Reincarnation

I'm not clear about the workings of reincarnation in Hinduism, and would appreciate some basic explanations of the process.
For example, is it Atman that is reincarnated, and does moksha mean Atman merging with Brahman?
And do the different Hindu schools explain reincarnation in different ways?
Thanks.

It varies by sect, and individuals.

I can give you my interpretation. It is the anandamaya kosha Anandamaya kosha - Wikipedia that reincarnates. This is the innermost body we have, of the 5 bodies. During each lifetime, it develops or grows the other five bodies around it. In English it's often called the soul body, or body of the soul. But deep inside the anandamaya kosha is Atman, the Self, or the core of the anandamaya kosha. In English, to distinguish, they are sometimes referred to as the soul and the soul body.

Shiva emanates pieces of Himself, and over a long period of time, those pieces return to him in total merger. (water with water) (monism) During this time, the anandamaya kosha stays separate from Him, and progresses closer to Him through a series of lifetimes, gradually maturing to be identical.

The soul body grows the other five bodies each time, but remnants will remain from each previous lifetime, prior to the current one. The remnants are things like how much will power a person has achieved, or determination, or skills, even traits. If the soul body reincarnates quickly, with some pre-arranged deal, it can still be losing remnants of the immediate past lives. This is why sometimes small children can remember bits and pieces of it, and may verbalise 'strange' stuff. It's because the previous 3 bodies, (excluding the physical body) have yet to be replaced. But by age 10 or so, the 4 new bodies are there, still developing, but in control.

Moksha is when the soul body and the soul have learned all the lessons they need to learn in a physical body. It's totally mature, and ready to merge with Siva.

Souls who aware of reincarnation and the patterns can control it to some degree. For example you can choose where you want to be reborn, or choose a family. It's a co-operative effort between souls with physical bodies, and souls without. The older you are in soul age, the more control you have. Old Hindu souls will use conception rituals, for example, to attract an older soul.

Not sure if this helped, but .... best wishes in coming to an understanding of it.

In my understanding, it is the causal body that is reborn into a jiva.

The Atman is the experiencer of the life of each jiva the causal body is born to. The Atman experiences the rebirth, but is not the one technically reborn, if that makes sense. Similarly to as my mind is the one that experiences me in a dream, but it’s not that dream self.

Atman is always Brahman. It doesn’t merge. Atman is an individual appearance of Brahman, just as a wave is an appearance of the ocean.

Meerkat said:

I'm not clear about the workings of reincarnation in Hinduism, and would appreciate some basic explanations of the process.
For example, is it Atman that is reincarnated, and does moksha mean Atman merging with Brahman?
And do the different Hindu schools explain reincarnation in different ways?
Thanks.

Click to expand...

I'll give you my understanding as a follower of non-dual (God/Consciousness/Brahman are not-two) Hindu philosophy.

We have individual souls on the causal/soul plane which are composed of subtle matter not detectable by the physical plane. It is these souls (causal bodies/Higher Self) that animate bodies of the lower denser planes (incarnation/reincarnation).

Atma is pure infinite consciousness. A ray of atma (paramatma) is the consciousness animating the soul and then subsequently the denser physical bodies.

Moksha occurs when the soul eventually realizes that it is just pure Atma. Atma is One and indivisible and any previous sense of separateness was always an illusion. Moksha is eternal being-awareness-bliss (sat-cit-ananda).

Vinayaka said:

It varies by sect, and individuals.

I can give you my interpretation. It is the anandamaya kosha Anandamaya kosha - Wikipedia that reincarnates. This is the innermost body we have, of the 5 bodies. During each lifetime, it develops or grows the other five bodies around it. In English it's often called the soul body, or body of the soul. But deep inside the anandamaya kosha is Atman, the Self, or the core of the anandamaya kosha. In English, to distinguish, they are sometimes referred to as the soul and the soul body.

Shiva emanates pieces of Himself, and over a long period of time, those pieces return to him in total merger. (water with water) (monism) During this time, the anandamaya kosha stays separate from Him, and progresses closer to Him through a series of lifetimes, gradually maturing to be identical.

The soul body grows the other five bodies each time, but remnants will remain from each previous lifetime, prior to the current one. The remnants are things like how much will power a person has achieved, or determination, or skills, even traits. If the soul body reincarnates quickly, with some pre-arranged deal, it can still be losing remnants of the immediate past lives. This is why sometimes small children can remember bits and pieces of it, and may verbalise 'strange' stuff. It's because the previous 3 bodies, (excluding the physical body) have yet to be replaced. But by age 10 or so, the 4 new bodies are there, still developing, but in control.

Moksha is when the soul body and the soul have learned all the lessons they need to learn in a physical body. It's totally mature, and ready to merge with Siva.

