In Search of Rebirth: Gita & God 26

The best way to search for Rebirth is to ask who would be re-born. Atman or Self being indistinguishable part of the never-born, never-dead Paramtman or God will reamian there always and can go through rebirth. The Self or Atman or Paramtman being the only source of everyting is inhererent in everything and everything including the dead body is contained in the Self or Atman. So, the body when dead is still in Atman even as it transforms into ashes or into other elements in the grave. Though the body may not have the gunas / properties to rea,lise the Self or Atman. The body transforms after death and cannot have rebirth the way I wish to see a rebirth.
It is in a live body that the Self may be realized. But for that the mind must become still, the mind and the intellect must meditate on the Self and the ego must go. Then the Self appears and a person may merge with the Self or Atman or God. But who is this person who merges with Atman. He is not the body. He is not the ego or the intellect. He is not the mind because mind becomes still when the Self is realized. Then who is this person who merges with Self and detaches from all gunas, intellect and ego? Yes, I am That (Self). But who is that I that merges in That Self? Is it that the ego unable to use the intellect and mind and therefore the senses becomes unable to give expression to the Gunas? And, therefore ego is that which ultimately dies to merge in the Self? Before that happens, Ego is what I am ! Or, there is a third person who is the I. This I is influenced / captured by guna-combination-personality-illusion (GCPI) and when I overcome the GCPI through Yoga that I realize the Self?
It does not matter however who I am so long as I do not realise the Self or Atman.
But I or the Ego or the GCPI are something that this Universe contains and hence must exist in Atman or God. Therefore , the Self or Atman or God must exist in I and the Ego or the intellect or the mind or the GCPI. But these being only the derivative of God or Atman or the Original source must be susciptble to change just as the body changes or transforms. We know how the body transforms after death. But what happens to I or Ego or Mind or Intellect after body's death? Do they also die and transform or they do not die and yet transform? If they transform, they must be always there and cannot ever die or be born again.

If therefore nothing we can identify other than the Self/ Atman/ God / the Orginal indestructible, immutable source of everything, then everything has to be under transformation. If they transform, they are never really dead - only a particular form may disappear and yield place to another form. That exactly what even the body does while it has life and when it does not have life. If we say the body is dead because there is no life inside it, then every other thing which does not have life in it must be dead.
When does the ego lose the life or does it have a life at all or is it always alive. The Gita and the Upanishads do not consider these questions are relevant. Because, these are part of Apara Vidya and not Para Vidya . Para Vidya is the knowledge by which you know the essence of all other knowledge of science and arts. The question that Para Vidya seeks to answer is where does everything come from? The answer is that it comes from Atman or Paramtman or the Self, the God Almighty. How do we prove or know that. The method to know is Yoga and the ultimate state of Yoga is when the mind has become still, the ego is lost, all desires have gone. It is then when the knower knows the answer by merging with that what is to be known, the original source. The knower, the known and the knowledge bcome the same. The knower has lost any other identity at that stage; he sees every things in himself and him in everything else. This is a rare of state to happen within a ive human body and rare is a human body that experiences this state. It is the state of bliss that no one has described anywhere for another person to understand or feel. So, the probability of such a state arising in any human body like that of mine is in the infinitsimal distance of zero, even if the method of Yoga is taken recourse to.
Whether there is rebirth of anything or not is immaterial to this scientific theory of God.

Preparing for Rebirth: Gita & God 25

With the current birth having been with Hindu parentage, the threat of almost certain re-birth has been a thought nurtured from very childhood, questioned during the college and university education days of romance with scientific methods, almost forgotten during working career life before it started looking up at the face when one is much closer to death. Whether you have reasons to worry about re-birth or not, you like exploring the idea. At many places in the Gita, Lord Krishna talks about re-birth, though one could surmise that the relevant verses re-birth were grafted into Gita by believers other than the original composers of the verses in the Gita.

