Who Chooses Our Next Birth? How Karma’s Coding Decides Everything

Question

Is our next birth chosen by us, or is it given to us according to our karma and level of consciousness? Do we select it ourselves, or does someone else decide it for us?

Answer

It works like this:
Whatever actions we do—our feelings, thoughts, attitude, perception, and behavior—leave an imprint inside us. This imprint becomes a kind of inner coding. We carry this coding with us just like a cap we wear on our head; that cap is called upādhi, an attribute attached to the soul.

Based on this coding, we receive the next birth.
So who makes the choice?
The coding itself.
And who created that coding?
We did.

Through our current actions, our feelings, our thoughts, we create this inner code. When the body falls, that same coding gives us the next body. So both things are involved: today we are creating the code, and when this life ends, that code produces the next birth.

This coding is formed by three kinds of karma together: sañcita, prārabdha, and kriyamāṇa.
It is the combined result of them all.

It is not that only one past life decides our next birth. It comes from the journey of many, many lives. Suppose your journey has been going on for a thousand years—then the coding of those thousand years is active. Out of all those files, any one file can rise to the top at any moment.
That is why it is said that the movement of karma is very deep and mysterious.
How the Supreme arranges the results is His own divine working. Earlier people used to say “Chitragupta keeps the records,” but it is simply a way of expressing the same idea.

In worldly life, we see similar things. One person consistently performs “very good,” another performs “good,” but in one particular year the second person performs “outstanding.” That outstanding result lifts him above the one who was always very good.
In the same way, every action—good or bad—gives its own result.
A sinful action will give its own outcome.
A good action will give its own outcome.
Good cannot cancel bad; bad cannot cancel good.
All results have to be received separately.

Take the example of Ratnākara the robber. He killed and looted for the sake of his family. When he was asked whether his family would share his sins, he had no answer. He realized that he alone would have to face the consequences. That realization awakened him, he transformed, and later became a sage.
So even after doing so much sin, one outstanding awakening lifted him very high.

Something similar can happen in ordinary life too. A child may perform poorly in school for years, barely passing. But one day a talent suddenly awakens within him—this too is the result of some good karma. Just as bad karma makes it hard for him to study, good karma can awaken inner talent.
This is how karma works.
It cannot be fully explained—only understood a little.

The main thing is to know that we perform both good and bad actions, and all results will come. We don’t know which file is on top and which file is hidden underneath, but every result will come in its own time.

And the most important insight is this:
I alone am responsible for what I do.
If I earn money, I should earn it honestly, because I am the one who will stand before the Supreme at the time of accounting. He will not ask me whom I did it for—my family, my parents, my children. He will ask only: “What did you do?”

The day this understanding dawns, a deep change takes place within.
That is what awakening means—jāgriti, real wakefulness.