Recycled Suffering: Considering Metempsychosis

Liberation, bondage, what are they to me? What do I care for freedom? For I have known God, the infinite Self, the witness of all things. - The Heart of Awareness

Reincarnation is a controversial subject to put it lightly.  Some people believe in it strongly and even point to evidence of its reality.  Others are highly skeptical of the idea that there is anything or anybody who survives the death of the physical body.  And still others hold religious views which are antithetical to the concept of reincarnation.  Reincarnation is central to Buddhism and Yoga-Vedanta.  It is simply an accepted fact.  As Lord Krishna teaches in the Bhagavad Gita, “There has never been a time when you and I have not existed, nor will there be a time when we will cease to exist. As the same person inhabits the body through childhood, youth, and old age, so too at the time of death he attains another body. The wise are not deluded by these changes.”

From this perspective we are all souls at various stages of spiritual evolution.  We recycle lifetime after lifetime in order to learn lessons and to pay off karmic debts as we make our way back to a state of primordial Unity.  Yoga is primarily a means of reuniting the individual soul with the Universal Consciousness.  It is understood within these systems that cycles of reincarnation are basically cycles of suffering.  True peace, happiness, joy, etc. can only be found when we are able to transcend these cycles and abide in Unity.  Otherwise we continue to experience dualities: pleasure and pain, birth and death, health and sickness, love and hate, success and failure, and so on.  We are bound by duality due to attachment.

Cultivating non-attachment is a central spiritual discipline in Yogic and Buddhist practice.  As Krishna explains attachment is at the root of psychological suffering:

When you keep thinking about sense objects,

attachment comes.  Attachment breeds desire,

the lust of possession that burns to anger.

Anger clouds judgment; you can no longer

learn from past mistakes.  Lost is the power to

choose between what is wise and what is unwise,

and your life is an utter waste.  But when

you move amidst the world of sense, free

from attachment and aversion alike, there

comes the peace in which all sorrows end,

and you live in the wisdom of the Self.

(Bhagavad Gita, 2:62-65)

To be honest, I have been resistant to the idea of reincarnation over the years.  Even after returning from India after having delved deeply into Yoga theory and practice, I was skeptical.  When I returned to study psychology in graduate school an acquaintance asked my opinion on reincarnation.  I replied that I didn’t take it literally but metaphorically.  She said, “You are the only Swami I ever met who didn’t believe in reincarnation!”  I’m still reluctant to think that there is somebody, or something, that “hops” from one body to another.  Instead I suspect that it is a transfer of information and energy.  Yoga teaches that reincarnation is based on latent memories (samskaras) and desires (vasanas.) 

While in graduate school I came across the writings of psychiatrist, Brain Weiss.  Weiss, in Many Lives, Many Masters, writes about his encounters with past-life memories in working with his patients.  http://www.brianweiss.com/   I also was introduced to Ian Stevenson’s book, Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation.  Rather than looking at memories uncovered through hypnosis, Stevenson investigated cases of children who claimed to remember past lives.  In some cases they remembered verifiable details of where they lived, their previous relations, etc.  In some cases they even remembered how to speak a “foreign” language.  http://reluctant-messenger.com/reincarnation-proof.htm.  Certainly these cases are intriguing if not conclusive for the rational skeptic.

Interestingly some physicists who are investigating the “physics of consciousness” have developed theories to explain reincarnation.  From a Yogic perspective, I think that they are really investigating the point of intersection between the physical domain and consciousness itself, which is truly metaphysical.  Stuart Hammeroff and Roger Penrose have developed a theory of “quantum consciousness” which basically states that consciousness exists and has existed throughout the universe since the beginning.  Hammeroff talks about this theory in a recent episode of Through the Wormhole: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/28/soul-after-death-hameroff-penrose_n_2034711.html. The theory proposed by Hammeroff and Penrose is very similar to the ancient philosophy of Vedanta as espoused in the “Gita.”  A similar theory can be found in Amit Goswami’s The Physics of the Soul.

Also interesting is that, if we investigate more deeply into the roots of Christianity and Judaism we find that reincarnation has been part of these religions as well.  Jesus referred to reincarnation in the New Testament when he equates the prophet Elijah with John the Baptist (Matt. 11:13-14 and 17:10-13.)  http://near-death.com/experiences/origen03.html.  It seems that any direct reference to reincarnation as part of Christian doctrine was edited out in 381 AD during the Council of Constantinople and the formulation of the Nicene Creed.  The council and the creed were basically a ploy to turn the Christian teachings into a political entity which was then used throughout the middle ages to control the populace.  Of course, some are still trying to do the same today.  http://youtu.be/QsogswrH6ck 

Ultimately, when we follow the Yoga path, which is not at all antithetical to the true path as taught by Christ, we enter into a blessed state of consciousness wherein we recognize that the cycles of samsara are cycles of illusion.  Our true being is timeless and infinite.  We are eternal Peace, Love and Bliss.  We don’t actually transmigrate at all.  It is a Cosmic Dream.