Dear Ektaji, 

At death, Consciousness goes back to Consciousness at rest, and Samskaras go back into the pool of Consciousness. If the Chit-jada granthi [knot of Samskaras] is not released, then the knot remains even upon the so-called death of the body-idea. That co-ordinate of consciousness is not fully at rest, as the Samskaras’ cluster continues simmering. The nature of consciousness is to unknot, so a new body-idea will be projected to help unknot through meditation or knowledge. Is this correct?

Answer:

The mind has made several assumptions in the question. Let us inquire into them carefully rather than turn borrowed knowledge into another belief. Ask the mind the following questions:

• • You say that at death, Consciousness returns to Consciousness at rest, Samskaras return to the pool of Consciousness, and an unresolved knot may give rise to another body-idea. How do you know about the body-idea? Have you directly witnessed what happens after the death of the body, or are you attempting to explain the unknown through intellectual reasoning?’
  • All coordinates of Consciousness may not have knot dissolution as part of their Flow. Can we definitively declare that every unresolved knot must generate another body-idea for the purpose of its dissolution? That would be an assumption, wouldn’t it?
  • Traditional teachings on Karma and Samskaras provide an explanatory framework for the apparent continuity of conditioning. However, an explanation is not the same as Direct Seeing. Is it?

The Buddha cautioned against becoming entangled in speculative questions that do not lead to the cessation of suffering. His Middle Way avoids clinging to the extremes of existence and nonexistence. Hence, don’t accept blindly, nor reject blindly. Let’s not conclude that there must be another birth, nor insist that another birth is impossible. Recognize the limits of direct seeing and stay with that. Honor that!

Now, let us approach your question from the highest standpoint of Ajāta Vāda. Gauḍapāda would take the inquiry to an entirely different level.

• • What birth? What death? What knot? Who is bound? Who needs liberation?
  • If Brahman alone IS, who was born? Who dies? Who travels from one body to another?
  • Where is the independently existing entity that carries Samskaras from one birth to the next?
  • Before asking what happens to the knot after death, have you directly recognized the knot itself?

Begin with what is available for Direct Seeing.

• • In Waking, the ‘I’ arises, accompanied by thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions. The ‘I’ appropriates these spontaneous arisings through the claims ‘I think’, ‘I experience’, and ‘I do’.
  • In Dreaming, another character and another world arise. The Dreamer also assumes an identity and experiences its Dream World as real.

When the Dream dissolves, where does the Dreamer go? When the Waker disappears in Deep Sleep, where does the Waker go? Did you witness a character travelling somewhere, or did you witness the dissolution of an arising into Nothingness?

When the ‘I’ reappears, can you directly recognize its spontaneous arising from Nothingness? Now inquire: Is the ‘I’ a continuously existing entity, or is continuity merely assumed because of the familiarity and conditioning accompanying its repeated arisings? This is where the inquiry becomes meaningful.

• • The Samskaras may be recognized through the familiar patterns accompanying spontaneous arisings.
  • The Chit-jada granthi can be investigated through the false identification of Consciousness with the body-mind.
  • The arising and collapse of the ‘I’ reveals the Pure Consciousness beyond the world-body-mind-witness complex.

But does any of this establish that an independently existing entity survives bodily death and acquires another body? No such conclusion follows merely from these observations. Continuity in conditioning is not proof of continuity in a separate individual. Likewise, the disappearance of the ‘I’ does not mean that Consciousness has travelled somewhere. Nor does its reappearance establish that somebody has returned. One must be careful not to turn Consciousness into a physical substance that moves between states, rests in a reservoir, or transports knots from one location to another.

Conventionally, birth, death, and karma are explained through the apparent continuity of conditioning, but Ajāta Vāda points to the highest Truths:

• • There has never been any real birth, bondage of conditioning, liberation from conditioning, or death.
  • There is no independently existing knot that must undertake a journey to become unknotted. The knot itself belongs to the appearance of ignorance.

So, remind the mind:

• • Why worry about what happens to the ‘I’ after the death of the body when the ‘I’ can be investigated in its present arising and dissolution?
  • Why construct a story about a future body-idea when the present body-idea has not yet been fully recognized as an appearance?
  • Why search for the destination of Samskaras when their manifestations can be witnessed here and now?

Let what is directly known be known. Let what remains unknown remain unknown. Do not fill the unknown with assumptions merely to satisfy the intellectual mind. Even the question ‘What happens to Me after death?’ contains the unexamined assumption that there is a continuously existing ‘Me’ to whom something must happen. Investigate that ‘Me’ first. At the highest level of Ajāta Vāda, the question of who is reborn loses its foundation when no independently existing entity is found to have been born in the first place.

Brahman alone IS. What is there to be born, to die, or to return?