A question from someone I know

[Guest guest]

Dear Friends,

 

I received the following e-mail from someone who is very close to me. I

will call him Mr. N. Mr N is a middle aged Hindu, a divorced father of

two, who has never been particularly religious and just recently started

to wonder about the mysteries of life. I told him that I would pass his

questions on to wise people and forward him any answers that I receive.

 

If you are so inclined and could make some comments, that would be

appreciated.

 

What he writes is given below.........Harsha

_______

 

 

 

 

Harsha, after our telephone conversation, I would like to make an

observation and pose a question for the learned members in your group so

that I may be enlightened. I am looking for more thoughtful answers than

"well, when the body dies, EVERYTHING in it is gone for ever!". Thats

too simplistic.

 

*

Here is my observation/question for your group and I hope you won't

laugh and dismiss this.*

**

 

 

 

Today's modern instruments can easily monitor the heart activity of a

person who is dying. Once the heart stops, the person is viewed as

having died. The wave like patterns seen on the heart monitor suddenly

turn into a straight line when the person dies because the heart has

stopped functioning.

 

 

 

But the two most important parts of our body are the heart and the

brain, and there is so little we know of the latter. What EXACTLY

happens to and in the brain when we die is not all that clear. The brain

is a most remarkable organ as it is the *only* organ that has both

physical and mental dimensions.

 

 

 

As I grow older, I find myself cogitating more about life in general,

and death in particular, as I consider death a part of life. In

Hinduism, it is believed that when the body dies, the soul lives on and,

in time, it attaches it self to another living form.

 

 

 

As a layman, I have no clue what a soul is, or how it is defined, but of

late I have been thinking much about what happens to the brain once a

person dies. I have no answers but only questions.

 

 

 

Most people who die a natural death have lived a complete life, that has

seen its ups and downs. By the time they are in their death bed, their

brain has retained a vast amount of information, including the many many

memories of that person's experience. Personally, I find it hard to

believe that when a person "dies", all that information in the persons's

brain, including the special memories, simply "disappear" from the scene

and is "wasted". And gone forever. I would like to know what happens to it.

 

 

Harsha, if your group members or other friends know anything about this

or have some thoughts on the matter please forward these.

 

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

Harsha wrote: Dear Friends,

 

I received the following e-mail from someone who is very close to me. I

will call him Mr. N. Mr N is a middle aged Hindu, a divorced father of

two, who has never been particularly religious and just recently started

to wonder about the mysteries of life. Dear sir,

Apart from my theoretical interests and a little

bit of absorption in my system what the great saints have talked about these

matters, I have an intuition that the brain is not individual, but only is a

particular manifestation of the collective stream, the particular

psycho-somatic apparatus being deluded into the idea that it is a seperate

individual by virtue of certain peripheral phenomena such as certain skills,

certain cultural conditioning, all these things being relatable only to the

superficial layers. Deep down in the bottom there is only the common stream

from which the individual is seperating himself, this phenomenon going on till

death. The consequence of this is that the individual by creating some seperate

images, memories, contributes all these things to the stream, it not being a

question of whether I or you continuing, the I and you being nothing but

fixation of memories, but not the Atman which cannot enter into the

time-stream. So I believe that our perception should be cosmic, there being no

scope for any individual salvation. Otherwise, we cannot explain all

inequalities and disparities in life. The man who has lived a successful,

happy, and so-called meaningfull life, cannot claim to have reached the

consummation unless and untill he has understood the truth that he is not

different from others, the attribution of all these things to karma being at a

particular level only, since the question arises as to why the suffering

individuals cannot have avoided it by being good, and also that what could have

prompted one towards the bad not being susceptible of explanation. Ultimately,

it comes to this that through the perception that one is an individual, a

body-mind mechanism, one cannot fathom the depth of life.

With kind regards,

Sankarraman

 

 

 

 

Photos

Ring in the New Year with Photo Calendars. Add photos, events, holidays,

whatever.

 

 

[Guest guest]

Shree Harsha – PraNaams to you and to your friend Mr. N.

 

The questions that your friend, Mr. N. asked do not arise for everybody.

It is only some who like to know where from I have come and where I am

going next and what is the purpose of this life, why I am born? Why am

I born in this life form for these particular parents, living in this

particular environment, related to these particular people, wife,

children, friends, employers, etc, etc? Not everybody wonders why apple

falls down, although it has been falling down since ages, is it not?

Some people are born with silver soon and some with no spoon at all,

some with birth defects, some suffering from childhood while for some a

royal path is laid down for them. Why there are such disparities in

life? Why life looks so unfair? Some people life long and die soon.

Some suffer and some cause others to suffer. How ordains all this?

Why? Only few like to know and Life after death is one of the mysteries

that people like to know. If one thinks there is life after death, it

has to be logical to think that there should be life before birth too.

One cannot have life that begins only with this birth but an eternal

life after death. That is illogical.

 

Same question were raised by Scientists of the yore whom we call Rishis.

