Before the materialist wave broke in the universities, the topic of reincarnation was of considerable interest to philosophy professionals. Pro-arguments by the great nineteenth-century British idealist, J.M.E. McTaggart, were widely discussed. C. J. Ducasse, President of the American Philosophical Association in the 1950s, defended the possibility in a well-crafted work of metaphysics.1
Ducasse’s theory goes as follows. A human being consists of personality and individuality (a psychic element). Only the latter could survive, Ducasse argues, since there is a physical and bodily component to personality. Individuality, however, is entirely psychological, consisting of “instincts, dispositions, and tendencies” formed by choices and actions in this and previous lives. The American philosopher supposes that psychological processes are developed, or instantiated, across lives, for the sake of proving the possibility of rebirth, he emphasizes, not as an outright assertion as fact. But his sympathies are clear.
Ducasse maintains that if rebirth is to be a real possibility, there must be an interval between death and birth where recollection of past lives is normal. Memory, according to him, underpins the identity of an individual across lives, though (fortunately for the theory) previous lives need not be accessible except in the death-birth interval. Analytic philosophers subsequent to Ducasse have shown through various consciousness fusion and fission thought experiments that memory is insufficient for personal identity.2 But this is, all told, a minor matter, since there can be no personal identity across lives, as I should like to argue in agreement with Ducasse (and many others who have thought about this). When John Doe dies, the person is gone, only some part of him surviving. Then to avoid what may be called the Leibnizian objection, Ducasse reasons that individuality must help shape personality. Otherwise, as Leibniz writes (quoted by Ducasse), “you might as well say that John died and another, the King of China, was born.”3 So, according to Ducasse, the living person is composed of both a personality, which is contingent upon the circumstances of a particular life, and an individuality, which is more constant across lifetimes.
Let us pause to appreciate Ducasse’s method, which is to show the mileage to be got from the requirement that reincarnation make sense. Not only must there be a potentially disembodied individual capable of awareness of previous lives, at least some deep dispositions comprising individuality must influence or determine the personality at certain points in a given lifetime. We can eliminate a lot of nonsense if the reincarnation thesis is to be, in Ducasse’s words, a live possibility.
So far, all Yoga philosophies would pretty much agree, since so much is left wide open. The problem with such a general approach is that if we are mindful of our Yoga inheritance, we face unavoidable options and questions Ducasse fails to answer. There are rather concrete Yoga teachings about rebirth that purport to address the facts of the matter, not just possibility. Indeed, taking our cues from Yoga theories, maybe not everything Ducasse alleges really follows from an analysis of the concept of reincarnation on the assumption that it could be real. For example, according to him, individuality would be itself developed, though much more slowly than personality.4 Now this accords with some yoga traditions such as the conscious reincarnation practices of Tibetan Buddhists as well as the Gita’s soul-making theory, broached in the last chapter. We make ourselves with choices over numerous lifetimes. But Ducasse’s analysis does not accord very well with two other theories prominent in classical Yoga literature.
A second theory used to maintain translife continuity is Nyaya’s view of an individual self—which is the same view, discounting details, as in Samkhya and in the Yoga of the Yoga Sutra. Nyaya’s essentially disembodied self has nonetheless the practical function of being the locus of psychological properties, including mental-physical dispositions. The self does not develop, on this view, and connections between one life and the next are mainly through the identity of the individual who takes one birth after another according to laws of karma. There are, however, some samskara connections that are translife. A child’s first voluntary act—to reach for the mother’s breast, in the stock example—proves reincarnation, Nyaya philosophers argue. All voluntary action is guided by samskara-fed cognition, and the child, ex hypothesi, has not formed the samskara in the current lifetime.5 But these samskara might be generic and nonindividuating for human beings, and Nyaya philosophers do not elaborate.
I propose to give a full airing to the Nyaya view of the self and personal identity in the context of a famous controversy with Buddhist no-self theory. But let me say from the outset that in the Yoga context the Nyaya picture is, like Ducasse’s, not sufficiently rich. In Nyaya we find no talk of a subtle body, a pranic body, the Upanishadic sheaths, and so on, none of the conceptual props of yoga practice that Yoga theorists use to develop views of rebirth. Although there is much metaphysical argument about the self, the school has no occult psychology. About details of translife continuity, Nyaya’s minimalism is too extreme (approaching silence!). We are particularly interested in Yoga views that connect practices with ideas about survival, so we need to hear the voices not so much of rational inquiry, as with Nyaya, but of yogic testimony.6 The Yoga Sutra, then, becomes of interest again, not because of the metaphysics of a purusha or self but because of its intricate theory of karma and life-spanning samskara. None of this is found in Nyaya literature, but the overall metaphysical stances are similar. Both stances seem compatible with soul making, but only in the YS is it fleshed out in terms of samskara, et cetera.
There is, however, another metaphysical view that is a veritable competitor with soul making. Again, soul making is the idea that continuity is developmental, on analogy to the growth and development in a single lifetime from untrained toddler to accomplished adult. Using Ducasse’s terms, according to soul making, personality etches individuality as well as the other way around, with our previous lives shaping what we are now. The competing view is that the psychic individual who survives death is capable of multiple personalities, which are not necessarily continuous with one another, except, perhaps, in the way that an actor has a repertoire and history of roles. The modern medical phenomenon called multiple-personality syndrome is in accord with this way of looking at reincarnation. Some recorded cases are dramatic in the contrasts of personality the living body assumes.7 In yogic lore, the idea is brought to life in stories of yogis possessing multiple human or animal bodies simultaneously.8
In tantric conceptions, individuality emerges in creative self-determination higher in the scale of principles, tattva, than the material world and these bodies of ours. The individual is, contra Nyaya, not an absolute: the “I” used by a speaker is elusive (here tantra is indebted to Samkhya), possibly meaning Shiva himself, the ultimate consciousness or self, as well as formations on many lower levels higher than our ordinary consciousness. And, again unlike Nyaya, there are a series of bodily self-determinations (mental, pranic) created by God or the Goddess or the Goddess in league with individuals. The levels of Shiva/Shakti’s self-manifestion have our individuality—us souls of humans—linked in complex relationships with a series of bodies up to a deep individual self capable of diverse lifetimes (though itself dependent on the creative action of still higher or deeper levels of consciousness power). Instead of growth, the model is of an unfolding from the top down (again, a Samkhya theme).
There is also a fourth metaphysical position in Yoga on self and personal identity, Buddhist momentariness and no-self theory, which is a stream theory denying that there is an unchanging individual who either develops or self-manifests. I propose in the next section to tie up the metaphysical exploration of this section with psychological models used in yoga practice. First, let us look at a few metaphysical arguments about personal identity with an eye toward the survival possibility.
Indeed, what philosophers both East and West have had to say about personal identity, although typically restricted to this life, has rather obvious relevance for the reincarnation thesis. Are we what survives? Clearly, the ashes of the funeral pyre, the Eastern equivalent of Shakespeare’s “food for worms,” do not matter. What does matter?
