Episode 01 - Essential Gita - Chapter 5 - Evolution, Cycle of Birth/Death.
CHAPTER 5. EVOLUTION, CYCLE OF BIRTHS AND DEATHS, RE-INCARNATION: ON DEATH AND BEING BORN AGAIN
When faith dictates that this life is just the only one and that there is nothing beyond death, all of life’s problems and expectations have to be played out in this very life. This life becomes the most precious; anxiety to wring the most out of it is the most intense.
As man found that anxiety interfering with the very purpose of his life, he projected his thoughts and found that there was indeed no singular encapsulation of all the causes and effects of a life in that one – most finite – life time; that there was indeed an inexplicable temporal space between the causes and effects of a life; he drew lessons from his observation that all are not ‘born equal’ in terms of material sciences. Children born of the same parents eked out very vastly different life styles, levels of thinking and ‘inborn’ knowledge; even with the advent of modern science and its great analytical tools, it was still inexplicable; just the ‘dna’s would not explain this striking dissimilarity in beings sharing the same parenting, same social environment, same opportunities. Why is new life so very widely dispersed – in terms of social, economic and ethnic circumstance?
The thought projections found an outlet for the anxiety. Since there was an unquestionable temporal distance between the cause and effect in one’s life (we are talking about moral causes and moral effects – punya and paapa and the resulting karma as in the case of Hindu thought, or even sinning and good deeds in other faiths producing their moral payloads), the wisdom dawned on man that he was perceivably born with a carry of payload – good or bad – for him to be born in the circumstances that he is. Man began to think of this life as a continuum that he could not project his thoughts into, one that was obtuse but inciting, provoking intense thoughts about.
Some philosophies like the Abhahamic ones concluded that there was indeed an after-life – a second innings of sorts – for people who die; because at that point, they had with them an accumulated baggage of their moral good and moral bad that they had eked out during their life here. (Added to this would of course be the payload that they had carried into this life when they were born.) This netted out good or bad moral merits that they have at the point of them had to be played out inevitably. There was no means of cancelling this – jettisoning this baggage.** Therefore, these faiths concluded that life continued after death – in a subtle (non-physical, virtual) form – and the lives were destined to go to higher realms – called the heaven – if the netted out carry was good; where they could spend this carry splashing through the pleasurable opportunities that this higher realm (heavens, ‘swarga’ in Hindu thought) was imagined to be replete with. And those who had unfortunately been laden with a payload that was in the net all bad, they were consigned to a lower realm – called the ‘hell’ or ‘naraka’ in Hindu thought – where they would be compelled to play out their collective evil payload by going through ghastly suffering and pain, as imagined in these faiths.
RIG VEDA MANTRAS – MANDALA 10
mainamaghne vi daho mābhi śoco māsya tvacaṃ cikṣipo māśarīram |
yadā śṛtaṃ kṛṇavo jātavedo.athemenaṃ prahiṇutāt pitṛbhyaḥ ||
śṛtaṃ yadā karasi jātavedo.athemenaṃ pari dattātpitṛbhyaḥ |
yadā ghachātyasunītimetāmathā devānāṃvaśanīrbhavāti ||
sūryaṃ cakṣurghachatu vātamātmā dyāṃ ca ghachapṛthivīṃ ca dharmaṇā |
apo vā ghacha yadi tatra te hitamoṣadhīṣu prati tiṣṭhā śarīraiḥ ||
ajo bhāghastapasā taṃ tapasva taṃ te śocistapatu taṃ tearciḥ |
yāste śivāstanvo jātavedastābhirvahainaṃsukṛtāmu lokam ||
ava sṛja punaraghne pitṛbhyo yasta āhutaścaratisvadhābhiḥ |
ayurvasāna upa vetu śeṣaḥ saṃ ghachatāntanvā jātavedaḥ ||
English Translation - by Ralph T.H. Griffith
1. Burn him not up, nor quite consume him, Agni: let not his body or his skin be scattered. O Jātavedasa, when thou hast matured him, then send him on his way unto the Fathers’.
2 When thou hast made him ready, Jātavedas, then do thou give him over to the Fathers’. When he attains unto the life that waits him, he shall become the Deities’ controller.
3 The Sun receive thine eye, the Wind thy spirit; go, as thy merit is, to earth or heaven.
Go, if it be thy lot, unto the waters; go, make thine home in plants with all thy members.
