Reincarnation and higher consciousness

Many individuals who take birth and attain higher consciousness on this earth, have to seek birth on other planets. Actually, people who brought information from other planets to this earth were basically from the other planets. It’s only now that the scientists have come to recognize there may be life on some fifty thousand planets. Yogis have known this since ancient times. In the past, however, they didn’t have any means to verify it. But when the souls who belonged to other planets took birth on earth and brought the news, their hypothesis was confirmed. Similarly, those who have carried the news of this planet to other planets are also different kinds of souls – the ones which could not be conceived on the earth.

At the moment of death, the consciousness of man comes together totally. In that crystallized form it draws in all his conditionings, propensities, desires – the total essence, we may call it the perfume or the stench of his entire life – and moves on to its next journey. Mostly, this journey will be automatic – there won’t be any element of choice in it. It will be as if you pour water and it moves into small hollows in the earth. Similarly, in the normal course, a womb works like a hollow into which a nearby available consciousness enters.

Therefore, in most ordinary cases a man is born again and again in the same society, in the same country. Very rarely does this change. The variation occurs only when a suitable womb is not available. That’s why it is so amazing that in the last two hundred years many great souls, which otherwise were born in India, had to take birth in Europe. Annie Besant, Madame Blavatsky, Leadbeater, Colonel Olcott – these are all souls from India who were forced to take birth in Europe. Lobsang Rampa, for example, is a Tibetan soul born in Europe. The reason for all this was that a womb was not available to them in the country of their birth, hence they had to look for it somewhere else.

An ordinary man is born immediately. This is like if you were to move from your house, you would obviously make a search for another house in the same neighborhood. If you fail to locate a house here, only then would you go looking for it somewhere else, in another neighborhood. If you don’t find it in Bombay proper, you may hunt for it in the suburbs: if you don’t succeed there, you may move ahead and look somewhere else. But once you have found the house, the matter is over. This phenomenon was put to a wonderful use. It would be good to consider a couple of things in order to see how this principle was used. It is necessary that we take a look at it now, because it carries a special significance in the context of the present times.

The most amazing application of it was made in India, through the caste system. The application was of great value. The Indians divided the entire society into four castes. The idea was that if a brahmin died, his soul should be reborn as a brahmin. If a kshatriya died, his soul should be reborn as a kshatriya.

It is obvious that if a society is divided into fixed divisions, then there is a great possibility that when a kshatriya dies, his soul would seek its next abode in the same neighborhood. It will enter into the womb of a kshatriya woman. And if a person’s soul continues to be born as a kshatriya for a few times, it will become kshatriya-like. You won’t be able to produce such a kshatriya, such a fighter, even by giving someone a regular military training. Similarly, if a soul were to be reborn as a brahmin ten or twenty times, the kind of pure brahminic quality that will unfold because of it can never be created by putting one into a gurukul – a residential school run by a brahmin teacher – or by educating him.

The amazing thing is, we have devised educational means good for only one lifetime. Some people in the past had worked out a system of education that would last for an infinite number of lives. It was indeed a remarkable experiment, but it met with decay. It became corrupt and putrefied – not because the idea and its application were wrong, but because its fundamental sutras, its main principles were lost. And those who claim themselves to be the custodians of the system do not have a single sutra to vouch for. No brahmin, no shankaracharya holds any sutra, any understanding on which they can lay their claim or authority. They only quote their scriptures which state that a brahmin is a brahmin, and a sudra is a sudra. But scriptures are of no use; only the scientific principles work.

So the most incredible experiment this country did was that of planning the birth of a soul for endless lives. That means they not only prepared the man for his future lives, they also made a controlled and systematic effort to redirect and channelize his consciousness for the lives ahead…. Because it is possible that a brahmin may take birth in a sudra family and, lacking an appropriate environment, he may not be able to carry the gains of his past lives into his next lives. This can cause great difficulty. It is also conceivable that what he could have achieved in ten days by being born in a brahmin‘s home, he may not achieve in ten years in a sudra’s home.

So such an advanced concept and far-reaching vision of human evolution was at the base of this clear fourfold division of the Indian society. The people had worked out the idea of taking birth in the same neighborhood so that one may keep finding wombs of the same quality for lives together.

All the twenty-four births of Mahavira and Buddha took place within the kshatriya tradition. Their entire growth happened in a particular direction. In each birth they were given a definite training. Hence, no gap existed between the training and direction given to them in successive births – an unbroken continuity was maintained. That’s why we could produce such incredible individuals. Producing people of such caliber now has become very difficult. Their appearance on this earth will now be only a matter of chance. Giving birth to such people through such a systematic planning has become very difficult indeed.

Osho, And Now, and Here, Ch 15, Q 9 (excerpt)