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The Quantum Truth of
Rebirth
Irreducible Mind, Quantum After-Death Personality Survival
and the Buddhist Metaphysics of Cyclic Existence and Rebirth
The title of this chapter was inspired by a recent article by the Theravadin monk Thanissaro
Bhikkhu entitled The Truth of Rebirth and Why it Matters for Buddhist Practice. In this article
Thanissaro Bhikkhu rebukes the supposedly modernizing movement within Western Buddhism which
seeks to remove the central doctrines of karma and rebirth in the mistaken belief that such notions are
unscientific. He writes:
Rebirth has always been a central teaching in the Buddhist tradition. The earliest records in
the Pali Canon indicate that the Buddha, prior to his awakening, searched for a happiness not
subject to the vagaries of repeated birth, aging, illness, and death. One of the reasons he left
his early teachers was because he recognized that their teachings led, not to the goal he sought,
but to rebirth on a refined level. On the night of his awakening, two of the three knowledges
leading to his release from suffering focused on the topic of rebirth. The first showed his own
many previous lives; the second, depicting the general pattern of beings dying and being reborn
throughout the cosmos, showed the connection between rebirth and karma, or action. When
he did finally attain release from suffering, he recognized that he had achieved his goal because
he had touched a dimension that not only was free from birth, but also had freed him from ever
being reborn again. After he had attained release, his new-found freedom from rebirth was the
first realization that occurred spontaneously to his mind.
…
So the theme of rebirth is woven inextricably throughout the Buddha’s teachings. And freedom
from rebirth has been a central feature of the Buddhist goal from the very beginning of the
tradition. All of the various Buddhist religions that later developed in Asia, despite their other
differences, were unanimous in teaching rebirth. Even those that didn’t aim at putting an end
to rebirth still taught rebirth as a fact. Yet as these Buddhist religions have come to the West,
they have run into a barrier from modern Western culture. Of all the Buddha's teachings,
rebirth has been one of the hardest for modern Westerners to accept. … For people who have
felt burned or repelled by the faith demands of Western religion, there is the added barrier that
the teaching on rebirth is something that — for the unawakened — has to be taken on faith.
They would prefer a Buddhism that makes no faith demands, focusing its attention solely on
the benefits it can bring in this life. So for many Westerners who have profited from the
Buddha's psychological insights and meditational tools, the question arises: Can we strip the
Buddha's teachings of any mention of rebirth and still get the full benefits of what he had to
teach? In other words, can we drop the Buddha's worldview while keeping his psychology and
still realize everything it has to offer?i
Thanissaro Bhikkhu argues that this approach is unacceptable and he focuses on the details of the
doctrines of the Pali Canon in order to prove the point that the concepts of karma and rebirth are essential
aspects of Buddhist theory and practice.
The term ‘rebirth’ is used rather than ‘reincarnation’ because some Buddhists consider the latter term
involves the non-Buddhist notion of a ‘fixed’ soul. In this chapter the term ‘reincarnation’ will also be
used, but it is necessary to keep in mind the awareness that there is no implication of a fixed entity
involved. Buddhism asserts a continuity of a changing energetic process of mind-potentiality, not a fixed
essence. And such a psycho-metaphysical view, contrary to many people’s beliefs, has scientific
credibility.
In a recent paper entitled ‘Compatibility of Contemporary Physical Theory with Personality
Survival’ quantum physicist Professor Henry Stapp concludes that ‘contemporary physical theory’,
which is essentially quantum mechanics, requires the recognition that:
…strong doubts about personality survival based solely on the belief that postmortem survival
is incompatible with the laws of physics are unfounded. Rational science-based opinion on this
question must be based on the content and quality of the empirical data, not on a presumed
incompatibility of such phenomena with our contemporary understanding of the workings of
nature.ii
In other words, according to Stapp’s analysis, whilst it is the case that quantum physics in no way proves
the survival of personality neither does it rule it out. In fact, as we shall see, a thorough investigation of
the quantum situation together with non-quantum investigations from various other fields of enquiry
naturally leads to the conclusion that survival of some immaterial aspect of the psychophysical
embodiment of human and perhaps other sentient beings is highly likely. Furthermore the most likely
scenario is fully in accord with Buddhist ‘epiontic’ psycho-metaphysics.
One of the motivating factors behind Stapp’s paper is the evidence marshaled together in the
important book Irreducible Mind: Towards a Psychology for the 21st Century, particularly the evidence
concerning Near Death Experiences (NDE’s). In the introduction to his paper Stapp indicates his
fundamental skepticism to the possibility of the personality surviving death, but he writes that:
…in contrast to the doubters who refused to look through Galileo's telescope, I have, in spite
of my skepticism, perused certain documentations of such claims that have been brought
insistently to my attention by scientists judged by me to be intelligent, critical, and sober-
minded. One such document was particularly arresting. It is the book Irreducible Mind, written
by Edward and Emily Kelly and several other scientists personally known to me. While
insufficient to quell my life-long doubts, this account has rendered reasonable the task of
examining whether the phenomena in question, if assumed to be veridical, could be reconciled
with contemporary physical theory in a natural and reasonable way.iii
An interesting feature of this guarded endorsement is the indication that he is only prepared to even
consider evidence and arguments advanced by people judged by him to be ‘intelligent, critical, and
sober-minded.’ This might on first consideration seem entirely reasonable, but it actually depends upon
the criteria which Stapp employs to decide exactly who is judged to be worthy.
Stapp indicates that he has a preference for what he calls “conservative and rationally coherent
conceptions of quantum physics.”iv But although it is incumbent upon us to pursue coherent
conceptions of reality, who is to say that reality is “conservative”? Exactly what is meant by this?
This is a very significant point for in his brilliant works Mind, Matter and Quantum Mechanics
(2004) and Mindful Universe: Quantum Mechanics and the Participating Observer (2007) Stapp
himself has argued that the materialist paradigm, which as he so correctly and powerfully demonstrates
has been completely undermined by quantum discoveries, operates as a unexamined and now clearly
mistaken metaphysical assump-tion for many scientists and philosophers. Despite this, however, Stapp
ap-pears to be comfortable to put in the place of an assumption of meta-physical materialism, an
equally unproven assumption of metaphysical con-servatism:
… “quantum mechanics” is understood in diverse ways even by highly respected scientists,
and in a vast array of disparate ways by many others. Within this grand collection of putative
interpretations there would undoubtedly be no difficulty in finding some outlandish conception
of quantum mechanics that would accom-modate even the wildest of assumptions about the
nature of reality.v
Here Stapp is laying out his credentials as being among the ‘intelligent, critical, and sober-minded’
interpreters of quantum theory as opposed to those who would embrace ‘wild’ assumptions about the
nature of reality. But what exactly are the criteria to be employed, is it all down to Stapp’s individual
judgment as implied in the earlier quote?
Such considerations are very pertinent to the current topic precisely because if one approaches such
topics as the reality of paranormal phenomena and their relationship to the discoveries of quantum
physics with the attitude that, although the material world seems to have vanished, nevertheless the world
must at least be conservative in its metaphysical makeup then deeply significant insights might be
missed. After all, what could possibly be less ‘conservative’ than a vast universe apparently explo-ding
into existence from ‘nothing’ at the moment of the ‘big bang’ thirteen and a bit billion years ago?
For some part of 2009 I was privileged to be involved in quite a vigorous email correspondence with
Stapp after I approached him to ask whether he would read some chapters of the books I was working
on at that time. These books I finally completed and published as Quantum Buddhism: Dancing in
Emptiness – Reality Revealed at the Interface of Quantum Physics and Buddhist Philosophy and The
Grand Designer: Discovering the Quantum Mind Matrix of the Universe. Stapp was very gracious and
read some chapters and for a while was very encouraging and we exchanged and commented upon
various articles we were working on. Our correspondence, however, came to an abrupt end when Stapp
became aware that I was proposing and arguing that Buddhist metaphysics had ‘thoroughly’ and
‘precisely’ anticipated the metaphysical discoveries of quantum theory (I nowhere suggested that
Buddhists knew matrix mechanics or the Schrödinger equation). Stapp was completely dismissive of
my views, saying that
Because of the lack of available-to-human-beings words and concepts, any description back
then must be vague and mystical within the conceptual/verbal structures known to scientists
today: a mere groping that could cover a multitude of positions expressible today.vi
In his conclusion Stapp wrote:
… although there are lots of correlates between QM and Buddhism, the claim that some
“rigorous” arguments have established, on the basis of the connections cited here, that the
ancient Buddhists understandings, as specified by their actual words, prefigured the detailed
understandings provided by QM, is not rationally borne out, and that to claim so reflects badly
on the claimant. I would advise some moderation of your claims.vii
I replied to Stapp indicating that I had no intention of moderating my claims because I was certain they
were correct and appropriate. I also analyzed his objections and indicated where I thought he was
incorrect or misunderstood Buddhist metaphysics.
Furthermore I suggested that in many respects Buddhist philosophy has a much more mature and
profound understanding of the metaphysical implications of the nature of quantum reality and the
‘emergence’ of ‘classical’ reality, an understanding which might help researchers in the field of the
foundations of quantum theory if only they would abandon Western academic arrogance. I indicated
to Stapp that I thought his attitude displayed a remarkable and inappropriate hubris which assumes that
only Western philosophical reasoning and scientific investigations could reveal or comprehend the
nature of reality. In reality, however, the various metaphysical investigations and formulations of
Buddhist philosophy clearly anticipated the “multitude of positions expressible today” as I have since
demonstrated in my many articles such as ‘The Elegance of Enigma: Quantum Darwinism, Quantum
Bayesianism (QBism) & Quantum Buddhism’ which explicitly demonstrates the same metaphysical
dis-cussions in 10th through to 14th century Tibet as is currently exercising the minds of those involved
in debates on the metaphysical implications of quantum discoveries.viii
One of the last articles I sent to Stapp was entitled ‘Quantum God?’ In this article I investigated the
extent to which quantum theory could allow the notion that we might consider the pool of infinite
potentiality under-lying the process of reality which is implied by quantum theory to be ‘God’. I
concluded that:
It cannot be said that quantum theory supports the vast theological panoply of belief about
the nature of ‘God’ which is maintained within most mainstream Christian theology. The
basic elements which we can attribute to the common meta-physical structure are:
• An infinite pool of potentiality which has the fundamental ‘epiontic’ nature of awareness.
In Buddhism this ground awareness is asserted to be non-dual which means it does not have
the split into experiential subject-object
• The internal mechanism of self-unfoldment which manifests itself as the minimalist ‘desire’
for the unfolding of meaning-experience into as many experiencing sentient beings as
possible'
• The metaphysical ‘existence’ of two interdependent, distinguishable yet inseparable realms.
The first is the ultimate, primordial realm wherein lie all the infinite possibilities for
manifestation; the second realm is the realm of the unfoldment which ‘floats’ within the
first realm. This second ‘seeming’ realm unfolds through the ‘epiontic’ quantum
mechanism.
This is the fundamental, minimal metaphysical structure which can be derived from a
comparison between quantum theory and religious metaphysics. The decision to call the
ultimate realm God, Dharmakaya or Al-Haqq is clearly extra and is hardly going to be
decided by looking to quantum theory.
My point was that one could call the realm of infinite potentiality ‘God’ if one were so inclined as long
as one was also aware that such a God was not really the God of mainstream Christianity. Shortly after
Stapp wrote in a paper ‘Minds and Values in the Quantum Universe’:
This [quantum] situation is concordant with the idea of a powerful God that creates the
universe and its laws to get things started, but then bequeaths part of this power to beings
created in his own image, at least with regard to their power to make physically efficacious
decisions on the basis of reasons and evaluations.ix
It is surely startling to find that someone who urges quantum ‘conservatism’ finds no problem with the
notion of a quantum God but takes exception to Buddhist Mind-Only metaphysics (Yogachara-
Chittamatra), which posits the ground of reality as an infinite pool of potentially energy-awareness.
Stapp has written an excellent book Mindful Universe in which he argues that the nature of reality is
essentially Mind-like, which is a central Buddhist Mind-Only doctrine! Furthermore, as we shall see, the
account of why Stapp now thinks that quantum theory is consistent with life after death, and therefore
reincarnation, is pure Buddhist Mind-Only metaphysics! Here indeed is a quantum mystery.
In his book Mind, Matter and Quantum Mechanics Stapp tells us that the evidence of quantum
theory:
…upsets the whole apple cart. It produced a seismic shift in our ideas about both the nature of
reality, and the nature of our relationship to the reality that envelops and sustains us. x
However, as we have seen, it appears that Stapp doesn’t like his apples too widely distributed, preferring
them to land conservatively within easy retrieval range. And it is intriguing to try and fathom why Stapp
favors a conservative upturning of apple carts.
According to the recent book How the Hippies Saved Physics, by David Kaiser, Stapp was a ‘charter
member’ of the Fundamental Fysiks Group (FFG). The core thesis of Kaiser’s book is that it was the
work of the members of the FFG, which focused on the metaphysical implications of Bell’s theorem at
a time when issues of quantum interpretation were gener-ally denigrated, led to key discoveries such as
entanglement and the no-cloning theorem, although the no-cloning theorem actually derived from a
refutation of one of Herbert’s proposals. However, another central concern of many of the group was
the possible interconnections between the new quantum discoveries and speculative and controversial
putative phenomena such as telepathy, psychokinesis, time travel and the interconnection of mind and
matter as posited by the psychologist Carl Jung and physicist Wolfgang Pauli.
Another recurring interest amongst some members of the group was the possible connection between
quantum physics and Eastern philosophies. Thus Nick Herbert wrote in his book Quantum Reality:
Nothing exposes the perplexity at the heart of physics more starkly than certain preposterous
claims a few outspoken physicists are making concerning how the world really works. If we
take these claims at face value, the stories physicists tell resemble the tales of mystics and
madmen.xi
And Gary Zukav, who was not a physicist but was helped by members of the group, in his The Dancing
Wu Li Masters:
… physicists are not the only people who view the world this way. They are only the newest
members of a sizable group; most Hindus and Buddhists also hold similar views.xii
And, of course, Fritjov Capra, in his cult classic The Tao of Physics:
A page from a journal of modern experimental physics will be as mysterious to the uninitiated
as a Tibetan mandala. Both are records of enquiries into the nature of the universe.xiii
Capra’s book became a bestseller and, although lambasted by some reviewers such as physicist and
staff writer for the New Yorker Jeremy Bernstein who called it a “superficial and profoundly
misleading book”, was welcomed by many in the profession of physics teaching as improving the
image of physics as an academic subject.
