Demystifying Reincarnation 18 – Common Questions about Reincarnation

Everywhere. Thank you. Hare Krishna.

Hare Krishna. Welcome back to the series on demystifying reincarnation. We are now in the midst of understanding the mechanism of reincarnation and addressing some of the objections or doubts about reincarnation.

So, we discuss the mechanism of reincarnation, which involves soul's departure from its previous body, its journey to the next body and its entry into that body. Now, the question may come up after the soul gives up one body and goes to the next body. What determines which body it will get? So, the essential principle that determines it is the karmic score of the soul.

Before we go into the concept of karma and a karmic score, let's focus on some Upanishads. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad itself gives two examples of how the soul transmigrates. Now, reincarnation and transmigration are related words, but in them, the emphasis is different.

In reincarnation, the focus is on the soul's entry into a body. So, the focus is on this body and how the soul came into that body. Whereas in transmigration, the soul's focus is on the journey, that the focus is on the journey of the soul from one body to another to another.

So, the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad says that just as the caterpillar, which is there on one leaf, he wants to go on to another leaf. So, it leaves this leaf partially, grasps the next leaf and then lets go of this leaf. Similarly, the soul leaves this body.

By that time, its consciousness is prepared itself or by its consciousness, as per its consciousness, nature has prepared for it a new body and then the soul goes into that body. And this process is meant to be evolutionary, it is meant to take us upwards. So, just as a goldsmith takes a lump of gold and then fashions it into something more attractive.

There might be a slab of gold from which the beautiful necklace may be made or a ring may be made. Similarly, the soul leaves its present body and that soul has lived in that body judiciously. The soul gets for itself a new body, a better body.

In this way, there is transition that is inevitable. There is evolution that is desirable. And both of these are meant to happen.

Transition is what happens from species to species. Evolution happens based on our choices. Now, we need to understand that for the soul, the body is essentially a dress.

So, वासांसि जीरणानिय था विहाय नवानि ग्रहनाति नरोपराणि था शरिदानि विहाय जीरणानि अन्यानि संयाति नवानि देही So, it is said that, just as a person gives up old dress and takes on a new dress, soul gives up one body and takes up another body. Now, this point is, earlier we have discussed this to stress the difference between the body and the soul. Now, we can use it for another point that when we have a particular dress that has got worn out and then we want to get a new dress, on what criteria is a dress that we get decided? One is our budget and the other is our liking.

Similarly, the soul gets its next body based on its desires and its karmic budget. So, depending on the soul's actions in a particular life, the soul gets the next body. Now, when we say the karmic score, it refers to the sum total of the consequences of the actions that the soul has done.

Certain actions acquire positive consequences, lead to positive consequences, certain actions lead to negative consequences. And a soul with a negative karmic score means that the soul has done more of the actions that attract negative consequences than the actions that attract positive consequences. And conversely, the soul with a positive karmic score refers to that soul who has done more actions that lead to positive consequences than the actions that lead to negative consequences.

So now, this karmic score is like our budget. The bigger our budget, the better the clothes that we can get. Similarly, if our karmic score is positive, then we as souls get a new, better body.

If the karmic score is negative, then we get a lesser body. Now, what exactly do we mean by better or lesser bodies? Actually, this better or lesser bodies, it is from both material and spiritual perspectives. Some people are good looking, some people are mediocre looking, some people are healthy, some people are sickly.

There are different kinds of bodies and people get these different kinds of bodies based on their karmic score. And this variation in the kind of bodies that we can get, it applies not only to the human species, but also to the non-human species. Earlier, we discussed about how the scope of reincarnation extends beyond the human, the subhuman species also.

The Vedic taxonomy, the Vedic system of classification envisions nature as comprising 8.4 million species. So, there are 0.9 million species of aquatics, there are 2 million species of plants, 1.1 million species of insects and reptiles, 0.1 million species of birds, 3 million species of beasts, and 0.4 million species of humans. So, if we consider here that this is a progressive analysis of the species, and the soul transmigrates from one species to another based on its karmic score.

And it is significant that the Vedic taxonomy states that the soul migrates through all the species, and when talking about species, it refers to humans as 0.4 million species. This implies that humans are not just one species. Now, in biology, the current human species is called as homo sapiens.

It is considered to be one species. Now, the classification that is given in the Vedic text is not based on biological characteristics alone. It is based on subtler criteria of consciousness.

