Reincarnation: a Myth or Science

1

An Ideal Family

Don’t limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.

Rabindranath Tagore

On 2 September 1983, in the early morning of hot and humid Calcutta, a child is born in a hospital. For some time, the child does not cry. Everybody in the maternity ward becomes anxious and starts wondering why the newborn is not crying. The doctor holds the boy upside down and gently slaps his hip. The boy suddenly starts crying. There is a momentary sigh inside the hospital room, which later turns into a stream of joy.

It is a boy child. The baby is perplexed with the new environment and continues to cry loudly. The nurse cleans him with hot water, wraps him in a piece of white cloth and gives him to the safe arms of his mother, with whom he is accustomed from the embryo stage. For so long, he has been quite happy to get all his biological needs easily through the umbilical cord, which has just been disconnected. Now he starts gasping for oxygen, trying to adjust to the hostile surroundings.

The baby stops crying, sensing the touch of his known shelter, and perhaps is confused with the paradoxical behaviour of the people around, who are laughing with joy. He learns his first lesson after birth: ‘When I cry, others laugh.’ It is true indeed; both births and deaths are paradoxical and full of mysteries. What we cannot explain scientifically, call it an act of God.

The elder brother of the newborn child asks his mother, ‘From where and how did the baby come?’

Her answer is ‘From heaven, my son.’

God indeed has created a robust and balanced evolutionary system of birth and death so that this planet can survive, but He keeps the magic wand in His own hands. There is a very common saying in our society: ‘Births and deaths are fully in the command and control of God.’ Even the doctors of this modern world believe it.

Three days later, the baby is taken to his home. A ceremonial welcome is waiting for him. The baby is first given to the hands of the most experienced person in the family, the grandma (grandmother), who after a very careful examination gives the opinion that her new grandson looked like his father. She predicted that this boy will be loved by all his friends and family members. Her final finding is that the grandfather of the family has been reincarnated as this boy. All elderly persons of the family ask her why she thought so.

Her answer is ‘The birthmark of this boy is similar to that of his grandfather and that too on the same place.’

The brother asks his grandma, ‘From where and how did this baby come?’

She gives the same answer: ‘From the heaven and by the act of God.’

Therefore, the mystery of birth remains as misty in the inquisitive mind of the young boy. For him, heaven remains a place of supreme happiness—adorned in flowers all around and had the spiritual state of everlasting communion with God everywhere.

The mother of the newborn baby, although weak after the recent delivery, remains very alert and active with the child. The baby remains in hibernation during the days. His playing sessions start at night, and he registers his existence with his cry.

Back when the mother was pregnant, the grandmother used to tell her, ‘During pregnancy, always think of good, holy things, and be positive. This will help the child to become pious and wise.’ She used to narrate good gospels and stories containing high morals.

The brother remembers all such stories, and he reminds his grandma to repeat those directly to his newborn younger brother for a better result. He observes the activities of the baby very keenly.

One day he asks his mother, ‘Why does the baby, without any reason, smiles for a while and then cries, raising his fists towards the sky?’

She explains that the baby can still recollect the sweet and sour memories of his previous life.

The boy wonders, How can a baby express fear and annoyance when exposed to sudden light and certain sounds for the first time! How does a newborn child get his first experience of fear or joy when he has not experienced those before? Newly born chicks hide under the wings of their mother when they see an eagle flying close to them. Who taught them the sense of fear immediately after birth?

He is convinced by his grandma that such experiences are inherited by the baby from his previous life. The immediate question from the boy is ‘What was I in my previous life?’

Grandma thinks for a while and replies, ‘You were a good, wise, and honest person and did many good works for others and never committed any crime.’

The boy wants to know how his grandma can be so sure. She calls the boy closer, then gently says, ‘God was pleased with your good deeds of your previous life, so He sent you to us. You are living so happily here, and people love you so much. See outside in the slum. There are little children like you who are not so lucky and are facing so much hardship in their lives because they did not do as much good works as you did in your previous life.’

The boy stares at his grandma and asks, ‘Is that a universal law of God?’

The prompt answer is ‘Yes, there cannot be any exception to that.’

The boy is curious and questions, ‘Now tell me how God sent a baby who slowly grew inside the stomach of my mother.’

The grandma replies, ‘It is very easy, my son! When your mother was asleep, God quietly appeared and sowed a seed in her stomach as our gardener sows seeds in our garden. The seed then germinates and slowly grows branches, leaves, flowers, and fruits, and ultimately it grows into a big tree. In fact, the seed has all the latent qualities of a grown-up person. Your younger brother will also become a boy like you in the near future and then a man like your father.’

‘Where is your mama?’ asks the boy.

Grandma paused a bit and then replies, ‘She has gone to heaven. At night, you can see countless stars twinkling in the sky. My mama is one of those. One day God will convert her into a small seed and sow it in the stomach of a very good lady.’

The boy enquires, ‘Why does God not appear publicly?’

