Karma and Rebirth

Author(s): T G Kalghatgi
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 61

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T. G. Kalghatgi
Therefore explanation of these facts by pre-existence is better and more satisfactory. 23
3. It is said that the theory of rebirth is inconsistent with the principle of heredity. The parents are reflected in the child both in physical and psychological traits. It is unnecessary to assume that it comes from another life due to its own traces acquired in the past. But this difficulty will hold good for every theory. It is simpler to hold that the self seeking for rebirth obtains embodiment in the frame offering the necessary conditions. The physical body derived from the parents according to the laws of heredity is appropriated by the conscious self. If this theory is not acceptable, much less is the other view which holds that a sort of supernatural essence is thrust into the bodily context at the appropriate moment. ... ... The soul draws around it the forces necessary for its proper embodiment. It is therefore natural that the child should be like the parents.24
If the creation of the whole nature is to be credited to the physical birth, then the body, life and soul of the individual are only a continuation of the body, life and soul of his ancestry, and there is no room anywhere for soul's rebirth.
Heredity cannot explain the psychic force other than the ancestral continuity. Heredity has shown that there is no soul, no psychic force which forms its material according to its pre-dispositions.
4. Another consideration is from memory. Here we may raise a question as (i) from the fact of loss of memory and (ii) desirability of the loss of memory.
(i) We have no memory of the past life and there seems to be no reason to expect that we shall remember our present life during subsequent lives. Now an existence that is cut off into separate lives, in none of which memory extends to previous life, may be thought to be of no practical value. We might as well be mortal, it has been said, as be immortal without a memory beyond the present life. It is sometimes asserted that rebirth without memory of the previous existence would not be immortality at all. Without memory of the present life, the life would not be mine at all. Rebirth of a person without a memory of the previous life would be equal to annihilation of that person.
But McTaggart points out that the self is not a thing in itself whose nature is independent of its qualities. Self is a substance with attributes,
23. McTaggart : Some Dogmas of Religion, p. 124. 24. Radhakrishnan (S.): An Idealist View of Life. p. 235.