ALL ABOUT SOULS

1. 1. HINDU SOUL

1.  

Rebirth for restitution

A young woman I knew delivered a baby. It cried the moment it was born. Normally, the babies were picked up and slapped on the buttocks to make them cry for their first intake of life breath . This child was thought to be a miracle, a god’s child who knew its ways from the moment it ws born. He cried during suckling through the corners of his mouth, whimpered in sleep and woke up from time to time wailing. As days went into week and months, the sound of his cry became feeble  and grating. That was  all the more heart breaking. In the meanwhile, the child’s head kept bulging like a balloon.  Someone divined that he was an avatar of Ganapathi, the elephant-headed god, Eighteen months after it was born, the avatar died.

All those 18 months when the baby lived, and even later, the village kept speculating what sin it could have committed in its past birth. Otherwise why did he had to undergo such a suffering through its innocent infancy? They surveyed the death stories of those who died in the previous couple of years.  Not even the professional oracle of the temple or its staff astrologer, known for his accurate predictions, could name the past birth of the dead baby.  

One evening in the sixties, Mr. Wilson, a practicing Roman Catholic with a family of six  daughters, a son and a wife, visited me. Though only an acquaintance rather than a friend,  he began offloading his burden of worries.

“I must have done something terrible in my past birth, to carry this burden of sorrow in this life. I have six daughters, two of them of the age to be sent in marriage, and a good-for-nothing son. And a perpetual nagger for a wife.”

I didn’t tell him that, considering his salary and the state of the Nation,,  he had done something terrible by producing children like a pig. Instead, I pointed out that his religion does  not believe in a brought-forward soul, only one carried forward from birth to after death till the day of judgment.

“That is true,” he said. “But look at me. I have never hurt a fly. Why should I suffer so much and pass my suffering to my innocent children?”

“This suffering cannot go on,” he continued: “So I will have another birth. Jesus showed that a rebirth is possible..”

I did not argue that resurrection of Jesus, if Paul could be believed, was that of god, not of man. Why kill his hope?

REINCARNATION

Hindu Pandits are of the uniform opinion that the belief in reincarnation is and integral function of the religion.  Dr. Annie Besant,  the theosophist-turned a staunch defender of Hinduism , asserted that

Reincarnation and the law of karma are essential for explaining the moral, ethical, and scientific inconsistencies of life.

(Dr. Annie Besant, Six Lectures at Adyar, Madras Province, May 2010)

Since there was no other way to dispense with the ills of the past, reincarnation simply had to be true.

New-Age faiths speak of past births.  They produce mediums who could interact between a dead person and a living one. I knew one Godbole ( the name meant God said), who claimed to be a medium and a seer, told me that he was trained by a certain Sarah from the United States.  He said, after a cursory examination of my hand and face, that my last birth was in a distant Planet called the Andromeda. He was not impressed when I argued that Andromeda was a galaxy, not a planet. Who said that a planet, a galaxy or a woman on this earth cannot bear the name of Andromeda?

Another technique used by the New-agers –  none of whom I knew a charlatan –  was that of automatic writing. Those who supposedly lent a pen for the automatic writing truly believed that the words flowed from someone , a relative of the excited client, who moved his/her hand with the intention of communicating with the living. . Sincere, self-convinced automatic writing with convincing  precision surprised me. Despite my sceptic nature, , I was very excited about the technique which seemed to give convincing results.  When the conviction turned out to be fifty-fifty as in any exercise in logic, I gave up.

DEJA VU

Many speak of recognizing a landscape or a person they had never met before in the current life.  Sometimes they recollect an entire episode. While psychologists interpret it as minor ‘seizure aura’s, others like to believe that Déjà vu is the sign of retrieving a part of one’s memory from a past life. One of my uncles ‘remembered’ being shot to death. “I did not feel pain, but intense heat where the bullet entered,” he would say. That when bullet enters, it sears the body with intense heat is a fact that was narrated to me by a friend who survived an accidental gun shot..

PAST LIFE PROOFS

Children being produced to media to describe their past-life relatives and convincing  anecdotes abound. . There was this eight-year-old boy who recognized his ‘wife’ in an old lady who lived a few kilometres away. A television serial in India once showed a gay person who lived with a teenager who was his lover in his past life and were reborn again to continue with their thrilling gay experience in this new life.

An astonishing ‘proof’ of rebirth was the life story of Shanti Devi from Delhi who was born in 1926 and claimed, at the age of four, that her real name was Lugdi Devi. . She claimed that she was married to a certain Kedarnath, who lived in Mathura, some  65 kilometres away,. She said she died after delivering a baby.

