Karma and Rebirth

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

Page 66

Rebirth-A Philosophical Study
to say where deceased persons had found their rebirth. Even the different arts of fortune telling have been put to the service of ascertaining past future courses of life. The Pali Canon relates of a Brahman Vangisa who from the skull placed before him was able to ascertain where its previous possessor was reborn. It is also said that from the horoscope of a person it is possible to determine the past and the future incarnation of a person.
Dr. McTaggart concludes "pre-existence, indeed, as we have seen, renders more probably a plurality of future lives. And the prospect of a great number of lives-perhaps an infinite number, though this is not a necessary part of the theory gives us the prospect of many dangers, many conflicts, many griefs, in a indefinitely long future. Death is not at heaven of rest. It is a starting point for fresh labours. But if the trials are great, so is the recompense. We miss much here by our own folly, much by unfavourable circumstances. Above all we miss much, because so many good things are incompatible. We cannot spend our youth both in the study and in the saddle. saddle. We cannot We cannot gain the benefit both of unbroken health and bodily weakness, both of riches and of poverty, both of comradeship and of isolation, both of defiance and obedience." But though way. is long, and perhaps endless it can be no more wearisome than a single life. For with death we leave behind us memory, and old age, and fatigue. "And surely death acquires a new and deeper significance when we regard it no longer as a single and unexplained break in an unending life, but as part of the continually recurring rhythm of progress as inevitable, as natural, and as benevolent as sleep. We have only left youth behind us, as at noon we have left the sunrise. They will both come back, and they do not grow old." As Radhakrishnan says, if we do not admit pre-existence we must say that the soul is created at birth of the body. Such a view makes all education and experience superfluous.
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McTaggart's position has been criticised by some, Pringle-Pattison says - Every reader will feel the sustained beauty of the words; the illusion lies in the recurrent 'we' and 'us'. Otherwise the idea of supplementing and enlarging our limited earthly experince is a natural and attractive one. But It is a prospect equally open to the ordinary believer in personal immortality; and in his case the enrichment of the personality would be real, whereas on Dr.McTaggart's theory, the varied experiences remain distributed among a number of different individuals. Again it is good to rejoice that 'the sunrise with its glories old' will gladden young eyes and hearts. ages
33. Glasenapp: Immortality and Salvation in Indian Religion, p. 33. 34. McTaggart, Some Dogmas of Religion, p. 138-39.
35. Radhakrishnan (S.), An Idealist View of Life, Unwin, 1961, p. 230.