Souls who aware of reincarnation and the patterns can control it to some degree. For example you can choose where you want to be reborn, or choose a family. It's a co-operative effort between souls with physical bodies, and souls without. The older you are in soul age, the more control you have. Old Hindu souls will use conception rituals, for example, to attract an older soul.

Not sure if this helped, but .... best wishes in coming to an understanding of it.

Click to expand...

So basically, it's the causal body (karana sarira) which reincarnates, and this is equated with the bliss sheath (anandamaya kosha)?
I don't really understand what the causal body is, or why it's equated to the bliss sheath - more research needed!

George-ananda said:

I'll give you my understanding as a follower of non-dual (God/Consciousness/Brahman are not-two) Hindu philosophy.

We have individual souls on the causal/soul plane which are composed of subtle matter not detectable by the physical plane. It is these souls (causal bodies/Higher Self) that animate bodies of the lower denser planes (incarnation/reincarnation).

Atma is pure infinite consciousness. A ray of atma (paramatma) is the consciousness animating the soul and then subsequently the denser physical bodies.

Moksha occurs when the soul eventually realizes that it is just pure Atma. Atma is One and indivisible and any previous sense of separateness was always an illusion. Moksha is eternal being-awareness-bliss (sat-cit-ananda).

Click to expand...

So basically, it's the causal body that reincarnates?
And Atman=Brahman=turiya, as per the Mandukya Upanishad?

SalixIncendium said:

In my understanding, it is the causal body that is reborn into a jiva.

The Atman is the experiencer of the life of each jiva the causal body is born to. The Atman experiences the rebirth, but is not the one technically reborn, if that makes sense. Similarly to as my mind is the one that experiences me in a dream, but it’s not that dream self.

Atman is always Brahman. It doesn’t merge. Atman is an individual appearance of Brahman, just as a wave is an appearance of the ocean.

Click to expand...

So basically, Atman/Brahman "observes" the repeated reincarnation of the causal body?
Like the two birds in the tree (jiva and Atman), described in the Mundaka Upanishad?

Meerkat said:

I don't really understand what the causal body is, or why it's equated to the bliss sheath - more research needed!

Click to expand...

The causal body, in my understanding, is the sum of one’s actions...the carrier of one’s karma, and the record of one’s experiences.

Meerkat said:

So basically, Atman/Brahman "observes" the repeated reincarnation of the causal body?
Like the two birds in the tree (jiva and Atman), described in the Mundaka Upanishad?

Click to expand...

Exactly.

As a supplementary question, can anyone say in a nutshell what the causal body actually is?
Comprised of vasanas (inherent tendencies)?

Meerkat said:

As a supplementary question, can anyone say in a nutshell what the causal body actually is?

Click to expand...

*points to post #8*

SalixIncendium said:

*points to post #8*

Click to expand...

Sorry, I missed that one!
How do the vasanas fit in with the "karmic record" aspect?

Meerkat said:

Sorry, I missed that one!
How do the vasanas fit in with the "karmic record" aspect?

Click to expand...

Vasanas are the result of the karma that is carried in the causal body. They influence behaviors of the jiva.

Meerkat said:

So basically, it's the causal body that reincarnates?
And Atman=Brahman=turiya, as per the Mandukya Upanishad?

Click to expand...

Correct. And Paramatman (the individual spark/ray of Atman in the Causal Body) =Atman too in that equality equation.

Nice replies, but all from the 'Advaita' stable, while Sri Madhvacharya (also known as Purna Prajna and Anandatirtha) says that Parmatma and Jeeva are always different (Dvaita - duality). He was the principle opponent of Sankara's Advaita. Hare-Krihnas or Acintya Bhedabheda Advaita also claims its roots in Sri Madhvacharya's philosophy.

"Madhva further enumerates the difference between dependent and independent reality as a fivefold division (pancha-bheda) between God, souls and material things. These differences are: (1) Between material things; (2) Between material thing and soul; (3) Between material thing and God; (4) Between souls; and (5) Between soul and God.
This difference is neither temporary nor merely practical; it is an invariable and natural property of everything. .. According to Madhvacharya, even in liberation (moksha), the bliss is different for each person based on each's degree of knowledge and spiritual perfection. This liberation according to him, is only achievable with grace of God Vishnu.
The four primary manifestation of Him as the Brahman are, according to Madhva, Vasudeva (Krishna's Dad), Pradyumna, Aniruddha (son and Grandson of Krishna) and Sankarasana (normally understood to be Balarama), which are respectively responsible for the redemptive, creative, sustaining and destructive aspects in the universe."
Madhvacharya - Wikipedia

The eight seminaries established by Sri Madhvacharya and three by his disciples are centered around Udipi, Karnataka. Udipi is also famous for its cuisine and beaches.