 A Kedrnath Chaube was traced out in Mathura who confirmed the death of his wife after childbirth. Shanti Devi complained that Kedarnath had not kept the promises he had made in her deathbed. Kedarnath conceded the truth in her claim.

Dr. Indra Sen, a Professor in Psychology (Doctorate in philosophy) and a follower of Aurobindo believed that Shanti Devi’s  was a genuine case proving rebirth. Sture Lönnerstrand, Who wrote Shanti Devi : I Have Lived Before confirms the veracity of the rebirth story after interviewing ageing Shanti Devi and her relatives. A reviewer doubts the conclusion of  author Lönnerstrand while another reviewer stated honestly that because he was a Hindu, he was convinced of the truthfulness of the story. Mahatma Gandhi set up a commission to  verify the claim which, after enquiries, admitted that her claims were substantiated by evidences presented. Books on ‘True Stories of Reincarnation’ abound in literature.

MORPHIC RESONANCE: A ‘SCIENTIFIC’ EXPLANTAION,

Alfred Rupert Sheldrake, a product of Harvard with a PhD from Cambridge University, proposed a theory that our memory is not stored in our brains, but somewhere outside (in the clouds?). That the neuroscientists have not been able to find a lobe or an area within the skull  where the brain stores its memory is a fact. Sheldrake argues that the brain works like  a television receiver which has no stored memory, but receives the data by resonance from the space around it. When you die, your memories stay in the collection of memories stored in space. Someone’s brain waves may resonate with the frequency of the memory waves left in the cloud storage by someone else who died before. Considering that Quantum Physics propose the theory of entanglement between distant entities, Sheldrake’s theory cannot be dismissed as pure unscientific nonsense. Sheldrake takes a sympathetic view of Hindu philosophy. Predictably, the scientists of the day go not give much credence to Sheldrake’s theories despite the latter’s long history of research in prime laboratories. 

THE INTERMEDIATE STAGE

Jainism and Buddhism support the belief in rebirth. However,  they do not mention souls as a distinct entity.. Hinduism believes in reincarnation of the soul ending in Moksha (salvation) at the climatical end. while Bhagavad Gita , the authoritative document for Hindu beliefs, often explains Soul in conflicting ways in different contexts.

THE INTERMEDIATE STATE BEFORE MOKSHA

Unlike great Hindu scholars (Pandits/Gurus), Lord Krishna of Bhagavad Gita  says that the Vedas deal with the attributes of material needs for protection and gain; Arjuna should transcend those temporal attributes (gunas) (BG22.42-45) although Krishna himself is the creator and knower of the Vedas and Vedantas (what follow the Vedas such as Upanishads etc,).(BG 15.15)  The good Lord does not prophesy salvation for the followers (and, perhaps worded rather lightly ) those imbibe the leftover soma drink after offering it to gods.

Those who worshipped Him through ritualistic sacrifices by the Vedas and purify themselves by drinking Soma left over from the yajna rituals,  will go to swarga, but when they exhaust the merits of their good deeds, they would fall back to the temporal world of birth and death. (BG 9.20-21).

Here, the Lord offers no hope of escape from the the cycle of death for the best of men. Mahabharata, the sourcebook for Gita, ends with the characters ending up in heaven after a short, but nightmarish experience in hell for the ‘good’ Pandavas while the ‘bad Kauravas are already in heaven.  

GODS AND GODMEN – REINCARNATIONS OF GOD

Trinity (Trimurthys – Brahma, Vishnu and Parameswara or Shiva).are the supreme Gods To prove that Hinduism is monotheistic ( unnecessarily accepting the claim that monotheism is the best), a Guru may argue that members of the Trinity are the embodiments of one other Supreme Being. Such a being does not find mention in Hindu texts unless it is the sound OM as claimed in Mandukyopanishad. 

The  Trimurthies  do  not die, but exist in  realms of their own,  far above the abodes of gods, and that of the demigods, the Devas, which is called Heaven or Swarga. The three Supreme Gods too have wives and probably enjoy sex, but have children born through different (you might say non-vaginal) techniques. Muruga (Karthikeya and Ganesh (Ganapathi) are prime examples of such miraculous births. A relatively recent addition was Ayyappa (Manikandha) who was born sometime in the 12^th-13^th centuryAll non-Capitalised gods are anthropomorphic  beings who take birth, wed, beget children  and have human forms with entrancing additional limbs and features.  They travel by riding animals of their choice. Although they are subject to bad influence of powers such as Shani (the planet which is an ominous  god)  those other than human reincarnations  of Vishnu, , don’t seem to die. Human avatars of Vishnu like Lord Rama and Krishna do die; the latter perishes with his entire race from the curse of a human queen.  Nonetheless, they are worshipped in temples all over India and abroad. The Government of India under Narendra Modi built a temple for a  child-version of Rama, called Ram Lulla (Lulla for Darling) although such a version finds no mention in any of the scriptures including Valmiki’s Ramayana.

