Past Lives and Liberation

[Guest guest]

Namaste Kathirasan-Ji.

 

Sorry for being late. Thanks for the wonderful site on past lives.

I have always been interested in the paranormal. Still, the fact is

that, from the rationalistic point of view, many experts have put

forward different explanations for so-called memories of past lives.

 

In this regard, I would like to raise the following question:

 

All these reported cases are of past lives. Supposing, someone

recalls a future life, will anyone buy that? No. Because the claim

cannot be verified. He will be mercilessly pushed on to a

psychiatrist. I remember a case in Bombay where the 'patient' knew

details of a future life! You know what happened to him? He was

immediately called a schizophrenic and forcibly taken to a clinic to

receive electric shocks in addition to a number of tranquilizers that

were then available in the psychiatrist's armoury!

 

No one has attempted to record cases where the future is 'remembered'

because that is against our sense of 'commonsense'. We take the

sequential or serial nature of consciousness as rigid and

unchangeable. Perhaps, we have a good case in Jules Verne whose

science fiction has proved him right time and again. Thank God, he

chose to writing fiction. Otherwise, he couldn't have escaped the

psychiatrist's kind attention. There may be other cases. Perhaps,

knowledgeable members among us can shed light on them.

 

Recently, someone on our list wondered how many more births he may

have to take before mukti is attained (I can't locate that post right

away.). It is a tragedy that, as advaitins, we have become prisoners

to this concept called liberation. Is such lamentation justified in

view of the following advaitic insights?

 

1. Advaita sings aloud that we are already liberated and that our

feeling otherwise is due to an error.

 

2. Liberation being self-realization that one is nothing other than

Brahman, can it be time-space bound? It is virtually a killing of

space-time.

 

3. If Brahman is beyond conditioning, liberation should also be

beyond conditioning. Hence, it cannot have a date and place of birth!

 

Liberation or, for that matter, a jnAni or jeevanmukta, shouldn't,

therefore, be assessed from our mundane point of view afflicted by

conditionings. If we feel that Bh. Ramana was liberated on such and

such date, we are committing a big error. We need only know that we

are already liberated and work according to scriptures and dharma

(whatever they are or what place or religion they belong to) to

attain chitta-shuddhi as only chitta-shuddhi can remove our error.

It is a seeming journey without a destination and, as such a non-

journey. It is a seeming attempt to gain what you already possess and

as such a non-attempt. Why then waste time setting target dates?

The firm conviction that there is no target date itself is

liberation. Whatever Consciousness kindly unravels enroute this

seeming journey (I like to call it a roller-coaster ride.), let us

thankfully enjoy without, of course, an enjoyership. The error will

surely be undone. Just don't ask when and where because that is

being inadvaitic.

 

Pranams.

 

Madathil Nair

---------

advaitin, K Kathirasan NCS <kkathir@n...>

wrote:

> Nevertheless do check out this interesting work done by Dr Ian

Stevenson:

> www.childpastlives.org