reincarnation by swami vivekananda

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A rather long message but since it sheds light on a number of topics,

its important you take the time out to read it.please make some time..

 

 

" To understand reincarnation, we have first to know that in this

universe something can never be produced out of nothing. If there is

such a thing as a human soul, it cannot be produced out of nothing. If

something can be produced out of nothing, then something would

disappear into nothing also. If we are produced out of nothing, then

we will also go back into nothing. That which has a beginning must

have an end. Therefore, as souls we could not have had any beginning.

We have been existing all the time.

 

Then again, if we did not exist previously, there is no explanation of

our present existence. The child is born with a bundle of causes. How

many things we see in a child which can never be explained until we

grant that the child has had past experience — for instance, fear of

death and a great number of innate tendencies. Who taught the baby to

drink milk and to do so in a peculiar fashion? Where did it acquire

this knowledge? We know that there cannot be any knowledge without

experience, for to say that knowledge is intuitive in the child, or

instinctive, is what the logicians would call a " petitio principii " .[7]*

 

It would be the same [logic] as when a man asks me why light comes

through a glass, and I answer him, " Because it is transparent " . That

would be really no answer at all because I am simply translating his

word into a bigger one. The word " transparent " means " that through

which light comes " — and that was the question. The question was why

light comes through the glass, and I answered him, " Because it comes

through the glass " .

 

In the same way, the question was why these tendencies are in the

child. Why should it have fear of death if it never saw death? If this

is the first time it was ever born, how did it know to suck the

mother's milk? If the answer is " Oh, it was instinct " , that is simply

returning the question. If a man stands up and says, " I do not know " ,

he is in a better position than the man who says, " It is instinct " and

all such nonsense.

 

There is no such thing as instinct; there is no such thing as nature

separate from habit. Habit is one's second nature, and habit is one's

first nature too. All that is in your nature is the result of habit,

and habit is the result of experience. There cannot be any knowledge

but from experience.

 

So this baby must have had some experience too. This fact is granted

even by modern materialistic science. It proves beyond doubt that the

baby brings with it a fund of experience. It does not enter into this

world with a " tabula rasa " — a blank mind upon which nothing is

written — as some of the old philosophers believed, but ready equipped

with a bundle of knowledge. So far so good.

 

But while modern science grants that this bundle of knowledge which

the child brings with it was acquired through experience, it asserts,

at the same time, that it is not its own — but its father's and its

grandfather's and its great-grandfather's. Knowledge comes, they say,

through hereditary transmission.

 

Now this is one step in advance of that old theory of " instinct " , that

is fit only for babies and idiots. This " instinct " theory is a mere

pun upon words and has no meaning whatsoever. A man with the least

thinking power and the least insight into the logical precision of

words would never dare to explain innate tendencies by " instinct " , a

term which is equivalent to saying that something came out of nothing.

But the modern theory of transmission through experience — though, no

doubt, a step in advance of the old one — is not sufficient at all.

Why not? We can understand a physical transmission, but a mental

transmission is impossible to understand.

 

What causes me — who am a soul — to be born with a father who has

transmitted certain qualities? What makes me come back? The father,

having certain qualities, may be one binding cause. Taking for granted

that I am a distinct soul that was existing before and wants to

reincarnate — what makes my soul go into the body of a particular man?

For the explanation to be sufficient, we have to assume a hereditary

transmission of energies and such a thing as my own previous

experience. This is what is called Karma, or, in English, the Law of

Causation, the law of fitness.

 

For instance, if my previous actions have all been towards

drunkenness, I will naturally gravitate towards persons who are

transmitting a drunkard's character. I can only take advantage of the

organism produced by those parents who have been transmitting a

certain peculiar influence for which I am fit by my previous actions.

Thus we see that it is true that a certain hereditary experience is

transmitted from father to son, and so on. At the same time, it is my

past experience that joins me to the particular cause of hereditary

transmission.

 

A simply hereditary transmission theory will only touch the physical

man and would be perfectly insufficient for the internal soul of man.

Even when looking upon the matter from the purest materialistic

standpoint — viz. that there is no such thing as a soul in man, and

man is nothing but a bundle of atoms acted upon by certain physical

forces and works like an automaton — even taking that for granted, the

mere transmission theory would be quite insufficient.

 

The greatest difficulties regarding the simple hypothesis of mere

physical transmission will be here: If there be no such thing as a

soul in man, if he be nothing more than a bundle of atoms acted upon

by certain forces, then, in the case of transmission, the soul of the

father would decrease in ratio to the number of his children; and the

man who has five, six or eight children must, in the end, become an

idiot. India and China — where men breed like rats — would then be

full of idiots. But, on the contrary, we find that the least amount of

lunacy is in India and China.

 

The question is, What do we mean by the word transmission? It is a big

word, but, like so many other impossible and nonsensical terms of the

same kind, it has come into use without people understanding it. If I

were to ask you what transmission is, you would find that you have no

real conception of its meaning because there is no idea attached to it.

 

Let us look a little closer into the matter. Say, for instance, here

is a father. A child is born to him. We see that the same qualities

[which the father possesses] have entered into his child. Very good.

