The Reality of Reincarnation

When interviewed on the subject of reincarnation not only did Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa establish the reality of reincarnation by citing both recent scriptural and scientific evidence, but he also explained the reason for reincarnation and how we are presently either consciously or unconsciously aiming ourselves towards another form of life following the demise of this life.

INTERVIEWER: So many people are becoming interested in reincarnation nowadays, yet there is very little in-depth understanding of what reincarnation really is. Do you think you could give us a deeper look?

JAGAT GURU: Of course it’s a very long subject, and when I come to New Zealand, I plan to give a lecture on reincarnation in depth. I am just in the process of publishing a book called Reincarnation Explained, but I can try to make a few points clearer in this interview. So, the first thing we have to understand is that when we speak of reincarnation, we are speaking of the person transmigrating from one form of life to another form of life. So, the first question we have to ask is, “Who is transmigrating?” Obviously, it’s not the body transmigrating into another body. So, it means that there is something which continues to exist after the death of one body.

So, the first thing that has to be understood, then, is that the person is not the material body. At death, the person leaves the body, the body starts to decay, and everybody who was relating to that person who was in that body starts crying and gets very unhappy because the person who they were relating to has left. So, understanding the science of transmigration of the soul means understanding that the person or living being who was in that body has left that body and, if they’re not purified spiritually, will now enter into another gross material body.

INTERVIEWER: So, the first thing we have to understand is that we’re not the body? Then who are we?

JAGAT GURU: Yes, that is the first point. If I am not the body made of flesh and blood, the question is, “Who am I?” In the Bhagavad-gita, Krishna answered this question when it was put to Him by Arjuna:

INTERVIEWER: So, the first thing we have to understand is that we’re not the body? Then who are we?

For the soul there is never birth nor death. Nor, having once been, does he ever cease to be. He is unborn, eternal, ever-existing, undying and primeval. He is not slain when the body is slain.

Bhagavad-gita 2.20

So, from this we can understand that the living being is the soul. That is a person’s actual identity.

It is not possible to perceive the soul with these eyes made of matter, but the indication or symptom of the existence of the living being is consciousness. I’d like to quote a purport by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami in this connection. He states:

Anyone can understand what is spread all over the body: it is consciousness. Everyone is conscious of the pains and pleasures of the body in part or as a whole. This spreading of consciousness is limited within one’s own body. The pains and pleasures of one body are unknown to another. Therefore, each and every body is the embodiment of an individual soul, and the symptom of the soul’s presence is perceived as individual consciousness.

Living entities in lower species of life exhibit less consciousness than those in the highest form of life, the human, which exhibits greater consciousness. So, you must clearly understand this point, that you are the living being or soul within the material body. When the body dies, you don’t die. The body is like a suit of clothes: When your clothes become old and torn, you throw them away, but this doesn’t mean that you no longer exist. This truth is also discussed in the Bible, where it is described that the material body is like a house that the soul or person temporarily resides in.

INTERVIEWER: Some people find it really hard to believe in reincarnation.

JAGAT GURU: There is no question of belief. It’s not very difficult to understand. It’s very scientific. Just try to understand this one simple point, that the body which you have on today is not the same body you had on 10 years ago or 20 years ago. The body dwindles, all the cells die, the molecules change, and you have another body, and that body is then replaced by another body, all the cells and molecules change. You have another body and so on. So it means that the material particles that are making up your body now are not the same material particles that you had on previously. So there is a substance which has continuity, that is, continues to exist even though your body kept changing. Do you understand this?

INTERVIEWER: Yes.

JAGAT GURU: So, if you can understand that the body you have on now isn’t the same body you had on 5 years ago, or 8 years ago, then you can understand that you have transmigrated. You have transmigrated from one body to another already in this life. There is no question of believing what’s going to happen later.

Just look at what you’ve already experienced. You can be an atheist, or you don’t need to believe in reincarnation or whatever. Still, you can go and get a picture of the body that you used to be in 10 years ago or 20 years ago or 30 years ago. You can look at that picture and you can understand that although that body in the picture is not the body you have on now. You still exist now. You exist, but the body that you’re looking at in that photograph does not exist. So, this is evidence that right now the soul transmigrates from a baby body to a boyhood body to a youth body to a man body to a middle age body to an old age body and so on. You have already transmigrated.

As the embodied soul continually passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. The self-realized soul is not bewildered by such a change.

Bhagavad-gita 2.13

INTERVIEWER: Well, what about the mind? A lot of people would say that we’re the mind.

