Page 43 - Complete Works of Dr. KCV Volume 1
P. 43

 take. If our deeds are human we take up a human body, otherwise we are attracted to and attain to other types of bodies. The movement of the soul from one type of body to another involves, of course, the belief in the existence of souls, life after death, and belief in the principle that disposes our future according to deserts. The belief in transmigration is common to all primitive races. India also believes in it, perhaps the difference is the primitive beliefs without any reasons whereas the Hindu has a principle or hypothesis which explains the belief. But Prof. Haas considers that this belief is not held but persisted in and that surely is a recessive dynamism. Totemic worship and taboo and superstition have been proved by Sigmund Freud to the phenomena of the subliminal and unconscious and irrational elements which, evolutionarily considered, have occurred earlier. To retain belief in them and to act according to those beliefs is a regressive (if not pathological) phenomenon.
But have the moderners been able to shake off this regressive movement? The superstition in the transmigration has been sacrificed at the cost of letting loose the whole Pandora's box of furies. Men need not take another body to be brutes; they have become brutes.
It was according to an ancient Sage that Goutama, the Buddha, made a profound remark that men become what they worship or love. Worshipping and eating derive their meaning from the root bhunj in Sanskrit. And on another occasion he made the remark that those who eat meat will become the abodes of the animals whose meat they eat. The ancient superstition of transmigration and the fear of transmigrating into lower forms of life prevented them from descending down the grade of life. This worthy restraint has been given up. There is a supreme wisdom concealed in the doctrine of transmigration when taken along with the doctrine of karma. Love of life and seeking to lift life to higher levels of being are implicit in this doctrine. The individual soul does not change its individuality as Prof. Haas thinks but only its sheaths or personality in the course of its transmigration. It is undoubtedly a point to insist that the individual has not the memory of his past life and therefore the doctrine of transmigration - both forwards or backwards - is refuted. But then are we certain that there is no biological memory, instinctive memory in the animals and ourselves. The Indian Yogi holds that it is possible to know the past lives fully and
































































































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