They wanted to find answers to these questions. They meditated on

these problems, all come up with consistent answers to these questions,

and wrote down their findings, which are revelations to them. Since

these are revelations in the seat of meditation, they refuse to own them

as theirs. These revelations were further confirmed by other Rishis by

their own investigations. They passed on these to the next generation

by word of mouth until a great Rishi. Veda Vyaasa collected all these,

edited and assembled in four volumes – called Vedas. Hence, the answers

to all the above questions were given in the end part of the Vedas

called Upanishads or collectively known as Vedanta.

 

The above background establishes the source of information for your

query. There is no point to reinvent the wheel when all the answers

readily available. In order to know more about it one has to study

carefully the analysis that has been provided. I am however going to

present briefly answers to your questions based on what I have learned

with the hope that you will find time to investigate further. There are

many avenues available for you to learn and you will discover more as

your interest grows. I have reformulated your questions to make them

brief and to the point

 

What is the soul and is there a soul? Here is simple answer. If I ask

you sir – who are you? What is your answer? You will tell me, for

example, “I am say 6ft tall, a British with an Indian heritage, engineer

or doctor, son of so and so, husband of so and so and/or father of so

and so, went to school here etc etc” – all the nine yards about yourself

– is it not? However, if you deeply analyze any or all of your answers,

they either pertain to qualifications of your body, your mind or your

intellect – but none of them pertains to you. They are all your

belongings or possessions but do not answer who you are. Since your

birth your body changed and is still changing continuously, but you

claim that you are the same person who had the child body when you were

a baby, young boy’s body, youth’s body, and adult body. The body is

changing, mind is changing – what you liked when you were a child is

different from what you like now – intellect is changing – your

concepts, your knowledge etc – but it is the same one ‘I’ who

experienced and learned in the childhood, who experienced the youth and

now experiencing the adulthood – that experiencer is changeless – is it

not? If the experiencer also changes then you will not be able to

recollect your childhood experience. You are able to tell proudly to

your children – When I was a child things were different, etc. You are

the same individual ‘I’ who is changeless in all changing experiences

and changing environments and changing equipments. You are the subject

‘I’, and anything you say about yourself are ‘objects’ that you ‘own’ –

the body, mind and intellect. Then ‘who are you really – sans these

things that you own. – Sir think about it. I cannot say I am a car or

chair or a dog since I own all of them. I am a possessor and they are

‘possessed’. I am the subject ‘I’ and they are objects that ‘I’ possess.

Subject is different from object. I cannot say I am ‘this’ since ‘this’

is an object and not subject. Therefore, 'I' can never be defined as

this or that since any definition is objectification, which is different

from subject I. You asked me – is there a soul? Sir please now answer

your self – is there ‘you’ sir that is different from all the equipments

or matter that you own and can you explain to me who that ‘you’ are?

Can you categorically say that ‘you’ do not exist? If you are in

pitch-dark room that you cannot see anything and I call you out and ask

you – sir are you there? – What would be your answer. Could you say –

it is too dark here I cannot see anything here and I do not know if I am

here or not? Or, I am able to hear you, therefore I must be here

somewhere. Sir your existence and the knowledge of your existence,

cannot be established by perception or by logic. You know you are there

and you know that you are conscious – Existence is called ‘sat’ and

consciousness is called ‘chit’ in Sanskrit. You are existent-conscious

entity –sat-chit- unobjectifyable entity, since you are the very

subject. Existence ‘you’ can never cease to exist – that is the

violation of the very conservation principle. You are that soul of your

body-mind-intellect equipments – the core of your personality – who is

the owner of all these that you claim as yours. The religions call this

as ‘soul’. Hindus call as ‘jiiva’. Jiiva has to be eternal

existent-conscious entity – no birth, no death – no beginning and

therefore no end. One cannot have beginning one side with eternal hell

or eternal heaven on the other side – as some religions claim –That is

illogical.

Matter is inert – an assemblage of carbohydrates-minerals and water –

but with you, the conscious entity present – it becomes so dynamic and

vibrant with life. It is enlivened by your very presence in the body.

Find out more about yourself who you really are since what Vedanta says

– all your sufferings in this life are due to identification of yourself

with equipments that you have.

 

You identify yourself with matter, which is inert, finite and

perishable, and by that identification take modifications of the body –

mind-intellect as your modifications, and suffer the consequence of that

identification. It is just like the case wherein I am sitting in lazy

boy’s chair, sitting in an air-conditioned room, watching a movie and

crying because of my identifying with the heroin, who is running for her

life in a think forest in the hot sun being chased by criminals.

 

When the body is old, I think I am old and when body is dying, I think I

am dying. But we at this same time use ‘my body’, which implies that I

am not the body. Same way, I am not my mind and my intellect. Find out

who you are? Says Vedanta.

 

Now about reincarnation – Since I am birth less and deathless, I take up

a particular body in a particular environment with particular parents –

since I have likes and dislikes left from my previous life, which can be

exhausted with those particulars. Whenever I act willfully for my

sensuous enjoyment, I accumulate new likes and dislikes which forces me

to act again. I get into cycle of action and reaction – and thus life

after life. Those I cannot exhaust in this life, I store into my account

to exhaust in future and while exhausting old ones I accumulate new ones

by willful indulgence. Hence present is the result of my past and

future is the result of my past modified by present action. I am

accountable for my fate and at the same token, I am the master of future

by properly acting in the present. Please study the karma yoga series

that I have posted in the advaitin list to see how I can get out of this

vicious cycle of birth and death. We have no eternal heavens and

eternal hells; heaven is only a field to enjoy the merits that cannot be

exhausted in this environment and hell is like rehabilitation center

where you exhaust experiences that cannot be exhausted in these

environments – These are results of your deliberate actions done with

selfish motives.

