The empiric I, which we ourselves daily experience as our own personality, is the result of the false identification of the I-concept with the physical body and our mental-emotional being (buddhi, manas and ahamkara). Therefore, this I consists of asat [non-existence], conditioned, perishable existence. The citta (cetas), the soul or heart, the emotional life, only exists as long as jada [that which is lifeless in itself] (seemingly) is touched by cit; it has no existence at all, not even a perishable one, it is only “imagined”.
Personal immortality in the sense of a preserved individuality of the soul, an individuality that in some way – however sublime or ethereal – would have any resemblance to our present empirical person, simply does not exist. Maya, who keeps us away from what is True and Real and conceals our true being, gives rise to the claim of the ahamkara or the I-maker – for the sake of our “spiritual” satisfaction – that we simply have to believe in something that resembles the Christian belief in the immortality of the mortal soul. Our personal vanity simply cannot bear that nothing of our personally experienced personality will or can be preserved, at the moment when the pure I or the Self [the atma] – released from the slavery under body, spirit, intellect, heart or “soul” – knows himself to be in the realm of Truth, in GOD’s realm.
As long as we rove about through endless cycles of births, we will carry the delusion of the individual soul. But when the true I, the true self [the atma], seized by God’s Own power of Knowledge (bhakti), knows God, then – as a result of this knowledge – the pure, true I will know what, who, and where it is, and will experience its eternal bodily form and personality, which is fundamentally different from the empiric soul in every respect. The Bhagavatam and the school of bhakti does not consider “knowledge of one’s self” as the solution to the untying of the knot of the heart, but knowledge of God, the result of which is knowledge of the true self [the atma]!
Svami Sadananda Dasa