JAGAT GURU: The mind is like a body. The mind is actually a subtle material body. In the same way that the material body is always changing. It’s in constant flux. You are the witness of the mind. For example, you are aware that your mind is changing. Who is the person who is watching the mind change? That’s you. the living entity. There is another example by one psychologist, who was explaining that you can tell that we’re not the mind by the fact that we can’t control the mind. People can’t control their minds. So. it means that there is an entity that is trying to grab onto or control the mind. This is more evidence that you’re not the mind but there is someone, you, and you are attempting to control your mind.

For example, sometimes your mind starts getting out of hand, and you can’t control it. You know, it just goes totally berserk, and you want to get your mind under control, but you just can’t stop thinking about something. You want to stop thinking of something, but you can’t stop thinking of it. So, then you try to control your mind. Or let’s give the example where you try to make your mind blank or you try to make your mind move this way or you try to make your mind move that way. So, the point is, whether you can do it or can’t do it, whether you can control your mind or can’t control your mind, this is evidence that you are the entity who is trying to control the mind as if it’s like a horse or something. You are trying to control the horse; you are trying to control something different than yourself. So, the fact is that you’re not the mind. The mind is a subtle body.

INTERVIEWER: How does the mind figure in the process of transmigration of the soul? Does the soul leave free from all contamination and free from all these material coverings, gross and subtle?

JAGAT GURU: The soul leaves the gross material body, the gross physical form, but is still covered by the subtle material body, i.e., the material desires and the recordings of the impressions which are made on the mind from past experiences in the previous body. For example, you have many central experiences. You see a bird, and by your eyes seeing that bird, that impresses on your mind the form of the bird. All of these forms and all of these subtle images and material desires are still covering the soul. In other words, it is the subtle body, the material mind, that is still covering the soul. When the soul leaves the gross body, this covering makes it so that the soul takes on another gross material body.

INTERVIEWER: How is that?

JAGAT GURU: The subtle material body is a nucleus around which the gross material body develops.

INTERVIEWER: If the mind is still there when the soul leaves the body, the soul is still covered by the subtle body, the material mind, that means I should be able to remember my past lives because I still have the same mind or that information is still there. I am still covered by the mind. So, isn’t the fact that I can’t remember my past lives, isn’t that evidence that there were no past lives?

JAGAT GURU: If that is your logic, then I have to ask you this question. Does a butterfly remember his past life as a caterpillar?

INTERVIEWER: I don’t know.

JAGAT GURU: Do you remember your birth, the birth of this body that you now have on? Do you have remembrance of the experience of leaving the womb, or for that matter, do you have remembrance of the experience of living in the womb?

INTERVIEWER: No.

JAGAT GURU: Yet you know that you were born, right?

INTERVIEWER: So, you are saying that just because I can’t remember or experience a past life doesn’t mean I didn’t have one?

JAGAT GURU: Precisely. Our memory is not perfect. That’s nature’s arrangement. You don’t remember birth or being in the womb or your previous deaths or your previous life’s activities or previous births. Krishna states that for one who is born, death is certain, and that for one who dies, birth is certain.

INTERVIEWER: Is it possible to go back with the help of hypnosis and remember previous lives?

JAGAT GURU: It may be possible. But what is the value of such remembrances? It’s good that you want to seek your roots or origin, but remembrance of past lives is not the way. You’ve had so many bodies since time immemorial; what’s the use of remembering one or two lives back? In the ancient Vedas of India, it is said that there are 8,400,000 species of life or different bodies; all the way from tiny microbial creatures to the vast bodies of demigods. Sometimes you may have an animal body or a plant body or a human body or whatever. The intelligent person will not be enamored with the mysticism of it all but rather will seek a solution to the problem.

INTERVIEWER: There was a film here some time ago called “Audrey Rose,” which depicted reincarnation as a kind of eternal joy ride from one body to the next.

JAGAT GURU: In that case, that movie failed to put forward the real yoga philosophy. By nature, we are sparks of God, eternal, or, in other words, continuous. We have no need to be in this finite world of material energy. It’s not our natural position. It’s not our home. Why should we, who are eternal and blissful by nature, want to remain within the material or carnal world, which is by nature transitory and full of sorrow? Incarnation means in the carnal or material body. The body by nature suffers birth, disease, old age, and death. Reincarnation means birth, disease, old age, and death over and over and over again. So, the soul should live eternally with God in His abode, free from this repetition of birth and death. As the great Chinese sage Lao Tzu once said: “The cause of all misery is the material body.” So why should we be anxious to put on another body over and over again?

INTERVIEWER: What is the earliest mention of reincarnation in the Christian church?

