Avatar Meher Baba Center Southern California
in Concert with
The Oral History Archive Project
Ward Parks
God Speaks Video Session Four

 

From Wikipedia the infinitely free encyclopedia part four:

Reincarnation

Through the entire process of evolution, the soul has been consciously identifying itself with the evolving gross body (sharir), yet, unconsciously, it has also been identifying itself with the evolving subtle and mental body (pran and mana). The subtle sphere refers to energy, or prana, a gross aspect of which is nuclear energy. In the book it is also referred to as the life-giving energy, or the breath of God. The mental sphere refers to the domain of instincts, feelings, and eventually also of thoughts and desires. When the human form is reached, along with the gross body, the subtle and mental bodies also reach full development and although they remain unconscious, the soul indirectly works through them in the corresponding spheres.

When the human body dies, the soul retains and further experiences the collected impressions through its identification with the subtle and mental bodies, until it associates with the next human form and takes apparent birth in it. During the interval between death and birth, the soul experiences intensively an unfolding of the impressions collected, so depending on what quality these impressions have been of (virtue or vice, good or bad), the consciousness of soul experiences either a heaven state or a hell state. After most impressions have been exhausted, a certain temporary equilibrium is reached and the soul is ready to associate itself with the next human form. The process of the soul's successive association with human forms is called reincarnation.

Baba's use of the word "reincarnation" does not correlate with what is described as "transmigration of the soul" in Theosophy and certain other esoteric schools of thought. For Meher Baba the soul does not actually 'migrate' because it doesn't go anywhere, since it is eternally within the Over-soul and has nowhere to go. Rather, for Meher Baba, "reincarnation" refers only to identification and dis-identification with forms conceived in illusion, i.e. "the involuntary process of intermittent association and disassociation of consciousness.”

 

During reincarnation consciousness tries to liberate itself from the burden of collected impressions. Yet, since it tries to achieve this by associating itself with impressions opposite from the previously accumulated ones, it gets further entangled in accumulating fresh impressions. Thus the soul experiences itself in a seemingly endless succession of human lives, as a man or a woman, as rich or poor, strong or weak, beautiful or ugly, black or white, in various places, religions, castes etc. It is only after numerous apparent births and deaths, that the range of human experience starts to get exhausted. In this way the soul starts dissociating itself from the gross world, enabling its consciousness to become aware of the subtle sphere