Coming and Leaving on Our Own

My impression is that even the religious traditions are unable to really speak to questions of this kind very much or any with great clarity, But the fact is that in this world, you need to have an identity. That this is the person doing this for which he, she needs to be paid this, etcetera. So identity is needed. And my own impression is that that strong notion gets deeply built into our heart. That even in the other realm, I will still have a particular identity.

Now here, having even said that, On the other hand, if this Zen Master is insisting that I had done something for him in a previous life, is it the same person, namely me who had done it? How does he recognize this? And was he the same person in a previous life, which he's now? So you see these questions, my own impression is we can speculate. But Nothing in our minds can actually relate with anything subtle unless there is some kind of identity attached to it. So it may even be that even when we speak about a previous life or next life, we would speculate or imagine some identity.

And then if it is a consequence of my present life actions, then naturally one would like to say it's me again. Yeah. But having said that, I should really repeat this again that I can't really say that it was same Ravi in a previous life. It can't possibly be the same body. It can't possibly be the same mind. So if there is something in me, the way it often gets established or not established, expressed especially in the Indian tradition, more emphasized in the Tibetan Buddhism Buddhism that we have not only our usual ordinary body, but what we call subtle bodies or sometimes they get called astral bodies.

There are different labels for it. And that even when this body dies, they settle or the astral body doesn't die. So maybe this identification is really with this astral body, their subtle body. Now the reason I am slightly saying this with a bit of a question mark, we have this tendency in the physics world as well. Either everything is material subtler and subtler levels of matter, or everything is energy than grosser and grosser than it becomes obviously matter.

So there is a very strong tendency for some people to move from one direction, for some others to move from the other direction. So it's whether it's the spiritual energy taking on different bodies or different subtler and subtler bodies acquiring spiritual energies. It becomes a little difficult to be so clear about. But both of these kinds of expressions you would find in religious traditions. So in that sense, one could say that even though the physical or gross body of Ravi will die, But whatever corresponds to the subtler body, astral body, that will not die.