Monday, November 27, 2017

PHENOMENON OF REBIRTH AND ITS KNOTTY PROBLEMS



Phenomenon of Rebirth in Earthly Life and Its Knotty Problems

(Compilation for a discourse by N.R. Srinivasan, Nashville, TN, November 2017)

The question of why, when, where and how Rebirth plays its part in earthly life has puzzled humanity from time immemorial.  Fear of death worried even the ancient wise sages who simply accepted the existence of the Supreme Spirit without any questioning and brought forth Upanishadic thoughts. They constantly engaged their attention on the subject. Nachiketas in Kathoepanishad  says: “This doubt there is about a man who has passed: some say, ‘He is’; some others, ‘He is no more’ ”.

We have no conscious recollection of having done any serious misdeed in the present lives! Then why to believe in the queer idea of past lives? And, if past lives in our actions today, why not accept the possibility of future lives? Some religionists, while admitting the endlessness of the individual soul, will not believe in its successive return to earth through the phenomenon of Rebirth. Many do not subscribe to that belief. Physical scientists have no answer for they have not the necessary data. The philosophers and thinkers can only speculate and never arrive at the indubitable Knowledge. Let us therefore listen to the wisdom of Spiritual Yogis like Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, as retold by Dr Jugal Kishore Mukherjee of Sri Aurobindo International Center.

Billions of star-clusters from millions of galaxies are inscrutably silent and lifeless   except for one small sized planet (earth) of medium sized star (Sun). Whole immensity of Universe shows no sign of life anywhere, and that is from the beginning of our cosmos since the mysterious moment of the Big Bang. Even on the earth life suddenly sprouted in the recent past and went on flourishing with prolific variety. This is a big mystery.

Everything in this planet of Earth organized itself in “units” whether as individual cells or individual animals or plants or as individual human beings. The birth of the individual is the second big mystery of the terrestrial manifestation. The spiritualist says human life is rare and precious.

The third mystery is the puzzling mystery of death. If life appeared on earth, it could have very well continued without being challenged by any contrary phenomenon! Death appeared on the scene as if from nowhere, and claimed its inalienable right to end every individual life sometimes short or long.  Birth is the first spiritual mystery of the physical universe. Death is the second, which gives its double point of perplexity to the mystery of death. Life becomes itself a mystery because of these two, which seems to be its begining and its end and yet in thousand ways betray themselves as neither of these two things, but rather intermediate stages. Death itself does not represent the final process of mystification for us. Even though it destroys life, it fails to annihilate the “individual”. Individual soul is reborn in the world of earthly manifestation. Thus, Rebirth is the fourth element of mystery to confound us.

One can find the basis of rebirth in religious, moral, psychological and philosophical explanations. Dr Ruth has described the physical transformation of inanimate objects, as  also, rebirth. It is explained that both objects and energy are capable of change. Energy cannot be destroyed. It only changes form. Many times the changed form is not visible. It is also suggested that the DNA is passed in invisible form through the soul to the next birth. Past deeds are conveyed through the soul this way. Past memories, knowledge and past experiences have passed from generation to generation this way. Our present knowledge is the accumulated form of past knowledge and experience. We know that characteristics from ancestors pass on through our genes.

According to Vedic concept, the soul is eternal and immortal without any beginning or ending.  Rigveda in 1/64/38 says: “Apaangprangeti svadhayaa gribheetoe amartyoe martyenaa sayoeni-h | taa sasvantaa vishoocheenaa vinyantaanyanyam chikyurna chikyuranyam || Soul is immortal. Physical body is destructible. The soul controls all the functions in the body. The body functions as long as soul resides within it. The most learned people do not understand the mysteries of the soul. The principal aim of life should be to understand it to the best of one’s ability”. Bhagavaan says in Bhagavad Geetaa, in 2/20: “Na jaayatae mriyatae vaa kadaachi-nnaayam bhootvaa bhavitaa vaa na bhooya-h | ajoe nitya-h saasvatoe ayam puraanoe na hanyatae hanyamaanae sareerae || The soul was never born, nor does it die. It will not emerge again. It is unborn, eternal, evetrlasting, and without age. Even when the body is destroyed the soul remains untouched”. In 2-18 Kathoepanishad says: “Na jaayatae mriyatae vaa vipaschit naayam kutaschinna babhoova kaschit | ajoe nitya-h saasvatoeyam puraanoe na hanyatae hanyamaanae sareerae || The intelligent Self is not born. Nor does it die. It is not produced from anything nor was he born. This unborn, eternal, everlasting, ancient, is not destroyed when the body is destroyed.  Even before, it was bereft of the form of human being and others”.  Geeta just repeats after Kathoepanishad.

