I often wonder how a seven year old American child could have mannerisms of sadhus, the wandering mendicants seeking God, commonly seen in India. As a young Richie, Radhanath Swami refused to sit on chairs while eating and preferred to sit on the floor. He wore clothes and shoes only if they were old and worn out. These are the typical idiosyncrasies of holy men living in sacred places of India. Richard could relate more to the poor and downtrodden, and was often embarrassed if he had better things than others. Considering Radhanath Swami’s later discovery of his guru in India and his appreciation for mother India, I can’t help asking if he has past life roots in India. This raises the question of reincarnation. Is it really possible for a person to take birth again; is there life after death?
There have been many researchers, psychiatrists and hypnotherapists who began with little or no sympathy for reincarnationist perspectives, but their research unavoidably pointed in this direction, and so, they proceeded with their findings. The work of Dr. Ian Stevenson, Carlson Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia, is particularly representative of this approach. Apart from Dr Ian Stevenson, many other researchers like Satwant Parischa, Gabriel Delanne (1924), Shirley (1932), B L Atreya (1957), Parrinder (1976), McTaggart (1915), Ducasse (1961) and Broad (1962,1971) have taken the subject of reincarnation very seriously and have researched and defended it. Over a 100 books and several research dissertations have been written on the subject of reincarnation since the late nineteenth century. Dr Ian Stevenson’s research of childhood reincarnation cases spans some 30 years. As of 1987, Stevenson had accumulated over 3000 cases of this type in his files and over half of these were of the “solved” type (that is the person’s past life experience had been determined beyond reasonable doubt). Thanks to Stevenson’s work, thousands of cases “suggestive of reincarnation” have now seen their way into print, and his related work is published in such prestigious academic journals as ‘The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease’, ‘The Journal of the American Medical Association’, and ‘The International Journal of Comparative Sociology.’
Through the centuries, a surprising number of intelligent, non-fanatical thinkers have believed in reincarnation. “I am confident,” said Socrates, “that there truly is such a thing as living again, that the living spring from the dead, and that the souls of the dead are in existence.” Ralph Waldo Emerson agreed. “The soul,” he wrote, “comes from without into the human body, as into a temporary abode, and it goes out of it anew…it passes into other habitations, for the soul is immortal.” A select group of 18th-, 19th-, and 20th- century Americans –
Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin, Tom Paine, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman, among others – who
believed that the soul, the energy that animates the body, goes on to a new body when the present body dies.
Numerous scientists and psychologists have believed in reincarnation as well. One of the greatest modern Psychologists, Carl Jung, used the concept of an eternal self that undergoes many births as a tool in his attempts to understand the deepest mysteries of the self and consciousness. “I could well imagine that I might have lived in former centuries and there encountered questions I was not yet able to answer; that I had to be born again because I had not fulfilled the task that was given to me,” said Carl Jung. Nobel Laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer often spoke of past lives, rebirth, and the immortality of the soul. He said, “There is no death. How can there be death if everything is part of the Godhead? The soul never dies and the body is never really alive.” Harvard biophysicist D. P. Dupey wrote, “We may lead ourselves down a blind alley by adhering dogmatically to the assumption that life can be explained entirely by what we know of the laws of nature. By remaining open to the ideas embodied in the Vedic tradition of India, modern scientists can see their own disciplines from a new perspective and further the aim of all scientific endeavours: the search for truth”.
Now when I read Radhanath Swami’s autobiography I get a feeling he was just continuing his search from where he had left off in his past life. I am reminded of one of the most celebrated scientists, Benjamin Franklin, who wrote, “Finding myself to exist in the world, I believe I shall, in some shape or other, always exist.”
