Dantes Daiji on Death and Reincarnation - 2

◎ Jade Tablet - 10 - 16

◎ Device for Vertical Ascent - 16

◎ The Reality of Reincarnation - 6

◎ The Mechanism of Death and Reincarnation

Here, the questioner assumes a common view of reincarnation (one-to-one reincarnation) where a single individual soul passes to the spirit world upon death, is reborn into the present world, and returns to the spirit world upon death again. However, Dantes Daigoji, disregarding even such social conventions, directly reveals the mechanism of human reincarnation itself. Therefore, the question and answer may seem mismatched at first glance, but in reality, the answer is perfectly comprehensive.

That is, when a person dies, they first return to the interconnectedness of all spirits and all phenomena, which is the Atman, the sixth body. Dantes Daigoji also calls the Atman, the sixth body, the Alaya-vijñāna, the Akashic Records, love, light, and "now, here."

When a person dies, regardless of whether they are aware of it or not, they return to this oneness. And a human being, being a single leaf, is reborn from a branch near where it emerged before. This is what is called reincarnation. The two leaves before and after reincarnation are roughly similar but actually different. That is the true nature of reality.

This view is very functional and is not a view from the so-called human perspective. From this viewpoint, good and evil, truth, beauty, and goodness do not seem to be derivable at first glance. Therefore, if one considers the unfolding of this world solely based on this mechanism, it is expected that a considerable number of individuals (cults, mammonism, egoism, etc.) who tout worthless things as truth and principle, and who think or act in such ways, will emerge. Dantes Daigoji called this "Dantes' negative influence."

However, it can also be said that all enlightened beings have proven that there is no longer evil in the hearts and actions of humans who have been able to confirm the oneness, the One, the Atman – which is God, Buddha, and Tao – in meditation.

Since it is impossible to prove this within the framework of current social common sense and the logic of science, the key to understanding it lies solely in the intuitive question, "How do you feel about it?"

Now, this mechanism coincides with the appearance of the primordial light at the beginning of death in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and those who understand that this mechanism is correct explain reincarnation along this line. I believe that includes Shakyamuni and the Dalai Lama.

Furthermore, under this mechanism, there is the posthumous judgment of King Yama, dependent origination, and the panoramic review of one's life. Without understanding this basic framework, one's view of these details may also be incorrect.

Dantes Daigoji calls the "experience that cannot be called an experience" of uniting with the One *samadhi* and sets it as one of the goals of meditation practice.

A dialogue between Dantes Daigoji and his disciple:

Dantes: "However, as I said earlier, if there's a bottle here, and it will still be here if left for ten minutes, reincarnation exists within that range. Yes."

Disciple: "So, dying isn't essentially that painful in terms of being able to be reborn as a human, but then there are various reincarnations. What's the trick behind that, or why do we do such things, do we choose to do it ourselves, or are we ordered by someone? What exactly is the mechanism behind all that?"

Dantes: "Well, you can see it by looking at a tree. There's a single tree, right? Branches come out from that tree, right? And leaves grow on the branches. Then, leaves grow this year and fall in winter. Next year, leaves grow again from the same place. At that time, the leaves that grow are different leaves from the ones that grew last year."

Disciple: "Well, they're mostly similar but different."

Dantes: "At that time, the formative power that tries to make the leaves grow exists within the branch itself, right? Formative power. Influenced by that formative power, leaves emerge as successors to the leaves that fell before, right?

If they emerge from the same place, they are always successors to the leaves that fell before in some form, right? They are not completely unrelated leaves. Reincarnation occurs within that range."

Disciple: "Eternal life, or the soul-like thing, corresponds to the branch..."

Dantes: "Yes. Reincarnation, to be precise, is not the soul traversing time in this way. Rather, it's the entirety of time, space, and matter – what we call 'now' is here. This is called the Alaya-vijñāna, the Akashic Records, Akasha, emptiness. It's here. Everything is here.

And we return to what is here. We return without being aware of returning, but we are returning. The experience of meditation clarifies that in order to become aware of it."

Disciple: "For example, let's say there are three reincarnations. This is now, past, and future.

If we are here now, what does it mean to return?"

Dantes: "We return here. Anytime. We return to the origin that makes this exist. Past, present, and future are all here."

Disciple: "I understand that in the sense that the cause for the future is contained here, but is that what you mean?"

Dantes: "No, that's not it. Everything is here. In other words, it's about in what form things manifest when they emerge from here. To manifest, they must be transferred into the framework of time, space, and matter. What originally exists has no time, no space, no phenomena. However, human concepts are trying to view the world from within such a framework, and they are creating that framework. We are just saying to meditate to remove that framework.