 

Vedanta provides how to get out of this vicious cycle of birth and

deaths can be ended by karma, bhakti and jnaana yoga. These need to be

learned from a teacher.

Hope this helps.

 

Hari OM!

Sadananda

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

--- Harsha wrote:

> Dear Friends,

>

> I received the following e-mail from someone who is very close to me.

> I

> will call him Mr. N. Mr N is a middle aged Hindu, a divorced father of

>

> two, who has never been particularly religious and just recently

> started

> to wonder about the mysteries of life. I told him that I would pass

> his

> questions on to wise people and forward him any answers that I

> receive.

[Guest guest]

advaitin, Harsha <harsha@h...> wrote:

>

> Dear Friends,

>

> I received the following e-mail from someone who is very close to

me. I

>

> As a layman, I have no clue what a soul is, or how it is defined,

but of

> late I have been thinking much about what happens to the brain

once a

> person dies. I have no answers but only questions.

>

>

>

> Most people who die a natural death have lived a complete life,

that has

> seen its ups and downs. By the time they are in their death bed,

their

> brain has retained a vast amount of information, including the

many many

> memories of that person's experience. Personally, I find it hard

to

> believe that when a person "dies", all that information in the

persons's

> brain, including the special memories, simply "disappear" from the

scene

> and is "wasted". And gone forever. I would like to know what

happens to it.

 

Namaste H et al,

 

The brain is just congealed energy and thoughts are finer energy.

Except for samkaras of tendencies, the vibrations are returned to

the greater pool of energy, at death. Thoughts aren't ours anyway,

we reach out and take them.

 

The construct that is left in the subtle body will not dissipate

until the ego which is central to its existence is eliminated.

Rebirth of these tendencies into new bodies will continue.

 

There is only one soul in the universe of illusion other human and

animal souls are mental construct or entities, only.

 

Ultimately it is all illusion and never happened, and really

thinking about it is somewhat analogous to examining the molecular

structure of water to get out of the swimming pool. Just climb out---

ie drop the ego...............IMHO....ONS...Tony.

[Guest guest]

*Thank you Sadaji and Tonyji, Michaelji, and Michaelji, and Ganesanji,

and others. I will compile the responses and send them to N and

encourage him to join the list and freely put his questions here.

 

On another matter, we now have an HS weblog and invite authors to join

us. Weblogs have been growing in popularity and have become another

important tool for community building.

 

http://.blogspot.com/

 

God bless you all with all good things.

 

Love to all

Harsha*

 

kuntimaddi sadananda wrote:

> Shree Harsha -- PraNaams to you and to your friend Mr. N.

>

> The questions that your friend, Mr. N. asked do not arise for everybody.

> It is only some who like to know where from I have come and where I am

> going next and what is the purpose of this life, why I am born? Why am

> I born in this life form for these particular parents, living in this

> particular environment, related to these particular people, wife,

> children, friends, employers, etc, etc? Not everybody wonders why apple

> falls down, although it has been falling down since ages, is it not?

--

 

 

 

"Love itself is the actual form of God."

 

Sri Ramana

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

Ref: Post no 29899

 

Dear All,

 

There is an article contributed to the Metaphysical Magazine by Swami

Vivekananda, New York, in March, 1895 which deals with this

particular question. I would like to share it with the learned

members of the forum. Ofcourse the post will be of full length. I

request the members to go through it at their leisure. Some passages

are very much abstruse and if found interesting can be discussed

also.

 

Here swamiji deals with the both sides of the story and he tells

about what is the opinion of the oriental and the occidental thought

on this issue and finally asks us to arrive at truth by our own deep

thought over the facts presented.

 

REINCARNATION

 

 

"Both you and I have passed through many births;you know them not, I

know them all."-Bhagavad-Gita.

 

*Of the many riddles that have perplexed the intellect of

man in all climes and times, the most intricate is himself. Of the

myriad mysteries that have called forth his energies to struggle for

solution from the very dawn of history, the most mysterious is his

own nature. It is at once the most insoluble enigma and the problem

of all problems. As the starting - point and the repository of all we

know and feel and do, there never has been, nor will be, a time when

man's own nature will cease to demand his best and foremost attention.

 

Though through hunger after that truth, which of all others

has the most intimate connection with his very existence, though

through an all - absorbing desire for an inward standard by which to

measure the outward universe, though through the absolute and

inherent necessity of finding a fixed point in a universe of change,

man has sometimes clutched at handfuls of dust for gold, and even

when urged on by a voice higher than reason or intellect, he has many

times failed rightly to interpret the real meaning of the divinity

within -- still there never was a time since the search began, when

some race, or some individuals, did not hold aloft the lamp of truth.

