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