That framework is a framework that exists within humans, and for animals, the world is a completely different world. The human framework just happens to arbitrarily believe in past, present, future, time, space, and distance. There is one interconnected life. You can call it light, you can call it love. That kind of life is densely filled and flowing. Life itself is."

Disciple: "Where did that framework come from, in terms of its origin?"

Dantes: "Origin occurs when the entire life itself becomes concrete and becomes individual things. Therefore, that framework is the cause of the story. So, if you erase that framework, you melt into the one interconnected life. That's what samadhi is called. That samadhi, in order to become concrete again as a human being A or a human being B, must be done within the format of a framework."

However, the one interconnected Atman can only be seen or thought about by fitting it into the framework of perception specific to humans: time, space, and matter.

Truly certain, rare, raw Atman includes parts that humans cannot even imagine.

Reincarnation is not one-to-one reincarnation, but by interposing the whole (or "being," the principal image, all phenomena) between lives, it has a complexity that makes it foolish to simply think of it as one-to-many or many-to-one.

Dantes Daigoji answers the question of where one returns in the past, present, or future by saying that one returns here, which includes all time, space, and matter, at any time.

Also, Dantes Daigoji answers, "We return without being aware of returning, but we are returning," but at the end of the death process, perhaps not only seeing the Buddha and deities occurs, but also an unaware union with the divine. Of course, that phenomenon probably occurs not only at physical death but also in gaps like sneezing. That's why he says we return anytime.

Therefore, it probably takes a fraction of a second to travel back and forth between "here, which includes all time, space, and matter" and the human social framework of perception. That is *kṣaṇa* (an instant).

The fact that enlightened beings live in a dual worldview probably means that such a round trip exists.

Furthermore, Morihei Ueshiba of Aikido and Naoya Inoue, the four-division world boxing champion, live in that *kṣaṇa*.

Dantes Daiji on Death and Reincarnation - 1

◎ Jade Tablet - 10 - 15

◎ Device for Vertical Ascent - 15

◎ The Reality of Reincarnation - 5

◎ The Mechanism by Which Spirits Endure

The following is a certain roundtable discussion in which Dantes Daigoji succinctly speaks about the mechanism of death and reincarnation.

A single tree is the World Tree, the Atman in which all worlds are connected as one. Mr. A is born as a leaf on this tree. And when the leaf dies and falls in autumn, at that time, that leaf returns to the Atman, which is cosmic consciousness.

In the Tibetan Book of the Dead, it is said that a person sees the primordial light (Mother Luminosity) immediately after death, and this corresponds to this part.

The following spring, a leaf emerges from a similar part of the branch. This leaf is Mr. A's reincarnation. Dantes Daigoji calls the latent power of the universe that forms this one-pattern reincarnation a ghost, and he explains the so-called spirit world mechanism very simply.

Dantes: "The reason why spirits endure, you see, is like this: there's a pool, an infinite pool.

Various people emerge from that pool.

You can think of it as a single tree. There's a tree, right? There are branches, right? Leaves emerge from here. Let's say this is you.

In winter, the leaves fall. But the following spring, leaves emerge again. At that time, the part that produces the leaves has a formative power at work within the branch that creates similar shapes, right?

That power is called a ghost. For example, let's say there's an ocean. In one part, rough waves always occur. In another part, only calm waves occur. The movement of the currents beneath the surface in this part is different from over there. That movement of the currents is the ghost.

But because human beings' normal cognitive ability cannot grasp it as the movement of currents, it inevitably manifests as a personified expression.

There's a pool, and when people die, they go to the infinite ocean of cosmic consciousness. Infinite images are accumulated in that ocean. When those images sometimes appear as images themselves, they are called ghosts.

When an image is expressed as a temporary physical body, that is called rebirth."

Disciple: "When you return to the ocean, are you alone?"

Dantes: "Whether it's one person or two, it's completely uncountable."

Disciple: "Not a measure like volume or capacity?"

Dantes: "Yeah. Those physical concepts cannot be applied at all. That's why in this world, you can count people as two or half a person or a medium person, or as male or female, one or two people. However, in the pool of cosmic consciousness, 1.5 people or 1.8 people actually exist. But try to make 1.8 people appear; you can't confirm it, can you? Not for humans living at the level of consciousness that counts one or two people. So inevitably, it takes the form of one person. That's why you can never expect objectivity from the words of ghosts. Something is mixed in, countless things are mixed in.

A coherent physical theory can absolutely not exist in the words of ghosts.

Why? Because images at countless levels of consciousness intertwine, creating coherence within them, and a message arrives.

Therefore, true spiritual vision is not the spiritual vision that occurs in a medium. The spiritual vision that occurs in a medium, as I said, appears in a form tailored to that person, within that person's framework. That's why the subconscious mind arbitrarily補ってしまう (supplements/fills in) the missing parts. That person's personal subconscious mind. Parts that are arbitrarily fabricated emerge.

