Death has
always been a mystery, a question seeking an answer from man from
times immemorial. What happens after Death is an even greater mystery.
And then there is also the question of Rebirth. Is there a truth
in this widely prevalent belief?
Religions and philosophies
all over the world provide many theories and explanations. But the
only way to have the true knowledge is by actual experience which
is not easy without following a long and difficult discipline.
But it is interesting
to observe that where this knowledge is not the result of mental
speculation but derived from direct experience, the descriptions
are very similar. We deal with this question of what happens after
Death and the question of Rebirth through an insightful article
by Nolini Kanta Gupta, called 'The Soul and its Journey'.
What happens after
Death and how does Rebirth take place?
The
Soul and its Journey
When a man dies, his soul or psychic being, after a time goes to
the psychic world and takes rest there till the hour comes to take
birth again in another body upon earth. There are then these two
periods in the life after death. First, the passage and next the
rest. The passage means the gradual shedding of all the other sheaths
or envelopes that surround the psychic being and form its earthly
frame. With the physical body has to go also the subtle body, then
the vital and finally the mental too. The reason why one does not
remember the past lives is this that one leaves behind the instrument
of memory - the brain mind - with one's death. One does not carry
over with the psychic being the other parts that constitute the
terrestrial life. They are dispersed and dissolved in their respective
cosmic spheres. The subtle body gives up its elements to the psychic
plane, the vital elements are taken into the vital world and the
mental elements go into the mental world, - unless the psychic being
is highly developed and has organised around itself as its instrument
of self expression any of these elements. In that case, as much
of the terrestrial parts - namely, of the subtle body and life and
mind - as have come into direct contact with the psychic and have
allowed themselves to be moved and moulded by its consciousness,
will alone persist and share in the immortality of the soul. Normally,
the elements of the human vehicle form a loose and unorganised aggregate
massed round the psychic centre. When the centre withdraws, they
too fall off automatically and are scattered into the universal
storehouse of Nature. Only when they have been organised and when
they have attained a definite form and character expressing something
of the psychic nature, can they maintain their identity, for this
identity is part and parcel of the psychic identity.
I have said that the
memory of past lives is effaced because of the effacement of the
instrument. But there is a higher memory which is the attribute
of the psychic consciousness. The psychic being is made of light
and knowledge: it knows, rather it sees and can survey the whole
curve of its past growth and development. Of course, it may not
see or remember - very often it does not - all the physical details
of things and happenings of an earthly life, the hundred incidents,
accidents and contingencies that are not directly linked to its
consciousness. But all things that have had its touch and have contributed
to its growth and development and have in their turn received its
influence - objects, persons, happenings or movements - find themselves
harboured in the psychic memory. And thus the only sure way of remembering
the past, remembering, that is to say, what is worth remembering,
is to go into the psychic being, possess the psychic consciousness.
There one has the whole panorama of the soul's odyssey revealed.
Any other way leads only to imagination, conjecture and delusion.
The difficult Passage
The passage between death
and the arrival at final rest in the psychic world is a most difficult
and dangerous ordeal for the human being. He has left the protection
of the body and has not yet found the refuge in the psychic: he
is obsessed and pulled back by his past - the desires, the hungers,
the attractions and repulsions, the plans unfulfilled, problematic
schemes - all haunt him still, things done, things not done crowd
around him and fetter his forward march. Not only his own Karma,
but the Karma of others too pursues him: all persons with whom he
has had relation, who think of him now, pity him, mourn for him,
lament his absence, raise so many hurdles and obstacles in his path,
oblige him to turn and look back. Again, there are forces and personalities
in the intermediate worlds with whom the poor disembodied creature
has now to come in contact, and not unoften he feels like one unskinned
and all his nerves on edge open helplessly to rough and painful
impacts.
Indeed, although it may sound somewhat strange and wonderful, nevertheless
it is literally true that the body is the fortress par excellence
for the individual being: it is not merely an ugly dirty clothing
that has to be cast off so that one may go straight to the enjoyment
of the beatitude of paradise; on the contrary, it is, as it were,
an armour, a steel-frame that protects the subtle body against the
attacks or harsh and cruel touches of other worlds and their beings.
Once outside the body, there is every danger for the individual
to go astray and be hurt, unless he is guided and protected by a
guardian angel, as Dante has had Virgil as his Maestro. We may note
here that the passage of Dante from Hell through Purgatory to Heaven
across their various levels is almost an exact image of what happens
to a soul after death. The highest Heaven where Dante meets Beatrice
may be considered as the psychic world and Beatrice herself the
Divine Grace that bathes, illumines and comforts the psychic being.
