by purujit dasa
SOUL MIGHT BE ETERNAL, BUT HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT THE SOUL TAKES ANOTHER BODY AFTER DEATH?
Too much absorption in the bodily concept of life means that our subtle body(mind, intelligence and ego) will have to be transferred into yet another body to fulfill our illusory bodily desires. This is the law of karma. Krsna says in the Bhagavad-gita:
yaṁyaṁ vāpi smaran bhāvaṁ
tyajaty ante kalevaram
taṁtam evaiti kaunteya
sadā tad-bhāva-bhāvitaḥ
Whatever state of being one remembers when he quits his body, that state he will attain without fail.
Bg 8.6
Our present body is therefore the result of our mental state at the time of death of our previous body. How this process works is explained in the following verse:
The living entity in the material world carries his different conceptions of life from one body to another as the air carries aromas.
Bg 15.8
It is a false claim that after the annihilation of this body everything is finished. The individual soul is transmigrating from one body to another, and his present body and present activities are the background of his next body. One gets a different body according to karma, and he has to quit this body in due course. It is stated here that the subtle body, which carries the conception of the next body, develops another body in the next life.
Bg 15.8 purport
Prabhupāda: When this body cannot work any more... Because this body is a machine. So a machine, if he does not move, then you, have to change to another machine.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: The desire is not... Actually it is not burned; it just changed. The desire is changed to for a higher purpose. We have a choice between the subtle desires. Just change is the there from one to another.
Prabhupāda: No, the same example: just like in a motor car you desire to go this side, but the machine is stopped, so you have to accept another motor car. It is like that, to fulfill your desire. After all it is a machine. Machine is matter. So it has got a time to work. When it is not working, then you change to another machine to fulfill your desire.
Morning Walk -- July 14, 1975, Philadelphia
(to be continued..)
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