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Coming Back
4. Three Histories of Reincarnation
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 | “Whatever state of being one remembers when he quits his body, that state he will attain without fail.”
Bhagavad-gītā 8.6
| | | As the soul sets out on its mysterious journey after death, it may, according to the traditions of the world’s great religions, meet with beings from other levels of reality—angels who help it, or judges who weigh its good and evil deeds on the scales of cosmic justice. A variety of religious art objects, spanning the entire range of man’s cultural history, depict such scenes. A painting on a fragment of Etruscan pottery shows an angelic figure attending a fallen warrior. A Christian mosaic from the Middle Ages shows a grim St. Michael, the scales of justice in his hands. Many people who have had near-death experiences often report encountering such beings.
| | | In the Vedic scriptures of India we learn of the servants of Lord Viṣṇu, who appear at the time of death to accompany the pious soul on its way to the spiritual world. The Vedas also tell of the fearsome agents of Yamarāja, the lord of death, who forcefully arrest the soul of a sinful man and prepare it for its next incarnation in the prison of a material body. In this historical account, the servants of Viṣṇu and the servants of Yamarāja dispute the fate of the soul of Ajāmila, deciding whether he should be liberated or reincarnated.
| | | In the city of Kanyakubja, there once lived a young saintly brāhmaṇa priest named Ajāmila, who fell from the path of spiritual life and lost all of his good qualities when he fell in love with a prostitute. Giving up his priestly duties, Ajāmila now made his living through robbery and gambling and passed his life in debauchery.
| | | By the time he was eighty-eight years old, Ajāmila had fathered ten sons by the prostitute. The youngest, a baby, was named Nārāyaṇa—one of the names of the Supreme Lord, Viṣṇu. Ajāmila was very attached to his young son and derived great pleasure watching the child’s early attempts to walk and talk.
| | | One day, without warning, the time of death arrived for the foolish Ajāmila. Terrified, the old man saw before him gruesome figures with fierce, twisted faces These subtle beings with ropes in their hands had come to forcibly escort him to the court of Yamarāja, the lord of death. Seeing these ghoulish creatures, Ajāmila became bewildered, and out of affection for his beloved child, who was playing a short distance away, he began to cry loudly, “Nārāyaṇa! Nārāyaṇa!’, With tears in his eyes, weeping for his young son, the great sinner Ajāmila unconsciously chanted the holy name of the Lord.
| | | Hearing their master’s name chanted with great feeling by the dying Ajāmila, the order carriers of Viṣṇu, the Viṣṇudūtas, arrived within a second. They appeared just like Lord Viṣṇu Himself. Their eyes were exactly like the petals of a lotus flower; they wore helmets of burnished gold, glimmering silk garments the color of topaz; and their perfectly formed bodies were decorated with garlands of sapphire and milk-white lotuses. They appeared fresh and youthful, and their dazzling effulgence illuminated the darkness of the death chamber. In their hands they held bows, arrows, swords, conchshells, clubs, discs, and lotus flowers.
| | | The Viṣṇudūtas saw the servants of Yamarāja, the Yamadūtas, snatching Ajāmila’s soul from the core of his heart, and with resounding voices they cried, “Stop!”
| | | The Yamadūtas, who had never before encountered any opposition, trembled upon hearing the Viṣṇudūtas’ harsh command. “Who are you? Why are you trying to stop us?” they asked. “We are the servants of Yamarāja, the lord of death.”
| | | The agents of Viṣṇu smiled and spoke in voices as deep as the rumbling of rain clouds: “If you are truly the servants of Yamarāja, you must explain to us the meaning of the cycle of birth and death. Tell us: Who must enter this cycle, and who must not?”
| | | The Yamadūtas replied, “The sun, fire, sky, air, demigods, moon, evening, day, night, the directions, water, land, and the Supersoul, or the Lord within the heart, all witness the activities of everyone. The candidates for punishment in the cycle of birth and death are those who are confirmed by these witnesses to have deviated from their religious duties. In proportion to the extent of one’s religious or irreligious actions in this life, one must enjoy or suffer the corresponding reactions of karma in the next.”