How far is the concept of Re-birth consistent with the concept of God in Gita? To explore this, one needs to ask the question: who is going to have a re-birth? My existing physical body will not have rebirth: this seems almost certain.Unless of course there is some way to use my body for a thorough repair and surgical reconfiguration. But that would not be a real re-birth: it would be re-conditioned body. So, what will bet rebirth?. My memories of the past? But the relevant brain cells will go dead when my body yields to deathb or even before that. So my memory cannot have rebirth. Even assuming that memory some how lives after my death and gets into a new born babies brain when it is born and after my death, the rebirth of my memory will not be accessible to the new born baby as it grows with accumulating new memories not consistent with the ones that my body had accumulated earlier. I could have written a detailed dairy of events in my life and got it published and a reader could get thatin to his memory but that would not have made a rebirth of I>

Will my ego or intellect that drove my body and mind so far could have rebirth? I have to identify my rebirth with a new born human child or a babd mosquiti or bird or animal as my rebirth. It will have developed its own ego and intellect: how would at the sametime operate with my ego and intellexct. Even if I assume that my ego and intellect can after my death hang in the air for a while before entering into a new born baby, how can this be my rebirth?

My ego and my intellect were fully developed ones: how will it operate as myself in a new born baby? Why does these have to enter the new born baby and not a fully matured adult are some others I have to find answers to.
Can my soul of self or atman be subject to getting reborn after I lose my existing body? Yes, that would seem to be a poosibility because atman has no ego in itself and no personality so it would have no difficulty in getting into another body. But Atman iis unborn and indivisible as is Paratman which is never born and never dead. How can therefore Atman be ever born or dead or therefore have a rebirth. My Atman, I learn, is unattached and covered by the illusion of Maya, which I have to overcome through Yoga to reach this Atman of mine that is not attached to anything. When I reach my Atman, I do not any longer exist but mege in Atman that is indivisible part of Paramatman.

It is only an illusion that I think that I have a soul or Atman that is different from the Atmans of other beings: when I discover my own self or soul, I am supposed to realize that all souls are nothing but the same indivisible, indestructible, ever presesny, never-born, never died, and infinite Paramatman. Atman is thus a mere concept that helps us realize that God exists in all beings and non-beings in this Creation and all these beings exist only in God. That is how God = Creation = Creator.
Atman or Self therefore cannot have rebirth by definition.

Then who can have rebirth? I can have rebirth only as Maya or Illusion that pervades the body, mind, intellect and covers the Self or Atman of an individual being. Illusion is a common property of human beings and it is the combination of three Gunas of varying strengths that work in the environment of Illusion, the Maya. The Guna properties are what are either solely in the body cells or partly in these cells and partly in the mind- intellect and the ego. In a new born baby, the body is genetically/ biologically determined and hence my existing body after death can in no way impart the new baby's genetic code or cells (unless the baby is biologically related to me. But the guna properties that my mind, intellect and ego are enriched with may be hanging somewhere like invisible soundwaves after my bodily death and before being captured / absorbed by or getting attached to a new body. That is the only way something can have rebirth - a kind of continuity of a particular guna-combination personallity of illusion (GCPI) from one body to another. Whether or not there is any correspondence between particular new body genetically imparted with certain guna property combination attracts particular GCPI or not may be a matter of detail and not relevant here.

This GCPI is under continuous transformation while it uses a body and then gets into another body. By composition, each GCPI in each body will be different and under continuous development. Maybe at some stage, a particular GCPI under its continous path of transformation lose all the strength of Gunas and shed the illusion while being attached to a body: it is at that time the body's atman is realised in its true form and the Paramatman is realised even in a physical body.

GCPI drives my body, mind, ego, intellect: GCPI is my false identity. On the death of my body, my GCPI may become attached to another body for continuation of its transformation. But that is not my rebirth. I am always there as Atman to be realised in a body one day by demolishing the GCPI. I have no rebirth - I am always there to experience and witness and once in a while experience the realisation of my own nature while remaining attached to a body.

