(a project of Mirravision Trust, Financed by Auroshakti Foundation)

A Psychological Approach to Sri Aurobindo's

The Life Divine

Book II

The Knowledge and the Ignorance-The Spiritual Evolution

Chapter 22

Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality

Part I

We have so long observed that the rebirth of the soul in successive terrestrial bodies is an inevitability in the manifestation but this assumption raises further questions:

(a) Whether that process of rebirth is quickly successive following death of the body to maintain an uninterrupted series of lives;

(b) Whether there are intervals where the soul travels to other worlds before return to earth-life; and

(c) Whether there is a spiritual evolution of the soul which undergoes mutations in its passage from birth to birth. (CWSA 21-22, pg.824)

If the physical universe was the sole sufficing universe, rebirth would follow an uninterrupted mechanical procedure of a constant transmigration from one body to another. There would be no interval and no other intervening world. The soul would not be independent from Matter and be perpetually dependent on the body for its continuity in existence. But mystical experience has confirmed presence of other worlds other than our physical worlds where the play of after-life is enacted. (Ibid) (Even Science today acknowledges the Near Death Experiences which occurs in subjects technically dead for a few moments before being resuscitated in the ICU; the subjects must be describing other worlds ; these experiences are not dreams or hallucinations because they occur in a state of physiological inarousal.)

Many interacting worlds

We actually live in a complex system of many interacting world of which we are not usually conscious of. We can become conscious of these other worlds and can also project our conscious being onto them, partly in life and presumably with full completeness after dissolution of the body. This possibility of projection into other worlds would have been easier if the human being was endowed with the capacity of self-transference or alternatively could arrive at it by a gradual progression. But at the beginning it would be difficult to project into larger Life Worlds or Mind-worlds and it would be easier to accept the proposition of an immediate transmigration from one body to another. (Ibid, pg.825)

Interval between births

The necessity for an interval between two births and the necessity of a sojourn into other worlds is necessitated by two reasons:

(a) There is a need of an interval between births to assimilate the progress attained and to discard what needs to be unnecessary; and

(b) There is an attraction of other worlds for the vital and physical planes in man's composite nature. (Ibid)

However everybody is not fit for such experiences unless one is developed in terms of consciousness. There can be in the absence of connection with other worlds and in the absence of an assimilative interval, a theory of rebirth that would be based on a constant transmigration. But there can be another alternative theory when there is no immediate rebirth and the soul needs an interval for preparation. A compromise between the two theories is also possible. The transmigration may be the first rule while the soul is unripe for higher experiences; followed subsequently by a passage to higher planes. There might be a third speculative stage where the soul is so powerfully developed that it needs no interval but can immediately resume a rebirth for a more rapid evolution. (Ibid, pg. 825-826)

Spiritual evolution of the soul

There are many inconsistent religious views about reincarnation which are difficult to be reconciled. There is a view that death is immediately followed by assumption of a new body. There are other views where one goes to heaven or hell after death according to the merits or demerits suffered by the soul and when the merits and demerits are exhausted, one returns back to the earth. However this formula has exceptions depending on the soul which has attained a higher stage of evolution enabling a position in some higher status than earthly life. The question of spiritual evolution of the soul is to be considered but it is ordinarily implied in cases where the soul becomes ready to transcend the necessity of being born again and is supposed to go to its eternal source upon death of the body though in the absence of a graded pathway, this ascent takes a somewhat zigzag course. However Sri Aurobindo considers that the question of reincarnation cannot be solved unless we give importance to the "self-embodying psychic principle" (Ibid, pg.826) or psychic being either in the nature of things or in the logic of the evolutionary process.

In the complexity of multiverses we live not only on the earth which is an essential necessity but we also simultaneously live in other worlds which appears to have a dynamic and practical necessity. Is that worth the trouble? Sri Aurobindo answers that such a complex life becomes inevitable because "different world-principles are interwoven with each other and in a way interdependent" (Ibid, pg.827) so as to have an effect on our spiritual evolution. This process is countered temporarily by the greater pull of earth on the preponderant physicality of our evolutionary nature.

Our brief human life proves insufficient for the evolutionary purpose. Therefore we have often held that a repeated human birth is a sequence needed for growth of our nature. Thus arose first during the period of rudimentary humanity, the possibility of repeated immediate transmigration so that death was followed immediately by a fresh birth. Is this phenomenon necessary? Perhaps at first when the psychic individuality, not the psychic being (the secret soul-entity) but its soul-formation is insufficiently developed, it could not abide autonomously except by dependence on the life's physical, vital and mental individuality. It would therefore be obliged to transfer its rudimentary crude personality to be preserved in a new body justifying an immediate rebirth. (Ibid)

Rebirth into a new formulation of personality

It might be guessed that such a rudimentary crude personality would not have been there with the evolutionary development of a strongly individualised being obviating the necessity of a rapid reincarnation. Yet there could be exceptions. Firstly, the downward pull of the physical life would be there. Secondly, the life-experience might be too brief and incomplete resulting in an immediate rebirth for its continuance. Or thirdly, there might be a strong will enforcing an immediate rebirth into a new body. "But still the alternative process of a reincarnation, a rebirth of the Person not only into a new body but into a new formulation of the personality, would be the normal line taken by the psychic entity once it had reached the human stage of its evolutionary cycle". (Ibid, pg.828)