In the practical effect upon the life problems, the apparent soul or spiritual individuality of the human being is not immortal, in the sense of eternity of time but has a beginning and an end. It is at best a creation by Nature Force or by Karma or Maaya or Cosmic Will out of the original In-conscientious or Super-conscientious and is therefore intrinsically impermanent, in its existence. It therefore follows rebirth of the individual is either unnecessary or else illusory. Therefore a single birth is all that can be asked for by a “conscious Being”. It is thus a part of purposeless creation like the wave, which rises on the surface of the sea, remains in existence for a while, and then disappears into the undifferentiated waters of the sea.

Advaita Philosophy based on the teachings of Upanishads admits actual and temporal becoming of the Eternal and therefore a real universe. The individual too assumes a sufficient reality, for each individual is in himself the Eternal who supports through him the experiences of life in manifestation. The continued turning of the wheel of this manifestation is due to two factors: Trishna, the desire of the individual for existence, and Avidya, ignorance of the Eternal Self.

Maharshi Vasishtha says in Ramayana: “Aasaapaasaa satabaddhaa vaasanaabhaava dhaarina-h | Kaayaat-kaaya-mupaayaanti vrikshaad-vrikshamivaandajaa ||        Mind of a man is engulfed by hundreds of desires and ambitions. After death, bonded to these desires and ambitions, the soul seeks to fulfill these just as a bird in search of fruit leaves one tree to another”.  Yama, the Lord of Death says to Nchiketas in Kathoepanishad 2-6 : “Na saamparaaya-h pratibhaati baalam pramaadyantam vittamoehena moodham | ayam loekae naasti para iti maanee puna-h puna-h vasamaapadyatae may ||  The thought of the other world does not occur to one who is  immature, inattentive and deluded by the desire for wealth. He who thinks that this world alone is, and that there is not the other world comes repeatedly to me (faces cycle of birth and death)”.

Once, this desire and  this ignorance cease, the Eternal in the individual, withdraws from the mutations of the individual personality and experiences into the timeless, space-less, impersonal and immutable Being. Thus the reality of the individual soul is quite temporary in this theory. It has no enduring foundation, not even perpetual recurrence in time. Manifestation seems to have no purpose except the will of the Eternal towards world creation and can end only by that Will’s withdrawal. The will to creation could then accomplish itself through a temporary assumption of individuality in each name and form, a single life of many impermanent individuals. It therefore follows that there should be a psychic entity always the same which should persist and assume body after body, form after form, until it is withdrawn from terrestrial manifestation by the creation by the original impetus which created this cycle.

The universe is a self-creative process of a Supreme Reality whose universal presence makes Spirit the sustainer of all things in existence. All things are there as this Spirit’s powers and means and forms of manifestation. An infinite and absolute Existence, an infinite and absolute Consciousness, an infinite and absolute Force and Will, an infinite and absolute Delight of Being, is the supreme Reality secret behind all appearances of the universe, which Upanishads refer to as Sat-Chit-Aananda. The Divine mind or Gnosis, the absolute Knowledge or the Supreme mind is the real creative agent, responsible for the cosmic order not directly as such but indirectly through the three limiting terms of Matter, Mind and Life. The material universe is the lowest stage of a downward plunge of the manifestation leading to the involution of the manifest being of the Supreme Mind into an apparent nescience (lack of knowledge or awareness) of itself. Out of this starting nescience the evolution of the manifested being into a recovered self-awareness was from the beginning inevitable and that is what is happening on earth. This recovery is possible through a conscious individual being. It is in him that the evolving consciousness becomes organized and is capable of awakening to its own Reality. Individual being is of immense importance, which importance rises in the scale of evolution.

It is the most remarkable and significant fact of a universe which started without   consciousness and without individuality in an undifferentiated universe, the material universe. This importance justifies the Upanishadic approach that Self as Cosmic Being or Spirit. The necessity for the growth of the individual and his discovery of himself as a condition for the discovery of the Cosmic Self and consciousness of the Supreme Reality
may be explained if both are powers of the Eternal Transcendent. Thus the world is real, the individual is real and the manifestation is real as Ramanuja says and not illusory without any purpose and that great purpose is to usher in the full manifestation of the Transcendent Divine in time and space.

This reasoning leads to two important inferences: 1) The reality of the persistent individual, and 2) the necessity of rebirth of some kind of the individual for the unfolding of the intended cosmic purpose. This follows that human birth of the individual is a term, which the soul must arrive in a long succession of rebirths. It must have had previous and preparatory terms in this succession, the lower forms of life upon earth. It has passed through the whole chain that life has strung in the physical universe based on the body, the physical principle.  

