Reincarnation Revisited Rationally

Author(s): Ashok Aklujkar
Publisher: Ashok Aklujkar

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ASHOK AKLUJKAR
REINCARNATION REVISITED RATIONALLY
"I have no trouble believing in rebirth. it's birth I can't accept." - Source not known.
• Mr. Triple-eye' – Reincarnation is determined by karman,
and karman, to a significant extent, by vara or social class. But it is reincarnation that troubles the contemporary rationalist most- or at least so it seems to me. If vama were determined only by the work one does or the qualities one possesses, the rationalists will probably not resist it much. That it is said to be determined by birth seems arbitrary and unfair to them. It then disturbs their program of pushing the sugarcane of life through the crusher of reason. Likewise, if one's actions were claimed to determine how one fares in this life, not many voices of protest would be heard from the rationalists, but when actions are viewed as determined by past existences and as determining the future existences, they protest, loud and clear. Reincarnation undermines the ideas of karman and varna, the relatively calm ones among them say.
Mr. White-robe - We do not like reincarnation because empirical evidence does not bear it out. It is an item that is better consigned to the realm of faith or belief, if not superstition. If the reincarnationist wishes to challenge this view, he must either produce empirical evidence acceptable to us scientists or demonstrate that our other theories would be incoherent unless we made place for reincamation in our theoretical universe.
Mr. Orange-robe - There you go again! You simply assume that your assumptions about doing science are adequate and beyond change. Is this scientific method - as you call it - capable of settling each and every question? Could its acceptability and nature not depend upon the issue being addressed? Are this method and the issue being addressed - whatever it may be entirely independent of each other as logical notions? Must we set aside a certain possibility because one-to-one correlations cannot be established between the presumed
Journal of Indian Philosophy 29: 3-15, 2001. © 2001 Kluwer Acudemic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands