Why Do We Reincarnate?

Why do we return, life after life, into a world that brings us the same joys and the same sufferings? Behind the image of the cycle of reincarnation lies a movement that is not visible at first glance: far from being an endless repetition, this path gradually shapes a freedom that did not exist at the outset. Here is what the cycle of past lives truly reveals about the meaning of our existence.

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The Hidden Meaning of the Cycle of Past Lives

Why do we return, life after life, into a world that brings us the same joys and the same sufferings? Behind the image of the cycle of reincarnation lies a movement that is not visible at first glance: far from being an endless repetition, this path gradually shapes a freedom that did not exist at the outset. Here is what the cycle of past lives truly reveals about the meaning of our existence.

When we speak of samsara, we speak of the cycle of incarnations, that succession of births and deaths which seems to turn without end. The image of the wheel comes naturally. We are born, we live, we desire, we suffer, we love, we learn, we die, and then a new incarnation begins.

At first glance, one might think we are simply turning in circles. But a wheel has a center. Lao Tzu said it was this center of the wheel that gave the wheel its whole meaning.

At its periphery, the motion is fast. The closer one gets to the center, the more the motion slows. At the center itself, everything turns around a point that does not move.

This is how The Path regards samsara: not as an absurd repetition, but as an immense movement that has meaning. We do turn, certainly, but we are not going nowhere. We are moving toward the center.

Imagine a vinyl record. When you set the needle down on the disc, it enters a groove. At first glance, it seems to keep turning around the same center. Yet the groove is a spiral. With each turn, the needle draws slightly closer to the middle. This is a good image for the cycle of incarnations. At first glance, everything begins again: a new person, a new body, a new story, new desires, new joys, new sufferings. But it is never exactly the same turn.

In the teaching of The Path, purusha (the eternal soul) reincarnates. It passes from one existence to another. The person, however, does not reincarnate. The body disappears, the brain disappears, the mind, the personal memory, the particular character all disappear with it.

But purusha continues its journey. Why? Because incarnation brings it something. It gradually brings an individual consciousness.

In the beginning, purusha comes from Unity. It belongs to that first reality from which nothing is truly separate. But it does not yet have the fully developed individual consciousness that will one day allow a voluntary return. The journey is therefore necessary. Incarnation is necessary. The experience of separation is necessary.

When purusha incarnates, it becomes the essential core of a living being. Around it forms the jivatman, the individual being, the incarnate soul, with its body, its mind, its perceptions, its desires, its fears, and its ego. And the ego plays an essential role here. The ego is often spoken of as though it were merely an obstacle to be gotten rid of as quickly as possible. It is not that simple.

Without the ego, there would be no true individual consciousness. The ego makes it possible to say, "I am." Through it, the awareness of being a distinct individual gradually appears.

This separation is at first very rudimentary. Then it becomes more complex, more affirmed, more conscious. Incarnation after incarnation, purusha thus grows in individuality. It does not become more purusha; it is purusha from the very beginning. What it acquires over the course of the journey is self-awareness as an individual. And this individual consciousness is necessary for something fundamental: freedom.

One cannot truly choose if one has not become capable of saying "I." One cannot freely return to the origin if one has never been capable of moving away from it. This is why individuality has meaning. This is why the ego has meaning. This is even why the long detour through the world has meaning.

Free will does not fall from the sky fully formed. It matures. At the beginning of the long course of incarnations, the being is mostly subject to the impulses of life, to needs, instincts, and circumstances. Then, gradually, as individual consciousness develops, the capacity to choose appears.

First between one pleasant thing and another. Then between the immediate and what requires effort. Then between what flatters the ego and what one knows to be right. And finally, between the world as it draws us in and the return to the origin. The journey through samsara makes this freedom possible.

The parable of the prodigal son offers a beautiful image of this movement. The son lives in his father's house. He lacks nothing. And yet he wants to leave. So he leaves the house. He goes out into the world.

He knows independence, pleasures, desires, enthusiasms, mistakes, disappointments. He has to leave in order to understand what his father's house was. As long as he lived there without having known anything else, he could not truly measure its worth. Then, after long wanderings, something matures within him. He understands. And he returns.

But the return is not a simple going back. It is not the same son who returns. The one who returns has lived. He has known the world. He has compared. He has chosen. He returns of his own free will. That is the whole difference.

At the outset, the son was there without having chosen it. In the end, he returns because he wants to. This is the meaning of the journey. We find this same idea in logion 18 of the Gospel of Thomas: "Where the beginning is, there the end will be. Blessed is the one who will stand at the beginning: he will know the end and will not taste death."

Life takes part in this maturing. Lila, the divine play of manifestation, works upon the being the way the current of a mountain stream works upon a stone. At first, the stone is rough. It has edges, rough spots. The current rolls it, knocks it about, pushes it against other stones. If it could think, the stone might believe that all these jolts serve no purpose. Yet, slowly, it becomes smooth. Its edges soften. It becomes a pebble. Then, with time, something that was hidden appears. Lao Tzu said that the sage, beneath coarse clothing, carries a treasure of jade.

Existence does this work. It polishes. It confronts. It compels us to desire certain things until we understand that they cannot give what we expected of them. It makes us pursue pleasures, achievements, possessions, and recognition, until the day we begin to see their limits. None of this is pointless.

The prodigal son had to know the world in order to want to return.

In each incarnation, it is the jivatman, the incarnate soul, that is transformed. The jivatman is that individual being formed around purusha within the present existence. It has a body, a mind, a personality, an ego. It learns. It makes mistakes. It changes.

It can become more conscious, more reasonable, more sattvic (from the sattva guna), or, conversely, allow itself to be carried away by desire, agitation, or ignorance. It is the jivatman that concretely lives out the experience of this incarnation.

