Demystifying Reincarnation 17 – The Mechanism of Reincarnation

We are through purification. Thank you.

Hare Krishna. Hare Krishna. Welcome back to our demystifying reincarnation series.

We will now discuss about the hows and the whys of reincarnation. We discussed about reincarnation from the scientific, historical and philosophical perspectives. And in the last session, we discussed about the soul and Gita's three-level model of the self and how it explains past life memories, near-death experiences and the mystery of consciousness.

Now, let us go deeper and try to understand this worldview. So, the soul is the entity that reincarnates. When we have a basic understanding of the soul, then we can move forward towards understanding reincarnation.

So, W. Somerset Maugham, the English writer in his book, The Razor's Edge states, has it occurred to you that transmigration is at once an explanation and a justification of the evil of the world. The evils we suffer are the result of sins committed in our past lives. We can bear them with resignation and hope that if in this one we strive towards virtue, our future lives will be less afflicted.

So, we discuss about how reincarnation reveals a worldview which is centered on cosmic justice. Before we move on, in the bridge between reincarnation and the soul, we have to consider what is the scope of the reincarnation of the soul. And that leads to the question, which all living beings have souls? Do humans alone have souls or do non-human beings, just animals also have souls? One thing is clear that there is something special about human beings.

What is that speciality? It is the capacity for metaphysical inquiry. In the Christian tradition, it is called as the light of reason, that humans alone have the intellect that is lit by reason. And by that light of reason, by the light of that reason, ultimately one can direct one's consciousness towards God.

So, the soul's potential for self-realization can be actualized in the human form. And the speciality leads, the speciality of the human form leads some people to extrapolate and presume that the soul exists only in human beings. They say that animals, because they lack the capacity for metaphysical inquiry, because their consciousness is so diminished, because there is such a significant difference between humans and animals, therefore, animals cannot have souls, or at least they cannot have souls of the same kind that humans have.

This argument or this extrapolation, it actually conflates, it confuses our humanity with our spirituality. It equates the capacity for metaphysical inquiry with the existence of the soul. However, if we look at a foundational level, how do we know that there is something called a soul at all? The defining difference between matter and spirit is consciousness.

And consciousness, as we discussed earlier, has no materialistic explanation. It is consciousness that comes from a non-material spark. And this consciousness, the capacity to be aware of oneself and aware of one's surroundings, that is not present only in human beings.

That is present even in animals, that is present even in birds, even insects, even microbes. In fact, wherever there is life, there is consciousness. So, if we understand that the non-material side of our being is the soul, and the presence of the non-material side is inferred through the presence of consciousness, then we could infer by this, in this chain of inference, that wherever consciousness is present, there that non-material side, the soul must be present.

And because all living beings have consciousness, therefore all living beings, including the animals, we can infer they have a soul. Now, the Vedic wisdom tradition also says further that actually there is a difference between, there is another way in which we can perceive the presence of soul. How can we know that in a particular matter, in a particular say material body or material structure, a soul is present? We talk about embodied soul and we could conversely, we could talk also about ensouled matter.

Embodied soul means the soul that is present within the body and ensouled matter means matter in which soul is present. We could use that terminology. Now, normally if we look at matter, it undergoes three transformations, not rather, it has three stages, states of its existence.

It is created, it deteriorates and it is destroyed. For example, a house, it is built. After it is built because of the passage of time, because of the weather, because of various factors like that, it starts deteriorating and eventually it is destroyed.

So, all material things go through these three changes, creation, deterioration and destruction. But those which are ensouled material bodies, so they go through three additional phases. There is not only creation or we could call it birth, beginning, there is growth, there is reproduction, there is maintenance, then there is deterioration and there is destruction.

So, if you make a small one BHK house, one bedroom hall kitchen house, it is not going to grow to a three BHK house. It is going to stay as it is. But parents have a small baby and the baby grows up to a fully grown young man.

So, there is growth and this happens in all species, this growth. Then there is reproduction. There is one house or two houses next to each other won't produce a third house.

But we have living beings who reproduce. And then further is maintenance. If the hand of a chair gets cut, the foot of a chair gets cracked, it will not heal itself.

But if our skin gets cut, automatically it heals itself. There is a capacity for maintenance over there. So, these three additional features which are present in ensouled matter, which are not present in normal matter, these also point towards the existence of a soul.

And these three characteristics are also present in animals. And therefore, we can infer, we can conclude that animals also have souls. Animals are actually having souls which are of the same nature as humans.

The difference is not in the presence or absence of souls. It is in the presence or absence of developed consciousness. So, the characteristic of the soul is not the capacity for metaphysical inquiry.

The characteristic of the soul, the defining characteristic is consciousness. And when the soul is adequately evolved, then it exhibits the capacity for metaphysical inquiry. In the beasts, in the animals, the soul's consciousness is underdeveloped.

