On Rebirth:
Archaya Mahayogi Shridhar Rinpoche:
http://www.byomakusuma.org/Teachings/MarshlandFlowersPart2.aspx
Issue 38: 15 - 28 October 2007
…Thousands of meditators around the world have remembered vividly incidents in their past lives.
So things like rebirth, miracles, the laws of karma may not have been proven yet by 'science'; but that does not warrant throwing them out of the window by calling them unscientific. Science has very little to do with these things and probably never will prove these things as either false or true because, they do not belong to the field of science. And as we have seen, even according to top level scientists it is false to think/ believe that only the narrow and limited field that science deals with is real / actual / true / non – superstitious. This is a kind of fallacious thinking wrought about in the present day due to excessive outdated over-modernistic education which is already getting to be out of date in the western world.
Since the time of the Buddha till now, for about over 2500 years, reports have come again and again from both Buddhist and non – Buddhist sources of special humans possessing special powers of the mind. Yes there have been fakes who have capitalised on the simple credulous minds; but as the Egyptian Sufi saint of the eleventh century EI Ghazali says, "If there are fake gold that itself is a proof that there is genuine gold. If there were no genuine gold there would be no fake gold."
In the Indian subcontinent it is not only the Buddhist literature spanning 2500 years of history but also Vedic – Hindu literature and Jain literature which speak of miraculous powers and remembering former lives etc. It is not a matter of one human or twenty humans but virtually unaccountable records when we take into consideration all the Buddhist / Hindu / Jain records. Such a vast array of records even if only anecdotal and not validated by scientific methods just cannot be thrown over-board so easily. And it should not be too, as we have seen that the knowledge based on science is not the only true piece of knowledge we humans should treasure.
As far as rebirth or re-incarnation goes, Ian Stevenson (MD), the Head of the Department of Parapsychology of Virginia University has done 'scientific research' on this issue, conducting research all over the world from Alaska, Lebanon, India to Sri Lanka. By the so called 'scientific research' it is meant research that is based on double blind methods and such other modus operandi used by science to prove any hypotheses.
He has come up with a huge four volume work doing research in cases from all around the world, even amongst people who do not have any cultural background regarding reincarnation. Based on his record he says that we can definitely say that science cannot disprove rebirth.
In the context of Samatha meditation, it is possible to bring back memories of past life, just like memories of this life. This is not easy, but even memories of childhood are not easy. But thousands of meditators around the world have remembered vividly incidents in their past lives. We are not talking about imaginations but memories. There is a qualitative difference in experience between a memory and an imagination. Every mentally healthy person can distinguish whether he is imaging or remembering. After all I remember a past event not a future event while we imagine / fantasise the future.
Besides the meditators remembering when they go into deep levels of Samatha / Samadhi there are hundreds of cases of young children all around the world who remember, their previous life – their names, family names, city / village / town, the details of their old street / house / rooms and even what was in the cupboard in the room. (To be continued)
Issue 39: 29 Oct - 4 November 2007
Hypnotic trance facilitates revivification of lost memories…
Reincarnation
Dr. Ian Stevenson has done a lot of research on such children and he has shifted fraudulent from the genuine. And he has come up with four huge volumes of genuine ones which he says cannot be scientifically disproved in any way. His four volumes are: Cases of reincarnation type: India; Cases of reincarnation type: Sri-Lanka; Cases of reincarnation type: Lebanon and Turkey; and Cases of reincarnation type: Thailand and Burma. He has also written another book - Twenty cases suggestive of reincarnation.
Then again there is the world famous psychotherapist Helen Wembach, who also used over 20 years of her own clinical work in hypnotherapy. She too claims that even though she herself is a Christian whose beliefs contradict the idea of reincarnation and her training in psychotherapy did not in any way prepare her for this; cases she dealt with for over 20 years, overwhelmingly pointed rather clearly at cases of former lives.
Hypnotic trance facilitates revivification of lost memories of this life especially those from birth onwards. Everything that the child sees, hears, smells, feels, remembers are stored in the subconscious/unconscious. These memories can be teased out into awareness through various methods like 'free association' in Freudian psychoanalysis, active imagination in Jungian analytical psychotherapy and hypnotherapy etc.
When Helen Wembach used hypnotherapy, which is a powerful tool to bring out lost memories entrenched stubbornly in the subconscious, she often found that her patients went further than birth into former lives. She also found that if memories and wounds of former lives were healed the effect was seen in this life's mental life. These are records that cannot be easily explained away; as actual mental and physical healings had also taken place.
I would like to recount the case of a multi-millionaire that Helen had dealt with. One of her patients was a millionaire who had suffered from strong pains in his right ribs. Being a millionaire, he had the best of doctors and his personal physician made him go through all the possible checkups possible at the time in the States. Since no physical cause was found in spite of repeated tests of various kinds, his personal physician finally suggested that it could be of a psychological origin and he should try a psychotherapist as well. Then he met Helen.
Helen started digging up his subconscious mind to cull out some experience / event in his childhood which could be the cause of his excruciating pain. Many physical pains and pathologies originate in some traumatic experience in childhood. The purpose of all forms of psychotherapy, be it Gestalt psychotherapy, Freudian psychoanalysis, Jungian Analytical psychotherapy, transactional psychotherapy or hypnotherapy or their combinations etc., is to bring the traumatic experiences hidden in the recesses of the subconscious to conscious awareness.
