Reincarnation: Karma And Reincarnation - II

By Sri Swami Sivananda

The doctrine of reincarnation is accepted by the majority of mankind at the present day. It has been held as true by the mightiest Eastern nations. The ancient civilisation of Egypt was built upon this doctrine and it was handed over to Pythagoras, Plato, Virgil and Ovid, who scattered it through Greece and Italy. It was the keynote of Plato�s philosophy when he says that all knowledge is reminiscence. It was wholly adopted by the Neo-Platonists like Plotinus and Proclas.

The hundreds of millions of Hindus, Buddhists and Jains have made that doctrine the foundation of their philosophy, religion, government and social institutions. It was a cardinal point in the religion of the Persian Unagi. The doctrine of Metempsychosis was an essential principle of the Druid faith and was impressed upon the Celts, the Gauls and the Britons. Among the Arab�s philosophers it was a favourite idea. The rites and ceremonies of Romans, Druids and Hebrews expressed this truth forcibly. The Jews adopted it after the Babylonian captivity. John the Baptist was to them a second Elijah. Jesus was thought to be a reappearance of John the Baptist or one of the old prophets.

The Roman Catholic purgatory seems to be a makeshift, contrived to take its place. Philosophers like Kant, Schelling and Schopenhauer have upheld this doctrine. Theologians like Julius Muller, Dorner and Edward Beecher have maintained it. And today it reigns over the Burmese, Siamese, Chinese, Japanese, Tartarian, Tibetan, East Indian and Ceylonese including at least 750 million mankind and nearly two-thirds of the human race. Is it not surprising then that this great and grand philosophical education, which the Hindus and

Buddhists and Jains gave to the world centuries and centuries before the Christian Era, should or could be blotted out of existence from the Western and European world by the soul-blighting and absurd dogmas of the dark ages that supervened? By the persecution of the wise men and destruction of the innumerable works in the Library of Constantinople, the Church hierarchy managed to plunge the whole of Europe into mental darkness, which has given the world the black record of inquisition and the loss of millions of human lives through religious wars and persecutions.

Here is a challenge to the non-believers of the Hindu theory of transmigration. In Delhi, a little girl Santi Devi gave a vivid description of her past life. There was great sensation in Delhi and Mathura, nay, throughout the United Provinces. There was a great assembly of persons to hear her statements. She recognised her husband and child of per previous birth who were living in Mathura. She pointed out the place where money was kept and an old well in the house which is covered now. All her statements were duly verified and corroborated by respectable eye-witnesses. Several cases like this have occurred in Rangoon, Sitapur and various other places. They are quite common now. In such cases the Jiva takes immediate rebirth with the old astral body or Linga Sarira. That is the reason why memory of previous births comes in. He did not stay in the mental world for a long time to rebuild a new mind and astral body to his various experiences of the world.

Transmigration made its appearance in the early Christian church. Elijah was reborn as John the Baptist. �Did the blind man sin, or his parents, that he was born blind?� asked the believers in transmitted retribution. There is a period of anxiety immediately after death, when angels contend with demons for the possession of the departed soul on its way to purgatory.

Pythagoras and others had their belief in metempsychosis from India only. Pythagoras who flourished in the 6th century also taught a doctrine of transmigration; and, curiously enough, prescribed abstinence from the eating of flesh.

The suckling of a child and the act of swimming of a duckling�these instinctive acts are proofs of memory which must be the result of their corresponding and inseparable impressions left by the same acts in a previous incarnation, never mind when and where. Every act leaves Samskaras in the Chitta which causes memory. Memory in its own turn leads to fresh actions and fresh impressions. This cycle or Chakrika goes on from eternity like the analogy of seed and tree.

There is no beginning for them, the desire to live being eternal, for them, i.e., for the desires. Desires have no beginning or end; every being is clinging to this physical life (Abhinivesa). This �will to live� is eternal. Experiences are also without beginning. You cannot think of a time when this feeling of �Aham� or �I� has existed. This �I� exists continuously without any interruption. From this we can easily infer that there have been previous births for us.