| | | Originally the living beings exist in the spiritual world as eternal servants of God. But when they give up the service of the Lord, they must enter the material universe, comprised of the three modes of nature—goodness, passion, and ignorance. The Yamadūtas explained that the living beings who desire to enjoy this material world come under the control of the modes and, according to their specific relationship with these modes, acquire suitable material bodies. A being in the mode of goodness obtains the body of a demigod, one in the mode of passion takes birth as a human, and one in the mode of ignorance enters the lower species.
| | | All of these bodies are like the bodies we experience in dreams. When a man goes to sleep, he forgets his real identity and may dream that he has become a king. He cannot remember what he was doing before he went to sleep, nor can he imagine what he will do upon waking. In the same way, when a soul identifies with a temporary, material body, he forgets his real, spiritual identity, as well as any previous lives in the material world, although most souls in a human body have already transmigrated through all 8,400,000 species of life.
| | | “The living entity thus transmigrates from one material body to another in human life, animal life, and life as a demigod,” the Yamadūtas said. “When the living entity gets the body of a demigod, he is very happy. When he gets a human body, he is sometimes happy and sometimes sad. And when he gets the body of an animal, he is always fearful. In all conditions, however, he suffers terribly, experiencing birth, death, disease, and old age. His miserable condition is called saṁsāra, or transmigration of the soul through different species of material life.
| | | “The foolish embodied living entity,” the Yamadūtas continued, “unable to control his senses or his mind, is forced to act according to the influence of the modes of material nature, even against his own desires. He is like a silkworm that uses its own saliva to create a cocoon and then becomes trapped in it. The living entity traps himself in a network of his own fruitive activities and then can find no way to free himself. Thus he is always bewildered and repeatedly dies and is reborn.
| | | “Because of his intense material desires,” said the Yamadūtas, “a living entity takes birth in a particular family and receives a body like that of either the mother or the father. That body is an indication of his past and future bodies, just as one springtime is an indication of past and future springtimes.”
| | | The human form of life is especially valuable, because only a human can understand the transcendental knowledge that can free him from the cycle of birth and death. But Ajāmila had wasted his human life.
| | | “In the beginning,” the Yamadūtas said, “Ajāmila studied all the Vedic literatures. He was a reservoir of good character and conduct. He was very mild and gentle, and he kept his mind and senses under control. He was always truthful, knew how to chant the Vedic mantras, and was very pure. Ajāmila always showed proper respect to his spiritual master, guests, and the elderly members of his household—indeed, he was free from false prestige. He was benevolent to all living beings and never envied anyone.
| | | “But once, Ajāmila, following the order of his father, went to the forest to collect fruits and flowers. On the way home, he came upon a very lusty, low-class man shamelessly embracing and kissing a prostitute. The man was smiling, singing, and enjoying himself as if this were proper behavior. Both the man and the prostitute were drunk. The prostitute’s eyes were rolling in intoxication, and her dress had become loose, partially exposing her body. When Ajāmila saw this prostitute, the dormant lusty desires in his heart awakened, and in illusion, he fell under their control. He tried to remember the instructions of the scriptures, and with the help of his knowledge and intellect he tried to control his lust. But because of the force of Cupid within his heart, he was unable to control his mind. After that, he always thought of the prostitute, and within a short time he took her in as a servant in his house.
| | | “Ajāmila then gave up all of his spiritual practices. He spent the money he had inherited from his father for presents for the prostitute and even rejected his beautiful young wife, who came from a respectable brāhmaṇa family.
| | | “This rascal Ajāmila got money any way he could, legally or illegally, and used it to maintain the prostitute’s sons and daughters. Before death, he did not undergo atonement. Therefore, because of his sinful life, we must take him to the court of Yamarāja. There, according to the extent of his sinful acts, he will be punished and then returned to the material world in a suitable body.”
| | | After hearing the statements of the Yamadūtas, the servants of Lord Viṣṇu, who are always expert in logic and argument, replied, “How painful it is to see that those in charge of upholding religious principles are needlessly punishing an innocent person. Ajāmila has already atoned for all of his sins. Indeed, he has atoned not only for sins performed in this life, but for those performed in millions of previous lives as well, because he chanted the holy name of Nārāyaṇa in a helpless state of mind at the time of death. Therefore, he is now pure and eligible for liberation from the cycle of reincarnation.