Om beach, Udipi Cuisine (eating places all around the world), Udipi Krishna temple (the domed things are rathas),

Opinions vary, as would be expected from something relayed mostly through folklore. There's been very little empirical study on consciousness and it's place in theoretical physics.

In popular mythology it's pretty straightforward: A body dies; the soul, spirit-body, jiv-atman -- whatever you choose to call it -- is released, maybe dwells a while in some sort of spirit-world or "heaven," and, at some point in the historic future, takes another human body and lives another life.
In India, at least, anecdotal testimony of this type of scenario is pretty common. You read accounts of kids with previous life memories in the papers, for example.


Those of us with a more philosophical or scientific bent, though, have dreamt up way cooler scenarios.

First, individual consciousness is an illusion. There is only one, universal consciousness, tapped into by all conscious entities, whose qualia vary according to the mediating circuitry between their ears.

Invert a colander over a light bulb and there will appear to be hundreds of individual, independent light sources -- but this is an illusion -- Maya. There is a single source underlying all of them.

There's a single Universe Wide Web, running countless life-programs simultaneously.
Just as multiple players can run Minecraft at the same time, a specific life can be run by multiple players simultaneously.
And as we know from relativity theory, time is not as we perceive it. The past is not gone; and futures are as real as presents or pasts.

From our 3rd-state -- AKA 'waking state' -- consciousness we can only perceive a single life at a time, and in that life, we can only perceive one time at a time -- very restrictive.
It's like watching a film, where an illusion is created by perceived, sequential, still images, running at a steady rate, one frame at a time, in one direction. This is not reality!

In reality, the first and last frames exist simultaneously. Both are real, and the whole sequence can be run countless times, forward, backward, slo-mo -- whatever.
After death, or anytime, there's nothing preventing a consciousness from running a Stone-age Neanderthal or a future Mars colony life, after 'dying' in '2021.
Time is not an arrow. At any given time, the whole film exists in toto, plus "given time" is a relativistic illusion.
There is no change; no time, except in our minds.

When we "die" nothing really changes. The life we lived, and all other lives, everywhere and everywhen in the universe, are still there, ready to be run. The real "us" is the timeless, universal consciousness under the colander. What determines what life we run in any illusory incarnation I have no idea. (Science really needs to get off the couch and do some research here).

The sequential, life-after-life scenario in popular mythology is a simplistic fantasy. Philosophical Hinduism, like Advaita Vedanta, is more complicated.

Aupmanyav said:

Nice replies, but all from the 'Advaita' stable, while Sri Madhvacharya (also known as Purna Prajna and Anandatirtha) says that Parmatma and Jeeva are always different (Dvaita - duality). He was the principle opponent of Sankara's Advaita. Hare-Krihnas or Acintya Bhedabheda Advaita also claims its roots in Sri Madhvacharya's philosophy.

"Madhva further enumerates the difference between dependent and independent reality as a fivefold division (pancha-bheda) between God, souls and material things. These differences are: (1) Between material things; (2) Between material thing and soul; (3) Between material thing and God; (4) Between souls; and (5) Between soul and God.
This difference is neither temporary nor merely practical; it is an invariable and natural property of everything. .. According to Madhvacharya, even in liberation (moksha), the bliss is different for each person based on each's degree of knowledge and spiritual perfection. This liberation according to him, is only achievable with grace of God Vishnu.
The four primary manifestation of Him as the Brahman are, according to Madhva, Vasudeva (Krishna's Dad), Pradyumna, Aniruddha (son and Grandson of Krishna) and Sankarasana (normally understood to be Balarama), which are respectively responsible for the redemptive, creative, sustaining and destructive aspects in the universe."
Madhvacharya - Wikipedia

The eight seminaries established by Sri Madhvacharya and three by his disciples are centered around Udipi, Karnataka. Udipi is also famous for its cuisine and beaches.

Om beach, Udipi Cuisine (eating places all around the world), Udipi Krishna temple (the domed things are rathas),

Click to expand...

So what is reincarnated with a Dvaita perspective?

The different Jeevas, till Lord Vishnu grants them his grace, no merger with God. Then they go and reside in Vaikuntha till it is time for the universe to dissolve into the Godhead. (Well, I am not a Madhva follower, I mention what I have learnt from various sources).

Meerkat said:

So what is reincarnated with a Dvaita perspective?

Click to expand...

In Dvaita, you're forever 'in the presence of God' and eternally separate. It's like salt being dissolved in water. In Advaita it's a total merge, like water into water.

I guess none of us will know for sure until it happens, or until we're realised enough to know for sure.

Well, one knows exactly what would happen if one goes by Advaita views that I hold. Disintegrate, disperse and join billions of other forms, living and non-living, forever alive, though not in your current form. But how does form matters to Brahman?