And this theory, when amended with certain necessary modifications, helps to illustrate the symbolical or esoteric interpretation of the Bardo Rebirth Doctrine.
In further illustration, applicable to the higher Hinduism as to the higher Buddhism, advocates of this interpretation point out that even before the final dissolution of the human body of the moment of death there is incessant transmigration of the bodily atoms. So long as the body is the receptacle of the consciousness-principle, it is said to renew itself completely every seven years. And even as the constituents of the physical man thus transmigrate throughout all organic and inorganic kingdoms and the mind remains unchangedly human during the brief cycle of one life-time, so, normally, it likewise remains human during the greater evolutionary cycle—i.e. until it reaches the end of all sangsāric evolution, namely, Nirvāṇic Enlightenment.
The esoteric teaching concerning this may be stated literally: That which is common to the human and to the sub-human worlds alike, namely, matter in its varied aspects as solids, liquids, and gases, eternally transmigrates. That which is specifically human and specifically sub-human remains so, in accordance with the law of nature that like attracts like and produces like, that all forces ever follow the line of least
as Sayana in his Commentary in the Atharva Veda (xix) seems to explain, the boy mentioned is the same as the boy Nachiketas of the [Taittirīya] Brāhmaṇa, who went to the realm of Yama, the King of the Dead, in Yama-Loka, and then returned to the realm of men. That this primeval Hades legend was interpreted esoterically as teaching a rebirth doctrine is confirmed by the ancient Katha Upanishad, the story of Nachiketas being used therein as a literary vehicle to convey the highest Vedāntic teachings concerning birth, life, and death. (Cf. Katha Upanishad, ii. 5; iii. 8, 15; iv. 10–11; vi. 18.)
Preserved in an Old Javanese MS. of the fourteenth century is a very similar Hades legend in which the Yaksha Kuñjarakarṇa is commanded by the Lord Vairôchana ‘to go to Yama’s kingdom to see what is prepared for all evil-doers’. Peculiar interest attaches to this version, because it records a doctrine—akin to that referred to by the Greek and Roman writers—of thousand-year periods of transmigration into plants, animals, and defective human beings, prior to rebirth in a human body free from karmic blemishes. It mentions, too, that from Yama’s kingdom Pûrṇavijaya was recalled to human life. (Cf. The Legend of Kuñjarakarṇa, translated from the Dutch of Prof. Kern by Miss L. A. Thomas, in the Indian Antiquary, Bombay, 1903, vol. xxxii, pp. 111–27.)
