Sri Aurobindo and The Veda (Auroville) - Session 1

(13 September 1995)

It is said in Indian thought that the real seeking is not a philosophical seeking but Brahma Jigyasa—the desire to know what the Brahman is. This of course can be a preliminary to philosophy also but more than that, the greater intensity comes when there is a need to know the secret of liberation—‘mumukshutva’ how to liberate ourselves. I felt in this group, it is not philosophy but mumukshutva that is much more evident and this is a greater reason for study. If it was only a philosophical inquiry then the reason for continuing in this form would have been much less. But if it is an inquiry into the means of liberation and the secret most knowledge that is pertaining to liberation then it has a greater meaning.

Actually Kathopanishad deals with this very question, what is bondage and what is liberation? Perhaps later on we may take up Kathopanishad, it is a very difficult Upanishad and there is a lot of symbolism, the language is very packed and certain things are very clear and certain very secret. In a sense you might say one feels that one understands and yet one does not understand. So I thought even as a preliminary to Kathopanishad something else is needed.

There is one chapter in Sri Aurobindo’s book called ‘The Life Divine’ which would be directly relevant to our enquiry because that chapter directly deals with the problem of the soul, karma and immortality so I thought we can take up this chapter. As everyone knows ‘The Life Divine’ is a very difficult book, not only the language but the force of argument and the arrangement of arguments is very rigorous. Every word in the book is very weighted and no word is written superfluously. Sri Aurobindo is, according to the Cambridge history which has been recently published, the best writer of English in the present century, and that will be evident when you read even this one chapter. It has to be studied very slowly, without any impatience or without any great hurry. Moreover, since this is a chapter taken from the middle of the book, there is another special difficulty—if you read the whole book from the beginning to the end then the argument would run like a thread and you might say there is an interconnection of thought. But when you take out a chapter from the middle of the book then one does not know what has gone before and what is to come later. It is very similar to our human birth. We do not know what has gone before this particular birth and we do not know what is to come later. But it would still help us, if we knew what this book is from which this chapter is taken and what is its basic argument?

Sri Aurobindo wrote this book from 1914 to 1921—seven years, when he was editor of a journal called ‘Arya’ which he published from Pondicherry. In this journal in a serial form chapter after chapter of this book was written. This was not the only book being written. He was simultaneously writing seven books. Every month seven books were appearing serially. It is a feat of human consciousness and how he wrote is a marvel. And each book is a formidable book and each on a different subject. He wrote ‘The Life Divine’, ‘The Synthesis of Yoga’, third he wrote ‘The Secret of the Vedas’, the fourth the ‘Essays on the Gita’, fifth he wrote ‘The Human Cycle’, it is a story of human society from the earliest times to the present day and indication as to how the future of society will be in days to come. The sixth book he wrote was ‘The Ideal of Human Unity’ which is a study of the notion of the State, of the Government and Institutions of the Government. It is the study of the State right from the earliest times to the present day. And how the future of the state will be in the coming years? The Seventh book he wrote was called ‘The Future Poetry’. And he wrote the longest poem in English literature ever written—‘Savitri’. Sri Aurobindo was primarily a poet, although very well known as a philosopher. But basically he was a poet and in the field of poetry he was supreme; in fact the most supreme poet of the 20th Century. And he wrote the longest poem in English Literature ever written and that is ‘Savitri’. It is 24,000 lines long. But in this particular book, ‘The Future Poetry’, he discussed what is poetry; is poetry a mere fictitious imagination or is it itself a means of knowing the Truth. Normally people do not believe that poetry is a means of knowing the Truth. It is felt that it is an imagination of the poet to look at the moon and feel joy about it, express the joy about the moon and that is all. It is a subjective experience of the moon. But that poetry can be a means of discovering the Truth and expressing Truth and expressing the truth in a beautiful form so as to create a delight in the soul—this specific characteristic of poetry he has discussed in this book and in doing so he has examined the course of English poetry from Chaucer to the present day; Chaucer, Shakespeare and many other English poets, metaphysical poets like Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, and Byron, then the new poets of the present day, Whitman and so on, right up to present day and then has indicated that English poetry has a possibility of expressing what the Indian poets call mantra.