JAGAT GURU: In the third century a man named Origen, who was one of the founders of the Christian church, stated in his book First Principles:

By some inclination towards evil, certain souls lose their wings and come into bodies; first of men. Then, through their association with the irrational passions, after the allotted span of human life, they are changed into beasts, from which they sink to the level of plants. From this condition, they rise again to the same stages and are restored to their heavenly place.

INTERVIEWER: What is that “inclination towards evil”?

JAGAT GURU: The desire to be God, the desire to be the supreme enjoyer or central enjoying agent of God’s energy. A soul with even a little desire to be master can’t very well stay in the abode of the Lord because there is only one Lord or Master. All the rest of us are by nature servants, and everyone in the kingdom of God is actually enjoying serving Him. So if someone doesn’t want to serve God, they are placed immediately into the material world. This material world is for those of us who want to imitate God. In the Bible it is stated that God created this world for the enjoyment of man. But actually it’s for the attempted enjoyment. There’s no real enjoyment here. We’ll be happy and enjoying when we are again resituated in the spiritual sky, the kingdom of God, again as His servants. But we don’t want that. We want the kingdom of God with ourselves on the throne, with ourselves in the center. We want the kingdom of God without God. As soon as we think “I shall not serve,” immediately God makes it possible for us to not have to see Him. You see, service to God is based on love. It must be voluntary. So the soul, having a degree of independence, can eternally choose to serve or not to serve God, and God knows our every feeling and gives us our desire.

INTERVIEWER: Why did the Christian church stop teaching reincarnation?

JAGAT GURU: I don’t pretend to know all the details, but I do know that in 553 A.D. Emperor Justinian issued his “Anathemas Against Origen”: “If anyone asserts the fabulous preexistence of souls and the monstrous restoration which follows from it, let him be cursed.” Some say Emperor Justinian made the statement because he was motivated by political ambitions, and others say that the masses of people mistakenly thought of reincarnation as a license for sinful activity. They thought, “Wow! What am I worried about? I can come back again and again and enjoy eternally.” They didn’t understand that the material world is a place of misery. Also, they didn’t understand the laws of karma, that is, according to your actions there will be certain reactions. Or, as Jesus put it, “As you sow, so shall you reap.”

Actually, many people do not recognize that it is a problem for the living entity, who is eternal and blissful by nature, to be bound up in the temporary, finite, material dimension, having to undergo repeated birth, diseases, old age, and death. This is a suffering condition. Just like one time A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami was explaining to a group of students at the University of Hawaii that if a person lives like a dog, he’ll come back as one. One boy said, “What’s wrong with that? It sounds great to me!” Similarly, ex-President Richard Nixon said that if he could choose, he’d come back as a dog!

INTERVIEWER: Does reincarnation wipe out what’s known as the Judgment Day?

JAGAT GURU: Of course not. In fact, it’s precisely because of the judgment that a person enjoys or suffers in the next phase of his existence. The Christians also call it hell and heaven. So the soul will exist for some time in a hellish or heavenly condition according to his karma or past actions. Actually, we don’t need to look very far to see souls in a hellish condition—hogs, dogs, trees, the lower species of life. There are so many dimensions of hell, and the soul with bad karma exists in one or another of those dimensions in a particular body. Obviously you couldn’t exist in hell without a material body because if you were without a material body, you’d be in the kingdom of God. Some souls are in hell to a certain degree right here and now.

INTERVIEWER: But Christians say that animals don’t have souls.

JAGAT GURU: The word “soul” is sometimes used in different ways. When “soul” refers to “living being,” obviously an animal has a soul—or more accurately, a soul or living being has on an animal body temporarily. But when “soul” refers to rationality or ability to inquire into the Absolute Truth or to come to a point of perfection, then a plant or animal is without a soul. Why? Because basically their only interests are eating, sleeping, mating, and defending. Their consciousness isn’t advanced into inquiring into the truth. So, if the Christian church teaches that this human life is a one-shot deal in order to make the people serious about developing their love for God now, then this is quite understandable. After all, some people think, “It doesn’t matter. I’ll have another chance.” You may have another chance, but you don’t know when. Superficial understanding of reincarnation could definitely lead people into irresponsible living. The human form of life is so rare that we should take advantage of it. It is the take-off point for the kingdom of God. We can get off the wheel of birth and death. But if we neglect to use this opportunity, if we simply live like animals, then why should God again provide us with a human body? If my mentality is like that of an animal, then my next body will be an animal body.

INTERVIEWER: How does that work?

JAGAT GURU: As I mentioned earlier, the mind is the nucleus around which the gross body develops. It’s like the gross body is a reflection of our mind. The different types of bodies we see in the material world are simply external manifestations of the different desires or tastes of the different souls.

