{"id":114,"date":"2013-07-13T01:26:01","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:26:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=114"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:26:01","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:26:01","slug":"12-the-reincarnating-soul-vol-16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16\/12-the-reincarnating-soul-vol-16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16","title":{"rendered":"-12_The Reincarnating Soul.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\n
\nThe Reincarnating Soul<\/font><\/b> 
\n<\/font>\n\t\t<\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

\nHuman
\nthought in the generality of men is no more than a rough and crude acceptance of
\nunexamined ideas; it is sleepy sentry and allows anything to pass the gates
\nwhich seems to it decently garbed or wears a plausible appearance or can mumble
\nanything that resembles some familiar password. Especially is this so in subtle
\nmatters, those remote from the concrete facts of our physical life and
\nenvironment. Even men who will reason carefully and acutely in ordinary matters
\nand there consider vigilance against error an intellectual or a practical duty,
\nare yet content with the most careless stumbling when they get upon higher and
\nmore difficult ground. Where precision and subtle thinking are most needed,
\nthere they are most impatient of it and averse to the labour demanded of them.
\nMen can manage fine thought about palpable things, but to think subtly about the
\nsubtle is too great a strain on the grossness of our intellects; so we are
\ncontent with making a dab at the truth, like the painter who threw his brush at
\nhis picture when he could not get the effect that he desired. We mistake the
\nsmudge that results for the perfect from a verity.
\n   
\nIt is not surprising then that men should be content to think crudely about such
\na matter as rebirth. Those who accept it, take it usually ready-made, either as
\na cut and dried theory or a crude dogma. The soul is reborn in a new body, –
\nthat vague and almost meaningless assertion is for them sufficient. But what is
\nthe soul and what can possibly be meant by the rebirth of a soul? Well, it means
\nreincarnation; the soul, whatever that may be, had got out of one case of flesh
\nand is now getting into another case of flesh. It sounds simple, – let us say,
\nlike the Djinn of the Arabian tale expanding out of and again compressing
\nhimself into his bottle or perhaps as a pillow is lugged out of one pillow-case
\nand thrust into another. Or the soul fashions itself a body in the mother’s womb
\nand then occupies it, or else, let us say, puts off one robe of flesh and then
\nputs on another. But what is it that<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 89<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n


\nthus "leaves" one body and "enters" into’ another? Is it another a psychic body and subtle form, that enters into the gross corporeal form, – the
\nPurusha perhaps of the ancient-image, no bigger than a man’s thumb, or is it
\nsomething in itself formless and impalpable that incarnates in the sense of
\nbecoming or assuming to the senses a palpable shape of bone and flesh?<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 
\n  <\/span>          
\n<\/span>In the ordinary, the vulgar conception there is no birth of a soul at
\nall, but only the birth of a new body into the world occupied by an old
\npersonality unchanged from that which once left some now discarded physical
\nframe. It is John Robinson who has gone out of the form of flesh he once
\noccupied; it is John Robinson who tomorrow or some centuries hence will
\nreincarnate in another form of flesh and resume the course of his terrestrial
\nexperiences with another name and in another environment. Achilles, let us say,
\nis reborn as Alexander, the son of Philip, a Macedonian, conqueror not of Hector
\nbut of Darius, with a wider scope, with larger destinies; but it is still
\nAchilles, it is the same personality that is reborn, only the bodily
\ncircumstances are different. It is this survival of the identical personality
\nthat attracts the European mind today in the theory of reincarnation. For it is
\nthe extinction or dissolution of the personality, of this mental, nervous and
\nphysical composite which I call myself that is hard to bear for the man
\nenamoured of life, and it is the promise of its survival and physical
\nreappearance that is the great lure. The one objection that really stands in the
\nway of its acceptance is the obvious non-survival of memory. Memory is the man,
\nsays the modern psychologist, and what is the use of the survival of my
\npersonality, if I do not remember my past, if I am not aware of being the same
\nperson still and always? What is the utility? Where is the enjoyment?<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 
\n  <\/span>          
\n<\/span>The old Indian thinkers, – I am not speaking of the popular belief which
\nwas crude enough and thought not at all about the matter, – the old Buddhistic
\nand Vedantist thinkers surveyed the whole field from a very different
\nstandpoint. They were not attached to the survival of the personality; they did
\nnot give to that survival the high name of immortality; they saw that
\npersonality being what it is, a constantly changing composite, the survival of
\nan identical personality was anon-sense, a contradiction<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 90<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