As Kaiser points out, Capra’s book draws on:
… several of the Fundamental Fysiks Group’s favorite physicists, among them Henry Stapp,
David Bohm, and John Wheeler. Like group member Jack Sarfatti, Capra emphasized
Wheeler’s shift from “observer” to “participator,” even including a long quotation from one of
Wheeler's little-noticed conference talks on the theme “The idea of ‘participation instead of
observation’” Capra noted, “has been formulated in modern physics only recently, but it is an
idea which is well known to any student of mysticism,” which, after all, has always required
“full participation with one's whole being.”xiv
And this emphasis on the participatory nature of quantum reality is also a central aspect of Stapp’s
work. In his upsetting of the apple cart passage for instance Stapp indicates that the evidence of quantum
theory places actions at the center of the metaphysical structure of reality, quantum theory, he writes:
…upsets the whole apple cart. It produced a seismic shift in our ideas about both the nature of
reality, and the nature of our relationship to the reality that envelops and sustains us. The
aspects of nature represented by the theory are converted from elements of being to elements
of doing. The effect of this change is profound: it replaces the world of material substances by
a world populated by actions, and by potentialities for the occurrence of the various possible
observed feedbacks from these actions.xv
This view maps directly into the Buddhist notion of karma, a term which actually means ‘action’. In
the Buddhist worldview the notion of karma-vipaka, or action and feedback, is central; the notion of
the universe as a ‘self-excited’ feedback loop, driven by intentional actions (Pali: kamma, Sanskrit:
karma), is central to Buddhist metaphysics. In his exposition of the nature of kamma Thanissaro
Bhikkhuxvi tells us that:
Buddhists … saw that karma acts in multiple feedback loops, with the present moment being
shaped both by past and by present actions; present actions shape not only the future but also
the present. Furthermore, present actions need not be determined by past actions. In other
words, there is free will, although its range is somewhat dictated by the past.xvii
The quantum perspective presented by Stapp, and others, actually indicate the quantum mechanisms
underlying the operation of karma-vipaka.
Most of the members of the Fundamental Fysiks Group were comfortable with the notion of quantum
physics penetrating into the realm of the ‘mystical’. However it would appear that some of them had a
rather naïve, perhaps almost adolescent, appreciation of what ‘mystical’ states were and what their
achievement entailed, thus Nick Herbert explained that in the Consciousness Theory Group, a spinoff of
the Fundamental Fysiks Group:
We would take any drug (some of us), compose bizarre music, use EEG output in unusual
ways, consort with psychics, Tarot readers, tricksters, shamans, sex magicians and millionaire
toy manufac-turers.xviii
The impression one gets is that of a very undisciplined and hedonistic approach to the attempt to generate
‘mystical’ experience and explore the nature of consciousness.
Such an approach is widely at variance with Buddhist metaphysics and practice. For example,
according to Buddhism ‘supernormal’ powers such as telepathy and direct recall of past lives are results
of the attainment of advanced meditative states. However in order to achieve such meditative states a
practitioner needs to practice moral discipline, restraint of the senses and deep and committed continuous
practice of shamatha, or concentration meditation, leading to samadhi which is a state of continuous and
stable focused awareness which can stay unwavering and undisturbed by conceptual thought for
extended periods of time. In a discussion of shamatha and samadhi the Buddhist practitioner and writer
B. Alan Wallace refers to the advanced state of being able to remain in such a state for twenty-four hours
although results can be obtained by being able to rest in this focused and unwavering state for four hours:
Instead of being able to rest effortlessly in unwavering samadhi for twenty-four hours, one
may do so for only four hours - still far beyond anything considered possible according to
modern psychology! This is what Tibetan Buddhists refer to when speaking of “achieving
shamatha” and “settling the mind in its natural state.” To achieve this degree of samadhi may
require a year or two of intensive training, meditating ten hours per day. While at first glance
such an investment of time and effort may seem impractical, consider that this is far less time
than it takes to earn a graduate degree in astronomy. If the study of the heavens had been left
to naked eye observers, we would still believe that a mere 3,000 stars revolve around the
Earth.xix
The significant point here is that according to the Buddhist psycho-metaphysical worldview
practitioners who attain such extraordinary states of advanced mastery of the mind can have direct
insights into the nature of reality.
The kind of direct metaphysical insights that the Buddha had when he achieved enlightenment
revealed to him, amongst other things, the illusion-like nature of the universe, the ‘epiontic’ nature of
the basic ‘dream-stuff’ of reality, the cause and effect mechanism of ‘karma’ operating within the
‘epiontic’ ‘dream-stuff’ of reality, and the operation of dependent origin-nation (Sanskrit:
pratītyasamutpāda; Pali: paticcasamuppāda, also trans-lated as ‘dependent co-arising’). And an
important aspect of these insights was a direct knowledge of previous lives. The following is from the
Samannaphala Sutta (The Fruits of the Homeless Life) which outlines the phases of enlightenment:
And he, with mind concentrated ... applies and directs his mind to the knowledge of previous
existences. He remembers many previous existences: one birth, two, three, four, five births,
ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty births, a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand births, several
periods of contraction, of expansion, of both contraction and expansion. There my name was
so-and-so my clan was so-and-so, my caste was so-and-so, my food was such-and-such, I
experienced such-and-such pleasant and painful conditions, I lived for so long. Having passed
away from there, I arose there. There my name was so-and-so ... And having passed away
from there, I arose here." Thus he remembers various past births, their conditions and details.xx
“Periods of contraction and expansion” refers to the universe!
The metaphysical details of quantum theory, then, would certainly have been known to the Buddha,
as will clearly become apparent. He could hardly have been fully enlightened without this knowledge
concerning the fundamental functioning of the foundational ‘dream-stuff’ making up the process of
reality. Such a notion, however, is likely to seem outlandish to people veering on the side of
‘conservatism’, and who also assume that only Western modes of investigation can penetrate the
secrets of reality.
In an article in the Times Science vs. the Near-Death Experience the reporter and science author
Brian Appleyard wrote that:
[NDE’s] happen all the time. They may happen to everybody, however they die. Remarkably
similar experiences have been reported throughout history in all cultures. Obviously, most are
lost to us, because being near death is usually the immediate prelude to being dead. But
precisely because high-tech hospital resuscitations are so effective — around 15% of cardiac-
arrest victims are revived — we can now regularly hear news apparently from beyond the
grave. And it sounds like very good news indeed. You don’t really die and you feel great.
What could be nicer? NDEs are so common, so vivid and so life-transforming — survivors
frequently become more compassionate, religious and serene as a result of what they
experience — that scientists, philosophers, priests, psychologists and cultists all want a piece
of the action.xxi
The reason that NDE’s appear to becoming more common is that instances of people being brought
back to life after cardiac arrests are increasing in number. According to Dr Parnia, who is studying the
phenomenon, it is correct to say “to say that experiences after cardiac arrests are actual death
experiences rather than near-death experiences.” NDE’s are often associated with out-of-body
experiences, and, as Appleyard writes:
There are thousands of reports of OBEs but the two most famous cases are Pam Reynolds and
Maria’s Tennis Shoe. Reynolds, an American singer, watched and later reported on with
remarkable accuracy the top of her own skull being removed by surgeons before she moved
into a bright glowing realm. But it was Reynolds’s account of the surgical implements used
and the words spoken in the theatre that make the case so intriguing. Maria, meanwhile,
underwent cardiac arrest in 1977. She floated out of her body, drifted round the hospital and
noticed a tennis shoe on a window sill. It was later found to be exactly where she said it was.
The shoe was said to be invisible from the ground and not in any location where Maria could
have seen it. Such stories suggest that OBEs should be scientifically verifiable.xxii
There are a great many reports of NDE’s which involve people near death or clinically dead, with
apparently no brain function, who find themselves floating out of their body and then after being revived
are able to report exactly what was happening during the time that they were apparently dead. Some are
reported in IM and many others can be found on the internet. Often these experiences involve tunnels
leading towards blissful lights, spiritual figures and dead family members who tell the person that should
return to look after children or finish some task.
The evidence would certainly seem to suggest that awareness can in some form operate
independently of the body. However:
There are plenty of sceptics who will pounce on negative results or even positive ones with
any signs of ambiguity. Dr Peter Fenwick, a neuro-psychiatrist who has overseen Parnia and
Sartori’s work, admits that, whatever the outcome, there will still be “wriggle room” for
sceptics.xxiii
But as we saw in a previous chapter, on many occasions sceptics will facilitate their ‘wriggle’ by
ignoring or distorting the evidence. Some skeptics wriggle their way into arrant stupidity. According to
Appleyard:
Susan Blackmore argues that we have OBEs all the time. Think about your last holiday.
Picture a scene from that holiday. Many will see that scene as if from outside themselves —
they will be a character in the picture, as they are in OBEs reported in NDE narratives. It’s
just what our brains do, say the sceptics: they secrete mind in all its fabulous variations and
with all its incorrigible delusions. There’s nothing there to get all weird about. The soul is not
a soul, the brick is a brick and the brain is just a 1.3kg bag of water, fat and carbohydrates,
subtly organised to provide us with the illusions of freedom and thought.xxiv
The quantum physicist John Bell said of the ‘many worlds’ view of quantum theory that if it were to be
taken seriously it would not be possible to take anything else seriously. This surely also applies to the
ridiculous assertion that recalling holidays is equivalent to floating out of one’s body while it is brain-
dead and then precisely seeing what is happening in the room or even miles away. In true inimitable
style Blackmore produces materialist absurdity. Furthermore in a quantum age a brick is not a brick in
the sense that she means, even on an atomic level it is 99.9999999999999% not a brick. In the section on Near Death Experiences (NDEs) the authors of IM consider the various
‘explanations’ desperately offered up by defenders of the materialist faith and demolish them all with
rigor and precision. It is worth looking at the kind of refutations offered in IM in order to get an idea of
the rigor of the analysis. For example the claim that oxygen deprivation can account for NDEs is dealt
with as follows:
One of the earliest and most persistent of the physiological theories proposed for NDEs is that
lowered levels of oxygen (hypoxia or anoxia), perhaps accompanied by increased levels of
carbon dioxide (hypercarbia), have produced hallucinations.... One study frequently cited is that
of Whinnery (1992), who compared NDEs to what he called the “dreamlets” occurring in brief
periods of unconsciousness induced in fighter pilots by rapid acceleration in a centrifuge... He
claimed that some features common to NDEs are also found in these hypoxic episodes, including
tunnel vision, bright lights, brief fragmented visual images, a sense of floating, pleasurable
sensations, and, rarely, a sense of leaving the body. The primary features of acceleration-induced
hypoxia, however, are myoclonic convulsions (rhythmic jerking of the limbs), impaired memory
for events just prior to the outset of unconsciousness, tingling in the extremities and around the
mouth, confusion and disorientation upon awakening, and paralysis, symptoms that do not occur
in association with NDEs. Moreover, contrary to NDEs, the visual images Whinnery reported
frequently included living people, but never deceased people; and no life review or accurate out-
of-body perceptions have been reported in acceleration-induced loss of consciousness.xxv
Next up for refutation is the ketamine model:
... the suggestion that a ketamine-like endogenous neuroprotective agent may be released in
conditions of stress... Ketamine, an anesthetic agent that selectively occupies NMDA receptors, can
at subanesthetic doses produce feelings of being out of the body. Moreover, ketamine sometimes
produces other features common to NDEs, such as travel through a dark tunnel into light, believing
that one has died, or communion with God. - This hypothesis, however, also has problems. First, it
is not at all clear that ketamine experiences do in fact resemble NDEs. Unlike the vast majority of
NDEs, ketamine experiences are often frightening and involve bizarre imagery, and patients usually
express the wish not to repeat the experience. Most ketamine users also recognize the illusory
character of their experience, in contrast to the many NDE experiencers who are firmly convinced
of the reality of what they experienced and its lack of resemblance to illusions or dreams. Even if
ketamine experiences do resemble NDEs in some respects, many important features of NDEs, such
as seeing deceased people or a revival of memories, have not been reported with ketamine.
Furthermore, ketamine typically exerts its effects in an otherwise more or less normal brain, while
many NDEs occur under conditions in which brain function is severely compromised.xxvi
The authors further point out that a “naturally occurring ketamine-like substance ... has not been
identified in humans.”xxvii
Another reductionist account of NDEs is the view, propounded most notably by M. A. Persinger
(inventor of the putative God-helmet), that electrical stimulation of the brain can reproduce NDEs on
demand:
Persinger has also claimed that “a vast clinical and surgical literature ... indicates that floating and
rising sensations, OBEs, personally profound mystical and religious encounters, visual and auditory
experiences, and dream-like sequences are evoked, usually as single events, by electrical
stimulation of deep, mesiobasal temporal lobe structures”. His sole reference for this strong claim
is a paper by Stevens (1982). That paper, however, is confined entirely to descriptions of certain
physiological observations made in studies of epileptic patients, and it contains no mention
whatever of any subjective experiences or of electrical stimulation studies, much less of “a vast
clinical and surgical literature” supporting Persinger’s claim. Persinger goes on to claim that, using
weak transcranial magnetic stimulation, he and his colleagues have produced “all of the major
components of the NDE, including out-of-body experiences, floating, being pulled towards a light
hearing strange music and profound meaningful experiences.” However, we have been unable to
find phenomenological descriptions of the experiences of his subjects adequate to support this
claim, and the brief descriptions that he does provide in fact again bear little resemblance to NDEs
(e.g., Persinger, 1994, pages 284-285)....
Neurologist Ernst Rodin stated bluntly: “In spite of having seen hundreds of patients with temporal
lobe seizures during three decades of professional life, I have never come across that
symptomatology [of NDEs] as part of the seizure.xxviii
The authors go on to explain that the similarities between the hallucinations produced by electrical
stimulation of the brain and NDEs have been greatly exaggerated.
Once such physicalistic theories for NDEs and been disposed of the authors go on to say:
NDEs seem instead to provide direct evidence for a type of mental functioning that varies
“inversely, rather than directly, with the observable activity of the nervous system” (Myers,
1891d, p. 638). Such evidence, we believe, fundamentally conflicts with the conventional
doctrine that brain processes produce consciousness, and supports the alternative view that brain
activity normally serves as a kind of filter, which somehow constrains the material that emerges
into waking consciousness. On this latter view, the “relaxation” of the filter under certain still
poorly understood circumstances may lead to drastic alterations of the normal mind-brain
relation and to an associated enhancement or enlargement of consciousness.xxix
The authors of IM show that the reductive-materialist accounts of the phenomenon of NDEs are
desperately implausible attempts to explain the phenomenon away as merely a matter of matter mutely
and mindlessly mattering away to itself on the edge of material extinction. The only plausible account,
an account which fits all the other phenomena meticulously researched and presented by the authors
of IM, is that our everyday consciousness operates against the background of a much wider and deeper
pool of a more fluid realm of consciousness.
The authors of IM suggest that the notion suggested by Myers at the end of the nineteenth century,
that the brain is a ‘filter’ which focuses a deeper more universal pool of consciousness into the light of
the everyday world, accounts for all the phenomena that they survey with complete coherence and
adequacy. Furthermore, as physicist Henry Stapp has recently pointed out, this account is also entirely
consistent with quantum theory.
Before looking at the Buddhist view of the ‘epiontic’ functioning of ‘cyclic existence’ with its view
of continuous rebirth, or samsara, it is useful to outline Stapp’s recent indication of how quantum theory
is compatible with personality survival after death because his suggestions correspond pretty well with
the Buddhist worldview. Stapp first describes what he calls the orthodox quantum mechanics in which
in which a ‘Process 1’ (a term introduced by John Von Neumann) decision is made by human beings as
to how to interrogate ‘nature’ in order to force quantum reality to adopt a mixture of possibilities each
of which has a definite probability. According to Stapp:
The choice of the actually occurring Process-1 action is not specified, either deterministically
or statistically, by any yet-known law or rule: it remains, in this specific sense a “free choice”.
