I am not this Body - Easy to say…

I am not this Body

The body is a machine, like a motor car is a machine. I am within this body as the driver is within the motor car.

Now the motor car has many needs. It needs gas, it needs oil, it needs to have it’s tires pumped up and so on. But if one forgets the driver in the car and simply concentrates on the machine and the needs of the machine the driver will not be satisfied.

He will be sitting in the car starving. Because the food of the driver is different from the food of the car. You can not feed the driver gas. His food is different.

So we are the driver of this body. This body has so many needs, but these bodily needs are different from our needs, we are the driver of the body, the soul within the body, “the ghost in the machine…”

So our idea is to satisfy the bodily needs only as much as necessary to maintain the body in a healthy condition and spend the rest of our time and energy in spiritual activities which help us to reawaken our original spiritual consciousness, these are our real needs, the needs of the soul.

It is not that we do not eat, or sleep, or have sex or defend, but these things are done in a regulated way to maintain the body in a healthy condition. But as the motor car is simply a vehicle which is meant to transport the driver to his destination, we see this material body as a vehicle which can be used to transport the driver–the soul–to his ultimate destination: back home, back to Godhead.

If we spend all our time trying to satisfy the senses of our body we will waste all our time and energy in this way and become completely distracted from the real purpose of life which is to get out of this material world and get back home to the spiritual world where we will get an eternally youthful spiritual body full of knowledge and full of pleasure… Then we will really be happy…

Please let me know what you think.

Chant Hare Krishna and be happy!

Reincarnation - FAQ

Reincarnation

Answers to common questions people have about reincarnation.

Common questions people have with the concept of reincarnation

1. How many people believe in reincarnation?
Statistics world-wide are difficult to obtain, but in the US the Gallup Organization made a survey in October 2001 of Americans’ belief in psychic and paranormal phenomena. For this survey, they asked adults 18 and over amongst other things if they believed in “Reincarnation, that is, the rebirth of the soul in a new body after death”. In the results, 25% said they did believe in reincarnation, 20% didn’t know, 54% didn’t believe in it and 1% had no opinion. Belief was only slightly higher among males than females, while it varied significantly between age groups: belief amongst 28-29 year-olds was at 25%, 30-49 year-olds were at 22%, while people 50 and over were at 28%

2. Is there any evidence at all suggesting life after death?
Scientists investigating ‘near-death’ experiences say they have found evidence to suggest that consciousness can continue to exist after the brain has ceased to function.
More details: news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/986177.stm

3. Is there a scientific basis for reincarnation?
Any biologist can tell that our body’s cells are constantly dying and being replaced by new ones and every seven years we change the complete set of cells that means we change our body every seven years but this change is so gradual that it’s imperceptible. So, each of us has a number of “different” bodies in this very life. The body of an adult is completely different from the body the same person had as an infant. Yet despite bodily changes, the person within remains the same. In other words, we reincarnate even in the course of one lifetime. Something similar happens at the time of death, when this body cannot be worked any more, the self undergoes a final change of body.
Therefore Krsna says:

“As the embodied soul continuously passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth, and then to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death” (Bhagavad-gita 2.13)

He further says:

“As a person puts on new garments, giving up old ones, similarly, the soul accepts new material bodies, giving up the old and useless ones” (< ahref=http://www.asitis.com/2/22.html>Bhagavad-gita 2.22)

Forensic Evidence of Reincarnation: Indian forensic scientist Vikram Raj Singh Chauhan is trying to prove reincarnation is real. He has presented his findings at the National Conference of Forensic Scientists in India. More details: http://science.krishna.org/Articles/2002/10/025.html

4. So why can’t everyone believe in reincarnation?
Lord Krsna explicitly says- “Some look at the soul as amazing, some describe him as amazing, and some hear of him as amazing, while others, even after hearing about him, cannot understand him at all. The foolish cannot understand how a living entity can quit his body, nor can they understand what sort of body he enjoys under the spell of the modes of nature. But one whose eyes are trained in knowledge can see all this. The endeavoring transcendentalists, can see all this clearly. But those whose minds are not developed cannot see what is taking place, though they may try to” (Bhagavad-gita 2.29, 15.8-10)

