The Belief in Rebirth and the Gospel of Gautama Buddha

T.A.P Aryaratne

When we speak of Buddhism we mean the doctrine set forth in a certain collec­tion of compositions, chiefly discourses, orally transmitted over a period of some five centuries before the Christian era began, and committed to writing towards the close of that period. From this fact we cannot justly conclude that these documents are totally unreliable as a guide to the teaching of the Buddha; but to assume the opposite, namely that they constitute a completely or even largely accurate record of the Buddha’s doctrine, would be to discount the propensity of chroniclers of the an­cient world to take liberties with facts and events to enlarge, embellish, and adorn them. If, in addition, we have reason to believe that the various composers of the discourses had sectarian interests, or had their special causes to plead, we cannot reasonably expect from them an objective record of facts. And we do certainly know that the authors of the discourses, the Buddhist monks, belonged to an order that was badly split by dissensions which began in the very lifetime of its founder.

In this connection, what Dr. Edward Consze says, in a book published just four years ago, is very pertinent. He says: “The history of Buddha’s thought might be expected to begin with an account of the teaching of the Buddha himself or at least the beliefs current in the most ancient community. The nature of our literary docu­ments makes such an attempt fruitless and impossible.” Thus according to Dr. Consze not only the Buddha’s actual teaching but even the beliefs commonly held by the earliest Buddhist community are impossible to ascertain. I would not go all the way with Dr. Consze. I would not say it is altogether impossible to get a fairly clear notion of what the Buddha taught; but I would say that to do so demands a readiness to accept what investigation reveals, no matter how startling the revelation may be.

Before we go into the question of the authenticity of the texts, it is perhaps pertinent to ask why this question of authenticity should arise at all. What if the ancient authors of the canonical documents had in fact made a scrupulous effort to hand down to prosperity the genuine word of the Master? It would not be difficult to entertain that possibility if only the documents disclosed a consistent system and a credible narrative. But to our disappointment where we expect to find consistency we only find contradiction. We are presented with the startlingly original philosophy of impermanence along with the primitive Indian doctrine of rebirth and as part and parcel of it; we find the Buddha, whom we have pictured in our minds as a soul of humility, presented in many places as one given to vainglorious talk, to bragging about his wisdom; we find arahats, of whom we do not find a single nowadays, scat­tered far and wide in their hundreds in the Thatagata’s time; we find the arahat shown as being capable of miracles and marvels that would put to shame the miracles of the New Testament (he can multiply his human form and appear as many persons: he can become invisible at will; and he can go right through a wall or a mountain, crash through to the bowels of the earth, walk on water without sinking, fly through the air, touch and stroke the sun, the moon and the stars, creep through key holes, etc); we find the Buddha and the arahats shown as making flying trips to one or other of the heavens to hold converse with the gods and other exalted beings who inhabit them and we read of such monstrosities as the cutting of their own throats by arahats for fear of falling from the arahat state! There is also, of course, the other side of the coin; the Buddha is shown as noble and dignified in conversation, as denouncing miracles and marvels, as instructing his hearers again and again in the sublimely beautiful Brahmaviharas and the Eightfold Path of deliverance.

But which of these is the true picture? The meditations on abounding loving kindness and the path to the passionless state or the descriptions of the alleged super­normal powers of those who have reached that state; the non-self regarding principle of impermanence and soullessness or self-emphasizing doctrine of rebirth? A satis­factory answer to these questions can, I think, be found if we can first find an answer to the larger question, the pursuit of which Dr. Conze characterised as “fruitless and impossible” namely the question, “What did the Buddha teach?”

At the outset of this investigation I would make one assumption, namely that Siddatta Gouthama was an original philosopher and not a reformer or a reshaper of existing systems. The average Hindu, of whom Radhakrishnan is the typical representative, believes that the Buddha was a reformer of Hindu ideas. I think the evi­dence suggests that the Buddha was nothing if not original. There is no gainsaying that he was the greatest original thinker India ever produced. And if it is accepted that the Buddha taught an original philosophy which broke away radically from ex­isting traditions, then by eliminating from the texts all the elements of religion and philosophy that were current in India at the time the Buddha began his ministry, we can arrive at reasonably accurate idea of what his teaching was.

It is easy enough, at least for educated Buddhists, to discard a good deal of the supernatural elements in the Tripitaka, though some may be loath to surrender the belief in the miraculous powers of the arahat. But no matter how intelligent educated a Buddhist may be, he will cling to the rebirth doctrine as though it were the very life­blood of the Buddha Dhamma. And the reason for this passionate attachment to the belief in rebirth is not far to seek. The doctrine responds to man’s deepest craving - the craving for more life. Man has a vital stake in the doctrine, and it is easy to understand why all religions are founded on the craving for more life. Christianity is founded on the rock of personal immortality, and popular Buddhism founded on the rebirth doctrine. If after this life man cannot hope to live on in heaven, he must at least have another spell in this world, or in any world whatever; life anywhere is preferable to the finality of death and extinction.

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the rebirth doctrine, which was deeply embedded in the Indian consciousness should have crept into the Buddhist Cannon and entrenched itself there after the Buddha’s death. Without it Buddhism had no chance of finding a foothold in India as a religion; the monks of the Buddhist Order, the Sangha knew this; and it is they who fixed the Canon as we know it. The monks knew also, no doubt, from the fact that the common man was not capable of grasping the revolutionary concept of impermanence of Anicca and even more from his natural horror of a teaching that denies the reality of his self, that there was no hope of survival for their Order amidst the other religious movements which catered for man’s lust for more life. So they set about purposefully garnishing the absolutely original teaching of the Buddha with elements of popular appeal - the rebirth dogma, the popular gods, the miraculous powers of the arahat, etc.

It would be interesting to compare the popular elements of the Jain religion with those of Buddhism. In both we have the Karma - and - rebirth doctrine; in both it is taught that enlightened ones appear in this world from time to time - from eternity until, eternity; in both there are exactly 24 previous enlightened ones named (the Jain list starts with Vrasabha and the Buddhist with Dipankara); both systems speak of the omniscience of the founder; both speak of deliverance from Samsara and attainment of Nirvana; and both were characterised by mendicant orders. And when we remember that the Jain system was first in the field, it becomes obvious which system borrowed from which. To say that popular Buddhism borrowed from Jainism, how­ever, does not mean that the Buddha was a borrower. There are two Buddhisms - the Buddhism of the monks, which is popular Buddhism, and the Buddhism of the Bud­dha- the esoteric original Buddhism. It is the Buddhism of the monks that borrowed the religious trappings of other faiths in India. And When these borrowings are re­moved from the system that has come to be known as Buddhism, the residue is the pure doctrine of the Buddha, which is entirely original; and this consists of the Anicca - Anatta doctrine with -its corollary, imperfection or ill or suffering and path out of his oppressive sense of suffering, which is also the middle path - the path that avoids the extremes of self-torture and of self-gratification.

Almost all the writers on Buddhism father on the Buddha all the ideas found in the Canon, and thus implicate him in the naive beliefs of his philosophical forbears and of his contemporaries. They forget one of the utterances frequently attributed to him that his doctrine was unheard of before, difficult to perceive, hard to understand, not grasped by ordinary minds. In the Ariyapariyesana Sutta and elsewhere, it is said that the Buddha did not at first want to teach this “toilsome, abstruse, deep, difficult, subtle doctrine” But out of compassion for humanity he eventually taught it. Now what is so hard to understand, subtle, and abstruse in the teaching that the individual has a series of lives and what he sows in one he reaps in another? The dogma is not only extremely simple to grasp but it is one that the average man avidly and fondly embraces; no mental operations are involved in apprehending it; and far from being unheard of, it was a very commonplace doctrine. What was unheard of before, what was deep, what was difficult to be understood by ordinary minds, was the denial of rebirth, the doctrine of Anatta, and the broader concept of Anicca. There cannot be the slightest doubt that this is the only meaning of the words so definitely attributed to the Buddha in the Canon.