DARWIN FINDS SUPPORT IN AVATARAS

Madam Helena Blavatsky once well-known  Russian occultist who co-founded the Theosophic Society stated that the Dasavataras  (ten incarnations) of Vishu) symbolize Darvinian theory of evolution. The ten incarnations range from fish through amphibian torotoise, pig, a half-animal-human named Man-lion (Narasimha) a short-statured human mamed Vamana,  to the supremely perfect human,  Lord Rama. Next in line is Krishna, the clever, conniving strategist who caused the sub-continental war called Mahabharata. . Buddha (who predates Rama’s story) is recently upgraded as an avatara, presumably to please the Dalits who worship Buddha. Many of them had converted to Buddhistm under the influence of Baba Sahib Ambedkar, the disgusted Dalit who happens to be the prime architect of Indian Construction..

HUMAN INCARNATIONS

Godmen abound in India, with cult followers spreading across the Nation and overseas. Among them Meherbaba, who openly claimed to be an avatar,  the same as Rama, Krishna, Jesus, Muhammad and Shirdi Saibaba.  Shirdi Saibaba was  a Muslim mendicant who was pronounced to be divine being  from the 15th century.  Sathya Saibaba, the divine head of a larger Hindu cult that earned much fame in India and abroad as well as notoriety when he lived, died ten years earlier than he prophesied.   He proclaimed that birth and rebirth are inescapable for those who held desires in their heart. Perhaps he equated desire to  karma. He said:

LIFE + DESIRE = MAN
LIFE – DESIRE = GOD 

(https://www.saibabaofindia.com/blitz1.html)

That was his philosophy while he accumulated lands, buildings, money and gold some of which was used in charity hospitals and local civil works, but much of which was carried away by the disciples whom he taught to shed their desires.

WHY REBIRTH IS AN ESSENTIAL PART OF HINDUISM

The layman, with not much capacity to stomach conflicting theories and philosophies, merely needs a place where one could unload the inescapable sins he committed for survival. Carrying that burden to another time and another personality, though a temporary reprieve, is not a bad idea to him.

I met an  electrician in Meher Baba’s Ashram who told me how he fell senseless and given up for dead when he touched a live wire.  Lying  in state draped in a shroud, , he could hear his relations hovering over his body and crying while others discussed the funeral plans. He woke up while being lifted from the ground. When he came fully around, he found that his wallet with over Rs. 6000 was gone.

“I didn’t mind, “ he said. That was the exact amount of Rs. 6,000 I owed a neighbour in my past life, but I died before  clearing my debt. Now I have a clear conscience.” I didn’t ask if his conscience strode two baths. 

How God Directs the soul

The Supreme Lord dwells in the hearts of all living beings, O Arjun. According to their karmas, He directs the wanderings of the souls, who are seated on a machine (yanthra) made of material energy.(BG 18:61)

That is how God directs your soul from body to body to help you  balance your accounts. Not today, not over a period counted in years, but over a series of births and rebirths.

BUT THE SOUL IS NOT YOU.

Bhagavad Gita,  the manual of life for many,  tells that the soul will  immediately cast off the aged, weak and fragile body  as if  it were a worn out dress and replace it with a brand new infant body (BG 2:22) so one could start all over again.  While one is subject to the inevitability of of death that follows birth after a certain  span of life, the soul, which is one’s real being, is immutable, and indestructible.

Weapons cannot cut it, fire cannot burn it, water cannot wet it and wind cannot dry it. Since the soul makes no contact with  material things which alone cause pleasure and pain which come and go, it stays impervious to all suffering. 

 (BG 2:23-24).

The soul, immune to death and rebirth, carries on, like your digital files recorded in  the clouds. It does not sin, so there is no need for it to carry the burden to another life.

Soul does not seek restitution

“When the embodied self leaves a body and takes another, it carries the mind and senses along, just as the wind carries scents from their source.” (BG 15:8)

That it is not the soul, but something else, like the imperceptible wind that carries the scent of a dead person, in the form of  one’s balance sheet to the next birth. This concept is a takeaway from Buddhist (which was probably known when Mahabharata was written) Sutras  which admit of no soul, but insists that one’s sufferings are a result of the past birth, if not this birth itself.

