Reincarnation: WHO is it that Travels? Atma? Jiva? Subtle body?

Here we will share some observations about the Bhagavad Gita. These insights will help you
apply the profound teachings of the Gita more effectively in your life. Towards the
beginning of the Bhagavad Gita's second chapter, just after Sri Krishna begins his upadesa,
his spiritual instruction to Arjuna, he discusses reincarnation in verse 13.

Just as the embodied being, undergoes childhood, youth, and old age, in the same way,
another body, will be acquired. In this matter, a wise person is not confused. The indwelling
being remains unchanged while the body that it inhabits grows, ages, and eventually dies.
After the body dies, the indwelling being gets associated with another body, the particular
body destined by the laws of karma.

But what exactly is that indwelling being that is said to leave one body and acquire another?
What is that transmigrating entity? Who is it that gets reborn? In this verse, Sri Krishna uses
the word dehi, indwelling being, which literally means, the one who inhabits a deha, body.
In this context, a lot of other words are frequently used, words like eternal soul, cosmic
spirit, and life force, also Sanskrit terms like atma, jivatma, purusha, and so on. This
proliferation of words can add confusion to a topic that's already difficult.

And to make matters worse, each of those words has various meanings and interpretations.
For example, the expression cosmic spirit is likely to mean different things to different
people. And, if you look up the word atma in a proper Sanskrit dictionary, you'll find more
than a dozen meanings.

So, if we want to know who and what this indwelling being is without any kind of confusion,
we'll need to be careful and precise about the words we use. We'll also need proper
guidance for exploring this topic, and that guidance can be found in our Vedic scriptures,
where the wisdom of the ancient rishis was recorded. Let's start our exploration with the
word atma.

To understand exactly what the rishis meant by this word, we can turn to a famous verse
from the Shvetashvatara Upanishad, which describes atma as, eko devah sarva-bhutesu
kutah. Deva literally means, one who shines, or one who is glorious. That's why this word is
often used for God.

But here, the word deva refers to the one who shines as consciousness, the consciousness
within you, the consciousness that illumines your mind and reveals your thoughts,
emotions, and memories. So, this verse says, ekah devah, there is but one shining
consciousness, which is gudah, hidden, sarva-bhutesu, in all beings. The verse goes on to
describe that atma as sarva-vyapi, all-pervasive, and sarva-bhutantaratma, the antaratma,
or the inner self, of sarva-bhuta, all beings.

Putting this all together, the Upanishad defines atma as the one, all-pervasive consciousness
that is the inner self which dwells in all beings. Now, we seem to have a problem. If atma is
one, and the same atma dwells in all beings, how can it be the one who reincarnates? In
order to be the one who travels, it should be associated only with the particular body which
it leaves at the time of death.
It can't be the inner self of all beings. And there's another problem. If atma is all-pervasive,
it's everywhere, and if atma is everywhere, how can it travel? It's already there.

All this goes to show that the rishis did not use the word atma to refer to the entity that
leaves a body at death and travels on to a new one. They used the word atma to mean the
one, all-pervasive consciousness that dwells in all beings. Unfortunately, this word is subject
to a lot of confusion, because in Hindi and other Indian languages, the word atma is often
used to refer to that transmigrating entity instead of the one, all-pervasive consciousness.

Here we will use the meaning used by the rishis. Now, if atma is not the transmigrating
entity, then who or what is it that travels? The English word soul is often used in this
context. We can loosely say that it's the soul that travels.

But the word soul can also cause confusion because each of the world's religions have a
different concept of what the soul actually is. So, for the sake of clarity, we'll avoid that
English word altogether and use a more precise Sanskrit term instead. The term used in
Vedanta is sukshma sharira, the subtle body, which is differentiated from the sthula sharira,
the physical body.

Sukshma means subtle, which describes that which is not physical, not tangible, that which
can't be seen, heard, tasted, smelt, or touched. For example, a flower is sthula, physical, but
the happiness you feel when you see a beautiful flower is sukshma. Your brain is sthula, but
your mind, your thoughts, memories, and emotions are sukshma.

Your mind is not a physical object. Your brain weighs about two and a half pounds, but how
much do your thoughts, emotions, and memories weigh? They exist, but not as physical
objects. They are subtle, non-physical objects, and they're part of your subtle body, your
sukshma sharira.

Your sukshma sharira inhabits your physical body and endows it with life and sentiency.
Without a sukshma sharira, your sthula sharira would be a lifeless corpse. And just as your
sthula sharira has parts, like arms and legs, your sukshma sharira also has parts.

A dead body has no prana, no life force. Therefore, prana is considered part of the sukshma
sharira. A dead body can't walk or talk.

Therefore, the powers of walking and talking are considered part of the sukshma sharira. A
dead body can't see, hear, taste, touch, or smell. So, the five senses are also considered part
of the sukshma sharira.