Let us look more closely at the question of what is not original in Buddhism; what it shares, for example with the Jain system. The Jains taught that existence is suffering, that this suffering is due to karma in pervious births, that rebirth will persist so long as karma persists, that the way to end rebirth is by destroying past karma, that past karma can be destroyed by austerities, and that with the destruction of past karma by austerities rebirth is ended and the soul at the death of the body attains nirvana. The Jains also held that these truths were taught by enlightened beings, called Thirthakaras, who appeared at different epochs; and, as we saw, they named 24 of them. Now all these features are found in Buddhism, except for the following variations. The Buddhist system admitted the problem of suffering as humanity’s major problem, not as a truth that had to be discovered but as an obvious phenom­enon that cannot escape notice; and it explained that suffering was not due to past karma, as the Jains taught, but to the very nature of sentient life, which is short lived and necessarily therefore imperfect, and which is conscious of its imperfection (the man who is bountifully endowed with wealth and health will still think of the ap­proaching end of his good life and groan). And the way to escape from suffering that the Buddha taught was - a radical departure from the extreme path of austerities or self-mortification of the Jains; namely, the middle path of moderation, and constant meditation on the vanity of belief in an enduring self. When one unswervingly ob­serves the eightfold path of unselfish living, which includes the brahmaviharas or meditations concerned with identifying oneself with the whole of humanity or, more correctly, with the whole of sentient life, in this life itself (diththe va dhamme) one achieves nibbana or equanimity or deliverance from suffering; and release from suf­fering is identical with release from the sense of a separate self.

The problem facing the Jains and the Buddha was the same, the problem of suffering. In determining the causes and prescribing the cure for suffering, the Bud­dha differed fundamentally from the Jains; the physician was not content with publicizing his remedy; he also denounced the quacks, their diagnosis, and the rem­edy they prescribed. Again and again in the Nikayas, we find the Buddha denouncing the practices and the beliefs of the Jains or Niganthas, as they were called. In the Devadha Sutta of the Majjhima Nikayas, for example, the Buddha takes up the karma­and - Rebirth doctrine, which was a fundamental article of faith with the Jains, analyses it, and exposes it as hollow and false. At this point, I should like to digress a little and refer to a method characteristic of the Buddha when dealing with irrational beliefs. It is the method of one who accepts as true only those doctrines, the truth of which can be observed, or demonstrated, or directly inferred. In the famous Tevijja Sutta a young Brahmin asks him how he should affect union with Brahma, the highest God; and the Buddha’s answer is: How do you know that Brahma exists? Have you seen him face to face? And he proceeds to show that the only way Brahma should be understood is in impersonal sense, as man’s highest aspiration, and the way to union with Brahma is by practising universal love, which is identical with self-forgetful meditation.

It is with the same directness, amounting almost to bluntness, that the Buddha deals with the Iains’s concept of Karma and Rebirth. Addressing the Jains, he says: “You Niganthas believe that your sufferings are due to Karma coming over from past births. How do you know you existed in the past and produced such-and-such karma?” He ridicules the whole idea of previous births, and proceeds to show that cause and effect or Karma is an observable and demonstrable process; and he gives examples. A man is struck by a poisoned arrow, and he feels acute pain and experiences suffering; a surgeon is summoned and surgeon extracts the dart, and the extraction causes the wounded man intense suffering; the surgeon applies medicaments on the wound, and the man again suffers, acutely; eventually the treatment heals the wound, and the man suffers no more, and is free to go about his normal business.

Here a particular series of the occurrence of pain and suffering is analyzed and is shown to be due to observable cause, and the cessation of suffering, too, shown due to an observable cause. The question as to why that particular man and none other was struck by the dart is not raised because not relevant to the explanation of the man’s suffering; but I think it is implied that such a question leads one to postulate mystical, indemonstrable and irrational causes when the real cause stares in the face. Another example cited is that of a man who falls passionately in love with a woman: he sees this woman flirting with another man, enjoying his talk and his company and he feels the pangs of jealousy and suffers acute mental agony; then at a certain stage he de­cides to get out of his infatuation, and casts out of his mind all thoughts concerning the woman, and he suffers no more. Here again a particular effect is shown to have an observable cause. It is not necessary to postulate a cause beyond one’s birth to account for one’s sufferings; nor is a future birth necessary to overcome one’s present suffer­ing. In this example, it was utterly unnecessary to account for the lover’s sufferings by the unverifiable theory that in the past birth he committed the crime of weaning the affections of a woman from her rightful lover; the cause and the cure are both to be found in this life; they are symptoms and features common to human instincts anywhere. The same theme, with variations is the subject matter of the Cula-dukka­kkhanda Sutta of the Majjhima Nikaya.

That the denial of rebirth by the Buddha was the unique and revolutionary fea­ture of the philosophical teaching in India of the 6th century B.C. is evident from a number of crucial passages in the texts in which the view is expressed in a variety of ways. Anicca or the principle of impermanence was emphasized in the first sermon itself. If this sermon is thoughtfully studied it will be seen that although it has not been seriously tampered with, the nooks have not been altogether blind to the possible danger of leaving it entirely unedited. It will be observed that when the discourse was ended the immediate reaction of Kondanna, one of the five original disciples was to exclaim “whatever by nature has a beginning has also by nature an end” and the Buddha’s reply to Kondanna’s exclamation was in turn to exclaim that Kondanna had understood, that is, grasped the meaning of the discourse. Therefore, we may safely infer that the starting point of the first discourse was Anicca, though the dukka phenomenon resulting from Anicca is elaborately described. We can reasonably pre­sume that at the out set the Buddha wanted his hearers to know that whatever begins must come to an end: for example a living being that begin existence at birth must finish it at death. He reinforced this idea in the next sermon by clearly demonstrating the absence of an enduring soul in man, which alone can be supposed to supply a basis for rebirth. And, logically, in the final message to his followers he emphasized, the same basic principle. “Perishable, are compounded things”, and compounded things have a beginning or organisation.

This is the vital principle that the Buddha laid his finger on: what is caused to come into being as an entity must in due course disrupt and perish. And cause is what we normally understand by the term - a real process that can be observed or directly apprehended or directly inferred: it just cannot be something that can only be imag­ined or must be taken on trust and is unverifiable. The Buddha knew that the belief in rebirth was widespread in his time; and he concentrated his logic right from the start on demolishing the mystical, superstitious, and unscientific nature of that belief.

It may be argued that by the statements “whatever has a beginning has also an end”, and “All samskaras are perishable” the Buddha meant that each span of life in the infinite samsaric series is of limited duration. But why should a world teacher repeatedly emphasize what is obvious to any simpleton, that every creature born must also die? And, again, it may be argued - and it has been - that the Anicca merely means that every thing including human beings change every moment, that the child is not the same as the youth or the youth the same as the old man. But this, too, is obvious to any average intelligence: Nothing is added to existing knowledge by em­phasizing the truism that everything changing that nothing is the same for long. The statement of the Buddha makes sense only when it is understood as a denial of the continuity of the individual beyond death or the disruption of the khandas.

And what of Anatta? Was the word coined merely to distinguish it from the Hindu Atman which wanders in Samsara unchanged and intact, did Anatta merely emphasize as popular Buddhism seems to assume, that the wandering Atman or Atta is changing all the time? Is not Anatta on the contrary the very negation of Atta, the denial of the reality of a wandering element changing or unchanged, from birth to birth? It certainly is what it means - it is the opposite of Atta, not a modified Atta or Atman, Anatta is implied in Anicca, in the statement that whatever by nature has a beginning has also an end. Samsara the stream of births by definition has no begin­ning and, logically, can have no end. Kondanna’s understanding of the first sermon was hailed by the Buddha, and since the same idea was repeated by him in many discourses and just before his death, it must be presumed to be the basis of his teach­ing; and eternal Samsara, which contradicts that teaching and which was taught by others before him, must be ruled out as having no part or lot with the Dhamma.

Let us for a moment assume that the Buddha did teach karma and rebirth, and try to work out the implications of the doctrine and see whether they square with his reputation for unsurpassed insight and intelligence.