Just as the Vedas are mantric poetry. Sanskrit language had the possibility of expressing mantra and mantric poetry. Similarly English poetry has a possibility in future to arrive at a kind of experience and capacity so that a mantra can be expressed. Then he defines what a mantra is. According to him Mantra has three important characteristics. First of all it must have the highest Truth vision. Unless poetry is able to discover the Truth, the poetry cannot become mantric, so there must be Truth vision. Not the ordinary Trust vision but the highest Truth vision. Secondly, it must have the highest power of rhythm. In a sense you might say poetry is nothing but rhythmic words. Just as painting is nothing but color and line, similarly, poetry is nothing but rhythmic word. Whenever you can express a word that is rhythmic, it is poetry. It must be the highest form of rhythmic word that should be present in a mantra. And then the form and the style in which it is written must be appropriate to the rhythm and to the Truth vision. When these three intensities are combined together then mantra is born. Sri Aurobindo conceives that the future of poetry in the English language has a possibility of turning into it. To give an example of it he wrote ‘Savitri’ in English language. ‘Savitri’ is a mantric poetry.

Mantric poetry for the one who hears it has a very special meaning. When a mantra is heard it carries with it the power of realization. It is a specialization of mantric poetry. If it is heard properly, with a silent, attentive consciousness, if you just even repeat it, the meaning grows into you and what is conveyed is realized in due course with constant repetition of it. This is the special power of mantra. Sri Aurobindo wrote the whole poem, ‘Savitri’ as a repetition of what he had written earlier about ‘Future Poetry’ as proof that the English language is capable of mantric poetry. You can write mantras not only in Sanskrit but also in English, it is a new creation of our times.

These seven books Sri Aurobindo wrote simultaneously, at the same time. Secondly, he wrote with a completely silent mind, as he said he never thought. Thinking process as we understand it was completely absent when he wrote. He said that knowledge came to him like a rain from heaven, in a windless mind there is a complete hush of consciousness, a completely silent mind capable of receiving the knowledge formulating itself by itself. He used to sit at his typewriter and type out so that the knowledge was transmitted straight on his fingers and was transmitted on the typewriter. In a sense you might say he knew what he was typing only when it appeared on the typewriter. It was a straight transmission. And the third quality of his writing was, as he himself said; it is a sadhana which he did during this period to express the Truth without any error whatsoever. So that is the character of all the seven works he wrote during that period. The fourth character of his writing was that it is the highest knowledge formulated in a language appropriate to the modern mentality. This is a very special quality of his writing.

Modern mentality is skeptical, materialistic, logical, systematic, and lover of subtle and complex arrangement of ideas in which conclusions follow from the presentation of data naturally without forcing conclusions to come out. This is the mentality and it is this mentality that all his writings were addressed. Therefore in his writings, there is, you might say, a rigor of data, facts, and data of all kinds, comprehensive data and presentation of data in such a way that the conclusion will follow if you observe the data really carefully, trying to measure every aspect of the data. That is why when we read his writings we must remember that there is this kind of presentation and argumentation and he sees the same data sometimes from different points of view. Some people who are not very observant and are very hurried in their way of thinking might feel it rather tiring but this is the modern mentality. Modern mentality does not want to escape from any rigor of presentation of data from which anything is missed out. It is as if you stand on the top of a mountain and describe whatever you are seeing as you stand on one side you cannot describe from all sides of the mountain but you are standing on the top and you see certain portion of what you are surveying and you describe the whole thing. Then you move to another part and take another angle and see the other part. But in doing so the earlier part you were seeing is also surveyed again. And then it is the third part until you see the whole thing in totality. So if you read the whole of ‘The Life Divine’ you will feel something of this kind like a geographer who maps the whole and how he goes around a hill and surveys the entire hill and gives the topography of the whole hill.

