The School of Life – Creation and Reincarnation in the Vedic Teachings – Dandavats.com
By Dr. Tasi István
Ísvara Krishna Dasa
Did you know that before you were born human, you had lived in plant and animal bodies at least eight million times?
The genesis of life and species is one of the most important issues, as our views on origins strongly influences our purposes, our values, and our way of life.
In this video you can understand how the cycle of reincarnation, invisible to the human eyes, takes place. You also get acquainted with the explanation of the origin of living beings, as taught in the Vedic literature.
The most amazing phenomena in the world are living beings: unicellulars, green plants, six-legged insects, streamlined fish, bright-skinned amphibians and reptiles, graceful birds, terrestrial and aquatic mammals - and the most special being on Earth: man. The fascinating forms and properties of many millions of species raise the big question: where do the creatures of the living world come from?
The Indian Vedic teachings make a definite distinction between the body and the conscious self that moves the body, namely, the eternal soul. If we would like to understand the origin of life on Earth, we need to examine on the one hand, where the souls come from and, on the other hand, where the bodies that carry them come from.
What is life itself? What causes life? What distinguishes the living beings from inanimate things? Vedic teachings provide a clear answer to this question. The source of life is the self, the eternal soul, which is immaterial, supernatural, and always conscious. And the body is merely a biological vehicle made up of material elements, which is guided by the soul.
Where do these souls, who are called jiva in Sanskrit, come from? In the Bhagavad-gita, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Sri Krishna says, “the living entities are my eternal, small parts.” These tiny spiritual beings relate to God the way sparks come from fire. The fire is huge, but the sparks are tiny - meaning they are different in size but of the same quality. So, we ourselves are transcendental beings, just like God. But while His abilities are unlimited, ours are limited.
Today, many scientists assume that life on Earth came into being by spontaneous combination of chemical elements. They think, life is nothing more than a complex arrangement of chemical elements and molecules. However, according to the Vedic approach, life is not material and therefore could not have emerged from matter. Even today’s advanced science cannot create life from matter, and there is not even a theoretical explanation for how this would be possible. In fact, life cannot be created in a laboratory. Certainly not, because the source of life, the soul, is immaterial. Just as aluminum cannot be made into a gold watch, so life cannot be created from material components.
So, the living sparks, the jivas come from the Supreme Life, God. But how do these souls get into the material world? When the tiny jivas want to come here, they have to put on a body - just like a heavy diver who puts on special equipment to be able to dive deep into the water.
We earthlings are all eternal souls, including the jivas living in animal and plant bodies. Souls move their bodies the way drivers control their cars. Although we do not see the soul itself, consciousness and life phenomena indicate to us that the soul is present in a body. And when the life-giving, conscious soul departs, the physical body becomes dead.
The soul can live in the material world in 8,400,000 types of different biological forms ó plant, animal, or human. But how did these different forms appear on Earth? Where do biological machines of varied appearance come from? The world religions uniformly regard the appearance of life forms as the result of divine intention. It is good to know that of all the scriptures in the world, the Indian Vedic writings describe in the most detail when, why, and how God created the various species.
The characteristics of biological organisms, from bacteria to giant whales, were invented by the Supreme Person Himself. The forms of life are therefore the results of intelligent design. The wonderful qualities of creatures testify to the artistic sense and fantastic engineering abilities of a divine being.
The life forms invented by the Supreme were manifested in their complete form in the material world through a multi-stage, top-down process of creation.
Living beings reside not only on Earth but on other planets in the universe as well. Creation of species is not just a one-time event. After vast eras of the cosmos, the planets are repopulated again and again.
Souls reside in a plant or animal body only for the lifespan of the species. At the moment of death, they leave their bodies and take on the bodies of a next, higher organism. This is how souls move upward in the process of transmigration. They are born in eight million different forms by the time they reach the human life form.
The forms of species are thus given from the beginning, and the tiny souls move from one to the other. This process can be called spiritual evolution. This process is similar to when people first have little money and lives in a small room. Then as they get more and more money, they move into more and more expensive and complex houses.
Within the scientific community and public thinking there is a speculative theory of evolution. According to this hypothesis all species evolved from a common ancestor through tiny, continuous changes by millions of years. This theory has not been proven and is being questioned by some scientists for logical and scientific reasons. Moreover, some biologists argue that characteristics of living beings suggest the activity of a designerís intelligence behind. This design approach is in harmony with the Vedic explanation of creation.
According to the Vedic teachings of the Supreme Scientist, God, the human race - like all other species - was created and always existed in parallel with other species. Although this is not well known, there is also substantial archaeological evidence of many millions of years of human existence on Earth.
How will we be born after our human existence? It depends on what desires we have and what actions we take in our lives.
Man is a special being because in this form of life the jiva, the soul is given outstanding intelligence. In this way he can ask the most important questions of life and understand the most perfect answers by the help of the Vedic scriptures and teachers. Thus, one can begin the process of spiritual self-realization, which is the highest possibility and the final goal of human life.
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