4 Thy portion is the goat: with heat consume him: let thy fierce flame, thy glowing splendour, burn him. With thine auspicious forms, o Jātavedasa, bear this man to the region of the pious.
5 Again, O Agni, to the Fathers’ send him who, offered in thee, goes with our oblations. Wearing new life let him increase his offspring: let him rejoin a body, Jātavedasa.
EVOLUTION
The Universe has been evolving – expanding, mutating, occasionally constricting itself; it is an enormous bundle of supreme energy and its ceaseless outputs – of expansion, change, constriction. That is the universally conceded cosmic truth.
All the beings in the Universe – sentient, insentient, cosmic – have also been evolving – mutating – ceaselessly.
Of all these, the evolution of the human – the man – has been the most remarkable. Remarkable only for the reason that its vital component, the human mind, has lent itself to a keener observation and measuring than what has been possible with the other beings and objects that comprise this universe.
Knowledge, culture, civilization, ethics, values, societal systems and spirituality have all been changing over ages.
Ancient literature lets us have a look in into all these facets of the human evolution in eons of the past. In our own lifetimes we see those changes and are able to perceive them in relation to the old.
And the overall drive or movement – from humanity’s point of view – could be assertively said to be – forward, onward; set firmly on a journey towards divinity, towards the ultimate destination or goal where no further mutation or change is either necessary or possible, a merger, commingling of these individual life forces, subjected to repeated births, life experiences, travails, seeking of truth and gradual jettisoning of all the causes. of rebirth and pain.
I would liken the evolution of man to a ratchet-wheel that is tilted to a 45-degree upward trajectory, moving up two feet, and slipping back on the ratchet two inches. The trajectory is secularly upward – relentlessly towards union with the Supreme Being – of Moksha – or deliverance from all pain and unto boundless bliss. The journey is a relentless struggle of consciousness against the lure for the sense organs of objects of so-called pleasure, distractions enroute. The material world, ‘prakriti’ is filled with those objects that trip and distract. Those who gain the right knowledge and guidance at the feet of a good mentor or preceptor, or guru might gain handsomely in this struggle. For those who are less blessed, though, the struggle could be darker and daunting but still the course is set towards divinity. The journey could be made up of an uncertain number ‘births’ and ‘deaths’, and every lifetime presenting an opportunity for man to try and disentangle consciousness from the spider’s web – the’prakriti’.
This evolution, stage by stage and through countless ‘births’ and ‘deaths’ is a process that elevates the entire humanity towards divinity.
If one could imagine a humongous concourse of humanity purposefully setting out on this elevating journey towards divinity with all the billions of beings participating in different stages of spiritual evolution, one could further imagine a least evolved lot keeping the rear. With this lot of persons, the misconceived notion that the body is the ‘I’, is everything of life and its purpose, with the Atma shrouded by the overpowering sense of body, nearly stifling the Atma fatally. The Isavasya Upanishad (Mantra 3) calls these persons as causing the suicide of their souls – atmahanO janah.
Bhagavad Gita - Chapter 16, Verse 9
etāṁ dṛiṣhṭim avaṣhṭabhya naṣhṭātmāno ’lpa-buddhayaḥ
prabhavanty ugra-karmāṇaḥ kṣhayāya jagato ’hitāḥ
Holding fast to such views, (“The world is without Absolute Truth, without any basis (for moral order), and without a God (who has created or is controlling it). It is created from the sexual union alone and has no purpose other than sexual gratification.”) these misdirected souls, with small intellect and cruel actions, arise as enemies of the world threatening its destruction.
Chapter 16, Verse 16
aneka-chitta-vibhrāntā moha-jāla-samāvṛitāḥ
prasaktāḥ kāma-bhogeṣhu patanti narake ’śhuchau
Possessed and led astray by such imaginings, enveloped in a mesh of delusion, and addicted to the gratification of sensuous pleasures, they descend to the murkiest hell.
But the Gita holds out a promise of deliverance for these struggling souls at the bottom too:
api chet su-durāchāro bhajate mām ananya-bhāk
sādhur eva sa mantavyaḥ samyag vyavasito hi saḥ
Even if the vilest sinners worship Me with exclusive devotion, they are to be considered righteous because they have made the proper resolve.
Chapter 9, Verse 31”
kṣhipraṁ bhavati dharmātmā śhaśhvach-chhāntiṁ nigachchhati
kaunteya pratijānīhi na me bhaktaḥ praṇaśhyati
Quickly they become virtuous and attain lasting peace. O son of Kunti, declare it boldly that no devotee of Mine is ever lost.