The question now is whether the necessity of rebirth still continues, if so, how and by what series, once the human birth is attained by the individual soul? Why a succession of human births and not one alone? The answer to this question is quite simple.  For the same reason rebirth continues that has made human birth itself a culminating point of the past successions, the previous upward series. It is because of the inexorable necessity of the always ascending spiritual evolution. The soul has not certainly finished what it had to do, by merely developing into humanity; it has still to develop that humanity into its higher possibilities. Even great souls like Sankara, Ramanuja, Madhva, Ramakrishna etc might not have made the crown of human birth, signifying the end of the out-flowering of the Spirit in man!  Every individual soul must at least reach the present highest point by the example set by these noble souls, before we can aim at the call off the recurrence of human births for the individual.

After the maximum possible human development, man has to move from the ignorance and the little life which he is at present in his mind and body to the Knowledge of  Evolution and the large Spiritual life. Just as the imperfection of man is not the last word of Nature, his spiritual perfection too is not the last peak of the Spirit. Mind, the leading principle as man has developed is not the highest principle. Mind itself has other spiritual ranges as yet only imperfectly possessed by the human individual. Therefore, a prolongation of the line of evolution and consequently of the ascending line of birth to embody them is inevitable. The Supreme mind, as a power of consciousness is concealed here in the terrestrial evolution. Rebirth cannot cease in its ascent before the Super-being becomes the leader of the terrestrial existence. This then is the rational foundation for the phenomenon of rebirth in earthly life. 

The wise political leader of India Sir C. Rajagopalalachari once said, “Greatest of our inventions cannot reach the border lines of metaphysics”. Even if physical sciences were to discover the necessary conditions or the means for an indefinite survival of the body, still, if the body could not adapt itself   so as to become a fit instrument of expression for the inner growth, the soul would find some way to abandon it and pass on to a new incarnation. The material or physical causes of death are not its sole or its true cause; its true inmost reason is the spiritual necessity for the evolution of a new being.

Let us now get light on some of the knotty problems of Rebirth in the wisdom words of the Mother and Aurobindo:

* What does the soul seek by its birth into the body?
According to popular ideas (Puranas and myths), Reincarnation is commonly supposed to have two aspects, metaphysical and moral, an aspect of spiritual necessity, as aspect of cosmic justice and ethical discipline. The soul is on earth as a result of desire and ignorance; it has to remain on earth or return to it always so long it has not wearied of desire and awakened to the fact of its ignorance and true knowledge. It does not however, remain always on earth but alternates between earth and other worlds, celestial and infernal, where it exhausts its accumulated store of merit or demerit due to the enactment virtue or sin and then returns to earth in some kind of terrestrial body. The nature of this incarnation and fortunes are determined by the soul’s past actions, Karma. There is double punishment and double reward for sin and virtue: for the sinner is first tortured in hell and afterwards afflicted for the same sins in another life here. The righteous or puritan is rewarded with celestial joys and afterwards again pampered for the same virtues and good deeds in a new terrestrial existence.

The truth is different from the above. The Spirit within is not an automation in the hands of Karma, a slave in this life for past actions. If certain amount of the results of past karma is formulated in the present life, it must be with the consent of the psychic being which presides over the new-formation of its earth-experience and ascents not merely to an outward compulsory process, but to a secret will and guidance. That secret will is not mechanical, but spiritual. If indeed rebirth were completely  governed by a system of rewards and punishment, if life’s whole intention were to teach the embodied spirit to be good and moral, then there is  understanding as of, how limited Intelligence is,  in denying to the mind in its new incarnation all memory of its past birth and actions. For it deprives the reborn being of all chances to realize why it is rewarded or punished or to get any advantage from the lessons of the profitableness of virtue and the un-profitableness of sin vouchsafed to him or inflicted on him. The object of birth being growth by experience, whatever reactions come to past deeds must be for the being to learn and grow, not as lollipops for the good boys of the class in the past and canings for the bad ones. This is a Puraanic approach. Karma cannot be accepted as the sole determinant, of circumstances and whole machinery of rebirth of our future evolution. Free will and choices (self-expression and experience) are what the soul seeks by its birth into the body; whatever is necessary for the self-expression and experience of this life, whether it intervenes as an automatic outcome of past lives or as a free selection of results as continuity or as a new development that formulates.

