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Death, Karma and Reincarnation

(A chapter from the book Nature of Human Thought (second edition))
(A sequel to this is another essay. How to reduce the fear and pain of death)

Anil K Rajvanshi
Phaltan, Maharashtra, India.
Email: [email protected]

Death is the most certain thing for any living entity and yet we know so little
about it. It may come earlier or later in life but the inevitable always
happens. Yet we carry out our actions and behave as if we are immortal and
death does not enter into our scheme of things. In a way that maybe a good
thing because the fear of death may not allow us to be bold enough to do
lots of things in life. Nevertheless, if we understand death then we will really
understand life, and this will help us to live it fruitfully and happily.

In almost every society through time immemorial the religious and spiritual
writings are about the art of living which prepares human beings for death.
Thus, they contain intricate details of heaven and hell. Some religions also
make the description of hell extremely frightening so that people will change
their behavior to avoid it. Majority of spiritual writings are about how to live
properly so that one can escape the cycle of birth and death. In all these
writings the underlying philosophy is of the continuity of soul.

Thus, Egyptians believed that eventually resurrection will take place and so
elaborate mummification ritual for treating the dead body was developed.
Similar has been the case in other religions.

In Indian Yogic tradition transition of soul from body to body is like

changing into new clothes. It goes through all the living species and evolves
towards godhead after its karmas (Sanskrit for actions/deeds) are resolved
through various births. Katha Upanishad, Patanjali Yoga Darshan and

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Brahma Sutras do talk briefly about the rebirth of soul in human form and

how it can also be transformed into various species4 3 . Patanjali Yoga says,
“The transformation of one species into another is caused by inflowing of
nature. Good or bad deeds are not the direct cause of this transformation but
only act as a breaker of the obstacles to natural evolution – just as a farmer
breaks down the obstacles in a water course so that water flows by its own
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nature” . Hence the transfer of soul from one species to another seems to
be an accepted thesis in Indian religion.

Direct evidence of continuity of soul has come from people who had near
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death experiences (NDE) . NDE seems to happen when a person is
declared clinically dead but after some time returns to life. Interestingly
nearly all the descriptions of NDE in all societies are similar and talk of
getting out of the body and going through a dark tunnel and then coming
into brilliant white light. Depending upon the religion or faith of the person
he or she sees Christ, Krishna, Buddha, or any chosen deity. For agnostics
or atheists there is a feeling of tremendous warmth and happiness in the
presence of white light.

Quite a number of people have also reported that during NDE their whole
life flashes by and almost all their past actions become visible. Probably it is
because the memory of their present birth is still fresh. Then somehow the
self is told that his/her time to die has still not come and the person “wakes
up” in the body, which is being resuscitated. Interestingly enough during
this period there is no concept of time. In majority of cases tremendous
change in attitude towards life and death takes place in people who
experience NDE. They consider dying as a pleasurable experience and are
not afraid of death anymore.

One of the most detailed treatises on death and dying is the Tibetan book of

Living and Dying4 6 . Most of the material in this book is based on Indian
Yogic system though Tibetan Buddhists give some terms Chinese sounding

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names. In this book a good description is given of what happens to the soul
after death and till it gets a new body. Tibetan Buddhist Lamas call this
transition state as Bardo (Tibetan word for transition).

They identify the bardos as:

1. Natural bardo of life. This extends to a person’s lifetime.
2. Painful bardo of dying. This is the period, which lasts from the beginning
of process of dying until the clinical death.
3. Luminous bardo of dharmata is the period after the death experience and
is manifested by varied colors, sounds and light. This is similar to NDE.
4. Karmic bardo is the time interval, which lasts till the soul gets a new
body. The Buddhists believe in the Indian philosophical system that
getting a new body is dependent on the karma (Sanskrit for action) of
previous births. Similar beliefs exist in other religions. Hence one's
actions or karma in this life seem to play a significant role in how one
dies and in what form they are reborn.

Karma and Fear of Death

Karma is a Sanskrit word meaning action. However, it embraces the whole
meaning of living. Thus, according to law of karma your actions or deeds
(both good and bad) decide your future in this life or the next life. Law of
karma occupies a central position in Indian philosophy. There are tomes
written on it but here we will focus mostly on how it relates to death.

