Rebirth from Vedas/Scriptures

[KALKI]

Rigveda 10.59.6-7 Blissful Ishwar, Please provide us again healthy eyes and other sense organs in next birth. Please provide us powerful vitality, mind, intellect, valor again and again in next births. We achieve bliss in this life and future lives. May we keep looking up to your glory always. Keep us in peace with your blessings.O Ishwar, you provide us space, earth and other elements again and again so that our sense organs function. You provide us the ability to have good health and enjoy life in every birth. You make us strong again and again in various births.


Yajurveda 4.15:Whenever we take birth, may our deeds be such that we get a pure mind, long life, good health, vitality, intellect, strong sense organs and a powerful body. In next life also, keep us away from bad deeds and indulge us in noble actions.


Atharvaveda 7.67.1:May we get healthy sense and work organs in next life as well. May I am full of vitality. May I have spiritual wealth and knowledge of Ishwar and vedic concepts again and again. May we be selfless for welfare of world in next lives again and again. May our deeds be noble so that we get human life and always get purity of mind and actions so that we can worship you and achieve salvation.


Atharvaveda 5.1.2ne who conducts noble actions obtains noble lives in next births with strong body and sharp intellect. Those who conduct bad deeds get birth in lower species. To experience the fruits of past actions is natural trait of soul. After death, the soul resides in Vayu, Jala, Aushadhi etc and again enters the womb to take next birth.


Yajurveda 19.47:There are two paths for the soul. One path Pitriyan provides birth again and again through union of father and mother, good and bad deeds, happiness and sorrow. The other path of Devayana frees the soul from cycle of birth and death and provides bliss of salvation. The whole world reverberates with both these paths. And after both, the soul again takes birth as progeny of father and mother.



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Rigveda 1.24.1-2:Question: Whom do we consider the most pure? Who is the most enlightened one in entire world. Who provides us mother and father again in the world after gifting us ultimate bliss or Mukti?Answer: The self-enlightening, eternal, ever-free Ishwar alone is most pure. He alone provides us mother and father again in the world after gifting us ultimate bliss or Mukti.


Yaju IV. !5; Atharva VII. 6-67-1; Atharva V. 1-1-3..

"O God! May the mind with knowledge and other good qualities an may the full term of life come to us in our rebirth, through Thy favor. May pure thoughts come to us in our rebirth and may sight and hearing also come to us. O God! Thou art the guide and director of the universe; in Thee there is no fault such as arrogance, deceit; thou are the protector of our bodies, and art all wisdom and bliss; keep us aloof from evil deeds and protect us in all our birth-cycles, so that being free from sin we may remain happy in all our births."

"O Lord! May we get, through Thy favor in our rebirths all the senses and that force which sustains the pranas. may we be endowed with the noble riches of knowledge and have firm devotion to Thee. May we get human bodies so that we may be able to tend the fires, Ahavaniya, etc. O Lord of the Universe! May we have the same form, intellect and good bodies as we were endowed with in our previous birth so that we may be able with the help of intellect to discharge our duties properly in the world of our rebirth and may we never suffer pain on any account.

"A man who, has done good actions in his previous birth, gets many good bodies in virtue of those good actions, but if he has done evil deeds he does not get human body and is born into the body of an animal, etc., and suffers pain.[This is the lesson conveyed by God in the first half of the verse.]It is the nature of the soul that it reaps the fruits of its good and had actions done in a future birth. After leaving its old body it enters such substances as the air, water, medicinal herbs, etc., and then through their agency it enters into a new body according to the fruits of its former good or bad deeds.The jiva which obtains a full and complete knowledge of the Vedas, the word of God, obtains the body of a learned man like its former body and enjoys happiness; but the jiva which acts in violation of the dictates of the Vedas and virtue gets the body of lower animals and suffers pain."




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Rig VIII. !. 23. 6 & 7."O God! Thou conductest ourpranas. We pray Thee that we may be happy whenever we may assume another body after death. Grant us, O God! The eyes and all the other senses, the pranas and the inner senses in our future birth when we may assume another body after forsaking the present. Do Thou grant us that when we are born again we may enjoy uninterruptedly all enjoyable thins. May we be able to see the luminous sun and the ingoing and outgoing pranas in all our rebirths. O God! Thou art the dispenser of honor and happiness, make us happy in all our rebirths, through Thy grace."[In this mantra, the eye (Chakshu) represents all the senses and prana the inner senses.]

"Be gracious, O Lord! To grant that in our rebirths the earth may give us pranaborn of food and strength, the bright light of the sun may give us prana and middle region may give us life; the juices of medicines such as soma, may give us body (bodily health and vigor). O God! Thou art the giver of strength and nourishment, show us in our rebirths the path of virtue (dharma). We pray that happiness be our lit in all our births through Thy grace.
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Yaju XIX. 47."We have heard that there are two paths in this world for enjoying the good and suffering the bad consequences of virtue and vice. The first is the path trodden by the pitris (the wise) and the devas (the learned) and such men as are devoid of knowledge and wisdom. The first is divided two fold i.e., the pirtriyana and theDevayana. That in which a jiva obtaining a body from the father and mother enjoys happiness as the fruit of its good actions and suffers pain as the consequences of its evil and deeds and again and again, i.e., in which it is subject to past and future birth is called the pitriyana. That in which it obtains emancipation, is liberated from the world i.e., the migrations of birth and death is called devayana. In the former, after having enjoyed the fruits of its stock of virtue it is born again and dies also. In the latter, it is not born again, nor does it die. By these two paths the whole world passes and repasses.When the Jiva, leaving it's previous body and wandering about in the air, water or vegetable kingdom enters the body of the father or the mother it becomes and embodied spirit."
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The author of the Nirukta also supports the doctrine of rebirth in the following couplets:
"I died and was born again, and having been born I died once more. I have tenanted thousands of different bodies.
"I have tasted many kinds of food and have sucked many kinds of breasts. I have many fathers, mothers and friends.
" The jiva is born with its head downwards and suffers the pains of birth." Nirukta XIII, 19.

