The Scientific Background of Rebirth

by Dr. Granville Dharmawardena, PhD(Cambridge)

(A talk given at Dhammadeepa Buddhist Temple in Dandenong,Victoria, Australia on Saturday 24th May 2003)

Science is a system of knowledge that had been steadily advancing since Galileo used the telescope, that he invented, to confirm that the sun and not the earth is at the centre of the solar system, in the early seventeenth century, in 1609 to be precise. The aim of science is to understand the reality of nature, ie. all natural phenomena and the laws governing them. Science uses the rational system of knowledge and this is one of the two systems of knowledge available to mankind to understand the reality of nature. Let us first of all see where we stand in our science knowledge at present.

Scientists believe that the greatest discovery in the history of science is the discovery made by quantum scientist Nicholas Gisin at Geneva university six years ago in 1997. Gisin experimentally proved that the universe is non-local in nature. This was theoretically predicted by another quantum scientist, John Bell, in 1964 and tested in a limited way by quantum scientist Alan Aspect at Paris-sud University in 1982.

Let us try to understand the differences between classical science and modern science. Classical science developed from the seventeenth century to the end of the nineteenth century. The foundation for classical science was laid by Sir Isaac Newton in the seventeenth century. The fundamental assumptions on which classical science is built are as follows. These are only assumptions and not scientifically established facts. Classical science assumes that the universe is one huge mechanical system operating according to exact mathematical laws. It consists of material objects, made of solid indestructible particles, that move in accordance with Newton's laws of motion. All these particles are made of the same material substance. Reductionism, determinism and absolute mathematical certainty are basic fundamentals of classical science.

Reductionism is the opposite of non-locality and Gisin's discovery has proved that reductionism is not true of the universe. Reductionism means that everything can be broken down into smaller and smaller parts until they come down to the small solid indestructible fundamental particles. The properties of an object are the aggregate sum of the properties of the fundamental particles that constitute it. The fallacy of this assumptions is clearly demonstrated by an example given in the Milinda Problem where it has been shown that the properties of a chariot cannot arise by adding the properties of the parts of the chariot and Gisin's discovery conclusively proved that reductionism is not true.

Determinism means that since everything in the universe happens according to definite mathematical laws, it is possible by mathematical calculations, to precisely predict everything that will happen at any given time in the future. That means that the fate of everything is predetermined. Quantum uncertainty proves that this is not true of the universe.

Godel's theorem in mathematics also shows that absolute mathematical certainty is not true of the universe. Kurt Godel was honoured with the title "The mathematician of the Twentieth Century" for this important discovery.
Classical science recognizes only material aspects of the universe and processes and phenomena that operate within three spatial dimensions. But nature includes a substantial number of very important non-material and beyond three dimensional processes and phenomena. Classical science cannot perceive or understand these processes and phenomena. During the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries classical scientists studied the phenomena in the universe that are limited to three spatial dimensions and material objects. The scope of the five human senses is also limited to three spatial dimensions and therefore we cannot perceive, understand or imagine any process or phenomenon that extends beyond three spatial dimensions. Scientists were quite at ease with classical science because their perceptive abilities and those of classical science were in tune. Our scientific common sense is based on three centuries of experience with classical science and we are trained to reject or doubt anything that goes beyond the limits of classical science. By the end of the nineteenth century classical scientists were quite confident that they had mastered all phenomena that were within the limits of classical science.

Rebirth is a phenomenon that extend beyond three spatial dimensions. Consciousness, which is the main operative entity involved in rebirth, is neither limited to three spatial dimensions nor to the realm of material objects. Therefore it is not possible to study or examine rebirth through classical science. Try to look at micro-organisms in water using the naked eye. You will see only clear water and no micro-organisms because micro-organisms are beyond the scope of the naked eyes. They are there, but the naked eyes cannot see them. You need a microscope to see them. When you use a microscope you see them. Similarly you cannot examine rebirth with classical science because rebirth is beyond the scope of classical science. Therefore to study rebirth one has to use a knowledge system whose scope extends to all realms of operation of rebirth. Modern science satisfies this requirement.

