Talk:Between Death and Rebirth

By Vishal Agarwal

Just as we feel nostalgic about and attached to our old home that we have abandoned, the departed ātmā also feels attached to its old body and to the friends and dear relatives whom he had known when alive. But the ātmā realizes soon that the bonds he had with his friends and relatives are over and they were temporary anyway. According to some accounts, the ātmā is assisted by beings of light after death to its next abode, which may be a temporary heaven or hell, or this very earth because in Hinduism there are no everlasting hells and heavens. This next abode depends on the karma that the person performed in his previous lives- good karmas lead to good abodes and bad lead to bad ones. These effects or residues of karma performed by us (‘karmāshaya’, or ‘saṃskāra’) and our behavioral tendencies (‘vāsanā-s’) are stored in our Manomaya Kosha, and they travel with the transmigrating ātmā.

The ātmā is then reborn in its next abode. There are 14 levels of existence (‘loka’) according to Hindu scriptures, and human existence is somewhere in the middle. People with a very good stock of virtuous karma (‘puṇya-karma’) may be reborn as Hindu equivalents of ‘gods’ (devatās) or other semi-divine beings in different heavens or other realms, and those with very bad karma (‘pāpa-karma’) will be reborn in hells or in lower life-forms on this earth. A modern Hindu scholar describes what happens to the ātmā in this intermediate state- “At death, the soul leaves the physical body and remains suspended in an ethereal form. If one has been able to conquer desires, there are no ties or attractions to bind it down. It ascends straight up towards the vast immanent Universal consciousness, to the realm of complete peace and harmony. However, this does not happen to many for multiple desires extend their nooses all around us. Those who are able to overcome most of them rise up and taste of the land of tranquility. This is their stay in heaven. But when the remaining tendrils of desire begin to pull at them, they come earthwards again and are reborn according to their residual karma. But what happens to those who are totally enmeshed in desires during their life? On death, they leave their physical bodies but desires continue to cling to ethereal forms as they had done to the physical one. Now comes the problem. The glutton, who was always obsessed with food, continues to long for good things to eat; indeed, may see good things spread all around but can neither touch them nor eat because now he does not have either the physical hands or mouth. The craving punishes him and he cannot satiate it. This dreadful state of longing but being unable to indulge in longing is hell, purgatory or Naraka as the Hindus call it.”