Grandma replies, ‘If God appears publicly, then the bad people will directly ask for many good blessings from Him, which He does not like to bestow in order to ensure good governance of our planet and justice to the good people. Therefore, He carefully remains unseen to the general people. Those who obey His laws and commandments truthfully and pray regularly for His sight, He appears only to them, like the idols you see in temples, and fulfils their wishes. To see him, you will have to work very hard and may have to wait for a long time. But whoever sincerely prays for His sight, He appears before him at an appropriate time.’

‘Then why should I not stop going to school, reading books, and start performing prayers only to invoke him?’

Before Grandma can reply, the baby starts crying loudly. The boy becomes concerned and runs away to see the baby, whom he has started loving from the very first day he was brought into the house.

He excitedly asks his mother, ‘Why is the baby crying so loud?’

His mother replies, ‘He is hungry, my son.’

His instant question is ‘Can he sense hunger?’

‘Yes!’ his mother replies. ‘Just like you.’

‘Why can’t my brother do everything that I can do now?’ he asks.

His mother gently taps the head of the boy and says, ‘I heard when your grandma explained to you the mystery of birth. Did she not tell you that this baby was like a seed in my stomach? In a few months, he has grown so much that he can now cry, move, and sense with his little organs.’

‘Did you not feel hurt when the baby was inside your stomach?’ the boy asks his mother.

‘No, my son, I felt very good to bear this child. He used to float on some fluid inside my stomach. He used to swim, move, kick, and play.’

The boy asks again, ‘Why, Mama, only mothers bear a child? Why not fathers?’

Mother thinks for a while and replies, ‘God is very considerate. See, your father works so hard. He has to go to his office every day and also does physical work to earn money. But your mother does relatively less hard work. If your father would have bore the child, it would have been very difficult for him to do such hard work. God therefore has given this privilege to mothers only. He has also bestowed mothers with more kindness and love towards children, for which they are respected more in societies.’

The baby continues to cry. Mother then feeds the baby. Immediately he stops crying. After a little while, he starts sleeping.

The boy becomes inquisitive again and asks, ‘What did you feed him?’

Mother softly replies, ‘It was milk from my breast.’

‘Was it just like how a cow feeds its calf?’

‘Yes, of course!’

‘Who has given you milk?’

‘It was given by God for feeding the child. Milk formed with the birth of the baby and will remain until he starts eating other foods.’

The boy salutes God for His kindness, turns around, and hurriedly disappears. He goes to the terrace and looks at the glittering star-studded sky and tries to gauge the strength and kindness of God. He also tries to locate his grandfather’s star. He cannot spot the one among the countless stars, but he enjoys the bright full-moon night. The moon is up in the sky.

He starts singing softly, ‘Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are, up above the world so high. Like a diamond in the sky.’

He looks around and discovers more stars. The more he concentrates, the more stars he discovers. He begins to enjoy the distant stars twinkling in the moonlit sky. The moon appears to him as the possible castle of God, encased by a bright translucent sphere. He looks around again and again to guess the size of the universe and becomes disappointed at one point when he realises that it is huge and beyond his perception. Suddenly, he hears the loud voice of his father calling him for dinner.

The little one remains intoxicated by the sight of the night sky. He asks his father excitedly about a star which he saw dislocating from the sky and falling down somewhere. His father explained that it was a shooting star.

He is not satisfied and asks, ‘Was it an evil one? So God did not like it and therefore exiled it from His kingdom?’

Father becomes serious and enquires whether he had completed his homework. He is smart enough to realise that his father may not have a good time in his office and therefore may not have liked his question, so he remains silent.

The boy is loved very much by his sister. She tells him very interesting short stories, sometimes rhymes before going to bed. He shares his experience of the beauty of the night sky with his sister and then questions, ‘How big is the sky? Is it bigger than our Earth?’ Her answer is yes! He shares the information given by their grandma that their grandfather shares a space in the sky along with the stars.

His sister remembers a beautiful quote:

He is born in vain, having attained the human birth, so difficult to get, does not attempt to realize God in this very life. (Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa)

The boy tries to recollect all the information he has gathered and also his own findings, then summarises those to his sister.

• God gifts babies to mothers only, so mothers are more respected in families and societies.

• Babies grow inside the stomach of mothers, like the seeds in the garden soil.

• God arranges everything for our planet.

• Whoever does good works and remains honest, God sends them to good families.

• Everybody, after completing their tasks, goes back to heaven, a beautiful place of God in the sky.

• The sky is very big; there is no end to it. It has to be very big because in the end, all people from earth go there. It is a two-way process.

• People who are pious and pray every day can see God Himself, like we see the idols in temples.

• Sometimes people go back to their own family as a baby in their next birth.

2

Concept of Birth

Long ago you were a dream in your mother’s sleep, and then she awoke to give you birth.

Khalil Gibran

The boy starts snoring softly and plunges into the darkness of the night. The dawn will again bring new challenges, new ideas, new questions, new information, and so on. Slowly this boy will become a youth. But his innocence, inquisitiveness, simplicity, tranquillity of mind, honesty, naughtiness, and over and above all, the purity of his mind shall not remain the same. The complexity and maya, the hallucination (nescience), of this samsara (earth) will slowly pollute him.

