Mysteries of Death, Fate, Karma and Rebirth

VII

The Mystery of Rebirth

On a dark but clear moonless night if we gaze at the wide expanse of the sky, billions of star-clusters from millions of galaxies will meet us with their inscrutable silence and lifelessness. Except for one small-sized planet (earth) of a medium-sized star (sun), the whole immensity of the physical universe shows no sign of life anywhere, and that from the beginning of our cosmos since the mysterious moment of the Big Bang. And, relatively speaking, only in the recent past life suddenly sprouted on that one privileged planet and went on flourishing with prolific variety. But why? What can be a greater mystery than that?

But there is a second mystery to confront us. In this teeming kingdom of life upon earth everything organised itself in "units", whether as individual cells or as individual trees and animals or as individual human beings. We ask again why so? What is the purpose behind this formation of "individuality"? The "birth" of the individual is the second mystery of the terrestrial life manifestation.

Now comes the third mystery, a still more puzzling mystery: the mystery of "death". If life appeared upon earth, it could have very well continued without being challenged by any contrary phenomenon! But, strangely, the most mysterious "death" appeared on the scene as if from nowhere and claimed its inalienable right to end every individual life after some time short or long. But why? In Sri Aurobindo's words:

"Birth is the first spiritual mystery of the physical universe, death is the second which gives its double point of perplexity to the mystery of birth; for life... becomes itself a mystery by virtue of these two which seem to be its beginning and its end and yet in a thousand ways betray themselves as neither of these things, but rather intermediate stages in an occult processus of life." (The Life Divine, Cent. Ed., p. 742)

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And death itself does not represent the final process of mystification for us. For, although, in a way, it destroys life, it fails to annihilate the "individual": the individual, at least the individual soul, is "reborn" in the world of earthly manifestation. Thus, "rebirth" is the fourth element of mystery to confound us.

Man has sought to solve these mysteries since the beginning of the recorded history of mankind. Speculations have been galore and various theories and hypotheses have been advanced to no universal acceptance and satisfaction. After all, the solution depends upon the nature, origin and object of the cosmic movement, and as we determine this, so we shall have to conclude about birth and life and death, the before and the hereafter.

The first question we have to answer is whether the before and the after, the situation before the birth of the individual and that after its death, are purely physical. If Matter were the sole principle of the universe and physical energy were its sole "mover", as the Materialist alleges, then no further questions would be possible and we have to wrap up the issue. But, for various valid reasons, which we cannot elaborate here, we cannot accept that Matter is the prime principle and self-existent. We have, therefore, to reject the easy and obvious materialistic solution and fall back upon other hypotheses.

One of these is the religious myth and dogmatic belief of a God who constantly creates immortal souls out of his being and associates them with material bodies, thus vivifying these latter with a spiritual principle.

But this theory involves two paradoxes. Firstly, the hourly creation of beings having a beginning in time but no end in time and, moreover, being born by the birth of the physical body but somehow not ending with the dissolution of that body. Secondly, these individual beings are arbitrarily given a ready-made mass of qualities, virtues, vices, capacities, defects, temperamental and other advantages and handicaps, - not made by them at all through their own growth, but made for them by arbitrary fiat, - yet for which and for the appropriate use or misuse of which they are held responsible by their creator and judged at some stage and rewarded or punished as the case may be.

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Obviously, this hypothesis does not appeal to our rationality and we have to seek for some other theory. Let us see what follows if we start with the postulate that the human soul is eternal and immortal without any beginning or end. But even before that let us see whether the "soul" is real at all or something fictitious.

There are, indeed, two theories which do not admit the immortality of the human soul nor its eternity in time nor even its reality. They start from opposite ends but arrive at the same conclusion. Both these theories start with the fundamental idea that there is an original Unity from which all things in phenomena begin, by which they live and into which they cease at some time or other. Of course, these theories differ as regards the nature of this primal Unity.

One theory asserts that there is a cosmic Inconscient which creates a temporary soul and consciousness which after a brief play are extinguished and go back into the original Inconscient without leaving any trace behind.

The second theory posits a sole-existing Superconscient Reality, the Transcendent Brahman, the eternally unmodifiable Being, which admits through an inscrutable Maya (the power of creative illusion) the illusion of an individual soul-life in the world of phenomenal Mind and Matter which themselves are ultimately unreal. For, as we mentioned at the beginning, the one unmodifiable and eternal Self or Spirit is, according to this hypothesis, the only reality: everything else may be pragmatically existent for some finite interval of time but is never real.

There is a third theory which admits neither the primal Inconscient nor the original Superconscient but a Nihil or Void as the substratum. There is somehow imposed upon this Nirvana an energy of successive becoming, called Karma, which creates the illusion of a persistent individual or soul by a constant continuity of associations. Its simplistic analogy is that of a collection of a thousand honey-bees leaving the branch of a particular tree to move on to a branch of a far-off tree. Now, while in flight, these multiple "bees" (sanskaras, sensations, etc.) give the false impression of an "individual soul" in movement. But if the honey-bees disperse and the artificial group disintegrates, the whole thing vanishes: in the

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same way, if the "glued" sanskaras, sensations, etc. get disbundled, the artificially created fictitious individuality of the human "soul" disappears.

