Demystifying Reincarnation 15 – The Gita’s model of the self and its explanatory potential

Hare Krishna. Welcome back to a demystifying reincarnation series. Reincarnation is a mystery, in the sense that it happens, but how it happens is not so easy to understand.

We discussed in this series, our series is divided into three parts, the scientific, the historical, and the philosophical. And we have completed two parts in it, the scientific part and the historical part. Scientifically, we discussed past life memories, near-death experiences, and the phenomena of consciousness, how these are not explicable with the materialistic paradigm that has been adopted by mainstream science today.

And then we discussed the historical perspective, where many of the world's ancient civilizations across history and geography have accepted reincarnation, and it is how reincarnation is compatible with the world's major religions. Then, now, if we consider reincarnation, okay, where can we learn about it? If we accept reincarnation, what would be a source, which could teach us about reincarnation? So, the ancient Indian wisdom tradition has a wide body of knowledge, which has been lauded by many thinkers across the world. So, for example, the American thinker Henry David Thoreau said, whenever I have read any part of the Vedas, I have felt that some unearthly and unknown light illuminated me.

In the great teaching of the Vedas, there is no touch of sectarianism. It is of all ages, climes, and nationalities, and is a royal role for the attainment of the great knowledge, for the attainment of the great knowledge. Now, this is a general appreciation of the Vedic literature.

Specifically, if we have this evidence for reincarnation, we have the acceptance of reincarnation, evidence through science, acceptance in history, where is the explanation for it? Where can we turn for the explanation? So, the American author, William Walker Atkinson, who was a pioneer of the New Thought Movement, he says in his book, Reincarnation, the Law of Karma, while reincarnation has been believed and taught in nearly every nation and among all races, in former or present times. Still, we are justified in considering India as a natural mother of the doctrine, and in as much as it has found an especially favorable spiritual and mental environment in that land and among its people. The tree of the teaching being still in full flower and still bearing an abundance of fruit.

So, the Vedic literature do give us a systematic, even comprehensive understanding of the mechanism of reincarnation and of the entity that reincarnates, which is the Atman, the soul. And while we live in the modern scientific times, where we get knowledge, so much new knowledge from various sources, some of us may feel hesitant. Why should we turn towards ancient wisdom? So, actually, even in science, knowledge is cumulative.

And Albert Einstein has said that, Isaac Newton said actually that, if I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants. So, we are ultimately actually human beings. We are on a search for learning, for growth towards happiness.

So, if from science, we get material knowledge and technology, and that helps make our life better, we can take that. If from ancient wisdom texts, we get knowledge of our metaphysical side, of our spiritual side, and that enriches us internally, we can accept that also. That openness to knowledge from various sources can be immensely enriching.

So, and what to speak of for spiritual subjects, even for general philosophical subjects, many eminent thinkers, including scientists, have recognized that the Vedic literature offer valuable insights. So, for example, the Nobel laureate, Werner Heisenberg, the German physicist, he said that, after the conversations about Indian philosophy, some of the ideas of quantum physics that had seemed so crazy, suddenly made much more sense. And similarly, Nobel laureate, Professor Brian David Josephson, who was the world's youngest Nobel laureate, he said that, the Vedanta and Sankhya hold the key to the laws of mind and thought process, which are correlated to the quantum field, that is the operation and distribution of particles at atomic and molecular levels.

Now, the Vedic wisdom tradition has a vast library of books, and among them, the most important is the Bhagavad Gita. The Bhagavad Gita's wisdom has been appreciated by eminent thinkers from all over the world, including scientists like Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer, philosophers like Ralph Aldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Rudolf Steiner and Albert Schweitzer, apostles of peace like Mohandas Gandhi, literary luminaries like Hermann Hesse and Aldous Huxley. Now, for example, Huxley states about the universality of the Bhagavad Gita.

The Bhagavad Gita is the most systematic statement of spiritual evolution of endowing value to mankind. It is one of the most clear and comprehensive summaries of perennial philosophy ever revealed. Hence, its enduring value is subject not only to India, but to all of humanity, to all of humanity.

