How long after biological death until the soul reincarnates?

Airplanes fly from Tokyo to Boston. There are many paths they could take. Some go direct, over the arctic. Some have layovers in cities like London or Honolulu. Some might even stop in Korea and China first. Not everyone going from Tokyo to Boston travels the same route. Neither does everyone “traveling from one body to the next.”

Add to this another significant point:

When I die, my connection to physical points of reference will black out suddenly or fade out gradually. Without physical points of reference, is there any meaning to “days” or “years”? Such units depend, after all, on having a relationship to physical things (the Earth, Sun, Moon, etc.). When consciousness is not animating a physical host (“body”), it isn’t subject to conventional time. We notice this every time we fall asleep. Consciousness recedes from its physical host, and when we wake up a moment later, the clock has jumped 5, 6, 8, even 12 hours ahead.[1]

So, to reply directly to your question: We don’t know how long it will take when someone dies before “they” become whatever they become next. This is not because we don’t know enough about the after-life, but because

1. The afterlife-experience is not at all uniform for everyone, and
2. It is not trackable by conventional time-units.[2]

Does consciousness exist separate from the sentience of beings in physical forms?

The most important contribution of Vedic philosophy and science, and its only truly significant point of disagreement with modern psychology and cosmology, is this:

Consciousness is the basis of reality.

“Reality” (something tangibly experiential) cannot exist unless there is, pre-requisite to it, consciousness (a quantum capable of experiencing).

Consciousness is not a product of the universe. The universe is an inherent byproduct of consciousness. Physical forms exist “in” consciousness. Not visa-versa: consciousness does not exist “in” physical forms. Consciousness produces physical forms as its method of extending and enhancing itself.

So, to reply directly to your question: Consciousness can exist without structures like a brain, nervous system, etc. but it usually prefers not to, because it produces these structures to enhance and extend itself. These structures, however, cannot exist separately from a conscious host.

I feel that my dad “communicates” with me somehow, but if he is reincarnated, how would that be possible? So maybe he hasn’t reincarnated yet?

When a person dies there are two equally valid ways to see it: (1) they are gone, (2) they remain (like an echo).

When a father dies, the conditions that made him a father no longer apply to him. He actually ceases to be a father. He “was” (not “is”) a father.

This might prod us to ask if a “father” ever really existed at all? Well, a “father” was really a transient set of circumstances – like a wave in an ocean or a ripple on a river. The ocean is real, the river is real, but their waves and ripples have only a semblance of reality. Similarly a “father” (or any relationship or identity) is a semi-reality.

This could sound heartless and cold (after all, it means: “Your dad is gone, and was never really here.”), but it has very warm implications as well (“Your dad is almost as real now as he ever was.”).

Certainly, “he” can communicate with you, because “he” (or the part of “him” that you accessed) was always mostly you – your perception of him. Therefore he still exists, in your perception, like an echo. The same transient factors that made him real when he was “alive” can also let him have echoes of reality now.

We sometimes feel new communication with deceased people, not just “echoes” or “memories.” The same dynamic is working here: most of what a person does and says is not exactly done by them – a soul. What a person does is mainly done by the natural interactions of the transient circumstances of their bodies and minds. Since traces of those circumstances still exist, traces of their interactions can still happen even when they – the soul – has ceased to identify with or be aware of that situations and circumstances. This produces new experiences, new communications from people who have died.

So, there was no need to ask how long it takes before a soul is reincarnated, because you did not interact with your father’s soul. And that soul is not what was your father.

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[1] There is another category of time, “non-conventional time,” but it has no conventional units because it is not a product of physical events. This abstract time enables non-physical entities to proceed towards their aims.

[2] BTW, it is also technically quite important that there not be a fixed amount of time between one life and the next. Without this flexibility, the gods administering karma would find it impossible to do their work.