Or he is like a composer of orchestra. This is also another image of his writing. If you want hundred violinists, hundred pianists and so many others who are accompanists and you know each and everyone’s role and all kinds of tunes, melodies and harmony which have to be brought together and you are in control of everything and you direct everything and ultimately a very harmonious music comes out. Many of us who are not attuned to western music feel very tired when they hear western music because it is not only melody but harmony and we are not accustomed to it. Similarly, those who want a real run out of this argument may not feel happy with this writing. But one who wants joy of a complete orchestra, one who has patience, quietude, a great sensitivity, a capacity to go into the depths and wants to enjoy how melodies emerge out of harmony and how from small movements it goes into bigger, and bigger movements and how it drains off ultimately and gives rise to another. Unless you are attuned to this you will not enjoy western music. ‘The Life Divine’ is written on that pattern. It is a big orchestra as it were, being played before you. So, out of that orchestra this chapter is only one little piece. It is injustice to a book if you take out a chapter and read it separately. But if you know this is a part of the whole, then even a big piece of music can be heard in parts also and you can enjoy it by itself also because the orchestral enjoyment is present in every part of it.

This particular chapter before us is entitled,

‘Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, The Soul and Immortality.’

The first line says:

Our first conclusion on the subject of reincarnation has been that the rebirth of the soul in successive terrestrial bodies is an inevitable consequence of the original significance and process of the manifestation in earth-nature...

Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine - II: Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality

This is a difficult sentence and it refers to our first conclusion which has already gone before this chapter. It will be best if I gave you in one paragraph where this conclusion has been arrived at in the previous chapters. I will give you one page on it.

This is the last paragraph of a chapter prior to this chapter and that chapter is entitled ‘The Philosophy of Rebirth’.

Next to that is another chapter called ‘Order of the Worlds’ and then is this chapter we are going to read ‘Rebirth and Other Worlds’. But to read all three chapters would have been a very difficult task and much of it is largely philosophy.

I thought this last chapter is very good, provided we read this one paragraph from this earlier chapter. In this one paragraph which is there, Sri Aurobindo sums up the philosophy of rebirth.

On what basic data can rebirth be inevitable? This is the question he puts in this chapter and proves that these being the data, the facts, rebirth becomes inevitable. He sums up the whole thing in one paragraph:

This then is the rational and philosophical foundation for a belief in rebirth; it is an inevitable logical conclusion if there exists at the same time an evolutionary principle in the Earth Nature and a reality of the individual soul born into evolutionary Nature. If there is no soul, then there can be a mechanical evolution without necessity or significance and birth is only part of this curious but senseless machinery. If the individual is only a temporary formation beginning and ending with the body, then evolution can be a play of the All-Soul or Cosmic Existence mounting through a progression of higher and higher species towards its own utmost possibility in this Becoming or to its highest conscious principle; rebirth does not exist and is not needed as a mechanism of that evolution. Or, if the All-Existence expresses itself in a persistent but illusory individuality, rebirth becomes a possibility or an illusory fact, but it has no evolutionary necessity and is not a spiritual necessity; it is only a means of accentuating and prolonging the illusion up to its utmost time limit. If there is an individual soul or Purusha not dependent on the body but inhabiting and using it for its purpose, then rebirth begins to be possible, but it is not a necessity if there is no evolution of the soul in Nature: the presence of the individual soul in an individual body may be a passing phenomenon, a single experience without a past here or a future; its past and its future may be elsewhere. But if there is an evolution of consciousness in an evolutionary body and a soul inhabiting the body, a real and conscious individual, then it is evident that it is the progressive experience of that soul in Nature which takes the form of this evolution of consciousness: rebirth is self-evidently a necessary part, the sole possible machinery of such an evolution. It is as necessary as birth itself; for without it birth would be an initial step without a sequel, the starting of a journey without its farther steps and arrival. It is rebirth that gives to the birth of an incomplete being in a body its promise of completeness and its spiritual significance.

Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine - II: The Philosophy of Rebirth

Sri Aurobindo takes all the data and then arrives at a conclusion out of it. There is one simple data before us and that is the data of effects that life has evolved in matter and mind in life. This is an indubitable fact. In any case we find the human body which is indubitable; you cannot doubt it that is a fact. The human body first of all is material, it has pulsation and it is capable of thinking, these three facts are joined up together in this particular human body. According to the modern thought of evolution, coming together these three things in man is because of a long process; where first there was matter for a long time, then in some insignificant corner a germ began to pulsate, out of that life-forms came out, variety of them, millions of them. But these forms had no intelligence in them, e.g. a blade of grass, bacteria  had no intelligence in them. But gradually in some of the life forms some kind of intelligence began to appear some kind of mind and then you came to the human body and in the human being, mind as a power of conception becomes very clear. These are the three steps which have come up according to the modern theory of evolution: matter, life and mind.

We do find that birth is a very curious phenomenon. As Sri Aurobindo says in one of the places, "birth is a first mystery by which human beings are intrigued and death is another mystery which reinforces the mystery of birth", so birth may remain a kind of a mystery or one might say a senseless mystery because there is nothing fundamental to look into.

This world is just like this, a manifestation of matter, life and mind. It is like you prepare hundreds of dishes for a feast and then somebody comes from the neighborhood and says what have you done, have you invited thousands of people? You suddenly realise that nobody has been invited. This big feast seems to be senseless, meaningless, has no significance. Whenever we use the word significance, there is a special meaning in it. Significance means significance for the experiencer. All significance in the world is significant for the experiencer, for the enjoyer, for one who is going to enjoy; if there is nobody to enjoy anything it is not significant. You may write twenty books but if neither you enjoy them after reading or writing them nor is anybody else going to read them, it is a senseless exercise. It may be there, it is not impossible. The world may be a senseless, mechanical necessity in which these things are happening. But it has no significance.

That’s what Sri Aurobindo says:

If there is no soul, then there can be a mechanical evolution without necessity or significance and birth is only part of this curious but senseless machinery. If the individual is only a temporary formation beginning and ending with the body, then evolution can be a play of the All-Soul or Cosmic Existence mounting through a progression of higher and higher species towards its own utmost possibility in this Becoming or to its highest conscious principle; rebirth does not exist and is not needed as a mechanism of that evolution.

Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine - II: The Philosophy of Rebirth

If the individual soul is itself a product of birth and that soul is only a formation so long as the body remains, and that formation ceases then what will be reborn? There is nothing to be reborn. It comes into being with the body, it dies with the body then the question of rebirth does not arise. If the individual is only a temporary formation, beginning and ending with the body then evolution can still be there but rebirth will not be there. Rebirth does not exist and is not needed as a mechanism of that evolution. This is the second possible formulation of the data.

The third alternative, or if the All Existent expresses itself in a persistent, but illusory individuality, rebirth becomes a possibility or an illusory fact but it has no evolutionary necessity and is not a spiritual necessity. It is only a means of accentuating and prolonging the illusion up to its utmost time limit. There is a theory according to which the individual is a temporary formation but not beginning with the body and ending with the body.