The following list is instructive. Cut down considerably from the eighty-nine items on the original, which is from the Pali tradition of southern Buddhism and the philosopher Buddhaghosha (c. 400 C.E.), it still serves to show the complexity of personal identity. These are, according to the Buddhist, psychological factors falsely identified with, helping to create an unreal “I” that we have to transcend. There is great utility in being able to recognize the types of phenomena you can mistakenly identify with. But at least some of them are also, according to Buddhist reincarnation theory, features or lines of continuity that can survive: “volition, applied-thought, sustained-thought, happiness, interest, energy, life, concentration, faith, mindfulness, conscience, …tranquillity of the mental body, tranquillity of consciousness, …zeal, resolution, attention,” and so on.9
Analytic philosophers have brought out what many consider most important to their identities by a variety of thought experiments. Clearly, the mind seems more important than the body, at least any particular body part. We can imagine my brain being replaced by a mechanical brain while I live on, just as with a heart transplant.10 In a stock example from Nyaya, you need your left big toe to feel a thorn prick in the digit, but you do not need it to remember the incident (including the pain as in that toe). What matters most are lines of psychological continuity. So, within the realm of psychological continuities, the Buddhist list may be considered to present candidate features, although none is essential to our identity, according to Buddhist analysis.
What explains why we should care about our future selves? According to Buddhists, the answer is self-grasping ignorance. Why we should care is explained by causal relationships. In Buddhist analyses, it is false that we are the same person now as previously. Our sense of identity over time is misleading (and worse). Nevertheless, great lamas plot their rebirths, and though caring about what will happen to yourself is for most of us due to ignorance, it is not just common sense but also rational wisdom, given our privileged relationship to our own futures, that we should care about ourselves especially, according to Buddhist and indeed practically all Yoga theories.11 You can dedicate your yoga practice to another, but the practice shapes yourself, at least foremost and most immediately. Consonantly, theistic Vedanta and Nyaya posit as agents eternal individuals who reincarnate, much like the souls of Platonic and Christian conception in the West.
Eternality of individuals seems, however, a rather maximalist claim. The Buddhist’s embracing the Samkhya theme of the elusive “I,” of our ability to identify and to disidentify with formations of personality, emotions, thoughts, and so on, has at least a grain of wisdom in it, it seems to me. Nevertheless, the Buddhist stream theory is vigorously and, in the classical context, rather successfully disputed by Nyaya, in particular by Udayana (c. 1000). Note that Abhinava Gupta’s tantric view shares features of both, agreeing with the Buddhist about the elusive “I” but also with Nyaya that there is an enduring individual. And in modern philosophy, body and brain theories along with psychological theories look much more like the Buddhist view than like Nyaya.
In a broader context, a soul or consciousness nugget concept as an answer to the personal identity question has been widely jettisoned in modern philosophy. Recently, a reductionist view in many respects similar to the Buddhist no-soul continuum idea, elaborated and defended by Derek Parfit in particular, has had wide play, eliciting a large secondary literature.12
Classically in India, the dispute over personal identity focuses on the gaps, such as deep sleep, as well as psychological continuities, such as remembering. Within Nyaya literature, a specific type of knowledge called recognition is generally taken to be the consideration that carries the day, a kind of knowledge combining perception and memory. The argument is that it would not be possible without an enduring subjectivity.13 Only the person who experienced Devadatta yesterday could be the person who recognizes him today, since one person does not have another’s memories. There is also put forth a cross-modality argument to the effect that only a self can synthesize sensory information received about a single object, a yellow piece of cloth, for instance, from two separate sensory faculties, yellow from the visual faculty and the soft touch of the cloth from the tactile.14
On Nyaya’s side, a key supporting thesis is that properties have property bearers, also thought of as their locations. Selves and physical things have in common being the bearers of properties, some cross-type, such as dispositional properties, and some type-specific, such as cognition and color. Dispositional properties are inferred, for example a self’s capacities of memory and a physical thing’s elasticity. In the case of a blue lotus, we perceive both the blue and the flower. We also perceive the color as “nested in” the lotus, so to speak. However, we infer that dispositional properties have possessors.
Much of our everyday speech, vyavahara, reflects such a layeredness ontology of properties and property bearers (dharma and dharmin) through the relations of adjective and noun. And, like David Hume’s maxim, “Save the appearances,” the principle that vyavahara are not to be rejected without good reason is the school’s operative rule. Consonantly, perceptions and cognitions of certain other types have as their objects property bearers, or qualificanda, as qualified by properties, or qualifiers, and should be assumed veridical unless shown false. Our cognitive links to objects must be assumed in general true and reliable. Otherwise, the distinction between illusion and veridical experience would make no sense and our efforts would be unsuccessful. Our talk about ourselves shows a layeredness relation between the self and its properties, cognitions, pleasures and pains, emotions, and so on.
Thus, that a self, a pot, and numerous other items endure through change is backed up by our common talk and experience to the effect that we say, for example, that it is the same pot, red now after baking, that formerly was black and this Devadatta we see is that person whom we also saw yesterday, as well as that we ourselves are the same. Then in addition to this presupposition in everyday discourse of our own sameness through change, an analysis of recognition as well as of cross-modality cognition establishes an unchanging self qualified by cognitions as properties.
The Buddhists for their part put forth a stream theory. Causality plays the role of a binder, not a property-bearing self. Everything is in flux, everything is momentary. There are no substances with properties. But so-called properties (dharma)—which are really tropes, unique and nonrepeating (similarities are “universals” constructed by our minds for practical purposes)—are strung together causally. The current momentary item causes a similar item in the next moment, assuming no drastic change in the surrounding auxiliary causes or circumstances. A seed moment in the granary gives rise to another seed moment that is practically its duplicate, but a seed moment put in the ground with water and warmth gives rise to a sprout moment. Personal identity over time, like thing identity, is to be accounted for by particular lines of causal connection, not by enduring substances.
The chief argument for this ontology—an argument refined by Buddhist philosophers over many centuries—assumes that one thing is identical to another if and only if it has (or can be reduced to) exactly the same powers or properties. Further, to exist is to be causally efficient. So, if a seed has the power of sprout producing, then it is ipso facto different from a seed that is not sprout producing. It is not the same seed in the ground as it seems to have been in the granary. Previous moments in a seed stream, so to say, do not have the property of producing the sprout had by the seed moment that actually does the producing. Nothing endures, including us. Everything is always changing. Causality is our word for the regularities.
Nyaya philosophers argue that recognition and cognition across sensory modalities show the inadequacy of the Buddhist stream theory, which is a reductionism departing from everyday vyavahara and thus bearing, to begin with, the burden of proof. But the Buddhists claim to have a proof. So let us look a little closer at the first argument and a complaint voiced by the Nyaya philosopher Udayana.15 If, as the Buddhist proposes, self and personal identity reduce to a series of psychological events held together and ordered causally, the temporal gap between the original experience of Devadatta and the recognition of him now cannot be explained. What happens to the information during the period when there is no awareness of it?
A striking example of the problem is deep sleep, which the Buddhist is forced to view not as an absence of consciousness but rather as a period when the consciousness stream is composed of moments of self-consciousness without object-consciousness.16 It is the lack of object consciousness that is supposed to account for our inability to remember the nightly occurrence. But Udayana brings out that all remembering presupposes a psychological gap, a period when the information gathered by the original experience is absent from consciousness. On the Nyaya view, it lies latent in the self as the content of a mental disposition. Udayana criticizes the Buddhist on the grounds that such dispositions are excluded by his theory.