That means that in the human species itself, although the species offers us more developed consciousness, develops the capacity for metaphysical inquiry, not all human beings have the same level of that capacity, and not all human beings use that capacity which they have, leave alone develop it. So, depending on how much metaphysical awareness or interest in metaphysical consciousness that the species, that the humans exhibit, humans can themselves be classified into 0.4 million species. So, the word species is similar in biology and philosophy, in the Neeta's philosophy, but the implication is different.

And in this process of spiritual evolution of the soul from one species to another, the soul's journey through the lower species is automatic. Automatic in the sense that based on the karmic score of the soul in a human species, the soul is having some negative karmic score that will go down to the lower species. And then from there, it will rise upwards, upwards, upwards progressively.

It will come to the human species. And the human species is like a juncture. From here, the soul can go in different directions.

It can go upward, it can go downward, it can stay where it is stagnating, or it can get out completely. So, now it's interesting over here that the soul, it can not only go up, but it can also go down, even when it is in the human species. Some people say that the reincarnation of the soul is only progressive, it is never regressive.

That means they acknowledge that animals also have souls, and they say that the souls will evolve from the animal species to the human species. But thereafter, say once the soul has attained the human species, they argue that the soul has crossed over to a higher threshold of awareness. And from there, it will not regress, it will not come down.

They say once we are humans, we will never go back to animal species. However, this assertion is counter-logical. Why? Because the whole rationale for the transmigration of the soul is to facilitate the soul's exploration of its various desires.

The soul has been given free will, and we in the human species have the advanced intelligence to put this free will to maximum use. So, when we use this free will to learn to direct our consciousness towards the eternal, then we attain the eternal. That is like putting the investment for getting maximum returns.

But there are some human beings who don't care about metaphysical inquiry. Instead of exploring the eternal, instead of trying to understand the higher values and purpose of life, they stay caught in the immediate. They stay caught in desiring pleasure in the here and now.

When that happens, when they stay caught in desiring pleasure in the here and now, then actually they are living not at the level of human consciousness, but at the level of animal consciousness. It is said that humans and animals have four activities in common. So, eating, sleeping, mating and defending.

So, these four are common to humans and animals. But humans can inquire beyond this, the ultimate purpose of life, to understanding what our actual nature is and to harmonizing with that essential nature. When humans don't do this, when humans stay caught in the activities of eating, sleeping, mating and defending, that means they're not using the privilege of the human body they have.

And the body is an arena given by the soul for playing out its desires. So, for example, say in the human body, some souls want to gorge indiscriminately on various kinds of food. Say they want to eat a lot of flesh.

Human body biologically is not suited for flesh eating. Now, those who want to gorge on flesh, nature sees their desire and nature says that, okay, this is your desire. I will provide you a tool that is more suitable for your desire.

And accordingly, they go down, they are given the body, say of a lion or a tiger. There, the fangs, the claws, all those, the talons, they are all much more suited for flesh eating. So, the idea is, if the process of transmigration is based on the desire of the soul, but is partially, then if the soul desires in the form to enjoy subhuman pleasures, to devote oneself to the enjoying of bodily pleasures, in such a soul, its desire has to be facilitated.

And the way it is facilitated is by giving the soul a subhuman body. So, in that way, it's understood that the transmigration is not just progressive, it can be regressive also. If the soul has regressive desires, the soul goes down to lower levels of existence, lower strata of existence.

And at this point, of course, we don't have to go down, we can also rise upwards. From the human level, we can go to the eternal level. Before we go towards that, let's explore some common objections to reincarnation, some common questions about reincarnation.

So, the most common objection is that, if we have lived before, why can't we remember our past lives? It's a very valid question. And let's look at the phenomena of memory itself in the beginning. Now, is recollection the only or the necessary evidence of reality? Now, if we ask a friend, what were you doing at this particular time, you know, say at 7.50 pm on February 21 of 2016, just exactly say one year before this moment, you'll get a blank from that person.

Even if you ask, leave alone one year, ask one month before, or even one day before. It's very difficult to remember for most of us. So now, just because we can't remember that something happened, that what happened at that particular time, that does not mean that the time didn't exist.

It's our tendency to forget. And the forgetting of something does not mean its non-existence. Secondly, if we see this forgetfulness is also a psychological device for self-protection.

Often, if somebody goes through a trauma, and that person is not able to forget the trauma, then, or if a person goes through a traumatic event, and then they're not able to forget that event, then that is what they get traumatized by that. And the traumatizing effect continues for a long time. Somebody sees a loud one's murder at close quarters.

