Creation involves the putting together of substances; what is put together must come apart in course of time, and get liberated. The individual is created and so he has to disintegrate and die. Now, some are born happy, some are enjoying health and happy lives, some are born miserable; others are born feeble-minded or as defectives. Who hurt them or injured them? God is proclaimed as just and kind, is He not? It can be argued how such a God can ever be so partial and prejudiced. How can such differential treatment come into the realm ruled by God? Such doubts are natural. But the vision of the sages of Bharat who moulded the thought of this land, revealed that God is not the cause of these differences; they are the consequences of the acts indulged in by the individual in lives previous to the present one. They result in happiness and misery, health and handicaps. Good and bad are self-made, the effects of what was done in previous lives. There are two things that stand like parallel lines before us when we consider this subject, mental and material. If satisfactory solutions can be found for the problems relating to human nature and its special qualities in materialism, then there can be no basis for believing that there is a factor called Atma, or the Soul.

When an item of work is done again and again, it becomes a habit, a skill doesn’t it? Therefore, the skill or habit that a newborn exhibits must be due to constant repetition indulged in, long ago, isn’t it? Of course, such practice must have taken place in a previous life or in many lives, so it is necessary to posit the validity of the belief in past and future lives, for all living beings. This is a basic belief in Bharatiya spiritual thought. (BPV, pp. 20-21)

Man has immensity in him; this is the core of Bharatiya thought. A person can discard as many gross bodies in which he takes temporary residence, as the number of times he files his nails, but the subtle body cannot be so changed; it lasts and persists. This is the most secret doctrine of Bharatiya spiritual thought. Man means: a complex of the gross body, the subtle body and the Jiva, the individual. (BPV, pp. 45-47)