Rebirth

Letters on Yoga - I
“Rebirth”

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(Dr. Manilal:) “Where can the souls of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda be? Have they taken birth again?

(Sri Aurobindo:) You have to enquire at the Foreign Office of the World. (Laughter)

You said Vivekananda came to you in jail.

When he came he could not yet have taken birth again.

But now?

He may have or he may be in the silent Brahman unless the Brahman has sent him down.”

(Sri Aurobindo:) “By rebirth, too, this world around us, our environment, its suggestions, its opportunities are no longer left as the field of an ephemeral physical flowering or as a Life which cares very little for and means very little to the individual, though it may offer much perhaps during its uncertain longer time to the species. The world grows to us a field of soul-experience, a system of soul-recurrences, a means of self-effectuation, perhaps a crystallising of the conscious being’s effective self-reflections.”

(Sri Aurobindo, Savitri:)

“These unfamiliar spaces on her way

Were known and neighbours to a sense within,

Landscapes recurred like lost forgotten fields,

Cities and rivers and plains her vision claimed

Like slow-recurring memories in front,

The stars at night were her past’s brilliant friends,

The winds murmured to her of ancient things

And she met nameless comrades loved by her once.

All was a part of old forgotten selves:

Vaguely or with a flash of sudden hints

Her acts recalled a line of bygone power,

Even her motion’s purpose was not new:

Traveller to a prefigured high event,

She seemed to her remembering witness soul

To trace again a journey often made.”

(Sri Aurobindo:) “It makes life a significant ascension and not a mechanical recurrence; it opens to us the divine vistas of a growing soul; it makes the worlds a nexus of spiritual self-expansion; it sets us seeking, and with a sure promise to all of a great finding now or hereafter, for the self-knowledge of our spirit and the self-fulfilment of a wise and divine intention in our existence.”

Record of Yoga
Undated notes c. January 1927

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(Sri Aurobindo:) “It is a little difficult to explain. When one gets a new body, the nature which inhabits it, nature of mind, nature of vital, nature of physical, is made up of many personalities, not one simple personality as is supposed — although there is one central being. This complex personality is formed partly by bringing together personalities of past lives, but also by gathering experiences, tendencies, influences from the earth atmosphere — which are taken up by one of the constituent personalities as suitable to his own nature. Such an influence left behind by Vivekananda or one of his disciples may have been taken up by you without your being an incarnation of either.”

(Sri Aurobindo:) “There is usually no memory of the outward events and circumstances of past lives — for this memory there must be a strong development towards unbroken continuance of the mind, the vital, even the subtle physical; for though it all remains in a kind of seed memory, it does not ordinarily emerge. What was the divine element in the magnanimity of the warrior, that which expressed itself in his loyalty, nobility, high courage, what was the divine element behind the harmonious mentality and generous vitality of the poet and expressed itself in them, that remains and in a new harmony of character may find a new expression or, if the life is turned towards the Divine, be taken up as powers for the realisation or for the work that has to be done for the Divine.”

(Mother:) “It is only a completely formed conscious being that can remember exactly in another life all that has happened before. It can even pass consciously from one life to another without losing anything of its consciousness. How many people upon earth have reached that state?... Not many, I believe. And usually they are not in the least inclined to narrate their adventures.”

(Mother:) “It is profoundly true in reality; there are large ‘families of beings’ who work for the same cause, who have gathered in more or less large numbers and who come in groups as it were. It is as though at certain times there were awakenings in the psychic world, as though lots of little sleeping children were being called to wake up: “It is time, quick, quick, go down!” And they hurry down. And sometimes they do not drop at the same place, they are dispersed, yet there is something within which troubles them, pushes them; for one reason or another they are drawn close and that brings them together. But it is something deep in the being, something that is not at all on the surface; otherwise, even if people met they would not perhaps become aware of the bond. People meet and recognise each other only to the extent they become conscious of their psychic being, obey their psychic being, are guided by it.”

(Mother:) “This is a thing that is happening constantly. Each day there are thousands who die and many others who are born. This is a thing that happens constantly and Sri Aurobindo is occupied with all this. He is in the subtle physical and constantly people who die come to Him and also He decides who will come back. It is something common ...
         It is a thing that goes on constantly in the subtle physical. He is preparing souls who shall reincarnate.”

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See also

• Conception
• Psychic being choosing its birth
• Death
• Loretta reads Savitri: Book Four, Canto IV "The Quest"