According to some commentators the law of karma is very deterministic.

They claim that you are born according to your karma and things happen to
you in your present birth because of your past karmas etc. Hence one
cannot change the present life. This, however, negates the whole basis of
Yoga which claims that one can change the Sanskars (memories) and hence

ones life47.

Each one of us is born with a unique genetic makeup, which provides a

basic template for our general behavior. This behavior is further modified by

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the surroundings that one encounters in life. I therefore believe that each
one of us has the power to change our destiny and our memories by our
actions in this life. Our actions change the neural pathways in the brain
and hence the mind which guides us to our future course of action. Thus
individually we have a free will to create our own destiny but collectively we
all maybe guided towards mankind’s evolution.

As we saw in Chapter 1, each one of us can be thought of as an individual

molecule moving “randomly” in the sea of humanity and according to the
forces of opportunity acting on us. But all of us together may produce a
“dissipative structure” which is the evolution of mankind. Thus, the
evolution of mankind towards a greater spiritual and technological
sophistication is quite certain and therefore deterministic; and guided
by the energy available to it.

Also, according to Indian Yogic system, the time of death is governed by the
karma of a living entity. When the karma’s course is finished then death
takes place. It is not clear how one can find out what constitutes karma, its
duration or how many karmas a person accumulates during his/her
lifetime. Patanjali Yoga Darshan simply states that Sanyam on his/her
karma makes it possible for the Yogi to calculate the exact time of his

death4 8 . This also suggests that a Yogi has no control over his death though
he may know the time of exit. However, there are many instances of great
Yogis who have left their body by their own will and hence can certainly

select the time of their departure31, 36

. Also in pandemics, wars and large-
scale upheavals on earth the person’s karma may become irrelevant since
these external forces are far more powerful than individuals one.

An interesting aspect of time of death was given by the great Indian

mathematician S. Ramanujam who used to say that the death of a person
takes place only at a certain space-time junction point. He never explained
what that junction point was. Ramanujam who died in 1920 at the young
age of 32 was one of the greatest mathematicians of the last century. He

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was basically a spiritualist, and mathematics was a by-product of his

spirituality. He said many times “an equation to me has no meaning unless
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it expresses a thought of God” . He had some powers which made him
clairvoyant and hence could predict events. He even predicted that he
would die before the age of 35. Quite a number of his friends and relatives
used to come to him for consultation about their future and quite a number
of times he urged them to move away from their present living place so that
the space-time junction point could be avoided.

Though all the living entities are afraid of death, the desire to know how and
when death will take place is quite strong in human beings. The first
impulse to sensing impending danger is to protect oneself and survival is the
cornerstone of Darwinian evolutionary theory for all living entities. The
possible reasons for death fear could be:

1. The experience is very traumatic. It is accompanied by loss of identity

and sometimes by tremendous physical pain.
2. The living being does not know “instinctively” what will happen to its
“memory” or form. For example, whether it will find a new body or will it
be fixed in space for a long time. So, there is a fear of unknown. All
living entities are wired in such a way that they are afraid of losing their
body and with it their form and identity. If a soul can exist without a
body, then we should not be afraid of death. However, the form or body,
which gives us the sense of ‘I’, is very afraid of losing its identity.
3. The process of learning or moving to a higher level of consciousness is
disturbed and delayed. For example, 20-30 years or even more can be
lost in the process.
4. The living entity loses its ability to change “memory”. This ability comes
with the brain attached to the body and with death the body ceases to
exist. As we saw in Chapter 4 the proliferation of species in the initial
stages of evolution is a direct consequence of the desire of space “G” to
have and keep a body. It allows the templates of memory from that
species to continue.

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Blocking the Pain of Death

Since the soul clings to the body, the shedding of lifetime memories at the
time of death is painful. That is the reason the Indian Yogic system stresses
the liberation of soul so that the painful cycle of birth and death is stopped.

Yogis also believe that reduction or elimination of pain during death would
remove its fear. One of the major aims of Yoga therefore is to make the body
and mind powerful enough so that pain is either reduced or removed
completely.