JIVATMAN (LIFE SOUL) AND PARAMATMAN(SU[REME SOUL(

The belief in a life-soul, jivatman for each indivudual, supervised and guided by the Solitary Supreme Soul, Paramatman is the most accepted version : it gives the believer an identity through many births, a personal soul that would last till it merges with god,. (Which in reality, no one wants to come  too soon.

So Jivatma, which carries the wounds of memory of past lives to the next, is fine with a believing Hindu while the Guru assures the pious that one’s jivatman is not an indifferent onlooker, but one who shares one’s spiritual and temporal failures and victories.  A  Guru is an essential part of one’s spiritual understanding;  without him you might start interpreting the great scriptures and confuse the issue and start asking uncomfortable questions.. So a pious Hindu must take a Guru for advice rather than try to understand the scriptures by himself.

Mundakopanishad cites a fine allegory to explain the  duality Soul(s) residing in a living being:

• One bird (jīvātman) eats the sweet and bitter fruits.
• The other bird (paramātman) simply watches in serene detachment.

Mundakyopanishad 3.1.1-2

Kathopahishad  expands this concept even further with the popular chariot allegory::

• :The body is the chariot.
• The intellect is the driver.
• The mind is the reins.
• The senses are the horses.
• The jīvātman is the passenger.
• Finally, (when all its pasts and memories of the past are cleared out, it attains its supreme goal – the Paramatman.

Katha Upanishad I.3.3–4

ADVAITA SIDDHANTA

The great Adi Shankara denied that the Jivatman and Paramatman are distinct, but one and the same.  The universe and all its contents (Brahma ) and the Brahman (creator) are indivisible.  This philosophy is much admired and spoken about, but the later Shankaras built temples and wrote sexy poetry like Soundarya Lahari (Waves of passion in beauty). For authenticity, these creations and the temples are attributed to Adi (the first) Shankara, although the name itself suggests that there were  second, third, and perhaps many Shankaras later who did things which did not quite go by the non-duality theory.  

To make up for this dichotomy, the pious Hindu who goes to seek blessings of his god, is given to read a gold-plated board atop the entrance to the altar which says : Tat twam Asi. (That is you). This comforting  idea that God is you (or within you) is often reinforced with : Aham Brahmosmi. (I am the universe). That you are a part of the universe is not denied. Brahma (the Universe) is the same as the Brahman (the creator).  Period. If that were true, why mustn’t one stay home and worship oneself?

SALVATION

Bhagavad Gita describes salvation as union with the Supreme Soul (Brahma).

One becomes fit to attain Brahman when his intellect is purified and firmly controls the senses, immune to attraction and aversion. Such a person relishes solitude, eats lightly, controls body, mind, and speech, is ever engaged in meditation, and practices dispassion. Free from egotism, violence, arrogance, desire, possessiveness of property, and selfishness, such a person, situated in tranquility, is fit for union with Brahman

BG 18. 51-53

The wise endowed with equanimity of intellect, abandon attachment to the fruits of actions, which bind one to the cycle of life and death. By working in such consciousness, they attain the state beyond all suffering.

BG 2.51

Abandon all varieties of dharmas and simply surrender unto Me alone. I shall liberate you from all sinful reactions; do not fear.

BG 18.66 

Then you become , a Mahatma, often mistaken for a godman. For the last time, at the right time, you doff the crumpled clothes in the form of wrinkled skin and bald head with only a few strands of white hair on it,  to join the dust in the good Lord’s feet. No more memories, no desires, no regrets. Pure  non-existence except as a particle of dust. Then there is no  perceiver nor the perceived

NO MOKSHA FOR DEMONIC SOULS

These cruel and hateful persons, the vile and vicious of humankind, I constantly hurl into the wombs of those with similar demoniac natures in the cycle of rebirth in the material world. These ignorant souls take birth again and again in demoniac wombs. Failing to reach Me, O Arjun, they gradually sink to the most abominable type of existence.

BD 16.19

Those fell into a demonic life would continue to do demonic deeds and roll from terrible births – like that of a worm or a pig. – to terrible births . The sinner may wander through hundreds of births without ever attaining a human life. The punishment varies according to the judge and the kind  of sins committed.

Manusmriti sentences the sinner to be born in the womb of a low-caste woman. Garuda Purana decrees a worm’s or lowly animal’s life. Fortunately, the low-castes who are doomed to such a fate canot read Manusmriti or the Vedas. To be doubly sure, Manusmriti warns not  to read aloud  a scripture within the hearing  of a low cast.