The third alternative is that the soul or individual is a temporary formation, but persistent. That is to say that it may be argued that even when the human body dies, there is an inner formation of the individual which still continues to subsist or persist but it is temporary and ultimately it is illusory. That is to say that at a certain stage you will find that it was a false notion that there was an individual at all. This is the view of Buddhism and of Mayavada both of which maintain that the individual is a temporary but persistent, ultimately illusory Reality. According to Buddhism an individual consists of Samskaras. There is a distinction between the human body and the human individual. The human body simply consists of matter but human individual consists of samskaras, consisting of impressions, sensations, images, ideas, desires, impulses and thoughts. You make a complex of all this which is housed in this body. This complex is different from the human body. Therefore when the human body dies this formation can still remain and this complex can incarnate into another body, it comes of this body and goes into another body and develops further on and on and on until it reaches a point, an accentuating point where there is an experience of acute suffering, acute sense of bondage, and one begins to ask the question ‘what am I? Why am I bound to be in this condition where I am?’ Until you reach this point, you go on taking birth from body to body and when you reach this question then you begin your enquiry. Maybe that that enquiry is not finished in that particular body, then again you come out into another body and the enquiry continues. A point is reached when you discover that actually all that you called yourself is only a temporary formation and this temporary formation has persisted for a long time, over long, long years, coming out from one body to another. Then you discover that this formation can be broken because it is temporary. If by nature it was not temporary you could not break it. So you find out if it is breakable, this formation can be broken. And when you break it you find that actually it was a fluff, it was ‘tuccha’ which means it was nothing actually. Because when it is broken you find that there is something quite different, which has no connection at all with all that was happening all around. It is ‘Shunya’ as in Buddhism, which is what you find after you break your individuality, there is ‘shunya’. There is no connection. This formation was real fluff. It was like a bubble that bursts or you find it is entirely an immobile self. This bubble was mobile all the time, whereas what you discover is not shunya but an immobile Reality, completely silent in it self, in which there is no possibility of any movement at all, so even a temporary formation which has movement was possible right in the beginning. If you reach shunya it is called nirvana. In Shankar’s philosophy when you reach the Immobile Reality, it is the stage of moksha or liberation. The temporary formation is dissolved then. You find it was not there at all, it was illusory and did not exist at all.

If these are the data, then rebirth may be a fact, but rebirth is not a necessity; there is a difference between the two. There is no logical necessity that there must be rebirth. If the individual is a temporary formation it can theoretically be broken any time. Why should it be broken only at a given time when you are accentuated and all that. Theoretically, there is no reason why it should persist for a long time. It may persist; it may not persist. Both the conclusions are possible. Therefore, Sri Aurobindo says, rebirth does not become a necessity. Birth may exist. But it does not become necessary. Both Buddhism and Shankara’s Mayavada believes in rebirth. But under the data given there rebirth is a possibility but not a necessity. This is the third possibility.

We come to a fourth alternative. If there is an individual soul or Purusha, not dependent on the body but inhabiting and using it for its purpose then rebirth begins to be possible but is not a necessity if there is no evolution of the soul in nature. The presence of the individual soul in an individual body may be a passing phenomenon, a single experience without a past or future. Its path in the future may be elsewhere.

This is the view of some of the major religions of the world of today, not Hinduism, not Buddhism, not Jainism but all the other religions, Islam, Christianity, Judaism; they believe that there is an individual soul which inhabits this body but the soul does not have evolutionary purpose. It believes that there is a soul, not a temporary formation, nor an illusory formation. It is something which is different from the human body; it is different even from samskaras.

It is a distinct entity. In the religious language the soul is called the breath of God. And once breathed it never dies; it is permanent. If there is an individual soul which inhabits a body but if the soul itself is not participating either in its own evolution of consciousness or in the evolution of nature in which it is inhabiting, then since it is a reality, after death it continues to exist. Therefore it may reincarnate into another body but since it has no purpose of evolving in nature it may not necessarily enter into another body. It has no further purpose if its purpose is not evolutionary. Its purpose may be very limited, to be simply in the body and to take a decision to surrender to God or not to take a decision of this kind. If this is the only purpose and not evolutionary purpose then rebirth is not necessary at all.

One body is given to you according to this theory and in this lifetime you have to take a decision as to whether you accept Christ as your saviour or Mohammed as the prophet of God and declare your allegiance to God. If you do so, that is the purpose and there is no evolutionary purpose. It is not that you are going to evolve new forms and higher levels of consciousness. If this is the only purpose then a choice is given to you in this life and you exercise the choice even at the point of death you have a chance of taking a decision. And if you do not take a decision in favour of this alternative, then there may be another possibility for you. If you are favourable to God you will go to heaven. You will not come to another rebirth, but you will go to heaven. Or if your decision is unfavourable to God then you will go to hell. And on the Day of Judgment this decision will be taken by God. This is a kind of logical conclusion one can derive from this kind of theory. If there is an individual soul inhabiting the body but which has no evolutionary purpose in nature then it may take rebirth, because it is an individual soul, but it has no necessity to take rebirth. And its future existence will be either in heaven or hell in this world or somewhere else but not in this particular world which we know. So this is the fourth alternative.