For deeds to produce karmic effects, in the shape of rewards or punishments in this or a future life, it is said that they should be consciously and intentionally done. It is asserted that a man’s conscious and deliberate actions have reactions in some mysterious manner even after death, and that he must be reborn in order to reap the results of at least some of those actions. The mechanism of this scheme of retribution is not explained at all, but let that pass for the moment. Buddhists maintain that the Buddha expressly taught that good actions win reward or merit in this life or in a future life and that evil actions are duly followed by punishments in the course of repeated lives. Now what are good and evil actions? What are the norms for judging actions to be good or evil? Evidently deeds are classified good or bad according to conventional standards of civilized society. We are not told what happens when a cannibal or a head-hunter kills according to the decrees of tribal law. The savage kills from what he believes to be his duty; and his purpose therefore is highly moral. What are the karmic effects of such acts which are evil and criminal by our standards but correct according to the primitive conception of right action? What are the karmic effects of animal sacrifice performed in primitive societies from high religious mo­tives? It has been estimated that some 500,000 years ago there were no human beings on this planet, evolution had not proceeded to the point of producing man. How did Karma work for the inconceivable variety of animals, birds, insects and reptiles that roamed the earth in the pre-human age? The explanation of popular Buddhism might be that these animals were human beings who had previously existed in other planets, and other worlds and were, as animals in this world, living out the karmic effects of evil deeds in their earlier human life. This of course suggests that a being must first be born in human form, since the acts of animals are not motivated or deliberate and could not produce karma, whether good or bad. Those who would not make the karma theory an integral part of the Buddha’s teaching probably did not bargain for his impasse!

It cannot be too strongly emphasized that the real Buddha-vachana has got to be methodically extracted from the vast number of documents which constitute the canon; and in this process many portions of the canon, including whole Suttas have to be eliminated as being inconsistent with the basic doctrine. Even in the very earliest times there could be no agreement among Buddhist as to what the Master’s teaching was. There were even in those early days, about the second century after the Buddha’s death, as many as 18 different sects, and of the disputes that arose within the Bud­dhist community, this question of the surviving individual took first place. It is in fact, the first subject discussed in the kathavaththu, which is an account of the various disputes current in the time of Asoka. The question of the permanence of the indi­vidual self, or the pudgalavada, as the subject came to be known, was nothing but a symptom of the confusion created by the very earliest monks, who would not make up their minds to break with the Athma or Atta tradition therefore sought to effect a compromise between the Anatta and Atta.

A favourite method adopted by the authors of the documents in grafting the rebirth doctrine on the Dhamma, was to tack on to a Sutta on a definite subject some quite irrelevant passange bearing on the rebirth theme and in conflict with the general tenor of the discourse. Such a stock passage is the description of the monk who attains arahathood, going through the various jhanas or trances, in the course of which he recalls his past lives and acquires miraculous powers. The Devadha Sutta (already quoted) and others are disfigured and sometimes rendered meaningless by such passages.

I now come to a more sophisticated explanation of Karma, the alleged motive force of the wheel of rebirth. Karma is explained as the process or mechanism of natural justice in the universe. This is a dogmatic assertion without a shred of evi­dence to support it.  How do we know that the processes of nature are just? All that we know is that there are uniformities in nature; that there is system in the structure and operations of the physical world: for the rest nature is blind, wasteful, red in tooth and claw, utterly amoral. Natural justice indeed! What natural justice could there be in a world where animal life on land and sea is organised on the principle that the bigger must swallow the smaller in order to exist; where the reason for the existence of small animal species is to serve as food for the bigger; where the mouse is the foreordained prey of the cat, and the fly of the spider. Those who talk of karmic or natural justice talk only in human terms - terms agreeable to the mind of civilized man. All moral values are man-made. Justice is a value-concept born under the stress of the human situation and man tends to assume that his values are the highest and the most appropriate to the universe! The idea of natural justice or karmic justice is simply the desire to extend a human value-idea to the universe of eternal time and boundless space. It is of the same order as the concept of an almighty personal god. Both are arbitrary human concepts based on faith. The Buddha had no use for either.

We can legitimately or rationally explain only what falls within the limits of a span of human life, the limits being birth on the one hand and death on the other. Talk concerning possibilities beyond these two limits is idle talk. Nagasena in the Milinda Panna, trying to explain rebirth of beings changed by Karma can only de­vise, examples like milk changing into curd, one flame being lit from another, man­goes being produced from previously planted mangoes - all observable physical phe­nomena which do not reach out to the world of the seen and the unknown. You cannot prove the unseen or the mystical or the imaginary by the analogy of what is actual or real and observable.

                       

The rebirth idea arose among primitive people and remained with them as an article of faith, and certain modern communities hold to the belief purely as a matter of faith and tradition, with no intelligent or demonstrable method of making it acceptable to the rational mind. Hence the feverish enthusiasm with which Hindus and Buddhists hail any person who claims to recall a previous birth. None of these cases of claimed recollection have been investigated under fully scientific condition, though a great many have received a quasi-scientific investigation, mostly by interested parties. When eventually such cases come to be investigated by genuine scientific methods of control, I have no doubt, that they will all turn out to be carefully engineered frauds, not unlike the hoaxes perpetrated in the sphere of spiritualism by mediums who have claimed to be able to contact spirits of dead people and who have successfully hoodwinked professors of psychology for years. Spiritualistic mediums rely heavily on human gullibility, particularly on the gullibility and sometimes the complicity of investigators. Lazlo-Lazlo, the Hungarian medium, soon after his exposure confessed to Cornelius Tabori the journalist, that he had been able to carry on his sham demonstration chiefly owing to the gullibility of the investigating university professors who attended his seances!

This is the condensed text of a lecture delivered under the auspices of the Rationalist Association of Ceylon in 1966, later published in The Ceylon Rationalist Ambassador brought out by Abraham T Kovoor. This paper is mainly concerned with Pali Buddhism. 

Courtesy: Soul, Spirit, Rebirth and Posession: Author & Editor: Abraham T Kovoor [Publisher: B Premanand, Indian CSICOP, Podanur, 2009]

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Abraham Kovoor’s Case Diary: Do We Survive Death?

Abraham Kovoor

“If Mr. Kovoor s materialistic theory of the mind is accepted, all possibility of survival after death has to be ruled out, which means that all religious teachings that postu­late a life after death are false”. (G.G. Munidasa - Times of Ceylon - 30-4-67).

“What Mr. Kovoor thinks will happen to his own spirit after his death?” (A. Wickramasinghe - Times of Ceylon).

I do not hold the view that my life is located in a particular spot in my body. Life is generated in all living cells in my body, and is sustained by the oxidatory chemical action which goes on in them. This chemical action is maintained by my breathing and blood circulation. It is not in any way different from the production of heat and light energies during the combustion of the hydrocarbon in a burning candle. Heat and light do not depart from a burning candle when it is put out, and return to it when relit.

Courtesy: Wikipedia

It is just a case of cessation of chemical activity and production of energy. Similarly there is nothing to get out from my body when it dies as a result of termination of breathing and blood-circulation. If by any chance my dead body is resuscitated by some of the modem techniques, it will be wrong to think that the ‘departed life or soul’ re-entered the revived body.

My death will not be taking place abruptly at a particular moment in time. I began to die some 70 years ago. I started my life as a parasite on my mother. About one-eighth of my body died in the form of the umbilical cord and placenta on the day I terminated my parasitic mode of life. From that day onward I have been dying as well as growing. While numerous cells in my body died daily, numerous new ones were born. Large quantities of dead tissues have escaped my body by way of cropped and shaved hair, peeled off skin, cut nails, dropped teeth, and the millions of internal cells dead and discarded as waste during urination and perspiration.

Accidental cuts and bruises, bacterial and virus infections, physical and mental work, exposure to ultra-violet and infra-red rays of the sun, action of caustic and corrosive chemicals I have come in contact with while working in science laborato­ries, consumption of highly spiced pungent curries etc., have been responsible for killing the major part of my seventy-year-old body.

Once, a part of my body was removed by surgical operation. Forty years ago a minute cell separated from my body, merged with a foreign cell, and continued to grow out of my body. It is still growing, dying and proliferating in Paris as Dr. Aries Kovoor.

During my youth the rate of birth of new cells in my body was far greater than the rate of death. Hence, I began to grow and put on weight, reaching a maximum of 185 pounds in my 40th year. I maintained this maximum weight for a few years more when the rate of birth and death of cells in the body was equal. Thereafter the rate of death steadily kept ahead of birth, so much so, that my present weight is only 125 pounds. The total weight of the dead tissues which have escaped from my body all these years would amount to lakhs of pounds.

