Muses of Murari

After watching Devdutt‘s talk on “East Vs. West” on TED online, many old thoughts came to my memory. We are told (in our country) from our childhood about Indian mythology stories and concept of karma, rebirth based on karmic fruits and so on. I’m sure most of us don’t take this belief very seriously and over the time our beliefs are more shaped by myriad outside influences. And many of us not have given enough thought to this ancient idea of karma and rebirths. At least, I’d not had any serious thinking in this area so far.

In fact, I had glimpses of questioning thoughts on the validity of rebirths and any proofs for it. In all those moments, I dismissed that it’s not worth pursuing. One fine day, I happened to listen to Devdutt on a podcast and later on TED video. His talk interested me. Especially his refreshing thought that traditional East believes life is stretched over rebirths and West believes in single birth. His example (check out video) of a meet between a saint and Alexander is simple and delivers the point. Though I thoroughly enjoyed his talk, I somehow was not convinced until, I happened to read the book : Many Lives, Many Masters.

This book is about a real life experience of diagnosing a disturbed young woman patient by a psychiatrist Dr. Brain Weiss.  Dr. Weiss explained his strange experience while hypnotizing his patient. He came to know, during hypnosis, about the patient’s multiple births over centuries and how few of her present day acquaintances has had connected to her in many of her previous births.

When I read the blurb of the book, I instantly took it and when I started to read that evening, I couldn’t keep the book down. I remember, I hurriedly had my dinner and read the book overnight! Very fascinating conversation between the doctor and his hypnotized patient.

In one instance, the patient, in her hypnotized state, describes consistently the same state how she felt whenever she moves from one birth to another, i.e. the state between after her death and before her next birth. And the masters, she describes, guides her through. Masters are some kind of astral bodies, the term very much confused me when I was reading another book written by a Yogi. Interestingly, these masters spoke through her (the patient) to the doctor. Initially, the doctor was confused whether the masters are real or the patient herself acting but when he was told about his very personal incidents that happened years ago, he was convinced that this special experience is for him. In later stage of treatment, in one of the hypnosis, masters indeed told the doctor that this special experience is for him and the patient is just an arrangement to pass on the message. This is one simple incident and the book has many more incidents which can be spiritually interpreted and be cherished.

If one (not mind or body, lets say soul) has no death and continually takes rebirths in this world to perform or fulfill some karmic debts, why the heck we are living as if there is no tomorrow. All the ills on this world created because we live as though its our only life and we need achieve so much in this small period. But if we, for a moment, think that we (inner self ) are eternal and are again and again coming to this world (out of our nature) to finish our karmic debts, then our focus would turn towards inner self and we will spare our planet from the ills we are causing now. That is just a thought. May be I picked up somewhere. It doesn’t matter what the source is.

Whether one buys in this argument (rebirths) or not, one can easily accept that our ancient wisdom is abyss of knowledge of inner science. More we dig into it, more we get to understand ourselves and our place in this universe.

Related posts:

• My views on “God Does Not Play Dice”
• Thoughts on “A Prison Diary”
• My books want-list
• My views on “Autobiography of a Yogi”
• “Buddha: A story of Enlightenment”