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about in the present day due to excessive outdated over-modernistic
education which is already getting to be out of date in the western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