Of course, not such discontinuity but rather psychological continuity, as presupposed in the recognition, “This is that Devadatta I saw yesterday,” is Nyaya’s (and Udayana’s) main argument for a selfsame psychological locus, a self. There is also self-perception, as verbalized in such statements as “I am aware of myself looking at the picture” (walking, talking, etc.). But self-perception, in an introspective act, is, like all perceptions, a momentary psychological occurrence and thus incapable of revealing the self’s endurance over time, in the Nyaya understanding. But recognition, Nyaya insists, does indeed show, against the Buddhist or anyone, the self’s continuity. Devadatta, or anything else that endures, would not be recognized as the object encountered yesterday had the subject who does the recognizing not been the same. The sameness or difference of Devadatta from the one time to the next is not the point. This the stock example is perhaps confusing since with respect to Devadatta the recognition is evidence that he too has endured, like a pot through a change of color. The point is that if I were not the same, I would not recognize Devadatta. If it were not I but some other who had experienced Devadatta—to imagine a change of subject—then only that other and not I would remember him now, that is, genuinely remember. Similarly, genuine recognition of Devadatta presupposes that the recognizer is the same person who had the previous memory-forming Devadatta experience.
Surely this would hold too for Ducasse’s death-birth interval. That is to say, if there were recognition of things and events (not only of ourselves, though that would also count) from memories formed in previous lives, then reincarnation would be a warranted assumption. But, to move very fast, interpreting the enduring subjectivity as ourselves, do we have to see it as Nyaya’s self? Against Nyaya, I would say no.
Nyaya’s Buddhist opponent redirects the force of the recognition argument. So-called recognitive cognition does not show endurance but rather, so the Buddhist claims, only psychological continuity between the earlier and later moments. One moment of I-consciousness is the principal cause of the next; psychological continuity is to be explained causally without Nyaya’s cumbersome and misleading posit of self. Every cognition has a subjective and an objective aspect. A moment of Devadatta (as object) experience is followed appropriately in your self-consciousness stream by a moment of Devadatta remembering. The information in both is fused in a moment of recognition. Mental dispositions, like everything else, are momentary, though one moment imparts its selfsame information to the next. The moment is samskara impregnated, so to say, and the information stored travels through a samskara chain or stream. Thus the subconscious vehicles of remembering are used by the Buddhist in pretty much the same way as they are by the Nyaya philosopher and, by the way, practically all disputants on the classical scene.
But Udayana’s counterargument is that the Buddhist’s problem is that samskara are subconscious, not cognitive. They are not conscious moments within the stream that comprises a person. If they were, then, like all cognition on the Buddhist view, they would themselves be immediately grasped, not needing to be inferred to be known. Cognition is, Buddhists say (in agreement with Advaita Vedanta), self-luminous, self-manifesting. All knowledge is itself known. If instead the Buddhist views samskara as objects belonging to another stream and not part of that which comprises a person’s identity, then remembering itself, as well as the psychological events that depend on remembering, would not belong to the consciousness stream. For how would they enter? Remembering is not perceiving. But something has to carry the information about the object, besides the object itself, in the period from yesterday’s experience and today’s remembering. This is not another psychological stream, since one person does not have another’s memories. We remember only what we have experienced ourselves. Therefore, the resource of the psychologically dispositional property, the samskara, is unavailable to the Buddhist theorist.17
Whatever the Buddhist philosopher might say in reply, Udayana has homed in on a key feature of the Buddhist view, namely, that it is self-consciousness that matters most.18 Karma and dispositional properties may shape a future personality, but the consciousness stream is taken to be what really matters. At each moment there is self-consciousness in that consciousness is aware of itself as consciousness. This dharma is privileged in the psychological continuum that not only is the person in this lifetime but also goes on past death (see below, figure 4B).
Thus in the end—and in wide overview, with an eye toward reincarnation—there seems little difference here from Nyaya, little difference between these staunchest of classical opponents, since consciousness, according to the Buddhist, survives death, as do many lines of karma. Nyaya’s idea of a self who is not necessarily but can be self-aware, whose presence underlying a stream of psychological properties secures identity, does not seem all that different, in cross-life perspective, from a consciousness stream around which accrues karmic dispositions and memories. Both are supposed capable of translife memories, as Ducasse would require (though only the Buddhists, and not the Nyaya philosophers, ever talk about this). Indeed, on the Buddhist theory, which is the one interpreted as reductionist, self-consciousness is more important than it is with Nyaya. The consciousness stream secures personal identity for the Buddhist in the current lifetime and beyond, whereas the Nyaya philosopher says we are often distracted and not conscious of ourselves, not only now but also after death. Perhaps we should say that it is on the Nyaya view that the “I” is elusive! The tantric Abhinava sides with the Buddhist about self-consciousness, and the individual he posits is not an eternal and independent entity, though it remains the same through multiple earthly incarnations. The Mahayana Buddhist, for her part, finds the bodhisattva to develop perfections over lifetimes, perfections understood as dharma streams accruing to a particular santana or psychological continuum of (self-)consciousness. And there is the Upanishadic conception of a spark soul or Hamsa, the great bird who flies over the highest mountains of life and death—ideas to which we shall return in chapter 5.
We as “persons” do not survive death.19 Personal identity is constituted in part by the physical body as well as by psychological continuity. Philosophers have shown that we use mixed criteria, physical and psychological, to make judgments about whether a person at time t2 is the same as the person earlier at t1.20 Even the conservative Indian schools of Nyaya, Mimamsa, and others agree that what they call the self is not the person; the person is confined to the length of a particular life, whereas the self survives the death of the body.
Yoga philosophers disagree, however, about precisely what survives. Vedantins have somewhat different views from Nyaya (and Mimamsa, etc.) not only about translife continuity but also about the individual (jivatman) and the ontological underpinnings of self-consciousness, as do of course Buddhists: this is the “elusive I” one level up! So let us take a few steps down from the controversy about what’s real to look at the psychological sides of the Yoga theories and what is said more concretely about processes and formations that form the bridgework between lifetimes.
We enter now the realm of the occult and nonmaterial and therefore of high speculation, where yogic and other mystical testimony is crucial as a launching pad. Nevertheless, we can also identify in ordinary experience the psychic sheaths, physical, pranic, and so on, central to one model of translife consciousness. Yogic testimony gets preeminent weight, but there are theoretical connections with everyday life on all the models, as we shall see.21
All Yoga psychology assumes a subtle body or nonmaterial psychological continua, whether simple or, more normally, complex consisting of multiple strands. Two models are dominant, a sheath conception, which corresponds to, roughly, a band or aggregate conception, and a chakric conception. Many tantrics use both the sheath/band model and the chakric, and some theorize on how the two relate. There are also complications about temporal limitations and the question of soul development mentioned at the beginning of the chapter. Let us try to disentangle Yogic thought about reincarnation by looking first at the psychological model of concentric or suffusing sheaths, kosha (figure 4A) along with its Buddhist stream or aggregate counterpart (figure 4B), then the chakric theory (figure 4C). Afterward, we shall return to the idea of soul development.
