Reincarnation, Karma and where do we go when we die 

Growing up in a little village in conservative Catholic Austria, i remember that it did not make much impact on my young mind when they talked about heaven and hell, about where people supposedly would go when they die.

The veiled threats from the priests and the nuns of my kindergarten worked for a while but then not anymore.

In later years when i started to question those deeply ingrained beliefs of my cultural environment, i remember the feeling of hitting a wall with my probings.

A kind of intellectual purgatory started to appear in my young life, definitely i started to understand the meaning of purgatory ;  )

I also remember clearly the uplifting emotions that came some years later, when i encountered the books and teachings of the East that talked about Reincarnation and about Karma in pretty clear and matter-of-fact terms.

Like a lightbulb switched on, the landscape became very clear and many of the things of life that puzzled me before started to make sense and appeared in a context, instead of being just random unrelated events lorded over by some mysterious god figure.

Early on in the late 1970s i had read about the work of Raymond Moody, about Near Death Experience (NDE) and his subsequent thinking about life after death as well also other researchers like Ian Stevenson who developed Past Life Regression techniques.

But it was actually only when i met Chris Griscom in New Mexico – a leading authority in Reincarnation Therapy – and had 3 weeks worth of astonishing past life experiences myself, that my intuitive and intellectual understanding of Reincarnation and Karma became a very personal practical experience for me.

Everything i experienced as “past lives” with “clear mind and awareness” had a direct correlation to the challenges and themes of my personal life in this present lifetime.

In short, and without exaggeration – this has been a deeply reassuring experience, shining light and greatly easing some of my inner struggles.

Now it has been half a lifetime since i first came into contact with all such information and it has taken all my life experience, all reading and studying and contemplating to transform this initial intuitive euphoria and enlightenment into the deeply integrated clarity of today, that helps me to make sense of many of the contradictions and absurdities and seemingly random events that life can offer and that are on display in our world today and in all of history.

And although i am not always able to find a linear and rational explanation and experiential proof for my believes, i found that the two fundamental concepts of Reincarnation and Karma have been the real gems in my understanding of the continuity of life of the individualized Soul in her journey towards unity with Spirit/God.

REINCARNATION

So – with that said on a personal note – now i will try to lay out in a more generalized way my understanding about where we go after our body dies and what happens in between incarnations and what my belief is about Reincarnation and the role of Karma.

It is astonishing that the concept of reincarnation has been mostly unknown in western societies of the Roman-Christian religious denominations up until not so long ago.

This hadn’t always been the case, as a belief in reincarnation had flourished in the West in ages long ago in the times of the Druids, Pythagoras, Plato, and the Neo-Platonists, to name just a few and had even been part of early Christianity until it was officially declared heretical/a deadly sin by the Church Authorities in the sixth century A.D.

After that point, the concept of reincarnation vanished almost entirely from the Western consciousness.

In the East, Reincarnation has been a mayor cornerstone of various religious traditions and philosophy/metaphysics throughout the ages.

It was only when Eastern religious teachings started to filter into the West by way of the stories about adventurous spiritual seekers and later in more comprehensive ways thru movements like Theosophy a.s.o., that more and more Western people started to open up to consider – if only as a hypothesis – that we might actually not only live once (and then end up in heaven or in hell forever, maybe with some stopover in purgatory if necessary ;  )

Although nowadays an increasing number of people say that they believe in reincarnation, it seems that relatively few are able to adequately explain or talk about it, what it actually is, how it actually works and what it means for our life, our priorities, our purpose and direction.

I think that Karma and Reincarnation are the two most vitally important spiritual concepts for humanity to accurately understand and apply this understanding on the way we live our life.

Individually and as a society.

Karma and Reincarnation are inextricably linked with each other. I think to get a clearer idea we need to grasp the Law of Karma first.

KARMA

I don’t pretend to understand why Karma works, what the mechanism is that “works behind the scenes”, but i definitely don’t believe that there is some “guy in the sky somewhere” who dishes out 5 stars for good deeds and some punishment for bad ones ;  )

“Karma” literally means “action” and “deed” in the Sanskrit language of India.

It is described there in the old scriptures of the Vedas as the Law of Cause and Effect, Action and Reaction, Sequence and Con-sequence.

We are always setting causes in motion, every moment, through every act, our every word, and even our every thought.

