Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali

Author(s): Prabhavnanda Swami, Christopher Isherwood
Publisher: Ramkrishna Math Madras

Page 86

YOGA AND ITS PRACTICE
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the individual, being compelled by his karmas to incarnate in the form of a duck, must, thereby "inherit” a duck's attributes, including the knowledge of swimming. So the word "instinct” does not help us very much, either way, towards an explanation of man's fear of death.
It may be objected also that this "proof" of reincarnation (Patanjali will advance others, later) is unsatisfactory for another reason-why should our fear of death necessarily depend on remembered experience? Suppose we have had no previous experience of death, doesn't this make it all the more terrifying? Is there anything more fearful than the totally unknown? "Ay, but to die," exclaims Shakespeare's Hamlet, "and go we know not where....."
This, however, is not the whole of the answer. And perhaps Patanjali's proof of reincarnation through memory of the death experience may be justified after all. Consider this passsage from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad:
There are two states for man-the state in this world, and the state in the next; there is also a third state, the state intermediate between these two, which can be likened to dream. While in the intermediate state, a man experiences both the other states, that in this world and that in the next; and the manner thereof is as follows: When he dies, he lives only in the subtle body, on which are left the impressions of his past deeds, and of these impressions he is aware, illumined as they are by the light of the Atman. The pure light of the Atman affords him light. Thus it is that in the intermediate state he experiences the first state, or that of life in the world. Again, while in the intermediate state, he foresees both the evils and the blessings that will yet come to him, as these are determined by his conduct, good and bad, upon the earth, and by the character in which this conduct has resulted. Thus it is that in the intermediate state he experiences the second state, or that of life in the world to come.
The "intermediate state” is, according to this definition, a sort of lucid post-mortem interval during which an individual