Mystery of rebirth
This text was machine-transcribed from the printed book and may contain errors. Select the words and choose “Report a mistake”.
Q: Swamiji, after death, will we lose all identity and merge with cosmic energy? - Binoy, Singapore
Binoy, you have a wrong understanding about enlightenment. Actually, now you have one body and you are living with one body and enjoying with it. Suddenly if you have ten bodies and you can be at ten places at a time, eat and drink what you want, how will it be? Enlightenment is like that! Let me define this whole thing. If you live with the consciousness which perceives more than this body, then after you leave this body, you will live in greater bodies than this body. If you perceive yourself as shrinking, suffocating, small, then after you leave this body you will live in lower-level bodies, and carry not only a small identity, but the identity which makes you suffer more and more. It is neither your actions nor your identity that decides about rebirth. It is how experience you while you are living. If you feel you are more than your body, if you feel - wow, if this is life, I want more! - then you will not have any more births. That is the paradox! If you feel - oh God, I don't want to live anymore! - then be very clear, already more bodies are waiting! So, how you feel about you - that decides whether you will have rebirth, what kind of birth you are going to have, what will be the state, what will happen to you after death.