The psychic powers that Shakyamuni speaks of, you see, are about overlooking the pool of cosmic consciousness, the ocean of cosmic consciousness itself. So it's once. It cannot be divided. There's telekinesis, telepathy, various things, right? Knowing past lives, knowing destiny, seeing past lives, seeing ghosts. All those things originate from the interconnected cosmic consciousness."

In this roundtable discussion, the unfolding of archetypal images that form various concretions within the overall Atman is called ghosts, and the main topic has become the side of ghosts.

A roundtable discussion that speaks even closer to the core of reincarnation follows below.

Shakyamuni's View of Reincarnation

◎ Jade Tablet - 10 - 14
◎ Device for Vertical Ascent - 14
◎ The Reality of Reincarnation - 4
◎ Human Destiny is Action

Osho Bhagwan said that his view of reincarnation was the same as Shakyamuni's.
How does early Buddhism view the one-to-one reincarnation theory?

'Section Five: What Causes Birth (1)
[The deity said, ———]
"What causes a person to be born?
What of a person wanders about?
What falls into the cycle of rebirth?
What is the great fear for a person?"

[The Venerable One said, ———]
"Craving causes a person to be born.
The mind of a person wanders about.
What exists falls into the cycle of rebirth.
The great fear for a person is suffering."

Section Six: What Causes Birth (2)
[The deity said, ———]
"What causes a person to be born?
What of a person wanders about?
What falls into the cycle of rebirth?
From what does a person not become liberated?"

[The Venerable One said, ———]
"Craving causes a person to be born.
The mind of a person wanders about.
What exists falls into the cycle of rebirth.
A person does not become liberated from suffering."

Section Seven: What Causes Birth (3)
[The deity said, ———]
"What causes a person to be born?
What of a person wanders about?
What falls into the cycle of rebirth?
What is the destiny of a person?"

[The Venerable One said, ———]
"Craving causes a person to be born.
The mind of a person wanders about.
What exists falls into the cycle of rebirth.
Action (karma) is the destiny of a person."'
(Buddha's Dialogue with the Gods / Translated by Hajime Nakamura / Iwanami Bunko, pp. 83-84)

Summarizing this:
Craving causes a person to be reborn,
The mind of a person wanders about,
What exists falls into the cycle of rebirth,
Action (karma) is the destiny of a person.

In this way, in Shakyamuni's view, the subject of reincarnation does not seem to be an individual as a distinct personality, because "what exists falls into the cycle of rebirth" can also be read as "what dies does not fall into the cycle of rebirth."

This is because, if it were a one-to-one reincarnation theory, Shakyamuni's answer should have been:

"The body (spirit body) of the previous life causes a person to be born.
The body (spirit body) wanders about.
The existing body (spirit body) falls into the cycle of rebirth.
The individual body (spirit body) is the destiny of a person."

For Shakyamuni, the body (spirit body) does not seem to carry much weight in considering reincarnation. Therefore, Osho's explanation that "memory reincarnates" is possible, and there can also be a phrasing like Shakyamuni's that can be taken as "action reincarnates."

Furthermore, in the view of Hiromoto Honzan, a Kundalini Yogi, it is written in a way that suggests that only the astral body and mental body reincarnate as individuals, and when it comes to the causal body, it is not really considered a distinct personality. In other words, if it is a body that is not a distinct personality, then it is not one-to-one reincarnation there.

It can be read that karma reincarnates, not individual subtle bodies.

Osho's Explanation of Reincarnation - 2

◎ The Reality of Reincarnation - 3

◎ Jade Tablet - 10 - 13

◎ Device for Vertical Ascent - 13

◎ The Decomposition and Reconstruction of Maya-like Memory

Furthermore, Osho Bhagwan's explanation continues:

'Most people don't remember because very few people inherit the whole memory system of one person. Many people inherit fragments from here and there. That collection of fragments forms your 'misery system'. Everybody who has died on this earth has died in misery.

Only a very few people have died in joy. Only a very few people have died understanding no-mind.

Those people leave no footprints. They don't leave the burden of memory for others to carry. They simply disappear into the cosmos. They have no mind. They have no memory system. They have already dissolved it in meditation. That's why an enlightened person is never reborn.

But unenlightened people, whenever they die, release all their patterns of misery. Misery attracts misery just as wealth attracts wealth. If you are miserable, misery miles away will be attracted to you. You become a right vehicle.

It is a very subtle phenomenon, like radio waves. Radio waves surround you, but you don't hear them. If you have the right apparatus to receive, you will hear them immediately. Even without the radio, the waves are moving around you.