First, a little more about history. The Buddhist skandha model of our consciousness—skandhas are aggregates of currents of different phenenoma or entities, literally “parts” or “shoulders,” of a translife complex or continuum (figure 4B)—is causal and antisubstantivalist, unlike the substantivalist kosha conception of the Upanishads, which is slightly earlier.22 Nevertheless, there is at least a rough match with the sheath model, the kosha and the theory of the cosmic self, atman. The rupa skandha—anglicizing the Sanskrit, which in Pali is khandha—is sense data, form, matter corresponding to the food (annamaya) sheath; vedana is sensation, feeling corresponding to the pranic (pranamaya) sheath; samjna is cognition, thought corresponding to the lower-mind (manomaya) sheath; samskara (also vasana) is disposition corresponding to the higher-mind (vijnanamaya) sheath; and finally vijnana is consciousness corresponding to the bliss (anandamaya) sheath and the central self. Further convergence of traditions occurs in broad views of the relationship of karma and rebirth, as shown in both Buddhist and Hindu “mythological” stories of multiple worlds of after-death experience as well as in teachings of moral lessons to be learned from rebirth. But let us focus, if arbitrarily, on the substantivalist conception of the sheath, while keeping in mind that similar ideas are present in Buddhism. Shortly, we shall see that the sheath schema is consistent with the view of the afterlife in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, among other non-Vedantic ideas and texts.
According to the kosha or sheath model (figure 4A), consciousness has five spheres of embodiment: physical; vital—or “breath-made,” pranic; lower-mind—the sensuous intelligence we share with animals; higher-mind—more profoundly connective intelligence; and blissful. The Taittiriya Upanishad, the earliest source, seems to have these bodies concentrically ordered, each interior (antara) to its predecessor, beginning with the most exterior, the physical body, the food (annamaya) sheath. However, the meaning of the word “interior” does not, in this context, concern relative location but rather relative essentiality and nearness to the immortal self. Some interpret “interior” as coincident. The ideas of essentiality and distance from the self are realized with respect to relative endurance, among other factors. The physical sheath perishes at the most rapid rate. Each sheath connects with a world or environment consonant with its constituents. The food sheath has as its external or universal counterpart the physical world, the pranic sheath has the life universe (or universes), the lower-mind and higher-mind sheaths connect with mental universes, and then bliss and spirit contain or suffuse all universes. The inner sheaths enliven the outer, and the outer can die or fall away while the inner continue on. The material world is suffused with prana, prana with mind energy, and so on. In other words, there is at least enough independence of the inner from the outer that the individual in her pranic body can and does survive the death and dissolution of the material sheath.
The individual self, jivatman—or is it the universal self, atman?—chisels personality formations through its karma-making choices in the pranic and mental bodies as well as the physical. So not only do the non-physical bodies—and the self’s bliss (usually treated as intrinsic, if hidden from our waking consciousness)—survive, at least for a time, the dissolution of the physical sheath, but so do dispositions that mold the different substances into personality. Our strong talents and likes and dislikes and the whole range of emotional, mental, and intuitive resources that make up much of what we are right now will, so goes the core theory, continue on in a pranic or another world, enveloping this one, and shape our reincarnations.
Phenomenologically, our patterns of thought, our cast of mind, I should like to point out, do have unity comparable to that of the physical body. Each of us has a mental personality that is comparable to our physical “look,” and our emotional or affective personality also has comparable unity. Thus it is not a stretch to imagine vital and mental bodies for an individual. The sheath model is of course metaphor, and beyond denial of causal closure, as discussed in chapter 2, the relationships among the parts of our being are not known. The tantric view of chakras has them connected by canals, nadi, which are sometimes viewed as strings of spiritual light also connecting the sheaths.23
In the tantric conception, nonmaterial substance or energy exists. The chakras are not material. From the epistemic point of view of our Yoga minimalism, this is the crucial part. Concerning details, my best guess is that like early physical theories, much of this occult physiology will be revised and changed, perhaps significantly. Nevertheless, the main point is that the emotional and thinking beings we are can and do survive death.
Now in due course there may well be, as some teach, dissolution of the pranic and mental bodies in turn. Not only do opinions diverge about the precise components of the “subtle body,” sukshma sharira, that survives death and reincarnates, there is little consensus about the after-death adventure. Disputed in particular is what “exhausts itself” in experience in other worlds and what continues on to be reincarnated here, or whether, as in Tibetan Buddhism, by resisting the pull to reincarnation at various pivotal points one continues to progress toward enlightenment. Nevertheless, everyone agrees that formations in all four interior sheaths (or, in Buddhism, in all the skandhas, or at least bundled components from every skandha), are said to survive the dissolution of the physical.
The sheath model employs a substance metaphor that connects with the idea of worlds. Each sheath is made of a substance or energy that is a subkind of universal stuff, ordered asymmetrically in terms of successive containments such that the more interior formations are to endure the dissolution of the less. However, all are supposed to be interconnected, according to not only (rival) Buddhism as a fundamental principle of the universe but also Hinduism (for the most part), through the being of the Absolute Brahman (who is necessarily omnipresent).
In the mainstream Vedantic conception—which is absorbed into both Buddhist and Hindu tantra—the metaphysical correlate to the range of sheaths is the idea of the physical universe as one organized range of a continuum of manifested being, sat. The material universe is presumed to be a sector so distinctly organized that it appears to be separate from other universes, which are similarly distinctly organized and appear separate although none is in fact. All are sustained by the being of the Absolute, according to Vedanta, or are maintained by the cosmically constituent energy or shakti (or Shri), in tantric views. There are, strictly speaking, no “parallel universes” in Vedanta, tantra, etc., although we are encouraged to think like that by talk of various “worlds” in the Upanishads and elsewhere (loka, etymologically, field of vision), and indeed of separate sheaths.24 But everything is interconnected; as pointed out, the “higher” are said to pervade and suffuse the “lower,” for example, prana, enlivening the physical body and the mental suffusing prana.
According to Vedantic theism as well as the creationism of Abhinava and other tantrics, God is prolific. God self-determines its intrinsic aspect of energy/stuff to emanate a series of interconnected worlds or levels of being, ranging from the heavens of gods and goddesses through life worlds of typal beings down to our material level or, according to some, lower levels of hell.25 The degree and type of power enjoyed by the individuals within a world as well as the character of the energy/stuff constituting a common nature and intersubjective objects distinguish heavens from hells and lower life worlds, as well as from our physical universe. Our physical world is apparently peculiar in manifesting properties typical of life and mind worlds, and as physical beings we live simultaneously in the physical extensions, so to say, of other universes.
At death, the subtle body (sukshma sharira) or astral body or, as is sometimes said, pranic body—which then would consist of not only the vital or pranic sheath but also the three sheaths interior along with the interiormost consciousness or self (variously interpreted, the metaelusive “I”)—somehow “travels” to one or another life world, in the normal course of events. This would be, as explained, a universe largely separate from the physical world. However, there is much continuity, since, for example, the surviving being still thinks and has dreamlike experience continuous with her or his earthly embodiment. As suggested, opinions diverge about whether reincarnation is launched from this next world or whether there are a series of sheddings of bodies and travel through a series of worlds. Even Vedantins hardly speak in unison. The Tibetan Book of the Dead presents a complex series of realms into which the consciousness of the deceased can enter. Possibly there is no general rule.