The origin and nature of this choice constitutes a huge causal gap in the orthodox theory, as it
stands today.xxx
This view of the situation divides the quantum situation into two realms. The first is a ‘physical’ realm
of potentialities and the second is a ‘mental’ realm of decision making as to what measurements to
perform on the part of human beings. Thus there is clearly an interaction between these two realms.
Stapp writes that:
The residents of these disparate domains become dynamically linked, producing an ontology
akin to Descartes' psychophysical dualism. But the mental and physical aspects are not two
independent Cartesian substances, each completely sufficient unto itself. On the physical side,
the quantum temporal evolution proceeds in discrete steps, with an interval of continuous
expansion of an array of possibilities for the occurrence of an “actual event”, followed by an
actual event that reduces this array to the subset compatible with a specific “experience”. On
the mental side, according to William James …: “Your acquaintance with reality grows
literally by buds or drops of perception. Intellectually and upon reflection you can divide these
into components, but as immediately given they come totally or not at all.”xxxi
According to Stapp this viewpoint produces what he calls in his paper Nondual Quantum Duality
exactly that - a ‘dualistic quantum non-dualism’:
…quantum mechanics is thus dualistic in the pragmatic and operational sense that it involves
aspects of nature that are described in physical terms and also aspects of nature that are
described in psychological terms… This is all in close accord with classic Cartesian dualism.
On the other hand, in contrast to the application to classical mechanics, in which the physically
described aspect is ontologically matterlike, not mindlike, in quantum mechanics the
physically described part is mindlike. Thus quantum mechanics conforms at the
pragmatic/operational level to the precepts of Cartesian duality, but reduces at a deep
ontological level to a fundamentally mindlike nondual monism.xxxii
In other words there is a deep level of mind-like reality, corresponding to what Bohm referred to as the
‘implicate order’, which gives rise to an appar-ently ‘physical’ realm and a realm, or realms, of
experience and mentality. And these dualistic realms, which are essentially of the nature of Mind,
interact with each other.
It is easy to see that Stapp’s ‘dualistic quantum non-dualism’ maps pretty closely (despite his
objections) onto the Chittamatra-Yogachara or Buddhist Mind-Only metaphysics. In the following
quote the term ‘emptiness’ corresponds to Stapp’s ‘deep ontological level’ which he says is “fund-
amentally mindlike nonduality.” The Mind-Only metaphysical perspective tells us that the realms of
subjectivity and objectivity emerge in a dream-like manner from this deep level of nondual Mindnature,
which we can conceive of as an infinite pool of energetic nondual awareness-potentiality. The Tibetan
Buddhist teacher Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche explains:
That is a unique feature of the Yogacarin presentation of empti-ness, because emptiness is
normally understood as a complete neg-ation or a completely negative term rather than
something positive. Here, once subject and object are negated, emptiness, which is reality, is
affirmed in its place. A short passage from the Madhyantavibhanga says, "Truly, the
characteristic of emptiness is nonexistence of the duality of subject and object, and the
existence of that nonexistence."
“The existence of that nonexistence” is reality. Duality is removed, but emptiness itself is
another kind of existence. This is a contradiction in terms, from a logical point of view, but
that is how it is expressed. Yogacarins would say that logic has no place when it comes to
describing reality. That is how Yogacarins understood emptiness.xxxiii
In the Buddhist Madhyamaka, or ‘Middle Way’, metaphysical perspective ‘emptiness’ is described as
a purely negative phenomenon, an absence of substantiality. However, here it is clearly stated that from
the Chittamatra-Yogachara point of view the ground of emptiness is a ‘positive phenom-enon’
characterized as being the existence of the ‘nonexistence of the duality of subject and object.’ In other
words the ground of emptiness is a nondual ground of potentiality from which the phenomena of duality
(or the appearance of the phenomena of the dualistic world) arises. The ‘existence of the nonexistence
of duality’ is on a deeper, nondual level of reality than the kind of ‘classical’ type of existence we deal
with in the everyday world. The Mind-Only metaphysics describes the ground of the process of reality
as being of the nature of nondual Mind, in its personal aspect this ground level of nondual mind is
called the alayavijnana, the ground or substrate consciousness. It is this level of the process of reality
which carries potentialities from one lifetime to the next.
In his ‘Compatibility of Contemporary Physical Theory with Personality Survival’ paper Stapp
seems to backtrack somewhat on his views expressed in his Nondual Quantum Duality paper. The notion
that all aspects are essentially mindlike, he tells us, leads us into the realms of a biocentric panpsychism
which, he indicates, is difficult to square with ‘common sense’. And it is here that, again, we meet with
Stapp’s conservatism (even though God and quantum theory are compatible for him!). The natural notion
that the process of reality is biocentric, which is indicated by the evidence, Stapp finds unacceptable. So,
in contrast to his earlier paper where he asserts a deep level nondual mindlike foundation to the co-
arising realms of objectivity and subjectivity, he now wants to assert an independent realm of the
‘physical’ which has its own internal momentum:
Nevertheless a solution of the biocentrism problem that is more commonsensical than
panpsychism is to allow Process-l actions that are not psycho-physical---i.e., to allow some
reduction events to lack mental aspects altogether. This solution would permit some reduction
events to occur by virtue of sufficient physical conditions alone, and to contain no localized
mental aspect at all. Permitting, under certain physical conditions, purely physical kinds of
Process-1 actions does not in any way curtail the need for the existence, in the quantum world
in which we human beings live, of the psycho-physical-type Process-l actions. These actions
are essential---within orthodox quantum mechanics---both for the conduct of our consciously
informed and controlled lives, and for the linkage between physical theory and empirical data
that constitutes the basis of the tests and applications of quantum mechanics.xxxiv
In other words Stapp now wants to say that there is an independent realm of physicality which operates
with Process-1 type events upon itself, as well as another ‘physical’ realm which interacts with the
mental realm for its Process-1 (‘collapse-of-the-wavefunction or ‘reduction’) events.
However, there is no reason to ditch the view that the ultimate source of both realms of physicality,
that which appears to be self-sufficient and that which appears to interact with mind, as being nondual
Mindnature, which we envisage as an infinite nondual energetic pool of potentiality which has an internal
quality of awareness. It is quite appropriate to conceive of both aspects of the dualistic world, mind and
apparent matter as arising from this deeper level. In fact this is exactly the necessary conclusion from an
in-depth investigation of Zurek’s quantum epionticity proposal, which underlies his notion of ‘quantum
Darwinism’. Stapp and Zurek’s accounts support each other quite happily and Stapp’s self-sufficient
realm of physicality is, as in Zurek’s decoherence account, ‘congealed’ Mindnature. So both Stapp and
Zurek’s viewpoints also map seamlessly onto the Mind-Only nondual Mindnature metaphysics.
Towards the end of his Personality Survival paper Stapp clearly acknow-ledges that the ultimate
source of the physical and mental realms must be mind-like:
When one gets involved with these metaphysical issues that seem to go far beyond the
verifiable practical applications of our scientific theories, we are confronted with the question
of what determined the form of the laws that seem now to prevail. A naturalistic solution,
suggested by the process of natural selection that has brought into being the presently existing
life forms, is that the physical laws of nature themselves were honed into their present forms
by some analogous process of selection. If we can push back to a time when only one or the
other aspect prevailed, then it is certainly much easier to imagine a basically mental world
creating for itself a physical substructure to attend to the minor details, than to imagine a purely
physical world creating a mental superstructure. For we ourselves, in our mental theorizing,
can readily dream up mathematical laws, but no one has yet been able to explain how
consciousness could emerge from mindless matter.xxxv
So here we have Stapp again suggesting a metaphysical view which is entirely consistent with the
Buddhist Mind-Only/Mindnature perspective - an infinitely creative field of Mind-like potentiality
which has some kind of internal mechanism which, through a quantum evolutionary process opera-ting
on all levels, produces the manifested worlds of apparent physicality and mentality. Such a process, of
course, would encompass Zurek’s quantum Darwinism with its ‘epiontic’ adage that ‘states that persist
become the fittest to persist’
It is worth noting the fact that Stapp’s ‘Nondual Mindnature Dualism’ and Zurek’s ‘epiontic’
metaphysical perspective are quite compatible. This is significant because in many cases debates are
carried on as if there must just be one final way of describing the metaphysical structure and processes
of reality. Quantum physicists and philosophers seem to be after the final metaphysical solution which
excludes all others. But as Hawking and Mlodinow have argued in the recent work The Grand Design
wherein they propose what they call ‘Model Dependent Realism’, it is more likely that there will several
overlapping and interlocking ways of viewing and analyzing the situation. Buddhist metaphysics has
always been happy with this approach.
In Zurek’s perspective the quantum realm is said to be a kind of ‘dream-stuff’ which is ‘epiontic’.
Quantum states constitute the ‘information’ pool which is interpreted ontologically by observers as
constituting the external world of apparent materiality. But these states have been generated through the
epistemological activities of those very observers acting within the ‘dream stuff is made of.’ This is
indicated by Wheeler when he speaks of the universe which is produced by “notes struck out on a piano
by the observer participants of all times and all places.”xxxvi And when there are no manifested sentient
beings around to epiontically perceive, and in so doing create and maintain the universe, the epiontic
process must be going on at a deep ‘unconscious’ level of the process of reality. This corresponds to
Stapp suggestion that:
…a natural resolution of the problem of biocentrism leads to a relaxing of the notion that all
reduction events must be psycho-physical events possessing both mental and physical
components. That natural resolution of the biocentrism problem is to allow, in addition to the
psycho-physical reduction events that dynamically connect our human thoughts to the
physically described world around us, reduction events that involve only physical
properties.xxxvii
This suggestion that at a certain level of the process reality only ‘physical’ properties are required for
the functioning of the apparently ‘material’ realm corresponds to Zurek’s observation that:
…whilst the ultimate evidence for the choice of one alternative resides in our elusive
“consciousness,” there is every indication that the choice occurs much before consciousness
ever gets involved and that, once made, the choice is irrevocable.xxxviii
Roughly speaking from Zurek’s viewpoint decoherence is responsible for the apparently independent
functioning of the ‘physical’ realm. Although we know that ultimately the process of reality derives
from the epiontic functioning of mind-like ‘dream stuff’, once the process gets under way the external
world appears to function independently.
But this does not alter the fact that ultimate evidence is ultimate. Ultimately the entire process derives
from a nondual realm of Mindnature. Superficially the views of Stapp and Zurek may seem very
different, but in the overall metaphysical demeanor they amount to the same thing. A fundamental
nondual ground of vast energetic-potentiality which has an innate quality of awareness and an internal
function of creative cognizance gives rise through its own internal epiontic process to the apparent
world of duality within which sentient beings have their temporary beings. So ultimately the universe
is bio-centric.
In Stapp’s account the ‘epiontic’ process is driven by ‘laws of clinging’, a notion which he derives
from the nineteenth century psychologist William James who:
…drew attention to “the fantastic laws of clinging that allow a stream of conscious thoughts,
with its ever-changing intermingling of related ideas, to hang together like a persisting entity.
If there were purely mentalistic laws of clinging, then in our normal streams of consciousness
these mentalistic laws could be acting in coordination with the physical laws of clinging, to
produce the coordinated streams of consciousness that we experience.xxxix
And, furthermore, Stapp suggests that such ‘mental laws of clinging’ must be a primary aspect of the
process of reality, underlying both physical and mental manifestations of the dualistic world.
Furthermore the only ultimate coherent view of the emergence of dualistic mind and the appearance of
the apparently physical world requires a deeper level of nondual Mindnature:
This line of thought suggests that the mental laws of clinging could be the more basic, and that
they could create the physical aspects to assist in whatever creative endeavor is afoot. xl
Such a view quite clearly accords with Zurek’s ‘epiontic’ viewpoint, and other related quantum
models of the process of reality such as Bohm’s ‘implicate’ holomovement perspective and Rupert
Sheldrake’s ‘formative causation’ paradigm in which persistent structures of ‘clinging’ are quan-tum
‘morphogenetic fields’. The epiontic states that are ‘fittest’ are those ‘which persist’, and vice versa,
because ‘mental laws of clinging’, operating within the quantum ‘dream stuff’ of fundamental
Mindnature, are the origin of the persistence. Thus we see that the apparent stability of the gross
physical world and the temporarily persistent structures of organic forms and mentality embodied
within sentient beings, which are formed and maintained by what Sheldrake calls ‘morphogenetic
fields’, arise and persist precisely because of a fundamental ‘clinging’ aspect within the operation of
fundamental Mindnature.
With this insight into the central importance of ‘mental clinging’ Stapp, following James,
rediscovers a key metaphysical insight that the Buddha had discovered and elucidated in a precise and
detailed manner two and a half thousand years ago. The Buddha’s presentation of the ‘epiontic’ process
of reality, is embodied in his doctrine of the chain of dependent origination (Sanskrit:
pratītyasamutpāda; Pali: paticcasamuppāda). In the Lokayatika Sutta the Buddha indicates that the
metaphysical nature of reality is a matter of mind-like potentiality being triggered into manifestation
through the ‘epiontic’ cycle of dependent origination which is driven by clinging and craving:
From ignorance as a requisite condition come fabrications. From fabrications as a requisite
condition comes consciousness. From consciousness as a requisite condition comes name-
&-form. From name-&-form as a requisite condition come the six sense media. From the six
sense media as a requisite condition comes contact. From contact as a requisite condition
comes feeling. From feeling as a requisite condition comes craving. From craving as a
requisite condition comes clinging-sustenance. From clinging-sustenance as a requisite
condition comes becoming. From beco-ming as a requisite condition comes birth. From birth
as a requisite condition, then aging & death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair
come into play. Such is the origination of this entire mass of stress & suffering.xli
The canonical Buddhist presentation of these twelve links spreads them over three lifetimes because
this account describes how a developing structure of energetic-consciousness continuously takes
rebirth in the material realm because of a deep-seated clinging (upadana – which literally means the
‘taking up of what is offered’) to existence in the material realm.
The central Buddhist doctrine of dependent origination is an account of the way that a ‘clinging’
structured continuum of energetic awareness-cons-ciousness, involving gross to subtle levels – some
of which may be aband-oned at death, cycles through samsara – the cycle of suffering embodiment –
precisely because of the deep seated ‘attachment’ and ‘craving’ for embodiment on the part of
unenlightened sentient beings.
At death enlightened beings, who have relinquished the deep seated ‘clinging’ for embodiment,
blissfully dissolve into the nondual ground. When unenlightened beings die, however, they give rise
to a subtle ‘rebirth consciousness’ which carries karmic potentialities into a future rebirth and actively
seeks to re-embody itself. This rebirth consciousness is like a ‘clinging’ quantum morphogenetic field
carrying ‘seeds’ of potentiality derived from past actions. From the point of view of ordinary everyday
consciousness the rebirth-consciousness is ‘unconscious’ and for most people their previous lives
remain unconscious because the upper levels of gross consciousness do not have access to the rebirth
level of awareness, the ground-consciousness (alayavijnana).
