reactions. One could compare it to a long film strip where actions and reactions are linked; and the duration of a life is only a flash in this show of chain reactions. When a child is born, one must know that the particular body that he has put on is the beginning of a new series of acts, and when an old man dies, it is because a set of karmic reactions has just ended. . We can see that because of their different karmic activities, one will be born into a rich family and another into a poor family, even though they may both be born in the same place, at the same time and in the same environment. He who carries with him the fruits of acts of virtue obtains to be reborn in a well-to-do or pious family, when the one who drags behind him impious acts must be reborn in an unfortunate or inferior family. Changing your body means changing your field of action, just as changing from a child's body to a teenager's body also changes our activities.
It is clear that a specific body shape is assigned to the individual being according to a particular category of activity. And this process is repeated continuously, for so long that we can not trace its history.
The soul is active in a material body and when the latter, having become incapable of functioning, ceases to be, the soul will also interrupt the succession of its karmic activities. When the instrument that allows us to act breaks down and can no longer work, we encounter what is called death. And when we get a new instrument, what happens is called birth. One and the other are constantly linked, at each moment, through successive changes of body. The final change is death, and getting a new body is called birth. This explains birth and death. But in truth, the soul knows neither birth nor death, for it is eternal. The soul never dies, even after death, the destruction of the material body.
The Supreme Lord says, "Death is certain for him who is born, and certain birth for him who dies."
The intelligence of the holy being is always connected to the Sovereign Lord. His attitude towards material existence is marked by detachment, for he knows perfectly well that the material universe is a creation of illusory energy. Realizing that he himself is an integral part of the Supreme Soul, of which he is a tiny parcel, the saint performs his devotional service and is in no way involved in the material action and its consequences. In this way, he finally abandons his body of matter, or material energy, and as a pure spiritual soul, he finds the kingdom of God.