Reincarnation or “Punarjanma”, essentially used in relation to karma and a much debated topic, warrants viewing it more as a judge wherein the defense and prosecution will present arguments to support their stance.

The defense  view of Reincarnation

This is what the defense lawyer has to say in favor of reincarnation.

My Lord,

Sometimes one comes across situations which are difficult to relate to their corresponding actions. Then where are these extra results or experiences in life coming from? There are also lots of inequalities in the society we live in, be it rich or poor, pretty or ugly, healthy or handicapped, over which you have absolutely no control. Intuition says that there is something more to it than just randomness. There has to be some logic behind this inequality.

Past life regression has become an important emerging field and many authors have published books, which narrate the experiences of their patients’ past lives. In many cases, people start speaking and even singing in the language of their earlier lives, and so also do they carry scars from previous births. There are documented evidences of these sessions, which have been presented in front of the world. It is a widely emerging technique to solve many unresolved, but vital problems of your current life. The concept has been taken seriously over the years, even by the medical community.

There has even been conclusive documentation on thousands of cases wherein a child who remembered many instances and intricate details of his or her past life, like family, residence, street name, profession, etc. has been duly confirmed and corroborated.

Many religions, including Hinduism and Buddhism, believe in reincarnation. Reincarnation, or ‘Punarjanma’, is one of the core beliefs of Hinduism that is generally accepted by many of its practitioners. Reincarnation is the natural process of birth, death and rebirth until ‘Moksha’ or liberation is achieved. There are many references to rebirth in the early Buddhist scriptures.

There are techniques like automatic writing, family constellations among others through which one has been able to get in touch with the other world. Their experiences have also been duly verified. People have been able to get in touch with their near and dear departed ones and have obtained information from them which no one else but them knew. This further at least confirms that there is more to life than the current life.

The prosecutor view of Reincarnation

After the break, it was time for the prosecutor to take the debate ahead. The gist of his argument is as below:

Court needs facts, scientific evidences. Science does not believe in reincarnation or “Punarjanma”. There are also other religions like Judaism, Christianity, Islam which do not believe in reincarnation “Punarjanma”.

And lastly yes, there have been past life regression accounts. But it is unclear whether people are actually viewing it or are they just imagining it. And yes there have been recorded cases where the child is able to know things for no apparent reason. But they are subject to skepticism of their own. One of them being that these cases occur more prominently in places where there is belief in the concept of reincarnation, thus inducing bias in the analysis.

The Judge’s Afterthought – Does Reincarnation really exist!

As you investigate further as a judge before giving the final verdict, you focus on the arguments given by the prosecutor. You realize that Science is not against reincarnation, it is mostly clueless about reincarnation. Just the way it is clueless about lots of things, be it the way the human cell or brain works right up to the working of the universe. Non-existence of facts does not disprove a theory.

Also Judaism, Christianity and Islam are somewhat divided on reincarnation, though mostly in favour of one birth. As per them God has chosen us to play the roles and act as per the will of God – some poor, some rich and some else. However some sects within these religions do believe in reincarnation. They cite the example of some really underprivileged people for whom existence and daily survival is the key priority. They believe that if God wanted even these people, who are completely unequipped to understand the role they are supposed to play, that would be a huge injustice which is not possible in the rule of God. In fact you also realize an important fact that early doctrines in some of these religions supported reincarnation, only to be changed later on to aid personal interest of those in power.

In fact one of the verses in Qur’an reads “And you were dead, and He brought you back to life. And He shall cause you to die, and shall bring you back to life, and in the end shall gather you unto Himself (2:28)”. This seems to point at none but reincarnation.

And lastly, yes it is possible that many of the facts in past life regression or actual recorded cases of children could be not the right attribution. However the cases that are true to the core are startling. There is no other explanation for the fact that a child actually recalls his past life village, family, house, etc in a town which he has never known of in current lifetime. And this has been duly corroborated. Nor there is to  other  instances registered worldwide that are confirmed during past life regression, wherein the patient starts talking or singing in a language he/she never heard of in this lifetime. Also known as Xenoglossia, in many cases person speaks the archaic version of the language spoken centuries ago, reducing any further chance of it being a lost memory or a fantasy. And the cases are umpteen. Even if half or more cases are wrongly attributed to reincarnation, the few that do remain have no other explanation.

In a nutshell, if one were to analyse things purely based on evidence, the odds are more in favor of reincarnation being real than not.

Karma and reincarnation have been very closely related over the years. Karma is the universal Law of Nature. Spanning across lives, Karma is about swapping roles and understanding others. There is nothing good or bad about it. The poor life is not bad, neither is the wealthy life. The educated life is not bad, neither is the uneducated life. As you swap roles continuously in the rebirth cycle, you understand the pains of each life and evolve as a more mature, tolerant and loving human being.

How to live our life in view of the above light has be shared in the book ‘Can You Play‘. The book closely looks at karma and its implications in your current life in a scientific way and devises path for you to live life fully, successfully.