During the twentieth century science expanded its scope. Einstein's theory of relativity took the scope of science up to four spatial dimensions and quantum science took it far beyond. Modern science is not limited by the number of dimensions or by the materiality of the phenomena studied.

Let us now see what is meant by rebirth.

When a person dies and is reborn what is it that goes from the dying person to the reborn person? We know, for sure, that the material body of the dying person does not go. All our investigations show that the subconscious memory bank of the dying person goes to the reborn person.

For the purpose of examining rebirth we can consider the human being as consisting of two distinct parts. That is the material part or the body which is within the scope of classical science and that of our five senses and the non-material part or the consciousness which is beyond the scope of classical science and that of our five senses.

We understand the behaviour of the material body and we have no difficulty in understanding what happens to it at death. We all understand, clearly, that the material body comes into being at conception and perishes at death and death is its end.

Then what do we know about the nature, behaviour and functioning of consciousness? Consciousness does not generate any perceptible stimuli that reveal its nature and functioning. Therefore we cannot perceive and understand its nature and functioning in the way that we understand how our bones and muscles move when when we walk or run. There is no controversy about how our bones and muscles move because they are within the scope of our understanding capability. Our five senses are sensitive to visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory and tactile stimuli and consciousness does not generate any such stimuli to which our senses can be sensitive. It can shoot in thoughts and ideas into our mind. But these do not reveal its own nature and functioning.

Then how can we know something about the nature and functioning of consciousness. There are two ways. There was one person who understood it and we can learn from his teachings. That person is Lord Buddha. The other way is to use quantum science and experimental observations.

Let us see how quantum science looks at rebirth. David Bohm and August Compte were the quantum scientists who showed that consciousness is quantum in nature. The easiest entity we can examine to get an idea of how a quantum entity behaves is the electron. An electron is a packet of waves that localizes in an atomic orbital or spread throughout the universe. An atomic orbital is an electron position around an atomic nucleus, which in classical science parlance, one would say, is an orbit around an atomic nucleus in which the electron revolves. An electron which remains localized in an atomic orbital with its presence limited to the immediate region around the nucleus de-localizes if it loses its tuning to remain in that position in the atom. It then becomes a free electron spread throughout the universe. Thereafter, if it finds a vacancy in an atomic orbital of the same or another atom, which is in tune with its energy needs for localization it gets into that orbital and localizes there. Consciousness behaves in somewhat a similar manner. So long as the active living cells of the brain, called neuron cells, maintain conditions for consciousness to operate in tune with the brain, it remains localized in that brain. When the brain loses its ability to remain in tune with consciousness, consciousness de-localizes, leaves the brain and becomes free floating. Brain going out of tune with consciousness can happen either by death or by deactivation of brain cells. Deactivation of brain cells can happen due to unconsciousness resulting from illness, accident or anaesthesia. If the brain regains its tune with consciousness, consciousness can come back and re-localize there and we call it 'near death experience'. Sometimes consciousness can de-localize and re-localize during deep sleep. We call this situation an 'out of body experience'. If the brain does not regain its tune with consciousness after consciousness de-localizes, consciousness will leave for good and the person dies.

When consciousness de-localizes at death, it becomes a free floating consciousness. A free floating consciousness wanders around looking for a vacancy in a brain which can tune up with it. Vacancy in a brain means a brain which does not possess consciousness. What is meant by being in tune is that the brain possesses conditions essential for consciousness to operate within it. In quantum science parlance we call it non-local conditions. Another factor we have found from our experimental investigations is the amount of merit or kamma the consciousness carries with it. When we ask free floating consciousnesses what they are up to, the two common answers we get are, "looking for a mother to get back to the world" and "trying to acquire more merit to come into a better family". Once a free floating consciousness finds a vacant brain and re-localizes there the person is reborn.

