By Rudra Shivananda
In key spiritual texts, re-birth and liberation are explained in terms of the moon and the Sun, keeping in mind that we are not talking about the physical sun and moon but the existential planes they represent. If a person has done a lot of good deeds, such that the good exceeds the bad, then such a person will go to the moon after passing and enjoying the nectar of the gods or pitris (forefathers). When the momentum of the good deeds gets exhausted, there will be a coming back from the heavenly plane, to rebirth into this world. The good deeds have taken the soul to the Chandraloka and it enjoyed blissful experience there and after the exhaustion of the blissful experience there, subsequent to the exhaustion of the momentum of those deeds, there is a reversal, a coming back. The five elements will then form a new body vehicle, according to the balance of Karma. Rebirth is certain for those who only cultivate good actions such as charity and good works.
For those who have practiced yoga, or have otherwise walked the spiritual path, they are destined to go to the heart of the sun. Highly purified souls bright in their behavior, shining in their character, travel through the rays of the sun to the orb of the sun. The rays of the sun are the paths through which the soul travels higher and reaches the solar plane. In order to go to the sun, the soul has to be bright, powerful, and purified. The soul gets further liberated in the solar plane through guidance and practice, and do not have to return to earth for rebirth.
One’s sadhana or spiritual practice is critical because one day or the other, by the power of your practice and the grace of the divine, you will go to the solar plane, provided you are determined to attain moksha or liberation. This is important to understand, because if a spiritual practitioner does not become Self-Realized in his or her life-time, there are several options available depending on the level of achievement – returning to the physical plane for further practice or going on to the solar plane for higher practice.
When one has graduated from the solar plane, it opens up to higher stages of ascent. There is no sudden jump into the Supreme Being. The soul crosses through the worlds above, the five elements, the physical embodiment of the fourteen worlds – Bhu-loka up to Satya-loka, and eventually, towards the Universal Being, – Brahma-loka. The consciousness of individuality is maintained as needed for compassion and love. The nearer you go to the border of the Universal Being, the less you become conscious of your individuality. Yet the individuality in a very rarefied form persists. At that time, says the texts say that the manifest Divine sends a messenger, a being of light comes and leads the soul along the path towards the un-manifest and absolute Being.. This is the stage of cosmic consciousness but it is still not complete liberation, because to have cosmic consciousness there must be some object of which one must be conscious. The process by which complete liberation is achieved is the mystery between the Supreme and the yogi. We cannot understand nor speculate beyond a certain point.
Sadhana is the pathway to liberation. The spiritual guide shows the way and gives the spiritual push to start the engine of achievement. The power of liberation is by the purity of your purpose and intention, and the expansion of your love to all beings. Cultivation of the Love Principle provides the fuel that will propel you on the path. This is because even though the Divine has no attributes and cannot be belittled by our mental conceptual framework, we can only conceive of the Divine with attributes. We, as human beings, can think only as human beings even in respect of the absolute. We think of the vast dimensions of the comprehension of God’s Existence, in terms of superlatives, such as ‘All-mighty’, ’All-knowing’, All-powerful’, ‘All-Loving’, ‘All-blissful’. These are the characteristics that we are able to conceive and attribute to the Divine. However, the one accessible attribute that we can all agree on is “All-Loving” and therefore, this is the one attribute that we can develop along the higher path.