"In Mukhya Brihadaranyaka Upanishads 3.2.13 it is stated that after death the different parts of a person return to the different parts of Nature from whence they came, that even his soul (atman) goes into space and that only his karma, or effect of work, remains over?
These lines I feel have been misread and misrepresented. When it says that a person returns to different parts of nature it is in fact talking about the elements returning to the basic components that make up nature as in a building decaying back to sand. When they are talking about Karma here, they are not talking about the later idea of births and reincarnations, but rather just pure actions. That is if one plants a seed in the ground and then passes away, the effect of planting that seed, a grown tree, persists beyond the planter. All actions in the life go beyond this lifetime, but this does not mean that the individual lives again to experience it in the same consciousness, as they have now merged into the elements which have made all new living and non living beings, the food and is the ultimate meaning of the sacrifice.
