Karma and re-incarnation

Dr Satish K Kapoor

Reincarnation — the belief that souls pass from one body to another after death — has been debated throughout the course of history. The word ‘Metempsychosis’ has the same meaning, but is usually applied to the perception that human souls may be incarnated in animals due to bad acts performed deliberately.

Religious traditions

Belief in reincarnation prevailed among Australian aboriginals, Pharisees, Sadducees, the first fathers of the Christian Church, Arabs, Celtic Druids, Scythians, Hindus, Buddhists and others. Jesus Christ tacitly expounded this theory when he told his disciples that John the Baptist was Elijah in his formal life. (Matthew XI, 14). Eliseus’ later incarnation as Jesus had been prophesied several hundred years before in the Book of Isaiah (VII.14). There are passages in the Apocrypha which indicate that there were holders of the doctrine of Transmigration among the Jews, and in John (IX.2) it seems indicated in the disciple’s question: ‘Master who did sin, this man or his parents that he was born blind?’ The Christian Council of Nicaea (325 CE), however, insisted that the doctrine of reincarnation should be dropped from the Bible. The second Council of Constantinople (553 CE) declared: ‘From now on, let this doctrine be anathema.’

Neo-Platonists regarded reincarnation as an integral part of their doctrine. Both St. Augustine and St. Francis accepted it, Virgil and Ovid, Roman poets, were its enthusiastic supporters. In medieval age, the theory of reincarnation won a number of adherents, including Goethe, Fichte, Hume, Lessing and Schelling. Subsequently, western thinkers, like Herbert Spencer and Arthur Schopenhauer, found in it a lofty explanation of inequalities in life. Scientists and parapsychologists across the globe have probed incidents where some claimed to have recalled their previous lifetime.

Karma and reincarnation

In eastern religions, reincarnation has been justified on the basis of karma, the immutable law of cause and effect, which explains why a person is born rich or poor, healthy or disabled; or why one is a prodigy and the other, stupid or just a mediocrity. Heredity and environment do not explain everything. One cannot also blame the Almighty on that count for he does not indulge in favouritism. Man is capable of impacting his present and future states. If negative karma keeps the soul confined to a lower state of consciousness, virtuous acts purge the soul of karmic load.

Dropping of gross body

After his final departure from the temporal world, the soul of a person revels in higher or lower regions of being, depending on his karma. What leaves sthula sharira, gross body, is prana, life, manas, mind, five senses of perception, five senses of action, and acts of merit and demerit. All these form a part of Sukshma sharira, subtle body, that accompanies the soul during all its transmigrations. Regression of the soul into lower planes of existence is to exhaust sanchita karma, accumulated actions of past lives. Each lifetime provides an opportunity to evolve spiritually and gain perfection through right knowledge and right conduct so that one is able to receive prabhu kripa, divine grace, and tread the path of gods from which there is no return to the world of phenomena, instead of the path of the manes that necessitates one incarnation after another.

Swami Vivekananda explained the theory of reincarnation thus. ‘We know that we have a present and feel sure of a future. Yet how can there be a present without a past? Modern science has proved that matter exists and continues to exist. Creation is merely a change in appearance.’ The reason why an ordinary person cannot recall the events of his past lives is that infinity conceals what need not be revealed to him in the next birth. Would not life be troublesome if one carried a colossal burden of memories? However, the past can be unfolded by developing psychic powers.

Dr Kapoor is a noted educationist, historian and spiritualist