The living entity in the material world carries his different conceptions of life from one body to another as the air carries aromas. The living entity, thus taking another gross body, obtains a certain type of ear, tongue, and nose and sense of touch, which are grouped- about the mind. He thus enjoys a particular set of sense objects.

Bhagavad-gita 15.8-9

INTERVIEWER: So, the physical body a soul has on at any given point in time—whether animal or plant or human—is just a vehicle to carry out the particular desires of the mind?

JAGAT GURU: Exactly. For example, the tongue is a manifestation of the desire to taste and the nose is a manifestation of the desire to smell. But nature has provided different living beings with different types of tongues and noses, according to the particular tastes or desires. The tongue of a pig is specifically suited to facilitate the enjoyment of a certain type of food. The tongue of a cat and that of a human is meant to facilitate the “enjoying” of their respective foodstuffs. So, nature provides us with the type of body—senses—according to our mentality or desires.

INTERVIEWER: So, then someone really addicted to surfing, for example, could get a porpoise body?

JAGAT GURU: Yes. Or that of a seal or shark body which would enable him to surf all day without getting cold or having to come out to eat. Actually, wetsuits are a type of thick skin already, almost like seal skin. But not everyone who surfs is an addict. It’s a question of attachment.

INTERVIEWER: Sometimes you see people who look like or act just like some particular kind of animal. Does this mean that they are actually turning into that creature.

JAGAT GURU: Yes. How the mind is molded oftentimes is reflected in the gross body even in this life. For instance, you may look at a person and although he has the body of a human being, he actually, for some reason or other, looks just like a pig. “My God! that guy looks just like a pig!” Or have you ever noticed that sometimes a person looks like his dog? The person in that body has been developing a certain type of mentality, and that mentality is therefore reflected in his gross body. This is seen not only by the spiritualists, but by the materialists as well. I have seen jokes or cartoons about it in big newspapers. How is it so? The answer is given in the Vedas, that the person, although in a human body, is shaping his subtle body or mentality like a dog. Therefore, he is becoming like a dog. He is always looking at his dog, thinking of his dog, feeding his dog, thinking of what the dog can enjoy, talking to him, etc. His love is misdirected to the dog and therefore he is developing the subtle body like that of a dog.

INTERVIEWER: So as long as we have material desires in our mind at the time of death of the gross body, then we’ll have to take another body?

JAGAT GURU: You get what you want. Yes. Nature will provide you with a body to work out your particular desires.

INTERVIEWER: Some psychologists say that regression to our childhood and even past lives will help a person understand himself and become free of all his hangups about different things which are possibly stemming from experiences in past existences.

JAGAT GURU: The mind is like a computer containing hundreds of thousands of impressions, not only from this life, but from all previous lives. So, the idea of the psychologists that they are going to help you get to the root of your problem by taking you back to when you were a baby and your father did something mean to you, making it so you have a hangup now, is superficial. A person has so many past impressions and hangups that it is not possible for the psychiatrists to take you back to them all. They may take you back to the primal scream, the pain of birth, but then they have to take you back to the experience of death you had in your previous life, then the primal scream of that life, then the previous primal scream, and so on and so on. They don’t understand that you have had hundreds of thousands of experiences in innumerable bodies and innumerable species even. How are they going to take you back ten thousand lives to when you were a maggot and you had a psychological breakdown because you were hungry and your mother wouldn’t let you eat some stool! Or your death as a fly when you were swatted so that now you have a phobia about flyswatters. So, there is no use trying to undo all this. It is more practical to try and solve the problems of life by laying down a new set of tracks for a new future, by remembering your real identity as spirit and attempting to reestablish your relationship with God.

Anyway, what is this philosophy that reliving your bummers will counteract them? Why do you think that those experiences will be any less painful the second time around? And how will it keep you from having another bummer tomorrow?

The solution to these miseries is to remember your real identity and your relationship with God. The solution is to aim your senses for the pleasure or service of God rather than your present external material body.

INTERVIEWER: So, the attachment to the material world and different types of enjoyment is the cause of reincarnation?

JAGAT GURU: Yes. The point is to develop another attachment, attachment to God. There is no way we can live in this world without eating, sleeping, mating, and defending or enjoying different material experiences. The point is to develop another activity, namely, self-realization or God consciousness. Our material needs must be taken care of. But we can simultaneously cultivate what Lord Jesus and Lord Krishna called “loving attachment to God.” If you’re attached to the Supreme Lord, automatically you’re detached from trying to enjoy the material world and you can live in the world without being of the world. Thus, you won’t need to take on another body and come back to this world.

INTERVIEWER: Very interesting! A lot to think about. Thank you.

JAGAT GURU: Thank you. Haribol.