Why the Liberated Still Take Birth: Understanding Karma, Compassion, and the Real Meaning of Rebirth

Question

Here’s my question, madam. If I’ve become established in the awareness of the Self, doesn’t that mean I’m free from the bondage of karma? Then why would I take another birth?

Answer

See, whether you take birth or not doesn’t really depend on your personal wish.
Birth doesn’t happen simply because you want it — it happens as part of a larger process.

Across many lifetimes, we have gathered countless desires, tendencies, attachments, and unfulfilled wishes.
These impressions remain stored deep within the subconscious.
They don’t vanish just because we intellectually understand the Self.
They can only dissolve through experience, through living life in awareness.

So, taking birth is not something bad.
In fact, it’s through taking birth — through human experience — that the stored desires and tendencies within us find their completion and eventually get exhausted.
By living consciously, through knowledge, we dissolve these impressions one by one.

That’s why taking birth again is actually a good thing — it gives the soul a chance to complete what’s left unfinished.

Question

But if I’m already established in Self-awareness, wouldn’t all those old karmic impressions already be gone?

Answer

Not quite. They don’t end simply by coming into Self-awareness.
That’s why in the Ramayana, Rama is the symbol of Self-knowledge — yet even after Rama appears, there’s still so much work to be done.

Look at His journey — He’s not sitting in comfort.
He has to face challenges, conflicts, and inner battles.
Similarly, even after awakening to Self-knowledge, the latent tendencies — attachment, anger, desire, ego — still exist within the subtle layers of consciousness.

The awakened awareness must now work through them, just as Rama works through His mission.

So, even after realizing the Self, we continue to live, act, and purify — until the inner storehouse (sanchit karma) becomes completely empty.

Question

Okay, but let’s say this happens over many births — and finally all my karmas are exhausted. Then what happens?

Answer

That’s a beautiful question — and our scriptures give an answer.
They say that when all karmic bonds and tendencies are fully dissolved, and there remains nothing more to be done for oneself, then such great souls take birth again out of compassion — karuṇāvash, moved by compassion.

They incarnate not because they have to, but because they wish to help humanity.
They come to share knowledge, to guide others toward liberation.

Think of Buddha, Krishna, or other enlightened beings — their own work was complete, yet they took form again, not for personal gain but for the upliftment of others.

There’s even a story about Sri Ramakrishna.
He once said that though he had risen to the highest state, he deliberately kept one small desire — the love of food — alive within himself.
When his wife asked why, he said, “I’ve kept this one desire so that it will give me a body again — because through that body I have some work to do.”

That’s how compassionate souls choose to return — not from bondage, but from purpose.

Question

But earlier you said birth isn’t in our hands. And now you’re saying some great beings take birth by choice — how do we understand that?

Answer

That’s right — for most of us, birth is not in our hands.
We continue to take birth according to the store of accumulated karma — our sanchit impressions.
Only when that entire store is emptied — when every trace of desire, attachment, and identification is gone — does birth become a matter of choice, not compulsion.

That is a very advanced stage — far beyond where most of us are right now.

Question

Then why didn’t King Dasharatha attain liberation? I mean, his desires must have been fulfilled — what kept him bound?

Answer

See, that’s where the difficulty begins — we start treating these stories as historical accounts of individual people.
But Dasharatha is not a man’s name here.
Dasharatha represents the pure mind — the mind with ten senses (dasha-ratha — “he who rides the ten chariots”).

So, when we ask, “Did Dasharatha attain moksha?” we’re missing the point.
This isn’t about a physical king’s liberation; it’s about the inner journey of the mind.
The pure mind naturally moves toward liberation — that’s its destiny.

Question

True, but still, in the story, Rama didn’t perform his father’s last rites — why is that?

Answer

That’s exactly why I say — if we read these stories as mere history, we’ll never find answers.
You’ll have thousands of such questions — “Why didn’t Rama return?”, “Why didn’t Dasharatha attain moksha?”, “Why did this or that happen?”
You can write them all down — but you won’t find answers in a literal reading.

When I began studying these texts myself, I had the same questions.
And when none of them were answered, I realized — these aren’t historical stories.
They’re spiritual metaphors.

And when you start reading them through that lens — with spiritual understanding —
then every single question finds its answer within.