REINCARNATION
When man dies and reincarnates, it is his subtle body, still empowered with the Spiritual Self, that reincarnates. The Spiritual Self cannot be separated from anything whatsoever, be it animate or inanimate.
During reincarnation and retaking birth, when the subtle body leaves the physical body, it starts evaluating itself. It starts reviewing its entire journey right from the primal atom or subatomic matter to the present stage where it is.
This review and evaluation take place, and it discovers that it has to take on another body to fulfil the mission of reaching self-attainment.
The physical body lasts for seventy, eighty, ninety, and perhaps a hundred years because it is gross. The grosser the matter, the quicker the destruction or dissolution will be. The subtler the matter of which the subtle body is composed, the longer it takes to dissolve.
Man’s subtle body, or the individual soul, is within from the beginning until the end when he does not need it anymore. As the subtle body has discarded the physical body, in like manner, the spiritual body discards the subtle body.
In spiritual practices, we aim to discard the subtle body. But to give impetus or expression to a man’s subtle body, he needs the physical body. When the need for one lifetime becomes needless, or the physical body has done its work to a certain extent, when it becomes exhausted, when it requires renewing itself, the very subtle body or the individual soul has to reincarnate again.
In the evaluation period, it determines in what circumstances or conditions it has to be born. It might need to learn lessons being born in a wealthy or poor family, in a healthy or perhaps in an unhealthy body. All these conditions are conditions that we have created ourselves.
The composition of the subtle body is also of matter—very fine matter, much, much, much finer than the physical matter. But being so fine, it is also more powerful and more enduring. It contains within itself all the memories of all the lifetimes, and that is why, after leaving the physical body and being on its own, it can view all the experiences objectively. When it objectively views the experiences, a true evaluation can occur.
The birth of any person in any circumstance is no accident. There are no accidents at all. In this evaluation, after discarding the physical body, it also operates upon, or within the framework, within the pattern of certain karmic laws, or a pattern or as a part of a pattern which makes up the entire universe.
THE PROCESS TO SELF-ATTAINMENT
As the physical body disintegrates and returns to its original elements, from dust to dust, we would say the Hindus would say, “From ether to ether,” that is why they cremate. Likewise, at attainment, the subtle body also dissolves and returns to its original elements, which we would term self-attainment because what remains then is just the Spiritual Self.
To use an analogy, this Spiritual Self in man is captured in a balloon where the air inside the balloon is the same as the air outside the balloon. When the balloon is pricked or bursts, the air becomes one with the air outside the balloon. Therefore, no discrimination is made between the Spiritual Self captured within the framework of man and the Spiritual Self, the Universal Self. In other words, it means that the Atman and Brahman, the individual and the Universal Self, are only one. The barrier that makes man differentiate between the oneness of the individual soul or the individual Spirit and the Universal Spirit is the subtle body we call the individual soul. The Sanskrit term for it is Jivatman. Jiva means Life Force or life that is encased or which encases the Atman. That Atman is one with the Paramatman. In other words, the individual soul is one with the Supreme Soul or Spirit.
In evolution through various kinds of incarnations, we are bringing that subtle body still more to its subtler levels until it becomes so slight that the balloon, the balloon’s rubber, melts away and dissolves itself.
NOTHING IS EVER DESTROYED
We have said before that nothing is destructible. Nothing in the universe is ever destroyed. Even when we leave this body, this body is never destroyed. It disintegrates into its original elements, and from that, other substances are formed. The same thing happens to the subtle body. When that is dissolved, it also merges away into the elements that compose it, which are very similar to the physical aspects but exist in a much finer form. So in the process of the soul to self-annihilation, or rather to self-attainment, one is bringing the subtle body to its subtlest level, and from there, when the subtlest level is not needed any more, it is discarded.
So, when an individual wants to become the Universal Self or achieve self-attainment, he must go through this process.
In our sense, the individual soul requires a long time to gain experiences. It works in a curve, in a circle, with the downward stroke and then the upward stroke. As this primal atom progresses through and hurtles through space, it gathers all kinds of other elements that entrap it. It is like a silkworm spinning and spinning and spinning and getting caught up, getting enmeshed in the silk it has spun by itself. In like manner, the individual entity gets caught within himself until he reaches a peak, and when he reaches the peak, the desire for emancipation dawns on him. A yearning starts when he feels that he is completely trapped. Trapped by his karma, of course. The workings of his soul trapped him, as you would say. And the upward process would be to try to make the subtle body finer and finer and finer.
When the individual soul, or that little primal atom, starts, it goes through all these millions of lifetimes. I do not know where the Hindus got the figure from, but they say that one must live eight million four hundred lifetimes to reach the human stage. Where they get the figure, I do not know. But to me, it means that to develop from the subatomic particle to mineral, to plant, to animal, to man, it does require a long procession of processes, which from the Absolute viewpoint is just a flash. From the relative, from the linear angle at which we measure time and space, it is necessary to know it takes quite a bit of time and many processes, termed as lives or lifetimes. Perhaps that is how they came to that figure. That figure is not essential. But one thing is important, and that is that we have to go through these various processes.
… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang US 1977 – 28