Now, in their practical effect upon the life-problems of humanity, all these three theories are practically one. In all, the apparent soul or spiritual individuality of the creature is not immortal in the sense of eternity in time but has a beginning and an end; it is at best a creation by Nature-Force or by Maya or by Karma or Cosmic Action out of the original Inconscient or Superconscient, and is therefore intrinsically impermanent in its existence. In all three, "rebirth" of the "individual" is either unnecessary or else illusory, for none of these theories assume any ultimate purpose of fulfilment here upon earth. Therefore, a single birth is all that can be asked for by a "conscious being" who is fortuitiously engendered as part of a purposeless creation. Take the analogy of a wave which rises on the surface of the sea, remains in existence for half a minute or so, and then vanishes back into the undifferentiated waters of the sea.

In the way of the wave, an individual being has come into existence in the sea of real or imaginary becoming and will surely founder there and cease to exist. It is not at all eternal, and its only "immortality" is a greater or less continuity in the Becoming. It is not a real and always existent Person who maintains and experiences the ever-unfolding stream of phenomena.

For theories of this kind it is not indispensable that there should be a psychic entity always the same which should persist and assume body after body, form after form, until it is withdrawn from terrestrial manifestation by the cessation of the original impetus which created this cycle. "In none of these theories of existence is rebirth an absolute necessity or an inevitable result of the theory." (The Life Divine, p. 747)

Let us now consider some alternative theories of existence which admit the reality and the immortality of the human soul. But apart from this basic agreement, they differ in many ways among themselves both in their approaches and in their final conclusions. The starting-point of divergence is rather subtle. Let us move slowly in our elucidation.

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If the soul is admitted to be real and immortal in nature, it must also be eternal in time, beginningless in the past even as endless in the future. But even if the individual reality is assumed to be eternal, there remain two separate possibilities. It may be either a changeless self unaffected by life and its turns, or an eternal spiritual Person manifesting a stream of changing personality.

If it is such a person, it can only manifest this stream of personality in a world of birth and death by the succession of successive bodies; that is to say, by constant or by repeated rebirths into the forms of Nature.

Readers must have noted that we have advisedly employed the expression "constant" or "repeated" rebirths. But why mention these alternative procedures?

The reason is that a particular theory may or may not accept a second basic postulate, the postulate of the existence of many other supraphysical worlds of manifestation apart from our well-known physical plane of existence.

If a theory does not accept the existence of any supraphysical realm of manifestation, the terrestrial life and body being the sole fields of activity for the persistent unevolving soul, it has to adopt an idea similar to that of "Pythagorean transmigration". In the Pythagorean transmigration, as we know, rebirth is confined to a constant succession or direct transmigrations of the soul from one body to another; death is supposed to be immediately followed by a new birth without any possibility of an interval. The passage of the soul is thus a circumstance in the uninterrupted series of a material procedure. The soul has no freedom from Matter; it is perpetually bound to its physical instrument, the material body, and dependent on it for the continuity of its manifested existence.

But there is an alternative theory which seeks to avoid this lacuna of the hypothesis of direct and immediate Pythagorean transmigration of the soul. It accepts the existence of many supraphysical worlds of manifestation and the possibility of the human soul moving to these worlds after the dissolution of the physical body. Thus the necessity of constant immediate rebirth is avoided and the soul's capacity for passage to other worlds followed by a subsequent return to terrestrial birth is admitted. But even this modified

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theory does not automatically necessitate for the soul an unending series of repeated rebirths upon earth. For, it may be supposed that the human personality, once capable of attaining to other planes beyond the physical, may not care to return from those supraphysical higher planes but pursue its existence there. In this way it would have finished with its terrestrial life-evolution.

We now come to the theory advanced by the older Adwaitic Vedantism based on the teachings of the Upanishads. This theory admits an actual and temporal becoming of the Eternal and therefore a real universe. The individual too assumes a sufficient reality in this theory, for each individual is in himself the Eternal who supports through him the experiences of life in manifestation.

The continued turning of this wheel of manifestation is due to two factors: the "desire" (tanhā, tṛṣṇā) of the individual for existence and the mind's "ignorance" (avidyā) of the eternal Self. It is this double obstacle which keeps the individual attached and bound to the preoccupations of temporal becoming. Once this "desire" and this "ignorance" cease, the Eternal in the individual withdraws from the mutations of individual personality and experience into the timeless, spaceless, impersonal and immutable Being.