 

Taking a one - sided, cursory and prejudiced view of the

surroundings and the unessential details, sometimes disgusted also

with the vagueness of many schools and sects, and often, alas, driven

to the opposite extreme by the violent superstitions of organised

priestcraft -- men have not been wanting, especially among advanced

intellects, in either ancient or modern times, who not only gave up

the search in despair, but declared it fruitless and useless.

Philosophers might fret and sneer, and priests ply their trade even

at the point of the sword, but truth comes to those alone who worship

at her shrine for her sake only, without fear and without shopkeeping.

 

Light comes to individuals through the conscious efforts of

their intellect; it comes, slowly though, to the whole race through

unconscious percolations. The philosophers show the volitional

struggles of great minds; history reveals the silent process of

permeation through which truth is absorbed by the masses.

 

Of all the theories that have been held by man about

himself, that of a soul entity, separate from the body and immortal,

has been the most widespread; and among those that held the belief in

such a soul, the majority of the thoughtful had always believed also

in its pre - existence.

 

At present the greater portion of the human race, having

organised religion, believe in it; and many of the best thinkers in

the most favoured lands, though nurtured in religions avowedly

hostile to every idea of the pre - existence of the soul, have

endorsed it. Hinduism and Buddhism have it for their foundation; the

educated classes among the ancient Egyptians believed in it; the

ancient Persians arrived at it; the Greek philosophers made it the

corner - stone of their philosophy; the Pharisees among the Hebrews

accepted it; and the Sufis among the Mohammedans almost universally

acknowledged its truth.

 

There must be peculiar surroundings which generate and

foster certain forms of belief among nations. It required ages for

the ancient races to arrive at any idea about a part, even of the

body, surviving after death; it took ages more to come to any

rational idea about this something which persists and lives apart

from the body. It was only when the idea was reached of an entity

whose connection with the body was only for a time, and only among

those nations who arrived at such a conclusion, that the unavoidable

question arose: Whither? Whence?

 

The ancient Hebrews never disturbed their equanimity by

questioning themselves about the soul. With them death ended all.

Karl Heckel justly says, "Though it is true that in the Old

Testament, preceding the exile, the Hebrews distinguish a life -

principle, different from the body, which is sometimes called

`Nephesh', or `Ruakh', or `Neshama', yet all these words correspond

rather to the idea of breath than to that of spirit or soul. Also in

the writings of the Palestinian Jews, after the exile, there is never

made mention of an individual immortal soul, but always only of a

life - breath emanating from God, which, after the body is dissolved,

is reabsorbed into the Divine `Ruakh'."

 

The ancient Egyptians and the Chaldeans had peculiar beliefs

of their own about the soul; but their ideas about this living part

after death must not be confused with those of the ancient Hindu, the

Persian, the Greek, or any other Aryan race. There was, from the

earliest times, a broad distinction between the Aryas and the non -

sanskrit speaking Mlechchhas in the conception of the soul.

Externally it was typified by their disposal of the dead -- the

Mlechchhas mostly trying their best to preserve the dead bodies

either by careful burial or by the more elaborate processes of

mummifying, and the Aryas generally burning their dead.

 

Herein lies the key to a great secret -- the fact that no

Mlechchha race, whether Egyptian, Assyrian, or Babylonian, ever

attained to the idea of the soul as a separate entity which can live

independent of the body, without the help of the Aryas, especially

of the Hindus.

 

Although Herodotus states that the Egyptians were he first

to conceive the idea of the immortality of the soul, and states as a

doctrine of the Egyptians "that the soul after the dissolution of the

body enters again and again into a creature that comes to life; then,

that the soul wanders through all the animals of the land and the sea

and through all the birds, and finally after three thousand years

returns to a human body," yet, modern researches into Egyptology have

hitherto found no trace of metempsychosis in the popular Egyptian

religion. On the other hand, the most recent researches of Maspero,

A. Erman, and other eminent Egyptologists tend to confirm the

supposition that the doctrine of palingenesis was not at home with

the Egyptians.

 

With the ancient Egyptians the soul was only a double,

having no individuality of its own, and never able to break its

connection with the body. It persists only so long as the body lasts;

and if by chance the corpse is destroyed, the departed soul must

suffer a second death and annihilation. The soul after death was

allowed to roam freely all over the world, but always returning at

night to where the corpse was, always miserable, always hungry and

thirsty, always extremely desirous to enjoy life once more, and never

being able to fulfil the desire. If any part of its old body was

injured, the soul was also invariably injured in its corresponding

part. And this idea explains the solicitude of the ancient Egyptians

to preserve their dead. At first the deserts were chosen as the

burial - place, because the dryness of the air did not allow the body

to perish soon, thus granting to the departed soul a long lease of

existence. In course of time one of the gods discovered the process

of making mummies, through which the devout hoped to preserve the

dead bodies of their ancestors for almost an infinite length of time,

thus securing immortality to the departed ghost, however miserable it

might be.