In the vanguard of this same great rising concourse are elevated souls at the threshold of emancipation or moksha, fully alive with ‘mumukshutva’ – intellect focussed on moksha,an all-consuming aspiration for liberation.
The Taitreeya Upanishad, in Anandavalli, charts the graduation ladder right up to the Supreme Being.
Upanishads and the Brahma Sutra speak of an ‘Amanava Purusha’ – a being who is beyond being a human (who is not a god or godhead either) – beyond the material realm, not in the highest realms yet, but somewhere in that higher realm and at the threshold of divinity..
Sri Krishna speaks of that elevated soul, at the threshold of liberation
Bhagavad Gita – Chapter 2- Verse 55
prajahāti yadā kāmān sarvān pārtha mano-gatān
ātmany-evātmanā tuṣhṭaḥ sthita-prajñas tadochyate
when one discards all selfish desires and cravings of the senses that torment the mind, and becomes satisfied in the realization of the self, such a person is said to be a “Sthitha Prajna” - transcendentally situated.
Frederick Friedrich Nietzsche hypothesizes that humanity can elevate itself to a state of “Superman”(speaks of a Übermensch) – where humans ‘have transcended or gone beyond good and evil by perfecting oneself by going through the amor fati — loving one’s fate and destiny with a will strong enough to embrace everything one encounters in life, including suffering pain and sorrow.’.”
What happens if a striving yogi’s life is disrupted by death before he accomplishes realization? – Arjuna raises this query with Sri Krishna. Here is Sri Krishna’s answer:
Bhagavad Gita – Chapter 6, Verses 41, 42
prāpya puṇya-kṛitāṁ lokān uṣhitvā śhāśhvatīḥ samāḥ
śhuchīnāṁ śhrīmatāṁ gehe yoga-bhraṣhṭo ’bhijāyate
atha vā yoginām eva kule bhavati dhīmatām
etad dhi durlabhataraṁ loke janma yad īdṛiśham
The unsuccessful yogis, upon death, go to the abodes of the virtuous. After dwelling there for many ages, they are again reborn in the earth plane, into a family of pious and prosperous people. Else, if they had developed dispassion due to long practice of Yoga, they are born into a family endowed with divine wisdom. Such a birth is very difficult to attain in this world.
śhuchīnāṁ = (in a family of) pious and upright; śhrīmatāṁ = (in a family of) wealthy.
In the middle of this great concourse journey the middling majority – awakening to the consciousness within them, groping around to find the truth and struggling to jettison the oppressing layers of ignorance and material world’s lures.
Bhagavad Gita – Chapter 18 – Verses 60 to 62 succinctly spells out this struggle and divinity-bound journey:
Verse 60
swbhāva-jena kaunteya nibaddhaḥ svena karmaṇā
kartuṁ nechchhasi yan mohāt kariṣhyasy avaśho ’pi tat
Actions which out of delusion one may not wish to do, (out of ignorance about one’s innate/involuntary inclinations), one will be driven to do them by force of innate inclination, born out of one’s own vasanas.
Verse 62
tam eva śharaṇaṁ gachchha sarva-bhāvena bhārata
tat-prasādāt parāṁ śhāntiṁ sthānaṁ prāpsyasi śhāśhvatam
Surrender exclusively unto Him with your whole being, O Bharat. By His grace, you will attain perfect peace and the eternal abode.
(The precept of ‘prabatti’ is enunciated in Verse 62; Sri Krishna would amplify this subsequently – in verse 66 – celebrated as the ‘sarama sloka’ )
‘Births’ and ‘deaths’ in this context have no emotional quotient.
What happens at the time of death?