*Do men retain their identities after the dissolution of the bodies?
The ordinary mass of men is so closely identified with their bodies that nothing of them seems to survive when physical disintegrates. The outer form only dissolves; unless, that too, is made conscious and organized, round the divine center.  The true mental, the true vital and even the true subtle physical persists; it is that which keeps all the impressions received in earthly life and builds the chain of karma.

*What compels the soul to take birth in a body upon earth?
The psychic being is in its nature something that is put forth from the Supreme Spirit to support the evolution and it must do so till the Supreme Spirit’s purpose is accomplished. It is the psychic being which goes to the psychic plane to rest till it is again called to another life, when death occurs. There is, therefore no need of Force to compel it take a birth anew.

Yama says to Nachiketas in 6-4 of Kat.Up : “Iha  chaeda-sakad-boeddhum praak-sareerasya visrava-h |  tata-h sargeshu loekaeshu sareeratvaaya kalpatae || If one is unable to know him (Supreme Spirit) before the falling of the body, then he becomes liable to take body in the created worlds”.  Yoenimanyae prapadyantae sareeratvaaya dehina-h | sthaanumanyae anusamyanti yathaa karma yathaa srutam || Some souls enter wombs for getting bodies and others take up the form of immovable in accordance with their karmas (5-7)”.


*What has Karma to do with the soul’s terrestrial existence?
Karma has nothing to do with the soul’s terrestrial existence, for when the soul first entered this existence, it had no karma. Karma is only a machinery, it is not the fundamental cause of terrestrial existence. Law of Karma is operative only on earth. Earth is called Karmabhoomi in vedic concept.

* Does the old personality survive in re-birth?
The condition of one’s being after death depends very much on whether the vital has been converted here or not. If a person is only a medley of unorganized impulses, then at death, when the consciousness withdraws into the background, the different personalities in the individual fall apart, rush in hither and thither to seek their own suitable environments. One part may enter into another person who has affinity for it, another may even enter an animal, while that which has been alive to the divine presence, may remain attached to the central psychic being. If one is fully organized and converted into a single individual, bent on reaching the goal of evolution, then such individual will be conscious after death and preserve continuity, as illustrated by the noble souls like Sankara, Ramanuja, Madhva, Ramakrishna etc.

*Do animals incarnate in human body?
Animal soul as such does not incarnate in a human body for there is a great difference in the development. But a very tiny part of the consciousness may enter a human body. This happens when the animal possesses a great aspiration. Except for very rare cases, animals are not individualized and when they die return to their species.

*When does next birth occur?
Some people are reborn almost immediately after death. Some people however take centuries and even thousands of years to reincarnate. They wait for the necessary conditions to mature which will provide them with suitable milieu. If one is spiritually conscious, he can actually prepare the body of his next birth. Before the body is born, he shapes and moulds it, and it is he, who is the true maker of it; the parents of the new child are only adventitious, purely physical agents. Patanjali’s Yogasootra in2/12-13 says: “Klesamoola-h karmoesayoe drishtaadrshta janmavaedaneeya-h | satimoolae tadipaakoe jaatyaayur bhoegaa-h || If the accumulated deeds and rituals of the last birth are good, one is reborn in a good home and endowed with good abilities and a long life. When the soul leaves the body, it takes with it the knowledge, deeds and the intellect with it. Based on these the soul takes rebirth. With time, these show up in the new life”.   Bhagavadgeeta in 8/6 says: “Yam yam vaapi smaranbhaavam tyajyantae kalaevaram | tam tamaevaiti Kauntaeya sadaa tadbhaavabhaavita-h || *What happens to mental personality in re-birth? Whatever the soul is thinking at the time of death, having always being absorbed in it, the soul will attain the same in the next life.

The mental personality in rebirth if fluid, unorganized, with no cohesive life of its own and without personality, it cannot survive. According to Ayurveda the fetus is said to be formed as a result of father’s sperm (satva) and mother’s blood (rajas coming together but not until the subtle body has migrated into this union.  What made up the mental being dissolves in the mental region, when the body, the substance which made up the body dissolves in the physical substance. But as soon as the mental being is formed, organized, individualized and has become a personality, it no longer depends on the body for its existence, and   therefore it survives the body. The earth’s mental atmosphere is filled with beings, mental personalities which lead an entirely independent existence, even after the disappearance of the body; they can incarnate in a new body when the true Self reincarnates, thus carrying with it the memory of its previous lives.

*What is reborn in the re-birth?
There is a common misconception about rebirth. People believe that it is they, who are reincarnated yet this is a palpable error, though it is true that parts of their being are amalgamated with others and so act through new bodies.  Their whole being is not reborn, because of the simple fact that what they evidently mean by their “Self” is not the   real individualized entity but their external personality composed of the outward name and form. What does remain constant is the psychic being, which is not the outward personality at all, but something deep within, something that is not the exterior name and form.

