The Soul and Incarnation

What is incarnation? Is it the transfer of a soul to another body or is it the transformation of a soul? (Could it be both?) Does the memories of past soul formations continue to the next? Many do not believe in souls becoming incarnate in new bodies, but could they believe it possible to say that a soul can transform and create a new incarnation within the same body? This form of soul transformation, is the incarnation of a new identity out of the ashes of a body’s previous identity. A true soul transformation is not possible without the death of the previous identity, and that is a major life-altering event.

In the book, Jasmine, by Bharati Mukherjee, the main character has different names because in her life she has gone through different identities. Her soul perhaps did not fully understand all the lives it had passed through until she met with Dr. Mary Webb and was moved by her story of experiencing visions of her passed lives. Her present self, Jane Ripplemeyer, begins to question, "what if the soul is eternal?" She envisions the soul as a "giant long-playing record with millions of track, each of them a complete circle with only one diamond sharp microscopic link to the next life, and the next." She finds that she does believe that that is the path of the soul but that it is also possible that "extraordinary events can […] rip across incarnations, and deposit a life into a groove that was not prepared to receive it."

As soon as she has a realization that the soul is eternal and that lives can be torn and new lives take hold she sees the truth of it in her body’s life. Her first incarnation as Jyoti should have ended after the death of her husband but because of the extraordinary event of his death in her arms she transformed into Jasmine. And Jasmine is not Jane Ripplemeyer, the woman sitting before Dr. Mary Webb.

But beyond her shifts in identities is the question of who has lived every moment of her life? Who is a murderer, who held a dying husband, and who was the victim of multiple rapes? Which of these identities has lived these pains and horrors? The soul is the one who has endured all! No matter what life it was in it remembers all the pain of the past. Despite the transformations of the soul, it is eternal. The soul of Jyoti/Jasmine/Jane connects each life and connects each event in those lives.

Incarnation within one body is the connection of multiple lives to one soul and one body. The incarnations maybe totally different identities but they are of the same soul and therefore the same person. What one identity has experienced, the others have as well.