Why there is pain and what is its purpose? Pain and pleasure are
complimentary and are part of life. They are the attributes of the body. The
intense physical pain is probably an outcome of the body trying to repair
itself and requires very intense brain concentration for it. All other sensory
inputs or other thoughts are blocked by the pain sensation. This
concentrated thought might help the brain to heal the body. This is also the
mechanism where single-pointed concentration helps in memory removal.
Pain therefore could be one of the key mechanisms for removing or
modifying memory. Any intense experience can do the same. For example
intense pleasure of love for a chosen deity is the genesis of Bhakti Yoga

(Yoga of devotion)4 1 .

Interestingly, emotional, and physical pains and their intensity are similar in
nature and the brain does not differentiate between the two. Recent studies
have revealed that fMRI scans of the subjects showed that the pain of
rejection (emotional pain) and stubbing of big toe (physical pain) illuminated

the same part of the brain5 0 . We also show this similarity intuitively in our
vocabulary with terms like broken heart, heartache etc. Emotional pain
allows the brain to intensely focus on resolving conflicts and at the same
time helps it to send and receive thought packets.

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Advanced Yogis claim to have developed a mechanism of blocking pain from

reaching the brain through so called Kundalini Yoga. Kundalini is a very
ancient Indian Yoga system, whose practitioners believe that there is energy
(could be cerebrospinal fluid) which is coiled like a female serpent (Kundalini
is the Sanskrit word for a coiled female serpent) and lies at the base of

spinal chord5 1 .

However, there is no physical evidence of this mechanism and process.

Nevertheless, yogis believe that by yogic process (mostly by imagining and
willing it) Kundalini can be raised in the central canal of the spinal cord to
reach its ultimate destination - the brain. They also claim that once it
reaches the brain, liberation of a yogi from the cycle of birth and death takes
place. Raising it is done step by step and it takes many years of practice
before Yogis can raise it up to the brain. Yogis also claim that conservation
of sexual energy tremendously helps in this process.

Kundalini Yoga supposedly helps to remove the sense organ inputs to the
brain from various parts of the body. In medicine pain blockers do the
same. The main pain sensations from the body come through the spinal
cord and probably raising of Kundalini means blocking the pain centers in
the spinal cord progressively starting from the base of the spine and
reaching to the top of the brain. This effectively detaches the mind from
sense organs. Shri Ramakrishna used to say that as he started raising his
Kundalini, his body went through the process of locking itself starting from
the base of his spinal cord so that he lost control of these parts as the

Kundalini traveled from the base of the spine to the head5 2 .

Yogis believe that with practice of Kundalini Yoga the mind gets completely
detached from the body. This helps in developing memory or neural
pathways so that at the time of death it is quite easy for the memory or soul
to leave the body painlessly. Besides, they believe that with “pure soul”
(without the sense organ memories attached to it) it is possible to achieve
salvation from the cycle of birth and death. This is the central theme of

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Indian Yogic system. Patanjali says that once the gunas (result of karma) or
memories are resolved through Yoga then the soul becomes pure (without

memory) and merges into Universal Consciousness53.

Death and Memory Removal

At the time of death, it seems the ego sense ‘I’ or sense of identity has to
shed the memory of attachments of sense organs. It is through the sense
organs that we perceive the world and carry out our actions; hence it is
these organs which give the sense of identity to a living entity. As we have
seen earlier shedding of these attachments allows the removal of lifetime
memories and hence is painful. Thus, almost all memories are shed except
the “basic memory" which is then transferred. We do not know what that
basic memory could be.

An analogy from modern computers will be useful in explaining this

memory transfer. At the time of death there is a transfer of software (basic
memory) from the body. In a computer a person transfers the software onto
a new machine. In transfer of soul, it is done on its own. There is no agent of
transfer and hence it is guided by the forces it encounters just after death.
Just like software is useless without the machine, similarly the soul cannot
do anything without the body (hardware). Body allows the soul (memory) to
change its character just like one can modify software through a computer
machine. It is only through the body that the brain receives all the sensory
inputs and the body acts like an antenna for the mind. Hence the strongest
desire of the soul is to get a body. This could be any form of body and thus
the possibility of its transfer among species.

