Reincarnation a Scientific Fact

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>Message: 1> Sat, 24 Dec 2005 05:30:37 -0500>

srinandan (AT) aol (DOT) com>More Info on How Reincarnation may be a Natural

Fact>>>Rationalists should think twice before pooh-poohing claims to rebirth. A

three-decade-old Indo-American research project suggests reincarnation might

actually be a scientific fact. Varuna Verma

reports>>http://www.telegraphindia.com/1050410/asp/look/story_4592540.asp>>Dhiraj

Kant's colleagues don't stop to wonder when they see him charging up the stairs,

with a laptop, office bag and a Tupperware tiffin case flying behind him. The

27-year-old, Bangalore-based software engineer doesn't ever take the office

lift to work.>>Kant is not a health freak. He feels claustrophobic in closed

spaces and crowds. It doesn't interest him that PVR has started an 11-screen

multiplex in the city - he doesn't go for movies. He has never visited the

Forum Mall - Bangalore's most famous hangout joint.>>Acute claustrophobia was

the one bad patch in Kant's happy and healthy childhood. "From the age of five,

I'd dream of being squeezed into a small space. I couldn't touch, express or

communicate," says the tall, lanky employee of a top IT multinational.>>Kant

visited doctors and psychologists but found no answers. As a final shot in the

dark, he visited a past life therapist - and the answers came in a flash.

Through a series of sessions known as Past Life Regression (PLR) therapy, Kant

discovered he was a wild goat in a previous life. "I felt the same

claustrophobia and inability to communicate that I dreamt of," he says.>>Don't

laugh off Kant's claims. It comes stamped with scientific

approval.>>Bangalore's National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences

(NIMHANS) and the University of Virginia have been studying and documenting

reincarnation since 1974. The three-decade-old research is now throwing up

results. "We now have enough evidence to believe in reincarnation," says Dr

Satwant Pasricha, head of department, clinical psychology, NIMHANS.>>The

scepticism, however, doesn't seem to have deterred past-life researchers who

have identified and studied 2,600 cases of supposed reincarnation across eight

cultures of the world. Of these, Pasricha has studied 500 cases in India.

University of Virginia and the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) have

funded her research.>>Pasricha claims to have toed every scientific line while

studying reincarnation. Repeated interviews were conducted with the family and

friends of a child who claimed to have a previous life, and the child's

behaviour was closely monitored.>>The team interviewed surviving family members

of the supposed previous life and consulted sources such as horoscopes, records

at the municipality, police stations and hospitals for verifying birth and

death dates.>>Tarun Cherian's students have gone beyond human lives. A call

centre executive had fond dreams of an unknown mundu (dhoti)-clad man. Cherian

told her she had been an elephant in a past life. The man in her dreams was her

mahout. The young woman had also lived the life of a centipede and a petunia

flower. "Souls opt to live as plants when they wish to slow down and discover

the earth's rhythm," says Tarun as he brushes back his shoulder-length

hair.>>Pasricha might not have met any erstwhile petunia flower, but she claims

her research on reincarnation could help psychology answer some difficult

questions. Take the instance of monozygotic (identical) twins. "Science cannot

explain the discordance in personality, physical features and susceptibility to

disease in monozygotic twins," says Pasricha.>>Pasricha says the theory of

reincarnation can. She met Narendra and Surendra - monozygotic twins born in

1972 in Etawah, a small Uttar Pradesh town - when they were six years old. At

the age of three, they began talking of past lives. The two claimed they were

brothers in their previous life, and had died in a scooter accident. Pasricha

says the twins' personalities matched with those of their corresponding

previous birth. One was dominating, made all the decisions and was left-handed.

The other was submissive, more critical and right-handed. The qualities stuck on

in their present lives, claims Pasricha.>>Not everybody is ready to buy her

theory, though. Lokkur Vasanthi Rao, for one, says that reincarnation is a

figment of religious and emotional minds. "With Hindutva on the upswing,

theories like reincarnation are bound to prosper," she says.>>Rao questions

every point of Pasricha's research. She says the research was not conducted

under controlled conditions, and child psychology has it that young children

imbibe and believe what they see and hear.>>But Dhiraj Kant doesn't need

controlled laboratory experiments, pie charts and statistics to believe in

rebirth. He's been able to handle his claustrophobia better ever since he

discovered he was once a wild goat. And he continues to sprint up the stairs -

for why would a former mountain-climber ever take a

lift?>---->Past

life regressions are fascinating to consider, but the real goal of understanding

reincarnation is to become free from the painful cycle of birth and death. This

is not a very good business--to die and take birth

again.>____>From

the highest planet in the material world down to the lowest, all are places of

misery wherein repeated birth and death take place. But one who attains to My

abode, O son of Kunti, never takes birth again ~ Lord Krsna[bg 8.16]>>>[This

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