Memory is such a thing that we put down our car keys and later can’t remember where.
We can’t remember being in the womb. Were we there?
Forgetting one’s previous birth upon taking the next appears to be a law of nature (though a law that apparently has exceptions).
Srimad-Bhagavatam, a Vedic scripture, says that by the trauma of birth a child forgets his previous life.
It might also be said that if we could remember our previous births, the burden of the memories would be unbearable. The memories we carry around from just one life are sometimes sorely distressing. Multiply such memories manyfold, and they would surpass our ability to deal with them.
The Vedic scriptures don’t tell us that the only purpose of reincarnation is to learn.
According to the Vedic sages, the living entity forgetful of his eternal relationship with God, or Krishna, wants to enjoy independently in the material world, so Krishna affords him repeated opportunities to try to do so.
Sometimes the living entity wants to experience the supposed enjoyment of flying, so Krishna may grant him the body of a bird. Sometimes he wants to enjoy eating without discrimination, so Krishna may give him the body of a pig.
In this way, the bewildered living being can repeatedly pursue—for unlimited lifetimes—the material enjoyments for which he has come to this material world.
On the other hand, Krishna gives the living being repeated opportunities to turn away from the fruitless prospect of independent material enjoyment, attain spiritual self-realization, and regain the eternal relationship with Him.
In this way, we may embark on the path of spiritual advancement. And whatever progress we make is our permanent gain. So even if we don’t complete the project in one lifetime, in the next we can take it up where we left off.
Materially, whatever we have gained in one lifetime we leave behind when life is over. The millionaire can’t take with him even a penny. The professor can’t hold on to even a shred of his erudition.
But spiritually, according to the Bhagavad-gita, whatever gains one makes are never lost. If one takes up the path of spiritual advancement but fails to complete it, he may be granted a birth in a pious family or a wealthy one. Or, still better, he may be born in a family of transcendentalists. He then revives the spiritual consciousness of his previous life and again tries to make further progress.
By virtue of the divine consciousness of his previous life, he automatically becomes attracted to spiritual principles—even without seeking them. And when he engages himself with sincere endeavor in making further progress, he is gradually freed of all contaminations. Then, ultimately, after many, many births of practice, he achieves perfection and attains the supreme goal.
The Vedic literature tells us that there are 8,400,000 species of life, and living beings pass through all of them. So although to our limited vision the population may be growing, when we take all these species into account the true population of the world is beyond counting.
Added to this, the Vedic literature tells us that there are also living beings on other planets and in other universes.
The results of our limited human census, therefore, don’t present a problem.
One might object that this is just an ad-hoc explanation, a cop-out, a way to escape from the objection. But in fact it is an integral part of the Vedic philosophy, with implications in other contexts That it is not falsifiable doesn’t mean that it’s wrong. The realms of empiric science have their limits, so not everything in the world is falsifiable. What it means, therefore, is that the truth of this Vedic teaching is beyond the ability of science alone to either confirm or deny.
This is a very strange idea.
If I say "Night follows day," is that true only for me? It happens whether I believe in it or not.
Or suppose I say, “If you believe in death, it’s true for you.” Please—death will come for you whether you believe in it or not.
The Bhagavad-gita says, “For one who is born, death is certain. And one who dies is sure to be born again.”
According to the Bhagavad-gita, this is a law of nature. You can decide for yourself whether to believe there’s such a law or not. But laws of nature—whatever they are—do not not depend on one’s belief.
According to the Vedic literature, that’s not what happens.
It’s not that you switch bodies with someone else, or take over someone else’s body. Rather, you—the consciousness or soul within the body—take birth again, in a new body. You transfer, just as you might transfer from one apartment to another, or as you might change clothes, or as a caterpillar sheds its old body and takes on that of a butterfly.
Reincarnation is a topic about which the Bible is fairly quiet.
There is a text—Hebrews 9:27—that says, “It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.”
But is this a comment on reincarnation? Or is it, rather, a conventional statement? Any particular man—John W. Smith—is born but once, and dies but once. This we all know. Whether his soul then enters another lifetime is another matter.
The Vedic literature says that when any man dies, the acts of his life are weighed—he is judged. And then he takes his next birth accordingly. Is this in conflict with the text? You decide.
But before you do, please take into account the entire text:
And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation. (Hebrews 9:27-28)
The focus here is not on the question of whether the soul undergoes transmigration. Rather, a common example is being given by which to better understand the divine sacrifice offered by Christ.
There seems little reason to suppose that the use of this example rules out reincarnation.
