The Bhagavad-Gita teaches that the living entity is the soul and not the body. This is the first teaching of the Bhagavad-Gita from Lord Krishna and it’s a unique teaching. In other religious systems, they teach that we are the physical body.

The soul is eternal and the body is temporary. All souls have 3 qualities. Eternal, full of bliss, and full of knowledge. Thus all souls are equal, but also each soul is a unique individual.

When one is situated on the bodily platform, thus he thinks of himself as the body. There will be envy, hatred, jealousy, distress, enemies, problems, and so on.. When one is situated on the soul platform, he will see everyone as a soul, all 100% equal, and thus there will be no envy, no hatred, no jealousy, no distress, no enemies, no problems and so on.. Everything related to the body is temporary and thus not a reality in one sense. If you compare zillions of years of existence to say 1 sec of material existence. The material existence is real but it’s so insignificant and thus it’s just like a dream. From the soul level thinking, we are eternal and have no problems, because all problems are related to the body, which is temporary and our temporary material existence is insignificant compared to our eternal existence. Eventually all souls go back to the spiritual manifestation where everyone lives eternally in complete bliss. This is another unique teaching from Lord Krishna.

“The living entity is eternal and imperishable because he actually has no beginning and no end. He never takes birth or dies. He is the basic principle of all types of bodies, yet he does not belong to the bodily category. The living being is so sublime that he is equal in quality to the Supreme Lord. Nonetheless, because he is extremely small, he is prone to be illusioned by the external energy, and thus he creates various bodies for himself according to his different desires. For this living entity, no one is dear, nor is anyone unfavorable. He makes no distinction between that which is his own and that which belongs to anyone else. He is one without a second; in other words, he is not affected by friends and enemies, well-wishers or mischief-mongers. He is only an observer, a witness, of the different qualities of men.” (Srimad-Bhagavatam 6.16.9-10)