This process of continued death will go on till the day when there will be no more cells left behind to multiply. Even after the death of all the cells in my body, the cornea of my eyes will continue to live in the eyes of a lucky stranger.

The death of the 125 pounds of my present body will be a major event in my life of continued birth and death, because my brain - the seat of my mind - would cease to function, bringing to an end my individuality and ego.

My last breath will not be in any way different from the present ones. Then, as well as now, I shall be breathing out carbon dioxide and water vapour.

I do not believe that I have a soul or spirit to survive my death and go to heaven or hell, or to roam about as my ghost, or even to be reborn.

Abraham Kovoor (right) with MC Joseph

If at all there is a soul, the major part of it should have escaped from me long ago with the large mass of dead tissues which have left me already; and even after the death of the present 125 pounds of tissues, a fraction of that soul should remain in the body of the stranger who would be receiving the corneal graft.

I am an individual because, as a highly evolved animal, I have a set of centralized nervous, respiratory, circulatory and alimentary systems. But during the early stage of my development in my mother's womb, before the centralized biological functions started, I too had a dividual stage like many lower animals and most plants. While I was in my mother's womb, had the foetal tissue or the fertilized egg divided and separated into two or three parts, I would have had one or two identical (congenital) brothers born with me sharing fractions of my original soul or reborn personality.

Though sound and logical, these postulations will be rejected by people who are indoctrinated or brainwashed .about souls and rebirths, because they are not in line with the ‘teachings of religions’ .

Thus, though all religious teachings 'postulate a life after death' I have not found any valid reason or evidence to believe it. 

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Abraham Kovoor’s Case Diary: Rebirth and Prodigies

Abraham Kovoor

“Mr. Kovoor’s sound arguments to prove the absence of a life after death are, no doubt, very convincing. Yet, 1 like to ask Mr. Kovoor what he has to say about the numerous cases of rebirths investigated scientifically and confirmed by persons of high integrity and learning like Dr. Ian Stevenson, Prof HN Banerji, Prof K.N Jayatilleke, Mr. V.F. Gunaratne, and many others.

“How will Mr. Kovoor explain child prodigies, and inequalities in children born to the same parents?” (A. Wickramasinghe. Times of Ceylon - 29-5-1967).

Explanations for congenital variations are better sought in the science of genet­ics and the Mendalian laws of heredity than in karma and Rebirth.

Man has succeeded in producing prodigies among domesticated animals by se­lective breeding making use of his knowledge in the science of genetics. The prodi­gious egg-layers like the ‘High Line’hens, and the prodigious milk-yielders like the Jersey and Cape cows are the products of such selective breeding. The prodigious characteristics of the high-yielding hens, cows, cultivated plants etc., are governed by their genes and DNA molecules, and not by their Karma and 'previous births'.

Time will not be long before man will be using his advanced knowledge of genetics to improve the congenital qualities of his own species - Homo sapiens. Fu­ture man will surely find the need for discarding religious taboos, and to put into practice the knowledge he has gained by scientific researches to improve the quality of his own offspring. I visualize a future when the State will be interfering with the freedom of the individual in the field of procreation. By this I did not mean that individuals will be deprived by legislation their freedom to quench their sexual thirst by legitimate means.

Human procreation may become one of the most important nationalized con­cerns guided and controlled by expert geneticists and far-sighted statesmen.

It may be that semen banks, like blood banks, will be established at state ex­pense for preserving specially selected semen for artificially inseminating specially selected women possessing desired qualities. Thus, if man adopts selective breeding for improving his own species, it will be possible to plan the births of more and more child prodigies than at present. Today such prodigies are few and far between, being the product of mere chance.

It will not be too long before science works out a safe and satisfactory method of sex determination with chemicals. When such a possibility is available, man may be determining not only the quality of his offspring but also the sex.

 

Abraham Kovoor with his wife investigating a case

To say that child prodigies are born with the knowledge they had acquired in their ‘previous lives’ is as absurd as the assertion of some investigators of rebirth in Ceylon that acquired physical characteristics like wounds can reappear as scars on the bodies in subsequent births. If it is so, it will be a death-blow to the Eye Donation Society of Ceylon. The fear of being reborn blind will prevent people from donating their eyes!

A protagonist of rebirth goes about in this country proving the genuineness of an alleged case of rebirth at Balangoda on the basis of his pet theory that acquired physical characteristics, like wounds, could reappear on ‘reborn’ body. Another cham­pion of rebirth - a university don, and a close friend of mine - says, “Human birth is accountable in terms of the deaths of human beings, animals and non-human beings in this world or on other planets in this vast universe          The experimental evidence in rebirth is derived by using the age regression technique to regress a subject to ante­natal period. The subject is deeply hypnotized and taken back in time by suggestion. At any point in time in his past, the subject may be made to recount his experiences as well as to re-live them”.

Indeed, this is the first time a claim is made that rebirth can occur with both the body and mind of the previous birth intact. If this claim is correct, then there is no foundation for the don's theory that one organism can be reborn as a member of another species. If organisms retain the same bodies with all the congenital and ac­quired characteristics when reborn, how is it that the genital organs of a woman changed into male organs when she was reborn as a boy? If the pet theories of these exponents of rebirth are true, tigers and zebras should retain their stripes when they are reborn as human beings! Mathematical prodigies should be able to retain their mathematical knowledge even when they are reborn as donkeys or monkeys! We can then look forward for the wonderful day when a donkey - a mathematical prodigy­ will be occupying the Chair of Mathematics in one of our universities!

The three-pound mass of human brain built of 10 billions or so of nerve cells known as neurons, together with a mass of supporting glia cells is an organ crammed with much physicochemical activity. A great deal of physical and chemical activities takes place in its tissues. In short, it is a physicochemical laboratory where work goes on day and night throughout the period of its life. The force that makes the brain work is electricity. An adult brain works on 20 watts of electricity. Each neuron is in effect a tiny dynamo. All mental activities such as thought, will, cognition, volition, memory, reasoning, emotion etc., result from physicochemical activities which go on in the brain tissue. Mind does not exist apart from the brain. Damage to one's brain affects ones mental processes. With the death of the brain, consciousness and indi­viduality (ego) also end.

Just as there cannot be fire without a substance to burn, there cannot be life and mind without a body to respire. Mind cannot survive the death and decomposition of the brain. To say that mental faculties can remain intact after the death of the person is as absurd as saying that the body-less and brain-less spirit can appear in physical form (often dressed in white) as ghosts, and perform volitional acts.

Stories about children recalling the memories of their ‘previous births’ have to be discarded as myths, like the numerous ghost stories appearing in weekend newspapers.

  

Courtesy: Abraham Kovoor: Soul, Spirit, Rebirth and Possession; Published by B Premanand, Indian CSICOP, Podannur, Tamil Nadu; Date of Publication: 17-02-2000

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Possession and Trance

William Sargant

States of Trance and so-called possession form the core of many experiences which seem spiritual, mysterious and Supernatural. All through history men have thought that in trance contact could be made with an order of reality lying behind the everyday world, an order of reality with which we are not in touch in our everyday condition of mind and body.'

A dictionary definition of the word trance is “a morbid sleep, differing from natural repose in duration, in profound sensibility, etc., - the concomitant or symp­tom of diseases of the nervous system, particularly hysteria: catalepsy”. This defini­tion points us straight to the connection between the 'morbid sleep' of trance in which contact with supernatural truth is thought to be made, and disorders of the human mental and physical system.

William Sargant

In many trance states the subject is mentally absorbed apparently unaware of the external world around him, perhaps in a condition of exultation or ecstasy; but he may continue to talk and behave in ways which make sense, though after wards he cannot remember what he said and did. It is this combination of a frightening and abnormal state of mind with comprehensible speech and behaviour that has impressed men with the notion that someone in trance is the mouthpiece of the Gods.

The same thing can happen to someone who is kicked on the head while playing football or who suffers from loss of memory after a violent shock. Some drugs, hash­ish, L.S.D., mescaline and the like, induce a trance state, or ecstatic state not neces­sarily involving loss of memory. Trance states can also occur as a result of tumours of the brain or other brain injuries.