Re-localization of consciousness, in rebirth, is in a fertilized ovum, which is known as a zygote. Localizing consciousness makes a zygote an embryo. Thereafter it is an individual being. After the embryo matures in the womb for period it is born and it becomes a person. Psychologist Sigmund Freud showed that human consciousness consists of two main parts, which are referred to, in psychology parlance, as the conscious and the unconscious. In common parlance we call them the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. Conscious mind is about 20% of consciousness and the subconscious mind is about 80% of it. Conscious mind contains memories of things and activities that we know and remember. Subconscious mind contains memories of all past events that we have forgotten. These include memories of past lives. Experiments show that when consciousness de-localizes from a dying person's brain and re-localized in a new being, it carries with it the memory bank in the subconscious mind of the dying person, but not that in the conscious mind.

Now let us see how Buddhism teaches about the role of consciousness with respect to rebirth. Buddhist analysis also considers consciousness as consisting of two important parts as the bhavanga citta and viti citta. Bhavanga citta contains in store memories of all past activities and experiences. Viti citta consists of thoughts that arise superposed on bhavanga citta when a stimulus is received through one of the sense organs. Bhavanga citta is compared to the waters of a smoothly flowing undisturbed river. Viti citta thoughts that arise when stimuli are received, are compared to the ripples that arise on the surface of smoothly flowing water when pebbles fall on it. Or they may be compared to the radio frequency carrier wave in a radio broadcast and its modulating audio frequency wave.

A normal thought has 17 thought moments or thought waves superposed and flowing upon bhavanga citta. The function of the first thought wave is to alert the bhavanga citta of the on coming stimulus. Subsequent thought waves receive, recognize, deal appropriately with and register it. The last thought wave terminates it returning consciousness to bhavanga citta. At death the last thought consists only of 12 thought waves and the penultimate thought wave is known as the departing consciousness or cuti citta. The departing consciousness induces a new consciousness in a zygote creating a new being. This is known as relinking consciousness. In this process the memory bank in the bhavanga citta goes with relinking consciousness to form the bhavanga citta of the new being.

During this process, which begins with the failing of the material body, the consciousness of the dying person sees visions of kamma, kamma nimitta or gathi nimitta. Seeing kamma means, the dying person gets a rapid vivid panoramic view of his lifetime's good and bad activities, particularly, the recent,regular and predominant karmic activities. For example, a butcher might see the suffering of the dying animals at time he butchered them. This is experienced from the victims point of view and the dying butcher experiences the pain and suffering of the dying animals. Kamma nimitta means seeing representative symbols of lifetime's activities. A butcher might see the knife he had been using for butchery. Gathi nimitta means seeing a symbol representative of the place where the dying person is going to be reborn. One may see angels or a chariot as a sign of being born in a good place or fire as a sign of being born in a bad place. Research workers in the USA have found that the appearance of the kamma, kamma nimitta and gati nimitta are true. They have found that a person seeing kamma at death actually experiences the agony and the trauma experienced by the victims of his/her actions at the time these actions were committed.

Now let us see what is the driving force of rebirth as explained in Buddhism.

All beings are reborn after death. They live and die again to be reborn again. It is a never ending cyclical process. Each birth is associated with aging, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, despair and death. In this way all beings are churning round and round in a never ending whirl of unpleasant experiences from which there seems to be no escape. This type of cyclical and continued suffering is referred to as 'existential suffering'. The never ending birth-death cycle leading to existential suffering is known as the whirl of samsara.

To understand the driving force of rebirth, one has to discuss the cause-effect relations involved in it. In Buddhism it is known as Paticcasamuppada or the law of dependent origination. The cause and effect structure operating in the whirl of samsara is the central principle in the teachings of the Buddha. What is cause and effect principle? Everything happens due to a cause and nothing can happen without a cause. Sequences of events happen by a cause producing an effect, this effect becoming the cause for another effect and producing that effect, that effect becoming the cause for still another effect and producing that effect and so on.