The perspective outlined above can be viewed in the light of Stapp’s conclusion that:
If the reduction events need not always be dual in character, but can sometimes be purely
mental or purely physical, and if events of each pure kind can, under appropriate conditions,
cling together by virtue of their own dynamical laws, then it would seemingly become possible
for the mental and physical aspects of a living person to go their separate ways upon the death
of the physical body. For that fatal event would cause the disintegration of the physical
properties that normally allow the brain events to hang together with the mental ones. Because
the psycho-physical events associated with bio-systems are designed to receive mental inputs
that are properly mated to the physical event selected at this psycho-physical event, a
disembodied personality could perhaps latch onto a bio-system and thereby affect the physical
world. This would produce effects greatly at odds with what classical physics would allow.
For it would allow some aspect of personality associated with a deceased person to affect,
without any physical means of conveyance, the subsequent behavior of a living person. That
would contravene the precepts of classical physics. But if societies of mental events could
indeed persist without physical aspects, then such effects would not seem to require any basic
change of the known laws of quantum physics.xlii
Here, of course, Stapp is indicating the possibility of disembodied quantum ‘spirits’ (which hardly seems
‘conservative’!). However, it would also be entirely reasonable to consider that the ‘clinging’ structure
of mentality underlying this process, which according to Buddhism is not a fixed ‘soul’ but a developing
psychic structure, would not dissipate but, as Buddhist metaphysics asserts, seek further re-embodiment,
reincarnation, or rebirth. As we shall see later this is the most coherent explanation of the extraordinary
evidence presented in the work of the reincarnation investigator Dr. Ian Stevenson.
The Twelve Links of Dependent Origination (Paticcasamuppada) are expounded in the Sammaditthi
Sutta: The Discourse on Right Viewxliii and the Paticca-samuppada-vibhamga Sutta: Analysis of
Dependent Co-arisingxliv. I have taken additional information from Maurice Walshe’s Thus I have
Heard and the excellent Buddhism for Dummies by Jonathan Landaw and Stephen Bodian. The most
natural, and generally accepted, way of understanding the operation of these links is as spanning three
lifetimes, 1-2 relate to a previous life, 2-10 the present life (number 2 actually crosses between the
previous and current life because it is the rebirth consciousness that carries the karmic (Pali: kammic)
formations from one to the other), links 11-12 refer to the next life.
The twelve links are:
1. Ignorance (avijja): Ignorance is basically about the way that reality functions and what it amounts
to. And the fundamental ignorance is ignor-ance of the fact that the entire process of dualistic ‘reality’
is a dream-like illusion driven by ‘craving’ for existence. And this craving gives rise to dukkha, which
is suffering and dissatisfaction. The pervasiveness of dukkha in the dualistic world is the first of the
Four Noble Truths or Realities: (i) the pervasive existence of dukkha; (ii) the origin of dukkha which
lies in the existence of ‘craving’; (iii) the possibility of the cessation of dukkha; (iv) the path to achieving
cessation of dukkha by becoming enlightened. These ‘truths’ or ‘realities’ are called ‘noble’ truths
(realities) because they are only directly seen by ‘noble’ beings, i.e. enlightened beings.
Craving itself is actually a crucial element of the twelvefold chain of interdependent origination.
This means that the twelvefold chain itself is part and parcel of the second noble truth, because it is a
detailed and graphic depiction of the arising of dukkha, which is the first noble truth. Also it is clear
that part of the reason for the arising of dukkha, or suffering and dissatisfaction, is ignorance of anatta
(absence of fixed and inherent personal self and lack of substantiality in phenomena) and its co-
component anicca (the impermanence of all phenomena). Thus basically the ignorance indicated
concerns the fundamental and essential nature of reality and its functioning. On the Wheel of Life
image (see figure 1) this is illustrated by a hobbling blind man (top and slightly to the right of image –
the rest of the twelve links go clockwise around the ‘wheel’.
2. Kammic Formations (sankhara): Because of ignorance, sentient beings perform intentional actions
which have karmic (Pali-kammic) consequences, leaving traces upon the mind stream of the sentient
being performing the acts, of body, speech and mind. The image on the wheel of life is of a potter
fashioning a pot. The idea is that kammic actions fashion future poten-tialities.
3. Consciousness (vinnana) Karmic (kammic) actions condition the nature of the consciousness which
is projected into a future life. The image is of a monkey scampering down a tree, this represents the
consciousness, with kammic traces, leaving one life in preparation for the next. This rebirth
consciousness, which is a subtle consciousness carrying karmic traces will determine the nature of the
next link.
4. Name and Form / Mentality and Materiality (nama-rupa): The image is that of two travelers in a
boat, one of the travelers is form (rupa), which is the body; the other is ‘name’ or ‘mentality’ (nama).
Thus the body and mind, the psychophysical embodiment that one has in any lifetime depends on
previous lifetimes.
5. Six sense media / bases / gates (sal-ayatana) Represented by an empty house with six windows; the
six gates (ear, eye, nose, tongue, touch, and mental sense) are the bases for experience, although there
is no one inside, there is no fixed and permanent ‘self’ (anatta).
6. Contact (phassa): This link is represented by a man and woman embracing and kissing and …, but
in actuality this link is the coming together of senses and sense objects which then leads to the next link.
7. Feeling (vedana). Represented by a man with an arrow in his eye; feelings may be pleasant,
unpleasant or neutral.
8. Craving (tanha) Represented by someone drinking alcohol. Pleasant experiences produce a craving
for more of them. Unpleasant experiences produce cravings to be rid of them.
9. Clinging / grasping (upadana): Represented by a monkey snatching a fruit; this is a deep, instinctual
grasping at existence which is conditioned by endless lifetimes of habitual grasping. This grasping
becomes instinctually desperate at the time of death and conditions the leap into a future life.
Figure 1 – Wheel of Life
10. Becoming (bhava): Represented by a pregnant woman; here is the beginning of the next lifetime.
11. Birth (jati): A woman giving birth.
12. Aging and Death (jara-maranam): Represented by someone carrying a corpse. From the moment
we are born we are on the way to dying again!
This sequential description of the samsaric cycle of suffering (dukkha) is actually the detailed account
of the generation of the first ‘noble truth’ or reality of dukkha. The twelvefold cycle of links is clearly
driven at its core by ‘craving’ (tanha) and ‘grasping’ (upadana); which are the two crucial factors of
embodiment which are etched deeply and unconsciously into the psycho-physicality of embodiment.
A crucial feature of dependent origination is the ‘epiontic’ and ‘quantum Darwinian’ nature of the
process. As the Buddha said at the beginning of the Dhammapada “All phenomena are preceded by
mind”, indicating that all intentions leading to actions have effects at all levels of reality.
According to the Yogachara perspective it is the amplificatory mechan-ism of the universal karmic
cause and effect process within the fundamental epiontic dream-stuff of reality that creates the
appearances of the dualistic world. In this characterisation of the quantum process the appearance of
the ‘classical’ world of experience and materiality is generated through a continuous web of rapidly
repeated perceptions on the part of countless numbers of sentient beings over vast timescales.
The Buddhist philosopher William Waldron describes this fundamental aspect of the Yogachara
account of the functioning of reality as being driven by ‘self-grasping’ which is the deep instinctual
habit within all sentient beings to crave individuated experience. Waldron describes this as a ling-
uistically recursive process; however the ‘linguistic’ levels operative within the Yogachara account of
the process of reality operate deep within the psychophysical structure of embodiment, directly
structuring and deter-mining the potentialities for manifestation of future experience at deep
psychophysical levels:
…this linguistic recursivity, which colours so much of our perceptual experience, including
our innate forms of self-grasping, now operates unconsciously … and … these processes are
karmically productive at a collective level as well as indivi-dual level – that is they create a
common ‘world’.xlv
This constitutes an unconscious ‘intersubjective feedback system’ and therefore:
…it is the unconscious habits of body speech and mind to which we are habituated that give
rise, in the long term and in the aggregate, to the habitats we inhabit, the ‘common receptacle
world’ we experience all around us.xlvi
Although this formulation attributes the creation of the ‘common receptacle world’ to the unconscious
habits that ‘we’ have become habituated to (over countless lifetimes) it is important to understand that
this is also an inter-subjective process that begins at a deep non-individuated quantum level of the
universal process of manifestation into the dualistic experiential world. The universal process of the
unfolding of the ‘empty’ potentialities within the ground of reality arises because the function of
‘epiontic’ cognition, which unfolds the potentialities. Sentient beings are necessary agents of the
universal process of manifestation of experiential realms of duality and they therefore become
entrapped within the samsaric cyclic process of reality.
Thus we see that the ‘epiontic’ process of the ‘grasping’ for existence embodied within the links of
dependent origination as explained by Buddhist doctrine operate at all levels of the process of reality.
This process is driven by what Rupert Sheldrake refers to as quantum ‘virtual’ morphogenetic field
modules within ‘implicate’ quantum levels. Sheldrake describes the process of embryonic development
as follows:
The development of multicellular organisms takes place through a series of stages controlled
by a succession of morphogenetic fields. At first the embryonic tissues develop under the
control of primary embryonic fields. Then … different regions come under the influence of
secondary fields, in animals those of limbs, eyes, ears etc. … Generally speaking, the
morphogenesis brought about by the primary fields is not spectacular, because it establishes
the charac-teristic differences between cells in different regions that enable them to act as the
morphogenetic germs of the organ fields. Then in the tissues developing under their influence,
germs of subsidiary fields, fields which control the morphogenesis of structures within the
organ as a whole…xlvii
Figure 2
Furthermore:
…morphogenetic fields are not precisely defined but are prob-ability structures that depend
on the statistical distribution of previous similar forms. The probability distributions of
electronic orbitals described by solutions of the Schrödinger [quantum] equation are
examples of such probability structures, and are similar in kind to the probability structures
of the morphogenetic fields of morphogenetic units at higher levels.xlviii
Morphogenetic fields, then, are exactly the kind of quantum probability fields which would be created
or built up by the kind of processes involved in the quantum epiontic perspective. At the quantum level
atomic structures have been built up into the probabilistic fields of potentiality which under-lies the
material and organic levels of reality through the ‘epiontic’ process of reality over vast time scales.
Although the ‘external’ material world may appear to all intents and purposes to be independently
‘solid’ and immutable, the evidence that quantum probabilistic processes underlie the organic processes
of evolution, inheritance and morphogenesis is now clearly emerging. But, as was the case with the
evidence for neuroplasticity, the notion that these fundamental biological processes are fundamentally
quantum in nature is being resisted by academics with reputations staked on ‘classical’ perspectives.
“Ultra fast … functional quantum effects” have now been incontrovertibly demon-strated in one of the
most significant processes for the development and maintenance of life: photosynthesis. And there is
increasing evidence for a fundamental quantum component involving “room temperature quantum
coherence” in “bird navigation, the sense of smell, long-range quantum tunneling in proteins, biological
photoreceptors, and the flow of ions across a cell membrane.”xlix
The following comment upon recent evidence appears in a recent MIT Technology Review:
One of the biggest questions in biology is whether the processes of life are able to exploit
quantum effects to improve their lot. … we’re all made of quantum objects called atoms and
glued together by quantum forces. If you look closely enough at any biological process, you'll
see quantum mechanics at work. The question is whether nature exploits quantum mechanics
to achieve things that are not possible in the ordinary, classical world. There is a growing
debate on this topic. On the one hand, evidence has begun to mount that quantum mechanics
may play a role in processes such as photosynthesis, bird navigation and the sense of smell.l
Of course there will be critics of this emerging paradigm, there are many established and well-paid
academics, not to mention committed ultra-materialist Darwinian pundits, whose careers are based on
mistaken world-views. However it does not take an awful lot of thought to figure out that, if
photosynthesis exploits quantum techniques, the notion that other funda-mental processes taking place
at the molecular level such as the DNA replication, which must be quantum in nature, would not be
fundamentally quantum is absurd. Research is currently being conducted into quantum effects in the
functioning of DNA and it looks as if quantum entanglement and tunneling are involved.li
However, in the same way that the notion of neuroplasticity, a phenomenon which itself must have
a quantum basis, was erroneously thought by the academic establishment of the time to be impossible,
there currently still seems to be an ingrained feeling amongst biologists that fundamental life processes
must be classical. Why, well for one thing Dawkins, for example, does not understand quantum theory.
Because of this ‘classical’ bias the entire manner of posing the question is flawed.
Consider the assertion in the above quote that: “one of the biggest questions in biology is whether
the processes of life are able to exploit quantum effects to improve their lot.” The implication here is
that classical processes came first in evolution and only once ‘the processes of life’ had got themselves
under way using inefficient ‘classical’ methods did they look into the possibility of ‘exploiting’ more
efficient quantum effects that they had overlooked in their struggle for survival. If the universe is
fundament-ally quantum, and the processes of life derive from quantum fluctuations within the ground
quantum field at the beginning of time, the notion that classical processes came first is nothing other
than incompetent absurdity.
The close connection between Sheldrake’s quantum-based ‘formative causation’ hypothesis and the
quantum epiontic perspective resides in the fact that it is the quantum process of repeated perception or
activation at the quantum level that builds up the probability structures at quantum ‘implicate’ levels.
It is this internal quantum process, therefore, that creates morphogenetic fields. In other words
morphogenetic fields can be consi-dered to be classical level expressions of the deep operations of the
‘epio-ntic’ quantum level of awareness-consciousness. Such fields can clearly be associated with the
Buddhist notions of karmic (kammic) ‘formations’ and rebirth consciousness.
The manifestation of the dualistic realm of experience takes place through a hierarchy of quantum
epiontic levels, beginning with the merest spontaneous movement of the ground consciousness towards
the activity of perception. This movement of universal intentionality, which is a naturally innate
function of universal ‘empty’ consciousness, has the effect of activating, and thereby strengthening the
latencies of the potentialities within the ground of reality. Once the process has began the quantum
process of manifestation cascades through increasingly more complex levels of manifestation.
Sheldrake says that his hypothesis of ‘formative causation’, which has a great deal of commonality
with the Buddhist doctrine of dependent origination, does not explain the genesis of the cascade of his
manifestation of the evolutionary process; it only describes the mechanisms involved once the process
gets going:
The action of the morphogenetic field of a morphogenetic unit on the morphogenetic fields
of its parts, which are morpho-genetic units at lower levels, can be thought of in terms of
the influence of this higher level probability structure on lower level probability structures;
the higher-level field modifies the probability structures of the lower-level fields.lii
The necessary conclusion from the quantum epiontic perspective, however, is that the quantum realm
contains within it an innate perceptual ‘epiontic’ tendency to unravel quantum potentialities into the
dualistic experiential world through the process of quantum epiontic dependent origination which
operates at all levels of reality.