Metaphysically, however, the ideas are clearer. The world of the physical sheath is at the boundaries of creation, viewed from the perspective of the essential consciousness. The soul sojourns here to practice yoga for spiritual development, say some tantrics. Mahayanins say that we should want to return to help others, progressively developing the necessary abilities. Embodied physically, we are also embodied pranically and mentally, living simultaneously in all the sheaths. The mental and vital sheaths help to determine what happens physically during a lifetime. Conversely, earthly choices and events and reactions shape the subtle body that survives.
Mental dispositions, including dispositions to desire and emotion, need not rest in the self, as says Nyaya, but in the pranic and mental bodies, as say Vedantins (of all stripes). Surely this is right. Some samskara (mental dispositions) obviously rest in the brain. Formation of samskara percolate in, so to say, resonating through multiple levels, our actions etching patterns in nonmaterial energy/stuff as well as in the brain and physical body. Thus there would be, continuous with our earthly persons, aspects of ourselves that survive and act as individuals on other stages, like dream personas.
1. Vijnana, consciousness, self-consciousness
2. Vedana, sensation, feeling
3. Samjna, cognition, representational thought
4. Samskara, or vasana, disposition, connective thought
5. Rupa, sense-data, form, matter
After appropriate adventures and rest in whatever worlds, the subtle body embodying the individual that died reincarnates along with the essential individual. Our Yoga minimalism prevents much further specification of the nature of the individual who dies and takes rebirth, but I shall close chapter 5 with a few remarks that are directed to practice. There is too much disagreement about the reality or unreality of the individual (jivatman) in broadest perspective, though there are convergences in practice. Advaitins would join Buddhists in saying that any individuality is ultimately illusory. For Advaita, Brahman is in the end the “I,” and Brahman does not really reincarnate. Theistic Vedantins disagree sharply, Ramanuja, for instance, seeing the reincarnating jivatman as an eternal individual, as in Nyaya. There are other metaphysical variations, and the nature of the worlds we enter—there are so many possibilities to keep track of—is not clearly and uniformly conceptualized in classical literature or even in (Hindu) tantric texts specifically (I say this aware that I may be speaking in haste—this is a vast ocean of texts). Much seems to be left purposely vague, as though itself in honor of the minimalist attitude!
The Tibetan Book of the Dead, or Bardol Thotrol, is, in contrast, rich in details about an afterlife drama and opportunities for enlightenment.26 Buddhist and antisubstantivalist, the text sets the adventure in phases or bardos (transitions) where a common pattern of events occur, not as travel to other worlds. But the other-worlds schema of Vedanta and Hindu tantra translates pretty easily into the event-organized picture, although the conceptions of the three bodies of the Buddha and the five skandha or strands within the personality stream are, to be sure, peculiarly Buddhist. The overall plot structure as well as the forces and personalities encountered (hungry gods, bodhisattvas, wrathful deities, etc.) could be reconceived in substantivalist terms. Conversely, the other worlds of Hinduism and the Vedantic conception of sheaths could be accommodated to the Buddhist fantasia. The Tibetan tradition understands afterlife events as typal and invariable for everyone, although there are options (divergent routes) depending on choice or recognition and the karma of the deceased. New Yoga can accept this common denominator, the lines of emotional and intellectual continuity sketched, whatever the metaphysical truth about an underlying Self or self.
The Bardol Thotrol is most of all about enlightenment, about opportunities afforded the consciousness surviving a human death to become something other than someone destined for rebirth, realizing her true nature and merging with the dharma kaya, the “Dharma body,” of the Buddha. Although treated as an individual unit in the directions given, i.e., as the addressee, the deceased is, in Buddhist conception, not really differentiated as an individual. Opportunities for enlightenment are sometimes talked about as though one’s wave of light rejoined a larger and surer luminosity. The compassion of a bodhisattva is figured as a “lightray hook.” But note also the usage of the term kaya, body, in the compound dharma kaya, which in several places designates the supreme opportunity.27 Furthermore, the deceased’s “thought body” is mentioned expressly, and certain experiences and opportunities presuppose it.28
No chakric system of either a Buddhist or a Hindu variety is used very much in the Bardol Thotrol. Pranic energy is said to flow through a central channel (avadhuti = sushumna), but there is no express mention of energy centers. However, in other Buddhist texts—including, to be sure, Tibetan Buddhist—a chakric system is used to flesh out, so to say, a subtle body that survives and reincarnates.29 We come now to our second prominent model of occult physiology, the chakric (figure 4C), which is also utilized to specify the continuity presupposed in the idea of reincarnation. As explained, I shall use Yogic and Vedantic terminology, not Buddhist, though the latter could serve as well. I shall also use what has become now in the twenty-first century a rather mainstream conception of global sway. But we should keep in mind that there is quite a diversity in details in the early texts, so scholars tell us.30
A series of chakras or occult centers of consciousness is depicted as joined, for an individual, by a central channel called sushumna. Pranic or life energy can be redirected from its regular channels throughout the pranic body, which suffuses and enlivens the physical frame, i.e., in the nadis or ducts that constitute the main lines of flow of pranic energy. Thus it can be made to flow and “cleanse” the central channel, which joins the lowest realms of being with the spiritual. In the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, the central channel is talked about as itself divine, e.g., as Shambhavi (the “Kind Mother”) (see appendix E, verse 3.4).
Other than the sushumna, the two most important nadis are the ida and the pingala, which interweave from the nasal apertures through (or near) the chakric centers like the intertwining snakes around the caduceus of Greek mythology. Pranic energy can be redirected from these (by breath control as well as bandha engagement; see the discussion in the introduction as well as appendix E) to flow into the central channel, the divine axis said to correspond to the spinal column. This directly connects the principal chakras, which are seven (sometimes four, six, eight, nine, or ten). The chakras, like the sheaths, are thought to have cosmological dimensions, each connecting with a specific range of energies or substance or vibrational frequencies, depending on the other-worlds conception.
The seven principal chakras are, beginning with the lowest or “root” chakra (see figure 4C):
1) muladhara, the “root-support,” which is said to feel as though located at the base of the spine and to connect the pranic with the physical, as well as to be the locus of the sleeping serpent energy, kundalini (more about which just below—some put kundalini in the second or third chakras instead);
2) svadhishthana, the “self-established,” connecting with sexual energies (and so located);
3) manipura, the navel center, the “city of jewels,” another life-world center and the beginning of the central channel in some Buddhist systems;
4) anahata, the heart center where the “unstruck” sound is heard, where bhakti is felt;
5) vishuddhi, the throat center, the “pure,” connecting with voice and artistic expression;
6) the third eye, ajna, corresponding to the middle of the forehead, the “command center,” the center of highest mind; and
7) sahasrara, the “thousand-spoked [wheel],” also sahasra-dala, the “thousand-petaled [lotus],” the divine center, the center of enlightenment, which is said to be located just above the crown of the head and connected occultly with the brahma randhra, the cranial cleft through which runs the central channel, sushumna.
A second kind of current or energy is said to flow in the central channel, shakti, also kundalini, the serpent power, a divine or more divine energy in contrast with prana, the energy of life and breath. Some tantric texts say summarily that the point of yoga is to replace prana with shakti in the central channel. “Kundalini yoga” is now an English expression referring to yoga practices focused on awakening kundalini so that we become aware of our diviner selves, considered to be more essentially embodied in our system of chakric centers, through which the divine energy flows unchecked by the ordinary limitations of being human.