But there are also trances which are not induced by a sudden blow or shock, and although it is perfectly possible to fake a trance and people have done so, there is no doubt that genuine trance states of this sort do occur. They occur III the ecstasies of mystics or magicians, when the mind is concentrated on a powerful idea or image, of a god perhaps, and the link between the mind and the normal world seems to snap. They occur in clairvoyants and fortune tellers. And quite frequently in mediums.

Speaking In Tongues

There is also the phenomenon called possession, in which a god or spirit, which may be good or evil, is thought to have taken control of the person in trance, to speak through his mouth and act through his limbs; the person afterwards remembering nothing of what happened during the trance. The words and actions of someone possessed by a god or a spirit naturally carry considerable weight with an audience which believes them to be the words and actions of the god or spirit itself.

All over the world and at all times, including the present day, trances have served to inculcate or fortify a variety of beliefs. In Tibet, before the coming of the Communists, important decisions of policy were generally taken by the Dalai Lama and his advisers only after they had consulted the state oracle. The oracle was a young man who went into a trance and spoke strange words, which the priests interpreted. Hundreds of years before, the oracle of the temple of Apollo at Delphi was a woman who went into trance. Through her mouth, it was believed, the god himself answered the questions put to him. Although the answers were famous for being riddling, obscure and frequently misleading, many important decisions were made by Greek politicians only after consulting the oracle and in an attempt to follow its advice.

Some of the early Christians, including St. Paul, experienced ecstatic trance states and the Church festival of Pentecost (Whitsun) still commemorates the descent of the Holy Ghost to the apostles. There was the sound of great rushing wind, they saw what appeared to be cloven tongues of fire and they began to speak in foreign languages which they had never learned. This 'speaking in tongues' is a valued experience today among some groups of Christians who believe that it is a sign of contact with God.

Trance states are seen very commonly in Africa. During initiation ceremonies at puberty, states of trance are induced in boys and girls who experience a collapse or 'little death' after being exposed to rhythmic drumming, exhausting dancing, the pain of circumcision and the display to them of masks of the supposed tribal spirits. These spirits may talk to them through the mouths of witch-doctors who are themselves in states of trance and who wear the grotesque and frightening masks of the spirits they represent.

Real Healing Value

It is an old belief, still prevalent in some parts of the world that illness is caused by possession. Either the disease is itself an evil spirit which has seized the unfortunate patient in its grip, or it has been brought by an evil being which has taken hold of him. To cure him, the evil spirit must be cast out. The patient if often put into a trance, again through rhythmic dancing and singing, and the healer may also go into trance. Unknown to the patient, the evil spirit talks through his mouth telling the medicine-man why it has possessed the patient - perhaps because of some moral lapse on his part or as the result of a spell which an enemy has put on him. The medicine man then tries' to expel the spirit from the patient and, If he is successful, the patient emerges from his ~ mentally or physically healed.

Cures of this type do work in practice. From a psychiatrist's point of view, what happens is that in trance the patient is able to confess his sins and pour out his anxi­eties and problems in the same way as a patient on a Western psychotherapist's couch, though because he is in trance the African patient is not conscious of what he is saying and does not remember it afterwards. This process has real value for a variety of reasons, one of which is the patient's responding to suggestion and fully believing that the spirit which possessed him has been driven out.

Most of us in the West do not experience full-scale trance or possession at firsthand but we sometimes come close to it. Many people who went to hear Hitler speak - the effects of his hypnotic ranting reinforced by music, ceremonial, the response of a great crowd - were carried out of themselves into an uncritical state of mind in which they felt that he was almost a divine being. Enthusiastic listeners to the Beatles have been known to go into states akin to trance, with or without temporary loss of consciousness, when the music seems to take on a richness of significance of which the listener is powerfully aware though he cannot describe it in words. Lovers of classical music are not immune from the same effect. The state which we commonly call' being 'entranced', held in the grip of an experience of immeasurable beauty, immeasurable meaning, induced by works of art or by splendours of landscape, is the nearest approach to the true trance state which most of us ever make.

The Validity of Trance

There will always be arguments about trance. Some people believe that the medium in trance, the person possessed by a spirit, the speaker in tongues, the mystic in ecstasy, the art-lover entranced, may be truly in touch with a reality beyond the normal world, Others believe that trance is a splitting of the field of consciousness and . that the subject is not in touch with any mysterious or greater reality but is expressing beliefs, ideas, hopes or fears which he himself unconsciously holds or which are part of the general currency of his society.

The person in trance generally retains some vague awareness of his surroundings.  He rarely falls and hurts himself and he generally talks of things which he knows about. He may in fact exhibit a sharper perception and awareness of what is going on around him than in his normal conscious state, so that in trance he gives the impression of having an enhanced power to read other men's minds, to anaylse their present actions and prophesy their future ones. Strange tongues are spoken in trance but there is no completely proven instance of a language being spoken in trance by someone who was totally unacquainted with it before-hand. Subconscious forgotten memories can rise to the surface in trance: facts once known and languages once learned can be brought back by an individual who has little or no recollection of them in his normal state.

I do not myself believe that in states of trance gods ever speak to men. Trance is usually a state of self- hypnosis, through which all sorts of dubious beliefs can be implanted and maintained. Fortunes are not made because the subject of a trance is able to predict something readily checkable and profitable, the movements of prices on the Stock Exchange or the winners of horse-races. But trance states have been used through the ages, and will continue to be used, to prop up belief in a great variety of gods, spirits, ghosts and the rest. Those who have experienced trance themselves can rarely be convinced that something supernatural has not happened to them, because autosuggestibility tends to become so greatly enhanced in the Trance State.

We shall know much more about trance when we know better how the human brain really works. Readers of this encyclopedia will find states of trance mentioned in connection with gods' demons, ghosts, telepathy, witches, spirit possessions, and supernatural powers of all sorts. The reader is best left to his own final judgement as to whether man is deceived or elevated to high realms of the spirit by this fascinating but complicated mechanism of the human mind.

  

William Sargant was a controversial physician in Charge of the Department of Psychological Medi­cine at St. Thomas's Hospital, London, and a pioneer of physical methods of treatment in psychiatry. Author of Battle for the Mind, a work on brainwashing and conversion, and the Unquiet Mind, an autobiography, Dr. Sargant is a member of the Editorial Board of Man, Myth, and Magic, inwhich the above essay was published. 

Courtesy: Abraham Kovoor: Soul, Spirit, Rebirth and Possession; Published by B Premanand, Indian CSICOP, Podannur, Tamil Nadu; Date of Publication: 17-02-2000

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Bridey Murphy and Simandini: Hypnotic Regression and Rebirth

Abraham Kovoor

Believers in reincarnation often try to prove that their belief is neither blind nor silly by citing certain so-called scientific evidences. On such evidence, they say, is through hypnotic regression. They put great emphasis on certain alleged rebirth stories re­vealed through hypnotic regression. Two such "authentic" cases often cited by them are those of Bridey Murphy and Simandini. 

We reproduce below what the distinguished researcher and author Sprague de Camp and his wife Catherine deCamp have written about these two cases:-

I

“In the 1950s Morey Bernstein of Colorado, dabbled in hypnotism, undertook to hypnotise the wife of an acquaintance. The name of the woman was Virginia Tighe, although in his report, Bernstein called her "Ruth Simmons". When Bernstein hyp­notised Mrs. Tighe, he told her to "regress"; that is to go back to her childhood and describe the scenes. Then he urged her to go back to a time before her birth.

 

''You will find”, he told her, "that there are other scenes in your memory. There are other scenes from far away lands and distant places in your memory". (Bernstein, P.124).

 

Sure enough - as anybody who knows about hypnotism could have foreseen - Mrs. Tighe just did that. The scene, albeit “thin”, were said to be those of nineteenth century Ireland. The personality speaking through the body of Mrs. Tighe claimed to be Bridget ("Bridey") Murphy, an Irishwoman who had flourished more than a cen­tury previously, married one Brian McCarthy, and died in the fullness of her years.