And because the consciousness is underdeveloped, so the soul cannot perceive, the soul does not have the capacity to perceive spiritual reality, to conceive about the metaphysical realm. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna talks about how the soul is covered at two different degrees. In 3.38, we see that, So, he stated that, that just as fire is covered by smoke, just as mirror is covered by dust, just as a embryo is covered by the womb, so the soul is covered by impurities.

So, what this means is that there are different degrees of coverings. And these different degrees, the Gita commentators explain, refer to different species. In the plants, the soul's consciousness is extremely constricted.

It is the consciousness which is at the level of, that is compared to the embryo in a womb, is very helpless, cannot do anything until it comes out. Then there is a mirror covered by dust that refers to the consciousness of the beasts. So, sometimes the mirror can be so covered by dust that we do not see the mirror at all.

Similarly, the soul and the animal species, they are so covered, their consciousness is so covered that their capacity for metaphysical inquiry is practically not seen at all. And when a fire is covered by smoke, just by a little stoking, the smoke can be removed and the fire blazes forth. This refers to the soul in human consciousness, soul in human bodies.

Sometimes humans also behave in animalistic ways. But if they come in the right association, they are properly stimulated spiritually, then their spiritual faculties start becoming activated. The notion that humans alone have souls is a manifestation of the ideology of anthropocentrism.

Anthropocentrism means that humans are the center of everything. This is a very egocentric notion with the ego being expanded to all of humanity. And actually, if you consider from this perspective that only humans are capable of spiritual inquiry, that humans alone are capable of spiritual growth, humans alone are attainment, then with this ideology, then the whole of the flora and fauna in existence, all the plants and animals, their existence becomes pointless.

They exist for no purpose other than to provide a dramatic setting for the central drama of human redemption. And we see that animals also treasure their life. If a mosquito is under threat of being killed, it flies so briskly, every animal treasures its life.

And to consider that, if you consider the human population as compared to the population of all other living beings, then we would end up with the idea that actually most of life in the existence world is pointless. Because if there is no capacity for spiritual growth, then what is there for life? What is there to live for? We essentially live futilely. We struggle, struggle, struggle throughout our life, struggle fitfully, and then die helplessly and are exterminated out of existence forever.

So the whole of existence of the animal species is reduced down to utter meaninglessness. But actually, this idea results only when we are anthropocentric in our ideologies, in our worldviews. But if we consider the Vedic wisdom tradition, it explains that actually all living beings have souls.

A spiritually informed person sees all living beings based on their spiritual potential. And thus, in those bodies also, the souls are gradually evolving. So spiritual evolution is the driving purpose of all of existence.

And this purpose is not restricted only to the humans. It actually applies even to the animals. Now with this understanding, we can move forwards.

So the scope of reincarnation is not limited only to humans. It encompasses the animals also. They also go through different species, just as we humans can go through different species or rather the souls in human body can go through different bodies.

And so the soul in the animal body also goes similarly through different bodies. Now after understanding the scope of reincarnation, let us move on to the mechanism of reincarnation. Now if you have to analyze reincarnation, there are basically three steps.

When reincarnation, as the word we discussed earlier, inkarna means to come in flesh and re means again, to come again in flesh. So reincarnation will require first step, the soul's departure from the previous body. Then the second is the soul's journey to the next body.

And the third is the soul's entry into the next body. Let us look at these three stages one by one. Now what we normally call as death is actually not a death.

It is simply the separation of the soul from the body. The body is made of matter which is insentient and his body seems to have life as long as the soul is present within it. And what we call as death is simply the soul leaving the body.

Now it is described in the Upanishads that the soul leaves the body through one of the nine holes in the body. The body has nine holes which are related to the senses. There are the two eyes, the two nostrils, the two ears, the mouth, and the two excretory organs.

So among these, the holes from which the soul departs from the body is often indicative of the destination of the soul. That means that the souls who are more morally and spiritually evolved, they depart from the upper seven holes of the body. And this indicates that they are evolving upwards, that they are going to go towards the higher destination.

And souls who are morally and spiritually under-evolved or those who are morally and spiritually degraded, they depart through the lower holes. And that indicates that based on their consciousness, they are going down towards lower species. For the soul, the body is its home.

And the soul does not wish to leave the body, just as we would not want to leave our homes. But just as a person who is a tenant in a house, when their terms of tenancy gets over, when their tenure gets over, they may be forcibly evicted from the house. So like the soul is often forcibly evicted from the body.

And because the soul is attached to the body, therefore, the forcible eviction of the soul from the body is an occasion of immense misery, agony. So thousands of scorpion bites, the kind of pain that would result from them, that pain is what the scriptures compare the pain of death to. So it is an excruciating process, the soul's rupture from the body in which it is, so that it can go to its next destination.

