Reincarnation
Many people believe, there is nothing beyond death and all that exists is in this life. But all religions acclaim that there is an afterlife. In this post, we will look into the argument against reincarnation and resolve them.
Evidence of Soul
We know that at a certain point during pregnancy, the fetus in the mother’s womb shows signs of life as the heart starts beating. Before that moment, there is no heartbeat, and after that moment, the heart begins to function. So, what exactly has changed? It could be said that this marks when the soul enters the fetus, bringing life to it.
Similarly, when a person dies, at a certain moment the person is alive, and then at another moment, the person is dead. So, what has happened? Something has changed and the change is that the soul has left the body. So, this is the most simple and direct experience that we have about the soul entering and leaving the body.
In the Ecclesiastes 12:7 of the Bible, it is said “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it”. So here the Bible is saying that the body which is the dust will return to the earth and the spirit (or the soul) will go above.
Counter narrative
A counter-argument is that life resembles a candle: when you blow out the flame, it disappears, leaving nothing behind. However, what happens is that the flame becomes latent. It’s still present, but now it’s part of the wick and can be reignited at any time.
Similarly, when a person dies, the visible flame may be extinguished, but it can return in a different form. Just as the flame can emerge again after the candle is snuffed out, when a person dies, the soul may migrate and inhabit another body, thus continuing with life.
Now the question arises, how do we know that the soul exists? Take an example of electricity in the wire. How do we know that electricity is there in the wire? The final way of knowing is to touch the wire but that may electrocute you. So, what we do is we listen to others. We listen to the electricians, the technicians, the manufacturers and they tell us that the following wire has a high level of electricity and we accept it. Similarly, if we want to experience death—that is fine—but it is like electrocution. So, if you don’t want to get electrocuted and yet want to learn whether there is life after death, then you have to listen to others and get their experience. We cannot start learning everything from ourselves.
Purpose of Reincarnation
The journey of the soul can be compared to a spiral. It goes round and round and it also goes up. You are born one step above. The soul has some desires and to fulfill those desires, the soul enters the mother’s womb and enters into a fetus again at a higher level.
After birth, the soul does so many actions like going to school, doing business, doing service, and trading, and at the end of the time the body dies. The soul at the time of birth is not the same as at the time of death. The soul has experienced many things in this life, like being hit by a class fellow, passing a result, etc., and has evolved. The soul has become somewhat wiser. Then the soul starts its next journey. It experiences various things and reaches a yet higher level. The soul can go down too. If, for example, one is born a human being and does many evil deeds like killing people, robbing people, etc. So, in the next birth, the person may be born in a lower womb of maybe a cat or a dog or any other.
The purpose of this reincarnation is that one lifetime is not sufficient for us to attain God. We continue in this cycle of being born and dying until we rise to the point of an evolved soul which can be called God.
Religious views about the soul
The Sufi mystic Jalaluddin Rumi said “I died as a mineral and became a plant. I died as a plant and rose to an animal. I died as an animal and I was human. Why should I fear when I am less by dying? Yet once more I shall die human to soar with the angels blessed above.”
So here we have a clear statement of reincarnation from the Islamic perspective that one is born and dies at subsequently higher levels. More directly, the Quran says, “Allah created death and life so that He may test you to see which of you is the best in the deeds.” (Quran 67:2). So how does Allah test? I have been born and I live on this earth and if I do good deeds then Allah tests me and sends me to a higher level. If I do bad deeds then Allah tests me and sends me to a lower level. So, this is the meaning of testing.
From the Christian perspective, a story of Jesus’s life is widely discussed. Once Jesus was going somewhere and he met with a person who was blind from birth. So, the people asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?” And Jesus replied, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” (John 9:1-2)
Jesus spat on the earth, took some mud, mixed it with his saliva, applied it to the blind man’s eyes, and asked him to go and take a bath somewhere and he began to see. So, this is true that Jesus brought the eyesight back to a blind man who was blind from birth. But it still does not answer why that blind man was born blind. More importantly, Jesus also categorically states, neither this man nor his parents sinned. So, the person did not sin, his parents did not sin, yet he was blind.
The Hindu explanation for this is that the “result” is a combination of three factors—one’s effort, one’s inheritance, and one’s fate. So, the inheritance of the blind man was okay. Neither he had sinned nor the parents had sinned. There was no question of effort because, at the point of birth, he could not make any effort. But the third factor of fate caused his blindness. In this world there are so many things that are happening at random and one of the things that happened was that this man did not see. The solution to this riddle comes not from sin or good deeds but from fate and the triple combination of one’s effort, one’s inheritance, and one’s fate.
