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The soul wears the body in the sense that the body is like a dress for the soul, as the Bhagavad-gita (02.22) indicates.
The body wears out the soul in the sense that the body with its relentless demands for eating, sleeping, mating and defending tires or wears out the soul. These bodily activities may be necessary for survival, but they are by no means capable of providing lasting satisfaction. The repetitive nature of these demands keeps the soul distracted from the path to real satisfaction: the path of spiritual realization. Further, this unrelenting labor, coupled with the unremitting lack of fulfillment, drains out the soul – people who don’t live for anything higher soon find themselves depressed and dejected with not just bodily pleasures, but with life at large.
The soul wears out the body in the sense that the body being material is intrinsically perishable. And when it is used to fulfill the illusioned soul’s desires for unregulated indulgence, it often gets worn out faster. Put another way, the soul’s innate need for pleasure when pursued at the bodily level through eating, sleeping, mating and defending ends up exhausting the body, thereby accelerating its deterioration and destruction.
The way out of this body-soul entanglement is to recognize that the soul has a higher purpose than pandering to bodily demands and give that higher purpose due priority. The highest among such purposes is love, love for Krishna. When the soul directs its bodily energies to connect with Krishna through bhakti-yoga, that divine connection provides a higher spiritual satisfaction. The taste from devotional fulfillment doesn’t produce ennui and emptiness, as does sensual pleasure. Devotional taste leads to excitement and energization for greater devotion, thus rapidly raising our consciousness above the body’s inevitable degeneration to the soul’s imminent liberation
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