By: Ramaswamy Seshadri
Interestingly, major religions that originated outside India — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam–as well as those that originated in India, like Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism talk of the soul that survives the body after death.
The soul, on a certain plane of consideration, is indestructible according to all great religions of the world. Sai Baba and Sai Satcharitra have repeatedly stressed this aspect and the soul shows up not just once on earth but many times.
Krishna does not mince words when he says, “O Arjuna, both you and I have had many lives!”. Sai Baba told Shama that they were together for 72 births. That implies that the soul does not
die when the body does. Krishna uses this insight to help Arjuna overcome his anxiety over the possibility of his kith and kin ceasing to be passed away.
In an appealing illustration, Krishna says a soul takes a new body just as we pick up new clothes after discarding old ones. In the context of spiritual practices, the scenario that the Bhagwad Gitā presents to us is that of a soul ‘learning and growing’ and, at the end of many lives, attaining perfection.
A rare few breathe their last with loving remembrance of God. They reach the abode of God and do not come back to earth. When Justice Tatyasaheb Noolkar breathed his last, Baba said that he has no rebirth. Baba promised H.S. Dixit that he will take him in a ‘Vimana’ i.e., an easy transit to the other shore. Baba stopped Swami Vijayananda from proceeding to Manas Sarovar and prepared him to read scriptures for two weeks before he passed away on the lap of Bade Baba. Seven days before his Mahasamdhi he blessed an ailing tiger to give up its life right in his presence.
The overwhelming majority of us, as per our karma — good or bad actions — have a next life. Future life following the present one can be in environments better than the present one or in worse settings. The good news is that it is in our hands. If we live this life well, performing more virtuous deeds, we will receive a body in the next life that facilitates further upward growth. If instead, we mess up our present life with sinful acts, we will find ourselves in bodies — families and surroundings — that make it more difficult for us to rise on the spiritual path.
Sai Baba has assured that those of us with a lot of merits to our credit will go to celestial regions; those with very bad records will go to netherworlds marked by suffering, and those with a blend of good and bad karma to their credit are brought to the human sphere without any delay.
The Gita is perfectly in line with the Upanishads and Sai Satcharitra, which lay down the law of karma. In spirit, the law of karma is no different from the western saying, “As you sow, so shall you reap!” A mantra in the Kathopanishad declares that a soul is reborn in accordance with “what it did” and “what it learned”. This highlights the place for spiritual education.
Beginning with an enhanced sense of right and wrong, Sai Baba has urged us to regularly do ‘parayan’ of Sai Satcharita to study the science of the soul and rise above mere body-consciousness keeping Sai Baba close behind our thoughts. We are the spirit blessed by Lord Sainath, of the nature of pure consciousness of Sai Parabrahman, and our attachment to the physical body lies at the root of countless mistakes we commit. Moksha, liberation, is the happy end of this long story of our devotion to Lord Sainath.
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