Have You Been Here Before?

Attempts to find scientific evidence for rebirth have not been very successful

Is rebirth possible? Is there any scientific basis for believing in reincarnation?

Such questions have always perplexed man since time immemorial, but conclusive evidence to resolve this eternal mystery still eludes us.

To start with, let us align ourselves to the thought that reincarnation is not an abstract religious concept or a philosophy, but could be a natural phenomenon. The Theosophical Society which draws much of its inspiration from India, was the first institution in modern times in widely spreading the concept of reincarnation in the West. It has taken reincarnation, as well as karma and spiritual evolution, as one of its cardinal tenets.

Probably the best known collection of scientific data that appears to provide scientific proof that reincarnation is real, is the life’s work of Dr. Ian Stevenson - an academic psychiatrist, who led the study of reincarnation in the United States until his death in 2007. 

Dr. Stevenson’s credentials are impeccable. He was a medical doctor with many scholarly papers to his credit before he began paranormal research. He headed the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia. Dr. Ian Stevenson, who often called reincarnation the “survival of personality after death,” saw the existence of past lives as a potential explanation for the differences in human condition [source: New York Times]. He believed past experiences plus genetics and the environment could help elucidate phobias and other unexplained personality traits.

Instead of relying on hypnosis (like Dr. Brian Weiss) to verify that an individual has had a previous life, he instead chose to collect thousands of cases (in India, Africa, the Near and Far East, UK, USA, and elsewhere) of children who spontaneously (without hypnosis) remember a past life.

His studies are scrupulously objective and methodologically impeccable. The late Herbert S. Ripley, former chairman of the psychiatry department at the University of Washington in Seattle, noted, “We are lucky to have someone of his ability and high integrity investigating this controversial area. Wrote Dr. Harold Lief in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases: “Either he is making a colossal mistake, or he will be known as the Galileo of the twentieth century.”

Spontaneous past life memories in a child can be investigated using strict scientific protocols. Hypnosis, while useful in researching into past lives, is less reliable from a purely scientific perspective. He has over 3,000 cases in his files. Many people, including skeptics and scholars, agree that these cases offer the best evidence yet for reincarnation.

In order to collect his data, Dr. Stevenson methodically documents the child’s statements of a previous life. Then he identifies the deceased person the child remembers being, and verifies the facts of the deceased person’s life that match the child’s memory. He even matches birthmarks and birth defects to wounds and scars on the deceased, verified by medical records (such as autopsy photographs). His strict methods systematically rule out all possible “normal” explanations for the child’s memories.

Some of these children have recognized former homes and neighborhoods as well as still-living friends and relatives. They have recalled events in their purported previous lives, including their often violent deaths. In many cases birthmarks and other physical anomalies match up with injuries suffered in the prior life (for more read “Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect”)

The most obvious objection to reincarnation is that there is no evidence of a physical process by which a personality could survive death and travel to another body. Another objection is that most people do not remember previous lives. Possible counter-arguments are that not all people reincarnate, or that most people do not have memorable deaths.

For the foreseeable future, there can be no absolute scientific proof of reincarnation, and none against it. It is up to the individual whether they take a personal stand or not on the issue. Next week I will respond to your questions and concerns about rebirth.

.
Thought for the Week

“It is the secret of the world that all things
subsist and do not die, but only retire
a little from sight and afterwards return again.
Nothing is dead;
men feign themselves dead,
and endure mock funerals and there they stand
looking out of the window , sound and well,
in some strange new disguise.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
US Philosopher & Poet
.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

First published in Gray Matter - The Hindustan Times

Once Is Not Enough

Do you believe in reincarnation and rebirth?

Reincarnation: “to be made flesh again”, is a belief that some essential part of a living being (the spirit or soul, the ‘higher’ or ‘true’ self, the ‘divine spark’, or simply ‘I’) survives death to be reborn in a new body. Accordingly, a new personality is developed during each life in the physical world, but some part of the self remains constant throughout the successive lives.

Although Eastern religions accept reincarnation as part of their doctrine, Christianity has rejected it since 553 AD. Sufi mystics and poets in the Islamic tradition celebrate reincarnation:

‘I died as mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was man.
Why should I fear?
When was I less by dying?’

Reincarnation is a subject that has captured the popular imagination and the creative world. Many feature films revolve around the theme, including The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (1975), Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), Karan Arjun (1995) and The Mummy Returns (2001) to name but a few.

THE FEAR OF UNHAPPINESS
The Upanishads hold that we live in accordance with our deep, driving desires and it is those desires that are predominant at the time of death that determine what our next life is to be. In short, we come back to earth to achieve the satisfaction of that desire.

Buddhism expounds that desire causes suffering. If we examine our thoughts and feelings we will see that there is not one moment when we are not continually wishing for something or pushing something away.

This constant state of craving and aversion doesn’t allow us to live in the moment. We are so afraid that we will experience unhappiness by not getting what we want, that we go to great lengths trying to make sure the world provides for us what we think we need to be happy — love, security, money, sex, recognition, whatever. 

As our egos drive us continuously in the search for happiness in the outside world, we create a lot of drama and pain in this journey. A turning point can come when we no longer look to the outside world to give us happiness and turn inward on our paths to find the Universal Consciousness.

FACT FINDING
Many Lives, Many Masters is the true story of a prominent psychiatrist, his young patient, and the past-life therapy that changed both their lives.

As a traditional psychotherapist, Dr Brian Weiss, spent years in the disciplined study of human psychology.

He held steadfastly to conservatism in his profession, distrusting anything that could not be proved by traditional scientific method. But when he met his 27-year old patient, Catherine, in 1980, who came to his office seeking help for her anxiety, panic attacks, and phobias, it jolted him out of his conventional systems of thought and psychiatry.

For the first time, he came face-to-face with the concept of reincarnation and the many tenets of Hinduism, which, as he says in the last chapter of the book, “I thought only Hindus… practised.”

If you’d like to know who you were in your last life, log on to  http://www.thebigview.com/pastlife and just type in the date when you were born in your present life and share your experience with us.

.
Thought for the Week

“I used to believe in reincarnation,
but that was long ago, in another life”
Dave Schinbeckler
.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

First published in Gray Matter - The Hindustan Times