5. If people remember a past life as a foreigner, why can’t they remember their past life language?
A Russian woman who claims to be able to speak 120 languages says many of them are from her previous lives.Linguists claim to have identified that she speaks 16th century English,Chinese, Persian, Egyptian, Mongolian, Vietnamese, Korean and Swahili, reports Komsomol’skaya Pravda.

6. If there’s only a fixed number of souls, how has the world population increased?
This is often heard from people who don’t believe in reincarnation. why such people really expect that there is a limit to life in the universe. It is interesting to note that as man’s population has increased, the animal kingdom has gradually been decimated – and that is where some mystics say human souls gradually evolve upwards from. Also of note, highly advanced Yogis state that life exists on many other places in the unlimited expanse of the universe, in which case the planet Earth would be only one of many places for souls to inhabit. In the Vedic literature, our universe with innumerable planets throughout the galaxies is comparable to a grain of mustard seed in a bag full of mustard seeds.

7. Do people reincarnate as animals and vice-versa?

An popular reincarnation myth posits that the soul, once attaining a human form, always comes back in a human body in the next life and never reincarnates in a lower species. We may reincarnate as humans, but we could come back as dogs, cats, hogs, or lower species. There is no scientific or scriptural evidence anywhere for this fanciful “once a human, always a human” notion, which runs contrary to the true principles of reincarnation, principles that have been understood and followed by millions of people since time immemorial.
So Lord Krsna says:

“When one dies in the mode of goodness, he attains to the pure higher planets. When one dies in the mode of passion, he takes birth among those engaged in fruitive activities; and when he dies in the mode of ignorance, he takes birth in the animal kingdom”(Bhagavad-gita 14.14-15)

8. What factors decide the type of body in the next incarnation?
The type of body one gets in his next life will be determined by the type of consciousness he develops in this life and by the immutable law of karma. Krsna Says –
“Whatever state of being one remembers when he quits his body, that state he will attain without fail”(Bhagavad-gita 8.6)

9. So do people undergo sex changes in next birth?
Sex Change Without Surgery: As already explained, a person gets his next life’s birth according to what he thinks of at the time of death. If someone is too attached to his wife, naturally he thinks of his wife at the time of death, and in his next life he takes the body of a woman. Similarly, if a woman thinks of her husband at the time of death, naturally she gets the body of a man in her next life. –Srimad Bhagavatam (3.31.41)

10. Does everyone just keep reincarnating forever?
The sages of ancient India tell us that the goal of human life is to escape from the endless cycle of reincarnation. Don’t come back, they warn. One can break the cycle of rebirth by breaking free of the bonds of karma. Karma is what entangles us and continues the soul’s revolving in the cycle of repeated birth and death. Piety and its rewards are bound to make us inadvertently commit some act of impiety, because that is the nature of this material world which is full of inebrieties. Only pure spiritual activity frees us from the cycle of repeated birth and death. In bhagavad gita (14.20), Lord Krsna tells that one has to transcend even the mode of goodness to become free from birth and death” . He tells us how to transcend the modes of matarial nature– Those engaged in full devotional service, at once transcends the modes of material nature. Thus being engaged in devotional service and always meditating upon Me, who has fixed his mind upon Me, for him I am the swift deliverer from the ocean of birth and death, but those who are not faithful on the path of devotional service cannot attain Me, but return to birth and death in this material world (bhagavad gita 14.26,9.3,12.6-7).

