What is reincarnation and can we remember our past lives -

By Satyendra

Adi Guru Shankracharya said:

“Punarapi janamam punarapi marnam, punarapi janani jathare shayanam.”

It can be translated into English as: We are born again; we die again and again we have to sleep in the womb of our mother.

To understand the concept of reincarnation, we have to explore some other questions and acquire clarity regarding some other concepts.

Do we reincarnate?
What reincarnates?
Do we ever stop reincarnating?

Yes, we do reincarnate but our body does not reincarnate.

Although we use words like soul or atman, we hardly understand the real meaning of these concepts. Our mind is so badly entrapped in body consciousness that we just cannot think beyond our bodies.

When we think about our soul or atman, we conceptualize a different kind of a body. A body that is perhaps made of light and colour. But that is also a body. Our mind in our current state of awareness is just incapable of thinking beyond body.

The soul is indestructible. It is never born, and it never dies. So, the soul also cannot reincarnate.

The body is nothing but earth. It eats earth (that is fruits and vegetables, which are nothing but edible form of earth), accumulates it and ultimately goes back to earth. So, the body also cannot reincarnate.

What is reincarnation?

So,

if there is reincarnation, what reincarnates?

Till we do not try to know as to who we really are, we may not understand the concept of reincarnation.

Let us try to understand.

We will use different words for our body and our soul.

The entire creation can be divided into two parts: Matter and Consciousness.

Matter is gross and Consciousness is subtle.

Our body which we think is ‘Me’ is gross. Body is just Matter. But that which takes cognizance of this grossness, is the Consciousness which is very subtle.

For our understanding we label this Consciousness as the ‘soul’.

The body is just a vehicle while Consciousness or the soul is the driver that drives it.

This driver keeps changing the vehicle from time to time and this process can be termed as reincarnation.

When this energy reincarnates it carries past life tendencies with it.

We find that some people are very good drivers while some keep struggling with their driving. That is because the person who is a good driver has acquired the driving skills in a past existence.

Nature has ensured that the tendencies are carried forward but not the memory.

If we don’t lose the memory of our past lives, we may not be able to get integrated in our new role and our present life will get messed up.

Let us imagine a situation…

Suppose someone is reborn and remembers that in a past existence he was murdered by his present-day son. Will such a father be able to bring up such a son?

Or if someone remembers that his wife was his mother in a past incarnation. The moment such a memory surfaces, the relationship will be over.

However, there are some incidents where children have retained the memory of past lives for some years. Such incidents have been investigated by scientists who study the paranormal phenomenon and have found it to be true. But these are just aberrations in nature. How and why this happens is yet to be understood.

Individuality and Totality

Now let’s move away from our individuality and explore Totality.

Totality means everything and from which everything has emerged.

Only Totality exists. Individuality is a delusion. It only appears to be, but it is not.

Totality is pure Consciousness but, after descending into Individuality it gets contaminated by many qualities like our anger, desires and likes and dislikes.

This energy of pure consciousness gets mixed with the contaminated energy of individual consciousness and creates a delusion where a false world gets created and the individual starts believing that he or she has a separate existence.

So, when the body falls, this individual consciousness moves on and finds another body and starts living another separate and limited existence. In this way, it keeps on moving and learning its lessons, continuing its journey towards totality, the pure consciousness, from which it had emanated originally.

Individuality is deluded with a consciousness of separation. It considers itself to be a separate entity. It keeps on reincarnating because it considers itself separate from its original nature, Totality.

After travelling through thousands of bodies, it acquires the discrimination through which it can peel off the layers of that which is the false self or ego. Then it no longer requires a rebirth.

Because then the limited consciousness of Individuality merges into totality.

Once this fusion happens, then the need to know anything is not there because there is no ‘knower’ left.

The knower, knowing and the process of knowing all fuse into one.

The experience is there but, the experiencer is gone.

Duality ceases and the soul realises its unbounded and eternal nature.

This is the game of reincarnation.

(The column Spiritual Shades appears every Monday.)

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