According to Brahma Sutra, Patanjali Yoga Darshan and other ancient

Indian texts a soul can go into many bodies and also into any living entity
like plants! However just like sophisticated software will not run in a poor or
small memory machine, hence the memories of soul will remain dormant in
lower forms of body. It is only the human body which has the ability to
modify memories drastically.

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Death is the most traumatic experience for a living entity and the event
allows all the brain neurons to fire in a laser like fashion. This very
concentrated thought just before the final exit allows the memory or soul to
be transferred to the rigid higher dimensional space and could be the realm
of spirits and ghosts. Thus, it is quite possible that all souls immediately
after death may remain in suspended animation till, they get a new body.
However, one is not sure if the memory transfer takes place between all life
forms or is it governed by a certain brain size. Thus, there could be a cutoff
brain size below which the transformation from humans to other life forms
may not take place.

The chances of ghost formation are much more in sudden death conditions.
For example, people who die suddenly because of a heart attack, accidents,
murders etc. may not get enough time for the sense organ detachment.
Thus, the souls of such persons may retain the memory of body form for a
little longer time which may result in the ghost form. We still do not know
for how long the “ghost structure” can remain and what type of energy is
required to maintain its stability. Those who die of natural causes get
sufficient time for mind withdrawal or sense detachment of the soul and
may follow the Tibetan path of three bardos.

The spirits and ghosts being in higher dimensional space might have the
powers to affect life in our space. Such instances of spirits and ghosts
affecting life have been documented and recorded in all civilizations. Even

Patanjali alludes to these beings which reside in “higher places”.53(a) However

the "memory" of Yogis and enlightened souls guided by their willpower and
powerful minds, could transcend the realms of spirits and ghosts and can go
into even higher dimensional space.

Reincarnation and Passage of Memory

There are people who do not believe in life after death or reincarnation and
think that after death everything finishes with the body. However, there is
strong proof from a large number of cases where there has been a total

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recall of past lives and events by individuals (especially children) and these

cases have been reported in all societies and in almost all religions5 6 .
Hence, we will take the data of these cases as experiential fact and assume
that there is reincarnation and life after death.

There have been many instances when rebirths have taken place in the
same or nearby households brought about by a strong will from the loved
ones. The intense love creates a powerful force for the soul to be so reborn.
However, it is not known when and where the rebirth will take place. In a
celebrated case the Indian saint Shri Ramakrishna described in detail how
he and a very highly evolved Yogi decided to be born together on earth. He
identified that Yogi as Swami Vivekananda, a great spiritual leader of India.
However, it took 20 years for Shri Ramakrishna to find out about
Vivekananda although he was born within 20 km of where Ramakrishna
was staying! Besides Vivekananda was born 40 years after Ramakrishna

and the two met each other by chance in Calcutta57.

Since time immemorial human beings have been curious regarding what
happens to all our actions, ideas, memories etc. after our death. There have
been discussions on it in Upanishads and Mahabharata but most of them
skirt the subject by stressing that one should lead a moral and upright life

so that death is welcomed as a friend rather than an enemy43. We will

however explore this subject in the light of what we have discussed in
previous chapters. Hence it is possible that after death the following may
happen to all the memories and information that a person learns during
his/her lifetime:

1. Information generation is an evolutionary process. Any profound or

deep knowledge produced goes in the knowledge space (KS) and it
continues to increase. It is never reduced. Also all our powerful
emotions and information, whether good or bad, goes into the KS.
This space is filled with such knowledge from all over the Universe.