*Is it necessary to have knowledge of past lives?
Knowledge of past lives is interesting for an understanding of one’s nature and a mastery of one’s imperfections. It is far more important to concentrate on the future, on the consciousness to be acquired and on the development of the Nature, which is almost unlimited for those who know how to do it. It is therefore not much of importance to know the knowledge of past lives. It is rather a disadvantage.

*Is the lack of memory of the past life a handicap?
If a constant development of being by developing cosmic experience is the meaning, then, the building of a new personality in a new birth is the method. Then any persistent or complete memory of the past life or lives might be a chain and serious obstacle; it would be a force for prolonging the old temperament, character, preoccupations and  a tremendous burden hampering the free development of the new personality and its formulation of new experience. The cosmic law that deprives us of the memory of the past lives is a law of the cosmic wisdom and serves, not dis-serves, its evolutionary purpose. Even in this life, it is difficult to keep all the memories of our past and therefore the absence of any memory of our past lives is not a clear disproof of the phenomenon of rebirth.

Will the next birth be better always?
*The idea if the body is changed the next one will be better is also a mistake. It is only when one has profited fully and to the utmost by the opportunity for progress which life in a physical body represents, that one may hope to be reborn in a higher organism. All defections on the contrary, naturally bring in a diminution of being.

Does the phenomenon of re-birth really exist?
*Those who have had the memory of past lives have declared the reality of rebirth. There have been and still there are beings, whose inner consciousness is sufficiently developed for them, to know for certain, that this consciousness has manifested in bodies other than their present one and that it will survive the disappearance of this body.

*Do we start in our next life from where we left in last life?
A new birth, a new life is not a taking up of the development where it stopped in the last; it does not merely repeat and continue our past surface personality and formation of nature. There is a discarding, assimilation and strengthening of the old characters and motives; a new ordering of the developments of the past and a selection for the purposes of the future without which the new start cannot be fruitful or carry forward the evolution. Each birth is a new start, it develops indeed from the past, but it is not its mechanical continuation. Rebirth is not a constant reiteration but a progression; it is the machinery of an evolution process.

*Are there other worlds besides physical universe; do all the souls go there?
Our physical universe is not the sole manifested world. As in our own world, the experiences in other worlds are organized, but on a different plan, with different process and law of action and in substance that belongs to a supra-physical nature.  Just as in the physical world we are of the same materiality as the physical world, in the mental world, in the over-mind world and in the supra-mental world – and in many others, infinite others – there are beings that have a form whose substance is similar to the one of that world.  The necessity for an inter-regnum between birth and birth and a passage to other worlds, arises from double causes. There is an attraction of the other planes for the mental and vital being in man’s composite nature due to their affinity with these levels; and, that there is the utility or even the need of an interval, for an assimilation of the completed life’s experience, a preparation for the new embodiment and the new terrestrial experience.  But this need of a period of assimilation and this attraction of other worlds of kindred parts of our being may be effective only, when the mental and vital individuality has been sufficiently developed in the half-animal physical man. Until then they might not exist or might not be active; the life experiences would be too simple and elementary to need assimilation, and the natural being too crude to be capable of a complex assimilative process; the higher parts, would not be sufficiently developed to lift themselves to higher planes of existence.  In such cases, there would be immediate rebirth for individual.

*Do souls retain their relationship?
It is possible for two departed souls to retain the same relationship in successive rebirths but not a law.  As a rule the same relationship would not be repeated constantly – the same people often meet repeatedly on earth in different lives, but the relations are different.  If the same personality with the same relations and experiences incessantly repeated, the purpose of rebirth would not be served.

*What compels the soul to take rebirth in a body?
It is the psychic being that goes to psychic plane until it is called again to another life.  The psychic being is in its nature something, that is put forth, from the Divine to support the evolution and it must do until the Divine’s purpose in its evolution is accomplished.

*Does the soul come back to the same place?
It is not certain soul in its next birth comes back to the same place, under the same circumstances.  The number of beings who constantly return to a place of choice is very small.  Those who have returned are mainly the beings who before leaving the body asked to return in a new one.

*Does rebirth follow immediately death?
The soul progressively makes it passage through subtle-physical, vital and mental worlds to the psychic dwelling place from which it would return to its terrestrial pilgrimage.  That is why rebirth does not immediately follow and there is an inter-natal and interregnum short or long.

*Does soul have any sex?
There is no sex exactly in the psychic being but there is, what might be called masculine and feminine principles.

