Let's suppose reincarnation exists and let's suppose you want to reincarnate after your death: what would you want to reincarnate into?

It exists. 

We are not human beings having a soul experience, we are souls having a human experience.  We will keep coming back over and over until all thought of ego is erased.

You don't reincarnate INTO anything.  You evolve or devolve depending on what your past experiences have been.   If I am a good person, I can draw on that next time.  If I am a bad person, I can expect to have to pay for that next time.

Of course, that is so simplistic as to be a really bad example, but the idea is correct.   This is a huge subject that usually causes someone to ask a lot of questions.  So, this is just the tip of the iceberg of the Reincarnation idea.

Question: Can a yogi know his past lives?

Maharshi: Do you know the present life that you wish to know the past? Find the present, then the rest will follow. Even with our present limited knowledge, you suffer so much. Why should you burden yourself with more knowledge? Is it to suffer more?

When seen through the sight of the supreme space of Self, the illusion of taking birth in this mirage-like false world is found to be nothing but the egotistical ignorance of identifying a body as "I". Among those whose minds are possessed with forgetfulness of Self, those who are born will die and those who die will be born again. But know that those whose minds are dead, having known the glorious Supreme Reality, will remain only there in that elevated state of reality, devoid of both birth and death. Forgetting Self, mistaking the body for Self, taking innumerable births, and at last knowing Self and being Self is just like waking from a dream of wandering all over the world.

Question: How long does it take a man to be reborn after death? Is it immediately after death or some time later?

Maharshi: You do not know what you were before birth, yet you want to know what you will be after death. Do you know what you are now?

Birth and rebirth pertain to the body. You are identifying the Self with the body. It is a wrong identification. You believe that the body has been born and will die, and confound the phenomena relating to the body with the Self. Know your real being and these questions will not arise.

Births and rebirths are mentioned only to make you investigate the question and find out that there are neither births nor rebirths. They relate to the body and not to the Self. Know the Self and don’t be perturbed by doubts.

Question: Do not one’s actions affect the person in later births?

Maharshi: Are you born now? Why do you think of other births? The fact is that there is neither birth nor death. Let him who is born think of death and palliatives for it.

Question: What happens to a person after death?

Maharshi: Engage yourself in the living present. The future will take care of itself. Do not worry about the future. The state before creation and the process of creation are dealt with in the scriptures in order that you may know the present. Because you say you are born, therefore they say, yes, and add that God created you.

But do you see God or anything else in your sleep? If God is real, why does he not shine forth in your sleep also? You always are, you are the same now as you were in sleep. You are not different from that one in sleep. But why should there be differences in the feelings or experiences of the two states?

Did you ask, while asleep, questions regarding your birth? Did you then ask ‘Where do I go after death?’ Why think of all these questions now in the waking state? Let what is born think of its birth and the remedy, its cause and ultimate results.

Question: What becomes of the Jiva (Individual soul) after death?

Maharshi: The question is not appropriate for a Jiva now living. A dead Jiva may ask me, if he wishes to. In the meantime let the embodied Jiva solve its present problem and find who he is. Then there will be an end to such doubts.

Question: Is the Buddhist view, that there is no continuous entity answering to the ideas of the individual soul, correct or not? Is this consistent with the Hindu notion of a reincarnating ego? Is the soul a continuous entity which reincarnates again and again, according to the Hindu doctrine, or is it a mere mass of mental tendencies- samskaras?

Maharshi: The real Self is continuous and unaffected. The reincarnating ego belongs to the lower plane, namely, thought. It is transcended by Self-realisation.

Reincarnations are due to a spurious offshoot. Therefore they are denied by the Buddhists. The present state of ignorance is due to the identification of consciousness (chit) with the insentient (jada) body.

Question: Do not we go to heaven (svarga) as the result of our actions? This post was edited by WM BARR . =ABSOLUTE TRASH at November 8, 2016 11:16 AM MST

If I was a politician .. I could always aspire to come back further along the scale of advancement ... Say as a cockroach

I always heard that we have NO choice as to who we will be if we reincarnate.....and that as humans we can NEVER EVER come back as an animal, plant, etc.

Reincarnation, from all the things I"ve read/heard over the years, is an ongoing process...we are supposed to learn from our mistakes........

Now the following is not something I can say I agree with, but SOME feel that we pay for our past errors in each lifetime.

I attended a lecture once on this and someone asked the speaker, "what about the Jews in WWII?" and the speaker said, without hesitation, that according to the laws of karma, that they had done something equally horrible in another lifetime........welllllll  there was a gasp from the audience and then you could have heard a pin drop.

Same as 'we get the parents we deserve"........so in that line of thinking, abused children are paying for something done in a previous life.

I AM NOT SAYING THAT I PERSONALLY BELIEVE THAT, BUT THIS IS WHAT THE THINKING IS ON THIS.

KINDA SAD, actually......

My mom always said that religion did away with the idea of reincarnation; she said that if not, then someone could kill someone, thinking, 'well, I'll just pay for it in the next lifetime"...........strange, mom, but oh well!!!

so it's a VERY difficult subject.

and then there's the documented cases where in general children speak of a past life; the most famous is a little girl in India, I believe back in the 1950's,  who kept speaking of her husband and their children, described the house they lived in, and turns out the man lived not too far away....

so the parents took her to this man and she described the way her accidental death had happened, told him about in-laws, family,  etc., you know things that ONLY the deceased wife would know..

She even asked him if he still hid his money in a certain place...........it was said that at that point the man fell to his knees, in tears, saying that this truly was his wife..........!!!!!!

and it goes on and on.......


So why don't we hear about more cases like this? maybe reincarnation is just an ongoing,silent thing, where many people DON"T have any clue as to their most recent life.

and now for a lighter note; when I was in grade school, I always wanted to learn French!!!  someone jokingly said that perhaps in my last lifetime I fell in love with someone from France and thus wanted to learn their language!!!!!!

hey, you never know, right?  lol

and now ONE MORE THING AND THEN I'LL STOP.

all my life I have detested the fact that people DRINK.......I detest alcohol and cannot understand the craze our country has for WINE.............and other drinks.

so perhaps in my last lifetime I was an alcoholic?  who knows??????????????????????

all for now!!

:-D