11. But what is the problem if one keeps reincarnating forever?
The real goal of understanding reincarnation is to become free from the painful cycle of birth and death. This is not a very good business–to die and take birth again.
The great sage Kapila Muni informs his mother about the true nature of the death experience: “In that diseased condition, one’s eyes bulge due to the pressure of air from within, and his glands become congested with mucus. He has difficulty breathing, and there is a rattling sound within the throat. He dies most pathetically, in great pain and without consciousness.” (Srimad Bhagavatam 3.30.16–18)

But taking birth in the material world is no picnic either. For months the human fetus lies cramped within the darkness of the womb, suffering severely, scorched by the mother’s gastric fire, continually jolted by sudden movements, and feeling constant pressure from being contained in the small amnion, or sack, which surrounds the body in the womb. This tight, constricting pocket forces the child’s back to arch constantly like a bow. Further, the unborn child is tormented by hunger and thirst and is bitten again and again all over the body by hungry worms in the abdominal cavity, and what makes the situation even worse, when mother kills the children within the womb, which is not uncommon nowadays. Birth is so excruciating, the Vedic literatures say, that the process eradicates any past-life memories one may have retained.

12. So after we die, there’s no eternal heaven?
There is certainly a eternal spiritual sky. This information is there in Bhagavad Gita. Krsna says:
Yet there is another nature, which is eternal and when all in this world is annihilated, that part remains as it is, and that is the supreme destination (Bhagavad-gita 8.20)

But to reach that place, requires certain qualification — Just like we require the same qualification as prime minister to enter PMO, so we need godly qualities to enter the kingdom of God. We can acquire such godly qualities by living in association of saintly persons, discussing about God and chanting His holy name, the way iron rod acquire all the qualities of fire when placed in fire. This is the secret. Therefore Krsna says:

He, who practice to remember Me, undeviated from the path, and at the time of death, quits his body, remembering Me alone, at once attains My nature. After attaining Me, the great souls never return to this temporary world, which is full of miseries- wherein repeated birth and death take place, because they have attained the highest perfection — (Bhagavad-gita 8.5,7,15)

13. How do I know that someone, after death, has reincarnated or gone to spiritual world?
There are two ways of passing from this world–one in the light and one in darkness. When one passes in light, he does not come back; but when one passes in darkness, he returns. Those who pass away from the world during the influence of the fiery god, in the light, at an auspicious moment, during the fortnight of the moon and the six months when the sun travels in the north, don’t come back, but who passes away from this world during the smoke, the night, the moonless fortnight, or in the six months when the sun passes to the south, again comes back — (Bhagavad gita 8.24-26)

What is Re-Incarnation ?

Re-Incarnation

HINDUISM: THE PROBLEM OF SUFFERING:
Swami Adiswarananda, Ramakrishna-VivekanandaCenter, New York

Why is a soul born on earth, and why does it suffer? What happens to it after death, and what is its destiny? Why are there inequalities between one person and another? According to Hinduism, the idea of complete annihilation of the soul after death is inconsistent with the concept of a moral order in the universe. If everything ends with death, then there is no meaning to life. Nor is the view that the soul is created at birth and then becomes eternal at death reasonable, for anything that has a beginning will also have an end. Further, this view does not explain the obvious inequalities among people.

Re-Incarnation

Clearly, all are not born equal. Some are born with good tendencies, some with bad; some strong, and some weak; some fortunate, and some unfortunate. Moreover, all too often the virtuous suffer and the vicious prosper. One cannot attribute these injustices to the will of God or to some inscrutable providence, because such a concept belies any belief in God’s love for His beings. These glaring differences cannot be considered the mere results of chance happening; for if such were the case, there would be no incentive for moral or material improvement.

Then, heredity and environment, although they explain the physical and mental characteristics of an individual partially, do not explain inequalities satisfactorily. Nor does the doctrine of eternal happiness in heaven, or eternal suffering in hell, answer this question. Everlasting life in terms of time is self-contradictory. The dwellers in heaven, endowed with subtle or spiritual bodies, are still subject to embodiment and therefore cannot be immortal. The idea of eternal damnation for the mistakes of man’s brief earthly career contradicts justice and reason. The inequalities and sufferings of life cannot be set right by readjustments after death, because what happens after death cannot be verified. The conditions on the two sides of the grave are different, and the dead never come back to testify to their afterlife conditions.

