How reincarnation makes sense of our existence and that of animals too

[Seminar at the Bhaktivedanta Manor, London, UK]

Video:

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So, I’m grateful to be here amongst all of you today, and I’ll speak on how reincarnation helps us to make sense of life.
And I’ll focus on a particular angle within that. We’ll talk about do animals have souls, and why it matters for our understanding of ourselves and for our understanding of the world. I have written a book, Demystifying Reincarnation, where I talk about this elaborately, when I was a child, one of my interests was astronomy.
So, I wanted to become an astrophysicist in future. So, I would take a telescope and look up at the sky. So, at one time, there was a solar eclipse which was going to happen, which was much anticipated.
And I went with my telescope up to the terrace of my house, and I was waiting to watch. And somehow, before that, something had happened. Some person had spoken to me, which is something that had hurt me very much.
And then, as I was waiting for the, looking for the eclipse, just the eclipse came, and it went. And I was looking at the telescope, but I didn’t notice the eclipse. Or at least, most of it I didn’t notice.
Then it struck me, at that time, that actually, what goes on out there in the space, that is what was of interest to me. But sometimes, what goes on in here, inside the head, can be so captivating or distracting, depending on perspective, that it can completely consume our attention. So, that made me start questioning, you know, what determines what goes on inside over here? In our own, inside us, we can say as if there is something like an inner screen.
Right now, you are looking at me, I am looking at you. So, this inner screen, at that time, acts like a window. And, it helps us to see what is happening outside.
But this inner screen is remarkably versatile. Sometimes, it suddenly starts acting like a TV. And, we may be sitting here right now, but, we may hear one sound, or one word, and, what about this happened? What about that happened? What about that happened? And, we just go off into a movie about the past, about the future, about this person, that person.
So, this inner screen is what shapes the quality of our life in a big way. And, while we all have an inner screen, this inner screen is different in different people. Say, somebody is a habitual alcoholic, then, thoughts of alcohol keep popping up repeatedly on their screen.
Somebody is a cricket fan. Say, they may be doing some work, but, if there is a cricket match going on somewhere, they constantly, what is the score? What is the score? So, that keeps popping up on their inner screen. So, what is this inner screen? And, what determines what appears over there? The Bhagavad Gita offers us a three-level model of the human personality, or of life in general.
Say, there is the body, the mind, and the soul. So, the body is like the, if we consider a computer system, the body is like the hardware, the mind is like the software, and the soul is like the user. Or, to give another example, if we have some house with high security, we might have a gate, a compound and a gate, and you have a camera near the gate, and the input of the camera comes in the home.
So then, the camera is like the screen which shows us what is out there. So, that screen on which what is out there appears is the mind. So, the mind is like the software which puts together the inputs and brings them accessibly for us.
now, all of us have certain things which keep appearing and disappearing on the screen. And some stay for a longer time, some stay for a lesser time. And, now, not only do different things appear on the inner screen, but different things happen in the outer world also.
But we all respond differently to these different situations. And, say, if we are in a movie theatre, and fire breaks out. So, when the fire breaks out, at that time, most people would probably just run to the nearest exit.
And sometimes in closed places, closed crowded places, when some accident occurs, the casualties happen not so much because of the accident as because of the stampede that happens. So, there people just act impulsively. Now, some people might just freeze, fire! And some people might think, okay, okay, there is a fire, where is the fire extinguisher? There, they may go against the crowd, get to the fire extinguisher, switch off the fire.
So, these are three broad behavioural types. And the Bhagavad Gita refers to them as modes. Or in Sanskrit, it’s called gunas.
These are three, if we consider, say, in the past you had, now we mostly have gearless cars, but in the past we had cars with multiple gears. So, some gear is good for, say, going up a steep hill or a mountain. Some gears are very good for going very fast.
So, like that, we could say that these three modes, they are called as goodness, passion and ignorance. They are characteristic of three behavioural types. In goodness, we think before we act.
That is contemplation first and action later. In passion, there is first action and then contemplation. In ignorance, there is neither contemplation nor action.
There is simply delusion. Just confusion, not knowing what to do. So, if you go back to the example of the theatre, the people who just run towards the nearest exit, they are operating in which gear? Passion.
Acting before thinking. Just run. Those who just get petrified, they are in ignorance.
So, and those who think and go to the fire extinguisher, they are in goodness. Some people make things happen. Some people watch things happen.
And some people wonder what happened. So, there are three broad modes. Now, why are we talking about the modes here? I said that there is an inner screen within us and certain things pop up on that inner screen.
Now, why do different things pop up on different people’s inner screens? Sometimes, even if we have children, if we have two children, each child is a different personality. They are same parents. Even if the children are twins, still they have different personality.
Now, their personality, where does it come from? Because it comes from their upbringing, their association. But some children right from their childhood itself, they are different. Now, some kids, even when they are in their mother’s, in their cribs, they are looking out, waiting for the time and they will take over the house.
No? They just have, not necessarily in the negative sense, but they just have that inclination to take things over. Some kids, they just cry a lot. Each child is different.
So, just as all of us have a particular body with its particular looks, with its strengths, with its weaknesses, like that all of us have a particular mind. And this mind is, the mind, I refer to it as the inner screen, what pops up on that inner screen is determined by what we have done in the past. What we have done in the past means that actually we all begin life with birth.
