Latest / Sri Aurobindo Studies / Conscious Rebirth by a Fully Developed Psychic Being, Part 2

Transcript

Conscious Rebirth by a Fully Developed Psychic Being, Part 2 · Sri Aurobindo Studies

• 0:00
  There is considerable skepticism about the question of rebirth.
• 0:05
  There are also questions about what exactly is reborn and what
• 0:09
  happens to the existing current life experience and capabilities
• 0:13
  developed in a lifetime before death.
• 0:17
  There remains then also the mechanisms involved.
• 0:22
  There is a long history reviewing the question of life
• 0:24
  after death and the question of rebirth with worldwide focus and
• 0:30
  spanning virtually all cultures and time periods.
• 0:34
  There are legends or stories about locations where the dead
• 0:37
  souls go either permanently or for some period of time until
• 0:42
  they are reborn. Some individuals who have been
• 0:46
  pronounced clinically dead and then were revived have reported
• 0:50
  their experiences and their new understanding of their role on
• 0:54
  Earth. Some religions doctrinally
• 0:58
  reject the concept of rebirth on the grounds that it conflicts
• 1:02
  with their view of salvation and the attainment of heaven after
• 1:06
  judgment and bodily resurrection.
• 1:10
  Others hold that at some point the soul is not reborn into this
• 1:14
  world, but potentially into other worlds or domains as the
• 1:19
  soul's development progresses. We are focused here, however, on
• 1:24
  the specific question of rebirth in the context of the earthly
• 1:28
  life and process. Scientists have also begun to
• 1:33
  weigh in on the subject. In particular, the University of
• 1:38
  Virginia's School of Medicine set up a division of Perceptual
• 1:42
  Studies, DOP S to study this in similar esoteric questions.
• 1:49
  They set about developing a database of cases of apparent
• 1:52
  rebirth or transmission of specific capabilities across the
• 1:56
  life death barrier into a new life.
• 2:00
  The database comprises more than 2500 cases which were
• 2:04
  researched. Some could not be fully vetted
• 2:08
  and validated, but several hundred were carefully reviewed
• 2:12
  and found to be solid. Some of these cases were written
• 2:17
  up in books or in medical journals at the time they were
• 2:20
  published. Cases of musical or other forms
• 2:24
  of artistic or mathematical prodigies, such as the frequent
• 2:29
  sighted case of Mozart, come up from time to time.
• 2:34
  These represent cases of highly developed skills.
• 2:39
  More frequent, however, are cases of ordinary individuals
• 2:42
  without special skills. In many of these cases, the
• 2:46
  original memory stemmed from an individual who had died
• 2:49
  prematurely or violently. The mechanism here is unknown,
• 2:54
  of course, but it shows that somehow mental or vital or even
• 2:59
  physical memories were held together sufficiently and were
• 3:03
  able to penetrate into a child, either through a process of
• 3:07
  rebirth or possibly through one of the child picking up the
• 3:12
  formation from the mental, vital or subtle physical domain in
• 3:16
  which it was still highly organized.
• 3:19
  A large percentage of these cases involve events that
• 3:22
  occurred within a couple of years, thus lending credence to
• 3:26
  the organized mental vital physical formation simply being
• 3:30
  adopted, rather than a specific case of rebirth.
• 3:35
  However, those that involve longer periods of time would
• 3:40
  tend to favor rebirth as the cause.
• 3:43
  Some children with very specific memories actually identify
• 3:48
  themselves as the prior, now deceased individual.
• 3:53
  As a general proposition, of those cases that were documented
• 3:58
  well, the vast majority involved young children between ages 2
• 4:02
  and four with specific special knowledge, memories, or
• 4:07
  capacities that were unrelated to anything in their lives or in
• 4:12
  any development they had undergone in the current
• 4:14
  lifetime. The memories tended to fade as
• 4:18
  they aged for the most part, although some cases involved
• 4:22
  adults under hypnotic trance who exhibited language and detailed
• 4:27
  knowledge of dialects and languages unknown to them and of
• 4:32
  places far distant in time and space.
• 4:37
  One thing that is proven here, however, is that in certain
• 4:40
  instances physical, vital, or mental capacities or
• 4:44
  characteristics can translate from one life to another.
• 4:49
  There are even incidents of specific birthmarks appearing
• 4:53
  physically on the body of the newborn child.
• 4:56
  Most of these cases, as noted, are related to ordinary people
• 5:01
  with more or less ordinary capacities.
• 5:05
  This does, however, open up a pathway to understand the
• 5:09
  potential action of a highly advanced and developed psychic
• 5:12
  being, creating formations at the physical, vital and mental
• 5:17
  level to carry forward into a next lifetime.
• 5:24
  The Mother writes quote When the psychic is fully developed and
• 5:28
  very conscious, when it becomes a conscious instrument of the
• 5:33
  Divine will, it organizes the vital and the mind in such a way
• 5:38
  that they too participate in the general harmony and can be
• 5:41
  preserved. A high degree of development
• 5:45
  allows at least some parts of the mental and vital beings to
• 5:48
  be preserved in spite of the dissolution of the body.
• 5:53
  If, for instance, some parts, mental or vital, of the human
• 5:58
  activity have been particularly developed, these elements of the
• 6:02
  mind and vital are maintained even in their form in the form
• 6:07
  of the activity which has been fully organized, as, for
• 6:10
  example, in highly intellectual people who have particularly
• 6:14
  developed their brains. The mental part of their being
• 6:18
  keeps this structure and is preserved in the form of an
• 6:21
  organized brain, which has its own life and can be kept
• 6:25
  unchanged until a future life so as to participate in it with all
• 6:30
  its gains. In artists, As for instance in
• 6:34
  certain musicians who have used their hands in a particularly
• 6:38
  conscious way, the vital and mental substance is preserved in
• 6:42
  the form of hands, and these hands remained fully conscious.
• 6:47
  They can even use the body of living people if there is a
• 6:50
  special affinity, and so on. Otherwise in ordinary people in
• 6:56
  whom the psychic form is not fully developed and organized,
• 7:00
  when the psychic leaves the body, the mental and vital forms
• 7:04
  may persist for a certain time if the death has been
• 7:08
  particularly peaceful and concentrated.
• 7:11
  But if a man dies suddenly and in a state of passion with
• 7:15
  numerous attachments, well, the different parts of the being are
• 7:19
  dispersed and live for a shorter or longer time their own life in
• 7:25
  their own domain, then disappeared.
• 7:29
  The center of organization and transformation is always the
• 7:33
  presence of the psychic in the body.
• 7:35
  Therefore it is a very big mistake to believe that the
• 7:40
  progress continues, or even, as some believe, that it is more
• 7:44
  complete and rapid. In the periods of transition
• 7:47
  between two physical lives. In general there is no progress
• 7:51
  at all, for the psychic enters into a state of rest, and the
• 7:56
  other parts, after a more or less ephemeral life in their own
• 8:00
  domain, are dissolved. Earthly life is the place for
• 8:05
  progress. It is here on earth that
• 8:09
  progress is possible during the period of earthly existence, and
• 8:13
  it is the psychic which carries the progress over from one life
• 8:17
  to another by organizing its own evolution and development
• 8:21
  itself. End Quote.
• 8:25
  Reference Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
• 8:28
  The psychic being soul, its nature, mission and evolution.
• 8:32
  Section 3. Growth and Development of the
• 8:35
  Psychic, pages 85 to 87.