For every cause set in motion, there is a corresponding and correlative effect which comes back.

An Austrian proverb says that “what you shout into the woods, this will echo back from the woods”.

This is a way to say that the universe maintains its harmony, balance, and equilibrium.

In the Vedas it is postulated that every self-conscious being in the universe, without exception, is subject to the Law of Karma. Every being in possession of individual self-consciousness and the intelligent power of choice, is a creator of Karmic causes.

Karma is the Law of self-created destiny and everything in the universe proceeds according to this Law.

It can be good or bad, positive or negative, depending entirely on the nature of the causes we set in motion.

Karma is entirely impersonal, it has nothing to do with punishment or reward, it is entirely just and fair in its working.

Intuitively i tend to accept that as truth, just as i accept the Law of Gravity or Einsteins General Relativity. And i don’t totally intellectually understand those laws either. But they make sense to me.

Karma starts to make sense in the context of Reincarnation, it actually states that Reincarnation is put into motion and kept going by the Law of Karma, by the unfinished business, the unbalanced “Karmic bank account”  that we carry at the end of one lifetime.

Some of the aspects and circumstances of our current lifetime obviously do not have their origins in the current lifetime but seemingly in the distant past. Physical incarnation of the soul itself is a Karmic effect, since one of the main reasons we reincarnate is in order to deal with our past Karma.

The Law of Karma states, that every conscious thought, feeling and action we do/have has an effect on some level  on our future. And this effect can manifest on any level of our being in this same lifetime or in the next incarnation or far down into our future lifetimes.

How and why this is so spaced out over lifetimes is beyond my understanding right now, but i will keep you posted ;  )

Reading the Upanishads, early Vedic texts of India helped me greatly to understand more about these things.

According to those texts there are three divisions of Karma – and i will not bother you with the Sanskrit terms now.

One could be called the “Karmic reservoir”, the storehouse of all the Karma from past lives that has not yet been dealt with.

Then there is Karma is the specific portion of that Karmic reservoir which the person is destined to face and experience in the present lifetime. If this “unfinished business” is successfully dealt with and healed/balanced, that portion of the Karma will then be exhausted and wiped out.

And lastly there is the “fresh” Karma that we are creating for ourselves right here and right now, as we live this present lifetime. It becomes added to our Karmic reservoir and will manifest itself either later in this life or in future lifetimes.

Intertwined with our individual Karma, there is also family Karma, group Karma, national Karma, racial Karma, planetary Karma, and beyond.

Obviously it all becomes pretty complex and probably not my business to analyze and understand how this all works out in my life.

I am happy if I manage to understand the concept and the wisdom i can extract from that understanding:

– There is no punishment for my past actions. And no rewards either.

Rather than that, i am “punished” by my past actions, i may suffer the effects of them.

And similarly, my “good” seeds are bearing fruits accordingly.

– The only way to free myself from “negative” Karma is to accept “my lot in life”, whatever this is and make the best of it. And to stop setting new negative causes in motion!

– To avoid creating any further future sorrow and suffering for myself, i do best to stop creating it for others.

By living my life consciously and harmlessly.

By gaining awareness of my mind, thoughts, words, and deeds.

And live to be of help and service to others.

That is – in short – how i translate my understanding of Karma and Reincarnation into practicality in my everyday life.

REINCARNATION (again??? ;  )

Reincarnation means the same thing as re-embodiment and rebirth.

It is the jiva-atman, the individualized “part of my soul” returning to the earth – or other “places” – again and again and taking up residence each time in a new body in order to continue the soul’s progressive journey of inner evolution, advancement, development, and unfoldment.

Death is not the end and birth is not the beginning.

The old texts postulate that the soul reincarnates due to three main reasons:

– It still has lessons she/it wishes to learn

– It still has “karmic debts” which she needs “to work off” in order to further balance its Karma

– It has not yet fully realized its own divine nature, its absolute oneness with the Spirit / the Divine Essence / with All There Is.

Reincarnation is a Law in Nature. It is an ongoing cyclic process and necessity for each individualized soul.

Reincarnation does not happen immediately after death. I don’t think that the soul leaving one body and then instantly entering that of a baby which is about to be born.