You may have piety, you may have a great feeling of purity, kindness, charity, benevolence—all these good qualities by which you may come to a decision that you would like to have allegiance but what we call the knowledge of God, by becoming one with God, to live in God, the way in which we understand ‘living in God’, to continue to have allegiance to God is in itself living in God. And to continue to have allegiance in God is living in God. This is the fourth alternative.

But if there is an evolution of consciousness in an evolutionary body and a soul inhabiting the body—a real and conscious individual, then it is evident that it is a progressive experience of that soul in nature which takes the form of this evolution of consciousness. Rebirth is self-evidently a necessary part, the sole possible machinery of such an evolution, because you cannot evolve the possibilities of consciousness in one brief life. If it was possible in one brief life then there is no need of rebirth. In one brief life the purpose of evolution of consciousness could not be accomplished, since the purpose of the real individual soul is evolution of consciousness in this body, then once this body is over you have to take birth in another body. So rebirth then becomes a necessity.

If rebirth has to be a necessary conclusion of any data, these have to be the data viz.—there must be an evolutionary process of nature; this body itself be a product of evolution; the soul is not a temporary formation, not an illusory formation, not merely a persistent formation but a Real Entity and its purpose must be evolution of consciousness in the evolutionary body. If this is the purpose, then since in one body this purpose cannot be fulfilled it can be fulfilled by another process viz. rebirth. Then rebirth becomes a necessity. This is all that Sri Aurobindo shows by all alternatives that these are all the alternatives available comprehensive data. It is as necessary as birth itself. For without it birth would be an initial step without a sequel, the starting of a journey without its further steps and arrival. It is rebirth that gives to the birth of an incomplete being in a body a promise of completeness and its spiritual significance.

This is where the chapter starts.

In the first chapter, the first paragraph:

Our first conclusion on the subject of reincarnation has been that the rebirth of the soul in successive terrestrial bodies is an inevitable consequence of the original significance and process of the manifestation in earth-nature; but this conclusion leads to farther problems and farther results which it is necessary to elucidate.

Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine - II: Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality

Once you grant that there is a necessity of rebirth then many questions arise. In fact it is this question which is the central theme of Kathopanishad. The story is that Nachiketas is a son of a Brahmin who has done a sacrifice and in the sacrifice he has offered his wealth and his son Nachiketas is sitting nearby. And he finds that the wealth of his father consisted only of cows which have lived their full life and had become worn out, all the milk that they had they have given and they are quite worthless now and it is these that the Brahmin is offering as sacrifice. The son becomes very perplexed and worried and he feels that if you want to make sacrifices you should make good sacrifices, the things which are useful and have real value. To prevent the father from making sacrifices of useless things he puts a question to his father and says father to whom do you want to sacrifice me because he is a young boy with a lot of life to live and if he is sacrificed there will be meaning in it. So, inducing his father to say alright, I sacrifice you, he will earn some merit. Father is annoyed with his question. Then the boy asked for a second time and he asked for a third time. The father becomes very angry and in anger he says I give you to Death, to Yama I give you. As he utters these words, the soul of Nachiketas is transported to the house of Yama. He arrives at Yama’s house where Yama is not present for three days. And the attendants of Yama at Yama’s arrival after three days, inform Yama that a young Brahmin has arrived at his house and if you do not treat him well, it is not good for you. Now, you request him to come in and propitiate him. Yama says, since you have remained for three nights in my house I will give you three boons. Choose them. Nachiketas then asks for three boons. The first boon is when I return from here my father is very pleased with me. The second, tell me what is the nature of celestial fire, celestial Agni? And this question Yama answers. The third question he asks is—we are told that there is a debate that when man passes out then he is no more or does he still exist. Now that you know, you are the only one who knows the real truth please tell me what really happens.

This question is such an important question that Yama does not want to answer it. Such a secret question and such a secret knowledge to which an answer is to be given that he does not feel this boy should be given the knowledge and he says even Gods do not know. So why do you want an answer to this question? You select any other boon and I will give you. The boy says, what even Gods do not want to know, I want to know and I want to have that fulfillment.