And then that scene keeps playing on and on in their head. It can be nightmarish. So many times, a vital thing for healing such people is to give them fresh memories by which they can forget their past memories.

As long as they don't forget those past memories, this can't move onwards in their lives. So nature has provided us with a psychological defense mechanism, and that is of forgetting traumatic memories. So now, among all memories, death itself is a highly traumatic memory.

So suppose we had died during a car accident. And then, if we remember that car accident, every time in our future life when we drove a car, we will be traumatized, we will be paralyzed. And imagine if we have had many, many lives, and each of these lives we have died in different ways, and all those deaths we remember, we would practically be paralyzed in anything that we were doing.

So thus, the remembrance of traumatic events, if it can be pushed into the background so that we don't remember it, that enables us to move on in life. Now, each life is a new opportunity for the soul. And by living in the past, the soul does not move forward.

For the soul to move forward, soul has to move from, look ahead, remember the present and move forward toward the future. So forgetfulness is a psychological defense mechanism. And thirdly, actually, even when some children do remember, much of modern society is prejudiced against reincarnation.

Because of materialistic or other attitudes, many people do not believe in reincarnation. And because of that, when a child starts speaking, even if a child recollects past life, now a child tells, say a small girl tells her parents, mummy, mummy, I want to see my other mummy. What are you talking about? Shut up.

If parents do not believe in it, they'll feel threatened. What is this? What is this nonsense? And now for a child, her whole sense of self-existence, self-worth, self-identity is based on the parents and centered on the parents. And whatever causes children, parents displeasure, the child will tend not to speak a little bit.

But this leads to what is called as the suppression of childhood memories. And the suppression of childhood memories is something which prevents, even if some children do remember, still they don't express and they don't express and over a period of time, those memories go into the background, background and they are forgotten. So, if we consider our innate tendency towards forgetfulness, the psychological defense mechanism of forgetting traumatic events, and the suppression of unpalatable memories, suppression of memories that are disapproved, socially disapproved, familially disapproved, then it is remarkable that even a small number of people are actually remembering their past lives.

That small number itself is significant. Now, we may get the question, okay, if forgetfulness is the norm, then why is there an exception? Why do some people remember their past lives? Actually, that is also because of some peculiar karma. So, just like in this life, we see that our memory power is not uniform for everyone.

And why is there variation? In the sense that some people can have phenomenal memories, they can remember places, events, people, prodigiously and others have embarrassingly short, brief memories. Now, that we understand is a result of past karma. So, some people who have done good karma, they have longer memories.

Some people who have done poor karma, they have got shorter memories. Just as the memory power in this life varies for this life's events also, similarly, for some people, they may have, because of a particular peculiar karma, they can have a memory power that is greater than the normal by which they are able to remember some events from their previous life. Now, this can be good, this can be because of some good karma, this can be because of some bad karma also.

Sometimes to be able to remember one's past life may make one feel special, but remembering past lives, memories can also be traumatic. The children who remember traumatic accidents and deaths in their previous life, they can be very traumatized. That's why I said it's some peculiar karma because of which they are able to remember their past lives.

Now, the question may come up, okay, if we can't remember our past lives, then how do we learn from it? What is the point of it all? If we don't know what we did wrong or what we did right, how will we learn? The process of learning over multiple lifetimes is actually a cumulative learning of essential life lessons about how to live and how to act. It is not about specific memories about particular actions. Now, consider for example, say how we handle boiling water.

Now, we all are instinctively cautious that, oh, this boiling water should not spill on my hand, it will burn, it has scalded me. But if we look back and dredge our memory, how many of us can remember the first time we handled boiling water and we couldn't, we were burned by it, we were scalded by it? Most of us will not be able to remember. Now, does that mean that, now it could be that we ourselves might not have been scalded, somebody else might have been scalded and we would have seen that.

But we may not even remember that. So, but there was some incident by which we learned to handle boiling water carefully. And the important thing is that right now we handle the boiling water carefully.

The important thing is not the specific detail of when we learn that. Or to give another example, consider how we learn, how we use language when we say we are reading. When we are reading, actually speaking, we are processing hundreds of rules of language and grammar, you know, rules about what symbol means what, what shape on a letter in what location means what, how different symbols interpenetrate and they lead to particular kinds of meanings.

All these rules. Now, if we consider while reading all the rules that we use, do we remember the time when we learned all those rules? In fact, if we were to remember all those rules, that would lead to huge overload of our brain and we would not be able to read at all. So, similarly, the point of learning over in our spiritual evolution over multiple lifetimes is not that we have to remember the specifics.