So again, the point of this discussion is not to propagate one sectarian tradition as superior to any other sectarian tradition, but to be open to knowledge from wherever we can get it. So, we learn about evidence for reincarnation from science, we learn about the prevalence of reincarnation from history. Now, the mechanism of reincarnation, the purpose of reincarnation, how it works, why it works, where can we learn about this? So, the Vedic literature stands ready to illuminate us in this subject.

So, let us look at what the Bhagavad Gita talks about the soul and then we can move onwards to how the Gita's model of the soul and its connection to the body that can help us understand the past life memories as well as near-death experiences. So, the Bhagavad Gita describes the characteristics of the soul in its second chapter. So, first it says is that the soul is the source of consciousness in the body.

So, in the 13th chapter, 34th verse, it is stated that So, it is said that just as the sun illuminates the whole universe, similarly, the soul illuminates the body. The sun spreads sunlight and the soul spreads consciousness. Now, sometimes if you are inside a room, you may not be able to see the sunlight, but you can see the sun.

But just by seeing the sunlight, we can intuit the presence of the sun, infer the presence of the sun. Similarly, we may not always be able to see the soul, but we can see its symptom, the consciousness, and from that we can infer the presence of the Now, similarly, here the idea is of animation or pervasion. Consciousness pervades the body.

Now, consciousness doesn't just pervade the body, it also animates the body. So, for that, another example that we could use is of a car and a driver. So, just as the driver is present in the car and the driver animates, activates the car, so like that the soul is present in the body, which is like a car and the soul is the driver of that car.

And what we call as death is essentially the soul's leaving the body. So, the car will not move without the driver. Similarly, the soul does not move without the body.

That we will discuss later in more detail. Then another characteristic of the soul, the Bhagavad Gita says is that it is not affected by anything material. In 2.23, the Gita states that So, it says that weapons cannot pierce the soul, that fire cannot burn the soul, that water cannot dissolve it, and So, basically the point is that nothing material can destroy the soul.

The body is vulnerable to destruction in so many material ways, but the soul is invulnerable. The soul is indestructible. In this way, the Gita stresses the radical difference between the soul and the body.

The same point that the soul is not just not destructible by anything material, it is indestructible. That is also stated by the Gita that Nothing can destroy the soul. The Gita also says that the soul is entirely different from the body.

So, in 2.22, they said that just as a person, when their clothes become old, they leave those clothes and take new clothes. So, the soul gives up a body and becomes old and takes up a new body. So, we have actually intrinsically nothing to do with our clothes.

Like that, the soul has nothing to do with the body. Now, there are some religious or other traditions which talk about the soul. They often use the word soul as a metaphorical reference to our non-material essence.

But the Gita does not treat the soul as simply a metaphorical reference. It treats the soul as a concrete ontological entity, a higher dimensional entity who exists at the spiritual level. So, the soul and the body both are real and they are distinct.

They are temporarily related in our present embodiment. But eventually, they will become disconnected. Further, the Gita says the soul is extremely small.

The Gita itself talks about this. It is immeasurable. The Upanishads, the Sridhara Upanishad states that actually that when we take the tip of a hair and divide into 100 parts and again divide that into 100 parts, one 10,000th tip that we have, that is actually the soul.

That is actually the soul in its size of the soul. So, basically, the point of this is, since the tip of the soul itself is not a concrete measure, not a specific measure, so the point of this is that the soul is extremely small and the soul is an individual eternally. The soul is not just some vague light or an impersonal spark.

It is an individual. The Gita states that the souls existed before and everyone, all those people, the Gita is a conversation between various people and the speaker of the Gita says that I, we and everyone, all of us are going to be always present. And then another feature of the Krishna is that the soul is amazing.

So, in 2.29, it says that the soul is amazing. Some people hear of it as amazing, some people see it as amazing, some people seeing after it also don't understand it. Some people describe it as amazing.

