Ever since my father died in 1991, I started seeking the meaning of after life and rebirth, as I was told by many pundits that he has “reborn” ! Yet, other pundits wanted to provide for peace of his departed soul. But all of them wanted money in one way or the other.
As software professionals, we were taught in the industry to refer to the manual in case of doubt. So, I started to learn Sanskrit and started to refer to the sources of the Sanatana Dharma and the origin of such beliefs.
After seeking my truth for about 13 years, I have constructed a world-view which is compatible with both modern scientific knowledge of the present as well as the Vedas. Let me share an important part of this world-view with you. But lets first agree to disagree.
The Vedas are the fountain head of knowledge and the river of knowledge that constantly flows making the journey towards the ocean called the Truth, within the human minds.
Thus as the knowledge flows through the evolving Human Mind,( I have used the capitals to indicate that it is not a human mind but human minds' collective consciousness), we need to re interpret the concepts as per our present state of knowledge of the world and thus refine our world views.
Each human mind creates a world view, which is generally compatible within a social group. Thus the Truth (note the capital T) varies from one world-view to another and therefore there is no concept of Absolute Truth, everything is relative to the world-views.
Initially there was Rig Veda, followed by the three other Vedas; The Vedas represented the world-view prevailing at that point of time, when it was created, as a set of beautiful poetic mantras, in a scientific yet beautiful language, that is Sanskrit.
Sanskrit's success as a communication platform is demonstrated by the fact that we are still able to precisely recreate the chants of Vedas.
Upanishads were the first of the texts re-interpreting the Vedas, to reflect the evolving knowledge of the Arya religion.
I have used the word “Arya” rather than the commonly used word “Hindu”, as I could find no such word in Vedas, Upanishads or Bhagwad Gita. Please let me know if you find the word Hindu in any of the above stated ancient texts.
I think, the Persians or the Greeks first called the “Aryas” as “Hindu” , and they passed it on to the Europeans and it was re-exported back to us. The word “India” originated from the word “Hindu”.
The word phrase “Bharat-varsha” literally means the land of the king Bharat, and it is used in literature of the post Bharata period. It was shortened to “Bharat” to refer ourselves as a Nation, thus the indigenous word for India is Bharat and that of Hindu is Arya. Literally Arya means noble, in thought and in deed.
However, any noble soul irrespective of his or her cast, creed, colour, sex, nationality or religious beliefs may be referred respectfully as Arya.
The religion of the Aryans is referred indigenously as Sanatana Dharma, literally infinitely existing religion or the religion that has no beginning nor any end. Such a religion thus needs to adapt constantly in order to remain relevant and modern. And thus it has been re-interpreted many times before and would be re-interpreted in future as well.
Still at a later time, Bhagwad Gita was created to re-interpret the vedic concepts, to reflect the state of the human knowledge at that point in time.
Till date Bhagwad Gita remains the most referred religious text of the Sanatana Dharma. However, I feel that many of the Sanskrit shlokas have been taken literally rather than as figures of speech or as metaphors, which have resulted in popular misconceptions of after life and re-birth.
These misconceptions were used by the pundits and the then ruling classes to control and exploit the masses for their personal gains.
I would like to fix these misconceptions by redefining seven keywords by re-interpreting the original Sanskrit shlokas as per the current state of the human knowledge.
The seven keywords are:
atma, mana, bhoot, prana, avatara, mrytu and puanrjanma (re-birth).
Atma: It refers to the Self, the process by which we perceive ourselves and the world. It can also semantically stand for consciousness and soul in certain contexts (pragmatics).
As per Bhagwad Gita, atma can never die since it was never born (chapter 2, shloka 20 and 21) and that neither fire, water, wind nor weapons can destroy it (chapter 2, shloka 23 and 24).
The confusion can be clarified by separating the definition of soul from its instance.
The shlokas indicate that atma is the manifestation of the process of life and it does not have a physical existence. Thus with the end of an instance of a life process, a body dies, but the concept of life nor the concept of the Self die (Soul never dies). Thus “The Soul does not die with the body” means much more than its literal sense.
