The Sojourn of the Soul

How you (the soul) pass from one body to another is explained by Lord Krsna through a striking analogy: "Just as a person puts on new garments, giving up old ones, similarly the soul accepts new material bodies, giving up the old and useless ones." (Bg. 2.22) Lord Krsna explains that the mind is the mechanism behind these transmigrations: "Whatever state of being one remembers when he quits his body, that state he will attain without fail [in his next life]." (Bg. 8.6) Everything we've thought and done during our life makes an impression on our mind, and the sum total of all these impressions determines our final thoughts at death. According to the quality of these thoughts, we are awarded a suitable new body after death.

I remember that when I was ten or twelve, back in the early fifties, we used to jokingly say things like "Don't kill that fly! It may be your great-grandfather!" That wasn't too far off, but we missed the real point of transmigration, which is that our next body after this one is better or worse according to the quality of our activities in this life. If we're saintly, we'll get a saintly body next time, but if we're doggish, we'd better prepare ourselves for a dog's life after this one. This is the law of karma, which states that for every action we perform, either good or bad, there is an appropriate reaction to be reaped either in this life or in a future life.

So the millionaire and the genius are reaping the benefits of good karma, and the pauper and the dunce, having committed sinful activities, are getting their just desserts. Perhaps we would like the system better if everyone became a millionaire or a genius, but the purpose of the law of karma is not to provide us a cozy homestead in the material world. The purpose is to bring us to the point of asking the all-important question: "How can I escape from the painful cycle of birth and death?"

And a tediously painful cycle it is. According to the Vedas, the vast cosmic wheel of birth and death rolls through 8,400,000 species of life: 900,000 aquatics, 2,000,000 plants, 1,100,000 insects, 1,000,000 birds, 3,000,000 quadrupeds, and 400,000 humans. If you start at the lowest level, you first have to pass through the very simplest one-celled organisms before reaching those with sense perception. Finally, you evolve through all the mammals up to the human stage. Krsna explains that after death "the living entity, thus taking another gross body, obtains a certain type of eye, ear, tongue, nose, and sense of touch, which are grouped about the mind. He thus enjoys a particular set of sense objects." (Bg. 15.9) Therefore the type of body we have now is an expression of our consciousness at the time of our last death.

As Origen guessed back in the third century, the path of karma doesn't always lead uphill. Once having reached the human stage, we can fall back down into lower forms of life if we misuse the facilities of the human body. The human form is special because only human beings have sufficient intelligence to inquire into the means for getting out of the cycle of birth and death. Only in the human form can we stop identifying ourselves with the bodies we are passing through and learn to see our spiritual identity within. Once we realize our eternal, indestructible spiritual nature, we are free from the vicious cycle of birth and death.