 

The perpetual regret for the world, in which the soul can

take no further interest, never ceased to torture the deceased. "O,

my brother," exclaims the departed, "withhold not thyself from

drinking and eating, from drunkenness, from love, from all enjoyment,

from following thy desire by night and by day; put not sorrow within

thy heart, for, what are the years of man upon earth? The West is a

land of sleep and of heavy shadows, a place wherein the inhabitants,

when once installed, slumber on in their mummy forms, never more

waking to see their brethren; never more to recognise their fathers

and mothers, with hearts forgetful of their wives and children. The

living water, which earth giveth to all who dwell upon it, is for me

stagnant and dead; that water floweth to all who are on earth, while

for me it is but liquid putrefaction, this water that is mine. Since

I came into this funeral valley I know not where nor what I am. Give

me to drink of running water . . . let me be placed by the edge of

the water with my face to the North, that the breeze may caress me

and my heart be refreshed from its sorrow*."

 

Among the Chaldeans also, although they did not speculate so

much as the Egyptians as to the condition of the soul after death,

the soul is still a double and is bound to its sepulchre. They also

could not conceive of a state without this physical body, and

expected a resurrection of the corpse again to life; and though the

goddess Ishtar, after great perils and adventures, procured the

resurrection of her shepherd husband, Dumuzi, the son of Ea and

Damkina, "The most pious votaries pleaded in vain from temple to

temple, for the resurrection of their dead friends."

 

Thus we find, that the ancient Egyptians or Chaldeans never

could entirely dissociate the idea of the soul from the corpse of the

departed or the sepulchre. The state of earthly existence was best

after all; and the departed are always longing to have a chance once

more to renew it; and the living are fervently hoping to help them in

prolonging the existence of the miserable double and striving the

best they can to help them.

 

This is not the soil out of which any higher knowledge of

the soul could spring. In the first place it is grossly

materialistic, and even then it is one of terror and agony.

Frightened by the almost innumerable powers of evil, and with

hopeless, agonised efforts to avoid them, the souls of the living,

like their ideas of the souls of the departed -- wander all over the

world though they might -- could never get beyond the sepulchre and

the crumbling corpse.

 

We must turn now for the source of the higher ideas of the

soul to another race, whose God was an all - merciful, all -

pervading Being manifesting Himself through various bright, benign,

and helpful Devas, the first of all the human race who addressed

their God as Father --"Oh, take me by the hands even as a father

takes his dear son"; with whom life was a hope and not a despair;

whose religion was not the intermittent groans escaping from the lips

of an agonised man during the intervals of a life of mad excitement;

but whose ideas come to us redolent with the aroma of the field and

forest; whose songs of praise -- spontaneous, free, joyful, like the

songs which burst forth from the throats of the birds when they hail

this beautiful world illuminated by the first rays of the lord of the

day -- come down to us even now through the vista of eighty centuries

as fresh calls from heaven; we turn to the ancient Aryas.

 

"Place me in that deathless, undecaying world where is the

light of heaven, and everlasting lustre shines"; "Make me immortal in

that realm where dwells the King Vivasvan's son, where is the secret

shrine of heaven"; "Make me immortal in that realm where they move

even as they list"; "In the third sphere of inmost heaven, where

worlds are full of light, make me immortal in that realm of bliss"--

these are the prayers of the Aryas in their oldest record, the Rig -

veda Samhita.

 

We find at once a whole world of difference between the

Mlechchha and the Aryan ideals. To the one, this body and this world

are all that are real, and all that are desirable. A little life -

fluid which flies off from the body at death, to feel torture and

agony at the loss of the enjoyments of the senses, can, they fondly

hope, be brought back if the body is carefully preserved; and thus a

corpse became more an object of care than the living man. The other

found out that, that which left the body was the real man; and when

separated from the body, it enjoyed a state of bliss higher than it

ever enjoyed when in the body. And they hastened to annihilate the

corrupted corpse by burning it.

 

Here we find the germ out of which a true idea of the soul

could come. Here it was -- where the real man was not the body, but

the soul, where all ideas of an inseparable connection between the

real man and the body were utterly absent -- that a noble idea of the

freedom of the soul could rise. And it was when the Aryas penetrated

even beyond the shining cloth of the body with which the departed

soul was enveloped, and found its real nature of a formless,

individual, unit principle, that the question inevitably arose:

Whence?

 

It was in India and among the Aryas that the doctrine of the

pre - existence, the immortality, and the individuality of the soul

first arose. Recent researches in Egypt have failed to show any trace

of the doctrines of an independent and individual soul existing

before and after the earthly phase of existence. Some of the

mysteries were no doubt in possession of this idea, but in those it

has been traced to India.

 

"I am convinced", says Karl Heckel, "that the deeper we

enter into the study of the Egyptian religion, the clearer it is

shown that the doctrine of metem -psychosis was entirely foreign to

the popular Egyptian religion; and that even that which single

mysteries possessed of it was not inherent to the Osiris teachings,

but derived from Hindu sources."

 

Later on, we find the Alexandrian Jews imbued with the

doctrine of an individual soul, and the Pharisees of the time of

Jesus, as already stated, not only had faith in an individual soul,

but believed in its wandering through various bodies; and thus it is

easy to find how Christ was recognised as an incarnation of an older

Prophet, and Jesus himself directly asserted that John the Baptist

was the Prophet Elias come back again. "If ye will receive it, this

is Elias, which was for to come."-- matt. XI.14.

