The Spiritual Import of the Mahabharata and the Bhagavadgita :13-16.

Chapter 13: Centring the Mind in the Heart-16.

After attaining God, there is no rebirth.

Mam upetya punar janma duhkhalayam asasvatam, napnuvanti mahatmanah samsiddhim paramam gata h-:

Reaching all the planes of existence lower to God, there can be a reversion of the soul to those conditions where its unfulfilled desires can manifest themselves for fulfillment.

When God is the sole object of desire, when desires fulfil themselves entirely at one stroke, there remains no other desire to pull the soul back to the earth or any lower plane of existence.

Punar janma, rebirth, as I mentioned earlier, is not necessarily a rebirth in this world. It is a rebirth in any condition of being, any plane of existence anywhere in creation, any part of the cosmos—which are supposed to be infinite in number.

Any state which is less than the realisation of God is a rebirth; it may be in any lower plane.

But the whole process of reincarnation is rent asunder, cut at the root when the cause behind rebirth itself is plucked out from its very roots.

The cause of rebirth is the sense of individuality, the isolation of oneself from God, the assertion of the ego and everything that follows from it as a consequence.

The whole of samsara, the whole drama of life is the affirmation of the ego personality of the jiva, as if it is all-in-all and the master of its own self, reigning supreme in this world of mortality, in this world of desires and their fulfillment of the same.

This is the sorrow of man.

Swami Krishnananda
To be continued  .....