Reincarnation - reality, rationality, opportunity by Chaitanya Charan

2. Romanticizing Reincarnation
Soulmate – soul or mate?
Don’t incorporate
reincarnation into a
materialistic worldview –
let reincarnation redefine
your worldview

3. Reality
Dr. Ian Stevenson
Four types of evidences:
• Recollections
• Recognitions
• Behaviors
• Birthmarks

6. The Case of Necip Unlutaskiran
• Born in Adana, Turkey,
• Past-life as Necip Budak in
Mersin 80 km away
• Knew about scar on wife’s
thigh

7. The Case of Necip Unlutaskiran
• Affectionate to children
• Jealous of wife’s new
husband
• 6 correlating birthmarks –
probability 1 / 160^6

8. Fraud?
No money
No fame
No religious motive
Embarrassing eg Jasbir
Singh

9. Fraud
“Neither self-delusion, intentional
fraud, peer pressure, nor coincidence
could explain how the children Ian
investigated could have known all that
they knew about strangers who’d died
before they were born.”
- Tom Shroder, Editor, Washington
Post

10. Reality
Two different
people – non-
intersecting sets
Intersection point:
non-material soul

11. Rationality
Why different starting
points?
Chance?
Divine Caprice?
Multi-life progression?

12. Chance?
Life a cosmic lottery?
We live based on cause-
effect connection
Doctrine of helplessness

13. Divine Caprice?
God’s justice? – better
than ours, not worst
God’s tests? – why
different tests for
different people?

14. Multi-life progression
Our present starting point
is determined by us, by
our past ending point
Reconciles world’s
inequities with God’s
goodness

15. Implication
“Has it occurred to you that
transmigration is at once an explanation
and a justification of the evil of the world?
If the evils we suffer are the result of sins
committed in our past lives, we can bear
them with resignation and hope that if in
this one we strive towards virtue, our
future lives will be less afflicted.”
–W. Somerset Maugham in The Razor’s
Edge

16. Implication
“I am no Hindu but I hold the doctrine
of the Hindus concerning a future
state to be incomparably more
rational, more pious and more likely to
deter men from vice than the horrid
opinions inculcated by the Christians
on punishment without end.”
- Christian scholar & pioneering
Sanskritist Sir Willam Jones

17. Rationality
Longing to live forever
and love forever in a
world where nothing
lasts forever
Eg African tribal child
desiring a pizza

18. Opportunity
We are sparks
attracted to other
sparks.
Now we can become
attracted to the whole

19. Opportunity
All-attractive Krishna:
Whatever is attractive
in anyone is present in
its fullness in Krishna

20. Opportunity
Put Krishna first in our
relationships & our heart
will be fulfilled,
irrespective of whether
specific desires are
fulfilled or not