 

The ideas of a soul and of its individuality among the

Hebrews, evidently came through the higher mystical teachings of the

Egyptians, who in their turn derived it from India. And that it

should come through Alexandria is significant, as the Buddhistic

records clearly show Buddhistic missionary activity in Alexandria and

Asia Minor.

 

Pythagoras is said to have been the first Greek who taught

the doctrine of palingenesis among the Hellenes. As an Aryan race,

already burning their dead and believing in the doctrine of an

individual soul, it was easy for the Greeks to accept the doctrine of

reincarnation through the Pythagorean teachings. According to

Apuleius, Pythagoras had come to India, where he had been instructed

by the Brahmins.

 

So far we have learnt that wherever the soul was held to be

an individual, the real man, and not a vivifying part of the body

only, the doctrine of its pre - existence had inevitably come, and

that externally those nations that believed in the independent

individuality of the soul had almost always signified it by burning

the bodies of the departed. Though one of the ancient Aryan races, the

Persian, developed at an early period and without any Semitic

influence a peculiar method of disposing of the bodies of the dead,

the very name by which they call their "Towers of silence", comes

from the root Dah, to burn.

 

In short, the races who did not pay much attention to the

analysis of their own nature, never went beyond the material body as

their all in all, and even when driven by higher light to penetrate

beyond, they only came to the conclusion that somehow or other, at

some distant period of time, this body will become incorruptible.

 

On the other hand, that race which spent the best part of

its energies in the inquiry into the nature of man as a thinking

being -- the Indo - aryan -- soon found out that beyond this body,

beyond even the shining body which their forefathers longed after, is

the real man, the principle, the individual who clothes himself with

this body, and then throws it off when worn out. Was such a principle

created? If creation means something coming out of nothing, their

answer is a decisive "No". This soul is without birth and without

death; it is not a compound or combination but an independent

individual, and as such it cannot be created or destroyed. It is only

travelling through various states.

 

Naturally, the question arises: Where was it all this time?

The Hindu philosophers say, "It was passing through different bodies

in the physical sense, or, really and metaphysically speaking,

passing through different mental planes."

 

Are there any proofs apart form the teachings of the Vedas

upon which the doctrine of reincarnation has been founded by the

Hindu philosophers? There are, and we hope to show later on that

there are grounds as valid for it as for any other universally

accepted doctrine. But first we will see what some of the greatest of

modern European thinkers have thought about reincarnation. I. H.

Fichte, speaking about the immortality of the soul, says:

 

"It is true there is one analogy in nature which might be

brought forth in refutation of the continuance. It is the well -

known argument that everything that has a beginning in time must also

perish at some period of time; hence, that the claimed past existence

of the soul necessarily implies its pre - existence. This is a fair

conclusion, but instead of being an objection to, it is rather an

additional argument for its continuance. Indeed, one needs only to

understand the full meaning of the metaphysico - physiological axiom

that in reality nothing can be created or annihilated, to recognise

that the soul must have existed prior to its becoming visible in a

physical body."

 

Schopenhauer, in his book, Die Welt als Wille und

Vorstellung, speaking about palingenesis, says:

 

"What sleep is for the individual, death is for the `will'.

It would not endure to continue the same actions and sufferings

throughout an eternity without true gain, if memory and individuality

remained to it. It flings them off, and this is Lethe, and through

this sleep of death it reappears fitted out with another intellect as

a new being; a new day tempts to new shores. These constant new

births, then, constitute the succession of the life - dreams of a

will which in itself is indestructible, until instructed and improved

by so much and such various successive knowledge in a constantly new

form, it abolishes and abrogates itself. . . . It must not be

neglected that even empirical grounds support a palingenesis of this

kind. As a matter of fact, there does exist a connection between the

birth of the newly appearing beings and the death of those that are

worn out. It shows itself in the great fruitfulness of the human race

which appears as a consequence of devastating diseases. When in the

fourteenth century the Black Death had for the most part depopulated

the Old World, a quite abnormal fruitfulness appeared among the human

race, and twin - births were very frequent. The circumstance was also

remarkable that none of the children born at this time obtained their

full number of teeth; thus nature, exerting itself to the utmost, was

niggardly in details. This is related by F. Schnurrer in his Chronik

der Seuchen, 1825. Casper, also, in his Ueber die Wahrscheinliche

Lebensdauer des Menschen, 1835, confirms the principle that the

number of births in a given population has the most decided influence

upon the length of life and mortality in it, as this always keeps

pace with mortality; so that always and everywhere the deaths and the

births increase and decrease in like proportion, which he places

beyond doubt by an accumulation of evidence collected from many lands

and their various provinces. And yet it is impossible that there can

be physical, causal connection between my early death and the

fruitfulness of a marriage with which I have nothing to do, or

conversely. Thus here the metaphysical appears undeniable, and in a

stupendous manner, as the immediate ground of explanation of the

physical. Every new - born being comes fresh and blithe into the new

existence, and enjoys it as a free gift; but there is and can be

nothing freely given. Its fresh existence is paid for by the old age

and death of a worn - out existence which has perished, but which

contained the indestructible seed out of which the new existence has

arisen; they are one being."