Finally, a dead body can't think, remember, or feel emotions. So, these mental faculties are
also part of the sukshma sharira. All of these faculties together are said to comprise the
sukshma sharira.

And it is this sukshma sharira that leaves the physical body at the time of death and travels
on to acquire a new one. Atma doesn't travel. The sukshma sharira does.

In chapter 15 of the Bhagavad Gita, Sri Krishna describes the sukshma sharira's travel in
verse 8. sariram yadavapnoti yacchapyutkramatisvaraha grahitvaitanisanyati
vayurgandhanivasayata Here, the sukshma sharira is referred to as ishvara, lord, because it
is lord of the body. Like a king rules over his palace, the sukshma sharira rules over the
physical body. The sukshma sharira, according to Sri Krishna, avapnoti, pervades, shariram,
the physical body.

Then, at the time of death, utkramati, it leaves the physical body, grahitvaitani, taking along
with it all of its parts, like prana, mind, and senses. Finally, samyati, it travels on to acquire
another body. A lovely image is also given here.

The sukshma sharira's travel is like fragrance, which is blown by the wind, from its source,
from a flower for instance. In this verse, Sri Krishna beautifully describes the sukshma
sharira as the transmigrating entity. Now, we're ready to discuss the relationship between
the sukshma sharira which travels and atma which doesn't.

We can take advantage of a brilliant Vedantic metaphor, or drishtanta, that is traditionally

used to explain this relationship. In this metaphor, the sun is shining down on the vast
landscape representing atma, the one shining consciousness that pervades all. Imagine the
sun is a reflected on the surface of water contained in several wooden buckets. The wooden
bucket represents the physical body, sthula sharira, and the water in the bucket represents
the sukshma sharira.

The bucket is able to reflect the sun because it's filled with water. That describes how a
physical body has life and sentiency because of the sukshma sharira dwelling within it. The
sukshma sharira within the body reflects the one all-pervasive consciousness, just like the
water in the bucket reflects the sun.

In several buckets, you'll see several reflections of the sun, even though there is only one
sun in the sky. In the same way, we observe that there are many conscious beings in the
world, even though there is but one source of consciousness, which is atma. The one sun is
reflected in many buckets, and the one shining all-pervasive consciousness is manifest in
many conscious beings.

We can restate this with familiar Sanskrit terms and say, there is but one paramatma, one
supreme or universal consciousness, whereas there are many jivatmas, many individual
conscious beings. Notice that it's the presence of water in each bucket that allows it to
reflect the sun. In the same way, it's the presence of your sukshma sharira that allows you
to enjoy sentiency and experience the world around you.

As long as your sukshma sharira continues to dwell in your physical body, you'll continue to
experience the world. And, when your sukshma sharira leaves your physical body, your
experience of this life will come to an end. Now, to understand reincarnation a little better,
we can extend this metaphor.

Suppose one of those buckets is 85 years old. The wood is rotting, and several leaks have
already been plugged up so that the bucket can continue to hold water. That's like doctors
plugging up the leaks in our bodies, so to speak, using various medical procedures to keep
us alive.
Eventually, the old bucket will leak so badly that it's impossible to prevent the water from
draining out. This, obviously, represents death. When a bucket is empty, it no longer reflects
the sun.

There's just an empty bucket. In the same way, when the sukshma sharira leaves a physical
body, the reflection or manifestation of consciousness comes to an end, and the body no
longer enjoys sentiency. There's just a dead body.

Now, it's time for a riddle. Does the sun shine on an empty bucket? The answer, of course, is
yes. The sun shines on an empty bucket, but the sun is no longer reflected by it.

So, if we ask, is the one all-pervasive consciousness, known as atma, present in a dead body,
the answer, most certainly, is yes. Consciousness is all-pervasive. How can you keep it out of
a dead body? But even though it's present in a dead body, consciousness is no longer
manifest or reflected there due to the absence of the sukshma sharira.

Now, we can extend this metaphor even further. Suppose the water that leaked out of the
85-year-old bucket is collected and poured into a new bucket. A tiny little baby bucket.

Then, we'll see a new reflection of the sun in the baby bucket. I suppose this represents the
birth of a new child. When you see that one reflected sun has disappeared from the old
bucket, and a new reflected sun has appeared in the baby bucket, you might wrongly
assume that the sun has travelled from the old bucket to the new bucket, when it's actually
the water that has travelled.

In the same way, many people wrongly assume that atma travels from one body to the next,
when it's actually the sukshma sharira that travels. In addition to the traditional metaphor
we've just used, let us use a modern metaphor that you might find helpful. Your desktop
computer has hardware and software, and so do you.

The computer's hardware represents your sthula sharira, your physical body, and the
computer's software represents your sukshma sharira. If you look inside your computer,
you'll see the power supply unit in a corner. In this metaphor, that power supply represents
your heart.