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Thus, the old saying that all our actions may come to haunt us may
mean that the information is never lost.
2. The soul passing from one body to another carries the basic memory
only. We are not sure presently what this memory is and what is its
structure. However, it could be the username and the password just
like on the Internet where these two pieces of information allows one
to access all the information from the cyberspace! Once it gets into a
new body and as the brain reaches full formation, then it can access
the emotional information of its past births from KS. This is the
genesis of reincarnation.
3. The basic memory transfer makes more sense energy-wise since it will
be difficult for the transfer of soul from one body to another if large
amount of memory is attached to it. Besides one of the aspects of
getting a new body is that the memories of old body are removed, and
the “life” starts with a clean slate. Otherwise, the burden of past
memories can make living quite a chore since the heavy baggage of
these memories will not allow the new experiences to be gained easily.
Nevertheless, the memories in KS effect a person’s actions indirectly
and thus all our past actions can come to haunt us.
4. Probably these memories in KS are the gunas that Patanjali talks

about53. They can be modified or removed through Yoga. With the

removal of gunas their effect on an individual vanishes and liberation
takes place.
5. It is possible that the memory of past births maybe accessed during
dreaming process. During the early years of our life (between 6-10
years) our brains are fully developed but the ego sense ‘I’ is nascent
and still developing. Thus, it is possible that during dreaming when
our nascent ‘I’ is weak and nearly absent the memories of past life can
be accessed from the KS. This is akin to prophetic dream process
which has been the basis of great visions and discoveries throughout
the history of mankind (Chapter 9). This ability to access our past
lives however gets diminished as we grow older since the ‘I’ becomes
stronger with addition of new experiences and memories.

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6. The KS is of two types. The first that stays with earth or another
livable planet. This includes the books, memories, other materials,
and the “atmosphere” (both spiritual and otherwise) of earth or planet.
This KS moves with the earth and earthlings can dip into it to get the
knowledge so that the evolution of mankind takes place. The other KS
is in the Universe and as the earth passes through it, we can access it
and produce quantum jumps in our knowledge. The knowledge in
this KS exists because of actions of civilizations more advanced than
ours.

One of the major aims of all life forms is to get a body – preferably a human
one. Getting it is important in evolution of knowledge since a big human
brain allows us to tune into the knowledge space (KS). Bodies belonging to
other species cannot do so because of their small brain size. Hence if the
soul goes into other life forms, then the overall knowledge accumulation
slows down, and memories of past births cannot be changed or erased.

In order to avoid memory transfer after death into other species we need to
cultivate our minds in such a manner that at the time of death we have a
powerful structure of our thought so that most of the extraneous memories
are shed and we create a great "Spiritual mass". Practice of yoga helps us in
doing this. Creation of "Spiritual mass" is the only way to make sure that
the transition of memory from one body to another human body is smooth
and that it can also go to other planets by will. It is possible that our ancient
spiritual teachings about swarglok (heaven), etc. came because this planet
was not a comfortable or hospitable place and hence the focus was to
release the soul so that it could go to other hospitable planets from where
we might have originally come from.

As our technology advances, we will be able to make our future world a very
hospitable place so that the body could be made strong and healthy through
Yoga or designer drugs. This will help to keep the mind and brain fit so that
we can leave the body at will. Thus in future most souls may be able to

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produce a high “Spiritual mass” at the time of their death so that they could
either stay here on earth by will or could go out of the Earth's gravitational
field. Some Yogis claim that there are great masters who came from other
worlds, have chosen to live in this world for its upliftment, and are hundred

of years old54.

The “Spiritual mass” can be produced when the brain is working at its
fullest and capable of producing deep thought in higher dimensional space.
This is what great Yogis can do and is the basis of whole Yoga. As we age
our brain loses its suppleness and gets petrified. Hence it cannot fire all the
100 billion neurons in a laser like fashion at the time of death. This limits
most people’s capability to get a new body by will. Some of the great
spiritual leaders like Christ, Adi Shankaracharya, Sant Gyaneshwar of
Maharashtra, Swami Vivekananda etc. left their bodies before they reached

40 years of age and when their brainpower was at its prime.55 For others
who cannot produce the critical “spiritual mass”, rebirth is by chance or
strongly willed by their loved ones.

Basis of a Good Life

How does one lead his/her life so that it is happy, and death is painless and
is welcomed more like a friend when it comes? Tomes have been written on
this subject and the great masters of this world like Christ, Buddha,
Patanjali and others have spoken about it from their direct experiences. It
will be therefore arrogant on my part to say anything more than what they
have already said. However, we can try to understand it from the perspective
of our theory on deep thought.