*Can soul take more than one body?
The psychic being cannot take up more than one body at the same time.  There is only one psychic being for each human body.  But the beings of the higher planes, e.g. Gods of the over-mind can manifest in more than one human body at a time by sending different emanations into different bodies.

*What determines the circumstances of the new birth?
After leaving the body, the soul, after certain experiences in other worlds, throws off its mental and vital personalities and goes into rest to assimilate the essence of its past and prepare for a new life.  It is this preparation, which determines the circumstances of the new birth and guides in its constitution of new personality and the choice of its materials.

 *Have we passed through many forms before human form of birth?
What we see of Nature and of human nature justifies that there is in every one of us Consciousness that has been living through the ages and manifesting in multitude of forms.  The birth of the individual soul form to form continues until it reaches the human level of its manifested consciousness that is its instrument for rising to yet higher levels.  We see that Nature develops from stage to stage and in each stage takes up past and transforms it into stuff of new development.  We see too, that human nature is of the same make; all the earth-past is there in it.  It has an element of matter taken up by life; an element of life taken up by mind, an element of mind that is taken up by the spirit; the animal is still present in its humanity.  The very nature of human being presupposes a material and a vital stage which prepared its emergence into mind and an animal past which molded a first element of its complex humanity. We arrive then necessarily at these conclusions that human birth is a term at which the soul must arrive in a long succession of rebirths. It has had its previous and preparatory terms in the succession of  lower forms of life upon earth; and, it has passed through the whole chain that life has strung in the physical universe on the basis of this body, the physical principle.  Certainly, this inner divine spark has passed through successive forms in order to become more conscious of it, before becoming a psychic being as   found in the human form. 

*Can the soul go back to animal life, a process of retrogression?
It seems impossible that the human soul should go back with an entirety, and for this reason, the transit from animal to human life means a decisive conversion of consciousness.  It is surely impossible that a conversion so decisive by Nature should be reversed by the soul.
           
The soul, the psychic being, once having reached the human consciousness cannot go back to the inferior animal consciousness, any more than it cannot go back into a tree or an ephemeral insect. What is true is some part of the vital energy or the formed instrumental consciousness or nature can and very frequently does so, if it is strongly attached to anything in the earth life. The soul does not go back to the animal condition; but a part of the vital personality may disjoin itself and join an animal birth to work out its animal properties there, owing to some desire, affinity and  need of particular experience. This happens fairly, often to the ordinary man.

*What is the difference between the evolving soul and Self (Aatman)?
It is necessary to understand clearly the difference between the evolving soul (psychic being) and pure Aatman, Self. The pure Self is unborn, does not pass through death or birth, is independent of birth or body, mind or life or this manifested Nature. It is not bound by these things--not limited, not affected, even though it assumes and supports them. The evolving soul, on the contrary, is something that comes down into birth and passes through death—although it does not itself die for it is immortal—from one state to another, from one earth plane to other planes and back again to earthly existence. It goes on with this progression from life to life through an evolution which leads it up to the human state and evolves through it all, a being of itself which we call the psychic being that supports the evolution and develops a physical, a vital, a mental human consciousness as its instruments of world experience and a disguised, imperfect, but growing self-expression. All this it does from behind a veil. But a time comes when it is possible to come out from behind the veil, to take command and turn all the instrumental nature towards a divine fulfillment. This is the beginning of a true spiritual life.  The soul is now able to make itself ready for a higher evolution of manifested consciousness than the mental-human—it can pass from the mental to the spiritual and through degrees of the spiritual to supra-mental (sat-chit-aananda) state.

*Is it beneficial to die in infancy? Is a new born child Pure?
Laws of karma do not consider a new born child to be pure nor innocent soul.  Law of Karma denies a child that dies shortly after birth an opportunity for any spiritual progress. Every birth is an opportunity for an individual to grow and progress spiritually through the bitter and sweet experiences of life. Those who die in infancy miss this opportunity. A person with lot of bad karma to work out may be repeatedly born just in order to die again and again in his infancy.

* How the Laws of karma work on a person who commits suicide?
A person commits a great sin by committing suicide.  Such individual’s Karma force goes on hounding on the individual even in the other worlds. Karma forces inflict many times more sufferings and pain on the individual than what the individual would have suffered had the individual been alive. Hinduism strongly condemns suicide as it only prolongs the opportunity for liberation by innumerable number of years. The soul has to wait for innumerable number of years to be born again as human being.