But we don’t begin at the same point. Financially, some of us may be born in very well-to-do families, some of us may be born in not so well-to-do families. Physically, somebody may be born with a great look, somebody may not be born with such great looks.
But even psychologically, each one of us is different. So, where does this physical and psychological variation come from? If you look at life, we all try to make sense of things. If you go home and you find somebody, some friend is there waiting and they have got a scar on their face.
What happened? When we see an effect, we ask, what is the cause? The whole of science is based on this implicit acceptance of cause-effect correlation. When Newton saw the fruit falling, he asked, what made this fruit fall? So now, when we look at cause-effect correlation, most of the time, this cause-effect correlation makes sense. Okay, you know, why did you get a cold? Oh, you know, you got exposed to the cold weather.
That’s why you got it. You got a stomach upset, maybe you ate something inappropriate yesterday. So normally we find, okay, if a particular effect is there, this cause is there.
But there are certain situations in life when we are not able to figure out what the cause is. And this happens even in, not just in life at large, but even in science. Say, normally when we eat food, we get energy.
But if we eat food and we don’t get energy, then we understand something else must be going on. Maybe there is some disease in the body, maybe there is some problem in the stomach, because of which the food is not being digested. So that means, we normally look for cause-effect correlation.
And when we don’t find a cause-effect correlation, then we look for some other factors which will explain the lack of cause-effect correlation. So, if normally I wake up and I feel energetic, but if after waking up I don’t feel energetic, that means maybe I’ve got a flu or something, because of which I feel so tired. So we, when things don’t make sense, in the normal way of explaining things, if I’m feeling tired, I take a rest.
I wake up and I feel energised again. But if after taking a rest I don’t feel energised, then we don’t think that, okay, there is no cause for this. There is no cause-effect correlation.
We look for a deeper cause-effect correlation. We look for some other factors involved. When we eat food, I said, most of the times, we don’t think about our digestion at all.
It’s just that we eat, we get energy. Practically the only time we think about our digestion is when it doesn’t work. So, there are other factors involved which we assume are going to work out properly.
So, why am I talking about this? Looking for a deeper explanation. In our life, if we consider our starting point, all of us have variable starting points. So, in the course of our life, we may look for cause-effect correlation.
But, if we look backwards, at the very starting point of life, we see there is variation. And why is this variation there at all? Why are some people born wealthy, some people are born poor? Why are some people born good-looking? Why are some people born not so good-looking? Or, going to a subtler level, why are some people, right from the childhood, they seem to be very noisy and short-tempered, some people are gentle. That’s their disposition.
So, this difference, if we are to explain, we need to expand our frame of reference. We need to look for something deeper. So, basically we have three options to explain why there is variation like this.
First is, that everything, this variation is by chance. Some people are lucky, so they are born wealthy. Some people are unlucky, they are born poor.
And, the other explanation could be, that it’s all determined by a supreme controller. So, there’s a God, who has decided some people are born wealthy, some are born poor. Now, the first explanation that everything is by chance is very disempowering.
Because that just makes us, reduces whole of life to a lottery. And, if we happen to win the lottery, great. If we lose the lottery, that’s terrible.
But, what can be done? And, that is not the way we operate, in most of our life. We look at the cause of a correlation. So, chance is not a very satisfactory explanation.
If we consider God, then that makes God, or the supreme controller, whatever name we want to use, that makes the supreme controller discriminatory. And then, if we are meant to devote ourselves to that supreme, and that supreme is arbitrary and discriminatory, how do we devote ourselves to that? Many people accept atheism, not because atheism offers a better explanation of life. Rather, the theism that they have grown up, offers such an unsatisfactory explanation, that they prefer atheism.
Abraham Lincoln has said that, democracy is a terrible form of government. But, it is the best among all terrible forms of government. So, sometimes it may appear as if, what is the explanation for life? So, is it an arbitrary chance, or is it an arbitrary God? But, there can be a third explanation.
The third explanation is, that where we start in this life, is not determined just by anything arbitrary, but by where we left off in a previous life. So, if we expand the scope of reference, to include reincarnation, then, we can make better sense, of why we all have different starting points, we have different bodies, we have different minds. And, if we look at the world itself, in the world, there are not just human beings existing.
Beyond human beings, there are plants, there are animals, there are so many living beings existing. And, what is the purpose of the existence of anything? If we again go back to these three alternatives, the first alternative is chance. It’s just that, somehow, long ago, there was a lucky accident, and life came about.
And then, life mutated into all the various forms that we see today. Now, if you call it a lucky accident, a lucky accident simply means that nothing bad happens. If I have a Toyota, and it collides with a truck, a lucky accident would mean that the Toyota doesn’t get damaged.
A lucky accident doesn’t mean that the Toyota changes into a Mercedes. Isn’t it? That doesn’t happen. So, if we consider the idea of chance as the supreme arbiter, it is our life, and all of life ultimately becomes meaningless.
We just exist, live for some time, and then life ends. And we actually consider life so valuable. When somebody is sick, we go through so many efforts to try to save that person.