For example, consider the cause effect relations in the following sequence of events.
"A boy sees a beautiful girl. As a result of seeing her he falls in love with her. As a result of falling in love he marries her. As a result of marrying she becomes pregnant. As a result of her pregnancy he becomes a father. As a result of becoming a father he gets a lot of new responsibilities."

Here seeing the girl is the cause for falling in love. Falling in love is the cause for getting married. Getting married is the cause for getting pregnant. Getting pregnant is the cause for becoming a father. Becoming a father is the cause for additional responsibilities. If any of the above causes failed to produce the respective effect the sequence of events does not proceed in that way. This sequence of events can be broken at two stages by blocking the cause from producing its effect. The person can exercise caution and restraint, and resist falling in love or he can use family planning methods to prevent the girl from getting pregnant.

We are all taken through our lifetime's activities in this manner by the cause and effect principle. There are two main differences in the operation of the cause and effect principle in the whirl of samsara.

One is that it is cyclical. While going through the sequence of causes and effects in the birth-life-death-rebirth process, at one stage the effect of one of the causes become the cause for an effect that the sequence has already gone through making the sequence to reiterate and create an infinite loop. This infinite loop is the whirl of samsara.

The other difference is that, in the above example of falling in love and getting married, the operation of cause and effect relations are within the scope of our understanding by the five human senses and classical science. In the whirl of samsara the operation of some of the cause and effect steps are beyond three spatial dimensions and therefore beyond the scope of our understanding and that of classical science.

In a cyclical process of this nature there is no beginning or end. But for the purpose of understanding the whirl of samsara we can break in at any stage. We normally break in at 'ignorance' stage because 'ignorance' is one of the main driving forces of the whirl of samsara.

Ignorance here means ignorance of the reality of nature, particularly, the aspects of nature relevant to nature of existence and existential suffering. When one is ignorant one does things that can be wrong or harmful. When I was a three year old boy, I saw the hood of a cobra hidden under grass. Due to my ignorance I thought it was a small turtle and tried to touch it. Seconds before I could touch it my elder sister screamed and pulled me back and we ran home. I was ignorant of the fact that it was a cobra hidden under grass. My sister was not ignorant. She had the right knowledge and she saved me. If my sister was not there with me at that time my life would have ended that day due to my ignorance. Indira Ghandhi was ignorant of the long term consequences of training terrorist groups and she trained two terrorist groups, one headed by Bindrawale in Punjab and the other headed by Prabhakaran in Sri Lanka. Ultimately due to her ignorance both she and her son lost their lives and India lost her stability. If we look back at our lives with hind sight everyone of us will be able to recollect many instances when we took wrong decisions due to our ignorance at that time.

The ignorance we talk of in the whirl of samsara is something similar, but much deeper and beyond the comprehension capabilities of the conscious mind and our five senses. It is beyond intellectual probing. All our activities are decided on the basis of the limited knowledge we possess. This means that there is lot more relevant knowledge that we do not possess.