 

The great English philosopher Hume, nihilistic though he

was, says in the sceptical essay on immortality, "The metempsychosis

is therefore the only system of this kind that philosophy can listen

to." The philosopher Lessing, with a deep poetical insight, asks, "Is

this hypothesis so laughable merely because it is the oldest, because

the human understanding, before the sophistries of the schools had

dissipated and debilitated it, lighted upon it at once? . . . Why

should not I come back as often as I am capable of acquiring fresh

knowledge, fresh experience? Do I bring away so much from once that

there is nothing to repay the trouble of coming back?"

 

The arguments for and against the doctrine of a pre -

existing soul reincarnating through many lives have been many, and

some of the greatest thinkers of all ages have taken up the gauntlet

to defend it; and so far as we can see, if there is an individual

soul, that it existed before seems inevitable. If the soul is not an

individual but a combination of "Skandhas" (notions), as the

Madhyamikas among the Buddhists insist, still they find pre -

existence absolutely necessary to explain their position.

 

The argument showing the impossibility of an infinite

existence beginning in time is unanswerable, though attempts have

been made to ward it off by appealing to the omnipotence of God to do

anything, however contrary to reason it may be. We are sorry to find

this most fallacious argument proceeding from some of the most

thoughtful persons.

 

In the first place, God being the universal and common cause

of all phenomena, the question was to find the natural causes of

certain phenomena in the human soul, and the Deus ex machina theory

is, therefore, quite irrelevant. It amounts to nothing less than

confession of ignorance. We can give that answer to every question

asked in every branch of human knowledge and stop all inquiry and,

therefore, knowledge altogether.

 

Secondly, this constant appeal to the omnipotence of God is

only a word - puzzle. The cause, as cause, is and can only be known

to us as sufficient for the effect, and nothing more. As such we have

no more idea of an infinite effect than of an omnipotent cause.

Moreover, all our ideas of God are only limited; even the idea of

cause limits our idea of God. Thirdly, even taking the position for

granted, we are not bound to allow any such absurd theories

as "Something coming out of nothing", or

"Infinity beginning in time", so long as we can give a

better explanation.

 

A so - called great argument is made against the idea of

pre - existence by asserting that the majority of mankind are not

conscious of it. To prove the validity of this argument, the party

who offers it must prove that the whole of the soul of man is bound

up in the faculty of memory. If memory be the test of existence, then

all that part of our lives which is not now in it must be non -

existent, and every person who in a state of coma or otherwise loses

his memory must be non - existent also.

 

The premises from which the inference is drawn of a previous

existence, and that too on the plane of conscious action, as adduced

by the Hindu philosophers, are chiefly these:

 

First, how to explain this world of inequalities? Here is

one child born in the province of a just and merciful God, with every

circumstance conducing to his becoming a good and useful member of

the human race, and perhaps at the same instant and in the same city

another child is born under circumstances every one of which is

against his becoming good. We see children born to suffer, perhaps

all their lives, and that owing to no fault of theirs. Why should it

be so? What is the cause? Of whose ignorance is it the result? If not

the child's, why should it suffer for its parents' actions?

 

It is much better to confess ignorance than to try to evade

the question by the allurements of future enjoyments in proportion to

the evil here, or by posing "mysteries". Not only undeserved

suffering forced upon us by any agent is immoral -- not to say

unjust -- but even the future - making - up theory has no legs to

stand upon.

 

How many of the miserably born struggle towards a higher

life, and how many more succumb to the circumstances they are placed

under? Should those who grow worse and more wicked by being forced to

be born under evil circumstances be rewarded in the future for the

wickedness of their lives? In that case the more wicked the man is

here, the better will be his deserts hereafter.

 

There is no other way to vindicate the glory and the liberty

of the human soul and reconcile the inequalities and the horrors of

this world than by placing the whole burden upon the legitimate

cause -- our own independent actions or Karma. Not only so, but every

theory of the creation of the soul from nothing inevitably leads to

fatalism and preordination, and instead of a Merciful Father, places

before us a hideous, cruel, and an ever - angry God to worship. And

so far as the power of religion for good or evil is concerned, this

theory of a created soul, leading to its corollaries of fatalism and

predestination, is responsible for the horrible idea prevailing among

some Christians and Mohammedans that the heathens are the lawful

victims of their swords, and all the horrors that have followed and

are following it still.

 

But an argument which the philosophers of the Nyaya school

have always advanced in favour of reincarnation, and which to us

seems conclusive, is this: Our experiences cannot be annihilated. Our

actions (Karma) though apparently disappearing, remain still

unperceived (Adrishta), and reappear again in their effect as

tendencies (Pravrittis). Even little babies come with certain

tendencies -- fear of death, for example.

 

Now if a tendency is the result of repeated actions, the

tendencies with which we are born must be explained on that ground

too. Evidently we could not have got them in this life; therefore we

must have to seek for their genesis in the past. Now it is also

evident that some of our tendencies are the effects of the self -

conscious efforts peculiar to man; and if it is true that we are born

with such tendencies, it rigorously follows that their causes were

conscious efforts in the past -- that is, we must have been on the

same mental plane which we call the human plane, before this present

life.