1. Sahasrara, “thousand-spoked wheel” of enlightenment
2. Ajna, “command” center, third eye
3. Vishuddhi, the “pure” center of inspiration
4. Anahata, life and heart center, center of the “unstruck” sound
5. Manipura, city of “jewels”, life center
6. Svadhishthana, the “self-willed”, life center
7. Muladhara, “root” center, where Kundalini sleeps
8. Sushumna, divine road
9. Kundalini, serpent energy
10. Pingóla, pranic channel, “Sun”
11. Ida, pranic channel, “Earth”
12. Brahma-randhra, cleft of Brahman
There are also top-down Yoga teachings, shakti pata, descent of shakti (see the quote from the Kularnava Tantra in note 19 to appendix D). Divine energy is supposed to flow down from the thousand-petaled lotus above the body enlivening the central channel and the lower centers of consciousness, in the end awakening the kundalini energy—a reunion of lover and beloved throughout the manifestation of Brahman as the perfect individual (the bodhisattva).31
In the tantric Shaivism of Abhinava Gupta (see appendix D), the chakric model is employed in a top-down conception of creation including, in another Samkhya theme, very real individual conscious beings, a plurality of distinct purushas. Abhinava posits a status for the individual beyond embodiment and embodiments, as in large part a manifestation, not just a development along lines continuous with previous births. Although Abhinava is a tantric monist, he finds a real, translife-constant, progressively manifesting individual. It’s as though there are bare spiritual particulars, all exemplars of the chakric form, which is like a mold into which Shiva breathes—blows into full actuality like a glassmaker—life, the personalities assumed. The main thesis of the Spanda-karika, which is one of Abhinava’s sources, is that the world is a tremor, vibration, spanda of the divine, an out-breath followed by an in-breath of enlightenment. The in-breath does not destroy but enlightens. The world is progressive manifestation, arranged from above, not below. In this complex of ideas, there is a clear step toward the antisubstantivalism of the Buddhist, since it is vertical integration in a moment of time that is important, not so much soul development, each instant a moment of unique beauty in a cosmic dance.
Inspiring visions employ the chakric system. But there is, in addition to the occult literature on chakras as matters of advanced yogic experience, rather mundane theorizing, some very crude, about chakric and occult determinations of events in everyday life. Please, yoga enthusiasts, don’t expect me to champion everything. In order to be open to yogic teachings about chakras as they relate to our practices, we need not have too concrete a notion, I think, of occult flows of prana and shakti nor, especially, about the ties to everyday experience. Direct chakric openings in the course of asana work are not uncommon (especially in Corpse Pose, shavasana).32 We don’t have to have brittle beliefs in order to be ready for chakric experience.
Similarly, we have every right to be confident that at least something of our emotional and thinking beings survives—along with our best parts, our self-consciousness (in the Buddhist view) or our spiritual being. We shall look further at the concept of the spiritual individual in chapter 5.
The case for reincarnation is cumulative. No premise is the one and only hinge upon which all depends. Nevertheless, the reports of yogins and other mystics get special weight, and I shall devote the greater part of this section to the epistemology of yogic perception and mystic testimony. Then, in addition to several nonyogic considerations and evidence that provide further support for the reincarnation thesis, there are metaphysical considerations that help—for example, an argument put forth by Aurobindo that ties rebirth to the overall meaning of life. I shall look at all of these as well as, at the end, attacks by a famous atheist and psychic debunker, Paul Edwards. Thus, we shall take up yogic arguments, claims deriving from the results of yoga practice transmitted by testimony; nonyogic empirical considerations, such as xenoglossy, a child’s ability to speak a language she has not learned; one metaphysical argument, which, though containing empirical premises, hinges on a nonempirical reason, namely, life having meaning; and arguments to the contrary.
Superstition finds fecund soil in the idea of rebirth. I have proposed that Yoga requires only a minimalist view of afterlife possibilities. But a kind of maximalist commitment, or dedication, to practices is required to make the discoveries the experts say connect best with survival. Such commitment, however, is not the same as belief. Indeed, mere belief is too bare-bones to inspire practice. It has to be surrounded by emotional attitudes as well as, when called for, assessment of degree of trust. I recommend as the Yogic attitude toward rebirth something like quiet interest and confidence in an adventure whose details are unknown but for which there is no better preparation than yoga practice. The epistemic or justificational component of such confidence is the subject of this section.
Yogic arguments trade on a parallelism thesis, an epistemic parallelism between yogic and sense experience implicit in the notion, common to all Yoga schools (with qualifications), of yogic perception, yaugika pratyaksha.33 The move presupposes that ordinary sense perception has epistemic value (for the uncorrupted nonphilosopher, hardly a stretch), i.e., that in its normal operations it reveals facts and features of things around us; in other words, that it is a knowledge source, pramana—as say almost all the classical Yoga theorists. Yogic perception is a knowledge source for spiritual discoveries just as vision informs us of the lay of the land with respect to our physical environment.
The classical picture of the causal working of knowledge sources—perception, inference, testimony, a few other candidates—was sketched in chapter 3 in connection with the idea of samskara. Here we take a more purely epistemological or evaluative perspective. Yogic arguments have premises that are derived from yogic experience, such that at least one such premise—let us call it a yogic proposition, which is a lot like a claim made on the basis of sense perception—will figure crucially. Yogic propositions are warranted or justified by yogic perception, and the warrant carries over to conceptions and arguments developed from yogic propositions. The simple story ends here.
In both East and West, there have been many much more complicated stories just about the epistemic worth of sense perception, which is the launching pad for our parallelism thesis. The question of which sorts of claim sense perception makes certain has been a bugbear to theorists practically everywhere. To move quickly, I say, in line with Nyaya in classical India and successful criticism of Cartesian foundationalism in the West, that we should take for granted a certain fallibilism:34 any claim made on the basis of sense perception is defeasible, that is to say, is possibly wrong, is correctable. So too, then I say, with yogic perception as a knowledge source. In both cases, we need a theory with a defeasibility condition. Normally our senses do generate knowledge, but sometimes appearances are misleading (astigmatic, I see two moons). Similarly, yogic experience of consciousness independent of the body (and death) is trustworthy by default, but this yogic proposition could be defeated by other evidence or arguments.
So far our discussion has proceeded from what is called an externalist point of view in epistemology, which has as byword, “innocent until proven guilty.” As with sense perception in ordinary circumstances—and testimony based on firsthand experience—we do not question yogic perception’s veridicality, or the truth of what we are told by the testifier (guru) who knows, unless specific reasons arise. Conscious certification is called for only when there are grounds for reasonable doubt. This externalist attitude is best defended in Yoga classically by the school of Nyaya.
But let us also put our parallelism thesis to the test of a different approach to knowledge, the internalist, which finds self-conscious justification to be required for a belief to count as knowledge. Yogic epistemic parallelism holds here too.
Following Roderick Chisholm and William Alston, I find a “Theory of Appearance” to capture the defeasibility of sense perception without denying its epistemic value from an internalist perspective.35 This is an internalist view in that the subject knows that she is confronted with indications that might be misleading but is nevertheless sure about what she takes to be revealed. But note that the overall parallelism thesis does not hinge on Chisholm’s or Alston’s (or my or anyone’s) version of perceptual warrant. Nevertheless, Alston’s theory in particular does capture at least my intuitions about the role of sense perception in generating knowledge from an internalist point of view.
