Rebirth???

[Gregory Goode]

At 02:02 PM 2/13/98 -0500, Chandran, Nanda (NBC) wrote:

>But later it struck me that Birth and Death are also at the level of the
>body and mind only.  For if the Soul is truly immortal why do we have to
>worry about rebirth at all? So is it that, what the no rebirth concept
>really means is, upon enlightment when we truly realize the immortality
>of the Soul, we will stop worrying about death and rebirth? But what
>happens if we're born again? Will we be enlightened souls? Or should we
>go through the same grind again? Ofcourse the masters say naught, but

Some teachers teach just this same concept.  Ramesh Balsekar, and to some
extent Nisargadatta Maharaj.  All there is is consciousness.  There are no
entities of any kind, just impersonal appearances in consciousness.
Therefore there is no entity to be reborn.  No one is ever born more than
once, either at the present, past or future.  And this teaching is not
challenged, says Balsekar, by even the most detailed memories of other
past, present or future lives.  For, as Nisargadatta says, so what if you
remember all those details -- what makes the those lives YOURS??

According to this teaching, upon death the mind dissolves into the ocean of
consciousness, where it gets mixed up with all the other elements of other
minds.  Future beings might seem to be reborn, depending on the
cause-and-effect relations and what is destined to come in the future.  So
there might be inherited these elements of mind from the ocean of
consciousness, but not from any ONE person -- basically out of the soup
itself.  Therefore there is no REbirth, just births.

But even the soup is something that is seen in consciousness itself, and
THAT (consciousness) is what we are, whether we realize it or not.

Further, according to this teaching, to be enlightened is for there to be
no personal sense of doership left.  This is to see the Truth.  Once it is
deeply seen and felt, the Understanding has arrived.  The body/mind complex
continues according to its (illusory) nature, but it is not you.

--Greg