Yama says I will give anything—wealth, beautiful wives, children, and so much property that generations after generations there will be no lack of it. Ask for any such boon. He says then what is the end of all pleasures, nothing? But this knowledge is so precious that I want it. Then Yama says you have pleased my heart. There are two ways, shreyas and preyas. I offered you preyas and all that is pleasant and you did not accept it but you held on to shreyas—to that which is really worthwhile. I am pleased with you and will therefore let you have this knowledge, then follows a dialogue which is a very difficult dialogue. This is the question Sri Aurobindo says, if rebirth is necessary, if it is the necessity of universal significance then many questions arise.

There arises first the question of the process of rebirth; if that process is not quickly successive, birth immediately following death of the body so as to maintain an uninterrupted series of lives of the same person, if there are intervals, that in its turn raises the question of the principle and process of the passage to other worlds, which must be the scene of these intervals, and the return to earth-life. A third question is the process of the spiritual evolution itself and the mutations which the soul undergoes in its passage from birth to birth through the stages of its adventure.

Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine - II: Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality

The first question is what is the process of rebirth? Who is reborn, how is one reborn? In what form is he reborn?

The second is—is rebirth immediately successive? There are two notions which are running in the world amongst those who believe in rebirth, not sufficiently reconciled. According to one view you leave this body and you are immediately reborn into another body. According to the other view, once you come out of the body you go through experiences of pleasure and pain according to whether you have been good or bad on this earth. If you have been good you go to heaven and pleasures of some kind, otherwise you will be chastised and sent to hell for some time. And when this is over you take another birth. This is a popular notion, not necessarily scientifically verifiable. These are the current notions. We have to arrive at a very scientific conclusion on this subject. Is rebirth immediately successive or if not immediately successive then what happens to the soul in the interval?

The third question is that in the whole process of dying, coming out of the body, passing to wherever one has to pass after the death of the body, returning to the new body; what is it that the soul gains and how does it evolve itself. What is the process of its evolution? What role does nature play and what role does the soul play in the evolution of consciousness, which is the real purpose? These are the three questions that arise.

In answering these three questions the whole chapter has been written.

But it is a detailed discussion on this. Once again there are various possibilities which Sri Aurobindo puts forward.

If the physical universe were the sole manifested world, or if it were a quite separate world, rebirth as a part of the evolutionary process would be confined to a constant succession of direct transmigrations from one body to another; death would be immediately followed by a new birth without any possibility of an interval,—the passage of the soul would be a spiritual circumstance in the uninterrupted series of a compulsory, mechanical, material procedure.

Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine - II: Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality

The physical universe is the only universe. Once the soul comes out of the body there is nowhere else it has to go, so it goes into another body immediately. So, transmigration to some other world, heaven or hell or other worlds does not arise at all. This is true if the physical world is the only reality. If the physical universal is not the only reality then other possibilities arise.

We have found:

The soul would have no freedom from Matter; it would be perpetually bound to its instrument, the body, and dependent on it for the continuity of its manifested existence. But we have found that there is a life on other planes after death and before the subsequent rebirth, a life consequent on the old and preparatory of the new stage of terrestrial existence. Other planes coexist with ours, are part of one complex system and act constantly upon the physical which is their own final and lowest term, receive its reactions, admit a secret communication and commerce. Man can become conscious of these planes, can even in certain states project his conscious being into them, partly in life, presumably therefore with a full completeness after the dissolution of the body.

Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine - II: Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality

This is the second alternative for which we have already given evidence in the previous chapter.