The misconception arises from interpreting the soul to have a physical existence independent of the life processes.
Mana: simply means the mind. If brain is the hardware then mind is the software. Mind is a meta process, that is, it can control and change itself.
Mrytu: means death. The body dies but the process of life, the Soul, does not die, another instance of a birth will result in recreation of the life's process resulting in another instance of a human mind and thus another instance of the Soul.
In Object Oriented programming paradigms (like C++ and Java), if the definition of the Class may be compared to soul, then the instance of a class resulting in creation of an object defined by the class can be compared to life. The object is created and destroyed during the life cycle of the software program execution, when the object is destroyed its definition contained in the Class is not destroyed.
But stretching the above example beyond a point results in confusion, so please do not over analyse the comparison.
Bhoot: means the past. But, somehow it has come to mean ghosts. If we define ghosts as projections of the mind of the past or imaginary personalities then, yes, bhoot may mean ghosts. However, fear of bhoot or ghost is the fear of past misdeeds of the instance of the self.
The Self itself is pure as it is the definition of a concept which is not corrupted by the corruption of an instance manifested by a body's life processes.
Prana: the life-force. The oxidation process through which life sustains itself by generating energy from food it ingests. This process has no independent existence outside a living body.
Avatara: means re-incarnation. Also literally means to come down in Sanskrit. Interpreted as a god is reborn or come down from heaven. It should be re-interpreted as the person has re-incarnated or re-created all the properties that is attributed to a particular mythical character.
For example, in the epic Ramayana, Rama, Laxman, Bharat and Shatrughan all were Vishnu's re-incarnation. Meaning that, they all had attributes of Vishnu's character. And, not that the Vishnu's soul had been literally divided into four parts and entered into the bodies of the four brothers!
In taking the concept of avatar literally, we will end up applying differentiation and integral calculus concepts into religion, creating an extremely complicated world-view for ourselves.
Punarjanma: Rebirth is the most misinterpreted concept in the present form of Sanatana Dharma. It is a conjunction of two Sanskrit words, punah and janma. Punah means again and Janma means life.
The misconception originates from the literal interpretation of the famous Bhagwad Gita's shloka 22 in the second chapter. It means that just like a human changes old clothes for new, the soul manifests in a new body as the old body dies.
It is misconceived as an instance of the soul getting out of one body and the same instance entering a new born. Thus implying that an instance of a soul has an independent existence.
Actually, the shloka means that, the intellect or an instance of the soul manifests in a new body and a human is reborn as humans die after getting old. The process of life continues in new forms. The life force itself does not end, although an instance of the human body has died.
Just as a new light bulb lights up after you replace it for a fused bulb, the intellect shines again in a brand new body after it blacks out in an old body, that just died.
The electric light bulb, appears to shine to the humans, by the process of an electric current flowing through a conductor under the influence of an electric field, which is converted into heat and electromagnetic energy waves of frequencies interpreted by humans as light.
Thought the same light appears to shine from the new bulb which replaces the old fused bulb. However, the shine does not have an independent existence outside the process of conversion of electric energy fields into electromagnetic energy waves, occurring inside the bulbs.
Similarly, a soul is an manifest of the life's process and does not have independent existence outside a live body.
Thus the shloka (shloka 22, chapter 2) uses the metaphor of human shedding old clothes for new, to convey the continuity of the life forces and therefore the immortality of the Soul.
The Soul itself is immortal and it never dies as it was never born. The conclusion remains the same; even when the interpretation changes!
If you do not agree with me, it is OK as long as I have been able to convey my interpretation to you. Repeating myself, there is no Absolute Truth, everything is relative to one's world-view.
The world has no absolute reality and has no meaning beyond our minds.
Everything is maya (unreal).
सर्वं माया इति।
By Ashish Banerjee, www.Ashish.Banerjee.name (on 23rd October 2004, Vijaya Dashumi and Dushera day).
