In first part - https://www.astrosaxena.com/Musing1 , we have seen that how energy or consciousness reached up to the human incarnation. We have also seen how things went wrong from human incarnation itself as illusion of Ego and the Doer has set inside the Psyche of human conditioned mind.

Now, we will see how astral body/mind moves from one body to another body in different births.

Plant and Animal Incarnations – Up to this point, energy was exhibiting itself through different incarnations. Also, energy is taking shape of different plants and animals as per its wish to explore new things. Osho says that it is not that Giraffe has got a long neck, so Giraffe can eat leaves of tall trees but it is the other way around that Giraffe had desires to eat the leaves of tall trees, hence Giraffe is manifested with long neck. So, energy is exhibiting itself in various ways and play is continuing.

Human Incarnation – Now, the energy is still exhibiting itself as a human but the only difference is that human mind is getting conditioned. A child is taking birth as pure consciousness. That’s why; every child is super happy. They haven’t achieved anything in life as yet but happiness is extreme. Why? Because mind is unconditioned and there is no criteria in mind that I can be happy only when I get the promotion or I can be happy only when I get married to someone or I can be happy only when I can win an election. As a child has no criteria for happiness, child can be forever happy.

But then society starts playing its role. People around a child start giving him criteria that he can only be happy if he scores better marks than others in class or he can be happy only when he defeats another child in any competition. And when he does these things, people around him tell that how great he is!!! Ego has started developing.

Child starts believing that he is the doer and nothing will happen in life if he doesn’t do anything. In a way, he has started accepting himself separate from existence, like an island. He has started feeling that his individual life is separate and depends on his efforts. Important point is to remember that person need not to leave actions but he needs to let-go of the doer.

And once we accept ourselves as doer then the whole thing is not play anymore. Then ambitious start entering in life as person feels that if I am the doer then if I do more, I can get ahead of others. So, now the play is spoilt. Now, it can’t be a play at all when people are seriously speeding over each other as some purposes have entered in life. Till now, everything was purposeless. Best way to understand this difference is by watching a friendly/charity game between two teams of any sport and then watching a competitive game between same teams. In charity or friendly game players would be enjoying themselves and activity of playing itself is giving happiness. But in competitive game, winning is important, playing is not important.

As discussed, everything is a play without any purpose because only Ego needs a purpose to be fulfilled. As existence/energy/God has no separate sense of I/Ego, there can’t be any purpose with anything created by energy. There is no ego to be satisfied, right?

So, things go in wrong direction with this conditioning of society and we lose our path. This is what every spiritual Guru is trying to tell us that this whole life is a drama, don’t take it so seriously.

Losing and Re-gaining – But everything is equally necessary in life. Even this loss of path and conditioning of pure conscious state is equally important. Understand it like this, we lose importance or significance of something which we always have. We can see it in our daily life. A friend who is always available for us, we start ignoring the same friend. That’s why; marriages are collapsing day-by-day because partners are taking each other for granted.

To realize the importance of something, we must lose it for some time. Same applies for pure conscious state of existence. We must lose it, live our life in ego, suffer due to ego and then come back on the path of re-gaining lost pure consciousness.

This is what makes this whole journey of human incarnation as more a Maya or Illusion as the whole journey is for coming back to your unconscious self.

Various Incarnations – Let’s understand this from various births we go through –

Plants and Animals – As I said, up to this point, energy is exhibiting itself purposelessly. Energy wants to explore different things and different bodies, hence it is enjoying the ride.

Humans – With human incarnation, as the sense of separation takes place and conditioning/criteria/separate desires come in, now the incarnations are taking place due to unfulfilled ambitions. Let’s understand it like this. 

• An astral body or mind just moves out of animal kingdom and searches for the human womb for the first time to explore desires of human life. As it finds two people in sexual intercourse which can provide environment for it to take human body, it takes that womb.
• Now, important thing is that as consciousness is spread everywhere, Astral Body + Physical Body + Consciousness together will be termed as conception of a child.
• Now, the child takes birth. Conditioning of society begins. At the same time, we have to keep in mind that this child has just come from animal kingdom. He can’t leave all animalistic traits all of a sudden. So, this child as he grows up, may show more animalistic traits and can be seen as angry, violent, criminal-minded person. So, first few lives can be spent in exhausting those animalistic traits and after that the astral body/mind may settle down in evolving as human being. 
• With every life, we create a pattern of life and with every next life, existence get us into situations where we can evolve from that pattern of previous life. So, I don’t follow that logic of we are suffering for the sins of our previous lives as it makes concept of God as retributive or revengeful God. I feel it as compassion of God that it is providing us opportunity after opportunity in lives after lives to improve upon ourselves and evolve into higher consciousness.
• If astral body/mind is receptive towards this evolution then in one life or the other, mind will realize the presence of eternal consciousness and also the illusion of separate existence. That day, mind will break and come out of all conditioning and only consciousness will be left, pervading all over. So, the play will end where it began. This is what they call Enlightenment, the realization of self or the whole illusion. Everything takes a 360 degree turn and goes back to the source. Person realizes that it was his illusion that he was doing anything. All the way, it was play of energy and nature.
• Throughout this process, what keeps us away from truth or reality is the conditioning we get from people around us and the criterions we make for life based on those conditionings. Like, we all have certain criterions for life. For example, this should happen or should not happen, this is good or this is bad, one shouldn’t die young etc. But existence or God has no such criterions for life. So, breaking this conditioned mind is the biggest trouble of all.