Reincarnation Revisited Rationally

Author(s): Ashok Aklujkar
Publisher: Ashok Aklujkar

Page 6

ASHOK AKLUJKAR
REINCARNATION REVISITED RATIONALIY
of science and philosophy is really not my cup of poison. I had better go home. I hope Parvati has some down-to-earth stories to tell me. If not, there is always some indological mystery to curl up with. But since you, my dear reader companion, insist that provide some guidance before I leave, here is a list of publications which may have something to do with what you heard just now. Note, however, that the list is not exhaustive. When one preserves knowledge for aeons, the mind acts like a hard disk loaded with complex programs. The recall becomes slow. Anyway, at least this much must have become clear to you. Reincamation cannot be dismissed as a matter of belief or faith. It is not simply a matter of X wanting to believe in the existence of something and Y not wanting to do so. The belief or disbelief that reincarnation demands ultimately pertains to the very depth of epistemology. It forces even the scientist to make a choice that comes across as arbitrary or as guided by nothing more than individual preference. But now I seem to be starting another session. I must not keep Parvati waiting too long. Already her mood swings are beginning to match mine. After the Notes you will find the Bibliography I promised in the swing of my mood to compassion.
Stevenson that Tom Shroder had originally written for The Washington P t. I knew about Stevenson's work but nothing about him as a person or about the reaction to his research. Shroder's article contained some statements that echoed the thoughts present in my draft. I have now added these statements as notes, although my original intention was to include as few notes as possible, so that very little distraction from the flow of the dialogue would occur.
I have italicized only those non-English words which are mentioned as distinct from used,
If you think that this is I-1-1, Mr. Invisible Intrusive Indologist, who, unobserved. keeps an eye on the parties to the conversation as well as it is hoped - himself you may be in for a surprise.
Cf. Shroder 1999: E4: "Which is more likely." Edwards (1996: 256 wrote, "that there are astral bodies, that they invade the womb of prospective mothers, and that the children can remember events from a previous life although the brains of the previous persons have long been dead? Or that Stevenson's children, their parents, or some other witnesses and informants are, intentionally or unintentionally, not telling the truth: That they are lying, or that their very fallible memories and powers of observation have led them to make false statements and bogus identifications? Here Edwards was hammering at a central vulnerability of Stevenson's research: No matter how much evidence suggestive of reincamation Stevenson accumulates, he cannot begin to say what a soul is, much less show how it might travel from one body to another On the other hand, in trying to make Stevenson's suppositions seem absurd. even Edwards was admitting that if these cases are not the product of lies, bogus identifications and fallible observations - if somehow they could be demonstrated to be honest and accurate accounts - then they would constitute legitimate evidence for reincarnation, even if we can't explain how reincarnation works."
When the self-preservation instinct is not followed, as in a suicide, there are, of course, situational elements that overwhelm it at the time consemed,
Shroder 1999: E4 has Stevenson saying the following: "Modern psychologists imitated physicists by only being interested in what happened in a lab, not in things like love and death, and parapsychologists imitated psychologists. That is, you have tight control of conditions. But it seems to me that it is far better to be 90 per cent certain of something important than 100 per cent certain of something that is trivial."
(a) Note the guardedly expressed conclusion of Stevenson reported in Shroder 1999: E3: "I think a rational person, if he wants, can believe in reincarnation on the basis of the evidence" The same source quotes on p. E4 the following remark of anthropologist Antonia Mills: "Like Stevenson, I conclude that while none of the cases I studied offer(s) incontrovertible proof of reincarnation or some related paranormal process, they are part of a growing body of cases for which normal explanations do not seem to do justice to the data."
(b) Shroder 1999: E3-14: "A 1975 article in no less than the Journal of the American Medical Association said Stevenson "had collected cases in which the evidence is difficult to explain on any other grounds" besides reincarnation ... Apart from that early positive review ... mainstream science had almost completely ignored him."
(c) According to a BBC television programme I saw at Rajkot on 5 January 1993, the other researchers investigating reincarnation seem to be Satwani Pasricha, National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-sciences, Bangalore and Erlendour Haroldsson (I could not gather the institutional affiliation of the latter).
The last feature would tie in well with the importance attached to the last moments of life or the 'hour of death in several religious philosophics; cf. Edgerton 1926
The 'suggestion explanation deserves serious consideration because in the documented cases a difference has been noticed that may be related to difference of culture. Cf. Shroder 1999: E4: "As a group, the North Americans have fewer specific
NOTES
This dialogue essay began as a part of a paper titled "The pandits from a pinda brahmanda point of view," which is expected to be published in a volume being edited by Professor Axel Michaels. In trying to determine what made the pandit phenomenon possible and what its chances for survival or re-emergence were, I was led to thinking in a sustained way about the notions of varna, karman and rebirth. This necessitated that I clear my thinking regarding the acceptability or probability of reincarnation by writing down my thoughts, the ultimate result of which is the present piece. What I hope minimally is that the clarity I tried to achieve has not, on the contrary, led to a muddling of the issue. If it has, readers should provide the magical collyrium called 'rigorous discussion that is said to give one a clearer vision.
I wish to thank Professor Albrecht Wezler (University of Hamburg). Ms. Anne MacDonald (University of Vienna), Dr. Vidyut Aklujkar, Ms. Michele Demarais, Mr. Michael Dodson, Mr. Gordan Djurdjevic and Ms. Dragana Djurdjevic (all of University of British Columbia) for reading an earlier draft and suggesting improvements in wording and typing. It is also my pleasure to acknowledge that the essay was conceived and essentially completed while I was a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung in 1998-1999 living in Hamburg.
Subsequent to the completion of the first draft, I returned to Vancouver and began to go through the issues of the local newspaper, The Vancouver Sun, that my wife Dr. Vidyut Aklujkar had preserved in a pile for me. In the issue of 28 August 1999 (pages E3-E4). I chanced upon an article on the research of Professor lan