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad provides details – blow by blow - of this feared event:
Verse 4.4.2
ekībhavati, na paśyatītyāhuḥ; ekībhavati, na jighratītyāhuḥ; ekībhavati, na rasayatītyāhuḥ; ekībhavati, na vadatītyāhuḥ; ekībhavati, na śṛṇotītyāhuḥ; ekībhavati, na manuta ityāhuḥ; ekībhavati, na spṛśatītyāhuḥ; ekībhavati, na vijānātītyāhuḥ; tasya haitasya hṛdayasyāgraṃ pradyotate; tena pradyotenaiṣa ātmā niṣkrāmati—cakśuṣṭo vā, mūrdhno vā, anyebhyo vā śarīradeśebhyaḥ; tamutkrāmantaṃ prāṇo'nūtkrāmati; prāṇamanūtkrāmantaṃ sarve prāṇā anūtkrāmanti; savijñāno bhavati, savijñānamevānvavakrāmati । taṃ vidyākarmaṇī samanvārabhete pūrvaprajñā ca
(The eye) becomes united (with the subtle body); then people say, ‘He does not see.’ (The nose) becomes united; then they say, ‘He does not smell.’ (The tongue) becomes united; then they say, ‘He does not taste.’ (The vocal organ) becomes united; then they say, ‘He does not speak.’ (The ear) becomes united; then they say, ‘He does not hear.’ (The Manas) becomes united; then they say, ‘He does not think.’ (The skin) becomes united; then they say, ‘He does not feel.’ (The intellect) becomes united; then they say, ‘He does not know.’ The top of the heart brightens. Through that brightened top the soul (Atma) departs,‘either through the eye, or through the head, or through any other part of the body. When it departs, the vital force (Prana) follows; when the vital force departs, all the organs follow. Then the soul (Atma) has particular consciousness, and goes to the body which is related to that (graduated level of) consciousness. It is followed by knowledge, work and past experience.
tadyathā tṛṇajalāyukā tṛṇasyāntaṃ gatvānyamākramamākramyātmānamupasaṃharati, evamevāyamātmedaṃ śarīraṃ nihatya, avidyāṃ gamayitvā, anyamākramamākramyātmānamupasaṃharati |
Just as a caterpillar supported on a leaf goes to the end of it, takes hold of another support (another leaf) and contracts itself, before letting go of the first leaf and moving on to the new leaf, so does the soul throw this body aside—make it senseless—take hold of another support, and contract itself.
Swami Krishnananda would explain ‘death’ in more metaphysical/spiritual terms:
“Nothing happens except a fructification of the potentialities of thoughts and feelings enshrined in one's life as a common denominator, as it were, a kind of average that is struck of all the thoughts and feelings, and even actions thought and felt and committed in one's life.”
By this logic, such fructification determines the following birth. It is said that the last thought in a dying person’s mind determines the shape and nature of that soul’s destination – the next life, the next birth. The last thought does not arise in isolation. It is not a random one. Not out of thin air. It is, it ought to be, the quintessence of the thought-processes through that life – like the fruit of a tree, like its mature seed fit to germinate again.
Bhagavad Gita affirms this:
Chapter 8, Verse 5
anta-kāle cha mām eva smaran muktvā kalevaram
yaḥ prayāti sa mad-bhāvaṁ yāti nāstyatra sanśhayaḥ
Those who relinquish the body while remembering Me at the moment of death will come to Me. There is certainly no doubt about this.
Verse 6
yaṁ yaṁ vāpi smaran bhāvaṁ tyajatyante kalevaram
taṁ tam evaiti kaunteya sadā tad-bhāva-bhāvitaḥ
Whatever one remembers upon giving up the body at the time of death one attains that state, being always absorbed in such contemplation.
Verse 8
śharīraṁ yad avāpnoti yach chāpy utkrāmatīśhvaraḥ
gṛihītvaitāni sanyāti vāyur gandhān ivāśhayāt
As the air carries fragrance from place to place, so does the embodied soul carry the mind and senses with it, when it leaves an old body and enters a new one.
This is an important philosophical assertion – often contested by modern science. When an infant is born it is found to be conscious of what it should do, to have emotions of fear and happiness without any worldly trigger (crying or smiling for no reason at all), more demonstrably, reaching for the mother’s breast and finding the means of suckling (this is even more dramatic in the case of mammary animals that calve. The calves are delivered on the hind side of the mother but even as they struggle to get up on their spindly legs, find the udders of the mother. The Brahma Sutra in its famous aphorism, cites that as the clear demonstrable evidence that the new born has carried with it ‘vasanas’ (experiences) from its previous birth(s).
And the cycle of ‘births’ and ‘deaths’ could also be likened to a purgatorial process on the one hand – where the indwelling soul struggles to deliver itself from the overlayers of vasanas (experiences of life, present and past), gunas (the three gunas viz. Satva, Rajas and Thamas) and the karma. And, on the other, it also simultaneously is a spiritually elevating process through which the person increasingly realizes the indwelling Atman, and is able to be conscious of it, and, more importantly, differentiate the Atman from the gross body and identify himself with the Atman.
