Maharaj rejects the idea of re-birth or re-incarnation out of hand, and the basis for such rejection is so simple that it humbles us: the entity which is supposed to be re-born does not exist, except as a mere concept! How can a concept be re-born?
Maharaj in all innocence asks the protagonist of re-birth: "Please, I want to know, who is it that would be re-born?" The body 'dies' and, after death, is demolished — buried or cremated—as quickly as possible. The body, in other words, has been irreparably, irretrievably, irrevocably destroyed. That body, therefore, which was an objective thing cannot be re-born. How then can anything non-objective like the life-force (the breath), which, on the death of the body, merged with the air outside, or the consciousness which merged with the Impersonal Consciousness, be re-born either?
Perhaps, says Maharaj, you will say that the entity concerned will be re-born. But that would be utterly ridiculous. You do know that the 'entity' is nothing but a concept, a hallucination which arises when consciousness mistakenly identifies itself with the particular form.
How did the idea of re-birth arise at all? It was perhaps conceived as some sort of an acceptable working theory to satisfy the simpler people who were not intelligent enough to think beyond the parameters of the manifested world.
~Pointers from Nisargadatta Maharaj
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