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Question: What are your thoughts on the recent popular serial Raaz Pichle Janam Ka?

Answer: The serial brought the much-neglected topic of reincarnation to the forefront of the public mind. This is itself a significant and positive development. For too long has reincarnation been neglected as a sectarian, sentimental, religious belief. Reincarnation is not just a Hindu or Buddhist belief; verses confirming it can be found in all the great religions of the world including Christianity, Islam and Judaism, as is persuasively presented in several well-researched books including ISKCON scholar Steven Rosen’s landmark book *The Reincarnation Controversy*. Even in science, bold researchers like Dr Ian Stevenson have for decades accumulated strong

evidence supporting reincarnation. That’s why in India and in the West, books that present this evidence are becoming increasingly popular. The serial *Raaz Pichle Janam Ka* was an example of this phenomenon.

Unfortunately, such popular depiction is often romanticized and sensationalized and this distracts people from the seriousness of the reality of reincarnation. Many people fancifully imagine about their past life and some even try out past-life regressions. No doubt, such regressions can give factually accurate information about the person’s past life. No doubt, they can of free people from phobias caused by past-life traumas. But still they do nothing to save us from future traumas – in this life and the next. We still have to undergo the trauma of old age, disease and death in this very life. And we being souls who will take another body in our future

life, will have to undergo these traumas again and again. Unless we try to understand Raaz Agle Janam Ka (The Secret of the Next Life).

This secret is clearly explained in the Bhagavad-gita (8.4-5) in terms of the law of last thought. Whatever is our last thought while dying becomes the template on which our next body is built. So an intelligent person chooses to think, at the time of death, of God and of one’s eternal relationship with him so as to gain an eternal spiritual body in his kingdom, where one never faces any bodily traumas. But we can’t easily think of God at the time of death; our last thought is the thought that we

have most cultivated throughout our life. So only when we practice thinking of God during our life by chanting his holy names like the Hare Krishna mantra can we remember him at our last moment.

The serial tries to illuminate the past; the Gita illuminates the future. It’s upto us to decide which raaz matters to us.

The author is associate-editor for ISKCON’s global magazine, Back to Godhead