in
\nterms. They perceived indeed that there is a continuity and they sought to
\ndiscover what determines this continuity and whether the sense of identity which
\nenters into it is an illusion or the representation of a fact, of a real truth,
\nand, if the latter, then what that truth may be. The Buddhist denied any real
\nidentity. There is, he said, no self, no person; there is simply a continuous
\nstream of energy in action like the continuous flowing of a river or the
\ncontinuous burning of a flame. It is this continuity which creates in the mind
\nthe false sense of identity. I am not now the same person that I was a year ago,
\nnot even the same person that I was a moment ago, any more than the water
\nflowing past yonder ghaut is the same water that flowed past it a few seconds
\nago; it is the persistence of the flow in the same channel that preserves the
\nfalse appearance of identity. Obviously, then, there is no soul that
\nreincarnates, but only Karma that persists in flowing continuously down the same
\napparently uninterrupted channel. It is Karma that incarnates; Karma creates the
\nform of a constantly changing mentality and physical bodies that are, we may
\npresume, the result of that changing composite of ideas and sensation which I
\ncall myself. The identical "I" is not, never was, never will be.
\nPractically, so long as the error of personality persists, this does not make
\nmuch difference and I can say in the language of ignorance that I am reborn in a
\nnew body; practically, I have to proceed on the basis of that error. But there
\nis this important point gained that it is all an error and an error which can
\ncease; the composite can be broken up for good without any fresh formation, the
\nflame can be extinguished, the channel which called itself a river destroyed.
\nAnd then there is non-being, there is cessation, there is the release of the
\nerror from itself.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 
\n  <\/span>       The
\n<\/span>Vedantist comes to a different conclusion; he admits an identical, a
\nself, a persistent immutable reality, – but other than my personality, other
\nthan this composite which I call myself. In the Katha Upanishad the question is
\nraised in a very instructive fashion, quite apposite to the subject we have in
\nhand. Nachiketas, sent by his father to the world of Death, thus questions Yama,
\nthe lord of that world: Of the man who has gone forward, who has <\/i>passed
\naway from us, some say that he is and others "this is not"; which then
\nis right? What is
\n<\/span>the truth of the<\/p>\n

\n Page \u2013 91<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

great
\npassage? Such is the form of the question and at first sigh it seems simply to
\nraise the problem of immortality in the European sense of the word, the survival
\nof the identical personality. But that is not what Nachiketas asks. He has
\nalready taken as the second of three boons offered to him by Yama the knowledge
\nof the sacred Flame by which man crosses over hunger and thirst, leaves sorrow
\nand fear far behind him and dwells in heave securely rejoicing. Immortality in
\nthat sense he takes for granted as, already standing in that farther world, he
\nmust surely do. The knowledge he asks for involves the deeper, finer problem, of
\nwhich Yama affirms that even the gods debated this of old and it is not easy to
\nknow, for subtle is the law of it; something survives that appears to be the
\nsame person, that descends into hell, that ascends into heaven, that returns
\nupon the earth with a new body but is it really the same person that thus
\nsurvives? Can we really say of the man "He still is", or must we not
\nrather say "This he no longer is"? Yama too in his answer speaks not
\nat all of the survival of death, and he only gives a verse or two to a bare
\ndescription of that constant rebirth which all serious thinkers admitted as a
\nuniversally acknowledged truth. What he speaks of is the Self, the real Man, the
\nLord of all these changing appearances; without the knowledge of that Self the
\nsurvival of the personality is not immortal life but a constant passing from
\ndeath to death; he only who goes beyond personality to the real person becomes
\nthe Immortal. Till then a man seems indeed to be born again and again by the
\nforce of his knowledge and works, name succeeds to name, form gives place to
\nform, but there is no immortality.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 
\n  <\/span>          
\n<\/span>Such then is the real question put and answered so divergently by the
\nBuddhist and the Vedantin. There is a constant reforming of personality in new
\nbodies, but this personality is a mutable creation of force at its work
\nstreaming forward in Time and never for a moment the same, and the ego-sense
\nthat makes us cling to the life of the body and believe readily that it is the
\nsame idea and form, that it is John Robinson who is reborn as Sidi Hossain, is a
\ncreation of the mentality. Achilles was not reborn as Alexander but the stream
\nof force in its works which created the momentarily changing mind and body of
\nAchilles flowed on<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 92<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

and
\ncreated the momentarily changing mind and body of Alexander. Still, said the
\nancient Vedanta, there is yet something beyond this force in action, Master of
\nit, one who makes it create for him new names and forms, and that is the Self,
\nthe Purusha, the Man, the Real Person. The ego-sense is only its distorted image
\nreflected in the flowing stream of embodied mentality.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 
\n  <\/span>          
\n<\/span>Is it then the Self that incarnates and reincarnates? But the Self is
\nimperishable, immutable, unborn, undying. The Self is not born and does not
\nexist in the body; rather the body is born and exists in the Self. For the Self
\nis one everywhere, – in <\/i>all bodies, we say, but really it is not confined
\nand parcelled out in different bodies except as the all-constituting ether seems
\nto be formed into different objects and is in a sense in them. Rather all these
\nbodies are in the Self; but that also is a figment of space-conception, and
\nrather these bodies are only symbols and figures of itself created by it in its
\nown consciousness. Even what we call the individual soul is greater than its
\nbody and not less, more subtle than it and therefore not confined by its
\ngrossness. At death does not leave its form, but casts it off, so that a great
\ndeparting Soul can say of this death in vigorous phrase, "I have spat out
\nthe body."<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n


