Overcome The Cycle Of Birth And Death

Avatar Meher Baba

The series of incarnations the soul is impelled to take through karmic determination have a tendency to become endless. Through innumerable lives an individual has come into contact with countless persons and had all kinds of dealings of give and take with them. He is entangled in a web consisting of debts to pay and dues to recover. According to karmic law, he can avoid neither debts nor dues, since both are the outcome of karma inspired by desire. He keeps incarnating in order to pay off his debts and to recover his dues; but even when he means to clear up the account, often he is unable to do so. The power that keeps the individual soul bound to the wheel of life and death is its thirst for separate existence, which is a condition for a host of cravings connected with objects and experiences of the world of duality. It is for the fulfilment of cravings that the ego-mind keeps on incarnating itself. When all forms of craving disappear, the impressions that create and enliven the ego-mind disappear. With the disappearance of these impressions, the egomind itself is shed. Then there is only the realisation of the one eternal, unchanging Oversoul, the only Reality. God-realisation is the end of incarnations of ego-mind because it is the end of its very existence. The spinning of the yarn of karmic debts and dues would be endless if there were no provision for getting out of the karmic entanglements through the help of a Perfect Master. He can not only initiate an aspirant into the supreme art of non-binding karma, but can become directly instrumental in freeing him from his karma. If a person must get bound to someone, it is best for him to get bound to God or a Master, because this facilitates emancipation from all other karmic ties. When the good karma of past lives has secured for the aspirant the benefit of having a Master, the best thing he can do is to surrender himself to the Master and to serve him. The aspirant throws the burden of his karma on the Master, who has to find ways of freeing him from it. The master-disciple relationship is often carried forward from one life to another. Those who had gurus in past lives are drawn to him by an unconscious magnetism, not knowing why they are thus drawn. Treading the spiritual path continues for several incarnations before the aspirant attains the goal. The life of the reincarnate has many events and phases. The wheel of life makes its ceaseless rounds, lifting the individual to the heights or bringing him down from high positions. It contributes to the enrichment of his experience. Ideals left unattained in one life are pursued in the next; things left undone are finished; rough edges left by incomplete endeavour are rounded off; wrongs are set right. At last, out of the ripeness of experience and through the dissolution of the ego-mind, the soul enters into the unity of divine life. Then there is neither bondage of giving nor taking, because the soul has completely transcended the consciousness of separateness or duality.