The great sage Patanjali in the Yoga aphorisms and his commentator Veda Vyasa also have established the truth of the doctrine of rebirth.
'Flowing by its potency the fear of death affects even the learned.' Yoga !. 2-9The fear of death which is exhibited, from the very birth, by all (living beings) shows that there are births and rebirths. Even a newly born ant, as well a learned man, is subject to the fear of death. This shows that without experience of death in a former life, there would be no impressions of it in this. With out the impressions there would be no remembrance.

And without remembrance how could there be fear of death? Seeing that all living beings exhibit fear of death we should infer that past and future births do take place.

Similarly, the most learned sage Goutama in his Nyaya Shastra, and Vatsyayana in his commentary thereon express their belief in the doctrine of rebirth.Pretyabhava."Nyaya Sutra.
I.1.19[Pretyabhava is to leave an old and to assume a new body. It is composed of two words,Pretya which means, having died, and Bhava which means coming into being. So a jivaafter departing from here is born again and assumes a body.]

[KALKI]

The most fundamental information about reincarnation is found in Bhagavad-gita. In Chapter 2, Krishna explains in a rational, simple and clearly understandable way how the soul travels from body to body. This fact is not a question of belief but is relatively easy to understand and to accept with logical conclusions.

The prerequisite for this understanding of reincarnation is that one understands the difference between the body and the soul.

"That which pervades the entire body you should know to be indestructible. No one is able to destroy that imperishable soul. " (Bhagavad Gita 2.17)

"For the soul there is neither birth nor death at any time. He has not come into being, does not come into being, and will not come into being. He is unborn, eternal, ever-existing and primeval. He is not slain when the body is slain." (Bhagavad Gita 2.20)

"The soul can never be cut to pieces by any weapon, nor burned by fire, nor moistened by water, nor withered by the wind.(Bhagavad Gita 2.23)

Thus, the soul and the body are two different things. The body is temporary and the soul is eternal.

Although the nature of the soul is beyond the scope of measurable material interactions, one can realize its presence with the help of the following example:

"O son of Bharata, as the sun alone illuminates all this universe, so does the living entity, one within the body, illuminate the entire body by consciousness." (Bhagavad Gita 13.34)

There are various theories regarding consciousness. Here in Bhagavad-gita the example of the sun and the sunshine is given. As the sun is situated in one place, but is illuminating the whole universe, so a small particle of spirit soul, although situated in the heart of this body, is illuminating the whole body by consciousness. Thus consciousness is the proof of the presence of the soul, as sunshine or light is the proof of the presence of the sun. When the soul is present in the body, there is consciousness all over the body, and as soon as the soul has passed from the body, there is no more consciousness. This can be easily understood by any intelligent man. Therefore consciousness is not a production of the combinations of matter. It is the symptom of the living entity. The consciousness of the living entity, although qualitatively one with the supreme consciousness, is not supreme because the consciousness of one particular body does not share that of another body. But the Supersoul, which is situated in all bodies as the friend of the individual soul, is conscious of all bodies. That is the difference between supreme consciousness and individual consciousness. (Purport, Srila Prabhupada)

Although reincarnation constantly takes place because the soul is changing its various bodies, in the West the term reincarnation is mainly referred to as the final change of the soul into a new body.



"As the embodied soul continuously passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death."(Bg 2.13)

"As a person puts on new garments, giving up old ones, the soul similarly accepts new material bodies, giving up the old and useless ones."(Bg 2.22)

At the time of death the spirit soul leaves the gross body together with the subtle body (astral body-mind, intelligence and false ego)and is "born again" into the womb of a female body according to the law of karma (either immediately or after some time).

One's next birth is determined by one's consciousness at the time of death (yam yam vapi smaran bhavan...Bg 8.6) because everything we do or think in our present life leaves an impression in the mind and the summary of these impressions influences our consciousness at the time of death.

It is important to understand that one may have to accept any type of body after leaving one's human body. If one's human existence is without the cultivation of spiritual knowledge one has to enter lower forms of life.

So how does one purify his consciousness so that one can have a better life next time or avoid reincarnation all together?

Lord Krishna gives us the answer:

"And whoever, at the time of death, quits his body, remembering Me alone, at once attains My nature. Of this there is no doubt. "(Bhagavad Gita 8.5)

The only way we will remember Krishna at the time of death is to remember him during our life.
The best way to remember Him is to chant His holy names-the Hare Krishna Maha Mantra. It is the yajna (sacrifice) for this age.