Bhagavad Gita – Chapter 2, Verse 13
dehino ’smin yathā dehe kaumāraṁ yauvanaṁ jarā
tathā dehāntara-prāptir dhīras tatra na muhyati
Purport: Just as the embodied soul continuously passes from childhood to youth to old age, similarly, at the time of death, the soul passes into another body. The wise are not deluded by this.
“Death” comes through to average mortals as a most fearsome prospect – basically because of the ignorance of what lies beyond. Here, in this verse, Sri Krishna banishes that fear by making that event as natural as the aging process. Death is explained as a process – not to be feared or detested – by which the imperishable Soul, the Atman, discards the aged, dysfunctional body and takes up a new body elsewhere which we call ‘birth’.
How do we know that a new-born carries with it ‘vasanas’ (experiences) from the previous birth(s)? The Sutra would demonstrate this in the aphorism: ‘Sthanya paana abhilaashaath’ – Because of the innate urge shown by the new born to suckle – for satiating hunger, for quenching thirst. We find this amazing thing in other species as well – like an infant calf. Science might call this – ‘wired’ but for a brain that is supposed to have no experiences at the time of birth, how would it activate the baby’s coordinates to seek suckling?
We have discussed earlier how most oriental philosophies and many Abrahamic ones as well as some modern philosophical thoughts, accept the concept of reincarnation; the great Sufi mystic, Rumi, succinctly presents this cycle:
I died out of the stone and I became a plant;
I died out of the plant and became an animal;
I died out of the animal and became a man.
Why then should I fear to die?
When did I grow less by dying?
I shall die out of man and shall become an angel!
Chapter 2, Verse 47
jātasya hi dhruvo mṛityur dhruvaṁ janma mṛitasya cha
tasmād aparihārye ’rthe na tvaṁ śhochitum arhasi
Death is certain for one who has been born, and rebirth is inevitable for one who has died. Therefore, you should not lament over the inevitable.
Bhagavad Gita – DISSOLUTION AND RE-EMERGENCE EXPLAINED:
(According to the Hindu philosophy, the ‘dissolution’ is in two stages – the first (partial) one is the Naimitika Pralaya when one day in Brahma’s life concludes and his night sets in – 4.32 billion earth years; in this event, all physical life is extinguished, but the surviving souls merge into the unmanifest Supreme Being. The cosmic universe stays alive. This dissolution is not just a one-shot ‘big bang’. According to puranic sources, it is preceded by life-destroying natural disasters like one year of incessant intense rain – raining not ‘cats and dogs’ but ‘elephants. Followed by one year of severe scorching sun. Apparently, the final deluge has its task considerably lightened. The other is when Brahma’s own life of one hundred years end, he himself is consumed, along with everything else in the Universe - in that great dissolution - 311 trillion 40 billion earth years.)
Bhagavad Gita:
Chapter 13, Verse 18
avyaktād vyaktayaḥ sarvāḥ prabhavantyahar-āgame
rātryāgame pralīyante tatraivāvyakta-sanjñake
At the advent of Brahma’s day, all living beings emanate from the unmanifest source. And at the fall of his night, all embodied beings again merge into their unmanifest source.
(All undelivered souls – souls that have not yet attained ‘moksha’ / emancipation, would, at the end of the world, slip into a kind of ‘sleep mode’ and converge and merge into the ‘prakriti’ which would dissolve into the Supreme Being; the delivered souls, having been rid of the cycle of birth, would already have attained unity with the Supreme Being. And, at the dawn of Brahma’s day, as the Universe emerges out of that dissolution, the undelivered souls would also reemerge to assume bodies meant to seek a fulfilment of their respective unfulfilled desires, pleasures and pains – collection of unspent karma.)
Verse 19
bhūta-grāmaḥ sa evāyaṁ bhūtvā bhūtvā pralīyate
rātryāgame ’vaśhaḥ pārtha prabhavatyahar-āgame
Multitudes of beings repeatedly take birth with the advent of Brahma’s day and are reabsorbed on the arrival of the cosmic night, to manifest again automatically on the advent of the next cosmic day.
‘Dissolution’ and ‘Re-emergence/Creation’ encapsulated in these two lines. All life goes into hibernation during the celestial night – Brahma’s night – and all of them – exceptions being only those souls that have been delivered from the cycle of rebirth and have attained ‘moksha’ – re-emerge into the Universe to populate it again.