Psychic being and subtle body

Is it possible for the immediate rebirth of the same mental and vital personality after death? For that, the soul-personality must have full control over its nature-formation. "It is the soul-person, the psychic being, that survives and carries mind and life with it on its journey, and it is in the subtle body that it passes out of its material lodging; both then must be sufficiently developed for the transit." (Ibid) But the psychic being carries a highly selective portion-the essence of the experiences of mind and life. If we want the manifestation of the same whole vital and mental being at rebirth, then we must conceptualise that a transference after death "to planes of Mind-existence or Life-existence implies also a mind and life sufficiently formed and developed to pass without disintegration and exist for a time on these higher levels". (Ibid) Thus is secured the immediate rebirth of a sufficiently developed psychic personality and subtle body along with a sufficiently developed mental and vital personality. "But this by itself would mean a return to earth with the same mental and vital personality and there would be no more free evolution in the new birth." (Ibid, pg.829)

The psychic being moves to the future and is a harbinger of a new consciousness. Naturally it is not dependent on the past mind and life formations as well as the past body. It must therefore be sufficiently individuated and would require some time and space to discard the old forms and prepare for the new forms. This time and space requires a supraphysical world in the cosmos where it can abide between two births. It cannot be done in the earth which cannot support a disembodied spirit though a brief spell might be possible if there are subtle envelopes of earth-existence. A survival of the material body is not usually possible unless it can happen on a supraphysical world during the evolutionary progress or if there is no evolution, in some temporary second home of the spirit or it is in the original Void from which it does not return to the earth. (Ibid)

Where would be the temporary dwelling place of the subtle body between births? It may be surmised that the true mental being (which is another poise of the inmost being or psychic being) might choose a higher mental plane as in life one has a strong affinity to the mind. But man has a true vital being too which might be more powerful than the mind. And behind the true mental being lie the Jivatman of which it is a projection. Besides the soul has to cross many planes of world-existence after death of the body. The physical plane has to be crossed and it consists of many sub-planes affiliated to the mind and vital which form a "surrounding and penetrating strata through which the interchange between the higher worlds and the physical world takes place". (Ibid, pg.830) During its journey after death, the mental being can get stuck here and its voyage upwards might get delayed. After all, the upward journey of the soul during after-life is "a normal recurrent circumstance which intervenes to help out the process of a difficult spiritual evolution in the physical existence". (Ibid) Besides, a relation with higher planes and the mortal existence occurs during evolution and it determines the direction and character of the subtle being after death.

Formative imaginative worlds

The human mind has a tendency to mentally create supraphysical worlds in fantasy. Sometimes such constructions can become strong formations. The image making power of the human mind can at a higher level acquire a creative force. After death, the mental being can live in such worlds for a limited time until they are dissolved by the soul's pressure. Such formations are larger Vital or Life-constructions which allow the vital joys and vital sufferings of the physical being to be carried for some time into supraphysical mode to have "a greater scope, fullness and endurance". (Ibid, pg.831)These formative worlds born of sheer imagination must be considered as annexes of the vital or lower mental planes.

True supraphysical worlds

Besides the imaginary vital worlds which develop a relativity of their own, there are true vital worlds -"native habitats of the universal Life-principle, the cosmic vital Anima" (Ibid), and their annexes where the soul in its internatal journey may linger for some time depending on the predominantly vital character of the influences that shaped his earth-life. There are also subtle-physical worlds which appear to be extensions of the physical world but the soul here remains freer and happier than it is possible in earth-life. There are also mental or spiritual-mental planes where the soul can abide in its internatal journey but it cannot remain consciously there if there has been no sufficient mental development or soul-development in earth-life. One who has not gone beyond the mental plane in earth would not be able in internatal stage to ascend to any overmental or supramental state. Or, "if he had so developed as to overleap the mental level and could attain so far, it might not be possible for him to return so long as the physical evolution has not developed here an organisation of an overmental or supramental life in Matter." (Ibid, pg.832)

Plane of psychic assimilative sleep

The higher mental worlds are not the final habitat of the soul in the after-death passage; "for man is not entirely mental; it is the soul, the psychic being, and not the mind, that is the traveller between death and birth, and the mental being is only a predominant element in the figure of its self-expression. There must be then a final resort to a plane of pure psychic existence in which the soul would await rebirth; there it could assimilate the energies of its past experience and life and prepare its future." (Ibid, pg.832) The normal human being who is optimally developed passes through all planes to reach the psychic plane in after-life. On the way it sheds the mind-sheath, the life-sheath, the body-sheath but carries the essence of its mental, vital, physical experiences as a latent memory in the psychic being as "a dynamic potency for the future". (Ibid) But if the mind has not been sufficiently developed in earth-life, then the being may be stuck up at the vital planes in after-life and return from the heavens or hells of the vital plane to the earth or it would pass into a "psychic assimilative sleep coextensive with the internatal period". (Ibid)

- By Dr. Soumitra Basu