verses from the Upanisads, but by understading the difference between spirit and matter, the pieces fall into place.

‘Seers of the truth’ means self-realized souls. Self means atma or spirit-soul and realized means one who experiences the spirit soul, not one who has heard about or believes in the existence of the spirit soul.

Those are the opening words, now I will jump to the closing line and we see the self-realized souls have concluded something from studying two things (“studying the nature of both”). Those two things are spirit and matter. One is eternal and the other is temporary. This means one is affected by time – it gets older – and the other doesn’t.

Anything that is affected by time gets destroyed. (Time I am, the great destroyer of the worlds, Bg 11.32) Anything that is not affected by time doesn’t get destroyed which means it’s eternal, because it’s time that causes change, and if time cannot change something, it won’t grow old or be destroyed. That’s one of the reasons gold is valuable, it’s very resistant to time. The soul is completely resistant to time. However much time goes past, the soul doesn’t change one iota, it’s fully time-resistant and so it’s eternal.

Our bodies are material and matter is very subject to time. At every moment it is changing and in due course of time it will be destroyed. It will be broken down by the passing of time, as if it never existed. The various elements are assembled in a certain way for a while and then separated again. What exists are the elements constantly changing as the body grows and then dwindles. Because it’s temporary it has no more reality than a dream which is real when we are asleep but disappears when we wake up. Our body is just a longer dream that disappears at death as if it was never there - like a dream state - not a real state. That’s why it’s called non-existent, because it’s like a dream that isn’t real. We are aware of it for a short while and then it’s gone, like a dream.

So the body can be seen as non-existent because it doesn’t endure, it appears and then disappears like a dream. (of the nonexistent [the material body] there is no endurance) The soul however doesn’t change because it’s unaffected by time, and so it’s eternal. (of the eternal [the soul] there is no change)

Illustration

If you want an example to try to illustrate the point, then below is how it was explained to me.

Seers of the truth have realized their spiritual nature which means they have realized that they are eternal. Eternal doesn’t mean that you will live for a very, very, very long time! We can conceive of a very, very, very long time, but we can’t conceive of ‘eternal’. Eternal means you are outside of time. That doesn’t mean everything is frozen and you can walk around and look at all the people but they can’t see you because they are still stuck in time while you aren’t. It means that time doesn’t affect you.

Past, present and future are all the same. Time still exists, but it is irrelevant to you because you are changeless being eternal and so unaffected by time which constantly changes things. Now the fun part is that it’s not just you that is eternal, every living entity is eternal, and you see them all as eternal and changeless. Only the matter is changing and forming this shape, that has this name, and then that shape, that has that name, never holding the same identical shape for more than a moment before it is older and different in some small or large way. The constantly changing shapes are illusory so they have no significance to a seer of the truth.

“How are they illusory? I can see and feel them all around me”, I may say.

“Yes” says a seer of the truth, “to you they are real because you are within time, but to me they are not real, they are illusory and non-existent.”

“Please explain” I say.

The seer says, “When a person goes to watch a good movie, the visual and audio stimulation is so strong that the mind accepts it as real even though the intelligence knows that it’s not. It is real enough to evoke a physical response in the body. The story is captivating and the anticipation and desire to know what happens next keeps the person enthralled. The person is thus in illusion, and willingly so because they entered the movie hall of their own free will.

“As we know a movie is a series of still photographs displayed one after the other fast enough that we can’t see that. So now dismantle the movie, and arrange the entire set of photos one after the other on a massive board and stand far enough back from it so that you can see the whole ‘movie’ from start to end all with one glance. First you will notice nothing is moving. The moving part of a movie is an illusion. Then there is no story unless you look at the pictures sequentially. If you look at them all at once there is no progression from one situation to another. There is no past and future, there is only the one depiction of everything at once. Then touch them, they are just flat pictures that have no depth.

“When seen like this, a movie is non-existent because you have messed with the timing. You need to see the frames at a certain speed in a certain order arranged by time. If you destroy that, you destroy the movie. The illusion is gone. If you understand this and go to see a movie, you can still enjoy the movie because even though you know you are only looking at pictures on a flat screen, you know there is a reality beyond flat screens and you connect that reality with what you are viewing.

“This is similar to how ‘seers of the truth’ see the material bodies; they are illusory and so non-existent. The living beings are real and they don’t change, and because there is a real world where everything is eternal, the living entity, caught in the web of illusion, accepts the fake depiction (which is the world we see) of the real world (which is the world we can’t see) as reality, just as the movie goer temporarily accepts the fake depictions on the screen as real. In both cases the illusion is accepted because the person wants to accept it.