\n <\/span>          
\n<\/span>What then is it that we feel to inhabit the physical frame? What is it
\nthat the Soul draws out from the body when it casts of this partial physical
\nrobe which enveloped not. it, but part of its members? What is it whose issuing
\nout gives this wrench, this swift struggle and pain of parting, creates this
\nsense of violent divorce? The answer does not help us much. It is the subtle or
\nphysical frame which is tied to the physical by the heart-strings, by the cords
\nof life-force, of nervous energy which have been woven into every physical fibre.
\nThis the Lord of the body draws out and the violent snapping or the rapid or
\ntardy loosening of the life-cords, the exit of the connecting force constitutes
\nthe pain on death and its difficulty.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 
\n  <\/span>          
\n<\/span>Let us then change the form of the question and ask rather what it is
\nthat reflects and accepts the mutable personality, since the Self is immutable?
\nWe have, in fact, an immutable Self, a real Person, lord of this ever-changing
\npersonality which, again, assumes ever-changing bodies, but the real Self knows
\nitself always<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 93<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

as
\nabove the mutation, watches and enjoys it, but is not involved in it. Through
\nwhat does it enjoy the changes and feel them to be its own, even while knowing
\nitself to be unaffected by them? The mind and ego-sense are only inferior
\ninstruments; there must be some more essential form of itself which the Real Man
\nputs forth, puts in front of itself, as it were, and at the back of the
\nchangings to support and mirror them without being actually changed by them.
\nThis more essential form is the mental being or mental person which the
\nUpanishads speak of as the mental leader of the life and body, manomayah pr<\/span>\u00e3na-sarira-net<\/span>\u00e3.
\n<\/span><\/i>It is that which, maintains the ego-sense as a function in the mind and
\nenables us to have the firm conception of continuous identity in Time as opposed
\nto the timeless identity of the Self.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 
\n  <\/span>          
\n<\/span>The changing personality is not this mental person; it is a composite of
\nvarious stuff of Nature, a formation of Prakriti and is not at all the Purusha.
\nAnd it is a very complex composite with many layers; there is a layer of
\nphysical, a layer of nervous, a layer of mental, even a final stratum of
\nsupramental personality; and within these layers themselves there are strata
\nwithin each stratum. The analysis of the successive couches of the earth is a
\nsimple matter compared with the analysis of this wonderful creation we call the
\npersonality. The mental being in resuming bodily life forms a new personality
\nfor its new terrestrial existence; it takes material from the common
\nmatter-stuff, life-stuff, mind-stuff of the physical world and during earthly
\nlife it is constantly absorbing fresh material, throwing out what is used up,
\nchanging its bodily, nervous and mental tissues. But this is all surface work;
\nbehind is the foundation of past experience held back from the physical memory
\nso that the superficial consciousness may not be troubled or interfered with by
\nthe conscious burden of the past, but may concentrate on the work immediately in
\nhand. Still that foundation of past experience is the bed-rock of personality;
\nand it is more than that. It is our real fund on which we can always draw even
\napart from our present superficial commerce with our surroundings. That commerce
\nadds to our gains, modifies the foundation for a subsequent existence.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 
\n  <\/span>          
\n<\/span>Moreover, all this is, again, on the surface. It is only a small part of
\nourselves which lives and acts in the energies of our<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-94<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

 <\/span>earthly
\nexistence. As behind the physical universe there are worlds of which ours is
\nonly a last result, so also within us there are worlds of our self-existence
\nwhich throw out this external form of our being. The subconscient, the
\nsuper-conscient are oceans from which and to which this river flows. Therefore
\nto speak of ourselves as a soul reincarnating is to give altogether too simple
\nan appearance to the miracle of our existence; it puts into too ready and too
\ngross a formula the magic of the supreme Magician. There is not a definite
\npsychic entity getting into a new case of flesh; there is a metempsychosis, a
\nreinsouling, a rebirth of a new psychic personality as well as a birth of a new
\nbody. And behind is the Person, the unchanging entity, the Master who
\nmanipulates this complex material, the Artificer of this wondrous artifice.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 
\n  <\/span>          
\n<\/span>There is the starting-point from which we have to proceed in considering
\nthe problem of rebirth. To view ourselves as such and such a personality getting
\ninto a new case of flesh is to stumble about in the ignorance, to confirm the
\nerror of the material mind and the senses. The body is a convenience, the
\npersonality is a constant formation for whose development action and experience
\nare the instruments; but the Self by whose will and for whose delight all this
\nis, is other than the body, other than the action and experience, other than the
\npersonality which they develop. To ignore it is to ignore the whole secret of
\nour being.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 95<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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