NOT KARMA, BUT THE LAST THOUGHT

However many Vedic verse you had chanted, Brahmins you fed, or cows cared for, if you hear the barking of a dog while you are drawing your last breath, you are sure to end up as a dog in the net life. That is what Gita tells Arjuna, recorded here for your benefit:

Whatever one remembers upon giving up the body at the time of death, O son of Kunti, one attains that state, being always absorbed in such contemplation.

BG 8.6

No joke, an old friend in Janakpuri in Suburban Delhi, Venkatramani, thought he had a heart attack. While I drove him to the nearest hospital, he kept reciting the Bhagavatam verses of Krishna’s childhood mischiefs and of playing pranks on female Gopis. He later admitted to me that, in preparation for an event like what happened, he had chosen those stanzas and set them to memory. He didn’t die, and was bitterly disappointed that he missed the chance to live the life of a god playing flute to pretty women and having fun with them. I heard that a few years later when he died, his grandson’s Spaniel was barking loud. It was believed that dogs look up to the sky and wail pitifully when they site the Yama, god of death, strolling around looking for the next victim.  

REAL-LIFE RITUALS AFTER DEATH.

Soul and Moksha are for philosophical debates. Most Hindus practice the funeral rituals as prescribed in  the tenth Mandala of the Rig Veda.  The dead belong to Yama, the demigod of death.

The body of the dead is washed, anointed and shrouded. It is then taken away to a river bank or a burning ghat, or some place earmarked for cremation. Firewood (including a piece of sandalwood if the dead was not all that rich, or a lot of it if the relations could afford it) is preferred for cremation,  An electric or gas fired  crematorium is not forbidden since the Veda was not aware of such conveniences. In Southern India, particularly Kerala, the body may be cremated within the home compound if it has the space. Neighbours, even non-Hindus, seldom complain.

KAPALA KRIYA

Higher castes such as Brahmins cannot bear to have the soul of their dear parents escape through one of the nine offensive gates of the body.  The chief mourner (the son, to ensure good progress I n the next world is directed by the priest to make a hole at the top of the burning skull with a stave. Thus the soul escapes through a decent hole from the head of the dead. This is called the Kapala Kriya (Ritual of the skull). Animal sacrifice in the modern age is more symbolic than real.

The ash (including the unburnt pieces of bones is collected by the mourners after the pyre cools and placed in earthen pots for immersion in a flowing river (preferably the Ganges) or the sea.

.Panch gavya (Five substances of a cow  – milk, curd, butter, urine and dung form part of the ritual is consumed, by the mourner, or sprinkled. This is presumably to make up for the undone animal sacrifice

THE GHOST LIFE

The funeral rites are not over for the next 12 days because the ghost of the dead (preta) sticks around, presumably unwilling to leave his family and belongings. On the 13^th day, the preta is pleased with the ritual called sarpindakarana. Three balls of rice are made – one for the dead, the second for his/her immediate ancestor and the third for their past many ancestors. Crows are believed to be the proxies for the ancestors, or the ancestors themselves in disguise. If the crows readily arrive and peck away the food, it means that the dead and his/her ancestors – the manes –  are pleased. Then the dead goes away, accompanying Yama, the lord of death,  to the world of the manes. This place is neither hell or heaven, but a resort for the dead. A doctor friend of mine told me how his dead uncle came to him in dreams and groaned that he was starving for the past couple of years. The doctor remembered that he had not performed the Shraddha (annual ritual of rice ball offering) for two years. The very next day, he arranged for an off-season annual rice ball ritual. Soon theater he dreamed of a smiling uncle, gesturing all was well with him.

THE UNHAPPY GHOSTS 

Woe to the dead who have some residual worries or sorrows, were killed, or committed suicide, even died of unrequited love. They stick around or inside the house, or possess an innocent child or woman (rarely a man)  to  wreak revenge on the living. Special experts are invited and paid to avoid this terrible calamity,  By recitig magic manthras,, and often thrashing the unfortunate woman or girel who is possessed, until the preta agrees to leave. To be doubly sure, her wayward soul is stuck to a tree from where there is no escape. =

The luckier manes living in Yama’s world would need to be fed annually. They prefer to be fed on a river bank, or even better, on the banks of River Ganges. In this latter place, you can find many a knowledgeable Panda – presumably a short for Pandit –  on the shores of river Ganges in Haridwar of Benares.  He is trained to carry out the perfect rites on your behalf for money (expect much bargaining) plus  a donation to protect cows or helpless Brahmins. 

NEXT: CHRISTIAN SOUL

Further NEXT : Muslim soul)

on (though not duster and