And yet, what is the point of it all? If you look at the world, the whole of scientific endeavour is based on trying to make sense of things. Why do objects fall down? Why do planets move like this? Why do the environmental seasons change like this? Why do hurricanes happen? So, we have laws of motion, laws of thermodynamics, various laws by which we try to make sense of the world around us. But then if we ask, okay, why does this happen? This is the explanation.
Why does this happen? This is the explanation. Why do we exist at all? There’s no explanation. So, it’s like we have islands of meaning while drowning in an ocean of meaninglessness.
We have islands of meaning. Oh, this makes sense, this makes sense, but life, it doesn’t make sense. Well, that doesn’t make sense.
If there are islands of meaning, then why shouldn’t, maybe the ocean itself has some meaning, I just need to broaden my perspective. So, when we consider the idea that everything is by chance, well, not only our, the variations in our life, why different people have different ways of living, different starting points, that doesn’t make sense, but even life itself doesn’t make sense. If we consider the second, okay, God has ordained it.
Okay, for what purpose? What is the purpose of existence? Well, God has ordained it so that we can be delivered. Now, when there is only the perspective of one life, then it actually makes human life different from all other lives in a categorical sense. So, the idea that we have only one life, this is the idea that is propagated by many of the mainstream religions in today’s world, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, but if you go back to their core texts and their core traditions, a more nuanced picture emerges.
So, in my book I have talked about how even Christianity, Islam, Judaism, there are many passages which are broadly compatible with reincarnation. But the point, I am not going there right now, I am going to stick to logic and analysis here. The point is, okay, if there is a God who is good and then that God has to be, we have to devote ourselves, we have to surrender ourselves to that God.
But if we have only one life and we human beings can choose to surrender to that God, but what about animals? What about animals? What about plants? What is the purpose of their existence? Just live and they die. Is it that their existence is meant to be simply like a backdrop for the real drama that is human life? This idea, this is a very anthropocentric view. That we humans alone are special and everyone else’s life doesn’t count.
They live and they die and that’s the end of it. So, what the reincarnation worldview says is that there is a difference between human lives and animal lives, but that difference is more in quality, not in category. Category means that humans are different, animals are different, and humans can grow spiritually and attain God, animals just live and die.
That’s a categorical difference. The qualitative difference is that humans have more evolved consciousness than animals. And that is because, if you consider, when we are trying to make sense of things, say if a patient comes to a doctor and the patient has some rashes on the skin, they got some cough, they got some digestive issues, then the doctor will try to find a diagnosis that accounts for as many of the symptoms as possible.
If we just treat only the rashes, what about the cough? And yes, we can treat all of them separately, but if there is one diagnosis that explains all the symptoms together, then we could have one treatment which will cure everything. So, we could have, okay, human life has a purpose, we are meant to be spiritually elevated, but what about the rest of life? What is their purpose? Now, there has been a rising of human consciousness with respect to animals. In the past, animals were just treated as food for humans.
And although that is happening even now, but now there is greater awareness that animals also have emotions, they also have feelings, they also essentially have consciousness, the way we have. So, as we are becoming more and more aware, when we interact with the animal world, whether it is as pets or whether in circuses or whether we see it in wildlife, in documentaries or when we go on safaris, if we do, you see that they also have emotions like we do. They also feel pain and joy.
So, what is the purpose of their existence? That is related, what is the purpose of our existence? So, the first hypothesis that everything happens by chance, that makes all life equally meaningless. Animal life is meaningless, human life is meaningless. All of existence is meaningless.
The idea that this is the only life we have, and in this life, if we surrender to God, we attain God, that makes human life categorically different and all other lives just meaningless. But if you consider the reincarnation worldview, then what it means is there is a progression of the soul from one life to another. And our present life is determined by where we have lived in the past, what we have done in the past.
So, reincarnation helps us to see the whole universe as a university. And in this university, everybody is growing spiritually. So, animals are at a level of consciousness where they can’t perceive much beyond their bodily drives.
They just, animals are impelled by the urge to fulfil their bodily needs. We humans are also driven that way. But we humans can think of something more.
What is the purpose of life? What is the meaning of life? We can think about these things. And the more we ponder these questions and seek answers to these questions, the more life’s spiritual dimension opens. I’ll mention two points and then we’ll open up for questions.
So, reincarnation at one level, as I said, it can help us make sense of why we exist, why animals exist. And what would be the supportive evidence for the idea that, okay, there is a, the whole universe is like a university where all of us are meant to learn and grow. So now, if you had to look for some supportive evidence, what would we look for? Firstly, we can look at all of us, we long to live forever and to love forever.
We all long, nobody wants to die. And nobody wants their loved ones to die. So, if we were simply material creatures, why would we have this longing at all? Nothing material ever exists forever.
I was just in New York and we passed by the area where the Twin Towers existed. When the Twin Towers fell, it was not just the fall of a structure. It was also the fall of what it represented.
The idea of progress and power and prosperity, it is symbolised. So, even the, even huge mountains or huge towers, they are not, they don’t last forever. And yet, all of us have a desire to live forever.