The GCPI is subject to some kind of rebirth but I am not. This GCPI trabnsformation possibility may be consistent with Gita. The rest of rebirth theory may be designed by some preachers of religions for the purpose of influencing the common people to do good deeds and get better rebirth than worse rebirth (Rebirth & Karma relationship theory.

Hypothetical Unified Existence: God & Gita 24

Let us experiement in a Hypothetical living of Unified Existence of Gog. This living is by a particular agglomeration part X in the Creation. How would X be in perception and reality ?
He would find his entire body and mind as a small part of his existence in the same way he would find evrything else in the Creation as part of his existence. He would find Himself existing in and acting thruough everything: the differenmt human beings, all the non-human living creatures, the entire inanimate world - the breeze, the rain, the storm, the moon, the sun, the planets and stars, the limitless spece, the infinite time - past, present and future, and so on. By definition he would have all knowledge - all that ther was, is and will be to be known, He will simultaneously exist in everything, in every thoughts and actions and behaviour of evrything. He will find everyone in conversation and debate as his own converstion within himself. He would experience all this as one whole existence and would not have to desire anything, attach himself to anything that goes on happening: he will be just a mere witness to all that goes on and on. And, yet he will perceive as reality what X or Y or any Z does as his own action and behavior. He would then become completely one with the entire Creation and the Creator even if he acts in the form of X as a particular human being, as Krishana or Arjun - all at the same time. X would thus be different from normal, would show no fear, no disappointmenr and no anger. He will do anything that he would do without desire and ego. He would excel in whatever he is found to be doing. This is the concept of the person in unified existence.
This is what Lord Krishna has been characterised as and this is what Arjun sees of Krishna as Viswaroop Darshan. This is the Hypothetical Unified Existence. Such an existence is beyond any suffering or attachmenmt or obligation or performance and ever lasting, infinite and what we would call blissful. How did Krisna get into such unified existence. It is stochastically destiny outcome that a rare agglomeration form X would have the properties necessary to have that experience: it is only that rare outcome which we call Krishna by chance.
How would most others would have viewd the hopthetical person X. He would be perceived as one who excels in evry thing. He would by definition attract attention of others and others would be influenced by his thoughts and actions. He would be admired, praised, respected and followed by most others. That is the concept. Each person is different in external behavior because of the stochstically determined combination of Guna-doses facing stochastically determined external environment he / she fasces. X is just one such possibility which has the probability close to zero That is the concept.
Whether Krishna really existed in history or not is not the issue. The issue is the posibility of X, a human outcome with close to zer probabilty, that is identified with God/ Creator/ Creation. X is the concept of God that human mind can describe. That is why X is the incernation of God or God in living form. There are many other possibilities with low probabilities(though higher than the probability of X): these possibilities are X1, X2, X3, ... etc. forsome i and j, Xi = Xj but the equaivalence isnot true in general. These Xi and Xj s are different Avatars, Godly men like Buddha and Crist, saints like Ramkrishna, Chaityana and Mahavir or Nanak or Kabir, some great personalities like Mother Terressa, Mahatma Gandhi, Tagore, and so on.
Each person is just a stochastica outcome. So are the the persons named earlier. Of these X (or Krishna) depicts the stochastic outcome that is the close to the concept of a person being in complete unified existence as the Crerator and with everything in the Creation - a concept developed in the Upanishads and illustrated in the Gita.
After being in search of God or Brahmah in sound, in light, in the air and in the space, the Upanishads described God as not 'coarse,fine, short, long, glowing, adhesive", as without 'measure, inside, outside,shadow, darkness, air, fear, stickiness,odor, taste, eye, ear, voice, wind, energy, breath, mouth, name' , as 'unaging, undying, immortal, stainless, not uncovered and not covered(Aranyaka III: 8:6- Yagyavalkya) that is the "origin, sustenance and dissolution of the Creation" and therefore the only sat (being), chit (consciousness) and ananda (bliss). In Gita, thsi is illustrated by and thruough the character of Krishna: human being in complete unified existence.

Advaita Vedanta