All knowledge that we possess of the world is what we have gathered through our five senses. We get in contact with the external world through our five senses. If our eyes come in contact with a nice beautiful object our natural reaction to it is to consider it as pleasant and like it. The natural instinct that follows is a desire to possess it. Similarly if what comes in contact with our eyes is ugly and repugnant the natural reaction is to consider it as unpleasant and the natural instinct is to reject it and distance from it. As a result of the desire to possess or reject something we engage in various actions. If a beautiful object is something that has to be bought one raises the money, goes to the shop, buys it and brings it home. Similarly if the object is unpleasant one engages in actions to reject it, get rid of it and distance from it. These actions are known as volitional actions. The pleasant or the unpleasant object can be anything that one perceives through any of the five sense organs. After possessing an attractive object one engages in further volitional actions to enjoy it, secure it and protect it. By this time one's desire for the object has grown to be a craving Cumulation of lifetime's volitional actions constituting kamma, creates a very powerful craving for continuing existence. Craving for existence becomes an enormously powerful force at death and it generates relinking consciousness. Relinking consciousness leads to the arising of a new consciousness in an embryo for continuing existence. So, it is with desire as the cause that craving arises, with craving as the cause consciousness comes into being, with consciousness as the cause a new being comes into existence, with the creation of a new being as the cause the five sense organs come into being, with sense organs as the cause one gets in contact with the external world, with contact as the cause desire arises, with desire as the cause craving arises, with craving as the cause consciousness arises and in this manner the whirl of samsara keeps rolling. What is the driving force here? It is desire and craving that arise due to ignorance. Therefore the only point at which the whirl of samsara can be broken is at this point. The individual being cannot exert influence at any other point in the whirl of samsara. If one can control oneself and exercise restraint, after desire, instead of craving, one can break the whirl of samsara. To control oneself in this manner one needs wisdom. For wisdom to arise one must first of all dispel ignorance and then develop wisdom. To develop wisdom one has to quieten the conscious mind. To quieten the conscious mind one has to meditate. Thus the driving forces of the whirl of samsara are ignorance and craving and to break the whirl one has to practice meditation.

The picture we have created of the external world through stimuli we have received through the five sense organs is very limited and incomplete. There is lot more in the external world than what our sense organs can open to our perception because our sense organs can bring in only knowledge of material processes and phenomena that are limited to three spatial dimensions. Our sense organs are blind to everything beyond these limits. It is like the picture a colour blind person gets by looking at a beautiful flower garden. When we go into a beautiful flower garden we enjoy and appreciate the beauty of the flowers and the variety of colours in them. It is the variety of colours, their lustre and brightness that make us to perceive it as beautiful and attractive. But a colour blind person sees only dull black and white pictures of it. His eyes do not convey the colours, the lustre and the beauty to his perception and there is no attraction for him there. If a colour blind person is put in charge of managing such a flower garden, the decisions and actions that he would take will appear wrong and weird for us. Our view of nature and the volitional actions we perform in response to various stimuli that we receive through our sense organs, are based on our incomplete knowledge of nature and to a person who has a complete knowledge of the reality of nature they will appear wrong and weird. This is the ignorance we talk of when we refer to ignorance of the reality of existence and existential suffering.

Developing wisdom means acquiring a more complete knowledge of the reality of nature than what our sense organs can convey to our perception. This cannot be done through stimuli received through sense organs. Rational knowledge including science is based on stimuli received through the sense organs. Therefore to develop wisdom we have the go to the other knowledge system, the intutive knowledge system, which does not depend on sense organs. Intutive knowledge is not limited by the number of dimensions or materiality. Intutive knowledge is acquired by quietening and closing the rational mind and allowing unlimited knowledge to flow in freely and effortlessly through the subconscious mind. This is done by meditation.

Is rebirth a scientifically acceptable true natural phenomenon? How do we establish if it is scientifically true or not?

Obviously we cannot use classical science to examine rebirth because it is beyond the scope of classical science. Here we have to use scientific techniques, the scope of which extend up to or beyond the realms of operation of the phenomenon of rebirth. The only scientific technique that meet this requirement is modern science or quantum science. During the era of classical science the process of scientific authentication included criteria that cannot be applicable in modern science for beyond three dimensional and non-material phenomena. In classical science a scientist has to understand a phenomenon before entering it into the process of scientific authentication. This is not possible with modern science phenomena because scientists cannot understand them. Classical scientists had to make idealized mental pictures of the mechanisms of phenomena and their relationships with other phenomena before they present them for discussion. These are not possible with modern science phenomena which are beyond the perceptive and imagining capabilities of human beings.