So, the point is, what is amazing about the soul? If we consider the soul as the source of life, then there is a tiny microbe, which actually hundreds of thousands of which could fill up one centimeter of space and there is a giant blue whale, which is gargantuan in size and just from the microscopic to the huge, all of them are animated by this tiny spark of spiritual energy. So, how the scope of influence of that soul can be so widely, dramatically, inconceivably varying, that is something which is amazing. And the soul is actually situated in the region of the heart.

So, it is not in the heart, it is in the region of the heart. Soul is situated in the area from where the energies at a spiritual level radiate outwards. And now, a question may come up, if soul is in the region of the heart, then what about when the heart is transplanted? Actually, the heart transplant does not change the soul in any way because for the soul, the heart is like a throne.

When the throne gets damaged, we replace the throne. The king just gets up and a new throne comes and the king sits on that. The king is not changed when the throne is changed.

Similarly, the soul is not changed when the heart is changed or transplanted. Now, moving on, the Bhagavad Gita doesn't just describe the soul. Bhagavad Gita also describes an intriguing mechanism by which the soul interacts with the body.

And that mechanism is the mechanism which involves a triadic level, triadic vision of reality. Triadic means three. There are three levels of reality.

We have till now talked about the two distinct categories within reality, that is material and spiritual. So, the body is material and the soul is spiritual. But within the material, there is gross material and there is subtle material.

So, the gross material is the physical or the body that we see. And then there is the subtle material which is the mind. And then beyond them is the soul.

So, we could consider the soul is one circle, around it there is another circle that is the mind and there is a bigger circle that is the body. So, there is subtle body and the gross body. Now, the gross body is made up of various physical elements.

There is earth, water, fire, air, ether. And the subtle body, the Gita explains in 7.4, it is made up of mind, intelligence and ego. These are technicalities we should not go into.

And subtle body can be simply referred in shorthand as the mind. So, here the Gita has a significant sophistication in its model of the self. Often in Western intellectual circles, in Western philosophical traditions, the mind and the soul have been equated frequently.

The idea is that the mind and anything non-material is referred to by the word mind and it is conflated with the soul. But the Gita uses philosophical precision to differentiate between the mind and the soul. So, the idea is the mind is considered a subtle entity, which acts as an interface between the gross body and the subtle body.

So, to understand this, let us consider an example from the Svitashvatara Upanishad. Whereas, it is said that, if you consider this whole mechanic, consider a chariot. Now, in the chariot, there is the chariot, there are horses, and there are the reins, and there is the charioteer who controls the horses using the reins, and then there is the passenger.

So, the chariot itself is compared to the body, the horses are compared to the senses, the reins are the, the reins is the mind, the charioteer is the intelligence, and the soul itself is the passenger. Now, another example that we could use, more contemporary again, to illustrate this is of a computer system. In a computer system, there is the hardware, there is the software, and there is the user.

So, the user is distinct in a different category. The hardware and software, they are a part of the digital digital components, we could say, they are part of the mechanism of the computer. Of course, the software is not a physical component, but it says the software is a part of the computer.

So, like that, the hardware is like the body, the software is the mind, and the user is like the soul. This triadic level of, triadic vision of reality is quite intriguing. So, in this model, the soul itself is the root of consciousness, R-O-U-T, and the mind is the root of consciousness, R-O-U-T-E.

That means the consciousness comes from the soul, it is rooted through the mind, and then it goes to the body. So, for example, right now, say you are looking at me. So, when you are looking at me, the vision is coming through your, through my, through your eyes, and through the eyes, it goes to the optic, through the brain, from there, it goes to the mind, and from the mind, it goes to the soul.

So, the mind acts as the integrator of the inputs coming from the senses, and the presenter of these inputs to the soul, and the soul views those inputs and then responds accordingly, deciding what is to be done. So, now, with this basic understanding of the model, let us now consider the model's explanatory potential. You know, if we consider this model of the self, the question would be, okay, how do I know, okay, it is a nice concept to hear, how do I know whether it is true or not? One way to understand it would be that we look at the model, and then we look at how, what are the, what are the things that we need the explanation, and whether they can be, those things can be explained by this model.