It is that we have to remember the principles. And those principles are internalized as we make choices, meet consequences and make changes. So, by this we gradually move forwards, we learn, we grow.

And thus, the point of the learning is more of an internalized, evolved awareness. There is no specific recollection that is necessary that will cause enormous overload of memory. Another question might come is that what about population explosion? Does that disprove reincarnation? If the number of souls, if all souls are eternal, number of souls is finite, number of souls is fixed, then the population is increasing.

Does that disprove reincarnation? No, not at all. Now, this idea, the population explosion leads to disproval of incarnation, disproval of incarnation, that assumes that souls are present only in human bodies or that souls are present only on the earthly realm. There is soul traffic that is going on throughout the species and throughout the universe.

And therefore, what happens essentially is that at a particular point in history, souls in a particular body may be more. And that's why it may appear as if, say, in today's times, the human population may seem to have increased. And that may mean that that may make us think that, oh, what has happened? But it could well be that the souls from lower species have evolved here or souls from higher realms have evolved over here.

And the important point is that once we remove the assumption of the souls being present only in this realm, then the soul traffic can lead to, just like a traffic from multiple sources can lead to a traffic jam at any place. So like that, a population, a seeming population explosion can occur because of the souls coming from different places. Now, important, another point is that today many souls are making imprudent choices and many people are acting with bad karma.

And one consequence of that bad karma can be that more and more souls are brought together and they all have to struggle for scarce resources. The shortage that is caused by having a large number of souls fighting for a finite number of resources, that could also be a way we are getting a karmic reaction. So there's no way that population explosion in and of itself challenges the idea of soul's reincarnation.

Going further, thus, is reincarnation disproven by genetics? If we say that the soul gets a new body based on its own karma, but then we saw that the children have the characteristics of the parents. So the characteristics of the parent, children, do they come from their parents? Or do they come from the soul's past bad karma or past karma, whatever, good or bad? Actually, genetics and karma are not contradictory, they're complementary. The soul, based on its karma, is placed in a womb where it gets parents which are compatible with its karma.

That means that, say, a soul who has done the karma by which that soul will get good education, have good intellectual development, that soul may well be placed in a parent, among parents who value education and intelligence, and they facilitate the child's intellectual growth, and that's how the child grows to become an intellectual. At the same time, this is not mandatory. We see many of them, we always see exceptions also.

Sometimes there are parents who are geniuses, and the child is not. Parents who are fabulous musicians, they want the child to become a musician, but the child doesn't become. Child has very little musical abilities.

Why is that? If all the characteristics of the parents are just coming from children, of the children are coming from parents, then the parents should always be having those, especially outstanding characteristics the parents have, but it doesn't work like that. Conversely, sometimes geniuses are born in families where not only their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents were mediocre. From the greatest musicians, there was no one with a special music gene in their ancestral line.

That means, usually the soul gets a body which is according to the karma, and that's how the reincarnational lines and the genetic lines match. But in some cases, because of some particular combination of karma, the reincarnational line may draw in a particular which is different from the genetic line, and this difference proves that genes alone is not the cause. And perhaps the most dramatic way of illustrating this is that children of the same parents can often exhibit drastically different characteristics, and not just any children, but even twins.

Twins have different moods, different dispositions, different personalities, and this applies even to identical twins, that means monozygotic twins who are born from a zygote splitting into two after the same sperm, same semen has united with an egg. That means they are genetically not just similar, but identical, and yet they have different personalities. So, all this indicates that the karma of the soul is that these two are different souls with different karma, and although genetically they are identical, still personality-wise, they are different.

So, the human form which we have is an opportunity for the soul. It is the opportunity to come to the zenith of spiritual evolution. If in this human form, we understand that I am eternal and I am meant for eternal life, and we direct our heart, our life, our love towards the eternal, and by directing our love towards the eternal, we attain the eternal.

That is the purpose and perfection of spiritual evolution. In the session, we discussed about the mechanism of reincarnation in terms of what determines our next body. It is our karmic score and our desire.

We discussed also how recreation can be progressive as well as regressive, from lower species to human and from human to lower, and then we discussed common objections to reincarnation. Why can't we remember our past lives? How do we learn if we don't remember our past lives? Why do some people remember their past lives, if not everyone? And genetics of population explosion is through reincarnation. In the next session, we will discuss what are the practical benefits, what are the freedoms that are offered by the reincarnation-centered worldview.

Thank you.