THE TEACHINGS OF AUROBINDO FOR THE ATTAINMENT OF SUPRA-MENTAL STATE

Behind the appearance of the universe there is the Reality of a Being and Consciousness, a Self of all things, One and Eternal. All beings are united in that one Self and Spirit but divided by a certain separation of consciousness, an ignorance of their true self and Reality in the mind, life and body.  It is possible by a certain psychological discipline to remove this veil of separation of consciousness and become aware of the Divinity within   all of us in this very life.

This One Being and Consciousness is involved here in Matter. Evolution is the process by which it liberates itself. Consciousness appears in what seems to be in-consciousness and once having appeared is self impelled to grow higher and higher and at the same time to enlarge and develop towards a greater and greater perfection.

Life is the first step of release of this Consciousness; Mind is the second; but the evolution does not finish with mind; it awaits a release into something greater, a consciousness, which is spiritual and supra mental. The next step of the evolution must be towards the development of Super-mind and Spirit as the dominant power in the Conscious Being. For only then, the involved Divinity in things will release itself entirely and it becomes possible for life to manifest perfection.

The earlier steps in evolution were taken by Nature without a Conscious Will in the plant and animal life. In man Nature becomes able to evolve by Conscious Will in the instrument. This cannot be done wholly by the mental will in man, for the mind goes only to a certain point and after that can only move in a circle. A conversion has to be made a turning of consciousness by which mind has to change into higher principle or Super-mind.  

In the past, it has been attempted by a drawing away from the world and a disappearance into the height of the Self or Spirit, by the ancient psychological discipline and practice of Yoga. Sri Aurobindo teaches that a descent of the higher principle is possible which will not merely release the spiritual Self out of the world, but release it in the world, replace the mind’s ignorance or its very limited knowledge by a supra mental Truth-consciousness. This will be a sufficient instrument of the inner Self and makes it possible for the human being to find himself dynamically as well as inwardly and grow out of his still animal humanity to divine race. The psychological discipline of Yoga can be used to that end by opening all the parts of the being to a conversion or transformation through the descent and working of the higher still concealed supra mental principle.

This however cannot be done at once or in a short time or by any rapid miraculous transformation. Many steps have to be taken by the seeker before the supra mental descent is possible. Man lives mostly in his surface mind, life and body but there is an inner being within him with greater possibilities to which he has to awake—for it is only a very restricted influence from it that he receives now and that pushes him to a constant pursuit of greater beauty, harmony, power, and knowledge.

The first process of Yoga is therefore to open the ranges of this inner being and to live from there outward, governing his outward life by an inner light and force. In doing so he discovers himself his true soul which is not this mixture of mental, vital and physical elements but something of the Reality behind them, a spark from the Divine Fire. He has to learn to live in his soul and purify, and orientate by its divine towards the Truth the rest of the nature. There can follow afterwards an opening upward and descent of a higher   principle of the Being. But even then it is not at once the full supra mental Light and Force.   There are several ranges of consciousness between the ordinary human mind and the supra mental Truth-consciousness. These intervening ranges have to be opened up and their power brought down into the mind, life and body. Only afterwards can the full power of the Truth-consciousness work in the nature. The process of this self discipline (Saadhana) is therefore long and difficult, but even a little of it is so much gainful because it makes the ultimate release and perfection more possible. In this discipline the inspiration of the Master (guru), and in the difficult stages, his control and his presence are indispensable—for it would be impossible otherwise to go through it without much stumbling and error which would prevent all chances of success. The Master is one who has risen to a higher consciousness and being.  He is often regarded as its manifestation or representative. He not only helps by his teaching and even more by his influence and example but by power to communicate his own experience to others.


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 N.R. Srinivasan prepared this lecture for the Vedanta class at Sri Ganesha Temple Nashville, U.S.A., by suitably extracting and editing texts from Mysteries of Death, Fate, Karma and Rebirth by Dr. Jugal Kishore Mukherjee of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, drawing support from his earlier lecture on “Spiritual Evolution to Super-Manhood” (Hindu Reflections: <nrsriniblogspotcom>) and the following:


1.   Dr. N.S. Ananta Rangacharya, Principal Upanishads, Bangalore, India.
1.      Prem P. Bhalla, Hindu Rites, Rituals, Customs & Traditions, Pustak Mahal, Delhi, India.
2.      Swami Bhaskarananda, The Essentials of Hinduism, Ramakrishna Math, Mylapore, Chennai, India.

  APPENDIX

Where Do You Go When You Die? The Increasing Signs That Human Consciousness Remains After Death

Posted by Newsweek | Ayurveda in the News | IndiaDivine.Org

Clinically, we understand death to mean the state that takes hold after our hearts stop beating. Blood circulation comes to a halt, we don’t breathe, our brains shut down—and that’s what divides the states we occupy from one moment (alive) to the next (dead).

