yonimanye prapadyante śarīratvāya dehinaḥ।
sthāṇumanye’nusaṃyanti yathākarma yathāśrutam
Some jivas (dehinah) go into wombs to be embodied; others pass into the immoveable, according to their karma and to their assimilated knowledge [śruti].
[Katha Upanishad 2.2.7]

Here’s the bonus question from yogis…

If it is my subtle body that is reincarnating, and “I” was already there – then what’s the role of my parents?  What exactly did they contribute to me being here? Even if we say that mom and dad carried half and half of me before my birth, where was I before my parents were born?  Before that?  This leads to an inference that at some point in time, I was a mere “thought”!  …a collection of (akāshic) information records!

Remember the sloka from Yoga Vasishta:

All directions (disa) are just filled with currents (pavane) accompanied by prana-vibrations (prana vata) pregnant with throbbing intentions ((spurat – sankalpa)…

Sloka 622: Individual soul (jiva) is a mere will/intention at the core.

Ayurveda talks about parents giving physical ingredients for manifestation, but the karmic seeds were there from long before.  Remember our contemplation on what the modern neurologists now  think – 99% of our neural circuitry is pre-printed.  What’s the source for that 99%? We train that circuitry through environment, but our predispositions were already there.

But where do we take birth again, physically?  In this world only?  There are some clues from modern physics, but there are also some differences.  Below are the two takes.

First, a story from Yoga Vasishta, and then a couple of short paragraphs from a book on the physics of Superstrings.

Story from Yoga Vasishta [full story here]:

Līlā is the wife of a King named Padma.  She is intensely in love with her husband, and is determined to keep him with her all the time.  She learns from the resident experts that that is impossible, and at some point everyone has to die.  She then propitiates Goddess Saraswatī (the goddess of learning), and gains a boon that, if her husband ever died, his subtle body would never go our of her own room.  [how did she meditate? Having refrained from tasting food for three days and nights, she took light re- freshment on the fourth day and that only once.  Thus she was engaged in Nistha (meditation) for ten months. Then… ]  The goddess was very much pleased with her devotion and intelligence, and promises her that she would appear in front of her whenever and wherever she would require her.

In the due course, King Padma falls sick, and dies.  Līlā is left in intense mourning.  A voice came over the void, however, and assures her that the subtle body of the king is within the room where he died, and advises her to preserve the corpse until the departed subtle body vivifies it again.  Confused, Līlā meditates on Goddess and the Goddess obliges by appearing in front of her.  Then Līlā asks Goddess to take her to the world where her husband has manifested and currently experiencing life – he’s now born in another world where he is called King Viduratha (or King V for short here).

For the purpose of enabling Līlā to see the other worlds, the goddess teaches Līlā the existence of various interpenetrating planes, penetrating one another and existing unperceived by the inhabitants of the other planes.   She teaches her also the method of seeing and visiting various worlds interpenetrating our world, and finally takes her to the present world of her husband’s existence, where he is seen as a young king of sixteen years ruling over a mighty kingdom.  Līla becomes wonder-struck.  But Saraswatī makes her more so by telling her the story of her and her husband’s previous life…  To Lila’s surprise, Saraswatī tells her that all that happened only  a week (short time) ago.  Through the meditation techniques Saraswatī taught [to enter nirvikalpa samadhi and roam in cidakasa], Līlā now recollects all her previous lives, all the way from her origin from the creation/brahman.

Now both Līlā and Sarawati return to the world where King V, and find him in his 70th year! (time is after all not linear, and relative, in Yogis’ models!)…  After sometime, there arises a war in which King V is killed.  His subtle body, which is still present in the room of the original world, where the King Padma’s body is lying dead, now re-enters it.  King Padma is back to life with wife Līlā…

There are several points of contemplation from this story – interpenetrating worlds that can not be experienced by our senses simultaneously; relativity of time scales, which move at different speeds in different universes, and the subtle body moving across universal boundaries…  The last point is interesting – if we recall Stephen Hawking story from a while ago, in modern physics, this topic is still hotly debated as whether information leaks out of black holes from this universe into another universe or not, while yogis’ stories indicate that they believed so [see further readings below].   Our analogies hit a wall there, as no one possibly fell into a blackhole to came back and tell us anything about it.    Again, we are not looking for close-form solutions, but only seeds for our contemplation.  After all, we all know very well that the science and our understanding of how the universe (and our being) works is still a work in progress, and we also do not know how yogis got there either.   But now, below is a para from a commentary on modern physics discussing interpenetrating worlds:

(from Superstrings, and the Search for the Theory of Everything: by David Peat

… we know of course that our own universe exists.  But is this shadow world a fiction, a figment of theoretical physicist’s imagination?  Close analysis indicates that it is indeed theoretically possible for a shadow universe to exist in parallel to our own.  While we would feel its gravitational effects – since gravity is a property of the full E8 X E8 group – this shadow universe would be otherwise invisible.  Photons from the shadow group E8 have no interaction with the matter in our universe.  As your are reading this book, you could be occupying the same chair as a reader form the shadow world.  Or, you may be sitting at the bottom of a shadow ocean, or at the heard of a shadow sun!  For once science has out-stripped science fiction.

This idea of shadow universe was not unwelcome in certain areas of physics, for it offered a solution to the problem of missing mass.  The general theory of relativity makes it possible to say something about the size, rate of expansion and degree of curvature of the universe in relation to the amount of matter and energy it contains.  Current theories of the large-scale structure of the universe use the results of astronomical measurements to predict its total mass.

But the problem with this theory is that the predicted mass is larger than what is observed.  When the mass in all the stars and intergalactic dust is added together, it turns out to be too small.  Either theories of the structure of the universe are wrong and this would probably mean that the general relatively is also wrong, or some additional mass must be hidden from us [which is in this interpenetrating universe]….

Fascinating!  This summarizes thoughts on yogic model for reincarnation –  where we reincarnate is a huge gaping hole, but this also sheds some light on our true connections and responsibilities to our kids and parents.

“A child is born to you to help him face his/her karma in this life. A child is not your ego; not a pet… A child is born to you so that you can prepare him/her to face time unto Infinity.” – Yogi Bhajan

So, what’s important here is the hypothesis that there exists a “subtle body” that carries our deepest thoughts, desires,  action imprints, and if our own individual contemplation accepts this, there are several implications.  Particularly what we want to think about, why it is important to direct the thought process, because it impacts our long term, multi-life, goals.  If there’s no subtle body?  Then what? More on that next…

Again this is all for our contemplation to gain a grasp of the yogic model only – conclusions are not that important.  All are just models, until we individually gain an intuitive understanding of the key tenets.  Contemplation and exploration (vātāya manah) are a lot more important than conclusions.

May we all be blessed with a “contemplative” mind_/\_/\_/\_
(bhadram no api vātāya manah)

further readings

1. Yoga Vasistha by Samvid, https://www.amazon.com/Essence-Yoga-Vasishtha-Samvid/dp/0910261067
2. Stephen Hawking: Black Holes and Baby Universes, and other Essays, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53200.Black_Holes_and_Baby_Universes_and_Other_Essays?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=PIcjo6ohiy&rank=1
3. David Peat, Superstrings and the Search for the Theory of Everything, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/557998.Superstrings_And_The_Search_For_The_Theory_Of_Everything