Methods of interaction with the soul
How to know reincarnation? The best method is meditation. Like Buddha meditated and in his Jatak Mala he talks about his 76 or more previous births. Once he was a laborer, once he was a goat, once he was a something and he was able to see the large number of his previous births. But a counterargument is that such knowledge during meditation could also be a hallucination because you want to see previous births therefore you see previous births although they may not have happened. The solution to this riddle is to look at the experience of other people who have meditated.
Just like one electrician saying that this electric wire is charged and don’t touch it may not convince you. But if you check with five different electricians and each of them warns you that don’t touch the wire because you will get electrocuted, then most likely you will not touch the wire. Similarly, we need not rely on one person or one Buddha to establish that there is rebirth. if there is one person who says there is rebirth, then check with others, other evolved souls, and see if they also say so. If a large number of such people say that there is rebirth and they have seen their rebirth, then one may accept it.
The next counterargument is that the belief in rebirth can be due to social conditioning. Because loudspeakers are blaring and everyone is saying there is an afterlife, therefore, one gets conditioned to believe in the afterlife. Once again, it is not only that loudspeakers are believing that there is no afterlife. Loudspeakers are beaming on both sides. We can listen to both sides and discover the truth ourselves. It is not true that society only talks about the afterlife. Some people say that there is no afterlife. We have to discuss and have to arrive at our own decision whether there is an afterlife or not.
Yet another counterargument is that the population of the world is increasing. So where do the additional souls come from? Earlier there were 3 billion, then 5 billion and today there are 8 billion people and next year there maybe 10 billion people in the world. The solution to this has been given by Rumi. He says that he was an animal and he became a man. So, it is possible that when the human population increases, the number of cats and dogs may be reincarnated as human beings. When the human population is decreasing, the number of human souls may be born as cats and dogs. We may assume that the total number of souls is some fixed astronomical number in multiple trillions. But as Rumi said he was a mineral. So, every mineral, every particle in this universe has consciousness and has a soul. Some Jain monks say that the stones have souls. So, the entire universe is on an evolutionary trip. Minerals evolve and they become plants, the plants evolve and they become animals, animals evolve and they become human beings and human beings evolve and they can attain God.
Another argument against rebirth is the saying in the Quran that one cannot go back. Quran 23.99 says, “When death comes to one of them, he says, ‘My Lord, send me back so that I may do good deeds regarding what I have neglected.’ But no, these are just words that he utters. A barrier is placed behind him until the day they are resurrected.” This Ayat is saying that a person died and he went to the Lord and pleaded with the Lord please send me back so that I can do good things now. God said to him no there is a barrier behind you and you cannot go back. But God does not say you cannot go forward. You cannot go back into the same family or to the same body that you have lived. But you can go forward into another fetus, another body, and therefore this Ayat does not stand against reincarnation. It only says that you cannot go back to the same family and the same body from which you have died.
The last point is that the Quran repeatedly says that those who do evil deeds will be met with fire in the afterlife: “As for those who were destined to be wretched, they will be in the fire. For them, there is a violent exhaling and inhaling. They shall abide in it as long as heavens and earth endure unless your Lord may well otherwise.” Now the last phrase, ‘unless your Lord may well otherwise’ is very significant. This Ayat is saying that a bad person died and he went into the afterlife, met with fire and he will stay there. But only as long as the Lord does not think otherwise. So, if the Lord wants that person’s soul to get purified and to go back to earth in another body and to do good deeds in the next life, then the Lord will put an end to the suffering in fire.
My understanding is that once we die, we meet all the people who have died with whom we have done bad things and good things. So those whom we have done bad things like we have robbed someone or we have killed someone. After death everything is transparent and they will take revenge. Similarly, if we have done good things in life, then once we die, we meet with people who are happy with us, who are welcoming us and life moves on. So, as long as this exchange takes place in the afterlife, we are there either in heaven or hell. After that, we come back to earth because we have not evolved up to God and ultimately God wants us to come to Him.
So, once we have done enough of give and take of the things we have done on the earth, then we are born again, and again we start a new cycle where we have a choice either to do good things or to do bad things.
Conclusion
Considering all things, I think even the religious texts clearly say that there is rebirth and logic also says that there is rebirth. So, we should acknowledge that there is rebirth and we should indeed be afraid of doing bad things because then even if we don’t get punished in this life, we will meet those people with whom we have done bad things in the next life and then we will be punished.
So, this is the time to rethink reincarnation, accept reincarnation, and move forward.
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See full Video: https://youtu.be/_7xgK25LQjA
Read the full post in Hindi: https://www.ekishwar.in/is-reincarnation-real/