If one has, however,
within oneself an ardent and sincere and unflickering flame, one
can go through more or less easily and unscathed; but that is rare.
Even when alive, in sleep one goes out often into other worlds and
the foreign and unpleasant contacts and experiences he has there
are recorded in the brain-mind as nightmares: on such occasions
the best way to escape is to rush back into the body, the best place
of safety. Many have this experience of rushing headlong into the
body - dropping into the body, as it were - in order to escape from
a threatening danger in sleep and waking up all of a sudden to find
to one's relief that all was illusion and hallucination.
An easy and quick passage
to the place of rest, that is what the being needs and asks for
after death. This is determined by one's Karma in life and the last
wish and prayer at the moment of death - for the force of consciousness
at this critical moment acts not only upon the character of the
passage but also upon the character even of the next birth. Apart
from one's own merit, one can be helped by others also who are still
upon earth and who claim to be his friends and relatives and well-wishers
- not in the way they think they do at present, that is to say,
by grieving and lamenting or even by performing rites and ceremonies,
these often retard rather than accelerate the passage, but by an
inner detachment and calm prayer and goodwill: oftener perhaps to
forget the departed is the best way to help him. A truly conscious
help can be given only by one who has the requisite occult power
and spiritual realisation - the Guru, for example.
The Rest and the new
Birth
Once in its place of
rest the soul enjoys profound peace and delight and is in a kind
of luminous sleep. There it assimilates all the experiences of its
last life, that is to say, imbibes out of them all the substance
that goes to increase and strengthen its consciousness, the sap
that lends itself to the growth of the build and stature of the
being. These experiences are meant to bring the soul nearer - each
life being one step nearer - to the fullness of its union with the
Divine Consciousness out of which it came originally upon earth
as a mere spark, a parcel yet apart. This process may be short or
long according to the nature of assimilation undertaken. Here also
the being prepares for the impending birth, that is to say, gathers
all the elements that will be required for the play of the consciousness
in that life. A broad planning too is made here, a scheme in outline
of the kind of experiences that one will need for the particular
growth of consciousness envisaged. Some forces of consciousness,
out of the stock developed and assembled by the being, are kept
back, in reserve, others are brought forward for immediate use in
the life to be lived next. All this, however, is not the deliberate
rational process of the mind, it is something spontaneous, involved,
a luminous brooding and incubation, something like the trance of
Brahman within which the seed of creation is about to germinate.
The psychic being is
a packet of gathered power, a charged battery, as it were; when
it comes down upon earth, it calls round itself elements of mind
and vital and even subtle physical needed for the purpose of the
particular life experience, and even those that would go to constitute
the physical body. The psychic being usually picks up these elements
of mind and life and body out of the universal store-house of earth's
atmosphere as it needs them, in the same way as it returns them
there on the journey back after death. But as I have already said,
there are beings who have developed well-formed personalities of
mind and life and even of the physical consciousness. These formations
are not mere loose accretions, temporary arrangements for a life
experience, but are welded, organised, given a more or less permanent
shape, as the proper instrument of the psychic being, as its own
expression. In such cases, the outer personality too continues to
exist as an essential mode or vibration in and with the psychic
consciousness itself and when the soul descends upon earth, is in
contact with the earth's atmosphere, it projects out of itself the
external personality and formation. This does not mean certainly
that the personality remains something fixed and rigid, but that
it has attained an essential fullness of form and yet retains the
capacity for further change and growth through further growth of
the psychic being in other life experiences.
Now the time and occasion
for a particular birth of the soul depends naturally on the inner
need of that being. But it must be noted - as it is a fact in the
occult world - that the souls are not so many absolutely separate
unrelated autonomous self-sufficient entities, each one coming and
going as and when it chooses and likes: on the contrary, the souls
form group or families according to some secret affinity. And when
they come down, they do so not unoften in company. A call goes,
a bell is rung as it were intimating that the hour is come and they
rush down. And it may even happen that in rushing down a psychic
being is not too careful or fastidious about the instrument, the
vehicle he chooses to inhabit; whatever is handy and nearest and
on the whole suitable to his purpose he takes up and goes forward.
He takes it all as an adventure and has the joy of battle and the
warrior spirit that can taste of victory only when hard fought and
won. That is how we meet not unoften a considerable discrepancy
between the inner being of a man and his earthly tenement, his soul
and his external character and physical nature. There is a meaning
in the choice, a significance in the utilisation of unfavourable
conditions: there is a method in the madness.
