10.3: Reincarnation
As a person puts on new garments, giving up old ones, the soul similarly accepts new material bodies, giving up old and useless ones. (Bhagavad-gita 2.22)
Definitions
Re-incarnation: the incarnation or embodiment of a soul in a new body after it has left the old one at death
Transmigration: the passing (of souls) from one body to another at death.
Basic Description
- The human being's activities create karmic reactions or karma-phala (lit. the fruit of his work). His desires, thoughts, words, and actions in life produce a total impression on the mind.
- As long as the living entity still has material desires, Krishna continues to give him another opportunity to fulfill them.
- After death, the living being gets another body according to his desire, the total impression on the mind, and his karma-phala.
- The 8,400,000 species are created with different sets of senses to fulfill the different desires of the living entity.
- Karma-phala, which determines the path one takes through various species or to other human bodies, is only accrued in the human form of life.
- The soul uses up his accumulated karma-phala as he passes through the non-human species.
- Eventually, the soul returns to the human platform, where he gets a new opportunity to carve out a new destiny.
- This cycle continues until the living entity becomes free of material desire, which holds him in the material world.
Whatever state of being one remembers when he quits his body, that state he will attain without fail. (Bhagavad-gita 8.6)
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