The sister is fifteen years older than her younger brother. He is only six years old now, and the youngest brother is just a few days old. She goes to college and is a student of physiology in the University of Calcutta. Immediately after her little brother is asleep, she smiles to herself and goes to prepare for her studies. She compares her perception with that of her brother and recognises that her understanding of life had been the same until she grew up to a girl, leaving behind her childhood.

Now she is attending physiology classes, and after being exposed to the complexity of the system of birth and the associated process of growing up, she now knows the truth. She is now very proud of her knowledge on embryos, mutation, cell division, hormones, DNA, and so on. She remembers her recent memory on this subject.

As a student of physiology, she recalls that her professor, on the first lecture on birth, had narrated the dictionary meaning of physiological birth, ‘Birth is such a state that processes of life are manifested after the emergence of the whole body.’

It is an emergence and separation of the offspring from the body of its mother, which was seen in all mammals except monotremes. To produce a child, the parents have to be fertile. Fertility is the ability to conceive and bear a child, the ability to become pregnant through normal and synergic sexual activity. Hormones and the concerned neurological pathways should be in synchronism for sexual desire to be present. The sperm reaches the urethra through a physiological passageway.

There are many other legal definitions of birth. The most common of those is from the World Health Organization (1950):

A live birth is the complete expulsion or extraction from its mother of a product of conception, irrespective of the duration of pregnancy, which, after such separation, breathes or shows evidence of life, such as beating of the heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or any definite movement of voluntary muscles, whether or not the umbilical cord has been cut or the placenta is attached.

The students in class realise progressively how a simple definition taught by their grandmas have become much more complex.

We habitually make things complex, but God has made it very simple and routine for His children. A woman is not aware how and at what precise time a baby is conceived. Out of 20 million to 500 million sperms ejaculated, 1 or 2 lucky sperms eventually fertilises her egg. In the prostate gland of man, a mixture of spermatozoa and other fluids is stored, which is called semen. The spermatozoa holds human DNA, which contains the complete set of chromosomes; normal cells have two. These appear to be living organisms under microscope. They seem to be moving energetically with the sole mission of fusing with an ovum. The sperms may take only an hour to complete the journey of about 20 centimetres to the egg in one of the fallopian tubes, but then their lifespan is only one day. Lashing their long tails like whips, they execute an intricate dance, wriggling, pushing, competing, and prodding the membrane of the egg cell for some hours. Thereafter, only one lucky sperm penetrates the outer membrane of the egg. The egg then hardens its skin to prevent other sperms from entering.

Then the fusion of the nuclei of the sperm and egg cell takes place. Within a very short time, two volumes of genetic information are bound together in harmony. The combined male and female cell starts to grow and multiply. After about thirty-six hours, the egg splits into two new cells. Each of these grows and divides again to form a total of four cells. Meanwhile, a six-day-long journey begins; the embryonic baby goes down the fallopian tube to the womb, multiplying its cells as it goes. By the time the jelly-like cluster of cells reaches the womb, it has a firm core and is known as a blastocyst.

The rapidly growing baby formation has to sustain itself during its journey down one of the two fallopian tubes as nourishment gets exhausted. By attaching itself to the wall of the womb, which is thick and supplied with rich blood vessels, the baby obtains nourishment. During this stage, rootlets called villi, which are put out by the baby, grow into the lining tissues of the womb, drawing food for its growing cells. This process is natural but complex indeed.

About a month after implantation, the blastocyst begins to take a human form with a rudimentary head, brain, and trunk. The heart begins to throb. About two weeks later, arms and legs germinate from the tiny buds. Then the cranial nerves of the brain and the baby’s circulation system are formed.

Within two weeks of the egg implanting itself on the wall of the womb, it prepares for the formation of the placenta, the temporary organ which carries the function of the lungs, digestive system, kidney, liver, and blood supply. This system supports the baby till its own organs function. The placenta is attached to the baby through a tube which carries blood and nourishment, known as the umbilical cord.

Small blood vessels from both the placenta and the tissues lining the womb run close together, thereby a free absorption of nourishment by the baby takes place. This includes oxygen, salts, carbohydrates, and amino acids, which are the building blocks of human body. The spent and waste products from the baby are eliminated by the placenta, like a kidney, before the return stream goes back to the mother’s bloodstream.

In two months, fingers, toes, muscles, some of the bones, etc. are formed. One month later, a mature baby of about 8 centimetres in size takes shape. In the next six months, it is of about 25 centimetres, and just before birth, it reaches the size of nearly 50 centimetres.

The human brain begins to form at a very early stage. It happens in just three weeks after conception. But in many ways, its developmental activities continue throughout life. It is because the same events that shape the brain during initial development are also responsible for storing information, new skills, and memories throughout life; however, the degree differs. The newborn baby is not blank. The primary visual areas, the somatosensory cortex, and the auditory cortex remain active. It can process visual impressions.

Clear behavioural responses to smell can be recorded in pre-term infancy from approximately the twenty-ninth week.