Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

8. Rebirth

Fragment ID: 685

The soul goes out, after death, in a subtle body.

Recollections last only for a time, not till rebirth – otherwise the stamp would be so strong that remembrance of past births, even after taking a new body, would be the rule rather than the exception.

You say “relationships of one birth persist in successive births, the chances depending on the strength of the attachment”. This is possible, but not a law – as a rule the same relationship would not be constantly repeated – the same people often meet again and again on earth in different lives, but the relations are different. The purpose of rebirth would not be served if the same personality with the same relations and experiences are incessantly repeated.

It is not the case that there is complete annihilation of the ego in respect of forms of life lower than man after death.

What was spoken of as being in a static condition of complete rest is not the ego, but the psychic being after it has shed its vital and other sheaths and is resting in the psychic world. Before that it passes through vital and other worlds on its way to the psychic plane.

It is possible to come into direct touch with the departed so long as they are near enough to the earth (it is usually supposed by those who have occult experience that it is for three years only) or if they are earthbound or if they are of those who do not proceed to the psychic plane but linger near the earth and are soon reborn.

Universal statements cannot be easily made about these things – there is a general line, but individual cases vary to an almost indefinite extent.