After science expanded its scope beyond three spatial dimensions these requirements had to be dropped in order to prevent science from remaining a frog in the well type of knowledge system with very limited scope and applicability, that reject a vast array of natural phenomena that extend beyond the scope of classical science and that constitute the bigger part of the reality of nature.

While expanding the scope of science to realms beyond three spatial dimensions, a new scientific authentication procedure which enable human beings to include phenomena beyond the scope of human perception had to be established in order to include a bigger portion of nature within scientific knowledge possessed by mankind. The procedure for scientifically authenticating a new phenomenon or a theorem, in modern science, is once the new phenomenon gets known, usually presented by the person who perceived it, it is used to make predictions on what one should be able to experimentally observe if it was true. Thereafter, experiments are conducted to observe if the predictions are true. If the observations establish that the observable predictions are true and no observation shows that a prediction is untrue, the phenomenon receives scientific authenticity. Thereafter it becomes a scientifically accepted natural phenomenon.

For example when Albert Einstein proposed the general theory of relativity in 1915 one of the predictions based on that theory was that light travels in curves, not straight lines, when it passes close to a heavy object. Einstein's theory was scoffed at by classical scientists until an expedition of British scientists went to East Africa in 1919 to observe a solar eclipse and confirmed that that prediction made on the basis of Einstein's general theory of relativity was true. Theory of relativity is now a well established foundation block in science.

Consider for example the Big-bang theory of origin of the universe. It was proposed by a scientist and two predictions were made on the basis of the big-bang theory. They are, if the theory is true all the objects in the universe must be moving away from each other and the energy released in the big-bang must be available in the universe in the form of microwave radiation. Sir Edwin Hubble made observations in 1929 and confirmed that the first prediction is true. Pensias and Wilson at the Bell Laboratories in the USA made observations in 1965 and confirmed that the second prediction is true. As a result of completing this procedure with two observations coming true, the big-bang theory received scientific acceptance in spite of strong religious pressure to accept another competing theory.

To test the scientific authenticity of the phenomenon of rebirth it has to be examined through the above procedure. How does rebirth go through the above procedure?

Assuming that rebirth is true we can make the following predictions.

1.Spontaneous recall of past lives,
2.Recall of past lives under hypnosis,
3.Past life therapy,
4.Child prodigies and persons who can make use of past life knowledge and experiences including xenoglossy

Spontaneous recall of past lives,

The technique of psychoanalysis in psychology was developed by Sigmund Freud. Here a person is made to lie down in a semi dark room and speak out everything that comes to his mind. Initially he speaks out what he has in his conscious mind and as the memory store in the conscious mind gets exhausted the memories in the subconscious mind starts diffusing into the conscious mind and he starts speaking memories of forgotten past activities. These are usually memories of past activities of the present life. People who are subjected to this procedure are persons who have psychological disorders. Such people usually have large memory banks both in their conscious and subconscious minds and many of such memories are unpleasant ones. For such people exhausting all the present life memories stored in the conscious and subconscious minds is a daunting task. It cannot happen without enormous effort and time and that too will be with very low probability of success. However in the case of small children their conscious minds are relatively empty. Their subconscious minds are nearly free of past memories of the present lives, but full of memories of the past lives. In this case the diffusion of some of the past life memories from the subconscious mind to the conscious mind can happen relatively easily and effortlessly. When repeatedly questioned more and more information in the subconscious minds diffuse into the conscious minds. Thousands of children who speak of past lives in this manner have been tested and what they have said have been verified. A large bulk of such work had been done by Dr. Ian Stevenson, Carlson Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia (the USA).