| | | “The chanting of the holy name of Lord Viṣṇu,” the Viṣṇudūtas said, “is the best process of atonement for a thief or a drunkard, for one who betrays a friend or relative, for one who kills a priest, or for one who indulges in sex with the wife of his guru or another superior. It is also the best method of atonement for one who murders women, the king, or his father, for one who slaughters cows, and for all other sinful men. Simply by chanting the holy name of Lord Viṣṇu, such sinful persons may attract the attention of the Supreme Lord, who therefore considers, ‘Because this man has chanted My holy name, it is My duty to give him protection.’ ”
| | | In this present age of quarrel and hypocrisy, one who wants liberation from reincarnation should chant the Hare Kṛṣṇa mahā-mantra, the great mantra of deliverance, because it completely cleanses the heart of all material desires that keep one trapped in the cycle of birth and death.
| | | The Viṣṇudūtas said, “One who chants the holy name of the Lord is immediately freed from the reactions of unlimited sins, even if he chants jokingly or for musical entertainment. This is accepted in the scriptures and by all learned scholars.
| | | “If one chants the holy name of Lord Kṛṣṇa and then dies in an accident or is killed by a deadly animal, from disease, or by a weapon, one is immediately freed from having to take birth again. As a fire burns dry grass to ashes, the holy name of Kṛṣṇa burns to ashes all of one’s karmic reactions.”
| | | The Viṣṇudūtas then said, “If a person unaware of the potency of a medicine takes that medicine or is forced to take it, it will act even without his knowledge. Even if one does not know the value of chanting the holy name of the Lord, the chanting will still be effective in liberating one from reincarnation.
| | | “At the time of death,” said the Viṣṇudūtas, “Ajāmila helplessly and very loudly chanted the holy name of the Lord, Nārāyaṇa. That chanting alone has already freed him from having to take birth again for his sinful life. Therefore, do not try to take him to your master for punishment by another term of imprisonment in a material body.”
| | | The Viṣṇudutas then released Ajāmila from the ropes of the servants of the lord of death. Ajāmila came to his senses and, free from fear, paid his heartfelt respects to the Viṣṇudūtas by bowing his head at their feet. But when the Viṣṇudūtas saw that Ajāmila was trying to say something to them, they disappeared.
| | | “Was this a dream I saw?” Ajāmila wondered. “Or was it reality? I saw fearsome men with ropes in their hands coming to drag me away. Where have they gone? And where are those four radiant persons who saved me?”
| | | Ajāmila then began to reflect on his life. “Being a servant of my senses, how degraded I became! I fell down from my position as a saintly brāhmaṇa and begot children in the womb of a prostitute. Indeed, I gave up my chaste and beautiful young wife. What’s more, my father and mother were old and had no other friend or son to look after them. Because I did not take care of them, they lived with great pain and difficulty. It is now clear that a sinful person like myself should have been forced in his next life to suffer hellishly.
| | | “I am such an unfortunate person,” said Ajāmila, “but now that I have another chance, I must try to become free from the vicious cycle of birth and death.”
| | | Ajāmila immediately renounced his prostitute wife and journeyed to Hardwar, a place of pilgrimage in the Himalaya Mountains. There he took shelter at a Viṣṇu temple, where he practiced bhakti-yoga, the yoga of devotional service to the Supreme Lord. When his mind and intelligence were fixed in perfect meditation on the form of the Lord, Ajāmila again saw before him four celestial beings. Recognizing them as the same Viṣṇudūtas who had saved him from the agents of death, he bowed down before them.
| | | There at Hardwar, on the banks of the Gāṅges, Ajāmila gave up his temporary, material body and regained his eternal, spiritual form. Accompanied by the Viṣṇudūtas, he boarded a golden aircraft and, passing through the airways, went directly to the abode of Lord Viṣṇu, never again to reincarnate in this material world.
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