Purusha, at the heart of this being, gathers through this experience what contributes to its individuation. Thus, an incarnation is not merely a parenthesis between two births. It is a stage. Each existence progressively helps form this individual consciousness which, at the end of the journey, will be capable of freely choosing its return.

Karma is often spoken of as a kind of cosmic justice: good actions performed in one life would be rewarded in the next; bad actions would be punished. The Path does not see things this way.

The person born today is not the person who lived in the previous incarnation. She has a different body, a different brain, a different mind, a different family, a different history. Why should this new person pay for the faults of a former one? That would not make much sense.

An existence does, however, leave traces. Experiences, choices, desires, and habits of consciousness produce samskaras, imprints. These are not memories: they carry no image, no name, no specific scene. They are, rather, orientations, inclinations of greater or lesser strength toward one quality of consciousness or another, which purusha carries with it without needing to remember where they came from. All of this contributes to the overall maturing process.

There is, then, a real continuity between incarnations, but it is not the continuity of a personality carrying its memories and debts from one life to the next. The continuity is deeper. It is that of the path traveled by purusha through successive existences.

The Bhagavad Gita speaks of shraddha, often translated as "faith," and relates this inner disposition to the three gunas: sattva, rajas, and tamas. Sattva is linked to clarity, harmony, reason, and light. Rajas is linked to movement, desire, passion, and ambition. Tamas is linked to inertia, confusion, and ignorance. We all carry these three tendencies, but they are not present in the same proportions.

One might say their mixture forms a kind of genome of consciousness. Some people are naturally drawn to truth, silence, contemplation, and simplicity. Others are more drawn to success, pleasures, power, and recognition. Others still live mainly in confusion or inertia. This is not a matter of judgment.

We are simply not all at the same point in the journey. As incarnations succeed one another, consciousness matures. Gradually, sattva takes up more space. The capacity for discernment grows, and with it, true freedom. For free will is not merely the ability to choose between vanilla ice cream and chocolate ice cream.

True freedom consists in being able to see what draws us and yet decide not to follow it. It consists in being able to discern, to choose with full awareness, and, ultimately, to turn freely toward the origin.

Why would purusha not simply remain in Unity, rather than passing through so many lives? Because something would be missing: the individual consciousness and the freedom that only the journey allows one to acquire.

At the outset: Unity without individual choice. At the arrival: the return to Unity by choice. Between the two: the world, separation, the ego, desires, experiences, mistakes, maturing, freedom, and sadhana.

For a very long time, this maturing happens through lila alone. Life is enough. It teaches slowly. It gives rise to desires and then shows their limits. It makes us know pleasure and then its passing nature. It gives, takes back, begins again.

Purusha thus continues its long journey from incarnation to incarnation. Then comes a moment when the being is mature enough for another possibility to appear: consciousness can take part voluntarily in the return. This is where sadhana truly begins, the set of practices and guidelines of a spiritual path (marga).

The Observance of the sadhana does not serve to manufacture purusha. Nor does it serve to destroy all individuality; if individuality were simply meant to disappear, why would it have been acquired over such a long journey? It allows the being who has become sufficiently conscious to freely place its individuality at the service of the return. It is no longer a matter of being carried toward the center against one's will. It is a matter of turning toward it voluntarily.

When one meditates, when one practices the techniques, when one serves, when one returns to the awareness of Grace, one accomplishes something that was not possible at the beginning of the journey: one chooses. One chooses to return.

A moment comes when the tool that made the journey possible must not become the master. The problem is not that the ego exists; it was necessary for individuation. The problem begins when it claims to be everything we are. It served to build individual consciousness; it must now allow for choice, and then agree to no longer occupy the whole space.

The being can say, "I am an individual." Then understand, "I am not only this individual." And finally decide, "I want to return to where I came from." This is where individuality finds its true fulfillment, not in the eternal affirmation of separation, but in the freedom to choose Unity.

We spend a large part of our journey at the periphery. We run after a thousand things. We want to possess, to succeed, to be loved, to be admired, to travel, to know, to experience. Every desire promises us something. And every experience teaches us. Sometimes it takes many turns before we understand. The prodigal son does not return home the day after he leaves. If he had returned immediately, he would have learned nothing.

He has to go far enough. He has to exhaust certain illusions. He has to understand for himself. Then, one day, his outlook changes. We come to understand that what we have always been seeking in the world is not found at the periphery of the wheel. We must move toward the center.

Then meditation takes on its true meaning. Service takes on its true meaning. The Observance of the sadhana takes on its true meaning. These are the means of the conscious return.

We are no longer simply carried by the current of lila. We cooperate. We choose. And it is precisely because we can choose that the return now has a value it did not have at the starting point.

Samsara is therefore not an immense, pointless detour. It is the journey of individuation. Purusha enters the experience of separation without yet having the full individual consciousness that would allow it to freely choose the return to Unity. It passes through the incarnations. It comes to know the world through successive jivatmans.

The ego gradually allows it to acquire the sense of being an individual. Consciousness matures. Discernment develops. Free will appears. And, finally, the moment comes when purusha can return to its origin in full consciousness and full freedom. Like the prodigal son.

The house is the same. The father is the same. But the son who returns is no longer the one who left. He now knows why he returns. He no longer stays in the house because he has never known anything else. He stays there because he has known something else and has chosen to return to it.

This is Liberation. It is not simply returning to the starting point. It is returning to the starting point after having completed the whole journey. It is finding Unity again with the consciousness acquired through separation. It is coming home freely. And all these lives that seemed to turn in circles then reveal themselves for what they were from the beginning: a long spiral toward the center, toward Unity.

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