Recall of past lives under hypnosis,

Hypnosis is a technique used to put the conscious mind to sleep and communicate with the subconscious mind. Until 1952 this method was used to recall forgotten past memories of present lifetimes. If rebirth is true memories of past lives must be available in the subconscious mind and it should be possible to recall them through hypnosis. In 1952 hypnotist Mori Bernstein, in Colorado (the USA), hypnotized a lady by the name Virginia Tig and successfully recalled the memories of her past life. In her past life she was Bridey Murphy who lived in Ireland. She gave a lot of details of her past life and everything she said had been tested and found to be true. Thereafter thousands of such cases had been examined and tested. Hypnotism is now established as a method of reading memories of past lives.

Past life therapy,

Hypnosis is used to regress a person's awareness to memories of unpleasant past life events, which remain stored in the subconscious mind and cause psychological disorders, in order to neutralize these memories and heal the disorders. For example when a 14 year old girl, whose life was severely disrupted by a psychological disorder known as obsessive compulsive disorder, was hypnotised she revealed that the cause for the disorder was an unpleasant childhood memory stored in her subconscious mind. When she was a three year old kid burglars had entered her house through the kitchen door while she was alone in the kitchen. It was the fear instilled in her mind that had got repressed into her subconscious mind that had created the disorder. When the memory was neutralized under hypnosis the disorder disappeared and she became normal. Accordingly if rebirth is true some people must be suffering psychological disorders due to memories of unpleasant events of their past lives stored in their subconscious minds and it should be possible to heal them under hypnosis. This has been found to be true. People actually suffer psychological disorders in their present lives due to unpleasant events of their past lives and these can be healed by hypnotherapy. This has now developed to a branch of professional therapy known as past life therapy. For example a 26 year old lady who was bed ridden for over ten years due to her inability to walk revealed, under hypnosis, that the reason for her inability to walk was that in her past life she died with swollen legs. Her inability to walk disappeared after that memory was neutralized under hypnosis. The most common psychological disorders that result from unpleasant events of past lives are phobias.

Child prodigies and persons who can make use of past life knowledge and experiences and xenoglossy,

The Roman philosopher Cicero pointed out that the speed with which children grasp innumerable facts is strong proof of men knowing most things before birth. Since then the recognition that genius is flowering of past life knowledge and experience held ground. Exceptional precautious talent of certain children to pick up knowledge can be explained only by rebirth. For example a six year old child who had never played a musical instrument suddenly playing masterpiece quality music on a piano or a three year old child mentally following his father's calculations on his employees' pay sheet, spotting mistakes and later becoming one of world's greatest mathematicians cannot be explained in any other way. A few years ago a four year old American girl spoke three languages, programmed the home computer and read Shakespere instead of children's books. She had learned Japanese language entirely from books. Quite a list of person's whose exceptional talents in the present life are due to past life knowledge and capabilities have been recognized and the famous musician Mozart is among them. Another exceptional observation is that when some people, whose past life spoken languages are different from their present life languages, are hypnotized and regressed to their past lives, they speak their past life languages with the relevant accents even though they have never had any opportunities even to listen to those languages in their present lives. This is known as xenoglossy.

Observations made on the above four items agree with the predictions and the phenomenon of rebirth therefore very successfully goes through the process of scientific authentication of modern science phenomena.

Of the above four items I have given here only very brief accounts and anyone who is interested can refer the relevant literature and get a lot more detailed information. There are further observations such as injuries sustained at death in the past life appearing as birth marks in the present life and past life activities explaining a person's interests in the present life, which have not been discussed here in order to keep the text within limits.

On the basis of the above predictions and observations one has to conclude that rebirth is a natural phenomenon and it is scientifically true.

A science minded person often finds it difficult to accept rebirth because he tries and fails to perceive a rebirth mechanism which is intelligible within the outdated classical science framework. But theory of relativity and quantum science has compelled us to accept phenomena with unintelligible mechanisms like the jump of the electron and we do not hesitate to accept them. In an electron jump from one atomic orbital to another, the electron disappears from one orbital and reappears in the other without going across the space in between. Likewise with the data available we are compelled to accept rebirth as a part of the reality of nature.

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