This fundamental epiontic aspect of the process of reality underlies the grasping (upadana – 9th link
of dependent origination) for becoming into existence (bhava – 10th link) which eventually leads to the
quantum morpho-genetic fields which are the kammic (karmic) formations (sankharas 2nd link)
underlying rebirth consciousness (vinnana 3rd link). As Nyanaponika Thera eloquently describes the
situation:
The desire for conscious awareness has the same character as that for sense impressions: the
craving to be alive, to feel alive in the constant encounter with the world of objects present to
conscious-ness (or present within consciousness - as the idealists prefer to say). But there is
still more meaning than that to be derived from the description of consciousness as a nutriment
if we consider that it is explained primarily as rebirth consciousness. This rebirth
consciousness, which is a single moment’s occurrence, feeds (or conditions) the mind-body
process (nama-rupa) of the present existence; and it is the arising of such moments of rebirth
cons-ciousness at the beginning of each successive life that continues the interminable chain
of future births, deaths and sufferings, Growth or proliferation is a characteristic feature of all
consciousness. Each rebirth consciousness, though its direct link is with the life imme-diately
preceding it, has behind it the inexhaustible store-house of the beginningless past, a vast
granary of potential seeds of life. Fed from the dark unfathomable recesses of the past…liii
The Buddha clearly indicated the movement of rebirth consciousness from one life into a mother’s
womb of the next life. The following is from the Mahanidana Sutta, which is an exposition of the links
of dependent arising:
From consciousness as a requisite condition comes name-and-form. Thus it has been said. And
this is the way to understand how from consciousness as a requisite condition comes name-
and-form. If consciousness were not to descend into the mother’s womb, would name-and-
form take shape in the womb?liv
This clearly indicates that the links of dependent origination function across lifetimes and that a rebirth-
consciousness actively seeks a womb. Kyabje Kalu Rinpoche explained this as follows:
The embodiment that we now experience is a physical one, which is nevertheless mental in
origin; it arises from the mind. Its origin, ultimately speaking, is the mind. When we go to
sleep and dream we experience the dream state, which is a different kind of embodiment. The
mind does not experience through the physical body at that point, but it experiences a purely
mental body, which is another kind of embodiment based upon habitual tendencies in the mind.
These tendencies can be subtle ones of dualistic clinging and obvious ones based on our
experiences during this life, which form patterns that arise in the dream state. Furthermore, in
the future, when each and every one of us dies, the physical body disintegrates and the mind
goes on to experience another state of being. This is a disembodied state, in that there is no
physical basis for the cons-ciousness. Nevertheless, there is a sense of embodiment in the mind
which we term the mental body. In that situation there is still an impression of “I”. I exist. And
so the three states-the physical body which is the maturation of karmic tendencies, the dream
body of habitual tendencies, and the mental body of the after-death state-constitute different
elements of rebirth, which follow one after the other in a continual procession.lv
In his brilliant exposition of the fundamental teachings of the Buddha, The Only Way to Deliverance,
R. L. Soni writes that:
Personality can be symbolized by a wave on water. Although born of the residual momentum
transmitted by the preceding wave, it is still a new phenomenon, so far as its material content
are concerned. As such, while the person is a kammic continuity from the past, he is a new
entity so far as the physical elements are concerned. However, none of the psychic elements
are transmitted only the resultant force passes over to produce a new life. It is no wonder,
therefore, that the Buddha, in the Majjhima-Nikaya 38, admonished a monk holding the view
that Vinnana continues as is and not as a mere “relinking factor.” A look at Diagram II shows
each wave with its start, its flow and its ebb. This, in relation to the person, symbolizes rebirth
existence, and death. Rebirth follows death, so long as there is some residual force as a seed to
manifest anew. Usually there is no lack of such seeds to carry forward the process of
existence.lvi
Figure 3 - SONI’S DIAGRAM II
Although we talk of a rebirth-consciousness this must not be thought of as a fixed entity but, rather,
a set of tendencies and potentialities. Such a view is entirely consistent with the quantum epiontic
perspective, all intentionality, both unconscious and conscious, leaves amplificatory traces operating
within the epiontic quantum level.
Figure 4 – SONI’S DIAGRAM VII
Figure 4 shows another of Soni’s diagrams which shows how the links of dependent origination
interpenetrate so that, although the 12 links are spread across 3-lifetimes in order to relate them to the
fact of rebirth, this does not mean that the links not mentioned in any one lifetime are not operative. In
the diagram I have added labels around the side to make it easier to comprehend. Links in capitals are
those mentioned in the standard 3-lifetimes formula, those in lower case are the links that Soni considers
must be implicitly operative although not explicitly mentioned within the ‘middle’ or current lifetime.
Soni writes in this context that:
The encircled Arabic numerals in Diagram VII represent the links …with respect to the past,
present, and future. The non-encircled numerals represent the links, which, though not
enumerated, are potentially present. Thus, in the present, the very presence of tanha (link
number eight) means the operation of avijja and the mental dispositions flowing from it (links
number one and two). Similarly in the past, the presence of links one and two meant the
operation of tanha, upadana, and bhava (links eight, nine, and ten). In this way, rebirth was
enabled in the present. As regards the future, the process must repeat itself. With rebirth
indicated, links three, four, five, six, and seven arise. Links eleven and twelve, namely jati and
jara-marana, exist in the future, the past, and as well in the present. As such, the conclusion is
obvious: five causes in the past gave rise to five effects in the present; and, five causes in the
present give rise to five effects in the future. A look at Diagram VII will clarify this point. Of
course, past means repeated rebirths retrospectively going into the infinite past, and future
means repeated rebirths going forth into the infinite future. Each existence is a process of jati-
jara-marana. This ever recurring phenomenon of rebirth-decay-death evidently implies
suffering.lvii
The next diagram that Soni offers us illustrates the manner in which all the links operate in every
lifetime but are explicitly spread over three lifetimes. This is shown, with additional labels for easy
comprehension, in figure 5. Soni writes about this diagram:
Each life, in the past, present, and future, is an entity complete in itself, according to the
operation of the Causal Chain. This is illustrated in diagram VIII. In each existence the
resultant-complex (uppatti-bhava or U.B.) is used as a base for the cultivation of a fresh causal
complex (kamma-bhava or K.B.) for results in the future. It is clearly shown that each life
begins with link eleven, jati or rebirth, and ends with link twelve, jati-marana or decay-death.
It will also be noted that the “past” ends with “death” and the “present” begins with “rebirth”;
the “present” also ends with “death” and the “future” begins with “rebirth.” Moreover, the
diagram significantly puts links one and two (avijja and sankhara) at the junction of uppati-
bhava and kamma-bhava in each existence; otherwise, tanha will fail to be actualized without
the presence of these two. If tanha is not activated, further processing in the Causal Chain will
cease. Tanha, certainly, is a link of special import. It not only maintains the integrity and
continuity of the Chain of Existence in the infinite past but also is responsible for sustaining
Paticcasamuppada in the present in order to make it continue in the future indefinitely.lviii
Figure 5 – SONI’S DIAGRAM VIII
Here Soni indicates the ‘weak point’ in the chain which binds us to samsara, the link between ‘feeling’
(vedana – pleasant, unpleasant or neutral) and ‘craving’ (tanha). In large measure the Buddha’s path is
designed to unlink this link through the cultivation of medititive dispassion.
This all-embracing psycho-metaphyscal analysis of the deep epiontic functioning of reality on all
levels conforms precisely with the findings of modern quantum theory and the quantum ‘formative
causation’ theory of evolution and morphogenises proposed by Rupert Sheldrake.
At the beginning of his inspiring book The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying the Tibetan Buddhist
teacher Sogyal Rinpoche gives an account of two deaths that he witnessed when he was a young monk.
The first was of a monk called Samten who was not a fully realized practitioner, in other words someone
whose meditation abilities were not sufficient to allow him to move the focus of awareness to levels of
deep consciousness where the death process can be controlled. Samten was guided through the death
process by his master, Jamyang Khyentse:
As Jamyang Khyentse guided Samten calmly through his dying, he introduced him to all the
stages of the process he was going through, one by one. I was astonished by the precision of
my master’s knowledge, and by his confidence and peace. When my master was there, his
peaceful confidence would reassure even the most anxious person Now Jamyang Khyentse
was revealing to us his fearlessness of death. Not that he ever treated death lightly. He often
told us that he was afraid of it, and warned us against taking it naively or complacently. Yet
what was it that allowed my master to face death in a way that was at once so sober and so
lighthearted, so practical yet so mysteriously carefree? That question fascinated and absorbed
me. Samten’s death shook me. At the age of seven, I had my first glimpse of the vast power of
the tradition I was being made part of, and I began to understand the purpose of spiritual
practice. Practice had given Samten an acceptance of death, as well as a clear understanding
that suffering and pain can be part of a deep, natural process of purification. Practice had given
my master a complete knowledge of what death is, and a precise technology for guiding
individuals through it.lix
The second death recounted by Sogyal Rinpoche was that of a realized master:
Lama Tseten died in an extraordinary way. Although there was a monastery close by, he
refused to go there, saying he did not want to leave a corpse for them to clear up. … he just
gazed up into the sky and passed away … I was amazed that anyone who was staring into the
face of death could have that kind of confidence. … Khandro did go to fetch Jamyang
Khyentse. I shall never forget how he stooped to enter the tent. He gave one look at Lama
Tseten’s face, and then, peering into his eyes, began to chuckle. He always used to call him
“La Gen,” “old Lama”; it was a sign of his affection. “La Gen,” he said, “don’t stay in that
state!” He could see, I now understand, that Lama Tseten was doing one particular practice of
meditation in which the practitioner merges the nature of his mind with the space of truth and
can remain in that state for many days as he dies. “La Gen we are travelers. We’re pilgrims.
We don’t have the time to wait that long. Come on. I’ll guide you.” Transfixed, I watched what
happened next and if I hadn’t seen it myself I would never have believed it. Lama Tseten came
back to life. Then my master sat by his side and took him through the phowa, the practice for
guiding the consciousness at the moment before death. There are many ways of doing this
practice, and the one he used then culminated with the master uttering the syllable “A” three
times. As my master declared the first “A” we could hear Lama Tseten accompanying him
quite audibly. The second time his voice was less distinct, and the third time it was silent he
had gone.lx
This is an example of the extraordinary power of controlling the death pro-cess attained by very
advanced practitioners of meditation who constantly practice moving their minds onto the level of the
ground substrate-consciousness. And this “precise technology” of guiding oneself or others through the
death process is entirely consistent with Stapp’s account of quantum mentality and the survival of some
aspects of mentality through death.
The authors of IM, the work that prompted Stapp’s paper on after death survival, mention the
extraordinary investigations into evidence of reincarnation by Dr. Ian Stevenson with appreciation. Dr.
Ian Stevenson, who was a Canadian biochemist and professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia,
investigated many reports of young children who spontaneously recalled the details of a past life. He
conducted more than 2,500 case studies over a period of 40 years and published twelve books, including
Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation and Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect.
Stevenson undertook reincarnation research throughout the world, including North and South
America, Europe, Africa and Asia. When Stevenson retired in 2002 psychiatrist Jim B. Tucker took over
his work and wrote Life Before Life.
Because he was aware of the controversial nature of the subject Stevenson was investigating he
deliberately made sure his research was meticulous and thorough, always seeking for the most watertight
cases and subjecting his own results to rigorous investigation. It is worth noting that Stevenson never
claimed that he had proved the existence of reincarnation, he remained cautious in his language and
referred to his cases as being “of the reincarnation type” or “suggestive of reincarnation”,lxi and he came
to the conclusion that “reincarnation is the best, even though not the only, explanation for the stronger
cases we have investigated”lxii.
Tom Shroder, a seasoned and award winning journalist and writer, accompanied Stevenson on field
trips to Lebanon and India and wrote the book Old Souls about his experiences during the research
trips. This book is very significant because Schroder starts out pretty much a skeptic, although he is
also aware of the massive prejudice against the notion of reincarnation which leads to shoddy and
inappropriate treatment of the evidence. Shroder describes his attitude when about to embark on the
first trip:
Could any presumption against reincarnation be so great, I wond-ered, that it wasn't even worth
the effort for a skeptic, someone independent of Stevenson's funding, someone thoroughly
sane, to check the evidence out for himself? I had no idea how Stevenson's cases would hold
up under close scrutiny. But given what was at stake - nothing less than possible concrete
evidence of life after death - weren't they at least worth a visit?lxiii
Old Souls is an excellent book to read on this subject because of the way in which Shroder’s amazement
at the evidence, and his attempt to come up with alternative explanations to that of reincarnation, comes
across.
Stevenson’s research shows that childhood memories which appear to suggest reincarnation
generally occur between the ages of three and seven years and then begin to fade. His basic methodology
was to make meticulous notes of the details of the child’s putative memories of the former life and then
to compare these to the details of the actual life of the deceased person that the child claimed to be the
reincarnation of. Usually this could only be done by getting detailed reports of people who intimately
knew the deceased person, but in a few cases Stevenson was able to track down documentary evidence.
Stevenson’s preferred to interview the child in question before any contact between the child and the
deceased’s family had occurred as this cut out the possibility of contamination through commu-nication
between the two ‘lives’. Stevenson found that in the majority of cases that he investigated the persons
of the previous life had met some sort of violent or untimely death. Further spectacular evidence
involved birthmarks corresponding to wounds and injuries suffered during the violent or accidental
death.
A fairly typical case, written about by Shroder, involved a boy called Daniel Jurdi in Beirut who
spoke of a previous life as a 25 year old mechanic called Rashid Khaddege who was thrown to his death
from a speeding car on a beach road. This case involved a definite physical resemblance between the
two ‘lives’ (figure 6). According to multiple witnesses, Daniel Jurdi provided the name of the driver,
the exact location of the crash, the names of the mechanic’s sisters and parents and cousins, and the
people he went hunting with — all of which turned out to match the life of a man, Rashid Khaddege,
who had died several years before the Daniel was born.lxiv
When Daniel and his mother were driving in Beirut, they passed the place on the sea called Military
Beach. Here Daniel shut his eyes, hiding them with his hands, and started crying. He then screamed,
“This is where I died.” And this spot at Military Beach turned out to be where Rashid Khaddege had
died. Daniel also related that in his prior lifetime, he was mechanic. Regarding the accident, Daniel said
that the driver, Ibrahim, was speeding and lost control of the car. Daniel said “I flew out of the car and
landed on my head.” When help came to assist the injured, Daniel said that he heard someone say,
“Leave this one, he’s dead.” Eventually, Daniel’s father sent an acquaintance to Kfarmatta, to inquire
about someone fitting Daniel’s description of a mechanic who died in an auto accident at Military
Beach. The Khaddeges heard about the story and visited Daniel.
Figure 6
In this case Stevenson, with Shroder in tow, tracked down a newspaper report of the crash, which
was not an easy task. Shroder writes of this event in Old Souls:
I hadn’t expected the impact. There, on the screen, in the obscure interior of a newspaper
published eighteen months before Daniel Jurdi was born, three years before he would tell of
dying in an auto accident, was an account of a routine fatality that matched the child's story
almost exactly: Military Beach, high speed, Ibrahim driving a Fiat, Rashid thrown from the
car. lxv
Further remarkable details emerged when Rashid’s family related their story of how they turned up
announced to see Daniel and his family; Daniel immediately recognized Rashid’s sister Najla and called
her by name, although he had never met her and should have known nothing about her:
A few years later the family heard from an acquaintance that Rashid had been reborn at the
Jurdis’ house in Beirut. This was around 1972. Muna went with Najla and a friend to meet the
boy. “Daniel did not recognize me, probably because I had changed so much,” Muna said. But
he saw Najla and he called her by name. “In what way had you changed?” I asked. … She
leaned toward me. “Before Rashid died, she was not so religious,” Majd expl-ained. “She says
she dressed like I do - pants, blouses, high heels. But after his death, she began to wear the
head scarf and the long dresses. She thinks Daniel wasn’t expecting to see a religious woman.”