It is said that there is always an interval period, during which the soul experiences its own personal state of “Heaven”. Later on i will try to share what i came to understand about “death and the afterlife”, the period between incarnations.

For quite a while i believed that each soul – prior to incarnation – consciously chooses and selects her parents, along with other aspects such as the location, setting, and circumstances of the birth and so on .

But lately i have come to the understanding that it is probably not really a conscious choosing that determines the parents and circumstances. Rather the parents and other aspects of its upcoming rebirth are “automatically” determined by the soul’s own Karma, by causes that soul has previously set in motion while on Earth before.

I like very much the expression in the Upanishads, which says that the nature of each body in which the soul reincarnates is “according to our deeds and our needs”.

Our deeds, our actions of the past have determined the body – the outer shell – which we have to put up with for this present lifetime and it is also the most fitting and suitable body to help meet the soul’s needs for her inner evolution, development, and the learning of her lessons in this life.

As i am writing this, i notice that i am constantly mixing “it” and “she”, when i am talking about the Soul.

Generally it is always said that the soul is genderless, a “it”. But i am very comfortable to say “she” and i can honestly not explain why. And so i preference to mix the two ;  )

DEATH, DYING and the “AFTERLIFE”

What happens when we die?

Where do we go then?

Naturally, this question has always been of interest to me, first after my beloved older brother died when i was a kid, and then my not-so-very-beloved grandmother.

Half a lifetime later i was blessed enough to accompany my mother during the last week of her life and be present also when my father passed over to ….. where?

By this time i already knew enough, was aware of most of what i have been writing now about Reincarnation and Karma.

So it was easy and natural for me to accept the situation and to go along with the process till it was over.

And i guess, i could help them quite a bit, because i did not buy into the drama and trauma that is mostly associated with this fundamental event – death of the body, departure of the person.

But still, it is one of the great mysteries of this life:
The uncertainty what will be then.
Where i will go in my afterlife.
And which “I” will go there.

Although i have recall of quite a number of “my” past lifetimes, i don’t recall any of the intermediate periods between lives.

My certainties and believes about this – what happens to us in-between incarnations – comes from reading books about Near Death Experience (NDE) and studying what the “Tibetan Book of Death” has to say and understanding the very specific descriptions of this process from Theosophy and Anthroposophy.

That is a lot of  material that makes it very clear, that “death is not the end”.

On the contrary, a big adventure awaits when we go over to the other side. Literally! ;  )

And although i can not speak from my own direct experience, i will try to lay out as clearly as i can what i understand from those sources and what resonates with my own intuition.

I assume (and hope) you have read my articles about our subtle bodies and the different realms of existence, so i will not go into explanations about Astral Realm, Soul and all of that.