Physical universe is not the only universe. In fact in one of the important articles of Vedic knowledge there is a discovery of other worlds other than the physical universe. The Vedic seers were able to find out that there are worlds other than the physical world of which we have physical experience. And therefore he described the whole world in a very symbolic manner. He said the world is like an animal which has two heads, 4 horns and 3 feet—it is like a riddle—dveshirasa, chaturshringa, tripada. Three feet consist of 3 worlds, the lower worlds, the world of matter, the world of life and the world of mind— tripada. Even in the world there are 3 earths, the Veda speaks of 3 earths. Even in the earth principle there are two other earth principles of which we are not normally aware. The earth principle is called prithvi. The second is antariksha and the third is dhyao or heaven that is the mind. When the Vedic Rishis prayed they prayed that the first shanti may be dhyo shanti, antariksha shanti, prithvi shanti; tripada, the three worlds. Then comes another world, which is called the world of Truth and Vast, the world of Satyam, Ritam, Brihad, the Truth, the Right and the Vast. This is called the higher heaven. Dhyo is the lower heaven sometimes also referred to as Swaha.

In the Gayatri mantra we speak of Bhur is prithvi, Bhuva is antariksha and dhyao together and swaha is this swaha, higher than that is the triple world which is spiritual Satchitananda. So Satchitananda and Swaha, Truth and Vast these are the four horns. The 3 feet are the feet of matter, life and mind. The four horns are Satchitananda and truth and vast. These are the 7 Realities, 7 worlds. 4 higher worlds and three lower. The 4 horns are the higher worlds and the tripada, 3 feet the lower worlds—4 higher and 3 lower worlds. All this is the manifestation of a reality which is dual in character, which has 2 heads, which is Ardhanareshwar; which is supreme, at once the Lord and Divine Mother; which is the ultimate justification of the sex principle in the world. Aditi is called the Divine Feminine principle, the first Divine Mother from whom all creatures are born. And the Lord is often the image of Rishabha, the Supreme Bull, the image of the Veda. The knowledge of the existence of these worlds was a precious possession of the Vedic Rishis.

This was not just a belief. It was as if the Rishis were able to move into these worlds at will. They could enter into any world as they willed. It was a kind of personal experience. Just as we can say that I have seen the world and have no doubt of its existence, at least so far as my senses go. Similarly, one can say I have entered into the world of the Truth and Vast. I have entered the world of life, or of mind. In the world of mind there will be only the world of ideas and no matter as we see it. In the world of life there will be world desires, impulses. When you enter into the higher world of the Supermind, when you go to the higher level, Truth and Right and Vast, you will see only the manifestation which is luminous, the world of light, the world of delight, world of consciousness and the world of existence. These worlds were known to the Upanishads also, before Upanishads accepted this whole theory, not a theory according to them, but knowledge.

There is a very interesting sentence of Yama to Nachiketas. It says—those who believe that this world alone is and there are no other worlds they constantly remain as a victim of death. They cannot be liberated at all. Those who believe that there is only this world and no other world at all for them there is no liberation. They remain in this world of death, madhyaloka. So the knowledge of these worlds is necessary for liberation. This is one of the secrets that Nachiketas is told by Yama. He is made to realise that there are many other worlds.

So Sri Aurobindo, says:

But we have found that there is a life on other planes after death and before the subsequent rebirth, a life consequent on the old and preparatory of the new stage of terrestrial existence. Other planes coexist with ours, are part of one complex system and act constantly upon the physical which is their own final and lowest term, receive its reactions, admit a secret communication and commerce. Man can become conscious of these planes, can even in certain states project his conscious being into them, partly in life, presumably therefore with a full completeness after the dissolution of the body. Such a possibility of projection into other worlds or planes of being becomes then sufficiently actual to necessitate practically its own realisation, immediately and perhaps invariably following on human earth life if man is from the beginning endowed with such a power of self-transference, eventual if he only arrives at it by a gradual progression.

Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine - II: Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality

If you already have the power of entering into that world then as soon as you go out of this body it will be very easy to enter into it. But if you have not attained to that level of development then you may come back immediately into this body. But if you have developed that capacity then you can go into that world after the death of the body.

For it is possible that at the beginning he would not be sufficiently developed to carry on his life or his mind into larger life-worlds or mind-worlds and would be compelled to accept an immediate transmigration from one earthly body to another as his only present possibility of persistence.

Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine - II: Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality