In any discussion with Americans, especially Christians, about death and afterlife I find it difficult to bring up the subject of reincarnation. They neither understand nor believe in the concept. For them, the present life is “the one life to live” and the destination upon death is heaven or hell, depending on how they live their life. However, even in their mind, concepts of “heaven” and “hell” are vague, except for the image of heaven as an idyllic place with gardens, flowers, birds etc. and hell as just an eternal fire. It is not just the Christians; I have similar issues with my Indian friends who are atheists and/or technically oriented. They do not understand a concept that cannot be described in scientific terms using scientific laws.

To them, death is a decomposition of the body to its constituent molecules, and it is an absolute end followed by eternal nothingness. To be clear, I am not a spiritual person. Throughout my younger years, I never followed any religious path. I read no scripture, went to temples only to appreciate architectural beauty, and attended religious festivals for social interactions. It is the concept of reincarnation which drew me back to Hinduism, especially the book “An Autobiography of a Yogi” by Paramhansa Yogananda. I find a logical consistency and completeness in how our existence is described in Hinduism. Setting aside religions for the time being, let us follow the living arrangement of any man from his youth to death.

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A certain pattern emerges, no matter which country we focus our attention to. The starting habitat is usually small and modest. The person’s financial situation and professional prestige improve over time; perhaps there are additions to the family and he moves to a larger home. However, the house eventually gets old, requiring continuous repair and maintenance. When this becomes a headache, the owner decides to move to a newer home and starts the cycle over again. The transition from one home to another is not an instantaneous process. He may have to live in some temporary housing in between; perhaps a hotel or a rented place.

This cycle of moving into a new home, making improvements in life and moving on when the house gets too old, continues until the person retires. In retired life, he no longer wants to live in a fancy home with all kinds of physical comfort. He would probably prefer living in a senior community or retreat of some sort in a more peaceful and calmer place. Unlike individual homes, these communities are open arrangements. All retired people prefer such living as they spend more time reminiscing about their lives and emotional interactions as opposed to extravagant lives full of physical pleasures and materialistic obsessions. If a person lives long enough, he would eventually be content with living in a small place, perhaps an attic room, or even a cave, where he can just meditate and think about divine thoughts. Some travel to places like Varanasi and Hardwar to spend their remaining days sitting on the bank of river Ganges, absorbed in meditation.

In the US, if diagnosed with a terminal illness, he can be admitted into a hospice, where he remains in a halfasleep state. My purpose of bringing this observation is to show the similarity between a person living in a house and our soul (or “atman”) living in an enclosure that we call “body”. Just like we protect our home using locks, alarm systems, video cameras and even security guards, we protect our body by eating healthy food, taking appropriate medication and vaccines, wearing weather-proof attire etc. Throughout life, the soul makes improvements based on what the person does in life and eventually the time comes to move to a newer and younger body which requires less maintenance. There are really only two reasons for the soul to move to a different body: a) the old body has become ravaged by age and illnesses, and b) the soul has made enough improvement that a new body is warranted to carry on. The process of reincarnation is just like moving from one home to another by discarding the old body.

The soul lives on. During the period between successive incarnations, the soul floats around and hovers. The soul “sees” and knows what is going on in the world it left behind but does not attach to a particular body nor communicate. Our soul behaves the same way as we would behave in terms of continuing our existence. According to Hindu yogis, the soul first goes through a physical or gross body, then an astral body and finally a causal body before discarding everything and merging into a universal consciousness or “God”. I find this whole narrative both intriguing and captivating because it makes sense to me. More specifically, here are the salient points as I see it:

• The soul continuously improves itself in each incarnation. Each life is an opportunity to gain knowledge and broaden one’s outlook.

• There is a definitive ending when the soul merges into God. That is the ultimate liberation – only then the eternal nothingness starts.

• Reincarnations are not desirable scenarios. We all know that life on this earth is miserable. The goal should be to minimize the number of incarnations and achieve union with God as soon as possible. All religious practices are different ways to achieve exactly that.

• There is no heaven or hell, but repeated reincarnations could be interpreted as hell and that ultimate union is heaven.

• Science puts too much emphasis on the role of the brain in processing all signals from our five senses to explain everything, but this explanation is incomplete. It is indeed true when the soul is inside a human body but when we enter the astral world and beyond, we leave behind the human body along with the brain; other senses kick in that science cannot explain.

• Why do we go through these hundreds, if not thousands, of reincarnations? Why not unite with God just after one life? No one can find the answer in our present physical form using five senses.

• Hindu holy men have been saying this for thousands of years. There have been no modifications or additions to the central concepts. There is no “New Hinduism” or dozens of sects. That is why it is the Sanatan Dharma.

• The key Hindu rituals can be explained in terms of these central concepts involving reincarnation. Other religious festivities and worshipping various Gods is just mythology and metaphors with various messages for improving one’s soul.

• Buddhism and Judaism have accepted certain versions of the concept of reincarnation. Christianity is an oversimplified and incomplete interpretation in my view. It seems that Hindu holy men said it all and subsequent religions just rehashed various pieces of the overall concepts.

Reincarnation is the key to our self-realisation. Finding God and heaven after only one life is like graduating with a PhD after one grade. One must go through twelve grades in school and several more years in college and graduate study; sometimes repeating some classes but gaining knowledge at every step before that coveted degree. I have no doubt that I am coming back to this earth many more times. Many feel exasperated at the thought of repeating life with the same sequence of life phenomena, but I am looking forward to my next life with the anticipation of new experiences. (The writer, a physicist who worked in industry and academia, is a Bengali settled in America.)