Darshan with Swami Krishnananda – 1997

by Swami Krishnananda

47. The Atman and Reincarnation

(Darshan given on September 10th, 1997)

Visitor: After a man dies, he forgets his life when he is reincarnated again. So if the Atman doesn't change, and the Atman didn't make his sins, so why does he suffer from the...

Swamiji: The Atman does not take reincarnation. Reincarnation is not done by the Atman. It is all-pervading; it cannot take birth. It is only the mind that reincarnates. There is a difference between the mind and the Atman. The Atman is a universal existence; mind is an individual existence. It is the individual that reincarnates, not the universal. The Atman is universal; it cannot undergo transmigration. Wherever there is individual consciousness, there is finitude, and the finitude always struggles to become the infinite. This struggle is carried on by repeated transformations of oneself in the process of evolution. As a matter of fact, birth and death are only processes of evolution. Whenever there is an evolutionary process, the previous condition dies and the new condition starts. It happens everywhere, not only in human beings. The whole universe is dying every moment, and gets renewed for a better condition every moment. As long as there is finitude anywhere, whether it is outside or inside, this transformation must take place. But the universal Atman cannot transform itself. Reincarnation is only for the individual, finite consciousness until it becomes infinite. Then there is no reincarnation. It is perfect blessedness, called salvation.

Visitor: John Locke says that the personality is his memory, and...

Swamiji: Personality is not memory. It is a consciousness of one separate existence. The consciousness of one isolated existence is called individuality. Memory is only a part of it – memory and intellect and subconscious, and all sorts of things, you can say. It is a simple thing. The consciousness of one's being isolated as an individual, that is the whole trouble. From that, memory starts, everything starts. The problem is isolated individual consciousness. That is the problem. It has to become universal. Then there is no transmigration, no reincarnation. There is perfect blessedness, salvation. It is called salvation.

Visitor: To judge me for a back reincarnation, it's not a judgment because I don't see myself, who I had been before. It wasn't me because we had different memories.

Swamiji: It is not necessary to know what you were before. Why do you want to know that? Nobody can know that. And you cannot even know what is tomorrow. That also you cannot know. You can know only the present. The point is useless. The question is simple. Why are you complicating matters? I said the whole purpose of life is to become Universal Existence and be free from birth and death, and for that you should not talk of yesterday, tomorrow, memory, and past, present, future. These are all irrelevant matters. It has no connection at all. It requires deep meditation, prayerfulness and concentration on, as I mentioned to you last time, the wider realms of being, and your meditation should be on the infinitude of your finitude. This is a simple matter. All religions, spirituality, yoga, everything, is only in one sentence I have told you. All other things are useless commentaries. Don't think of memory, and all that. There is no meaning in that. You should not think of past, present, future – nothing. There is no use of thinking all these things. There is no benefit.

Visitor: Good people that suffer in this world because they had…

Swamiji: Good people suffer because they have done bad things in the previous birth.

Visitor: So everything in this world here is fair?

Swamiji: Everything is fair because everything is well adjusted, a perfect balance. The universe is a perfect balance, and nobody can understand that because you are separately sitting outside as an individual, so the cosmic operation cannot be known by an individual mind. When you enter that, you will feel everything is okay. The whole universe is beautiful. But when you see it, it looks ugly and hopeless. You must see it properly.

Another visitor: We Christians consider… You were talking about Buddhism the other day, and one question I'd like to ask you is Hindus say Buddha is an incarnation of Vishnu, and Buddhists say they don't believe that to be true.

Swamiji: No, they do believe. They believe in the incarnation of Bodhisattva. They are believing in the same way, only they call it by different names. There are many big incarnations, Bodhisattva and Avalokiteshvara, Maitreya Buddha. They are all Buddha's incarnations only. They believe exactly as Hinduism, but in a different way. Their language is different, and their description is different. Especially in Mahayana Buddhism, there is liberalism. Their concept is very wide, humanitarian and cosmopolitan. The incarnations of Buddha are accepted by Mahayana Buddhism in particular.

Visitor: So they're not irreconcilable. They are the same.

Swamiji: Every moment the Universal Being is incarnating itself. It does not require Hinduism and Buddhism and all that. It is a process of what we may call scientific evolution. There is evolution and involution taking place in the universe. When there is a coming down of the higher level to the lower level, you call it incarnation. When it is an ascending of the lower level to the higher level, you call it movement towards salvation. One is an activity from the centre to the circumference; another is an activity from the circumference to the centre. In modern language we may say they are centripetal and centrifugal forces. One moves away from the centre. That movement is called creation. The other way is the movement towards the centre. It is called involution. These processes go on continuously, endlessly, eternally. That's what you are asking?

Visitor: Yes. Thank you. One difference seems to be that Buddhists say there is no creator God.

Swamiji: Buddhism is a doctrine of phenomenalism. Everything is momentary; nothing is static. In the evolutionary process of the cosmos also, nothing is static. Everything moves. The question is, to where does it move? In what direction? Everybody should answer this question whether there is perpetual fluxation, movement, as Buddhism accepts and anybody will accept. You should not stop with that statement merely. You cannot say, “I am going.” Unless you know where you are going, the meaning of going has no sense. You say, “I am going to England, I am going to Delhi.” But if you simply use the word 'going', it loses sense.

So Buddha, in his great wisdom, said that everything moves, but it moves towards nirvana, the ultimate blessedness. And what the nature of that blessedness is, he was not prepared to explain because the human mind cannot understand what it is. He believed in that old saying: “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Today's problem is sufficient for us. Why should you drag tomorrow's problem unnecessarily? When you go near it, you will understand. Each time you take one step, and you cannot know the further steps. Buddha is misunderstood mostly because of his silence on certain matters. When he is silent about a thing, it need not mean that he doesn't know things. Even Christ said, “I know more things than what I am speaking.” It does not mean prophets should go on saying everything. They will say only as much as is necessary for the kind of public which they are addressing.

Everything moves towards an ultimate destination. So everything moves, is a fact; therefore, everything is phenomenal, but it leads to a state which is beyond the phenomenal existence, ultimate freedom. As long as you are caught up in phenomenal movement, there is no freedom. When there is cessation of this movement after the attainment of the ultimate aim, then there is no such question. Buddha calls it nirvana, in Hindu religion they call it moksha, people call it salvation, people call it attainment of God; all mean one and the same thing.

Visitor: Can you answer the question: Why the universe came into being?

Swamiji: It never came into being. Ultimately you will find it does not exist at all. They gave an example in Vedanta philosophy. Sometimes in twilight a rope looks like a snake. You are asking me since when the rope started looking like a snake. Is there a beginning for that? It never behaved like a snake at all, but it is perpetually a snake. You can go on seeing it, and every time you see it, it looks like a snake only. So it is a perceptional defect. The existence of the world as a real solid substance outside is a phenomenon arisen out of a defect in perception itself. By itself it is not there.

Visitor: Thank you.