Beautiful Samsara, the central conception of the metamorphosis of the soul that finds itself immersed in the “sea of samsara. The soul strives to find release in what is called Moksha which is the release from the bonds of its own past deeds otherwise known as karma. Our Karmic experiences form part of the general web of which Samsara is made. In our Eastern spiritual systems, which does not assume the existence of a permanent soul, the body accepts a semi permanent personality core that goes through the process of Samsara.
The range of Samsara can stretch from a single thought (and sometimes minerals and animals) to the generative Divine. The rank of one’s birth in the hierarchy of human life depends on the quality of the previous life. A variety of explanations of the workings of the karmic process within Samsara have been proposed. According to several the soul after death first goes to a heaven or hell or somewhere in-between until it has consumed most of its good or bad karma. Then it returns to a new womb, the remainder of its karma having determined the circumstances of its next life. In theory this allows for the possibility of remembering one’s previous lives which is called jatismara, a talent that great Saints possess or may cultivate if their plans to return to the Earth, once Samsara is completed whether for personal or spiritual reasons. You can always decided to return if there is more to do.
Samsara can also be seen as world view. If you look at the universe as a kind of unknown realm that you got trapped in, you are living in Samsara. You can view this with rebirth or without, they are just two different versions of Samsara. What happens when you die is not really different than what happens when you go to sleep and wake up. The person who wakes up is not the same person who went to sleep. The difference is that that when you wake up you exclaim “I exist, I am the same person”. But you are not this is the delusion of self. When we die, we say, that person no longer exists, they are now gone, this too is the delusion of self. Birth and death are just notions, they are not properties of our reality. They are ideas that we are projecting onto the happenings around. One escapes the cycle of rebirth by realizing this. This is the foundation of Samsara.
This experience of escape from Samsara, sometimes called Nirvana or Moksha, allows us to stop returning to Earth, if we wish. Instead, we are able to experience our true nature as divinity. This idea is at the heart of the most profound wisdom traditions known to humanity. It is a way of seeing not only the course our own souls travels and deepening but the course of all things — by the very nature of their existence.
This Self is never born, nor does it ever perish; nor having come into existence will it again cease to be. It is birthless, eternal, changeless, ever-same (unaffected by the usual processes associated with time). It is not slain when the body is killed. Just as an individual forsaking dilapidated raiment dons new clothes, so the body-encased soul, relinquishing decayed bodily habitations, enters others that are new. —The Bhagavad Gita