In both Buddhism and all forms of psychotherapy, awareness is curative. If the root cause (usually traumatic experiences but also sometimes just plain old childhood confusions) is brought clearly in front, to be scanned by awareness, the process of being cured begins. As long as the root causes are hidden in the dark nooks and crannies of the subconscious mind, there is no chance that we can free ourselves from its grasp and all that it entails. That is why Smriti – Samprajanya (mindfulness and comprehension) is of the utmost importance in the Buddhist path be it Sravakayana or Mahayana.
Even in the loony bin, a person who has flipped out begins to get cured only when he himself becomes aware that he has flipped out. The loony bin is an extreme case where people whose neurotic tendencies have become psychotic; but in society even amongst those who are considered socially acceptable, same neurotic tendencies found in the psychotic to an uncontrollable level, is to be found in a lesser or greater degree. Just like the lunatic we too can get cured or be freed of our neurotic tendencies, only as and when we become aware of them within us.
Thus awareness is curative and one of the purposes of most therapies is to bring the unconscious into awareness. This is called integrating the unconscious. The unconscious here means all the neurosis and complexes hidden within us. In Buddhist terminology, we can become free of our Klesha (emotional defilements) only if we are fully aware of the workings of the emotional defilements within us. That is why the Shasta (Master) prescribed living ones life in full mindfulness with comprehension - Smriti Samprajanya.
Going back to the story of the millionaire; while fishing for early memories of childhood, in a hypnotic trance, he suddenly slipped into a dungeon in the Roman period. He started wailing and crying, holding his ribs. When asked what was happening he described that he was in a prison in Rome and a Centaurian was towering over him and kicking him to death. When asked where he was being kicked, he pointed at the same ribs which had been causing him trouble since a long time. Thus he died being kicked on his ribs. When he was brought back to the present, he was commanded that he would remember the incident clearly even after he woke up. After he woke up from the hypnotic trance with full memory of the incident, it was found that he had 'miraculously' become free from the pain that had troubled him for such a long time. (To be continued)
Issue 40: 5 - 18 November 2007
Death is not the end of the mental continuum but only a change of the mental continuum.
Illusion of memory
Now let us go back to Shamatha after this explanation of rebirth and reincarnation. There are many questions regarding reincarnation which has not been dealt with yet; but let it be said that the Buddhist concept of reincarnation is neither unscientific nor scientific nor as baseless as materialists think. Although Hinduism and Jainism also believe in reincarnation, the Buddhist view of reincarnation is not exactly the same as the Hindu, Jain system.
Whereas in Hinduism and Jainism it is the same person or entity that is reborn again and again, the Buddhist view of Anatma contradicts such a notion. However, this does not mean there is no reincarnation at all in Buddhism. We shall discuss the various tenets of Buddhism later, however let me explain in short that it is not exactly the same person Hari Prasad or Ram Prasad who is born in the next life as one of the insights of proper Buddhist meditation is to see through the fact that 'Hari Prasad' is only a map of reality produced by culture / family / education / language / and the history of the person and not actually the territory itself.
In fact as per Buddhism there is no territory of the map but only the map. This is the concept of Anatma explained from an existential dimension. Since there is no Hari Prasad in reality but only a conceptual map based on culture / family / education / language and the history; there can be no question of that Hari Prasad being reborn again. But then what is the meaning of reincarnation in such a case? For now, in short, reincarnation means simply the continuity of the mental continuum.
Death is not the end of the mental continuum but only a change of the mental continuum. Since the mental continuum is a name for the flow, and since the mental continuum by nature changes second by second and does not remain the same there is no entity / thing / person who remains the same even second by second what to speak of after death. It is the illusion of memory which connects separate discrete mind – moments and make them seem to be the same 'mind–stuff. '
But if your Shamatha meditation practice goes deep enough then these memories which are carried forward can be reawakened, and the person knows from her / his own memory the fact of reincarnation. This memory can also be brought out through hypnotic trance. A similar thing can be said of Riddhi – Siddhis which is also another thing that the overly materialistic try to deny without any base.
These parts bring us to another topic called in modern psychological research as altered states of consciousness. To understand the phenomena of Siddhi – Riddhi (miraculous powers) and reincarnation, it is useful to understand the concept of altered – states of consciousness.
The mind has many altered states and what we call normal waking state is only one of the states of mind. It is certainly not more true, real, accurate or suggestive of reality than the other states of mind. Various states of mind have various properties which are not available to the normal waking state of mind. Even the fact that we call the waking state as normal is only a culturally ingrained idea and it is not in reality more normal than other altered states of mind.
There are many kinds of altered states of minds which vary from what is considered as the normal waking mind. Hypnotic trance is a category of altered state of mind which differs from the normal waking state. I call it a category because within the categories there are many levels which are different from each other. If we were to give some degrees to the depth of hypnotic trance there would be a range one percent hypnotic trance to 100% hypnotic trance. What is available to a 98 – 100% hypnotic trance is not available to a 1 – 20% trance. At around 68 – 70% or so one could easily anaesthetise parts of one's own body so that it could be operated upon without anesthesia. That is simply not available to either the waking state or even 10 or 20% hypnotic trance. (To be continued)