Philosophically, though, our definition of death hinges on something else: the point past which we’re no longer able to return. Those two were more or less the same until about 50 years ago, when we saw the advent of CPR. Today, someone’s heart can stop and they can be dead, and then they can come back.

Modern resuscitation was a game-changer for emergency care, but it also blew apart our understanding of what it means to be dead. Without many people returning from the dead to show us otherwise, it was natural to assume, from a scientific perspective, that our consciousness dies at the same time as our bodies. Over the last few years, though, scientists have seen repeated evidence that once you die, your brain cells take days, potentially longer, to reach the point past which they’ve degraded too far to ever be viable again. This does not mean you’re not dead; you are dead. Your brain cells, however, may not be.

“What’s fascinating is that there is a time, only after you and I die, that the cells inside our bodies start to gradually go toward their own process of death,” Dr. Sam Parnia, director of critical care and resuscitation research at New York University Lang One Medical Center, told Newsweek. “I’m not saying the brain still works, or any part of you still works once you’ve died. But the cells don’t instantly switch from alive to dead. Actually, the cells are much more resilient to the heart stopping—to the person dying—than we used to understand.”

Scientists working on human cadavers have from time to time observed genes that are active after death, according to University of Washington microbiology professor Peter Noble. For a 2017 study published in Open Biology, Noble and his colleagues tested mice and zebrafish and found not just a handful, but a combined total of 1,063 genes that remained active, in some cases for up to four days after the subject had died. Not only did their activity not dissipate—it spiked.

“We didn’t anticipate that,” Noble told Newsweek. “Can you imagine, 24 hours after [time of death] you take a sample and the transcripts of the genes are actually increasing in abundance? That was a surprise.”

Quite a few of these are developmental genes, Noble said, raising the fascinating and slightly disturbing possibility that in the period immediately following death, our bodies start reverting to the cellular conditions that were present when we were embryos. Noble found that certain animals’ cells, post-mortem, remained viable for weeks. The research suggests a “step-wise shutdown,” by which parts of us die gradually, at different rates, rather than all at once.

Exactly why some cells are more resilient to death than others can’t yet be said. In a 2016 study published in the Canadian Journal of Biological Sciences, doctors recounted shutting off life support for four terminally ill patients, only to have one of the patients continue emitting delta wave bursts—the measurable electrical activity in the brain we normally experience during deep sleep—for more than 10 minutes after the patient had been pronounced dead; no pupil dilation, no pulse, no heartbeat. The authors were at a loss for a physiological explanation.

Parnia’s research has shown that people who survive medical death frequently report experiences that share similar themes: bright lights; benevolent guiding figures; relief from physical pain and a deeply felt sensation of peace. Because those experiences are subjective, it’s possible to chalk them up to hallucinations. Where that explanation fails, though, is among the patients who have died on an operating table or crash cart and reported watching—from a corner of the room, from above—as doctors tried to save them, accounts subsequently verified by the (very perplexed) doctors themselves.

How these patients were able to describe objective events that took place while they were dead, we’re not exactly sure, just as we’re not exactly sure why certain parts of us appear to withstand death even as it takes hold of everything else. But it does seem to suggest that when our brains and bodies die, our consciousness may not, or at least not right away.

“I don’t mean that people have their eyes open or that their brain’s working after they die,” Parnia said. “That petrifies people. I’m saying we have a consciousness that makes up who we are—ourselves, thoughts, feelings, emotions—and that entity, it seems, does not become annihilated just because we’ve crossed the threshold of death; it appears to keep functioning and not dissipate. How long it lingers, we can’t say.”

Comments:
The above article is in line with the Hindu Funeral rituals which last 10 days plus another 2 days to complete the send-off of the beloved departed. The rituals are based on a similar belief that the dead person’s conscience takes that many days to finally dissipate from the material world in which it once lived and hence treated with set rituals like offering water for thirst, food, material gifts for journey to yonder world etc. etc. Once again science has merely established and proved what the Vedic Hindu world was aware of millennia ago .

Pandit Kishor Dutt Maharaj   

Thank you very much for this information. Very interesting and great knowledge that proves what we have always preached about the dead. The Garuda Purana mentions the same condition, yet it was wrote thousands of years ago. We have on occasion heard Pundit preach in Crematoriums before Cremating the Body that the dead person is always by its body until the body is completely burnt to ashes. This is a great new awakening for those that have forgotten what the scriptures say and could lead to more and more of us looking back and reading so we learn a lot more. Thank you for this very powerful message.