Thus the reality of the individual soul is quite temporary in this theory; it has no enduring foundation, not even a perpetual recurrence in time. "Rebirth," as Sri Aurobindo has pointed out, "though a very important actuality in this account of the universe, is not an inevitable consequence of the relation between individuality and the purpose of the manifestation. For the manifestation seems to have no purpose except the will of the Eternal towards world-creation and it can end only by that will's withdrawal... The will to creation could then accomplish itself through a temporary assumption of individuality in each name and form, a single life of many impermanent individuals." (The Life Divine, Cent. Ed., p. 753)

Here ends our rapid survey of all possible theories of existence and their views regarding the problem of the rebirth of the individual. This shows that "rebirth is a complex affair", as Sri Aurobindo has emphasised in one of his letters. (Letters on Yoga, p. 448)

But this is only a preparatory study. Our real purpose in this

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chapter is to know what Sri Aurobindo's Yoga-Philosophy has to say concerning the problem of rebirth and its purpose and culmination upon earth. The following section will be devoted to this issue and the elaboration will be mostly in Sri Aurobindo's words, although at times abridged and adapted.

Rebirth in the Vision of the Integral Yoga

The universe is a self-creative process of a supreme Reality whose universal presence makes Spirit the substance of all things in existence. All things are there as this Spirit's powers and means and forms of manifestation.

Sachchidananda (an infinite and absolute Existence, an infinite and absolute Consciousness, an infinite and absolute Force and Will, an infinite and absolute Delight of being) is the supreme Reality secret behind all appearances of the universe. Its Supermind (divine Mind or Gnosis) is the real creative agent and has arranged the cosmic order not directly as such but indirectly through the three subordinate and limiting terms of Mind, Life and Matter.

The material universe is the lowest stage of a downward plunge of the manifestation leading to the involution of the manifested being of Sachchidananda into an apparent nescience of itself. But out of this starting nescience the evolution of the manifested being into a recovered self-awareness was from the very beginning inevitable and that is what is happening upon earth.

Now, it is through a conscious individual being that this recovery is possible; it is in him that the evolving consciousness becomes organised and capable of awaking to its own Reality. The immense importance of the individual being, which increases as he rises in the scale of evolution, is the most remarkable and significant fact of a universe which started without consciousness and without individuality in an undifferentiated Nescience. This importance can only be justified if the Self as individual is no less real than the Self as Cosmic Being or Spirit and if both are powers of the Eternal Transcendent. It is only so that can be explained the necessity for the growth of the individual and his discovery of

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himself as a condition for the discovery of the Cosmic Self and Consciousness and of the supreme Reality. Thus the world is real, the individual is real, and the manifestation is real and not illusory without any purpose behind it. There is a great purpose and that purpose is to usher in the full manifestation of the Transcendent Divine in time and space.

And if we adopt this hypothesis, that leads to two important inferences: (i) the reality of the persistent individual; and (ii) the necessity of the rebirth of some kind of the individual for the unfolding of the intended cosmic purpose.

The next conclusion that follows is that human birth of the individual is a term at which the soul must arrive in a long succession of rebirths: it must have had for its previous and preparatory terms in this succession the lower forms of life upon earth; it has passed through the whole chain that life has strung in the physical universe on the basis of the body, the physical principle.

Now the question arises: Once the human birth is attained by the individual soul, does the necessity of rebirth still continue and, if so, how and by what series? But even before that we have to settle a further question: Why a succession of many human births and not one alone? The answer to this second question is simple: For the same reason that has made the human birth itself a culminating point of the past succession, the previous upward series. It is because of the inexorable necessity of the always ascending spiritual evolution:

All life is fixed in an ascending scale

And adamantine is the evolving Law;

In the beginning is prepared the close.

(Savitri, Cent. Ed., pp. 342-43)

Thus the soul has not surely finished what it had to do, by merely developing into humanity; it has still to develop that humanity into its own higher possibilities. We may reasonably doubt whether even a Plato or a Shankara makes the crown of human birth and therefore signifies the end of the outflowering of the Spirit in man. At any rate the present highest point at least must be reached

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by every individual soul before we can write finis on the recurrence of human births for the individual.

But there is something still beyond. For, after the maximum possible human development, man is to move from the ignorance and the little life which he is at present in his mind and body to the Knowledge and the large spiritual life. At least, the opening out of the spirit in him, the knowledge of his real self and the leading of a genuine spiritual life as distinguished from a religio-ethical life, must be attained before he can go definitively and for ever elsewhere.

But even that is not all. Still there is a beyond. For, as the imperfection of man is not the last word of Nature, his spiritual perfection too is not the last peak of the Spirit.

Mind, the present leading principle as man has developed, is not the highest principle. Also, Mind itself has other spiritual ranges as yet only imperfectly possessed by the developed types of the human individual. Therefore, a prolongation of the line of evolution and consequently of the ascending line of rebirth to embody them is inevitable.

And still there is a further beyond. For Supermind, as a power of consciousness, is concealed here in the terrestrial evolution. Therefore, the line of rebirth cannot stop even when the spiritual-mind planes have been possessed. It cannot cease in its ascent before the mental has been replaced by the supramental nature and an embodied supramental being becomes the leader of the terrestrial existence.

This then is the rational and philosophical foundation for the phenomenon of rebirth in earthly life, and this is supported by the spiritual Vision-Experience of the Integral Yoga.

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