A subject S who takes herself to be appeared to by object a F-ly (that is to say, who takes herself to perceive a as F) is prima facie justified in believing that a is F.
For example, S, looking at a banyan tree, takes herself to be appeared to banyanly (that is to say, takes herself to perceive the tree as a banyan), and is thereby prima facie justified in believing that the tree is a banyan. It may turn out to be a Hollywood movie prop or the like; the belief is justified prima facie only. Thus according to the yogic parallelism thesis, the belief “a is F” would be a yogic proposition, a basic yogic claim, insofar as a yogin or yogini self-consciously takes herself in her inner yogic experience to be appeared to appropriately. I daresay that the great teachers of yoga have been quite self-conscious about what they take themselves to perceive or experience. They articulate it in yogic propositions. Yogic arguments for rebirth have as a premise at least one yogic proposition, whose warrant derives from yogic perception.
For the externalist, the burden of proof is on the side of opponents of the parallelism thesis, since knowledge does not have to be justified. But this is also true for the internalist. For clearly yogins and yoginis self-consciously take their yogic experiences to be informative, as much as does anyone her sense experience. Thus, without countervailing evidence, they have a right to believe that Fa (that, e.g., their consciousness is independent of the body), a right that passes on to us, their students, by their testimony. Furthermore, one level up, they themselves—or at least almost all the classical Yoga philosophies that defend and encourage yoga—assert the parallelism. Let me repeat that this is implicit in the very concept of yaugika pratyaksha, yogic perception, which in effect all the schools accept: yogic perception is a knowledge source, pramana, like sense perception.
Of course, for certain topics only a few people count as having the authority to make a yogic claim. Nonyogins and all levels of student depend on the testimony of those in the know. As argued in chapter 1, our guiding principle should be to give the benefit of the doubt. This is in fact the attitude we take in action in everyday life. Otherwise, we could not get along in the world. For example, by and large we have not personally experienced being named the names we carry. Even if as babies we were present, we cannot remember the ceremony. I take it on the testimony of (especially) my parents that the name I have is indeed mine. How crazy would it be to doubt such testimony, although we can easily imagine its falsity! The epistemic default is trust.
Let me once more emphasize that the parallelism thesis and what we may call the charity view of testimony do not entail the truth of yogic claims. All claims are corrigible. The faith to sustain practice does not depend on absolutely precise content of beliefs or on certainty. There may well emerge considerations that override the guru’s teaching, as with an apparent perception of two moons. Nevertheless, we are to assume that meditation and other yogic experience has a noetic or cognitive quality, being both taken as informative about some pretty important matters, such as the death-spanning nature of our consciousness, and informative in fact. There is no general reason we should not trust our teachers’ testimony. Of course, if materialism were true, testimony about the nonmaterial nature of the subtle or pranic body that survives would be mistaken. But here (in chapter 2) we have successfully resisted the offending thesis of materialism, to wit, causal closure, and there is no other general consideration I am aware of that would undercut the healthy and open-minded attitude of accepting (provisionally, as with any testimony) what our teachers say. The Nyaya definition of testimony as a knowledge source (going all the way back to the Nyaya Sutra, sutra 1.1.7) is that it is the conveyance of information by an expert, i.e., by one knowing the truth, who wants to communicate with no intention to lie or deceive.
Opponents of the parallelism thesis purport to find a problem in the partial intersubjectivity of the (yogic, mystical) experience deemed to be, like sense perception, informative. Buddhists make different yogic propositions than do Hindus, objectors would allege using our terminology. The hasty (and illogical) conclusion is that disagreement cancels all views out, since the truth should be universally accessible and known. Religious pluralism is best explained as varieties of error, in this view. Yogic claims are undermined by the circumstances of their origin, peculiar histories leading to peculiar and diverse claims. I called this the historicist worry in chapter 1.
There are four main lines of response to the challenge, which through Yoga eyes looks like the problem of diverse lineages—the pluralism of views and traditions, some in sharp disagreement on certain issues—all of which promote yoga. So, in brief, the first line of answer is that, like Jaina positive perspectivalism and syad-vada, our Yoga minimalism includes the policy of relative and provisional acceptance, which does not mean that some claims might not on scrutiny be thrown out.
The second line, complementing the first, is that we are interested in convergences and divergences. We want to know why there are divergences. The convergences, such as between Buddhists and Hindus on the chakra system or even the kosha and skandha schemas, when appreciated, give us a better grip on truths of our psychology.
The third line is that partial intersubjectivity is well known to be objective within special activities that take sense perception to be informative, e.g., wine tasting, reading (knowing how the letters are sounded), jewel assessment, and so on (only the experts have the right to pronounce on the wine, the letters, the jewel, and so on). Yoga practice has physical, vital/emotional, intellectual, and spiritual dimensions, and there are high bars to cross in each sphere. Anyone in principle has the right to make a statement about, let us say, rebirth, that would count as initially acceptable, but only if he or she has passed all the disciplinary prerequisites should that person’s testimony be accorded the status of a yogic proposition based on yogic perception. Not everyone counts as an expert.
Fourth and finally, with such overwhelming testimony as we have about survival, contrary testimony, for example, that water is fiery, appears to be defeated in advance, badhita, blocked, as a Nyaya philosopher would say. No belief is immune from revision and falsification, but some beliefs are well entrenched and unlikely to be dislodged.
A second group of arguments develop from nonyogic phenomena that indicate reincarnation in the absence of better explanations. Dean of rebirth research over the past fifty years, Ian Stevenson has published books and papers devoted to children’s rememberings along with other abilities and bodily features that cannot be accounted for by genetics, experience, or the environment in the current lifetime.36 The data range from the highly generic down to specifics, i.e., privileged knowledge to which it seems that only a very few particular people could have access.
Xenoglossy constitutes especially impressive evidence. But it is only one arrow in Stevenson’s quiver. His research ranges wide, including birth marks corresponding to wounds that the child’s predecessor sustained along with birth defects, postures and gestures, and general countenance as helping to confirm a child’s memories. Children, Stevenson explains, tend to be the only people who remember previous lives because they are not, like adults, so preoccupied with the affairs of this one. His cases are taken mainly from cultures where rebirth is a common belief. He argues that in the United States and other Western cultures there is built-in discouragement of any talk that could lead to identification of the child’s predecessor. “Don’t say things like that, Martha. You’re just daydreaming.” Or it may be that simply a lack of encouragement results in such memories fading like dreams upon the child’s immersion into worldly activity.
Overall, Stevenson makes an impressive showing. Surely he deserves a wider hearing among philosophers.37 For Yoga philosophy, it is obvious that his evidence is not just compatible with our (minimalist) conceptions but also provides support.38 However, the material is massive, and there is no point in reviewing cases. The main debunker I know of is Paul Edwards, and his mockery and ridicule and no-holds-barred assaults on the character of the testifiers means that details would have to be patiently reexamined to answer, for example, charges of lying. Suffice it to say that New Yoga has an ally in Professor Stevenson and other rebirth researchers.39
The standard argument in classical Indian philosophy focuses on voluntary action directed to a goal that has not been previously cognized by an infant or child in the current lifetime.40 Goal-directed activity requires mental dispositions (samskara) formed by previous experience, and a child’s first-time reaching for the mother’s breast, or whatever the first action, is goal-directed, pushed by desire and informed by awareness of the breast as satisfying desire. Ex hypothesi, no such desire fulfillment has been had in the current life, and therefore must have occurred in a previous lifetime.