 

All this resulted in a best-seller by Bernstein, The Search for Bridey Murphy; a national reincarnation fad; Bridey Murphy clubs and amateur hypnosis circles; a mass of articles in magazines and newspapers about the case; and two or three suicides by people impatient to get on with their next incarnation.

 

Investigation of Bridey Murphy in Ireland failed to establish her existence. How­ever, investigation of Mrs. Tighe accounted for a great deal. For one thing, her speech, both in grammar and vocabulary, was solidly North American English except for a few artificial additions like "colleen". Gaelic words were consistently mispronounced in the manner typical of one who has read them but never heard them spoken, since the rules for pronunciation of Irish are very different from those of English.

 

The various elements in Virginia Tighe's description of herself as Bridey were all sooner or later accounted for in terms of Mrs. Tighe's own childhood memories. The climax came when a reporter discovered in Chicago a real Bridey Murphy: a woman of Irish birth who had lived across the street during Virginia's childhood, and who was now a youthful-looking grandmother, very much alive".

II

“In the 1890s, there lived in Geneva, a young woman known to the literature by the pseudonym" Helena Smith" (real name, Elise Muller). Mile Smith had a good job in a local company and practised mediumship on the side. She had been a dreamy child whose habit of reverie had strengthened into trance mediumship. Despite health, good looks and a respectable background, she disliked and despised her environment. She affected an air of regal hauteur and snubbed her suitors as mere bourgeois.

 

Mile Smith's romantic leanings appeared in the list of spirits who spoke through her. These included Victor Hugo, Marie Antoniette, and the famous eighteenth-century charlatan Cagliostro, who strangely enough did not understand his native Italian.

 

The most remarkable spirits, however were those from India and the planet Mars. It transpired that in an earlier life, in the fourteenth century, Helene had been the daughter of an Arab Sheikh. Under the name of Simandini, she became the elev­enth wife of an Indian Prince Sivrouka. When Sivrouka died, she dutifully burned herself up on his pyre. 

Catherine Crook de Camp with her husband, L. Sprague de Camp

In her Martian incarnation Helena appeared as a Martian princess. The princess's aggressive young boy friend also put in an appearance, describing and drawing pictures of the landscape of his native Mars. This landscape was lush tropical scene, even less probable than the Mars of Edgar Rice Burroughs. (Much less probable than the revelations of Mariner pictures!)

 

Helene came to the notice of the French astronomer Theodore Flournoy, who was dabbling in psychic research. At first Flournoy was impressed. When Helene was taxed with the fact that Simandini did not seem to know any Arabic, she wrote a sentence in perfectly good Arabic. Sacred name! Said Flournoy to himself; how could this ordinary, middle-class Swiss girl come by all this learned matter?

 

His puzzlement deepened when he learned that there had been a real prince Sivrouka, who had died when Helene said he did. Then Flournoy took a second look at the matter - the long critical scrutiny that slays so many beautiful theories. Helene, it seemed had been browsing in the stacks of the Geneva Public Library. What she saw, she retained - not on the conscious level, but in her unconscious, whence it could be raised in trance states. He found that the Arabic sentence was a motto on the flyleaf of one of the books in this library. Helene wrote it not from right to left as a real Arab would do, but mechanically, left to right. Her Martian language she had invented by using made-up words along with French sounds, grammar and word order.

 

However absurd, Helene's impersonations were a smashing success. Despite Flournoy's exposure of her sources, an American woman, with more money than sense, gave the reincarnated princess a life income. Helene quit her job, devoted her life to inspirational psychic painting, and spent her last years tottering on the verge of insanity" ...

 

"A hypnotic subject, in a genuine trance, tries to please his hypnotist. If the hypnotist tells him to conjure up a former incarnation, the subject strives to invent one. Moreover, Bernstein does not seem to have known that multiple personality is a mental disorder, which can become serious if encouraged. A prudent person would not let an. amateur remove his appendix. Such an operation is tricky enough even when done by a professional". 

(Spirits, Stars, and Spells, P.245-52  by L. Sprague de Camp And Catherine C, de Camp)

Courtesy: Abraham Kovoor: Soul, Spirit, Rebirth and Possession; Published by B Premanand, Indian CSICOP, Podannur, Tamil Nadu; Date of Publication: 17-02-2000

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Witchcraft: A Panel Discussion

Abraham Kovoor

This is the transcript of a panel discussion on Witchcraft - Fact or Fiction broadcast by CBC (Ceylon Broadcasting Corporation) on March 23,­1971 in its feature "Forum of the Air". 

Participants:

Dr. Nandasena Ratnapala (Moderator), Lecturer, Vidyodaya University. 

Mr. Abraham Kovoor - President, Ceylon Rationalist Association.

Mr. George Ondaatjie - Member, Ceylon Rationalist Association.

Prof. C.E.C. Bulathsinghala - an astrologer and palmist.

Rev. Fr. Matthew Peries - a demonologist and exorcist.

In the Ceylonese context, witchcraft has to be taken along with demonology, because witchcraft in Ceylon means the employment of a spirit as an agent to inflict harm or injuries, or to gain success or security. It is slightly different from what is found in western countries. Let us ask Rev. Fr. Mathew Peries his idea of witchcraft.

Peries: it is a popular belief that is not confined only to Ceylon. It is believed all over the world among people who accept spirits as discarnate personalities who can cause harm to human beings. They believe that by rituals these spirits can be used for ulterior purposes, as you said in the ritual of witchcraft.

Moderator: In Ceylon there are so many people who believe in witchcraft. Hardly a day passes without some notice appearing in the newspapers about actions of spir­its. Mr. Kovoor, what are your ideas about the subject?

Kovoor: Well, I do not know what this spirit is! We have bodies, we have life, the vital energy produced as the result of respiration, and we have minds, the working of the brain. Apart from these there is no scientific evidence to say that man has a spirit or soul to survive the death of his body. When we stop breathing there will be no more oxidatory work going on in the protoplasmic tissue producing any more life. There cannot be any life without there being a body to breathe. A discarnate spirit cannot have life because it cannot breathe. Of course, as Fr. Peries said, it is universally believed that there are spirits which are discarnate souls capable of appearing as apparitions, capable of talking or throwing stones or doing conscious acts. To be conscious, a spirit must have brain. A spirit has no body and muscles to throw stones. It has no vocal cord and lungs to speak. It is a sort of blind belief among many persons that spirits exist. But there is no scientific evidence to support it. If people see or hear spirits in the dark, it must be due to their hallucinations resulting from their delusional beliefs.

Image Courtesy: http://www.indg.in

Moderator: Now Mr. Kovoor, in the course of my research work I have come across not only villagers but even the sophisticated educated persons in towns and cities having beliefs in spirits, and their ability to bring about harm or benefit to the people. How can you account for this?

Kovoor: Education has nothing to do with blind beliefs. If you are brainwashed or indoctrinated from childhood in a belief, it is difficult to get rid of those ideas even with your education. These delusional beliefs get rooted in the sub-conscious mind. For example, I myself was brought up with the idea that man has a soul which be­comes a spirit after the death capable of going to heaven or hell. As a child I was mortally afraid of ghosts. It was an uphill task to remove such false beliefs. Although I have go~ rid of all such foolish beliefs, still it may linger in my unconscious mind. Recently I was recording a broadcast talk about ghosts at the Kanatta cemetery at night. Although I did not see any ghost there, if some one had made some strange sound, I would have got frightened because of my sub-conscious fear of them. But on the other hand if Dr. Aries Kovoor, my son, is frightened in a cemetery, he is not likely to experience such fears because as a child he was not indoctrinated about spirits, demons gods and similar nonsensical ideas.

Peries: Some persons believe that there is nothing beyond death to survive. For them demonology is a fiction. To 1110se who believe that men live beyond death, demonology and witchcraft becomes acceptable understanding.

Kovoor: I accept that Demonology and witchcraft become acceptable only to those who blindly believe in survival without any evidence!

Peries: There are so many things we cannot see, but we cannot say tlley do not exist. I have not seen the back of my head.

Kovoor: With a mirror in hand you can!

Peries: I have not seen my heart.

Kovoor: Before the invention of the microscope we never knew there were bacteria. Now we know. Science is broadening the horizon of our knowledge. There is no scientific evidence about a soul surviving the death of the body. If a mosquito does not leave a soul after its death, man too does not.