The whole basis of life is to have continuous happiness and joy and that is
possible with a very healthy body in a very hospitable world. The self can
only enjoy and be happy with a body (preferably a human body) since it
provides an anchor to it and allows the making and breaking of memories.

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One of the keys to happiness is reduction and complete removal of greed.

Greed creates tremendous conflicts and all-round unhappiness. Removal of
greed can be achieved by cultivating a nimble brain via Sanyam. A healthy
body can help in creating a nimble brain. The nimble brain has tremendous
processing power and hence a small amount of data is processed very
efficiently to gain useful information. This helps the mind to "get satisfied"
easily and helps in satiating the desire so that the person can move on. This
is the major step in greed reduction.

Sanyam also allows enough working memory space in the brain so that
majority of 100 billion neurons are available to focus on a single thought.
This becomes possible only when we have less memory locked up in the
brain about mundane and routine worldly activities and attachments. Also
there should be an excellent conflict resolution mechanism developed
internally. Deep down we should honestly evaluate our actions and should
be able to live with them in peace. This act can help in freeing the mind from
psychological knots, which can take up a major portion of the memory.
Removal of these knots may help make the mind calm and fit for deep
thought. The final word on this subject therefore belongs to Patanjali who
says, "Undisturbed calmness of mind is attained by cultivating friendliness
towards the happy, compassion for the unhappy, delight in the virtuous and
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indifference towards the wicked" .

Making this world a better and more hospitable place can also help in
calmness of mind and internal happiness. This will help us fulfill both our
physical and emotional needs and can help all humans to live a very full and
happy life. For most of us this planet is the only home we have. This means
that besides our personal evolution we should also contribute as much as
possible to mankind’s evolution. In this, technology will play a very major
role. It allows us to take care of our physical needs and with its progress
and evolution will allow us to live in a sustainable manner. Thus, to my
mind the contribution of Edisons, Fords, Einsteins and Newtons of this

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world towards mankind's evolution is at par with that of spiritual leaders

like Buddha, Christ, Patanjali, etc.

Mankind has always aspired to immortality. Thus, by means of chemicals,

drugs and spiritual methods humans have always strived to prolong their
lives. Yogis and practitioners of healthy body cult claim that human body
can theoretically live for 125 years. There are some Yogis in India who claim

that some masters have lived even for 300-400 years!54 I believe that once
our technology becomes very advanced then it will be possible for humans to
have a long life. Whether that long life will be productive, happy, and
emotionally satisfying will depend a lot on how hospitable we make this
planet earth. I believe a combination of spirituality and technology can
provide a basis for achieving this goal.

References

1. Patanjali Yoga Darshan is the oldest book on Yoga. It shows in a

scientific way how to control thought. There are four sections in this
book. They are Samadhi (absorption), Sadhana (practice), Vibhuti
(powers), Kaivalya (liberation). It has 195 sutras with each section
containing about 40-50 sutras (Sutra is a Sanskrit word meaning a
precise maxim). There are innumerable commentaries and translations
of the Sanskrit book. Most of them are literal translations of the
Sanskrit sutras which makes it very archaic and difficult reading. I have
drawn extensively from the following books:

a) Swami Prabhavananda, Patanjali Yoga Sutras, Shri Ramakrishna

Math, Madras, 1990.
b) B.K.S. Iyengar, Light on Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Harper Collins
Publishers India, 1993.

The interpretations of Patanjali’s sutras are however mine.

31. Shri Ramakrishna was a great saint of India. He was born in Bengal in
1836 and was a great exponent of Bhakti Yoga. His most famous
disciple was Swami Vivekanand who went to U.S. to attend the World
Religion Conference in Chicago in 1893. He later preached and set up in
U.S. centers about Vedanta and Indian philosophy. Though
Ramakrishna was illiterate, his innumerable visions tally quite

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accurately with the findings of modern cosmology. A good book on these

visions is Visions of Shri Ramakrishna, Shri Ramakrishna Math,
Chennai, 1989 (pg. 60). Ramakrishna left his body by will through
Samadhi.

36. Life of Swami Vivekanand by his Eastern and Western Disciples, Advaita
Ashram, Calcutta, 1979. pg. 645 about his death or Mahasamadhi.