This proves rebirth, however, only of a generic consciousness, a generic human or animal soul that wants food and knows where to look. It does not prove that the hungry infant reincarnates particular lines of psychological continuity embodied previously in Mr. Smith.
Xenoglossy is similarly restricted as evidence; it holds that the child has inherited dispositions from prior generations of the speakers of the particular language. These samskara could be without content that is restricted to a particular life and person. Still, here we have strong evidence for some kind of reincarnation. Perhaps part of xenoglossy could be accounted for by the thesis of a universal grammar. Vocabulary, however, is entirely learned and conventional. Its proper use implies training. It is not inherited genetically. Nevertheless, being able to speak a particular language belongs to large communities (usually) and is a characteristic that does not differentiate individuals within large groups. At the other extreme, there are cases of rather privileged knowledge or recognitive abilities that indicates a specific line of continuity to one very particular person, Mr. Jones, from another, Mr. Smith.
Genetics is commonly cited as accounting for traits of personality, emotions, and even consciousness. But genetics provides only necessary, never sufficient conditions for psychological properties or states. Furthermore, acquired characteristics are not, according to current theory, inherited. Thus Mr. Jones’s memories formed by Mr. Smith provide evidence for reincarnation.
Personally, I think the memory cases recorded by Stevenson and others should not be accorded too much weight in shaping our overall theory since the rule is that we do not remember past lives. Past-life memories are the exception. Nevertheless, memory, as mentioned to open the chapter following Ducasse, is crucial in the soul space between incarnations, since without it the view would fall to the “Liebniz objection” that one person, Mr. Smith, died, and another, Mr. Jones, was born.
Finally, at the risk of running together arguments from categories one and two, the yogic proposition that there is available through yoga practice the power, siddhi, to remember past lives is common lore. The siddhi is expressly mentioned in the Yoga Sutra, among other places.41
A third group of arguments finds the rebirth idea intrinsic to a whole world vision. Here we may place a bit of abstract reasoning by the modern guru and philosopher Aurobindo.42 He argues that since individuality is central to our lives as human beings, to our cultures, and indeed to our yoga practice—practice that can lead to spiritual enlightenment—it cannot be entirely illusory or so transitory as to end with death. Egoism is illusory and worse, but individuality itself is not all false. Now this is, to be sure, taking for granted a certain background metaphysics, namely, a variety of Vedantic and tantric monistic theism. Brahman, or God, working through divine shakti, suffuses the universe as “Sachchidananda,” Being-Consciousness=Force-Bliss. Brahman “self-manifests” this nature for the purpose of delight and self-discovery. Life would not have meaning if the individual did not in some way survive, and such meaninglessness in the self-manifestation of Brahman would be metaphysically discordant. Rebirth is the necessary “machinery” for the persistence.43
The argument can be reconstructed as follows.
A) If God is X (Sachchidananda, loving, omnibenevolent), then life has to be meaningful.
B) Life would not be meaningful without persistent individuality.
C) Persistent individuality in our world demands rebirth as machinery.
D) God is indeed X (Sachchidananda, etc.).
Therefore,
E) Rebirth is real.
Let me say a few words first about the third premise (C) and then address the argument as a whole.
Aurobindo shares with Vedantins and tantrics in particular a vision of worlds other than the physical universe where there are, to be sure, persistent individuals who are not reborn, not being subject to birth and death in the first place. Our world is a field of death and birth, and all individuals here have mortal bodies. If persistance as an individual is to include a material dimension—which means participation in ongoing life on Earth—then rebirth is called for.
This presupposes that a string of earthly identities is somehow more valuable or significant than a string of cross-world identities. The idea of Western religion that a life here is followed by life in heaven or hell or purgatory without a return is precluded, Aurobindo argues, by the value of human and cultural solidarities and other lines of continuity unavailable to a merely heaven-bound individual.44 In sum, premise C could be replaced with C′: The best sort of persistent individuality for us demands rebirth as machinery.
This is in accord with Aurobindo’s supposition that lines of earthly persistence are intrinsically valuable. As mentioned, it is also presupposed that there are individuals in other worlds who persist without rebirth. The idea is that we perfect specifically human virtues and contribute again and again to a communal life and history.
The most controversial premise may seem to be hidden in D, the reality of God or Brahman. But here the support is yogic perception and yogic propositions, as discussed above. Yogic testimony on this score is overwhelming, although there are differences about God’s nature. It is crucial to Aurobindo’s argument that God be Sachchidananda,45 so D is controversial within Yoga.
However, a less elaborate description may be all that is required—for example, to borrow a favorite from Western theology, God’s lovingness: (A′) If God is loving, then life has to be meaningful. Then the argument looks good, clear and cogent, given D. From another perspective, we might say that premise A is Aurobindo’s development of classical Indian theodicy, using rebirth to defend God’s goodness (see the end of chapter 3).
Finally, insuperable difficulties are alleged to face the rebirth conception, some of which have been collected recently in a book by philosopher Paul Edwards.46 The book is badly organized, and employs rhetoric unbecoming of a philosophy professional (“On examination the theory turns out to be just as hopelessly absurd as it seems at first sight to all sane people” is typical). Nevertheless, a few comments suit our purposes.
Edwards’s contentions may be grouped into three categories. First, there is his presupposition of the truth of materialism, of mind-body identity. “The weightiest argument against reincarnation… is based on the dependence of consciousness on the body and more particularly on the brain.”47 This, of course, has already been answered by us, in chapter 2. Please, Mr. Edwards, how can you prove causal closure? Unfortunately, this his main argument begs the question, but is employed time and again, particularly just when it looks, even in Edwards’s hands, as though the evidence is favorable. Second, there is disparagement and ridicule of various translife conceptions, all of which, from our Yoga perspective, look like the fallacy “straw man.” This is the (unfair!) presenting of a caricature or diminished version of a position to be attacked—in Edwards’s case, infantile versions of the “astral body” and other theories, in a word, a straw opponent whom it is easy to beat up and bully. Not so, however, our small but muscular minimalist theories, which are unharmed by the alleged difficulties. Third, there are long-winded character assassinations of testifiers and tarring with a broad brush. I cannot find any other argument.
Just a word more about the straw men that Edwards advances. An alleged difficulty of population increase for rebirth theory is a good example. Where do the extra souls come from? Our answer is that the other world or worlds or, as in Vedanta, planes of being, in which we live, have the resources, and we do not presume to know the details. All Yoga theories of reincarnation assert an other-worlds hypothesis, and we have no extraterrestrial population counts. Edwards has an entire chapter on this pseudo-problem, presenting the theories of pseudo-science as though they were the final and best word on the subject. With the sensibilities of neither a researcher nor an interpreter, he consistently fails to look for the “grain of truth” in rebirth testimony and theories—unlike Jainas, we may emphasize, who try as hard as possible never to commit the straw man fallacy, seeing others as like themselves, fallible but trying to say what is warranted and true.