Changes

Transmigration of the Soul

The other day I saw a revealing video of a young Russian girl on Facebook. Here it is. Stick around and watch the whole thing. This is truly wonderful.

This time-lapse photography was taken a week at a time until the girl reached 15 years of age. It demonstrates remarkably how the body changes imperceptibly.

I've been asked to explain some of the wisdom teachings of the Mahabharata story. The story I am writing is my own personal retelling of Mahabharata, gleaned from different authoritiative sources, notably the Kishari Mohan Ganguli translation. The Ganguli translation is in the public domain, available on the internet at Gutenberg.org, for those interested in source materials. Here's a link  http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Hinduism_(Bookshelf) My retelling is mostly an adaptation from Ganguli which is one of the few complete translations of the entire work, shloka for shloka.

 The Bhagavad-gita spoken by Krishna represents the core of wisdom teachings given in Mahabharata and is justly the most famous.  Here's a verse explaining transmigration of the soul, or re-incarnation.  This is spoken by Krishna to Arjuna, when he is bewildered, facing the awesome responsibility of confronting Bhishma, his grandfather, and Drona, his guru, on the battle field.


Here's the verse with translation and purport from the Bhagagavad-gita As It Is by my guru, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada who initiated me with hari-nama in October of 1976.

TEXT 13

dehino 'smin yatha dehe
kaumaram yauvanam jara
tatha dehantara-praptir
dhiras tatra na muhyati

SYNONYMS

dehinah--of the embodied; asmin--in this; yatha--as; dehe--in the body; kaumaram--boyhood; yauvanam--youth; jara--old age; tatha--similarly; deha-antara--transference of the body; praptih--achievement; dhirah--the sober; tatra--thereupon; na--never;muhyati--deluded.

TRANSLATION

As the embodied soul continuously passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. A self-realized soul is not bewildered by such a change.

PURPORT

Since every living entity is an individual soul, each is changing his body every moment, manifesting sometimes as a child, sometimes as a youth, and sometimes as an old man. Yet the same spirit soul is there and does not undergo any change. This individual soul finally changes the body at death and transmigrates to another body; and since it is sure to have another body in the next birth--either material or spiritual--there was no cause for lamentation by Arjuna on account of death, neither for Bhisma nor for Drona, for whom he was so much concerned.

Rather, he should rejoice for their changing bodies from old to new ones, thereby rejuvenating their energy. Such changes of body account for varieties of enjoyment or suffering, according to one's work in life. So Bhisma and Drona, being noble souls, were surely going to have either spiritual bodies in the next life, or at least life in heavenly bodies for superior enjoyment of material existence. So, in either case, there was no cause of lamentation.

Any man who has perfect knowledge of the constitution of the individual soul, the Supersoul, and nature--both material and spiritual--is called a dhira or a most sober man. Such a man is never deluded by the change of bodies. The Mayavadi theory of oneness of the spirit soul cannot be entertained on the ground that the spirit soul cannot be cut into pieces as a fragmental portion. Such cutting into different individual souls would make the Supreme cleavable or changeable, against the principle of the Supreme Soul being unchangeable.