Now, let’s understand the Soul’s Journey After Death. The soul carries sense perceptions, functions of the organs, impressions of the mind, and all previous life actions from the former body to a new body. So, the soul encompasses the life essence and all the elements.
The soul journeys many lives as it is not possible to settle all karmic accounts in one lifetime. It faces new learnings in each birth. New situations present themselves for future experience and further learnings. Based on all the good and wrong actions committed, the soul takes different forms. It can take the body of a creature or grain or vegetable or mineral.
The soul instinctively has the knowledge of the body to be born. The view that there is no return from Chandraloka is incorrect. Despite good deeds done in one birth, there may be many more pending that have to be performed in other births. So also, all account balancing for immoral actions do not happen in one lifetime.
The soul visits and revisits the earth plane in different forms to understand, learn and experience the functioning of nature. It even transits in grains or creatures for a short time as there is no dharma and Adharma. The karmic dairy closes when the individual soul merges with the supreme soul.
The Three Paths after Death – Soul’s Journey After Death
The First Path – DEVAYANA
The Uttara Marga or Devayana route or Northern route or the path of Light is the route by which the Yogins reach the state of Brahman. This path leads to salvation. Having attained direction of the gods, the soul comes to the world of Agni, into the planet of Vayu, to the world of Varuna, to the world of Indra, to the world of Prajapati, to the world of Brahman. Devayana is the path of the devotees.
The Second Path – PITRIYANA
The Pitriyana is the path of darkness or the course of ancestors, which leads to rebirth. Those who make sacrifices to gods and other charitable works with the expectation of fruits visit the Chandraloka during this route and come back to the world when their karmic fruits are completed. This is a path of ignorance or darkness.
These two Paths, the path of the lunar and the path of the sun, are not open to the entire world. The bright route is available to the devotees and the shadowy route into the Karmin’s. Samsara is ceaseless, and so the paths also are eternal.
The Pranas of Jivanmuktas that have attained knowledge of the self is absorbed in Brahman. The Jivanmuktas who reach Kaivalya-Moksha or instant salvation have no return.
Scriptures state that a Yogi never losses his discrimination. He is aware of the nature of the two paths and the outcomes that they lead to. Yogis know this by acquiring Jnana or Knowledge. The Yogi, who knows that the route of Devayana or the path of light results in liberation and the path of darkness to the cycle of deaths and births, is no more deluded.
Knowledge about the paths serves as a compass or beacon-light to guide the Yogi’s steps at each moment.
The Third Path – Tritiyam Sthaanam -Soul’s Journey After Death
The Srutis says that people who do not go by way of Vidya across the Path of Devayana into Brahmaloka or by way of Karma across the path of Pitriyana to Chandraloka are reborn in lower forms. The immoral beings go to third place (Tritiyam sthaanam). According to the scriptures, those who go along neither of those ways become tiny creatures, flies, worms, etc., and live short lives. Their location is called the third place because it is neither Brahmaloka nor the Chandraloka.
