Question: It is said, "Ātmā is immortal." What happens to ātmā after nirvāna? If it does not exist after nirvāna, then the belief that ātmā is immortal is wrong. Would you throw some light on this issue?
Goenkaji: Believing that Ātmā is immortal is a philosophical belief. First one has to believe that there is an ātmā, a soul, and then one has to believe that it is immortal. Both these beliefs are strongly interconnected. If ātmā, or the soul, is not immortal then ātmā is useless to me. I accept ātmā simply because somebody says that it is immortal, and by ātmā I understand it is "I." If somebody whispers in my ear, "Well look, everything is mortal, impermanent in this world, but you are permanent, you will always remain," I feel elated by this belief, "Wonderful, I will remain! Everything, the body, mind and the entire universe passes away, but I will remain!"
The tremendous amount of attachment that ignorance helps us develop to "I" is strengthened by this kind of belief. There is a reason behind the formation of all these philosophical beliefs. Our job is not to say, "No, it is wrong," to give reasons why, and get involved in debates and arguments—that won’t help. Neither should we confirm the belief.
Leave it aside. All right, if the belief is that there is a soul that it is immortal, then let me investigate this belief. Vipassana is nothing but investigating the truth pertaining to oneself within the framework of the body. The first thing that you come across is your bodily structure. By Vipassana, as you keep moving from the gross to the subtle, to the subtlest, you will reach a stage where you will start experiencing every tiny subatomic particle which is arising and passing. And you will realize, "Well this is not ātmā, because ātmā is immortal and this is not immortal."
Similarly, you keep on observing the entire mental structure. As you observe from the gross to the subtle, to the subtlest, you will reach the stage where you will find that the mental structure is also nothing but wavelets arising and passing. By this experience you are investigating, like a scientist, what the truth is. When you reach the stage where the entire mind and matter phenomenon is just arising and passing—and in that whole process the impurities are eradicated—then a stage comes where you transcend the field of mind and matter and you experience something which is called nibbāna, where nothing arises, nothing passes away. You may say it is immortal. But when you reach that stage there will be no "I." That stage has to be experienced by each individual. Without that, again it will become just a philosophy.
Accept only the reality pertaining to the truth that you experience within the framework of the body and keep moving. The answer will come, Vipassana will help to supply this answer.