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Re: Question about Hinduism
Christine Mucke (christine.mucke@mch.sni.de) wrote:
: In my view (an ignorant one) rebirth is a great and plausible
: idea of the indian religions. But a fact ? Are other religions
: then wrong ?
: As far as I understood right, there are a few high spiritual
: persons who can remember their previous life. What about
: the lot of other people ? Maybe the aspect of remembering is
: not so an important aspect of Hinduism.
Dear Christine Mucke:
Thank you for responding to this thread. I imagine you are talking
mainly about the Biblical view of rebirth. It is not wrong. Just that
the popular notion is wrong.
First, let us discuss rebirth in Hindu Scriptures. When a person dies,
his/her soul does not die, but the physical body is discarded by the
soul (jivAtman). The soul retains the memories of the life just ended
(the mind takes the indriyArtha = a mind's rendition of sense-pleasures).
As the soul takes birth, It takes a new body, and depending on Its state
of awareness, It remebers/does not remember events from the past life.
Many sages remebered their previous lives, for example, Sri Paramahansa
Yogananda (Autobiography of a yogi). I do not quite know what Scriptures
say about why most of us do not remember anything from previous lives,
but I know of some indirect statements about this. In the Srimad
Bhagavad Gita, Sri Krishna said, that Spiritual inclinations are carried
over from life to life (re: abhyAsayoga).
In the Bible, there is reference of rebirth when Jesus said that John the
Baptist was Elijah reborn. Elijah did not die a natural death, he was
taken up on a chariot. This has prompted many to say that he never
died. That can not be true, since he appeared in spirit body later. John
himself did not know that he is Elijah reborn (he denied). However, in
the book of Hebrews, there is a statement that man dies only once. The
author of Hebrews is unknown.
In any case, the important thing to recognize is, the common Christian
view of rebirth is essentially like resurrection, like Lazarus or Jesus,
both in body and in spirit. However, in the only case of rebirth noted
in the Bible (of John) it is a rebirth of the Spirit. In Christianity,
a person is identified with his/her body, not the Spirit. In heaven, the
resurrected person is given a new name by God. It is expected that the
resurrected person will keep his/her body too, maybe that is one reason
why a dead person's body is given a burial. I feel that is unrealistic,
since every visitor from heaven came with their Spirit body.
But in Hinduism, body is not considered a person's true identity. The
true identity is by the Soul.
Rebirth of the Soul is a fact, otherwise, it would not be possible to
remember anything about a past life. In the US, one Professor of the
name Ian Stevenson has studied children who remembered their previous lives.
He has written several books on it.
With best regards,
Dhruba.
