 135. Reincarnation |
When John denied that he was Elias (Elijah),** he meant that in the humble garb of John he came no longer in the outward elevation of Elijah the great guru. In his former incarnation he had given the "mantle" of his glory and his spiritual wealth to his disciple Elisha. "And Elisha said, I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me. And he said, Thou hast asked a hard thing: nevertheless, if thou see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee....And he took the mantle of Elijah that fell from him."†
The roles became reversed, because Elijah-John was no longer needed to be the ostensible guru of Elisha- Jesus, now divinely-perfected.
When Christ was transfigured on the mountain‡ it was his guru Elias, with Moses, that he saw. In his hour of extremity on the Cross, Jesus cried out: "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Some of them that stood there, when they heard that, said, This man calleth for Elias....Let us see whether Elias will come to save him."§§
The timeless bond of guru and disciple that existed between John and Jesus was present also for Babaji and Lahiri Mahassaya. With tender solicitude the deathless guru swarm the abysmal waters that swirled between two lives of his chela, and guided the successive steps taken by the child and then by the man Lahiri Mahasaya. It was not until the disciple had reached his thirty-third year that Babaji deemed the time ripe for reestablishing openly the never-severed link.
-Yogananda
The Truth of Reincarnation
When a person dies, the soul leaves the body and human realm, but it may be born again or reincarnate into human life. The soul follows a natural cycle in an almost endless process of transformation and evolution. The cycles may be compared to different versions of a work of art. Each new version is undertaken with the expectation of improving the previous one.
During the first several lives in the human realm, a person may make many mistakes and accumulate much dissatisfaction. This accumulation will affect the present and future lives of the individual. It is like making a sculpture. Every application of the chisel leaves its mark in the statue. In the same way, everything one says and does is an exact projection of one's energy. When the inner being leaves the body, it carries with it the accumulation of internal and external behavior of the previous lives, which in turn form the actual energy basis of the present life. By the same principle, the behavior one projects in the present life will continually bring reformation.
Although all human beings begin with the same original nature, what each individual says and does creates wide differences. Our actions determine whether we distinguish or degrade ourselves. By cultivating self-awareness, we have the possibility of living according to our original nature rather than according to the pressures of society or one's own emotional disposition.
Through the subtle law of energy response, we know that all actions are an exact expression of one's energy. All human beings reveal their most intimate secrets through the expression of their energy, whether it is high, low, positive, negative, creative, destructive, inert, concentrated, moral or vicious. There is no way to hide this from the intuition of a developed or undistorted human being. Such a person can tell intuitively how far the inner being has evolved throughout its many lives.
** John 1:21.
† II Kings 2:9-14.
‡ Matthew 17:3.
§§ Matthew 27:46-49.