“Did the Jurdis know you were coming?” I asked. “No, we came without an appointment. We
didn’t know the family. We just showed up at the door. Daniel was very happy when he saw
us. He said to his mother, ‘Bring bananas for Najla and make some coffee, my family is here.’
We were astonished. Rashid had liked bananas so much that my mother and Najla had stopped
eating them after his death because it reminded them of their grief.”lxvi
Daniel also spontaneously recognized Ibrahim, as well as Jijad, Rashid’s hunting buddy.
At this point in Shroder’s account it appears that there is absolutely no link connecting the two
families involved. But at a later point a potential, although tenuous, link between the families appears,
someone known to both families. Shroder then thinks that this link could contaminate the evidence, so
he r rehearses the kind of absurd story someone might try and make up to explain away the case and he
says:
I did not think that that kind of convoluted contamination was likely, only possible. It clearly
would be extremely unlikely for a two-year-old to hear and remember as much detail as Daniel
was given credit for - the name of the car’s driver, that the car had sped out of control and that
Rashid had been thrown out of it, that the accident had occurred near the water, that Rashid’s
mother had been knitting him a sweater. And, in any case, no grandmother’s tale could explain
the recognitions attributed to Daniel of the way to the Khaddeges’ home, of Rashid's sister
Najla, of Ibrahim and others.lxvii
The notion that the person known in a very peripheral way to both families would have conveyed the
detailed information between the families in a way that would enable a two year old boy to be able, let
alone want, to concoct the story is clearly absurd.
However, committed materialists who wish to avoid the implications of the evidence often produce
the most ridiculous reasons for simply dismissing it without any serious thought or investigation. The
following is part of a discussion between the Dalai Lama, Patricia Churchland and Antonio Damasio
reported in the book Consciousness at the Crossroads:
DALAI LAMA: There are specific recent instances in which two girls in India recollected the
names that they had known in previous lives. They knew the geography and the geographical
names. They could recollect their home village of the previous life and call it by name. They
also recognized textbooks used in their studies in a previous life, but they couldn’t even read
the texts in their present lives.
PATRICIA CHURCHLAND: How old were they?
DALAI LAMA: Four or five.
PATRICIA CHURCHLAND: They could have talked to practically any one in the meantime
who could have told them stories of the region and the people.
DALAI LAMA: In this case both girls now have four parents each. Because their memory is
so clear so convincing the previous two parents now accept each of them as being also their
own child. It was a case where the children recollected people and places precisely from their
previous lives – places they had never been to, where their parents had never taken them, nor
had their parents told them about them. It was totally out of their experience of five years of
their lifetime. They were able to recognise books that they were very fond of in their previous
life. Although they couldn’t even read, they were specifically attracted to those particular
books.
…
DALAI LAMA: I remembered this case because one of the two girls had died in an accident
with one part of her brain damaged. I myself a Buddhist, can’t find an explanation for that
small girl. You see, she recognized her previous parents very clearly, and also recognized her
own previous books. Yet she cannot read. From the Buddhist viewpoint, this is very difficult
to explain.
ANTONIO DAMASIO: So she was taken by people to the place where she lived in her
previous life?
DALAI LAMA: That's right.
ANTONIO DAMASIO: And in her previous life she had the accident?
DATAI LAMA: Yes. She was only about fifteen or sixteen when she died in the previous life.
The present parents, when they first detected these peculiarities, ignored the issue. The girl
said this is not my place, my place is somewhere else which has a different name. The parents
of this life didn’t take it seriously. They thought she was simply fantasizing. But she insisted
continuously. One day, her father told her, “Yes! All right, now show me.” The small girl took
her father very quietly a few miles away, to her previous home.
PATRICIA CHURCHLAND: It does raise the question of why it doesn’t happen more often.
If all of us are thought to have souls that come from other lives, then the problem is why each
of us does not recollect in great detail an earlier life. I quite honestly don’t have any beliefs
about my earlier life.
ANTONIO DAMASIO: That's exactly what I was thinking. Why doesn’t it happen more
often? What kind of education was that girl subject to? Was there anything special in that girl’s
upbringing that would have made that more likely?
DAIAI LAMA: In this particular case, I don’t know how to explain it. In her previous life, she
was an ordinary girl with no special training. Buddhism generally posits many different
degrees of vividness of awareness. One important thing to note is that in her previous life, she
had a healthy body but she met with a sudden death. So you see, when death occurs suddenly,
if one is in perfect health, one’s memories still remain very sharp.lxviii
The incredulous and lame remarks by Damasio and Churchland indicate that they are not even
predisposed to even seriously think about the evidence that the Dalai Lama is referring to. Churchland’s
remark about the children repeating information they have somehow heard from adults, given the weight
of evidence, is weak. Even if the children had heard something about the distant village, being able to
pretend to recognise previous parents with full emotional authenticity is surely another matter. To
entertain Church-land’s explanation seriously would mean that we accept that there are significant
numbers of children who are inexplicably driven to make up stories about previous lives who are also
brilliant actors and adepts at emotional deception.
Another case of this type that Stevenson investigated and Shroder writes about in Old Souls is that
of a seven year old Indian girl called Preeti. She remembered being Sheila, a teenager from a village
about 10 or 12 miles away, who was run over by a car. Preeti’s father told Stevenson and Shroder that:
As soon as Preeti could speak clearly … she said to her brother and sister, “This is your house,
not my house. These are your parents, not mine.” She told her sister, “You only have one
brother, I have four,” and said that her name was not Preeti, but Sheila, and gave names for her
“real” father and mother. She pleaded to be taken to her “home,” a town called Loa-Majra,
which was some ten to twelve miles away.lxix
Preeti’s parents told her to stop talking nonsense and ignored her protes-tations. When Preeti was four
she asked a neighbour who milked the family’s water buffalo to take her to ‘her village.’ This ‘milkman’
then asked a woman who had been born in the village of Loa-Majra if there was a man named Karna
married to a woman named Argoori who had lost a daughter called Sheila, which was the information
that Preeti had given him. The details turned out to be correct. Sheila had been hit by a car and killed.
When some men, one of which was Preeti’s previous life’s father, came to Preeti’s village she
immediately recognised him and ran over to hug him.
Preeti did not seem to recall actually being hit by the car but one of the details that Preeti gave about
her death prior to being reincarnated was ‘I had fallen from above and died.’ Later Stevenson and his
helper Satwant and Shroder found a press account about the accident in which Sheila had died. Shroder
writes about this:
I read a translation of the account: Sheila, fifteen, had gone with some other women to gather
grass for cattle feed. Sheila had forgotten her sickle and run back across the road to get it. I
read what happened next and stopped short. For one of the few times in my life, the cliché
about not being able to believe what I was seeing was literally true for me. I read the next
sentence again, slowly: The car hit Sheila and knocked her ten to twelve feet in the air. I was
astonished, then suspicious - maybe the writer had speculated as I had, then attempted to make
the account more persuasive by inventing the detail about the girl getting knocked into the air.
But the article contained no mention of Preeti’s cryptic comment about “falling from above,”
and, therefore, no obvious motive for inventing the detail.lxx
The cases investigated generally have many striking links of this nature, and often quite a few impressive
recalls and recognitions such as Preeti telling her parents “My house (i.e. Sheila’s house) is big and yours
is small,” which turned out to be true.
However, there are often also fragmentary and conflicting aspects which seem to weaken, although
by no means destroy, the weight of the evidence. In the Preeti case Stevenson recognizes the weak points
that will be focused upon by sceptics and says “Well I think the sceptics would have a good time tearing
that case apart.” I will hand over to Shroder’s narrative to finish the point:
Satwant looked at [Stevenson] quizzically. “What do you mean?” she asked. I turned to face
her. “Allow me,” I said. “You have this child who’s unhappy with her parents. She’s convinced
her parents don’t love her. And maybe the woman we just interviewed isn’t the only one from
Loa-Maya who married into the village. Maybe there are three or four other women who know
of Karan Singh and his family. And maybe Preeti is in the village one day and she hears a
couple of these women reminiscing about the old days, and they mention a teenage girl named
Sheila who was killed, and they also mention the father's name and the mother's name and say
how much they grieved for the girl. And Preeti thinks, ‘Maybe I'm not really from this family
that is mean to me. Maybe those parents who missed their daughter so much are really my
parents. And maybe I’m that girl who died.’ Because even at a young age she’s heard about
rebirth. so she starts saying, ‘you’re not my parents. My father's name is Karan Singh.’ The
milkman hears that and passes it along. The dead girl’s family wants to believe their dead
daughter has returned. So they come to see the girl, and there’s this big crowd. When they ask
Preeti who ‘her father’ is, she goes to the person everyone is staring at, and Karan Singh takes
this as complete confirmation. Similar things happen when he takes her back to his village.
Maybe she might even begin to make mistakes at first - she heads toward the wrong person -
but she sees people inching away from her or shaking their heads, so she finds the right person.
And when she asked where the married sister was? Maybe she had earlier overheard someone
say, ‘It’s a shame that Munni couldn't be here to see this.’ And it is no great leap in this culture
to assume that the reason a sister would not be at home is because she is at her in-laws.”
Satwant watched me with something between hurt and wonder. When I finished she asked,
“Is that what you really think?”
I thought about that for a minute.
“No,” I said.
The point is that the detailed alternative account that a sceptic would need to make in order to account
for the details are always ridiculous; which is why sceptics generally do not give detailed accounts of
individual cases but deal in vague generalities which only have a very superficial plausibility.
Another Stevenson case from Lebanon, which also demonstrates physical resemblance across
lifetimes, involves Suzanne Ghanem, who as a child remembered her past lifetime as Hanan Monsour.
Hanan was born in the mid-1930s and after her third child, she developed heart problems and had to
have open heart surgery. The procedure could not be done in Lebanon and as she had a brother living
in Virginia, she therefore arranged to have the surgery done at the University of Virginia.
However, Hanan died the day after surgery was done, which occurred in about 1965. Then 10 days
later, Suzanne was born and she had full memories of her past incarnation as Hanan, including her past
life name and the names of 13 Monsour family members. Suzanne gave enough information to be
reunited with her past life family.
Even Hanan’s husband, Farouk, a career police officer, accepted Suzanne as the reincarnation of his
deceased wife. To support this belief, Farouk pointed out that Suzanne could identify their friends by
name in photographs of them at social events, even though Suzanne had not met these individuals in
her contemporary lifetime.
Stevenson initially studied Suzanne when she was just a child in the late 1960s. Almost 30 years
later, in 1998, he revisited Suzanne and found that as an adult, Suzanne had the same facial features as
Hanan (figure 7).
Figure 7
In the discussion between the Dalai Lama, Damasio and Churchland, above, one tactic of the
materialist intellectual rearguard action is the issue of why more people do not remember previous lives.
Damasio also suggests that the girls might have been ‘educated’ into making their claims, an astonishing
weak attempted parry against overwhelming evidential odds. Again it is important to note that Damasio
and Churchland are not deeply pondering the issues involved, they have already decided that the
evidence must have another explanation, however desperately implausible, the explanation cannot be
reincarnation because they have decided ahead of any evidence that reincarnation cannot be a feature of
the process of reality.
One answer to the question as why there is not a greater number of children reporting previous lives
is supplied by the fact that in many of Stevenson’s cases, and also the case cited by the Dalai Lama,
involve violent deaths, so it looks as if a violent or untimely death predisposes, but does not guarantee,
past life recall.
Another reason is actually suggested by Damasio’s desperate suggestion that past life recall in
children is a result of them being ‘educated’ into the belief. As Shroder points out this argument can also
work in reverse:
..if you believe that the power of cultural belief is strong enough to create this mass delusion
that children remember specific details about the lives of dead strangers, don’t you have to
admit that it could work the other way around? That cultural belief could repress real memories
of previous lives…lxxi
And, indeed, there is suggestive evidence that this may be the case. For example one book review raised
the concern that many of Stevenson's examples were gathered in cultures with pre-existing belief in
reincarnation. In order to address this type of concern, Stevenson researched in Europe and then wrote
European Cases of the Reincarnation Type (2003) which presented 40 cases he examined in Europe.
Shroder did some research into cases in the United States and did not have difficulty finding some
convincing cases. One of them concerned the brother of a close friend’s wife, Shroder describes his
friend as “one of the most sceptical individuals I have ever known.” I will let Shroder take over again:
Arlene, Gene's wife, had been raised in Connecticut, the daughter of multigenerational
Northeasterners. However, as soon as her younger brother, Jim, could speak, he would say “I
was born in Dixie.” No, his parents, would correct him, you were born in Bridgeport,
Connecticut. But Jim would insist: “I was born in Dixie.” “It wasn't just that he kept saying it,”
Arlene told me when I asked her about it. “It was that word - Dixie. We didn't know anybody
who used that word. Who would use that word in Connecticut in the 1960s?” I asked her
whether she or her parents ever thought that it might have anything to do with a previous-life
memory. “Are you kidding?” she said. “We just figured it was more evidence that he was a
weird kid.”
Then the family took their first road trip south, to Florida. Arlene only had a foggy memory
of the trip, but thought that her mother would probably remember it clearly. I called her mom,
Phyllis Reidy who now lives just up the Florida coast from Miami.
“I remember we had a real load - my husband, my mother-in-law, the two kids, and myself
in our red station wagon,” she recalled. “There was no interstate in those days, of course, so
we drove all the way down old U.S. 301. Arlene was nine and Jim was six. One of the first
things Jim had ever said was, ‘I’m from Dixie.’ He said it all the time. And he spoke oddly
too. We always said it sounded like he had some kind of accent. We used to ask him if he was
from Boston, and he said, ‘No, I’m from Dixie. We may have said something like, ‘What do
you mean you’re from Dixie?’ But it never really went any further than that. We didn’t question
kids in those days.
“Then, when we drove into the south, he got all excited, started talking a mile a minute
about how his grandmother and grandfather came from Dixie and his mother and father did,
too, and I said, “We’re your mother and father and he said, ‘No, you’re not,’ just flatly, like
that.
“We were in Georgia, just south of the South Carolina line, and he really started going nuts.
“I’ll show you where we used to live,” he said. “There it is! It’s way up there, up that hill and
in back of those trees.””
“Did he describe the house?” I asked.
“It was an ‘old house’ was all he said.”
"Did you pull off the highway to go look?”
“We couldn't be bothered,…”
Might this indicate another reason why we don’t have more examples of recall of previous lives?!