If there were, say, a remote African tribe, disconnected from the whole world, and one day the child goes to the mother over there, Mummy, Mom, Mom, I want a pizza. The first thing the mom would ask, where did you hear about a pizza? If there is nothing in the environment which will trigger the desire for a pizza, it will raise the question, hey, where did you get the desire? So, similarly, nothing around us lasts forever. If we were simply products of the environment around us, nothing in our environment lasts forever.
And yet, we all have a desire to live forever. So, where does this desire come from? It doesn’t come from our externals, it comes from our internals. It comes from the core of who we are.
And this desire is present not just in humans, it is also present in animals. It is present in, animals are also remarkably resilient. They try their best to avoid death and come up with more, extremely creative and innovative ways to try to maintain their life.
So, this longing to live and live on and on, this comes from our core, which is non-material, which is indestructible, which is spiritual. So, similarly, we could look in the outer world to see if there is reincarnation for real. Then, if we have had previous lives, then can we remember those lives? And normally, when the soul goes from one body to another, the soul is meant to move forward.
A new body is a new opportunity. And most of our memories are circumstantial. Say, all of us may have lived in some home in our childhood.
Now, we may have some memory of that home, but if you go back there, we will remember it much more. You go away from it, our memories also go away. So, normally when the soul goes from one body to another, at that time, because most of our memories are circumstantial, those memories get wiped out.
But they are not erased, they are just put deep into the background, so that we can’t access them. But there are some people who remember their past lives. Dr. Jan Stevenson was a prominent researcher who focused on the study of spontaneous past life memories among children.
And he wrote several books. One of his last books was where Incarnation and Biology intersect. And he came up with four lines of evidences for past life memories.
We call them memories, but actually there are four lines of evidence. It’s called recollections, recognitions, behaviours, and birthmarks and birth defects. So recollections means, one day the child just, say a three, four year old child says, mom, mom, I want to go to my other mom.
What? And he says, the father, you know, I was big then, I am small now. What do you mean? And they start speaking about another life, and they speak specific clear details. That’s recollections.
And then, if they are taken to that area, they themselves show the way, they go to the house, they recognise the people, that’s second way, that’s recognitions. The third is behaviours. The children behave as if they were a person belonging to that family, in the particular relationship which the deceased person had with that person, with the people in that family.
And fourth is birthmarks and birth defects. Say, if they had been wounded or they had been killed in the previous life, whatever were the fatal wounds, they appear as birthmarks in this life on the kids. So, let me conclude with one story.
There is, this is described by Jan Stevenson, this is of a boy in Turkey, whose name was Nesip. This Nesip, he was born in Adana, in Turkey. And at a very small age, he started telling that, my name is Nesip Budak.
He says, no, your name is Nesip Unlu-Taskiran. He says, no, I am Nesip Budak. And then his parents started, this couldn’t make sense.
He says, I live in Mursun. This is a town which is a distance away, a hundred or so kilometres away. And that time people didn’t travel.
And his parents didn’t believe in reincarnation. So, they didn’t care. And as he grew up, he started threatening his parents, if you don’t take me there, I will go there myself.
And he said, a small boy, 5-6 years old, he would say that, I am married and I have kids. So, then finally, his grandfather, from his mother’s side, he lived in a town near Mursun. And he had recently, when he was around 6 or 7, his grandfather had remarried.
And his new wife was from Mursun. So, when his mother went to see her father, then that woman, Nesip recognised her. And he said, you are this, this, this.
And she also said, yes, there was a person named Nesip Budak. His grandfather got intrigued and then he took her, took them there. And when he went there, this boy had never been to Mursun before, but he straight took them to a particular house.
And in that house, when they knocked on the door, they found that there was a woman who was the widow of a man named Nesip Budak. And he not only recognised her, told him many things about her, about the house, about each other, about their relationship. And then he saw that he had some kids from his previous life.
And although he was smaller than them, he was fondling their hair and treating them as if they were children. So, this Nesip, when he saw his wife from the previous life, she had remarried. And when he saw her picture with her new husband, he got so angry, he took up the picture and wanted to tear it apart.
You are my wife, not anyone else’s wife. So, this is a small boy and she was a woman. So, this was just not comprehensible.
And then this Nesip had been a short-tempered person. So, at one time, in a fit of anger, he tried to attack his wife. And she had dodged the blow, but he had used a knife and that knife had scarred her on the thigh.
So, he told her that she has got a scar on the thigh. So, Stevenson had one of his female assistants take that woman to a separate room and he examined her. And he found that she had a scar exactly where Nesip said she would have it.
And she said, yes, my husband, we had a fight and that time he had used a knife against me. So, now how would a boy who has never met a woman know about some mark on a private part of her body? Not only that, Nesip also had six birthmarks on his body. And he would say that, actually, whenever he would talk about his previous life, this was where I was attacked.
So, Nesip used to drink a lot and one time he had gone into a fight with somebody else at a bar. And that person had taken out a knife and stabbed him repeatedly. So, the places where Nesip had been stabbed and which had caused eventually his death, those were the places where Nesip in this life had birthmarks.
So, he had six birthmarks. Now, Stevenson divided the human body into 160 XY coordinates to check out how precise is the correlation between the previous life’s birthmark and this life’s, the previous life’s fatal wound and this life’s birthmark. And he found that, so if there is an exact correlation, that means the probability would be 1 by 160.
