Is rebirth a myth?

There is nothing like the curse of doubt to unsettle one's mind. "Believe in rebirth Vs, Do not believe in rebirth". It is better to fall into either of these groups than just oscillate between the two like a pendulum in an old antique clock. But I just suffered from this dilemma like the pendulum for years. Many others suffer from this dilemma.

Perhaps the biggest armour for disbelieving in rebirth is that the phenomenon takes place mostly in Eastern countries, especially those permeated by Buddhist and Hindu cultures. Even those who happen to be born and bred in the magical East and migrate later to their homeland seem to fall into this charmed circle.

Is there a charm in the dead coming back in another form and further remembering the past birth and vomiting it all out to the amazement of the audience, usually the family members. In Buddhist literature this power to remember one's past birth carries the ennobled term, Jathi Smarana Gnanaya (the wisdom of remembering one's past birth or births).

Mental power

Those who possess it are regarded as "Beings gifted with a very high mental power". The wonder of passing from one birth to another and remembering the feat is just wonderful. But alas, the period of executing this power has a brief spell for some obvious reasons. One is that one should be able to talk to spill it all out. A human, boy or girl, begins to talk clearly (not babble) around four to five years when those endowed with the above wisdom begin to let it all out. For some inexplicable reason the power vanishes after the child is about seven years.

There are, however, exceptions. There is the story by Rudyard Kipling, born and bred in India later migrating to his home country. In one of his stories written after the comeback the hero is a frustrated clerk who begins to spill out his past lives.

An associate of his exclaims that such events happen in a typical Indian city replete with naked Nigantas, where this "nonsense" is believed but, "by God, for this to happen here, right in the midst of London, it is just incredible." The frustrated clerk, an introvert, has landed in this mega city from the rurals and has yet to see the ocean. But reading the details his past life described vividly as a galley slave making his passage cruising the ships and landing in the cotton fields of America one just falls into the charmed circle of the "Believers." Had he read it all?

No. Those around him cannot find any such stuff in his reading material that comprise banking prospectuses alone. Did anyone din it all into his ears?

There is no evidence of that. Was he turning to Buddhism or Hinduism for globalisation and the subsequent interchange of cultures had begun by now? No. The young man was a dutiful Sunday church goer.

So, there are such exceptions as those who begin to exhibit habits of past lives even before speech sets in.

A boy born into a house of the poorest of the poor in Matale highlands, begins to squat on his bed and recite some strange stuff that nobody in the family or neighbourhood understands. Then one day comes in the Nana (Moslem trader) to collect his long drawn out debts and listening to the boy flees the scene. Never did he insist on his debts again for the boy though about 10 months had been babbling parts of his religious text.

Dramatic

Beginning to talk he asks others, "Why did this happen to me?" insinuating the dramatic fall of fortunes. But what happens later to the boy is just poignant. Grown up he becomes very fastidious and hates his surroundings and the frugal food thrust on him. He talks of a lovely mansion he lived in, in the city of Kandea where sugar and tea were not brought in, in tiny bundles but in sacks, for transport. The father of his earlier birth had been a busy trader of Kandea. The parents finally take him to Kandea and he spots the mansion. The father walks up to the security guard and relates the story. Back he comes with a threat from the master of the house, not to bamboozle him with made-up tales but to get out immediately. The boy weeps. Here in this palace on King's Street he had lived and died of a fever. He was the only child and the grief stricken mother had died a few months later.

From where did I get this story? From 14 cases of re-incarnation compiled by Prof. R.L. Stevenson. It was given to me by Sarvodaya for translation but sheer laziness overpowering me, there it lies untranslated. In addition to the laziness was the fact that I was not an avid believer in rebirth till I came to the tale where I got personally involved.

Now that it is story-telling time let me begin, as related by the professor.

Once upon a time, sorry, not that long ago, but in comparative modern times when the schools were sprouting all over the island there was a school in the Western province close to the Deewali river. (The Ferenghi schools had come to stay.) An school teacher in this school was in the habit of coming every evening to the house of the head mistress and spilling out her woes comprising her husband bashing her.

The head mistress lived in a house sprawled out on a coconut estate and she was very kind and always gave an ear to the teacher and consoled her unaware of sordid events to follow.

Pneumonia

Soon after, the latter died of pneumonia. But she had been killed by her husband to make way for the paramour. Becoming sick with the daily bashings she had got confined to bed and the husband had taken her to the well at midnight and bathed her making her develop pneumonia. How did these facts get released? The school teacher after death had been reborn as a girl in Piliyandala and had begun to narrate her earlier birth story.

How did I get involved in this story? My mind began to work, guided by the location given. This event, that of an assistant teacher getting consoled by the female head teacher could have taken place in the 1940s in that area 25 miles off Colombo. Female head teachers were rare then and my aunt was one. She had four sons. To go on with my quest I had to have a dialogue with them.

The year that Prof. Stevenson's book was handed to me was 1970. The passage of time had done its task and only one son was available now. I asked him whether a teacher in his mother's school used to come and cry in their house.

Amazed at my question he said the moment the teacher appeared he ran to his mother's lap and listened to her.

It was all so dramatic, the way she demonstrated the "bashings" by her husband. I then asked whether he knew what happened later. He said that she died of pneumonia. That was the popular talk.

"You believed that?'

"No. There was a talk that she was murdered by her husband."

"Why?"

"The husband of the dead teacher married his paramour after the wife's death and their children are doing very well now. They are good chums of mine too. Why dig up the rotten past especially as no courts would ever take in the word of the reborn dead as witnesses".

I was now in the believer's nest. But I did not go in search of the reborn for she could be now years past the age of the Jaathi smarana wisdom.

Further, where is the natural justice in the world? The murderer goes free but marries his sweet love and begets a successful progeny. This is a strange, cruel, unpredictable and weird world!