Recent Advances in Science may Justify Santhara

Author(s): Surendra Singh Pokharna
Publisher: Surendra Singh Pokharna

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Recent advances in science may justify "Santhara"
"Santhara", an old custom from Jain tradition.It is a practice in which a person stops all life support inputs like food, water and medicines and other activities. He then waits for a peaceful death along with a wish for a good yoni in the next birth. It is based on the principle of Jainism that a person has a body made of material particles known as karma and a soul. When a person dies, it is only his body which dies, his soul goes to some other birth depending on his past actions or his karmas. Thus Jainism believes in life after death and also a life before his birth. The oath is taken only after consent of the family members and relatives. As per Jains there are 84 lakhs yonies in the world and his human life is just one incident in the history of movement of his soul, which may pass through many of these yonies. Hence they put tremendous emphasis on one's soul, which is permanent and less emphasis on one's body which is a temporary phenomenon.
The recent high court of Rajasthan has taken a decision and declared "Santhara" as a suicide or selfkilling and declaredthis as a crime. However, since the whole phenomenon involves concept of soul and rebirth and life after life, hence it is quite appropriate to see the latest point of view from scientific perspective. Actually let us first clarify that what scientists are calling as consciousness is quite different from the entity referred to as soul in Indian philosophy. In science the two terms are used interchangeably. It is assumed to be a non-physical entity. However, in this era of modern science, concept of consciousness/soul is now discussed more seriously. There are scientists like B D Josephson, EP Wigner, George Gamow, Kurtz Gödel, Prigogine, David Bohm, Roger Penrose, Deepak Chopra and ECG Sudarshan to name a few, who believe in the concept of consciousness and soul and feel that such a concept can be relevant even in science.
The interest among scientist to understand consciousness and soul can be inferred from an international conference on consciousness which was organized by the Centre for Studies on Consciousness of the University of Arizona at Tucson from April 21-26, 2014. Around 1000 scientists from 60 countries participated in this conference. Experts were there from various fields like computer science, neuroscience, neurophysiology, anaesthesiology, cognitive sciences, cybernetics, schools of medicines, bioengineering, artificial intelligence, physics, quantum biology, quantum computers, relativity theory, naturopathy, philosophy, psychology, religion, arts and many others. In all there were 500+ papers presented in this conference.
First the concept of consciousness comes into the picture in science due to many reasons. As per latest research in this field, all human beings have multiple options for taking any decision in any field and there are always choices available through what is known as a free well. There is another property of the brain that is memory which is holographic in nature, and is therefore not localized. Non-locality also plays an important role, in binding of say sense of colour", "shape" and "motion" of a moving object whose corresponding "senses" in the visual cortex are located in different regions and are also processed in different times. Hence possibility of using quantum physics for understanding consciousness was explored right from the discovery that electrons behave both like wave as well particle and there is an inbuilt uncertainty in our decision making. Also since a wavefunction in quantum mechanics, is always non-local and so can explain the non-local memory of the brain. Lastly