 

So far as explaining the tendencies of the present life by

past conscious efforts goes, the reincarnationists of India and the

latest school of evolutionists are at once; the only difference is

that the Hindus, as spiritualists, explain it by the conscious

efforts of individual souls, and the materialistic school of

evolutionists, by a hereditary physical transmission. The schools

which hold to the theory of creation out of nothing are entirely out

of court.

 

The issue has to be fought out between the reincarnationists

who hold that all experiences are stored up as tendencies in the

subject of those experiences, the individual soul, and are

transmitted by reincarnation of that unbroken individuality -- and

the materialists who hold that the brain is the subject of all

actions and the theory of the transmission through cells.

 

It is thus that the doctrine of reincarnation assumes an

infinite importance to our mind, for the fight between reincarnation

and mere cellular transmission is, in reality, the fight between

spiritualism and materialism. If cellular transmission is the all -

sufficient explanation, materialism is inevitable, and there is no

necessity for the theory of a soul. If it is not a sufficient

explanation, the theory of an individual soul bringing into this life

the experiences of the past is as absolutely true. There is no escape

from the alternative, reincarnation or materialism. Which shall we

accept?

 

JAI JAI RAGHUVEER SAMARTHA

 

Yours in the Lord,

 

Br.Vinayaka.

[Guest guest]

Vinayaka <vinayaka_ns wrote:

 

Ref: Post no 29935

 

Dear Sir,

Could we look at the immense phenomenon of death without the

knowledge of others, because death is so immediate and subjective that any

amount of thories will not be of help to us unless we are inwardly prepared for

that which means that whether we are free from all worldly attachments? While

we may not be sure of the experience of samdhi, death is most certain to happen

and it is for firsthand experience.

with regards

Sankarraman

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photos

Ring in the New Year with Photo Calendars. Add photos, events, holidays,

whatever.

 

 

[Guest guest]

ref post 29945

 

Namaste Sankaranji:

 

Sir , you are absolutely right about the phenomenon of Death. We

always think that 'death' only happens to others. But when one of our

own near and dear one 'die' then we start contemplating on the

meaning of Life and Life after death. In this connection , I am sorry

to note that both your parents passed away last year and I offer my

condolences. The death of parents is always hard to come to grip with

more so if we are not the 'ideal' child the parents wanted us to be.

By 'ideal' is meant if we discharged all our duties and

responsibilities towards our aging parents in an exemplary manner .

Many of ua are too busy doing our own thing and spend very little

quality time with the elderly parents and only when they are gone,

we feel the 'void' in our lives. Many chldren think by doing

the 'Shraddha' ceremony once a year we are discharging our 'pitru

rinam' ( ancestoral debt). While such samsakaras may have some

significance from a religious point of view, our Real obligation lies

in serving the 'living' and making the lives of our elderly parents

enjoyable and comfortable . Imagine, how much time and energy our

parents have invested in us when we were young to groom us into

productive citizens ?

 

In Death, only the physical body perishes. The soul never dies. The

Gita says :

 

na jayate mriyate va kadacin

nayam bhutva bhavita va na bhuyah

ajo nityah sasvato 'yam purano

na hanyate hanyamane sarire ( bg II -20)

 

For the soul there is neither birth nor death at any time. He has not

come into being, does not come into being, and will not come into

being. He is unborn, eternal, ever-existing and primeval. He is not

slain when the body is slain.

 

In the Katha upanishad ,

 

na jayate mriyate va vipascin

nayam kutascin na vibhuva kascit

ajo nityah sasvato 'yam purano

na hanyate hanyamane sarire

(Katha 1.2.18)

 

1-II-18. The intelligent Self is not born, nor does It die. It did

not come from anywhere, nor did anything come from It. It is unborn,

eternal, everlasting and ancient, and is not slain even when the body

is slain.

 

http://www.celextel.org/108upanishads/katha.html

 

The key word here is 'vipaschin' ( the intelligent self).

 

But 'Samadhi' is ALTOGETHER a different kind of experience . Here ,

there is a conscious departure from the physical body and the Yogi

has no trace of 'ego' whatsoever and is in a heightened state of

Consciousness. May be I am not articulating this correctly. But,

even great saints like Sri Ramakrishna when asked to describe

what 'Samadhi' is , went into a state of SAmadhi rather than

describing it. Samadhi and Bliss are synonymous. Then there are many

kinds of Samadhis . May be a learned member can quote appropriate

verses from the scriptures to explain this heightened state of

consciousness called 'samadhi' -the culmination of all spiritual

quest ?

 

Warm regards

 

ps

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-- In advaitin, Ganesan Sankarraman <shnkaran>

wrote:

>

>

>

> Vinayaka <vinayaka_ns> wrote:

>

> Ref: Post no 29935

>

> Dear Sir,

> Could we look at the immense phenomenon of death

without the knowledge of others, because death is so immediate and

subjective that any amount of thories will not be of help to us

unless we are inwardly prepared for that which means that whether we

are free from all worldly attachments? While we may not be sure of

the experience of samdhi, death is most certain to happen and it is

for firsthand experience.

> with regards

> Sankarraman

>

>

>

>

>