Bhagavad Gita 14.20
गुणानेतानतीत्य त्रीन्देही देहसमुद्भवान् । जन्ममृत्युजरादुःखैर्विमुक्तोऽमृतमश्नुते ॥ २० ॥
guṇān etān atītya trīn dehī deha-samudbhavān | janma-mṛtyu-jarā-duḥkhair vimukto 'mṛtam aśnute ||20||
Translation
Having transcended these three gunas that arise from the body, the embodied one is freed from birth, death, old age, and sorrow, and tastes immortality.
Reflection
What freedom would you take more seriously if you knew it could be tasted in this body?
Read this verse in its chapter: Chapter Fourteen
The fruit of the pivot. The dehin who has crossed past the three gunas, while still embodied, no longer pays the four-fold tax that embodiment usually exacts: birth, death, decay, sorrow. The body still ages and dies; he simply does not pay. Amrita is not deferred to a posthumous heaven; it is tasted, ashnute, present-tense. The phrase deha-samudbhavan, body-born, is precise: the gunas come up out of the body's existence, not out of the dehin's nature. The seeker is reminded he is being bound by what is not his and freed by recognizing what is.