And if there are six correlations, the probability 1 by 160 raised to the power of 6. It’s a very low probability. So, Stevenson, in this way, he has documented not just one, two, but hundreds upon hundreds of cases. And beyond that, there are many other researchers who have been inspired by his studies, by his methods.
And they have also investigated. And almost every day, a new case of past life memories comes up. And researchers investigate it.
And they come up with more and more of these four lines of evidence. Recollections, recognitions, behaviours and birthmarks and birth defects. So, all these point to the reality of reincarnation of some conscious being which goes from one body to another, which is what carries the impressions, the recollections and which is what enables a particular person to behave in a particular way.
So, what are we meant to learn and grow through reincarnation? As I said, we all have a longing for eternal life. So, we are meant to use our human life to enquire about life’s eternal side and direct our consciousness, our heart towards that eternal. So, to the extent we learn about spiritual knowledge and practise spirituality, to the extent we can grow spiritually and we can go to an eternal life.
The reincarnation which goes on and on is meant to culminate in an eternal existence. And not just you or me or some special souls, but every single soul, every single life form, be it a tiny microbe, an amoeba, or a small fish in a particular pond or an elephant or any other bird in the sky, every single one of them is entitled for eternal life. And we humans have the opportunity to explore life’s spiritual side and then as we direct our consciousness towards the eternal, we progress towards the eternal.
So, reincarnation helps us make sense of why we have different starting points in life and more importantly, what is the point of life? What is life meant for ultimately? That is to grow, to learn and grow so that we can attain lasting life and lasting love. So, I’ll summarise. I spoke today on the topic of reincarnation.
I started by talking how there is something inside us which can captivate us much more than the world outside us. Like looking at the sky but getting caught with the thoughts. So, different kinds of thoughts pop up inside us on our inner screen.
So, what determines what kind of minds we have? And conversely, what determines what kind of bodies we have? It is sometimes, it may be our association or upbringing, but even twins have different personalities. So, when we look around the world, whenever we see an effect, we want to look for a cause. If there is a disease, if there is a scar, we want to know what is the cause.
And science also progresses by looking for cause-effect correlation. So, then if you want to look for the cause-effect correlation of why we all have different starting points, why different bodies, different minds, different social situations, different economical situations, financial situations, then there are three explanations. Either it’s all by arbitrary chance or it is by arbitrary God or it is a multi-life progression where we start in this life from where we were in the previous life.
And arbitrary chance makes it, it’s a doctrine of helplessness. And that’s not the way we work in the world. Arbitrary God makes it very difficult to devote ourselves to such a God.
But if you want to look at a multi-life progression, then we can make more sense of why we are where we are in starting our life and what happens to us during the course of our life. And then when we look for an explanation, it’s like if a disease, if a doctor sees a symptom, if a disease can explain more and more symptoms, then that disease diagnosis is more likely to be correct. So similarly, not just the question why there is variation in the starting point of our existence, but why is there any existence at all, our existence or the existence of animals and birds.
So the lucky accident idea, the chance idea means that nobody’s existence has any meaning. The idea that we have only one life and our starting point is ordained by one arbitrary God, that makes, okay, our life is meaningful, can be meaningful, but all of our existence is meaningless. So the Bhagavad Gita explains that the difference between us and animals is not in a category as in quality.
Category, we are all souls, but qualitatively the soul’s consciousness is more evolved in humans than in animals. And more evolved means we can ponder something beyond our bodily drives and seek to attain lasting life thereby. And then as a pointer to this, I discuss two evidences.
One is that we all have a longing for eternal life and not just humans, but even animals. This is as unusual as the African boy suddenly wanting pizza. So this longing doesn’t come from our externals, because externally nothing is eternal.
It comes from our internals. And then I talk about past life memories, which have recollections, recognitions, behaviours and birthmarks and birth defects. So all of these point towards the reality of reincarnation and they all point towards, if we accept reincarnation, the universe becomes redefined as a university where we all are meant to learn and grow so that our consciousness evolves towards eternity.
Thank you very much. Hare Krishna. So are there any questions or comments? Yes, please.
So how do animals progress towards becoming human? Basically, if you consider the actions that we do as a bank or you could say a water tank, as a place where something is stored. So we all do some good actions and we do some bad actions. So they all, we could say, it’s called karma, positive karma and negative karma.
So the karma that we have done in the past, that determines where we start off in the present. So in the human form, if we do positive karma, we evolve further. If we do negative karma, then that negative karma determines where, which species we go to and how long we stay there.
So animals, they are largely driven by their instincts. They have freedom, but they have free will, but it’s very little free will. We humans may decide that, I may see a delicious feast in front of me, but if it’s a sacred fast, I may decide I’m not going to eat today.
But if a cat sees a mouse, cat can’t think I’m fasting today. Isn’t it? So it is driven simply by its impulses. So the animals, they don’t have the faculty to do anything special to evolve.
So the animal’s form is basically meant to exhaust karma. So in the animal form, say if karma is not so simple as to be mathematical, it is much more subtle because conscious intentions and other things are involved. But just as a mathematical attribute, if say somebody has a hundred units of karma, negative karma, then say out of that 30 units of negative karma may be meant to be exhausted in an animal world.
