Reincarnation #1

[Guest guest]

Question: Is reincarnation true?

 

Sri Ramana Maharshi: Reincarnation exists only so long as there is

ignorance. There is really no reincarnation at all, either now or

before. Nor will there be any hereafter. This is the truth.

 

[Note: Comments by David Godman: Most religions have constructed

elaborate theories which purport to explain what happens to the

individual soul after the death of the body. Some claim that the soul

goes to heaven or hell while others claim that it is reincarnated in

a new body.

 

Sri Ramana Maharshi taught that all such theories are based on the

false assumption that the individual self or soul is real; once this

illusion is seen through, the whole superstructure of after-life

theories collapses. From the standpoint of the Self, there is no

birth or death, no heaven or hell, and no reincarnation.

 

As a concession to those who were unable to assimilate the

implications of this truth, Sri Ramana would sometimes admit that

reincarnation existed. In replying to such people he would say that

if one imagined that the individual self was real, then that

imaginary self would persist after death and that eventually it would

identify with a new body and a new life. The whole process, he said,

is sustained by the tendency of the mind to identify itself with a

body. Once the limiting illusion of mind is transcended,

identification with the body ceases, and all theories about death and

reincarnation are found to be inapplicable.]

 

Question: Can a yogi know his past lives?

 

Maharshi: Do you know the present life that you wish to know the

past? Find the present, then the rest will follow. Even with our

present limited knowledge, you suffer so much. Why should you burden

yourself with more knowledge? Is it to suffer more?

 

When seen through the sight of the supreme space of Self, the

illusion of taking birth in this mirage-like false world is found to

be nothing but the egotistical ignorance of identifying a body

as " I " . Among those whose minds are possessed with forgetfulness of

Self, those who are born will die and those who die will be born

again. But know that those whose minds are dead, having known the

glorious Supreme Reality, will remain only there in that elevated

state of reality, devoid of both birth and death. Forgetting Self,

mistaking the body for Self, taking innumerable births, and at last

knowing Self and being Self is just like waking from a dream of

wandering all over the world.

 

~ Be As You Are