This grouping will appear
natural and inevitable when we bear in mind the purpose of creation
and the role of the psychic consciousness. For it is not a matter
of individual salvation, of the unilateral growth and development
and fulfilment of an individual psychic being. The soul is a luminous
point in an inconscient universe and its role is to make it conscious,
at least a representative portion of it. The psychic being's activity
is the means of a new creation, the transmutation of the earth -
consciousness, the growth and advent of a divine race, the manifestation
and embodiment of the Divine and His play upon earth. The souls
are the warriors, playmates, the beloved of the Lord. They have
to assemble and move together for the interest of the play. They
have to be in companies and regiments and battalions, in associations
and concert and harmonised formations.
Souls and their Groupings
The souls group themselves
into natural types according to the fundamental mode of consciousness
and its dynamism. And they form a hierarchy: they exist and function
in an organisation, the type and pattern of which is the pyramid.
At the apex is the One Supreme, at the base the infinity of individual
and disparate souls, earthly sparks, that are emanations, derivations,
scattered condensations, parts and parcels of that One Supreme.
In between, from the top towards the bottom, lie in a graded scale,
formations more and more specialised, particularised and concretised:
as we rise we meet the larger, vaster more comprehensive forms of
the same entities till we arrive at the typal and original, the
source being. Thus we can view a soul along its line of emanation
from the central source as a series of beings, the higher enclosing
and encompassing the lower. Not only so, a higher entity can have
several lower emanations and each of these again can emanate several
others. The number of emanations multiply as one goes down and they
decrease as one goes up. We can understand now what is meant when
we speak of kindred souls. When there is an inexplicable natural
affinity or similarity between two souls, it happens in such a case
that the souls are emanations of the same Over-Soul. And it happens
also sometimes that the guardian angel or daemon whom one may contact
is none other than one's own Over-Soul. The term Over-Soul takes
thus a literal and a profound significance.
We may illustrate here
a little. At the apex of the pyramid of existence is the Divine,
the Supreme Person, the Purushottama. Even there as He begins to
lean and look down, He expresses himself at the very outset as the
dual personality of Ishwara and Shakti (the Divine Father and the
Divine Mother) - sa dvitiyam aicchat, as the Upanishad says. That
is still the Divine in His highest transcendent status, paratpara.
Next, this dual or biune or divalent reality shows itself or throws
itself further out in a fourfold valency of the dynamic truth consciousness,
creating and leading the cosmic evolution. The Four Aspects of Ishwara,
forming the male or purusa line, are the great names: Mahavira,
Balarama, Pradyumna and Aniruddha. And the corresponding four aspects
of Ishwari form the other great quaternary: Maheshwari, Mahakali,
Mahalakshmi and Mahasaraswati. They embody the four major attributes
of the Divine in his relation to the created universe: Knowledge,
Power, Love and skill in work. They also represent thus a divine
fourfold order. The first embodies the Brahmin quality of large
wisdom, wide comprehension, a vast consciousness; the second has
the Kshatriya quality of force, dynamism, concentration and drive
of energy; the third possesses the Vaishya quality of harmony, beauty,
mutuality and the fourth has the Shudra quality of perfect execution,
thoroughness in detailed working, order and arrangment.
The higher Gods, like
those, for example, envisaged in the Veda, may be considered each
as an emanation of one or other of these Divine Aspects. They are
dwellers of Swar or the Overmind. Varuna seems to be an emanation
of Mahavira, a son of Maheshwari: for he is pre-eminently the god
of the pure and vast consciousness who releases us from the triple
bonds and shows us the winding way into the embrace of the infinite
Mother. His associate, Mitra, is the lord of love and harmony, evidently
an emanation of Pradyumna (or Mahalakshmi). Other gods of the same
category are Bhaga and Soma. The Balarama or Mahakali aspect is
manifested in Aryaman: Rudra being another form of the same. And
Mahasaraswati (or Aniruddha) must have given birth to and inspired
the Ribhus, who are artisans of divinity. The Puranic trinity -
Brahma,Vishnu and Shiva - with Indra as the fourth member forms
a parallel system embodying a similar conception.