And then that will determine for a particular period, in a particular situation, the animal lives in a particular body. Even if somebody is in a dog’s body, say not all dogs live equally happily. Some dogs may be pets of some wealthy masters and some dogs may be street dogs.
So in the dog life also there is variation. But the dogs don’t have the philosophical acumen. Why is life so unfair? It’s difficult for them to think of that.
But in their life they primarily exhaust their karma. And then when there are 30 units of karma which are meant to be exhausted in the animal life, when that is exhausted, then they come to human form. And in the human form, then one can choose consciously.
So if you consciously choose to grow spiritually, then that’s how we evolve. So in the animal forms, the evolution is more or less automatic. They just exist over there.
After their existence gets over, then they move forward to an area where they have greater faculty to execute their free will, to exercise their free will. Our spiritual evolution happens to the extent we use our free will to enquire spiritually. But because in animal bodies, there is not much scope for the free will to probe about spirituality.
So in that sense, it’s mostly exhausting karma, exhausting the past karma till they get to the human form. There is one way, however, if an animal comes in contact with a human being who is spiritual, and by that contact, say there is spiritually sanctified food, the animal eats that food, there are spiritually potent vibrations like spiritual sounds, mantras which they hear, then those, if the animal may not consciously understand what I am doing, but they take this in, that can also accelerate their evolution. Thank you.
Any other question? Yes. Thank you for the question. I just wanted to ask this.
The nature of the material world, the material energy is impermanent. Why is forgetfulness such a strong permanent thing in our lives? Because we see out of maybe 100 or 1000, only 1% or 2% might remember what happened in the past life. But most people, we don’t remember.
And if we say forgetfulness will also follow the curve of the material energy, so if a person is born, then he forgets, but as he is progressing towards old age, his forgetfulness decreases and he can remember, okay, last life I did this, did this. But why is forgetfulness such a strong permanent feature of the human being? So why do we tend to forget our past lives? As I said, each life is an opportunity for a soul to make a new beginning. So right now I am speaking to you.
I am using English words in a grammatically correct way, at least in a grammatical sense. If you ask me, when exactly did I learn English language? When did I learn English grammar? When did I learn English pronunciation? I don’t remember that. But the very fact that I am using the English language means that I must have learned it sometime.
Isn’t it? So for most of us, there are a lot of things which we have learned even in this life, the specific moment when we learned it, we may not remember it. So language is such a vital skill which is such an integral part of us for our communication and yet we don’t remember when we learned it. So basically, even in this life we tend to forget or to speak of previous lives.
And for the soul, each life is meant to be a new beginning and there could be too much cognitive overload if I start remembering. If say, if I see one person and say now if I meet, say, Sanjeev Agarwal and then I may remember I have another friend named Agarwal. But if I had been a hundred lifetimes animate for 500 Agarwals and I remember all of them, I won’t be able to function now.
Isn’t it? So actually, we all have finite capacities to function. But it’s another interesting thing, I did a further research which I have not there, which normally most past life researchers don’t do that. These kids who remember their past lives, I try to find out whether their remembrance of their past life made them spiritual in any way.
Whether it made them become spiritual explorers. So they just accepted that I was someone else in this life, in the previous life. Now I am this one.
But practically none of them became any more spiritually inclined because of their past life recollections. Why? Because that is just a memory that is there. See, our spirituality is much more a function of our intention than our recollection.
Our spirituality is much more a function of our intention. What we desire. One of the most famous cases of this is, when the Titanic sank, so Thomas Andrews was one of the main designers and he was blamed that he did not design the ship properly, that’s why it sank.
And there was another person, Black, who was one of the main financiers, or the arranger of finances. So he escaped, Thomas Andrews sank at that time. So William Barnes was a person who was later born and he claimed that I am the reincarnation of Thomas Andrews.
And he gave a lot of memories. What just happened here, that happened here, that happened there. And he gave one of the most coherent examples, cogent explanations of why the Titanic sank so quickly.
So he said before the voyage started, he was testing the hull and he used a hammer to hammer at various points to see how strong the hull was. At one particular point when he hammered, a resonance started. And as soon as he heard this, he became alarmed and he said, we have to thicken the hull.
But Black said, no, everything is scheduled now, we can’t spend any more time or any more money. So what happened when the iceberg collided, because of a resonance effect, it created multiple cracks. And that’s why the Titanic sank before any rescue could come.
And from the debris that was recovered, his explanation seems to be reasonably among the best. Of why it sank so quickly without going into the specifics of Titanic. The point is that William Barnes is fully convinced I am Thomas Andrews reincarnated.
And there is a fair amount of evidence to substantiate his conviction. But William Barnes has no interest in any spiritual growth. The mission of my life is to clear the good name of Thomas Andrews, which was spiralled by these people who blamed him for the reincarnation.
So basically for us, if we want to grow spiritually, the forgetfulness of the past is not a big obstacle. Even if we remember the past, there is no guarantee that it will make us spiritual. It is our intention which is directed by our intelligence and our association that will make us spiritual.
So remembrance is meant to serve a particular purpose. And if there is too much memory, some people just live too much in the past. And then that memory works against them.
