Q: If someone pursues this path will he have to take birth again? Will this be his last lifetime? What is his path after death? Does he attain the spiritual abodes like Vaikuntha / Goloka which is the destination for Vaishnavas or does he merge into Brahman or does he attain these realms and continue the work from there?
ALOKDA: In the traditional conception life is seen as an illusion, Maya, a field of suffering or more correctly pleasure and pain in which the soul is caught due to Ignorance. Therefore to escape from life into Moksha by various forms of Yoga is seen as the highest goal. One cuts the web of karma and the individual soul dissolves in the Supreme Reality.
In the Vaishnava and other bhakti traditions, life is a Lila of the Cosmic Creator. The soul or the jiva though his portion is tied to Ignorance due to Maya and hence to pleasure and pain. The Maya is not a creator of illusion but a cause of bondage. By praying, worship and bhakti one draws the Grace of the Divine Being through whatever aspect one seeks, Vishnu, Shiva, Krishna, Devi etc. The Divine Being or the Godhead once pleased with the bhakta makes the devotee ascend to his divine abode and stay near the Godhead in an ethereal body, chinmaya deha. At the end of kalpa, his soul withdraws into the Supreme Transcendent Source, Parabrahma along with the Godhead.
In Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga the world is seen as a half finished progressive manifestation of the Divine. Here the meaning of mukti is to discover the Divine Presence within and live and act in the world in tune with the Divine Will. Since this means a cessation of the egoism of the doer, the Jiva lives and acts in the world as a free soul, jivanmukta. He is neither willing for dissolution of his individual soul nor afraid of returning to the world through Rebirth. He comes back to do God’s work in the world, in humanity, lokasangrahartha, to help mankind evolve further.
This is the ideal of the Gita. Now Sri Aurobindo reveals what that further is. He says that man is a transitional being and is destined to evolve into a fully conscious divine superhumanity by embodying higher and higher levels of consciousness than the present human mind. The disciples of Sri Aurobindo are freed through this Yoga, at first into the jivanmukta state. Then they consciously become parts of the original Divine Plan and collaborate in the creation of the future superhumanity. For this they are free to come back into a human body and participate more directly in this new Divine Project, creation of the supramental being. Or else after withdrawing from the physical body, dwell in Sri Aurobindo’s abode in the subtle physical world waiting for the New Creation to crystallise and then take up a new supramental divine body for the earthly life.