In 2007 Jim B. Tucker, who has continued the work of Stevenson, published a paper entitled
‘Children Who Claim to Remember Previous Lives: Past, Present and Future Research’. In this paper
he described the following case as typical:
Kumkum Verma, a girl in India, is an example of the subjects that Stevenson studied
(Stevenson, 1975). She was from a village, but when she was 3-1/2 years old, she began saying
that she had lived in Darbhanga, a city of 200,000 people that was 25 miles away. She named
the district of the city where she said she had lived, one of artisans and craftsmen, and her
family did not know anyone from that district. Kumkum made numerous statements, and her
aunt wrote down many of them. Some of her notes were lost, but Stevenson was able to get a
copy of 18 of Kumkum’s statements that her aunt had recorded. The detail in these statements
included her son’s name in the life she was describing and the fact that he worked with a
hammer, her grandson's name, the town where her father had lived, and personal details, such
as having an iron safe at home, a sword hanging near the cot where she slept, and a pet snake
that she fed milk to. Kumkum’s father talked to a friend who had an employee from the district
in Darbhanga that Kumkum had mentioned. The employee went there to search for the
deceased individual, the previous personality, that Kumkum was describing. He found that a
woman had died five years before Kumkum was born whose life matched all of the details
listed above. Of note is the fact that Kumkum’s father, a landowner and homeopathic
physician, visited the family in Darbhanga once but never allowed Kumkum to see them,
apparently in part because he was not proud that his daughter seemed to remember the life of
a blacksmith's wife.lxxii
A list of typical features of the cases collected by Stevenson include:
• Claims were made spontaneously at very young age, often starting at 2-3 years old and
stopping by 6-7 years.
• Median length of time between death of previous personality and rebirth is 15 months.
• Claims involve ordinary lives, rather than grandiose fantasies. Sometimes the claim involves
a previous life in humbler circumstances.
• The details which are given of previous lives are matched with evidence to a high degree.
• In about 70% of cases the mode of death involves unnatural, violent and sudden death.
• Many children show behaviors connected with the previous life.
• Many children showed emotional attachment to previous family members appropriate to the
former relationship.
• In cases involving violent death over 35% of children displayed phobias related to the mode
of death.
• Many of the children practiced repetitive play linked to the previous life, acting out the
occupation of the previous personality and occasionally re-enacting the death scene.
Cases such as these have been found wherever researchers have looked for them and they have been
found on all continents except Antarctica, where no research has been done.
Perhaps the most remarkable feature of Stevenson’s research lies in his discovery of cases in which
the child has birthmarks which correspond to the violent death of the previous person. Cases such as
these were presented in an article entitled ‘Birthmarks and Birth Defects Corresponding to Wounds on
Deceased Persons’ and formed the basis for the book Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect. In his
article Birthmarks and Birth Defects Stevenson writes:
A correspondence between birthmark and wound was judged satisfactory if the birthmark and
wound were both within an area of 10 square centimeters at the same anatomical location; in
fact, many of the birthmarks and wounds were much closer to the same location than this. A
medical document, usually a postmortem report, was obtained in 49 cases.lxxiii
Figure 8a & 8b
Figure 9 Figure 10
Figure 8a shows the hypopigmented macule on the chest of an Indian youth who as a child remembered
the life of a man, Maha Ram, who was killed with a shotgun fired at close range. Figure 8b show the
location of the wounds on Maha Ram recorded by the pathologist. Figure 9 shows a large ‘epidermal
nevus’ on head of a Thai man who as a child said he remembered the life of his paternal uncle, who was
killed with a blow on the head from a heavy knife. Figure 10 shows the almost absent fingers on one
hand in a boy of India who said he remembered the life of a boy of another village who had put his hand
into the blades of a fodder chopping machine and had its fingers amputated. Other examples, including
the small, round puckered birthmark on a Thai boy that corresponded to the bullet wound of entry in a
man whose life he said he remembered and who had been shot with a rifle from behind and the
corresponding exit wound, can be found in Stevenson’s original paper which can be found on the
Internet.lxxiv
Stevenson’s obituary in the New York Times stated:
Spurned by most academic scientists, Dr. Stevenson was to his supporters a misunderstood
genius, bravely pushing the boundaries of science. To his detractors, he was earnest, dogged
but ultimately misguided, led astray by gullibility, wishful thinking and a tendency to see
science where others saw superstition.lxxv
However, the evidence collected by Stevenson is clearly suggestive of reincarnation, and when one
looks closely at the arguments claiming to debunk Stevenson’s work they invariably turn out to be
specious. For example the following is from a sceptical Internet article:
Furthermore, since we know that people can have memories and be completely unaware of the
source of those memories, he would have to be vigilant in identifying which memories were
likely to be the result of cryptomnesia. Also, there is the major problem of pro-viding an
explanation for how a personality can survive death and transfer to another body, something
Stevenson had no answer for.lxxvi
The claim concerning cryptomnesia is clearly false because in all cases the children had been nowhere
or seen no one which would account for the hidden memories required. This is an example of how
sceptical efforts to debunk Stevenson’s work do not engage with the accumulated detail of his work,
although they will pick upon one particular detail if they think they can provide a counter explanation
for that particular one. If one investigates the debunking claim, as we have seen, it will usually turn out
to be spurious. The general sceptical tactic seems to be simply to throw inappropriate and misleading
materialist advertising mud in his direction in the hope that people will not investigate too closely. An
explanation for the phenomenon of reincarnation has been outlined in this current chapter.
The sceptical internet article also claims that:
We need not grant that these cases can only be solved by appealing to a paranormal
explanation, however. Coincidence, faulty investigation, deception, and other normal
explanations are available.lxxvii
But, again, these aspersions are not correct; a rational and serious investigation of the evidence rules
these flaws out. If one looks into Stevenson’s procedures it is clear that he goes to great lengths to
eliminate the possibility of these faults and is always disappointed when he finds a possible case turns
out to have such flaws. It is true that in the early days of research one of his helpers turned out to be
deceiving him, but he found out and got rid of the person concerned. Sceptical attacks on his work,
however, bring this early event to the fore as if it taints all of Stevenson’s work. In the conclusion of
this article the author says that:
Those who want to believe in survival of a personality after death will likely ignore the
weaknesses in Stevenson's methods and praise him for his meticulousness, his devotion to
detail, his zeal to get every claim verified or disproved.lxxviii
But the reverse is equally the case. Those who do not want to believe in survival of some aspect of
personality after death (it need not be the entire ‘personality’, in Buddhist terms it is a ‘karmic echo’)
will likely ignore the strengths in Stevenson's methods.
Carl Sagan felt that Stevenson’s work fell short of providing proof of reincarnation but felt that
further research was warranted. In The Demon-Haunted World (1996), Sagan wrote that claims about
reincarnation may have some experimental support, he said that “at the time of writing, there are three
claims in the ESP field that deserve serious study,” and the third was the fact that “young children
sometimes report details of a previous life, which upon checking turn out to be accurate and which they
could not have known about in any other way than reincarnation.” lxxix Sceptic Sam Harris said of
Stevenson “either he is a victim of truly elaborate fraud, or something interesting is going on.”lxxx
In his book The Art of Disappearing the Theravadin monk Ajahn Brahm has a chapter called ‘Make
This the Last Time’. He extols the blissful advantages of jhana meditation as a preparation for letting
go of the material realm completely at the moment of death in order to blissfully disappear into the
infinite. He writes:
You’re realizing a great truth of Buddhism, something the Buddha also realized: the reason
you’re happy is because a whole heap of suffering is gone. The demons have let go of the rope
and you can breathe again. It’s wonderful when you experience this for yourself, because it
gives you direct insight into what we're trying to achieve. Because of the painful nature of the
body, we practice to detach from and transcend it, by going into the realm of the mind. When
you do this fully and irreversibly, you become a nonreturner, and you’ll never again be reborn
in the world of physical bodies. But if you don't get your meditation together, who knows
where your next rebirth will be.lxxxi
Here Ajahn Brahm indicates the aim of the Buddhist path as removing all the traces of clinging to
existence in order to realize the deathless experience of the nondual Mindnature ground of reality. In
Theravada Buddhism, which emphasizes the elimination of suffering and tends not to indicate the nature
of the result, the aim is seldom expressed in terms of ‘nondual Mindnature’ or anything similar. This is
a designation more in line with the Mahayana worldview.
The highly realized teacher Kyabje Kalu Rinpoche described the situation as follows:
This fundamental nature of mind as intangible emptiness, illumin-ating clarity, and dynamic
unimpeded awareness is what we term, in the Buddhist tradition, tathagatagharba buddha
nature, the seed or potential for enlightenment. It is that inherent nature of mind which emerges
as the fully enlightened experience. It is that which allows the fully enlightened experience to
take place in the first place. This is something that is shared by each and every living being,
human or otherwise. Anything that is sentient – anything that has consciousness - inherently
has this fundamental purity or nature of mind in its make-up. We find in the Buddhist teachings
that Buddha Shakyamuni said, “This tathagatagharba – this seed for potential enlightenment -
pervades all forms of life. There is not a single being that does not have this as part of its make-
up.” To give this experience a name for reference, or simply to label it for practical purposes,
in the Buddhist tradition we refer to this fundamental nature of mind as tathagatagharba - the
seed or essence of enlightenment. It is the potential for enlightenment. … If we recognize the
inherent nature of mind and its potential and learn how to cultivate it - learn how to cause it to
emerge through spiritual practice - then we ourselves can actualize that experience. We can
become a buddha. We can become completely enlight-ened.lxxxii
In this presentation, then, the aim of the spiritual quest is the direct realization of the nature of the mind-
energy of the process of reality. This requires the relinquishment of all the ‘afflictive obstructions’ and
‘cognitive obscurations’ which impede recognition of the fundamental Mindnature.
When a sentient being achieves full buddhahood through the path of a bodhisattva, a practitioner
who deliberately constantly returns into the realm of samsara in order to help all other sentient beings
towards enlightenment, the limitless accrued spiritual energy of his or her practice leaves an
inconceivable karmic echo of potential energy still active in helping sentient beings on the path to
enlightenment. This energy field is described as the three kayas, or bodies, of buddhahood. The primary
buddhakaya is the dharmakaya, the inconceivable realm of space-like, non-referential non-dual
awareness. The second buddhakaya is the sambhogikakaya (sambhogakaya) which is an immaterial
field of manifested awareness-energy of enlightened teaching potentiality which may be activated by
the aspirations of practitioners. The third buddhakaya is the nairmanikakaya (nirmanakaya) which:
…is of three types – (a) artistic nairmanikakayas (great artists, scientists, healers and so on);
(b) incarnate nairmanikakayas (any animate or inanimate manifestations by buddhas for the
welfare of beings); supreme nairmanikakayas who display the twelve deeds of a buddha (such
as Buddha Sakyamuni).lxxxiii
In the original Pali Suttas the Buddha indicates that this process may take many lifetimes. In all
forms of Buddhism (apart from some corrupt Westernized versions) it is accepted that the
psychophysical process of a sentient beings continuum looses the physical aspect at death and after
death remains as an energetic stream of subtle ‘grasping’ consciousness seeking re-embodiment. For
just about all non-advanced practitioners of course this process is hidden and there is absolutely no recall
of previous lives and it appears as if there is only one life.
In the Samannaphala Sutta (The Fruits of the Homeless Life) the Buddha indicated that the path
towards enlightenment can be facilitated by the prod-uction of a “mind made body”lxxxiv. This quasi-
stable mental structure of cons-ciousness is “what is mistaken for a soul of self.”lxxxv This suggests the
poss-ibility of consciously producing a quasi-stable mental structure which per-sists across sequential
lifetimes and thus being able to consciously control the death process. Indeed Mahayana bodhisattvas,
because they have generated bodhicitta (bodhichitta) which is a vast concern for the welfare of all
sentient beings, are able to retain certain subtle portions of the afflictive dispositions in order to postpone
buddhahood and therefore continuously take rebirth in samsara for the benefit of sentient beings:
The enhancing factor is not to relinquish the subtle afflictions that enable bodhisattvas to be
willingly reborn in samsara for the sake of accomplishing the welfare of others. The activity of
the knowledge of such bodhisattvas consists of liberating sentient beings continuously without
manifesting their own buddhahood.lxxxvi
Stevenson, reflecting upon the implications of the evidence he had collected that birthmarks may
correspond to physical traumas suffered by the previous embodiment said:
I find myself thinking increasingly of some intermediate ‘nonphysical body’ which acts as a
carrier of these attributes from one life to another.lxxxvii
The idea that there is an intermediate nonphysical body which occupies an intermediate state after death
and prior to reincarnation of rebirth is exactly the teaching of The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Bardo
Thötröl or Bar-do Thos-grol Chen-mo) which contain detailed description of the death process, the
nature and experiences of the intermediate state and the process of rebirth; the practice of these
instructions are a preparation for the actual process of dying.
In his introduction to the first complete translation of the The Tibetan Book of the Dead the Dalai
Lama tells us:
Normally in our lives, if we know that we are going to be confronted by a difficult or unfamiliar
situation, we prepare and train ourselves for such a circumstance in advance, so that when this
event actually happens we are fully prepared. …the rehearsal of the processes of death, and
those of the intermediate state, and the emergence into a future existence are at the very heart
of the path of Highest Yoga Tantra. These practices are part of my daily practice also and
because of this I somehow feel a sense of excitement when I think about the experience of
death. At the same time, though, sometimes I do wonder whether or not I will really be able to
fully utilise my own preparatory practices when the actual moment of death comes!lxxxviii
The following brief exposition of the process of death, intermediate state and rebirth is taken from the
Dalai Lama’s Forward to Death, Intermediate State and Rebirth in Tibetan Buddhism:
Those particles of matter, of combined semen and blood, into which the consciousness initially
entered in the mother’s womb at the beginning of the life, become the centre of the heart; and
from that very same point the consciousness ultimately departs at death. Immediately
thereupon, the intermediate state begins – except for those reborn in the formless realms of
infinite space, infinite consciousness, ‘nothingness’ or peak of cyclic existence, for whom the
new life begins immediately upon death. Those born within the realms of desire and form must
pass through an intermediate state, during which a being has the form of the person as whom
he or she is to be reborn. The intermediate being has all five senses, but also clairvoyance,
unobstructiveness and an ability to arrive immedi-ately wherever he or she wants. He or she
sees other intermediate beings of his or her own type - hell-being, hungry ghost, animal,
human, demigod or god - and can be seen by clairvoyants. If a place of birth appropriate to
one's predispositions is not found, a small death occurs after seven days, and one is reborn into
another intermediate state. This can occur at most six times, with the result that the longest
period spent in the intermediate state is forty-nine days. This means that those beings who,
even a year after dying, report that they have not found a birthplace are not in the intermediate
state but have taken birth as a spirit. In taking rebirth as a human, one sees one's future mother
and father as if lying-together. If one is to be reborn as a male, this sight generates desire for
the mother as well as hatred for the father – and vice versa if one is to be reborn as a female.
