Monday, January 25, 2010

Desire, death and rebirth

Where are we born after we die? How do we become born again? You are born again in the same way you died. After some time, the astral body cannot stay on the astral plane anymore, because the seeds of pranic motion have to be expressed on the physical plane again due to one's activity on the astral plane. A new physical birth is entered. Generally, this happens through a newborn child's body, but a more advanced soul who has his spiritual body well developed can pick up a body which is fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old and go right along in life from that point.

In what country do you become born? It all depends upon what country you were thinking about before and when you died. If you had a desire to go to Canada, most likely you will be born in Canada next time around. If you had been thinking about going to South America a year or two before you passed away, you would be reincarnated in South America, because that was your destination. If you were very much attached to your own particular family and you did not want to leave them, you would be born back in that immediate family again, because your desire is there. The astral body is the body of desire.

Students probing the mysteries of reincarnation often ask, "If reincarnation is true, why can't I remember my past lives?" They might just as well ask another question: "Why do we not remember everything in detail in this life?" The memory capabilities, unless highly trained, are not that strong, especially after having endured the process of creating a new body through another family and establishing new memory patterns. However, there are people who do recall their past lives, in the very same way that they remember what they did yesterday. Former-life memory is that clear and vivid to them.

However, it is neither necessary nor advisable to pursue events, identities or relationships that may have existed in previous lives. After all, it is all now. We don't think it important to remember details of our childhood years, to wallow in happy or unhappy nostalgia. Why pursue the remembered residue of what has already come and gone? Now is the only time, and for the spiritual seeker, past life analysis or conjecture is an unnecessary waste of useful time and energy. The present now is the sum of all prior thens. Be now. Be the being of yourself this very moment, and that will be the truest fulfillment of all past actions.

The validity of reincarnation and its attendant philosophy are difficult to prove, and yet science is on the threshold of discovering this universal mechanism. Science cannot ignore the overwhelming evidence, the testimony of thousands of level-headed people who claim to remember other lives or who have actually died and then returned to life, and the impressive literature spanning Hindu, Tibetan, Buddhist and Egyptian civilizations. Thus, the pursuit of various theories continues in an effort to bring theory into established law according to the reason and intellectual facilities of man. Those living in the heart chakra, anahata, are able to cognize and know deeply the governing mechanism of rebirth from their own awakening.

There are at least three basic theories or schools of thought related to reincarnation. At first they may seem to conflict or contradict one another, but further elucidation indicates that they are all correct. They are just different aspects of a complex mechanism.

-Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami

http://www.himalayanacademy.com/study/mc/daily_lesson_html/lesson_345.shtml


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