Of course, this applies primarily for the souls who are attached. The souls who identify with their body and think that they are the body and their existence and enjoyment depends on the body, they suffer excruciatingly and they have to leave the body. But the souls who are spiritually evolved, who understand that the body is simply a tool and this tool has served its purpose, either it has taken them already to the destination or now they have to go towards another tool to continue on their journey.

They are not that disturbed. So after the soul exits from the body, the next stage is the soul's journey to the next body. The Garuda Purana explains that actually when the soul departs from the body, the soul does not go alone.

Along with the soul goes the subtle body. So we discussed how our existence is at three levels, the body, the mind and the soul. The soul goes with the mind, so that the previous gross body, it remains behind.

And sometimes when the soul is going from one body to another body, at that time, the soul may get another, we could say a travel body. It is in Vedic terminology, it is sometimes called as Preta. So Preta in common parlance in India often refers to just corpse.

But in the terminology of post-mortem existence, Preta often refers to a travel body or a body that is subtler than the gross body and grosser than the subtle body that the soul is provided for moving from one body to another. Now while the soul is moving thus, the soul may go through many domains. If we study the cases of reincarnation that we see, we have studied, then we find that between reincarnation, between the death of a person and the reincarnation of another person, there can be different time zones, the time durations that may pass.

That is because the soul may go through different realms and at different realms of existence, the time itself may pass at different speeds. And that is why there may be different amounts of time that may go through. And sometimes the soul has done bad karma, has done, has behaved in a morally reproachable way in its previous embodiment.

The soul may also get some consequences. We will discuss about karma and its implications a little later in more detail. So the journey of the soul can also be traumatic.

Sometimes it can be swift, sometimes it can be prolonged, sometimes it can be uneventful, sometimes it can be tormenting. And in some cases, this journey itself may not begin because if the soul is very attached to a body and the soul does not want to leave the body or if the soul's new body is not yet ready, because that soul has destroyed its previous body prematurely as in the case of suicide, then the soul may not get a new body. And that existence of the soul with a subtle body, but without a gross body, that is called an existence as ghosts.

So ghosts are actually beings like us, they are souls like us, but they are souls like us without gross bodies. And because they do not have gross bodies, so they cannot fulfill their desires. So they may desire to eat something, but they do not have the body by which to eat.

And because of that, they are in a state of extreme misery and out of their desperation to fulfill their desires, sometimes they may forcibly encroach into some other body, occupy that body, that is what is called as possession. And then that person may become an instrument, their body, that person's body may become an instrument for the ghost to fulfill its desires. Of course, the topic of ghosts is a whole different subject.

I will go into it later. But suffice it to say that the soul's journey from one body to another can be quite traumatic. And then there is a third stage where the soul enters into a new body.

And when the soul enters into a new body, at that time, how does it happen? It will vary according to body to body. So, in the Bhagavad Purana, the Srimad Bhagavatam is also an important book in the Vedic library. It is a devotional classic, which also gives a lot of metaphysical information about the process of reincarnation.

And there it is stated that, how does the soul enter into a new body? So, under the supervision of divine nature, the soul enters into a womb through the life energy, through the seed of a male. Now, this, of course, refers to the process of reproduction of the soul and getting a body in humans. And similarly, there can be different mechanisms of reproduction, sexual or asexual.

And what is the mechanism of reproduction? The soul is guided to participate appropriately in that mechanism by which the soul ultimately gets a new body. Now, as the soul moves on, actually, the soul gets its new body and it slowly starts identifying with that body. So, now the Bhagavad Purana, as I said, is a devotional classic, but also contains some fascinating information about the life of the embryo in the womb.

And this description, which is given in the Bhagavatam, is actually revelatory about the consciousness of the soul. So, the soul awakens and the soul prays. And this, of course, again refers to a human body.

But the idea is that the soul is conscious, even in the mother's womb, although that consciousness may not be manifest at the biological level. It will become manifest gradually as the soul evolves. And eventually, the soul, when it grows, it gets a new body.

Sorry, when the body grows adequately, the soul emerges out of the mother's womb and that is when we say a person is born. But we may say that that's when the person takes birth. But actually, the soul has got a body right from the time when it enters into the womb and that body becomes manifest to our vision.

That is when we say it takes birth. This is how the process of reincarnation, the mechanism of reincarnation occurs. Now, in our next talk, we'll discuss about what determines the post-mortem destination of the soul and what are the principles that are considered when determining the post-mortem destination.

And then we'll discuss some further doubts, common questions about the process of reincarnation. Suffice it to say, in our class, in our session, we'll discuss today about how the mechanism of reincarnation occurs. Then Bhasti teaches how the soul departs from the body, how the soul travels to the next body and how the soul attains the next body.

And before that, we'll discuss the scope of reincarnation. It is not only through humans, but also encompasses the animals. And thus, we break free using the Gita's worldview from anthropocentrism.

And we see the meaning and purpose in not just human life, but in all life.