PLATE TWO

Reincarnation of the soul, the first fact that we need to understand on
the path of spiritual enlightenment, is graphically shown here.... As a
child grows, he becomes a boy, the boy becomes a young man, the young
man becomes an adult, and the adult becomes an old man. Throughout
all this time, although his body is changing from a child to an old man,
the person still feels that he has the same identity, the same ‘“‘self.’’ But
what is this ‘‘self,’°> and what happens to it at the time of death? Lord
Krsna explains in the Bhagavad-gitd (2.13 and 2.20), ‘‘Within the body is
the soul [the ‘‘self’’], and just as the soul passes from one’s infant body
to his youthful body, and from his youthful body to his aged body, so the
same soul passes into another body at death....For the soul there is
never birth nor death. Nor, having once been, does he ever cease to be.
He is unborn, eternal, ever-existing, undying, and primeval. He does not
perish when the body perishes.”’ Later in the Bhagavad-gita Lord Krsna
compares the process of changing bodies to discarding an old set of
clothes and donning a new set. But the soul’s ‘‘new set of clothes’ —his
new body—need not be human. There are 8,400,000 species, including
all kinds of one-celled creatures, aquatics, plants, reptiles, insects,
beasts, and human beings. By the law of karma, what kind of body a per-
son gets in his next life depends on the acts he performs and the desires
he cultivates in this life. (pp. 25-35)

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