43. S. Radhakrishnan, The Principal Upanishads, Harper Collins Publishers,

India, 2003, pg. 638 (Katha Upanishad II. 2.7).

44. Ref.1, Sutra IV. 3.

45. Raymond A. Moody, The Light Beyond, Bantam Books, 1988.

46. Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Rupa & Co.,
1998, pg. 102-104.

47. Ref.1, Sutra I.50.

48. Ref.1, Sutra III. 23.

49. Robert Kanigel, Man who knew Infinity – A life of Genius Ramanujam,
Rupa & Co., New Delhi, 1992, pg. 66.

50. Naomi I. Eisenberger, et al., “Does Rejection Hurt? An fMRI study of

Social Exclusion”, Science, Vol. 302, October 10, 2003, pg. 290-292.

51. Vasant G. Rele, The Mysterious Kundalini, D. B. Taraporevala Sons &

Co., Bombay, 1967.

52. Ref.31, pg. 12.

53. Ref.1, Sutra IV. 33.

53(a) Ref. 1, Sutra III.52

54. Paramhansa Yogananda, Autobiography of Yogi, Paramhansa Yogananda

Self-Realization Fellowship, LA 1979, pg. 355.

55. Sant Gyaneshwar. A great Indian saint of Maharashtra was born in 13th
century AD. He rewrote the Bhagwat Gita in Marathi (the local language)
so that it could become accessible to common man. This book is called
Gyaneshwari. It is said that he left his body by will at the age of 21.

56. There are close to six hundred thousand sites on reincarnation in Google
search engine on the Internet. However, one of the most thoroughly
searched scientific accounts of reincarnation is by Professor Ian
Stevenson (University of Virginia department of Psychiatry) who in the

©Anil K Rajvanshi, 2010

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last 40 years has thoroughly documented around 3000 cases of children

from all over the world who remember their previous lives. The following
references are on his work:
• www.healthsystem.virgina.edu/internet/psychiatric/stevenson.cfm
• www.near-death.com/reincarnation.html
• Ian Stevenson, Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect, Greenwood
Publishing Group, Inc. 1997.

57. Shri Ramakrishna has given a very vivid description in his own words of
who Swami Vivekanand was: ‘One day in samadhi I saw that my mind,
going up a luminous path, went beyond the gross world studded with the
sun, moon, and stars; and entered first into the subtle world of ideas.
The more it ascended to higher and higher strata of that realm, the more
did I see beautiful ideal forms of gods and goddesses existing on both
sides of the path. I came gradually to the end of that region. I saw that a
fence made of light separated the realm of the divisible from that of the
indivisible. Leaping over that fence, the mind entered by degrees the
realm of the indivisible. No person or thing having a form existed there.
As if afraid to enter there, even the gods/goddesses possessing heavenly
bodies only exercised their authority over realms far below. But the very
next moment I saw seven Rishis having bodies consisting of divine light
only, seated there in samadhi. I felt that in virtue and knowledge, love
and renunciation, they had excelled the gods and goddesses, not to speak
of human beings. Astonished, I was pondering over their greatness when
I saw before me that a part of the homogeneous mass of Light in this
abode of the indivisible, devoid of the slightest tinge of difference, became
solidified and converted into the form of a divine Child. Coming to one of
those Sages, and throwing its soft delicate arms around his neck, it
embraced him, and then calling him with a voice sweeter than the music
of the vina, made great efforts to wake him from samadhi. The sage did
wake up, and with half-shut eyes beheld the Child. I, seeing his bright
expression full of delight, thought that the Child must be the treasure of
his heart – that their familiarity was for eternity. The extraordinary
divine Child then expressed great joy and said to the sage, “I am going to
earth you must come with me.” The sage did not reply, but his loving
eyes expressed his assent. Looking at the Child with eyes of love for
some time, he entered again into samadhi. I was astonished to see that
a part of the mind and body of that Rishi, converted into the form of a
bright light, came down to earth along the luminous path. Hardly had I
seen Narendra (Swami Vivekanand) when I knew that he was that Rishi.’
Ref. 31, pg. 83-84.

58. Ref.1, Sutra I. 33.

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