You'll also see a tangle of assorted wires that represent your veins, arteries, and nerves.
And, you'll find the main CPU chip hidden beneath its cooling fins. Obviously, the CPU chip
represents your brain.

Inside the computer chassis, you'll also find the hard disk, the memory unit that contains all
your computer's software. That hard disk weighs about a pound and might be able to store
20 gigabytes of software in its memory. Now, if you were to completely erase all the
software from that hard disk, would it weigh less? And, if you were to store more software
on that hard disk, filling it up to its 20 gigabyte capacity, would it weigh more? This
metaphor accurately describes the distinction between sthula and sukshma, physical and
non-physical.

The hard disk is physical hardware, like any part of your physical body. But the software is
not physical. It's subtle, like your sukshma sharira.
Without any software, your computer would be useless. It's the presence and function of
software that makes your computer a powerful, intelligent device. In the same way, it's the
presence and function of your sukshma sharira that makes you powerful and intelligent.

Suppose your computer has been working fine, but when you turn it on today, nothing
happens. The screen remains dark. You hit control, alt, delete, and try to reboot it, but
nothing happens.

What's the problem? If your computer isn't plugged into an electrical outlet, how can it
work? In this metaphor, electricity represents atma, the one, all-pervasive consciousness,
like the sun did in a previous example. It is electricity that makes each computer work, and it
is the one, all-pervasive consciousness atma that makes all living beings sentient. If many
computers are plugged into the same power source, it's actually the same electricity flowing
into each of the computers.

In the same way, it's the same all-pervasive atma shining within each of us, illumining our
minds, revealing our thoughts, emotions, and memories, and enabling us to experience the
world. Now, we can extend this metaphor to explain reincarnation, like we extended the
bucket metaphor. When you buy a brand new computer, what's the first thing you do with
your old computer? You download all the software files from your old computer, and then
you upload them to your new computer.

Computer geeks call this software migration. We could call it transmigration. Just like
software can be transferred or migrated from an old computer to a new one, the sukshma
sharira travels from a dead body to a new one.

To complete this metaphor, suppose you erased all the software from your old computer.
Then, even when it's plugged into an electrical outlet and switched on, nothing will happen.
The computer will be dead, so to speak.

In the same way, even though the one all-pervasive consciousness continues to pervade a
dead body, that body will be lifeless in the absence of a sukshma sharira. Now, we come to
the final part of this discussion. Wood eventually rots and water seeps out of old buckets.

That's the way nature works. Computers eventually grow old. They get outdated and
become incompatible with newer generations of software.

So, an old computer must be retired, just like an old bucket. All this refers to the fact that
our bodies are constantly aging and will eventually be unable to hold on to a sukshma
sharira. We know that our sukshma shariras will travel on to inhabit new bodies.

But we also know that at the time of death, we lose everything. We lose our loved ones, our
possessions, the activities we enjoy, everything. It seems like a terrible loss awaits us all at
the end of our lives.

But with the help of Vedanta, we can discover that we truly lose nothing at the time of
death. How is that possible? Let's return to the bucket metaphor. When all the water leaks
out of an old bucket, it stops reflecting the sun, and this represents death.
But how is the sun affected by that? Not at all. The sun just goes on shining as the bucket
decays, as it leaks, when it's empty, and when its water is poured into a new baby bucket.
The sun remains unchanged throughout.

As we saw before, the sun represents the one all-pervasive consciousness, atma, and that
atma is you. With the help of the teachings of Vedanta, you can discover that you are that
very consciousness. You possess a physical body, but you're not that body.

You possess a sukshma sharira that inhabits your body, but you're not that sukshma sharira
either. You are the consciousness that illumines your mind. You are the consciousness that
experiences all your thoughts, memories, and emotions.

You are sat-cit-ananda. You are cit, consciousness, and that consciousness is sat, real. What
is truly real is unborn, unchanging, and eternal.

That means you are eternal, unchanging consciousness, and that eternal consciousness is
ananda. It is full, complete, perfect, limitless. These teachings are amongst the greatest
discoveries of the ancient rishis.

Unfortunately, due to ignorance, we usually identify ourselves with our bodies and minds,
more specifically, with our sthula and sukshma shariras. And, this erroneous identification
turns out to be the root of all suffering. The teachings of Vedanta demonstrate this clearly.

Fortunately, we can put an end to suffering by destroying that false identification. We can
use the teachings of Vedanta as a guide to look within ourselves in a process of self-inquiry.
And, that process of self-inquiry can lead to a personal, direct discovery of what the ancient
rishis discovered.

That discovery is moksha, freedom, liberation. Moksha is not merely freedom from rebirth.
Moksha is also freedom from ignorance, freedom from false identification, and freedom
from the suffering caused by our ignorance and false identification.

Om Shanti Shanti Shanti