There is no reincarnation. Still, misery reincarnates. The pain of millions of people is moving around you, looking for someone who wants to be miserable. A blissful person leaves no footprints. An awakened person dies like a bird flying into the sky, leaving no traces, no path. The sky remains empty.

Bliss moves without leaving any traces. That's why you don't inherit the heritage of the awakened ones. They simply disappear. But all kinds of fools and stupid people go on repeating the reincarnation of memory, and it becomes denser every day.

Be very conscious of your own desires and longings, because unknowingly they are already creating the seed of the new form you will take.'

(From The Zen Manifesto (Days with the Master / Ma Prem Shunyo / Osho Enterprises Japan, pp. 424-425))

Denying one-to-one or one-person-to-one-person reincarnation, and furthermore delving so deeply into the true mechanism of reincarnation, such an explanation may not have existed in recorded history.

The memory spoken of in this explanation is not a faint, ephemeral fragment of psychology like a recollection or a thought, but karma, which is the accumulated collection of good and bad deeds built up daily.

The fact that it is rare for one person's memory system to be entirely inherited by another person means that one-to-one reincarnation is scarce.

Looking at the Tibetan Book of the Dead, one gets the impression that one person's karma moves into another body and is reborn. However, Osho Bhagwan says that this is a misunderstanding and that reincarnation in such a form is rare.

What we call our system of misery is called ignorance = Maya. Maya propagates from one deceased person to many living people who are also Maya, and those who partially inherit Maya release that Maya in fragments when they die, allowing it to be taken up by multiple individuals who are susceptible media for Maya to inhabit.

This is the true state of reincarnation. Osho Bhagwan calls it the reincarnation of memory, but the memory he refers to is not memory as a psychological phenomenon, but the driving force, the motivation as karma that generates phenomena.

In the West, the art of memory, a technique of constructing reality through contemplation, has been known since ancient times.

The Earth's population has reached 7 billion, but there was a time when the entire world population was around 200 million. If so, where did the souls of the remaining 6.8 billion people come from? If the reincarnation interval in the afterlife were an extremely long period of thousands of years, it would make sense, but isn't that too long?

In other words, from the standpoint of acknowledging one-to-one reincarnation, the scenario that the immediate past life of most modern people was in the Neolithic period thousands of years ago would, from the perspective of discussing past life memories, lack interest in that reincarnation experience due to the soul's lack of experience living in a civilized society.

Then, countless questions naturally arise, such as what is ancestor memorial service, what is family, and what is the "self" that chooses a womb to be born into and reincarnate.

However, the emphasis of Osho Bhagwan's話 (story/teaching) is ultimately on awakening.

Osho's Explanation of Reincarnation - 1

◎ The Reality of Reincarnation - 2

◎ Jade Tablet - 10 - 12

◎ Device for Vertical Ascent - 12

◎ You Inherited Someone Else's Memories and Karma

Japanese people, during the Bon festival's sending-off fires, tend to believe that people reincarnate individually, and this has become a social norm. However, in reality, the situation is somewhat different. When considering soul fragmentation, one is made aware that a completely different explanation is needed for humans, karma, and memories.

The following explanation by Osho Bhagwan seems to be the definitive explanation of reincarnation.

That is, you were mostly born into this world inheriting the memories and karma of multiple other people.

Coincidentally, he gave this explanation on the eve of his own death, and I believe it is an explanation that could only emerge from a speaker in such a position. This was given in the form of Osho Bhagwan answering a question from his close disciple, Shunyo.

"My question was not about reincarnation, but the Master answered:

'The idea of reincarnation, found in all the religions of the East, is that the 'self' persists from one body to another, from one life to another.

This idea is not found in any religion that has its roots in Judaism. For example, it is not found in Christianity or Islam.

Now even psychiatrists are accepting that it is really possible for a person to remember past lives. The idea of reincarnation is gaining credibility.

But I want to tell you that the whole idea of reincarnation is based on a misunderstanding. It is true that when a person dies, his being becomes part of the whole. It doesn't matter whether he was a sinner or a saint.

But man also has a mind – that is, memory. In the past, there was not enough information to interpret memory as a bundle of thoughts or a wave of thoughts. But now it is much easier.

And regarding this matter, I can see that Gautama Buddha was in many ways far ahead of his time. He is the only man who would agree with my interpretation.

He said suggestive things, but he could not produce any proof. There was nothing that could be said verbally.

He said that when a person dies, his memories move towards a new womb. Not his self. We can understand it now.

When you die, you release memories all around. If you have lived a miserable life, all your misery will enter a suitable place, someone's memory system.

All of them may enter a single womb.

That's why people remember past lives. It is not your past. It is someone else's mind that you have inherited.'

(Days with the Master / Ma Prem Shunyo / Osho Enterprises Japan, pp. 423-424)"

※ Mind: Refers to the head/brain.