Who are You?

Try this small experiment. Stand up straight and point to yourself. 

.............now did you point to your head, your arm or leg or did you point to your heart? When we talk about the 'self' are we talking about our body, our brain or something within? The majority of you would have pointed to the heart. Now doesn't that tell you something? It is not surprising that the heart is the resting place for the soul and it is the soul that pervades the whole body with life essence. 

Compare a living being with a dead body, what is the difference? We say the person has 'gone' yet the body remains, so it must be something within that has gone. It is the soul within that is our real identity and gives the life symptoms to the body. After giving up one type of body, the soul enters another type of body, similar to taking off and putting on new clothes. 

We are not the body but the soul within the body. 

This is confirmed in the Bhagavad Gita by the supreme personality of Godhead, Lord Krishna himself. 

As the embodied soul continuously passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. A self-realized soul is not bewildered by such a change. (BG 2.13)

For the soul there is never birth nor death. Nor, having once been, does he ever cease to be. He is unborn, eternal, ever-existing, undying and primeval. He is not slain when the body is slain. (BG 2.20)

As a person puts on new garments, giving up old ones, similarly, the soul accepts new material bodies, giving up the old and useless ones. (BG 2.22)