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Rebirth-A Philosophical Study
to say where deceased persons bad found their rebirth Even the different arts of fortune telling have been put to the service of ascertaining past or future courses of life The Pali Canon relates of a Brahman Yangisa 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 & plurality of future lives and the prospect of a great number of lives-perbaps an infinite number, though this is not a necessary part of the theory – glves us the prospect of many dangers, many conflicts, many griefs, in a indefinitely long future Death is not a heaven of rest It is a starting point for fresh labours But if the trials are great, 90 is the recompense We miss much here by our own follv, 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 We cannot gain the benefit both of unbroken health and bodily weakness, both of riches and of poverty, both of comredeship 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 rogard it no longer ag 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 wo 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 19 created at blrth of the body Such a view makes all education and experience superfluous"
McTaggart's position has been criticised by some, Pringle Pattison says - Every reader will feel the austained beauty of the words, the illusion les in the recorrent 'we' and 'us' Otherwise the idea of supplementing and enlargiog our limited earthly experlace is a natural and attractive boe Bet It is a prospect equally open to the ordinary believer in personat timor. tality, 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 Agalo it is good to rejoice that 'tbo sunrise with its gloncs 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