Otherwise please read this material, so i t is clear what i am talking about.

~~~~~

In case i will ever have a grave and a gravestone, i would like to have on it written this poem by a little know poet that says:

Do not stand at my grave and weep

I am not there

I do not sleep

….

….

Do not stand at my grave and cry

I am not there

I did not die!

I am sure that my “I” will never die.

My astral body will eventually disintegrate when my dead physical body goes to dust.

And my etheric body, that subtle “double” carries Prana / Life-energy thru my organs to keep my material body animated now and keeps me in physical incarnation will return to the Universal Ether after i have “kicked the bucket” ;  )

But the soul, the part of my true self that journeys thru lifetimes, the jiva-atman is very much alive and conscious.

People who came back from a near-death-experience tell us, that they experienced themselves floating above the scene and looking down on their dead body.

Often they also see a kind of chord still connecting them with the body.

Many recall that they experienced something like a instantaneous review of their life.

And i believe that this is the first thing that will happen with me when i die.

In an instant a whole-life-review passes before my awareness of the lifetime i just left behind.

Everything relevant i did or missed to do passes with clarity before me, my true motivations and subconscious impulses clearly revealed. Everything that happened to me and how i responded is experienced without illusion now. Every hurt i inflicted and good deed i did. 
No judgement, just the facts.
I face myself naked … as somebody has called this kind of ultimate revelation  : O

Then the silver chord between “me” and my physical body gets broken or disconnected and this brings about the real physical death. No more going back!

The old texts claim that “this causes such a shock for the soul” that the next part of the death-process takes place without consciousness.

They say that unconsciously i will enter what is called the Kama Loka, which is also considered as being a part of the Astral Plane that is inter-penetrating the material plane.

How long i will stay there all be determined primarily by the degree of my attachment to the material world and the sensuality that characterized my life.

In this sphere happens a kind of separation between my lower vibrating sensual, vital, material nature and the higher vibrating, more spiritual parts of my personality.

My lower, sensual, more material side of my person cannot enter into the more refined sphere or the Mental Realm and so it has to be cast off here in the intermediate state of Kama Loka.

The texts say – and i intuitively believe that to be the truth and not just a moral or religious idea – that the more spiritually and less materially and sensually inclined and oriented i have lived my life, the swifter this process will happen.

When the break between the lower and the higher eventually occurs, I will then enter into what is known as the “gestation state” like a baby in the womb, a period and state of profound and unconscious rest.

I will literally “Rest in Peace”, as people often wish a dead person.

Meanwhile, the elements of my “lower” nature that still has strong attachments to the life just left behind , remain in Kama Loka, whereas I – as soul – has moved on.

I suppose this is what we usually refer to as ghosts. Ghosts that can haunt houses or appear in seances to spiritualists. But they are not en-souled really, more like mechanical avatars ; )

It is said that those “ghosts” will remain in Kama Loka until all its remaining passion and force completely wears out and then it will disintegrate entirely and cease to be. This may take longer or shorter time, depending on the force and amount of attachment i had to the previous life.

And i also suspect it will also take longer time if the people left behind can not let me go. I experienced that with my mother when my brother died early in his life. She never could let him go in some way, never really managed to come in peace with his passing.

I – the soul – has moved on already and eventually emerge from the gestation state back to consciousness by entering the state that the texts call Devachan.

This – i guess – is the bright light, that people with near death experiences glimpse in the distance and are compelled to walk towards. Many have spoken of the feeling of bliss of “coming home” while walking towards this light.

Religions may call this state “The Heaven”, but the texts say it is actual quite different from the rather fixed popular conception of Heaven that religions suggest.

The texts state that each of us – after we die – has our own personal heavenly Devachan  state and each of us creates it for ourselves out of our own consciousness. It is the exact representation and experience of what we had believed, hoped, and expected Heaven to be like while we were still alive on earth.

Uff, i wonder which kind of heaven is there waiting for the atheists, cynics and brutalists of this world? I have no idea. Anyway, i personally choose to believe in a heaven of bliss and unity and unconditional love :  )

And maybe 15 beautiful virgins on top of that as well (kidding! kidding! ;  )

Those of the loved ones who had passed on before us will also be there in this Devachanic state, regardless of how long ago and even regardless of whether they have already reincarnated again.

Again this is one of this mysteries that people with near death experiences talk about. And that actually blows my logical mind :  )

The duration of my stay in the Devachan state will be in accordance with the amount and force of the good or positive Karma that i acquired during the previous lifetime. This is what sustains and prolongs the Devachanic experience.

The Devachanic state and period will eventually begin to fade out and draw to a close, coinciding with the process of a new reincarnation of me – soul – through conception, through pregnancy, and finally culminating in “my” rebirth on the physical plane.

I – soul – will by then have dropped and discarded the personality and persona of the previous lifetime and will be start the journey into this new lifetime, incarnated into and through a brand new persona, that is shaped and determined by my own past Karma.

And so my soul-journey of ongoing inner evolution and unfoldment continues onward. 

I am aware that i have taken a lot of liberties and simplifications in my attempt to tell the story of “my journey thru the afterlife, from one incarnation to the next.

But i have tried my best to stay true to what i feel intuitively to be true rather than just believing what the old sacred texts say. So, i hope you will forgive the parts that make no logical sense or sound like a fairy tale.

My intention to write this was mainly to lay out for myself in my own words  what i believe as true.

And secondly maybe it can inspire you – the reader – to make up your own mind about it.

Or inspire you to ask questions that you might otherwise not have asked.

In any case, i wish myself a happy journey onwards when the time will come one day.

And the same i wish to you :  )

… the Cosmic Spirit seeks

not to restrain us

but lifts us

stage by stage

to wider spaces …

Herman Hesse – Stages

Maybe you want to read: The psyche, the mind, the ego, the self, the soul, the “I” – a clarification

and: The workings of the soul / The soul and her “context” / How does it all fit together?