Another tradition gives
the Four Supernals as (1) Light or Consciousness, (2) Truth or Knowledge,
(3) Life and (4) Love. The tradition also says that the beings representing
these four fundamental principles of creation were the first and
earliest gods that emanated from the Supreme Divine, and that as
they separated themselves from their source and from each other,
each followed his own independent line of fulfilment, they lost
their divinity and turned into their opposites - Light became obscurity,
consciousness unconsciousness or the inconscient, Truth became falsehood
and Knowledge ignorance, Life became death and finally Love and
Delight became suffering and hatred. These are the fallen angels,
the Asuras that deny their divine essence and now rule the world.
They too have their emanations, forces and beings that are born
out of them and serve them in their various degrees of power. Men
talk and act inspired and impelled by these beings and when they
do so, they lose their humanity and become worse than animals.
But still the Pure Reality
descends undeviated in its own line and man enshrines that within
him, the undying fire that will clean him and bear him to the source
from where he came. And there are luminous godheads that help him
and wish themselves to participate in the terrestrial transformation.
There is a pressure from above and there is an urge from below,
between these two infinities all is ground and moulded and changed.
Even the Lords of Denial will in the end change and learn to affirm,
become again what they truly were and are.
The Flowering of the
Soul
First then there are
the supreme divinities, aspects or own personalities of the Divine
in his supreme status, the Supermind; next come the first emanations,
the true or pure gods in the Overmind. Thence or simultaneously
there is the line of deformation, that of the false gods and godheads,
the Asuras and Titans. These too extend in a series of emanations
down to the subtle physical; except when they themselves incarnate
on the earth in an earthly body.
Man, the soul, we said,
comes direct from the Divine and is thrown and almost stuck into
the earth as a spark, as a point of luminous consciousness-force.
This soul, as it develops, we find, belongs to one or other of the
fundamental type of divine personality, it is a lineal descendant,
as it were, of one of the quaternary and its growth means growing
into the nature of that particular godhead and its fulfilment means
identification with that.
We may try to illustrate
by examples, although it is a rather dangerous game and may tend
to put into a too rigid and mathematical formula something that
is living and variable. Still it will serve to give a clearer picture
of the matter. Napoleon evidently was a child of Mahakali; and Caesar
seems to have been fashioned by the principle of Maheshwari; while
Christ or Chaitanya are clearly emanations in the line of Mahalakshmi.
Constructive geniuses, on the other hand, like the great statesman
Colbert, for example, or Louis XIV, le grand monarque, himself belong
to a family (or gotra, as we say in India) that originated from
Mahasaraswati. Poets and artists again, although generally they
belong to the clan of Mahalakshmi, can be regrouped according to
the principle that predominates in each, the godhead that presides
over the inspiration in each. The large breath in Homer and Valmiki,
the high and noble style of their movement, the dignity and vastness
that compose their consciousness affiliate them naturally to the
Maheshwari line. A Dante, on the other hand, or a Byron has something
in his matter and manner that make us think of the stamp of Mahakali.
Virgil or Petrarch, Shelley or our Tagore seem to be emanations
of Beauty, Harmony, Love - Mahalakshmi. And the perfect artisanship
of Mahasaraswati has found its especial embodiment in Horace and
Racine and our Kalidasa. Michael Angelo in his fury of inspiration
seems to have been impelled by Mahakali, while Mahalakshmi sheds
her genial favour upon Raphael and Titian; and the meticulous care
and the detailed surety in a Tintoretto makes us think of Mahasaraswati's
grace. Mahasaraswati too seems to have especially favoured Leonardo
da Vinci, although a brooding prescence of Maheshwari also seems
to be intermixed there.
For it must be remembered
that the human soul after all is not a simple and unilateral being,
it is a little cosmos in itself. The soul is not merely a point
or a single ray of light come down straight from its divine archetype
or from the Divine himself, it is also a developing fire that increases
and enriches itself through the multiple experiences of an evolutionary
progression-it not only grows in height but extends in wideness
also. Even though it may originally emanate from one principle and
Personality, it takes in for its development and fulfillment influences
and elements from the others also. Indeed, we know that the Four
primal personalities of the Divine are not separate and distinct
as they may appear to the human mind which cannot understand distinction
without disparity. The Vedic gods themselves are so linked together,
so interpenetrate one another that finally it is asserted that there
is only one existence, only it is given many names. All the divine
personalities are aspects of the Divine blended and fused together.
Even so the human soul, being a replica of the Divine, cannot but
be a complex of many personalities and often it may be difficult
and even harmful to find and fix upon a dominant personality. The
full flowering of the human soul, its perfect divinisation demands
the realisation of a many-aspected personality, the very richness
of the Divine within it.
-Nolini
Kanta Gupta