Peries: We who have examined patients afflicted by spirits have found that they are able to transcend time and space. I have read about girls who were so afflicted speak in foreign language which can baffle hearers. It is only for a short time, and that is the time when they are afflicted. Those are the convincing facts.

I have not seen the wind, but I know it blows. I know it blows when I see the wind ruffling. Therefore I say there is a thing called wind. I cannot say here is the wind, neither can I bottle it. But I know it can harm. In that way we believe that the end of man is not death. Man continues beyond death. For those who believe that, then the rest of sequence follows.

Kovoor: According to Fr. Mathew Peries the evidence for survival is that some persons speak like a dead person, or speak a so-called foreign language. This phenomenon can be explained in psychological terms. It is pure glossolalia. Glossolalia is a mental derangement or neurosis in which a person who has delusional belief in spirits, act and talk like a dead person often in changed voice. I have come across many cases of glossolalia, and even cured them. Similarly, people may behave like a dead person, and even claim clairvoyant powers. This type of neurosis is known as cryptesthesia. There are remedies for such mental afflictions.

Peries: Glossolalia would be only babbling of words without any meaning. There are transcendent states when they can tell about things in another room. That is why I am able to tell you that it is not the same individual, but a different person which came in. This condition stops when the spirit is addressed to by me. I do this accord­ing to the Christian right.

Ondaatjie: Of course, we have got to question whether this has been on a scien­tific basis. Because there is another phenomenon called ESP. Various claims have been made, and very close and exacting tests made. But they have nIl fallen short of any scientific standard.

Modem psychology can give alternative explanations for those phenomena such as a person seeing a spirit, or possession by spirit or demon. The explanation for a person seeing a demon like Kalukumaraya or a spirit is that it is pure hallucination. Psychologists say that hallucination is very often caused by excitement, fear or ecstasy. It is closely related to a person's beliefs, and is coloured by his childhood experiences and fears. In fact our culture is richly laid with many medieval beliefs in various demons and spirits. It is surprising that people see only spirits and demons about which they have heard so much. In this connection it is relevant to say that rationalists, for instance, do not see spirits, nor do they fear spirits!

Bulathsinhala: I do not believe in death. I believe in reincarnation. Death is only a passing phase. Belief in demonology is not mere hallucination. Often people come and say that a woman had died with some attachment. And then what happens? Stones are being thrown into the house, pictures on the wall are being broken. Cow dung and other dirty things are thrown at people. But no person is visible. I was taken there. Paid add taken there. They said a woman who had some attachment to the family had died and that person is creating the troubles. So that is not a hallucination. So, I said there are demons knocking about the place. I believe in witchcraft. I believe in soonyams. I believe in charms. If I am given time I can give colossal evidence to prove that demons are about the place.

Moderator: So you mean to say that persons who die are bom again, and at the same time you say that their spirits could be re-employed through witchcraft to inflict harm on others?

Bulathsinghala: Yes. If they leave this world with bad attachment they corme back to create trouble. They can be harnessed by us.

Moderator: By charms and manthrams, and by certain rituals?

Bulathsinghala: Yes, they can be harnessed by them.

Moderator: What do you think about it Mr. Kovoor?

Kovoor: Well, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. On three occasions I have challenged all types of occultists in this country through the English, Sinhalese and Tamil newspapers to kill me by their charms, soonyams, vas kavi etc., during speci­fied periods. During these periods I received through the post about 49 charms from allover the island. I have got them with me. The very fact that I am still alive proves that these charms and rituals are of no use. Of course, if I was a blind believer in these myths, there would have been some psychological effect on me.

Again, Prof. Bulathsinghala was trying to establish the reality of spirits through mysterious happenings like the throwing of stones, cow dung etc. Mr. Bulathsinghala, I have Investigated hundreds of cases of poltergeistism where similar mysterious happenings occur. In every case I have succeeded in finding out the person who was respon­SIble for all such acts. They are all done not by spirits, but by mentally sick persons.

Moderator: Excuse me Mr. Kovoor. We have come to the last minute. I am very thankful to all of you for coming and taking part in today's discussion.

We have been discussing "witchcraft" as our second subject, and Mr. Kovoor has said that spirits, from a rationalistic point of view, do not exist. Mr. Ondaatjie too has taken that view. Prof. Bulathsinghala, on the other hand, connects his belief in the existence of spirits with the popular belief people have in rebirth. Rev. Fr. Mathew Peiris has represented the Christian point of view and gave some information about certain singular happenings he has come across.

As a scientist I feel that many of these things have to be scientifically investigated. Prof. Bulathsinghala and Fr. Peries would do well to bring these things before Scientists for thorough investigations. Such investigations are bound to bring good dividends. 

Courtesy: Abraham Kovoor: Soul, Spirit, Rebirth and Possession; Published by B Premanand, Indian CSICOP, Podannur, Tamil Nadu; Date of Publication: 17-02-2000

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Abraham Kovoor’s Case Diary: Resurrection of Vasanth Babu Rao

Abraham Kovoor

The following news item appeared in many Indian newspapers:-

"Vasanth Babu Rao, 48, of Poona was a consumptive and a diabetic. On January 6th 1965 he had a severe chest pain, and was rushed to a nursing home in the city, but died shortly after admission. The doctor at the nursing home certified that the death was due to cardiac failure. Later in the evening, the brothers of Rao removed the body in a taxicab.

About one mile outside the city the taxi experienced severe jolts due to numer­ous pot-holes on the road. One severe jolt caused the head of the corpse hit against the door of the taxi. The occupants of the taxi were alarmed to see the right hand of the corpse move towards the side of the head which knocked against the door. The panic-stricken brothers turned the car, and drove back at pall-mall speed to the nursing home.

Two days later the late Mr. Vasanth Babu Rao was discharged from the nursing home hail and hearty."

Life or vital energy in all living organisms, including this Vasanth Rao, is sus­tained by a chemical action which goes on in the protoplasm-containing cells of their bodies. This chemical action is the slow oxidation (respiration) of nutrient substances such as glucose, fats and proteins found in the living cells. The products of this oxidizing reaction are carbon dioxide, water and vital energy (life). Of these, the first two by­products are discarded as gaseous waste during exhalation, and the third - vital energy - is utilized for all the biological activities of the organism. Respiration is conducted by all cells containing active protoplasm, a complex proteinic substance.

Modem researches have revealed that the mitochondria - the filamentous bod­ies present in the cytoplasm of living cells - are the power-plants of all life on earth. These mitochondria, with the numerous enzymes they possess, extract a very special form of energy - life or vital energy - from the chemical bonds in glucose, fats and proteins during respiration. The end product of this chemical action is adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the universal supplier of life (energy) needed for the contraction of muscles, the transmission of nerve impulses, metabolic activity etc., in short, all life-activities of the entire organism or its component organs.

Soul carried to Heaven: Painting by William Bouguereau

An organism like Mr. Vasanth Rao remains alive only as long as it respires. Respiration comes to a stand - still when (1) the protoplasm-containing cells do not get oxygen, (2) there are no fuel bodies such as glucose,fats and proteins in the cells, or (3) the protoplasm undergoes decomposition.

Thus, respiration is not in any way different from the burning of a candle. The difference between the two lies in the speed of oxidation. The fast oxidation (combus­tion) of the candle, like the slow respiration of an organism, produces carbon dioxide, water vapour and energy in the form of heat and light. Respiring organisms produce vital energy in place of the heat and light of the burning candle.

As long as the substance (hydrocarbon) of the candle does not undergo decom­position, it is possible to rekindle a put-out candle. Similarly, it is possible to revitalize a dead organism by re-establishing its respiration before decomposition of the protoplasm sets in.

A rekindled candle gives out fresh heat and light. It is not correct to say that the heat and light 'depart' from the candle when the flame is put out, and return to it when it is rekindled. Similarly, a re-vitalized or resuscitated organism produces fresh life (energy). It is wrong to say that vital energy (life) "departs" from an organism when it ceases to repair (dies), and returns to it when it is revived by restoring its respiration. The organism simply ceases to live or to produce vital energy, as a put -out candle ceases to produce heat and light.