So if we consider if memory is meant to help us function in this life, then remembrance of the past lives can work against that. And for those kids also who remember their past lives, it’s not a pleasant experience. It’s generally, why do they alone remember? So forgetfulness is a normal rule of material existence.
Usually they remember, few kids remember, most often it is because they have had sudden unexpected deaths. So basically if the soul is not able to process the event of death, living normally, suddenly a wound comes, a blow comes, a bullet shot or a knife stabs or whatever, a person suddenly dies. Then the soul is not able to process that event.
And that’s why the soul goes to the next body, but still there is the remembrance. So that is, you know, if you go from one country to another country, say if you go from America to India, a non-stop flight, then there is a significant jet lag. So we could say for some souls there is a transmigration lag.
They go from one body to another body, but if there is no adequate processing of the event of death, then that keeps going on in their mind. And that’s what causes the memories to be recollected. And for many of them, like there is a story of James Leininger, it came on TV on several channels also.
He was a boy who was an incarnation of a pilot from a previous life, a World War II pilot, James. So many of you may have seen that video, it’s there on YouTube also. So now he, this boy used to scream and cry.
And he used to have soul piercing shrieks of horror. What was happening was he was reliving the memory of how he was in the plane and the plane was bombed by the Japanese anti-aircraft missiles. So then the therapist Carol Bowman, her parents did not believe in reincarnation.
They wanted some way to relieve their child of the agony that he was going through. And then as they encouraged him to speak more and more and more, then he started becoming a little more calmer. His nightmares started decreasing.
And finally they took him on a ship to the spot where the Eugena was, where his plane had sank. And there he had like, he was just, he was there at that point, his children and all the rest of them became very scarily silent. And he cried fervently over there, holding on to his mother’s thighs, barring his face, he cried and cried and cried.
And then there was emotional release. And after that practically he never talked about his previous life. So his mother, along with the author, she wrote a book called Soul Survivor, where she describes her experience with the child.
So the point is that remembering our past lives is not natural because forgetfulness is what helps us to move forward in life. And remembering past lives can be quite distressing also. Any other questions? Yes, please.
Thank you. Is there any capacity in it? Capacity in how many reincarnations? How much data can a soul remember? I would say there is a capacity like that because how we remember also is a mystery. Earlier scientists used to think that we have these many neurones, brain cells.
And they used to think that one neurone is associated with one memory. But now as they try to do brain studies, when people have different thoughts, the same set of neurones seem to light up. So it’s not that we have, we certainly have limited capacity to remember, but we all have certain abilities.
And within that we can remember a lot. We may meet some people and not remember their names. But if we love cricket or baseball, we may remember the names of all the cricket players, people whom we may not remember.
So recollection is also a matter of interest, of ability, ability in the terms of what is it that we are good at or sharp at. So some people can remember musical tunes very well, but they forget where the keys are. So basically the memory is a tool.
And we all have a particular kind of tool which we have got by the karma from our past life. And some people, just like some people may have very strong muscles by which they can lift a lot of weight, some people may not have such strong muscles. So similarly, some of us may have more memory, some of us may have less memory.
But there’s no universal capacity limitation for everyone. Thank you. Can I ask just one question? Yeah, please.
I know this has been asked for multiple times. Does the soul feel emotions, pain, or happiness? And the reason I ask this question is that I, just for people who don’t know, I had two foetal surgeries. So I used to operate on my foetus.
So between the ages of 16 to 20 weeks, I would go into the telescope to the mother’s womb and hear the problem in my area. And the moment I touched the needle to the baby’s tummy, the baby would pull back. Now, the baby hadn’t learned the pain because it’s too early for the baby to learn pain.
But there was a reaction. It was not simply a reflex. It was actually the baby felt what I was doing.
So at that time, I always used to feel that it is a pre-learned phenomenon from previous life. And people say that, okay, the mind feels the pain or the mind feels the happiness. But actually, does the soul feel what we are feeling or is it just our body? Okay.
So does the soul feel what we are feeling or is it just the mind or the body? So there is a foetus, and the foetus is operated, even when the foetus is very small, still the foetus reacts to the stimuli. So, okay. Now, ultimately, it is the soul that is the source of consciousness.
Without the soul, there cannot be any experience of anything. In the 13th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, 21st, 22nd verse, if you look at it, 21st verse, Krishna says, kārya kāraṇa kartrūtve hetu prakṛtir ucyate puruṣaḥ sukha-duḥkhānāṁ bhoktrūtve hetu ucyate He says that, that action and reaction, kārya and kāraṇa, the cause and the effect, they happen in the arena of material nature. hetu prakṛtir ucyate But puruṣaḥ sukha-duḥkhānāṁ, the happiness and distress that we experience, they happen because of bhoktrūtve hetu ucyate, because of the consciousness being invested in matter with the desire to enjoy.
So, if I give the example of a screen, say, there are two people who are talking and at the same time a cricket match is going on. Now, one of them is a cricket fan, the other is not interested in cricket match. Now, something suddenly happens, a very good batsman gets out suddenly.
The person who is a cricket fan, for them, hey, what happened? For them, there is a lot of emotional agitation over there. For the person who is not a cricket fan, well, it doesn’t matter. So, what has happened on the screen is what is happening by its own nature.
