After conducting healing work through past life regression therapy on his patients for many years, an American psychiatrist/doctor/healer rejoices at his finding: - our soul is immortal; it doesn't die with the death of our physical body but lives on in new bodies life after life! He also proclaims that our individual soul chooses to come back to learn lessons from previous lives so that each life is happier with more love and enjoyment.
I have no doubt about the cycles of many life times of an individual soul; but I wouldn't be so pleased that my soul has to come back life after life through many cycles of births and deaths (with suffering, aging and illness in between). I'd like to think that I have the choice NOT to come back. I'd rather condense ALL the lessons my soul needs to learn into one lifetime - this present one - and then bugger off somewhere else, be it the 'higher rhealm', 'Buddha land', 'the kingdom of God', 'the land of immortals', 'abode of Siva' ... the name I'm not fussed about. The fact is, NOTHING will attempt my soul to take on another human form, not even the promise of life of a queen, success, wealth, love of prince (if I come back as a woman) or the love of a princess (if I come back as a man), all the sensual enjoyments that one can ever imagine... Nothing will make me feel happy so long as there's cruelty (not only to fellow human beings, but to animals), starvation, killing, injustice, violence, exploitation, hatred still existing in the world.
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| A Hindu view of reincarnation |
The soul has to come back because it still has desires good or bad. In the darkness of the limbo zone after departing the physical body, the soul has to wait patiently for the next opportunity. Then after numerous years of lingering, one day it suddenly notices a glimmer of light somewhere in the human world - this is the time of parents making love and this particular spot is where the old unresolved karma is. The soul is attracted to this hot spot just as moth dives to the light and the next moment you're in your mother's womb developing as a human foetus. This is the point of no return. You're born, you grow - baby, child, youth, adult, aged, illness, death. ... and the cycle starts all over again. True that your soul might get an overall review of the life it has just left and work out what's the next lesson(s) to learn in the next life (according to some accounts of people who've experienced near-death out of body experiences). Even if it is true that each successive life is happier and better than the previous one because the soul is learning valuable lessons that it has chosen to come back to learn, I personally don't see how can it be worth of all the hassle to go through the pleasures and pains all over again if I've the choice to exit it once for all, especially if I've got the choice of going to a better place - game finish! If that means that I have to relinquish my soul in order to do that, than fine, I've no problem with it.
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| Lao Tzu |
The Buddhists, the Taoists and the Hindus all view the cycle of births and deaths as chains to bind the human souls to suffering. It is a result of ignorance and desires - ignorance of the source or any alternatives, desires for sensual pleasures, for revenge, for more of everything, for reunion with the loved ones from previous life, etc. Buddha calls this world 'the evil world of five filths' and the human life 'the sea of bitterness'. Lao Tzu considers the human body as the culprit of all human sufferings ('
The only reason that we suffer hurt is that we have bodies; if we had no bodies, how could we suffer?' - Chapter 13, TAO TE CHING as translated by Authur Waley) The Taoists, behind the facade of resignation, submission and docility, are actually the radicals who claim 'my destiny lies within my own hands, not in the hands of Heaven'. Generations of Taoist adepts tried to show people a way to break free from the wheel of reincarnation through spiritual achemy. The time to get out is NOW in this very life, not in many many lives' time.
I think the American psychiatrist/healer is rejoicing at the discovery of the eternal soul because he's reaping success, name & fame and wealth that's been brought in by his workshops, therapy sessions (for those who can afford it) and his 'best-selling' books (proclaiming the 'good news' of the immortality of the soul). I can barely imagine him lying in his deathbed after enduring the sufferings of illnesses and old age rejoicing at the thought 'Hallelujah! I'm soon to return in another body to enjoy more of everything I've enjoyed in this life...' The Doctor seems to have forgot one essential law on this plane - the law of dualities. The more one has enjoyed something, the harder and more painful he'll find it to let go of it at the end.
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