Maharishi Ramana
“Where is the necessity for reincarnation? The theory of evolution is physically perfect. But for the soul further development may be required which happens after death.”
Maharishi Ramana: Let us first see if there is incarnation before we speak of incarnation. Who is the man: body or the soul? You answer ‘both together’. But you do not cease to exist in the absence of the body, say, in sleep. You call sleep temporary death. Therefore life is also temporary. If life and death are temporary, there must be something which is not temporary: that is the Realty. See for whom these questions arise. Unless the questioner is found, the questions can never be set at rest.”
SS Cohen explains: Doubts about past births have been expressed by many people, more especially by those whose scriptures do not teach reincarnation. The questioner is a Muslim who has found complete satisfaction in the theory of evolution without the necessity of rebirths and without deviating from his theological beliefs, except in that man has sprung up from the amoeba. But his questions carry in them their own solutions, if they are but carefully thought out.
In the first instance he admits the immortality of the soul and its continued development after death till perfection is achieved, yet he is unable to rid himself of the bias for the body, which he makes the partner of the soul in the synthesis of his self, or ‘I’. On what ground does he give the body a place in the make up of the ‘I’, he does not care to investigate.
If the body is half his self, then this is no longer a homogeneous unit, but a hybrid compound of mortal and immortal substances, of which the immortal, which he calls the soul that survives death, is only a part, or half.
Is this rational? Moreover, if the soul is not an integral whole, how is it possible for it to attain perfection in the evolution of which he speaks? Again, how does he know that the soul undergoes “further development” after death?
What does he, first of all, conceive the soul to be to require this development? Confusion becomes more confounded when he gives the body a share in his ‘I’, endowing it with sentience, with intelligence, when a little thinking would have convinced him to the contrary. By admitting mortality to the body, he has at once confessed to its insentience, for sentience never dies: it is eternal life.
The body is thus insentient and therefore unintelligent; whereas the ‘I’ is pure intelligence as the knower of all things. Therefore the body is neither the ‘I’ nor a part of it.
As for rebirths, why does he find them illogical? If in this life he is born, as he admits he is, why cannot he be reborn? That which has caused this birth should be a valid cause for another birth. What makes him imagine that the cause of this birth of his has exhausted itself and can no longer be available for another birth, or a series of new births?
Let us illustrate this by a concrete example. A man marries because he has a desire for a woman. If the woman a little later dies, he may marry a second time, impelled by the same urge. But suppose he also loses his body in the meantime, what is he to do to satisfy this persistent craving? Naturally he has to take another body, as he had taken the present one for some desire or other.
Thus Bhagavan tells us that there is no such thing as rebirth: what there is is only assuming one body after another for the satisfaction of desires. If you do not want to take another body, by all means you are at liberty not to, provided you have ceased to crave for anything, thereby eliminating the cause of “rebirth.”
We have therefore to study man before we enquire about evolution, reincarnation, life, death, etc., which is what makes the Master advise the questioner to discover himself first.
The 131st birth anniversary of Maharishi Ramana is being celebrated on Dec 30
Excerpted from Reflections on Talks with Sri Ramana Maharishi
S S Cohen