Now could there be fear of death to avoid pain, in any being who has been born, if he has no experience of liability to death, it being understood that desire to avoid anything is only caused by remembrance suffered in consequence thereof. Nothing which is inherent in anything stands in need of a cause. How should it be that a child, which has not experienced this liability to death in the present life, should, as he may be falling away from the mother�s lap, begin to tremble and hold his hands tightly the necklace hanging on her breast? How is it that such a child should experience the fear of death, which can only be caused by the memory of the pain consequent upon aversion to death, whose existence is inferred by the trembling of the child?

We have got boy-geniuses. A boy of five becomes an expert in piano or violin. Sri Jnanadev wrote his commentary Jnanesvari on the Gita when he was fourteen years old. There had been boy-mathematicians. There was the boy-Bhagavatar in Madras who conducted Kathas when he was eight years old. How could you explain this strange phenomenon? This is not a freak of nature. The theory of transmigration only could explain all these things. If one man gets deep grooves in his mind by learning music or mathematics in this birth he carries these impressions to the next birth and becomes a prodigy in these sciences even when he is a boy.

Even in the New Testament there is sufficient evidence for reincarnation. In St. John IX-2, a question is put to Jesus by his disciples�which did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? This refers to two popular theories of time�one, that of Moses who taught that the sin of fathers would descend on children to the third and fourth generation, and the other, that of the doctrine of reincarnation. Jesus merely says that neither that man�s sin nor his father�s sin was the cause of his blindness; he does not deny the pre-existence of that man. Lord Jesus indicates that John took the reincarnation of Elijah.

But people may say�if this doctrine is true, how is it that he does not remember his past incarnation? I will ask such people, in what way do we exercise the faculty of memory? Certainly, so far as we are living in a body, we exercise it through the brain. In passing from one incarnation to the other, the soul does not carry the former brain in the new body. Even during the course of one life, do we always remember our past doings? Can any one remember that wonderful epoch�the infancy?

If you have a knowledge of the Raja Yogic technique of perceiving the impressions directly through the Raja Yogic Samyama (Dharana, Dhyana and Samadhi at one time) you can remember your past lives. In Raja Yoga philosophy of Patanjali Maharshi, you will find: �Samskara-Sakshat-Karanat Purvajati-Jnanam.� By perceiving the impressions, comes the knowledge of the past life (Ch. III�18). All experiences that you have had in various births remain in the form of impressions or residual potencies in Chitta or subconscious mind. They remain in a very, very subtle form, just as the sound remains in a subtle state in the gramophone record. These impressions assume the forms of waves and you get memory of past experiences. Therefore if the Yogi can make a Samyama on these past experiences, in the Chitta, he can remember all the details of all his past lives.

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This was an excerpt from the book What Becomes Of The Soul After Death by Sri Swami Sivananda.

The death and dying and the life after death has always fascinated man. We want to now the truth behind near death experiences and become certain that there really is a life after death.

Many books have been written on the subject of death, but most of the works deal mainly with the astral or other spirit world. It has mostly been the study of the conditions in the Pretaloka which is merely one among the numerous supramundane planes or lokas beyond the grave. Spiritualism, seance and the testimony of recognised mediums have for most part featured prominently in all such works.

What Becomes Of The Soul After Death by Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj is a departure from the usual line in that it is based, to a great extent, upon authoritative scriptural texts and upon knowledge derived through reasoning, deep reflection and personal meditation. It throws a flood of light upon all aspects of life after death not adequately dealt with in other works. The book also gives valuable information about the different beliefs on this subject, of the various races and religions.

The book is dealing with rebirth, the soul, reincarnation, moksha, heaven and hell, karma and different lokas. It even includes death poems and death poetry, giving a complete picture and a new face of death. For more material see this link: What Becomes Of The Soul After Death.

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