Conscious Birth of Incarnations
When a pup, a dog or even a baby is born, it takes time for the new born to settle into its body and perform. In fact a human child takes longer than any other animal to move and to walk. A pup or a calf struggles after it is born for a few minutes, gets up tentatively, wobbles around and is functional. A human child, however, takes several months before it starts moving.
It happens the same way with the human spirit as well. To evolve and get liberated, the human spirit struggles through its samskaras. Samskaras are the embedded impressions and memories of past actions and desires. Samskaras drive our decisions, very often unconsciously. In the normal course of events most of us are bound by our samskaras and live our entire life chasing them, forever unfulfilled. When experienced and unfulfilled, these samskaras which are stored deep in our unconscious mind reappear with renewed vigor. Many of these samskaras follow us through many birth cycles as mind sets and attitudes. A few amongst us, a few lucky ones, who are mostly guided by enlightened masters, may find ways to work our way out of the bondage of our samskaras through meditation and sometimes through sheer devotion and finally find liberation.
These beings are born with burning desire to be enlightened. They have not been enlightened in previous births, have been close to it, have been close to enlightened Masters, but for reason or another had missed the bus, so to speak. Such rare beings, who seek desperately in this birth and finally find liberation, enlightenment, mukti, moksha or whatever name you wish to give to this experience of your being one with the divine, the Cosmic Energy, the Existence, are the jeevan muktas. Jeevan Muktas are different from incarnations; they do not have a conscious birth; they are born like all of you and struggle through life in the same manner. They do not arrive on this Planet Earth fully conscious of their true divine reality. They practice sadhanas (spiritual pursuits) diligently till their chosen path of gnana (wisdom), bhakti (devotion) or dhyana (meditation) leads them to the realization of their innate divinity.
Then, there are Incarnations. Incarnations take birth consciously, fully aware of their divinity within. They too may go through sadhanas; however, these sadhanas in the case of incarnations arise out of the realization of their own divinity, instead of being the necessary prerequisite to such understanding and realization. The sadhanas are part of their witnessing consciousness.
What you need to understand is this. Incarnations are already enlightened beings who descend upon Planet Earth with a mission defined by the Cosmic Energy. They have no choice in this matter. It is as if the energy of these enlightened beings is sucked into Earth due to a combination of circumstances; wherein the Cosmic Energy decides that the presence of the energy of this enlightened being would be value to human beings.
Incarnations are like the legendary swans, the Paramahamsas. These swans fly high in the sky and when they lay their eggs, their eggs hatch in mid air. The in fant bird emerges from the falling egg and starts flying without ever touching ground. These swans never touch ground during their entire lives. They are forever in flight; born in flight they mate in flight and die in flight. These birds have conscious birth. Paramahamsas are incarnations, who come down to Planet Earth fully realized, fully aware and conscious, and ready to fly fully conscious.
Jeevan Muktas on the other hand are like pups, calves and infants who struggle to get up and move. Unlike other pups, calves and humans, jeevan muktas eventually learn to fly and reach the same level of realization as the Paramahamsas. At the level of divine realization both jeevan muktas and Paramahamsas reach the same level. The difference between them is the starting point which is the conscious birth of the Paramahamsas. Paramahamsas do not need sadhanas and tapas (penance) to reach enlightenment; they already are enlightened at birth. Their sadhanas and tapas are only to inspire others and provide other spiritual sadhakas (spiritual practitioners) the template for guidance in their individual paths to enlightenment.
You may be tempted to ask how we know whether we are dogs or Swans.
When this question was asked of him THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM said: You must be at least a dog to be here. Otherwise you would not have reached this far and ask. If you are a Swan you would not even ask; you will know. Target is where you park, and you walk to the goal. (This incident was at the LA ashram and there was a Target Store in the Mall in the next block, where visitors parked their cars).