The postulate that there is no unmerited happiness and unmerited misery and that the individual soul takes after death a new existence during which it reaps what, good or bad, it had sown earlier was first propounded in the Satpatha Brahmana, one of the several commentaries that preceded the appearance of the Upanisads. The early Aryans simply believed that good men ascended to heaven to join company with the gods while the souls of the wicked sank down into the abyss of hell. The origin of the idea of transmigration is traced back to the post-Vedic period.
liberation or release from transmigration. Jivatma is thus tied to a karmik chakra or an endless cycle of birth-action-death-rebirth, until the chain is broken and karmik accumulation is dissipated and the jiva attains mukti or moksa, i.e. Every new birth in its turn necessarily involves new karma or action leading to further consequences. The individual soul (jvatma), so it is believed, does not perish with the physical body but dons a new corporeal vesture in a new birth which is determined by its karma in the preceding births. In Indian tradition, on the other hand, transmigration is an essential concomitant of the doctrine of karma, according to which every action, physical or mental, has its own consequence which must be faced immediately or in future, either in this life or in the hereafter, good actions leading to a favourable reward and bad actions entailing punishment. Some Western philosophers of yore also believed in the transmigration of soul, but for them it was associated with the concept of the immortality of soul. Attached to worldly objects, man will continue in the circuit of birth-death-rebirth until he attains spiritual liberation, annulling the effect of his past actions.īelief in reincarnation is basic to the eschatology of all religions of Indian origin. The cumulative effect of these determines his next existence.
The soul, it is held, does not cease with the physical body, but takes on a new birth in consequence of the person’s actions comprising thoughts, words and deeds. a person must receive reward or punishment if not here and now then in a subsequent birth, for his actions in the present one. Central to the concept is the principle of universal causality i.e. TRANSMIGRATION OF THE SOUL doctrine of rebirth based on the theory that an individual soul passes at death into a new body or new form of life. The latter term applies to the cumulative effect of actions performed during successive births and is somewhat akin to ' sanchit karma' and 'prarabdh karma' of Hindu theoreticians. Sikhism, moreover, distinguishes between karma and kirat. body or birth we receive and that it is through nadar (God's grace) that one secures the threshold of moksa" (GG, 2). Guru Nanak declares in the Japji that "all forms, beings, greatness and lowliness, pain and pleasure, bounties and wanderings are subject to the indescribable hukam and there is nothing outside the realm of hukam," (GG, 1) and then adds that "karma determines the kapra, i.e. "The whole universe," says Guru Arjan, Nanak V, "is bound by action, good or bad" (GG, 51). The theory of Karma or the doctrine of karma is a part of the Divine law (hukam).