        HINDUISM: REBIRTH AND THE LAW OF KARMA 

Hinduism contends that the cause of suffering and inequalities must be sought not in what happens after death, but in the conditions before birth, and puts forward the doctrine of rebirth. Rebirth is the necessary corollary to the idea of the soul’s immortality. Death is a break in the series of continuing events known as life. Through death the individual soul changes its body: “Even as the embodied Self passes, in this body, through the stages of childhood, youth, and old age, so does It pass into another body.” A knower of the Self can witness the passing of a soul from one body to another at the time of death: “The deluded do not perceive him when he departs from the body or dwells in it, when he experiences objects or is united with the gunas; but they who have the eye of wisdom perceive him.”

Rebirth, Hinduism maintains, is governed by the law of karma. According to this law, man is the architect of his own fate and maker of his own destiny. Karma signifies the way of life, that is, what we think, say, and do and it brings conditioning of the mind, the root cause of embodiment. It is the mind that produces bodies, gross or subtle. Remaining identified with the body-mind complex, the soul, though ever-free, follows its destiny and, as it were, experiences all pairs of opposites, such as birth and death, good and evil, pain and pleasure. Patanjali (the teacher of the Yoga system), in one of his aphorisms, describes the causes of suffering as five: ignorance, ego-sense, attachment, aversion, and clinging to life. Reality is neither good nor evil. There is nothing in the universe which is absolutely good or absolutely evil, that is to say, good or evil for all time. Good and evil are value judgments made by the individual mind in keeping with its inner disposition caused by past karma. If one asks, why does God permit evil, then the question will come, why does God permit good? According to the Hindu view, good is that which takes us near to our real Self, and evil is that which creates a distance between us and our real Self. The law of karma is the law of automatic justice. It tells us that no action goes without producing its result. The circumstances of our present life, our pains and pleasures, are all the results of our past actions in this existence and in countless previous existences. As one sows, so shall one reap. This is the inexorable law of karma. Karma produces three kinds of results: (a) results of past actions which have produced the present, body, mind, and circumstances; (b) results which have accumulated but are yet to fructify; and (c) results that are being accumulated now. Over the first category of results no one has any control; these are to be overcome by patiently bearing with them. The second and third kinds, which are still in the stage of thoughts and tendencies, can be countered by education and self-control. Essentially, the law of karma says that while our will is free, we are conditioned to act in certain set ways. We suffer or enjoy because of this conditioning of our mind. And conditioning of mind, accumulated through self-indulgence, cannot be overcome vicariously.

A Hindu is called upon to act in the living present, to change his fate by changing his way of life, his thoughts and his actions. Our past determines our present, and our present will determine our future. He is taught that no change will ever be effected by brooding over past mistakes or failures or by cursing others and blaming the world or by hoping for the future. To the contention that the law of karma does not leave any scope for the operation of divine grace, Hinduism’s answer is that the grace of God is ever flowing equally toward all. It is not felt until one feels the need for it. The joys and suffering of a human individual are of his own making. Good and evil are mind-made and not God-created. The law of karma exhorts a Hindu to right actions, giving him the assurance that, just as a saint had a past so also a sinner has a future. Through the doctrine of rebirth and the law of karma, Hinduism seeks an ethical interpretation of life. The theory of the evolution of species describes the process of how life evolves. But the purpose of this evolution can be explained only by the doctrine of rebirth and the law of karma. The destiny of the soul is immortality through Self-realization. Existence-knowledge bliss-absolute being its real nature, nothing limited can give it abiding satisfaction. Through its repeated births and deaths it is seeking that supreme fulfillment of life.



[Copyright Swami Adiswarananda]