Sometimes a text from Matthew (17:9-12) is offered as evidence of reincarnation. There Jesus tells his disciples that Elias had come again as John the Baptist. This text, however, does little to support the doctrine of reincarnation. It fits better with the Vedic concept of avatara—the doctrine that God, God’s son, or one of God’s messengers from the spiritual world may, by spiritual power, appear through birth in the world for the upliftment of the fallen souls. (Christians may find that this Vedic doctrine resonates with their own beliefs, or even offers a way to greater understanding—but that is another matter.)
A more relevant text appears in John (9:1-2):
And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?
The idea that the man was born blind due to the sins of his parents is easily intelligible: because of their own sins, the parents had a son who was blind.
But how are we to understand that a man could have been born blind due to sins of his own? Clearly, the man must have lived before. Of course, one could say that the man must have sinned in the womb. But this is a very strange explanation. What sin could the man have done there—crossed his legs wrong? Would the disciples have even entertained such ideas? Surely the alternative they are asking about is the possibility that the man had sinned in a previous life, an alternative that fit with a doctrine taught for centuries before Christ and undoubtedly still current while he was on earth—the doctrine of reincarnation.
And how does Jesus answer? Does he upbraid the disciples for their foolishness? Does he condemn them for bringing up a worthless or repugnant idea? Does he tell them in no uncertain terms that reincarnation is a mistake, a wrong teaching, an error?
Surely, here was an ideal opportunity to do so. But Jesus doesn’t.
Instead, in the next verse, he answers, “Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.”
In other words, this is a special case, a setup. The man has been born blind so that Jesus may show a miracle, as he does a few verses later.
And so Jesus comments on neither of the offered alternatives—the sins of the parents nor the past sins of the man himself—but simply puts forward a different story.
As we see, reincarnation is an idea that Lord Jesus declines the opportunity to refute.
One might say: “Clearly, the idea of reincarnation proceeds merely from wishful thinking—it’s comforting to think that, birth after birth, the soul lives on.”
Comforting? The Vedic writings say that the cycle of birth and death entails repeated miseries. Is birth fun? Is dying your idea of having a good time?
Apart from that, whether the idea gives solace or dread is beside the point. How we feel about things makes no difference as to whether they are true or not.
The objection suffers from the fallacious strategy of attacking one’s supposed motives for holding to a position—in this case, the idea of reincarnation—rather than addressing the position itself.
“But personality is but a product of the higher nervous system and the brain,” you might say. "So how could it move from one physical body to another?
Well, hold on there. You’re making some pretty big assumptions.
That consciousness is just a product of highly organized matter is just a theory. And the theory has an awful lot going against it.
Of course, if your theory is right, your objection raises serious difficulties. Effectively, reincarnation is scuttled. But if your theory is wrong, the grounds for your objection dissolve.
Apart from that, the objection essentially begs the question. The doctrine of reincarnation holds that we are souls who transmigrate from one body to the next. The objection says that this is wrong because we aren’t souls at all.
Merely to assert this just isn’t enough to amount to a refutation. Without supporting evidence, it’s just an instance of circular reasoning: The doctrine is wrong because it is wrong.
For your objection to be sustainable, you need to show us—not merely tell us but persuasively demonstrate—that the so-called soul (that is, individual consciousness) does arise from and depend upon particular formations of matter.
Though that belief is widely held to, with all the zeal of an article of faith, it is far from scientifically established. It remains a belief, with a lot going against it.
Extensive data gathered in rigorous parapsychological research points to the existence of consciousness as an entity that doesn’t conform to what are usually thought of as material laws.
Such research has shown strong evidence for psychokinesis—that is, the ability to bring about tangible material effects in objects beyond the reach of the muscles and physical senses. And there’s similar evidence for clairvoyance—the ability to see objects and actions beyond the range of natural vision. And this is apart from out-of-body experiences, precognition, evidence for spirit possession, and cases of the reincarnation type.
And we’re talking here not about flimsy research but high-caliber professional work. (For example, the work at the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research program.)
Quantum physical arguments offer reasons to suspect that consciousness is an entity unable to be confined within physical systems.
And arguments from information theory show that the genesis of consciousness from matter would require either that enormous levels of complexity develop from the sparest of information (how? and why?) or that enormous amounts of complex information be present in boundary conditions from the start (and again why? and from where?).
And then again: When has science ever generated life in a laboratory?
Set aside naive misconceptions about the Stanley Miller experiments conducted in the 1950’s, in which the outcome was biochemicals
not life but another sort of matter. And set aside talk of cloning, in which to come up with life you start with life to to begin with. When has science ever started with raw chemicals and generated life in a laboratory? The answer is never.
And that leaves an open-minded inquirer free to be persuaded by the considerable strengths of the Vedic view that the conscious living being is indeed a separate entity, transmigrating from one lifetime to the next.