So, for example, if we consider near-death experiences, now, there is the materialist model of the self, and then there is the spiritual model of the self, which is given in the Gita. Now, we discuss near-death experiences are not explainable at all by the materialist model of the self, because then in that model, consciousness comes from the brain, and when the brain is not functioning, when there is no conscious, when the brain is, brain waves indicate pattern, there should be no consciousness, innate consciousness is present. So, the materialist model fails to explain, but what about the Gita's model of the self? So, if we consider the soul, the soul around the subtle body, and then there is a gross body, and normally the soul is located in the gross body through the connection that is established by the mind and its identification of the body.

But when there is some traumatic event, such as accident or a cardiac arrest, at that time, the trauma of that event can cause a temporary separation between the physical body and the soul along with the mind. So, then the soul along with the mind come out of the body. Now, when we consider normal vision, in normal vision, what happens? Whatever is the visual information that goes in through the eyes, to the brain, to the mind, and to the soul.

Now, when a person is unconscious, at that time, because the eyes are closed, because the information is not coming into the brain, the person should not be able to see. But if the soul and the mind have come out of the body, the mind itself has subtle senses associated with it. The mind is also capable of seeing with, as we often use with the metaphorical word, mind's eye.

But the mind itself has the capacity to see. And the soul is the original source of vision, because the soul is what is conscious, and it is only when we are conscious that we can see. So, normally, the vision happens through the soul sees, through the mind, through the brain, through the eyes, the object that is external.

But in the case of near-death experiences, the soul and the mind come out. And the soul sees its innate capacity using the mind as a tool for vision. And this understanding can explain not only how some people can be conscious when they're unconscious, when they're biologically unconscious, it can also explain the near-death experiences among the blind.

How? Because for those people, actually, their brain or the mechanism of vision, either the eyes or the optic nerve, that part of the brain, something is damaged. That's why they can't see. But the soul still remains, retains the capacity for vision.

And when, say, we discussed the case of Vicky Umipeg in the book Mindsight by Kenneth Ring and Sharon Cooper, about how she was able to see twice during her NDEs. How was she able to see? Because she, the soul, has the capacity to see. And when that soul comes out with the mind, then in the normal circumstances, because of the damage to the optic nerve, the capacity for vision is blocked.

But now that blockage is removed because the soul is out of the body, and thus the person is able to see. So, in this way, the near-death experiences can be explained by this model. Similarly, what about the past life memories? The past life memories are also explainable.

And how they are explainable, that we will discuss in our next session. In this session, we discussed about, essentially, how the mechanism of reincarnation, which we have understood, which we have seen evidence for scientifically, which we have, whose prevalence we have seen historically, where can we turn for getting a coherent explanation of this? So, we discussed the Vedic literature as a source of knowledge, and how eminent thinkers have seen them as systematic, as insightful for philosophy that can illuminate even scientific concepts, what to speak of spiritual concepts like reincarnation. And then within the Vedic canon, we focus on the Bhagavad Gita, and we discuss various characteristics of the soul, such as it is indestructible, it is unaffected by anything material, it is extremely small, it is individual, it is different from the body, it is situated in the region of the heart, it is the animator of the body.

And then we discussed the two levels, the three levels of reality talked about in the Gita, that there is not just body and soul, there is body, mind and soul, akin to hardware, software and user. And then, while discussing the explanatory potential of the model, we discussed how the experiences that are not explainable by the material model of the self can be explained by this three level model of the self, where we see that when the person is unconscious, the bodily tool for vision is damaged, but rather if the soul and the mind get separated, then they can still see. So, in the next session, we will understand how this model explains past life memories and further how this model gives us further understanding of various other levels of consciousness.

So, join us in our next session. Thank you. Hare Krishna.