Though universally believed from primitive times, there is absolutely no evi­dence to think there is a soul or spirit for an organism (including man) to escape from it when it dies, and to come back to it if by chance it is revived.

Organisms breathe in various ways. Plants breathe through the thousands of stomata on the leaves, lenticels on the stems and pneumatothodes on the roots. Be­cause of the facility for breathing in carbon dioxide by any part of the bodies, plants can be fragmented, and each fragment made to live and grow under favourable condi­tions. It is absurd to think that such offspring of a plant share the fragmented soul (if any) of the parent plant, or that fresh souls get into the offsprings sprouting from the cuttings. We should not forget the fact that the life in a plant is not in any way different from the life in an animal. Biologically, both are living organisms, having common origin.

Higher up in the ladder of evolution, numerous animals like coelenterates, worms etc., conduct respiration by absorbing oxygen by their skins (cutaneous respiration). Such creatures also can be fragmented like plants, and each fragment will continue to grow into a new organism under favourable conditions. Here too, it will be absurd to think that such offsprings share the fragmented soul of the original organism if it had one.

Still higher up in the animal kingdom, insects breathe through numerous spi­racles (pores) along their bodies. The body of a cockroach or dragon fly will continue to live for a couple or more days even if its head is cut off, because that headless body can continue to breathe through the spiracles. It will die eventually when the fuel in its body gets exhausted. If the supply of the fuel is maintained in the headless body by some sort of artificial feeding, it can be made to live longer. In such a case, is it correct to say that the headless body, still alive, has a part of the original soul of the insect, the other part being lost in the severed head?

Pulmonary respiration carried on by still higher types of animals like Vasanth Rao, is slightly complicated and centralised; hence these animals are not dividuals like lower organisms. Though mammals are individuals, they too have a dividual stage during their early development in their mother's wombs. Identical twins, trip­lets, quadruplets etc., result by the division of one and the same fertilized egg-cell. Do identical twins share one soul or reborn personality divided into halves?

In pulmonary respiration air is breathed into the lungs and there the oxygen is absorbed by the hemoglobin of the blood. The oxygenated blood is then sent through the arteries and capillaries by the pumping action of the heart to all the living tissues of the body, where oxidation of glucose, fats and proteins takes place liberating vital energy. The by-products of this chemical action - carbon dioxide and water - are absorbed by the de-oxygenated blood, and brought back to the lungs to- be exhaled.

If the oxygenated blood is prevented to reach any part of the body by blocking the artery leading to that part, the tissues in that part of the body will die. But, if blood circulation to that part is restored before the protoplasm in the cells there start decom­posing due to bacterial action, it will be possible to revive the tissues in that part.

Similarly, if the protoplasm in the cells of tissues or organs severed from the parent body is preserved without decomposition under aseptic conditions, it will be possible to revive those dead tissues or organs by grafting them on the living bodies of other organisms even after many years. If a person has one or more such grafted organs in his body, does it mean that fragments of souls from the donors of such organs have merged with his own soul?

Tissues removed from organisms are made to live and grow in cultures in labo­ratories. There are numerous cases of such cultured tissues continuing to live and grow long after the death of the parent organisms. In such cases, are we to assume that a part of the soul of the dead organism is left behind in the tissues under culture? Do rebirths take place in installments in such cases?

Dismembered organs and tissues can be preserved for many years in glycerin at deep- freeze temperature to be used for future grafting. It is found that dead muscle tissues so preserved, contract like living muscles when exposed to the chemical trigger action of ATP (Adenosine triphosphate). Does it mean that such tissues still retain their souls?

Desiccated yeast can be preserved for years under aseptic conditions in vacuum containers. If a pinch of such dry yeast is put into sugar solution, and kept in optimum temperature, the dead yeast cells will revive and start multiplying. When yeast cells are resuscitated thus, do the departed souls of the dead yeast return after many years to reenter their old bodies? Or, is it a case of rebirths of other dead organisms?

Single-celled organisms like the amoebae do not ordinarily die but divide down the middle to form two new offsprings, leaving behind no father, no mother, no corpse and no spirits. In a sense, they are immortal. Have such organisms no ghosts or rebirths?

Death is the cessation of respiration. In higher animals, both breathing and blood circulation are necessary to enable the living cells in all parts of the body to respire. If the involuntary muscles of the heart and the diaphragm happen to stop functioning the animal will die even if the protoplasm in the cells of its body is in perfect condition. Such dead organisms can be brought back to life by artificial meth­ods of resuscitation such as cardiac massage, 'kiss of life' or mouth to mouth breath­ing, iron lung, electronic pacemaker, heart and lungs machine etc.

In the case of Vasanth Babu Rao of Poona, his death was due to cardiac failure. His resurrection was due to the re-establishment of blood circulation before the proto­plasm in the cells of his body started decomposing. The violent jerk the corpse expe­rienced when the car was driven along the pot-holed road· gave sufficient mechanical stimulus for the muscles of the heart and the diaphragm to resume their rhythmical movements. The dead cells of the corpse now began to get sufficient oxygen to respire and produce fresh life.

Peter Sellers, the well-known film star of America, it was reported, died seven times in 1963, and each time he was revived by the use of electronic pacemaker.

Neither in the case of Vasanth Rao of Poona nor in the case of Peter Sellers of America can it be said that their 'departed' souls came back to re-enter their resur­rected bodies. Do resurrected persons get fresh souls, the old ones having gone to heaven or hell, or even reborn in some other places?

Life and mind cannot exist without there being a living body to carry on respira­tion. Mind is the product of electro-chemical activity of the nervous system. Like life, mind cannot survive the death and destruction of the neurons which constitute the nervous system of an animal. Thus, it is absurd to contend that memories of past lives can be recalled in a later rebirth as alleged to have occurred in the case of Gnanatilleke of Talawakalle or Shanthi Devi of Muttra. More and more scientific evidences are forthcoming showing that memories are molecular based. Recent researches of Prof. H. Hyden have shown that "in the nerve cells of the mature organism, experiences retained in learning lead to more or less lasting alterations in the chemical composi­tion of the cell's R N A (Ribonucleic Acid) content; a fact of great significance for the problem of memory". Hyden's opinion that memory is RNA-based finds corrobora­tion in Prof. J.V. McConnell's researches on the memory of planarial worms at the University of Michigan.

The experiments of McConnell and Jacobson have shown the possibility of trans­ferring memory from one organism to another by injecting memory-carrying mol­ecules of R N A from one to another.

Thus, in dealing with accounts of rebirth, we are only dealing with human testi­mony and often with human gullibility. They are devoid of either scientific or intellec­tual merit. A molecular-based property cannot survive the destruction of the mol­ecules on which it is based.

Cessation of respiration is also the cessation of life. The idea of an immortal soul escaping the mortal body resulted from the instinctive desire of our primitive forbears to avoid total annihilation. It is from such groundless beliefs that the earliest of reli­gions, animism and ancestor worship originated.

Survival of numerous superstitious institutions and practices such as temples, churches, mosques, devales, sacrifices, offerings, worships, prayers, pujas, pilgrimages, vows, blessings, sanctifications, devotion, exorcisms, kattadiyas, kappuralas, priests, bishops, cardinals, popes etc., stem from the unfounded belief in a 'life after death'. Man spends a good deal of his time, energy and hard-earned money unneces­sarily to secure a happy future for his imaginary soul. If he knows that death brings the end of his conscious existence, he will spend his time, energy and money to make this life better here and now, instead of enriching the priests, churches and temples.

It is a paying job for priests of all religions to perpetuate the belief that death is only the beginning of an eternal life 'in the other world', for, it is on such beliefs in the minds of the gullible that their livelihood depends. Since priests have no possible means of brainwashing the domestic or wild animals into the belief of the survival of their spirits, they are free from being haunted or possessed by departed spirits, or from the fear of going to hell or being reborn in a miserable state.

Let us be rational, and work to make our present existence happy for us and our fellow beings. Let us learn to live at peace and harmony with our neighbours even if their languages, cultures and superstitions differ from those of ours. Above all, let us refrain wisely from brain washing our own children with superstitious beliefs handed over to us by our ignorant forbears. 

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