Now how did the qualities of the father come to be in the child?

Nobody knows. So this gap the modern physicists want to fill with the

big word transmission. And what does this transmission mean? Nobody knows.

 

How can mental qualities of experience be condensed and made to live

in one single cell of protoplasm? There is no difference between the

protoplasm of a bird and that of a human brain. All we can say with

regard to physical transmission is that it consists of the two or

three protoplasmic cells cut from the father's body. That is all. But

what nonsense to assume that ages and ages of past human experience

got compressed into a few protoplasmic cells! It is too tremendous a

pill they ask you to swallow with this little word transmission.

 

In olden times the churches had prestige, but today science has got

it. And just as in olden times people never inquired for themselves —

never studied the Bible, and so the priests had a very good

opportunity to teach whatever they liked — so even now the majority of

people do not study for themselves and, at the same time, have a

tremendous awe and fear before anything called scientific. You ought

to remember that there is a worse popery coming than ever existed in

the church — the so-called scientific popery, which has become so

successful that it dictates to us with more authority than religious

popery.

 

These popes of modern science are great popes indeed, but sometimes

they ask us to believe more wonderful things than any priest or any

religion ever did. And one of those wonderful things is that

transmission theory, which I could never understand. If I ask, " What

do you mean by transmission? " they only make it a little easier by

saying, " It is hereditary transmission " . And if I tell them, " That is

rather Greek to me " , they make it still easier by saying, " It is the

adherence of paternal qualities in the protoplasmic cells " . In that

way it becomes easier and easier, until my mind becomes muddled and

disgusted with the whole thing.

 

Now one thing we see: we produce thought. I am talking to you this

evening and it is producing thought in your brain. By this act of

transmission we understand that my thoughts are being transmitted into

your brain and your mind, and producing other thoughts. This is an

everyday fact.

 

It is always rational to take the side of things which you can

understand — to take the side of fact. Transmission of thought is

 

perfectly understandable. Therefore we are able to take up the

[concept of] transmission of thought, and not of hereditary

impressions of protoplasmic cells alone. We need not brush aside the

theory, but the main stress must be laid upon the transmission of thought.

 

Now a father does not transmit thought. It is thought alone that

transmits thought. The child that is born existed previously as

thought. We all existed eternally as thought and will go on existing

as thought.

 

What we think, that our body becomes. Everything is manufactured by

thought, and thus we are the manufacturers of our own lives. We alone

are responsible for whatever we do. It is foolish to cry out: " Why am

I unhappy? " I made my own unhappiness. It is not the fault of the Lord

at all.

 

Someone takes advantage of the light of the sun to break into your

house and rob you. And then when he is caught by the policeman, he may

cry: " Oh sun, why did you make me steal? " It was not the sun's fault

at all, because there are thousands of other people who did much good

to their fellow beings under the light of the same sun. The sun did

not tell this man to go about stealing and robbing.

 

Each one of us reaps what we ourselves have sown. These miseries under

which we suffer, these bondages under which we struggle, have been

caused by ourselves, and none else in the universe is to blame. God is

the least to blame for it.

 

" Why did God create this evil world? " He did not create this evil

world at all. We have made it evil, and we have to make it good. " Why

did God create me so miserable? " He did not. He gave me the same

powers as [He did] to every being. I brought myself to this pass.

 

Is God to blame for what I myself have done? His mercy is always the

same. His sun shines on the wicked and the good alike. His air, His

water, His earth give the same chances to the wicked and the good. God

is always the same eternal, merciful Father. The only thing for us to

do is to bear the results of our own acts.

 

We learn that, in the first place, we have been existing eternally; in

the second place that we are the makers of our own lives. There is no

such thing as fate. Our lives are the result of our previous actions,

our Karma. And it naturally follows that having been ourselves the

makers of our Karma, we must also be able to unmake it.

 

The whole gist of Jnana-Yoga is to show humanity the method of undoing

this Karma. A caterpillar spins a little cocoon around itself out of

the substance of its own body and at last finds itself imprisoned. It

may cry and weep and howl there; nobody will come to its rescue until

it becomes wise and then comes out, a beautiful butterfly. So with

these our bondages. We are going around and around ourselves through

countless ages. And now we feel miserable and cry and lament over our

bondage. But crying and weeping will be of no avail. We must set

ourselves to cutting these bondages.

 

The main cause of all bondage is ignorance. Man is not wicked by his

own nature — not at all. His nature is pure, perfectly holy. Each man

is divine. Each man that you see is a God by his very nature. This

nature is covered by ignorance, and it is ignorance that binds us

down. Ignorance is the cause of all misery. Ignorance is the cause of

all wickedness; and knowledge will make the world good. Knowledge will

remove all misery. Knowledge will make us free. This is the idea of

Jnana-Yoga: knowledge will make us free! What knowledge? Chemistry?

Physics? Astronomy? Geology? They help us a little, just a little. But

the chief knowledge is that of your own nature. " Know thyself. " You

must know what you are, what your real nature is. You must become

conscious of that infinite nature within. Then your bondages will burst. "

 

 

from

The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda/Volume 9/Lectures and

Discourses/The First Step towards Jnana