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Chapter 8: Guru's Explanation of the Soul's Everlastingness
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Explanation & Discussion:
In this stanza, the Guru establishes the existence of previous births as evidence of the everlastingness of the soul. This aspect has now been scientifically explored and it has been found that in several cases the information about previous lives was incontrovertible.
Moreover, it is noticed that snakes, scorpions, and such other creatures are furious. Their fury is not learnt by them in the present life. Similarly who could have taught a dog to bark or a tree to extract the required nutrients from the soil or air? They obviously possess those traits from birth. As such, the same must have been brought forth from an earlier life. In other words, the soul concerned must have acquired those traits, while it was in another body during a previous life. That is the evidence of the soul migrating from one body to another. It can therefore be clear that while changing the body from birth to birth, the soul continues to exist.
There are many people who refuse to believe in a previous life. If, however, they try to observe nature, they can notice innumerable living beings with different forms and shapes, different aptitudes, having varying number of sense organs, undergoing different types and varying intensities of pain, and so on. Is it possible that all such differences and variations occur without any cause? Keeping aside other beings, even among human beings there is diversity. Some are black, some are white; some are poor, some are prosperous; some live longer, some shorter; some stay healthy, some are afflicted with disease, and so on.
Science would state that the physical variations are due to the differences in parental genes. But what about the differences and diversities prevailing among the members of the same family? How do children get diseases, which are not possessed by their parents? Even twins conceived at the same time and
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