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120 : Śramana, Vol 59, No. 4/October-December 2008
each individual series extends indefinitely into the past and the future, rebirth cannot be predicted. Anyway, a meritorious person may often secure the kind of rebirth he deserves by intense thought of it before death. 13 Dr. S. Radhakrishnan elucidates this position in a lucid way:
For when in any existence one arrives at the gate of death, either in the natural course of things or through violence, and when by a concourse of intolerable death-dealing pains, all the members, both great and small, are loosened and wrenched apart in every joint and ligament; and the body like a green palm leaf exposed to the sun dries up by degrees, and the eyesight and the other senses fail, and the power of feeling, and the power of thinking and vitality are making the last stand in the heart then consciousness residing in that last refuge, the heart continues to exist by virtue of karma, otherwise called the predispositions. This karma, however, still remains something of what it depends on and consists of such former deeds as were weighty, much practiced and are now close at hand; or else this karma creates a reflection of itself or of the new modes of life now being entered upon and it is with this as its object that consciousness continues to exist.'4
As the desire and ignorance still remain predominant in an individual's heart one is not able to know the evil attached with the object of inclination due to ignorance consciousness still craves for the object of inclination. Thus, the karma that sprang up along with the consciousness impels it towards the object, hence another birth.
Animals, ghosts, men, gods and demons are all subject to rebirth. However, gods and beings of hell are not conceived but the last consciousness of the dying man creates in some fashion for itself the necessary divine or infernal body out of unorganized matter. In the case of men, animals or ghosts there may be delays in rebirth if circumstances are not propitious and in the meantime it may exist as a Gandharva. Gandharva is an intermediary existence in a short lived form. This Gandharva creates at the earliest opportunity, with the aid of the conceptual elements the proper embryo.
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