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The Soul And Its Journey
All of us are constantly travelling from somewhere to somewhere else.
The journey has necessarily to be undertaken in a vehicle of some sort
and the vehicle must have a surface prepared for it to ride on. And
of course we go to a place which we have to reach – the destination.
Therefore, we have the way upon which we must travel, the vehicle in
which we travel, and the destination to which we are travelling. If
perchance, the vehicle breaks down on the way, the intelligent traveller
gets out of the now useless vehicle and takes another vehicle. This
change of vehicle will be necessary as many times as the vehicle becomes
unserviceable, so long as the destination has not been reached. Once
the destination has been reached, vehicles are no more necessary. Once
the destination has been reached, the way too becomes a thing of the
past. So the important thing which we must ever keep before us is the
goal, the destination. The way and the vehicle are but the means to
our arriving at our predetermined destination.
In its travel back to its Original Home, as my Master has called it,
the soul is the traveller. The way is the life that it adopts on its
way home. The vehicle is the body in which it travels through life.
Looked at in this way, we see that there is nothing to be afraid of
in rebirth. Rebirth is nothing but the soul changing from one useless
vehicle to another useful one, so that it can keep moving on and on
upon its journey back to its Original Home. It is therefore, something
of a misnomer to even call it as rebirth. What is being reborn? Is it
the soul? No! Because as we see, the soul exists and continues to exist.
Is it the body which is reborn? No! Because it is a new body that is
created out of the elements for the use of the soul. Then what is it
that is reborn, if anything? I can only say that the whole concept of
rebirth is nothing but the change of vehicle necessary for the advancement
of the soul to the Goal.
What is the way? Obviously the way has to be the right one, as otherwise
we cannot reach the Goal at all. The importance of the way exists only
so long as we are yet away from the destination. Once we have reached
home, then we shall have no more to worry about the way, its condition,
nor even its existence. For the soul, the way to its destination
is life itself. Life, therefore, has to be properly led, if
one is to go on to the Goal. Also, once we have arrived home, the very
concept of life would appear to have no further meaning as life, (at
least as we understand it) becomes redundant. So one has to hold on
to life only until the goal is reached. So, for one who has arrived
at his goal it would be as foolish and unnecessary to hold on to life
as it would be to hold on to the vehicle. So the body has to be given
up, and more importantly, the very idea of life has to go.
What happens to the soul? It exists in its Original Home. One cannot,
in my opinion, attribute life to the soul – when we look at the matter
in this way. The soul exists eternally, but it takes upon itself a life
for itself when it has become separated from its Original Home, and
then a body too becomes necessary. Looked at in this way, life and life
in the body would appear to be one and the same thing. Once the soul
has reached its Home, the concept of life itself becomes meaningless.
The body is given by the past samskaras. Once we have been born, there
is no chance in that life to change it. It is fixed. The vehicle has
been assigned. Change of the vehicle becomes possible only when the
vehicle becomes unserviceable through old age or disease, when the soul
in its wisdom and in its anxiety to reach Home, discards the worn-out
vehicle and adopts another one. This is what we see as death and rebirth.
So, for one life we can have only one body, and wisdom dictates that
it should be carefully preserved, so that it may serve its one and only
purpose – that of transporting the soul to its Home.
The body is nothing but the vehicle for life. Life itself, as we understand
it, is nothing but the way that the soul adopts to enable it to reach
its goal. The Master is the one who makes the life meaningful and purposeful.
Once this is understood, fear of life, as well as the falsity of all
attractions that distract becomes apparent and one becomes capable of
abandoning all but the idea of the goal.
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