BORN AGAIN… AND AGAIN?
Now here’s the rub. In our present life, most of us don’t achieve anything like the degree of purity required for dying while living. Our minds are too involved with material existence to muster sufficient concentration to be able to pass through the inner door.
During the course of our lives, we think and act and desire, mostly in an entirely scattered and unfocused kind of a way. All of this thinking and acting leaves impressions on our mind, and at the time of death, our head is still full of stuff related to ourselves and to our existence in this world. So what happens to us after death?
Well, we go where our mind takes us. We might spend time in some inner place, some inner level of consciousness or being, its degree of happiness depending upon the purity of our mind. But sooner or later – usually sooner – our mind draws us back to this world, and we are reborn. Reincarnated. Even transmigrated into non-human forms, if that’s where our inclinations really lie.
And not only that, but the actions we made in life, all of which created lasting grooves or impressions on our mind, now rebound upon us, and form the fabric of our next life. Our past determines our future, just as it does in the present life. Indian mystics have called this the law of karma, the law of action and reaction, of cause and effect. Greek mystics called it the law of justice.
Now we’re getting into some deep stuff. We’re getting to understand something of the hidden processes of the universe, and how everything functions as a projection of the One Being. It’s all a matter of cause and effect. The cosmic accountant (higher aspects of the mind, actually) keeps track of everything. And we reap what we have sown. Like it or lump it.
And can we escape from this cycle of birth, death and rebirth? Yes, say the wise ones who seem to know about such things: through meditation of a very particular kind. They say that liberation from birth and death (an ancient ideal) is an essential aspect of the journey to the centre of ourselves. That learning to die while living is only a starting point.
But what kind of meditation frees us from ever having to die again?
