Bhagavad Gita 2.20 · BG 2.20
Chapter 2Verse 20
Sankhya Yoga
न जायते म्रियते वा कदाचिन्नायं भूत्वा भविता वा न भूयः। अजो नित्यः शाश्वतोऽयं पुराणो न हन्यते हन्यमाने शरीरे॥
na jāyate mriyate vā kadācin nāyaṁ bhūtvā bhavitā vā na bhūyaḥ, ajo nityaḥ śāśvato 'yaṁ purāṇo na hanyate hanyamāne śarīre
Translation
The soul is never born, nor does it ever die. It does not come into being, nor will it ever cease to be. Unborn, eternal, ever-existing and primeval, it is not destroyed when the body is destroyed.
What is truly you was never born, and will never die.
What does this mean?
What you most fundamentally are is described here as untouched by birth and death, deeper and steadier than any single chapter of a life.
In simple words
Krishna is saying that the real you, the self, was never born and will never die. It doesn't come and go the way a life does. It's older and steadier than any single lifetime, and it isn't touched when the body is.
The deeper idea
The verse stacks up negations, not born, not dying, not coming into being, not ceasing, to point at something the ordinary categories don't fit. In the Gita's view the self isn't an event on a timeline. Birth and death happen to the body. The instruction underneath the description is to stop identifying so completely with the part of you that's temporary. The verse doesn't ask you to prove this. It asks you to consider standing somewhere other than the fear that follows from assuming you're only the body.
How it applies to life
When you're gripped by the fear of dying, or watching someone you love near the end, this verse offers a different frame rather than a consolation. If what you most deeply are isn't the thing that ages and stops, then the ending you're bracing for isn't the total erasure it feels like. People carry this idea into hospital rooms and funerals, not as a slogan, but as a quieter place to stand while everything else is hard.