There is some action happening on the field, but what emotion the person experiences depends on how much the consciousness is invested over there. So, now, at one level, nothing has happened to the spectator who is sitting in their own house. They are just as safe and as comfortable as they were earlier.
But because of the investment of consciousness, they are disturbed. So, similarly, for the soul, when the consciousness is invested into the body, whatever happens associated with the body affects the soul. So, in the soul’s originality, the soul is unaffected.
That means the soul is always indestructible and in that sense the soul is not affected by the body, by anything that is happening to the body. But the soul’s consciousness does get invested in the body. And this investment of consciousness can be at various levels.
Say, right now, if you are awake and I bring a log of fire close to you, you will fend it off. Now, if you are asleep, at that time I bring a log of fire next to you. Now, you may not be conscious that a log of fire is coming on to me, but still there is some level of consciousness which is there.
Either you will try to push it away or you will try to move aside. Say, if you feel cold, right now, when you are awake, you may try to put a blanket around us or wear some coat. In night also, if we feel cold, we will look for a blanket.
So, that time, we are not conscious, in the sense that we are not consciously aware of what we are doing. But still we are doing something. So, in that sense, from the spiritual perspective, unconsciousness is not lack of consciousness.
Unconsciousness is also a state of consciousness. I am using unconsciousness in a very generic sense, not in a medical sense. But say, if we are asleep, we can say we are unconscious at that stage, to some extent.
But there is some consciousness over there. Similarly, for the foetus, at that time, the soul’s relationship with that body begins the moment conception occurs. But the soul may not be very clearly conscious of what is happening.
In fact, when a child is born, and for some days or some weeks, the child doesn’t even understand that there is someone called a mother. The child just puts his mouth somewhere, some nice liquid is coming and drinks from there. As the child starts growing, this is my mother and she loves me.
So, there is consciousness enough to suckle the breast of the mother. But there is not consciousness enough to understand that this breast belongs to a person and the person loves me. So, we could say that their consciousness is at various grades.
So, from the moment the soul contacts the body, which is, even when the soul is in a unicellular body, the sperm and the egg unite and the zygote is formed. From that moment, consciousness is there. But it is not exactly, you could say, conscious consciousness.
If there could be a word like that. So, that’s why there is an instinctive recoiling to pain. So, when you touch something, it moves.
Like if we are sleeping also, if somebody touches something hot to us, it’s too cold, we’ll try to move somewhere that is less cold. So, like that, the soul, even at that time, because the identification of the body has already happened, the investment of consciousness in the body has already happened, there is some consciousness. And for all practical purposes, we can say that the soul experiences pleasure and pain.
But there are two different perspectives depending on what is the focus. So, if you want to talk about the transcendence of the soul, we may say that actually the soul does not experience anything. And the Bhagavad Gita talks about that angle also.
yatha aakashya sthito nityam no, yatha sarva-gatam saushyad aakashyam nopalipatti sarvatra avasthuto dehe thatma nopalipatti So, the sky exists far above and the clouds come and go, the storms come and go, the traffic comes and goes, all that doesn’t affect the sky. Similarly, the soul exists different from the body. And whatever happens, it doesn’t affect the soul.
That’s one perspective. But the same Bhagavad Gita also tells us, in the same chapter, this is 13.34 and 13.9, the same Bhagavad Gita tells us, janma-mrtyu-jarāvyādhi-duḥkha-doṣānudarśanam See that old age, disease, death, these are serious problems of life. And think of how we can rectify them.
So, in terms of contemplation to understand the soul’s transcendence, we contemplate, actually the soul is not affected by all this. But in terms of doing practical action, we have to recognise that right now, my consciousness is invested in the body, and this is causing me distress. Therefore, I need to follow a process by which I can disinvest my consciousness from the body and invest it in something higher.
Normally, many spiritual paths, they make it a two-stage process. First, disinvest your consciousness. That is the path of say, you could say Buddhism or impersonalism, just become desireless, become emotionless.
Whereas bhakti helps us to use the body to invest our consciousness in something higher. So, I have speaking ability, I have singing ability, I have artistic ability, that’s where my consciousness is invested. So, instead of just saying, oh, all art is just temporary, it’s all illusion, all speech is just ultimately the sound vibration, instead of that, use this to direct yourself spiritually.
You have interest in speaking, speak spiritually. You have interest in painting, paint something spiritual. So, we use the consciousness invested in the body to invest it in something higher.
And as we keep investing our consciousness in something higher, then we become attached to that higher reality, we become attached to Krishna. And then we can connect with Krishna even when the body is not there to connect with. So, if by speaking about Krishna, singing about Krishna, my consciousness becomes attached to Krishna, if I tomorrow get some stroke which makes me unable to speak, then still I will be able to think about Krishna.
But I can’t suddenly deny the reality of bodily phenomena. So, we accept that they are real, and then we take real steps to redirect our consciousness higher. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Let’s give a big thank you to S.K. Chaitanya Chowdhury.
I haven’t had such a wonderful presentation of reincarnation so far. What we also have is, we have a few books, and these are written by Chaitanya Chowdhury and Prabhu. So, what we’ll do is, we’ll have them for you, and what you can do is, you can leave them with us, and we’ll give it to you, and whatever’s left, we’ll give them back to you tomorrow or something.