Being desirous, one rushes there to engage in copulation; but upon arrival, one sees only the
sexual organ of the desired partner. This creates anger which causes cessation of the
intermediate state and makes the connection to the new life. One has entered the mother's
womb and begun a human life. When the father's semen and mother's blood are conjoined with
this life or consciousness, they naturally and gradually develop into the elements of a
human.lxxxix
It is intriguing to note here that the “intermediate being has all five senses, but also clairvoyance,
unobstructiveness and an ability to arrive immediately wherever he or she wants.” This corresponds to
the Buddha’s description of the ‘mind-made body’:
And he, with mind concentrated … having gained imperturbability, applies and directs his
mind to the production of a mind-made body. And out of this body he produces another body,
having a form mind-made, complete in all its limbs and faculties. It is just as if a man were to
draw out a reed from its sheath. … Or as if a man were to draw a sword from the scabbard. …
Or as if a man were to draw a snake from its old skin. … He then enjoys different powers:
being one he becomes many – being many he becomes one; he appears and disappears; he
passes through fences, walls and mountains unhindered as if through air; he sinks into the
ground and emerges from it as if it were water; he walks on the water without breaking the
surface as if on land; he flies cross-legged through the sky like a bird with wings…xc
And it is remarkable that these supernormal abilities of passing through material objects, flying through
the air and so are precisely the features described by people having experienced Near Death Experiences.
The following are a few examples contained in the paper Do Any Near-Death Experiences Provide
Evidence for the Survival of Human Personality after Death? Relevant Features and Illustrative Case
Reports:
In my delirium night and day made little difference to me. In the four-bedded ward, where they
first placed me I lay, as it seemed, in a constant stupor which excluded the existence of any
hopes or fears. Mind and body seemed to be dual, and to some extent separate. I was conscious
of the body as an inert, tumbled mass near a door; it belonged to me but it was not I. I was
conscious that my mental self used regularly to leave the body... until something produced a
consciousness that the chilly mass, which I then recalled was, my body, was being stirred as it
lay by the door. I was then drawn rapidly back to it, - joined it with disgust, and it became I
and was fed, spoken to, and cared for. When it was again left I seemed to wander off as
before.... In my wanderings there was a strange consciousness that I could see through the
walls of the building, though I was aware that they were there, and that everything was
transparent to my senses.
And:
When my friend came in she seemed to move as before a slow motion picture camera laying
the bouquet of flowers on the table with much deliberation, turning very, very slowly and
moving toward the door. I was aware of a sensation of deep cold, an inner cold, and things
grew dark, then black – “blacker than midnight in a cypress swamp” as James Meldon Johnson
describes the world before God created day and night. After this coldness and blackness came
oblivion. Suddenly it was as if someone had turned on a floodlight and I glowed in its warmth.
My first thought was “no pain – wonderful - I'm free - I can go where I please!” I went to the
window to see what was outside. In the street four stories down a boy was teasing a much
smaller girl, trying to take away her skates. I thought l should intervene but before I had really
left the room my husband came in. He said: “Linda, why do you leave us?” and l turned back.
I remember thinking it odd he was bowed over a figure on the bed instead of looking at me.
And:
As they started to carry me it was remarked that it would come as a blow to my people, and I
was immediately conscious of a desire to be with my mother. Instantly I was at home, and
father and mother were just sitting down to their midday meal. On my entrance mother sat bolt
upright in her chair and said, “Bert, something has happened to our boy.” “Nonsense,” he said,
“whatever has put such an idea into your head?” There followed an argument. But mother
refused to be pacified and said that if she caught the 2 p.m. train she could be with me before
three and satisfy herself. She had hardly left the room when there came a knock on the front
door. It was a porter from the railway station with a telegram saying I was badly hurt. Then
suddenly I was again transported - this time it seemed to be against my wish - to a bedroom,
where a woman whom I recognized was in bed, and two other women were quietly bustling
around, and a doctor was leaning over the bed. Then the doctor had a baby in his hands. At
once I became aware of an almost irresistible impulse to press my face through the back of the
baby's head so that my face would come into the same place as the child’s. The doctor said, “It
looks as though we have lost them both.” And again I felt the urge to take the baby's place in
order to show him he was wrong, but the thought of my mother crying turned my thoughts in
her direction, when straight away I was in a railway carriage with both her and father.
And:
I was standing there in the middle of the room and distinctly saw my dead body lying upon the
bed.... I started to leave the room and met one of the physicians, and was surprised that he said
nothing to me, but since he made no effort to stop me I walked out into the street where I met
an acquaintance of mine, Mr. Milton Blose. I tried to greet Mr.Blose by hitting him on the
back, but my arm went through him....
Paranormal perceptions, enhanced mental abilities, instantaneous moving across distances, passing
through material objects, as well as feelings of great peace and joy, tunnel experiences, visions of bright
lights and ‘other-worldly’ places are all features of NDE’s.
The following account, taken from Anita Moorjani’s book Dying To Be Me, suggests that NDE’s
sometimes verge on the sphere of enlightened nonlocal consciousness:
I continued to be fully aware of every detail of every procedure that was being administered
to me, while to the outside world I appeared to be in a coma. I continued to sense myself
expanding further and further outward, drawing away from my physical surroundings. It was
as though I were no longer restricted by the confines of space and time, and continued to
spread myself out to occupy a greater expanse of consciousness. I felt a sense of freedom and
liberation that I’d never experienced in my physical life before. I can only describe this as the
combination of a sense of joy mixed with a generous sprinkling of jubilation and happiness.
It stemmed from being released from my sick and dying body, a feeling of jubilant
emancipation from all the pain that my illness had caused me. As I continued to plunge deeper
into the other realm, expanding outward, becoming everyone and everything, I felt all my
emotional attachments to my loved ones and my surroundings slowly fall away. What I can
only describe as superb and glorious unconditional love surrounded me, wrapping me tight as
I continued to let go. The term unconditional love really doesn’t do justice to the feeling, as
these words have been overused to the point of having lost their intensity. But the physical
battle I’d fought for so very long had finally released its strong hold on me, and I had a
beautiful experience of freedom. It didn’t feel as though I’d physically gone somewhere else
– it was more as though I’d awakened. Perhaps I’d finally been roused from a bad dream. My
soul was finally realizing its true magnificence! And in doing so, it was expanding beyond my
body and this physical world. It extended further and further outward until it encompassed not
only this existence, but continued to expand into another realm that was beyond this time and
space, and at the same time included it.xci
Moorjani’s description has remarkable features in the context of considering that what is actually
happening in NDEs is, as Stapp intimated, that a conti-nuum of quantum-based awareness is leaving the
limited constraints of em-bodiment and moving into a purely quantum level of potentiality and aware-
ness (in the following quote ‘Anoop’ is Anita Moorjani’s brother):
Although I was no longer using my five physical senses, I had unlimited perception, as if a
new sense had become available, one that was more heightened than any of our usual faculties.
I had 360-degree peripheral vision with total awareness of my surround-ings. And as amazing
as it all sounds, it still felt almost normal. Being in a body now felt confining. Time felt
different in that realm, too, and I felt all moments at once. I was aware of every-thing that
pertained to me - past, present, and future – simul-taneously. I became conscious of what
seemed to be simultaneous lives playing out. I seemed to have a younger brother in one
incarnation, and I was protective of him. But I knew that this sibling's essence was the same
as Anoop’s, only in that existence, he was younger instead of older than I was. This life I was
now perceiving with Anoop seemed to take place in an underdeveloped rural setting, in a time
and location I couldn’t identify. We were living in a sparsely furnished mud hut, and I looked
after Anoop while our parents went out to work in the fields. As I was experiencing the
sensations associated with being a protective older sister, ensuring that there was enough for
us to eat and we were safe from any undesirable external elements, it didn’t feel like a past
life. Even though the scene appeared historical, in that realm, it still felt as though it were
happening here and now. In other words, time didn't run linearly the way we experience it
here. It’s as though our earthly minds convert what happens around us into a sequence; but in
actuality, when we’re not expressing through our bodies, everything occurs simultaneously,
whether past, present, or future.xcii
This is what one would expect if the NDE state of consciousness-awareness is ‘located’ (or perhaps
‘nonlocated’ would be the correct term) fully within the nonlocal quantum realm of potentiality wherein
all the potentialities for the partcular psychic-mental continuum are contained in quantum superposition
at the same time.
In his book Physics of the Soul: The Quantum Book of Living Dying, Reincarnation and Immortality
the quantum physicist Amit Goswami suggests that the intermediate entity which links between
successive lives is a quantum structure which he calls the ‘quantum monad’. In this book Goswami
surveys all the evidence from reincarnation research and quantum physics and concludes:
In principle, the use of such quantum monads is available to all of us. It seems, however, that
certain incarnate individuals are correlated via quantum nonlocality; they have privileged
access to the events of each others’ lives via nonlocal information transfer. It seems that it is
these individuals who share the same quantum monad in an ongoing fashion; it is they who
can be called the reincarnations of one another. The past life mental and vital propensities that
one inherits in this way is called karma in the Hindu tradition. Thus, the monad, the survivor
of the death of the material body, forms a continuum with the physical incarnations because it
carries, via its subtle vital and mental bodies, part of the individual identity … not the
melodrama, not the ego-content, but the character, the tendencies of mental thinking and vital
feeling, the (mentally) learned repertoire of contexts, also phobias, avoidances of certain
contexts - in other words, both good and bad habit patterns that we call karma. It should now
be clear that the propounders of life and death as a continuum are right, and therefore, the
Tibetan Book of the Dead is correct!
Goswami wrote Physics of the Soul in 2001; as time flows on the accu-mulating evidence only adds
support to the quantum truth of rebirth.
The authors of IM, who are supporters of the principle of the maxi-mization of intellectual
conservatism, say regarding the debate concerning reincarnation/rebirth and Near Death Experiences:
It involves a large body of relevant empirical evidence which is at present virtually unknown
to the great majority of laypersons and scientists alike. … We insist that anyone who wishes
to participate meaningfully in discussions of the survival question must study this literature,
thoughtfully and with an open mind.xciii
Unfortunately, however, as the authors of IM point out, it is more generally the case that those who wish
to maintain that it is impossible for an aspect of mind or consciousness to exist in some form
independently of the body do so by willfully ignoring the evidence.
An example of this is provided by the occasion when Alex Tsakiris asked Susan Blackmore, who
has established a name for herself as being a ‘debunker’ of the paranormal and claims for the reality of
NDEs, to appear on his Skeptico show to discuss the evidence for NDEs in the work of various NDE
researchers. Tsakiris asked Blackmore to look into the evidence presented by Jeff Long but Blackmore
replied that she no longer considered herself to be a researcher in the field, and was uninformed about
current research, and could not “face reading his book”. Tsakiris com-mented:
But hold on. You're still a public figure, a public intellectual, public scientist, and to remove
yourself, I think is fine, but you still express a very strong opinion about this. And when we
juxtapose that with what you just said, that I’m completely uninformed; I really heve no
opinion because I haven't studied the literature in 15 years and a lot has happened in 15 years.
I mean, don’t we need to resolve those to a certain extent?xciv
Blackmore went on to say that, although she had not read any books on the issue or done any research,
she had not heard of anything significant in the field which would make her want to investigate further.
She did, however, despite not knowing anything about new research, then go on to to assert that:
I mean some things we know very well, don’t we? We know what proportions of people have
them; we know that people are posi-tively changed afterwards; we know something about
those kinds of changes. We know that various drugs in particular, painkillers and those kinds
of things, we mention that our experiences and blur them rather than enhancing them. We
know that levels of carbon dioxide are positively correlated with those experiences.xcv
To which Tsakiris responded:
No, we don’t. And I don’t think we should get into that because you just said that you haven't
followed it for 15 years. If you want to get into it then I would put you opposite a researcher,
Pim Van Lommel or like I said, Dr. Jeff Long, or Dr. Bruce Greyson. People who are really
up to date on the research who have published, have collected data for 20 or 30 years rather
than - you're doing this thing again where you say, “I’m completely removed from the field. I
don’t have anything to say. I haven’t researched. I haven’t read any of the literature. I have a
stack of books I haven’t read and none of them are even NDE books. They're not even on my
table.” And then you're going to spout off all these things that you believe or that you assume
to be true without looking at the research. I appreciate just having an opinion, but I’ve got to
ask how well-informed is it?xcvi
Alex Tskiris devoted quite a few shows to discussions with NDE researchers and various ‘debunkers’,
and the conclusion he came to was:
… you’ll hear this over and over again from … skeptical neuro-logists, skeptics in general,
and mainstream scientists who haven’t looked at the data. What you’ll hear over and over
again is the research is heading towards a conventional explanation of near-death experience.
And here’s the thing. I’ve got to say – that’s not just a little bit wrong, that’s completely the
opposite of what’s really going on.xcvii
Dr. Ian Stevenson
i "The Truth of Rebirth: And Why it Matters for Buddhist Practice", by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Access to Insight, 23 April
2012, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/truth_of_rebirth.html ii Stapp H. Compatibility of Contemporary Physical Theory with Personality Survival p17 iii Stapp H. Compatibility of Contemporary Physical Theory with Personality Survival p2 iv ibid v ibid vi Personal email vii Personal email viii You can find this on my website and it will be published in a future book ‘Quantum Madhyamaka’. ix Stapp, H. P. (2010). ‘Minds and Values in the Quantum Universe’ in Information and the Nature of Reality, Davies, Paul
& Gregersen, Niels Henrik (eds), Cambridge University Press, p117. x Stapp, Henry (2007) p20 xi Herbert, Nick (1985) p16 xii Zukav, Gary (1979) xiiiCapra, F (1975) p36. xiv Kaiser, D (2011) p 157 xv Stapp, Henry (2007) p20 xvi A ‘Bhikkhu’ is a Buddhist monk xvii http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/karma.html xviii Kaiser, D (2011) p102 xix Wallace, B. Alan (2012) p152-153 xx Walshe, M. (trans.) (1987) p106 xxi http://www.mindpowernews.com/LivingDead.htm xxii ibid xxiii ibid xxiv ibid xxv Kelly E. E, Kelly E. W, Crabtree A., Gauld, A., Grosso M., Greyson B. (2007) p379 xxvi Kelly E. E, Kelly E. W, Crabtree A., Gauld, A., Grosso M., Greyson B. (2007) p380-381 xxvii Kelly E. E, Kelly E. W, Crabtree A., Gauld, A., Grosso M., Greyson B. (2007) p384 xxviii Kelly E. E, Kelly E. W, Crabtree A., Gauld, A., Grosso M., Greyson B. (2007) p382-383 xxix Kelly E. E, Kelly E. W, Crabtree A., Gauld, A., Grosso M., Greyson B. (2007) p385 xxx Stapp H. Compatibility of Contemporary Physical Theory with Personality Survival p5 xxxi Stapp H. Compatibility of Contemporary Physical Theory with Personality Survival p7 xxxii Stapp, H. Nondual Quantum Duality xxxiii Influence of Yogachara p109 xxxiv Stapp H. Compatibility of Contemporary Physical Theory with Personality Survival p10 xxxv Stapp H. Compatibility of Contemporary Physical Theory with Personality Survival p14 xxxvi John D., Davies, Paul C. W., Harper, Charles L. (eds) (2004) p577 – Wheeler, J A (1999) ‘Information, physics,
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http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/nyanaponika/wheel105.html liv http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.15.0.than.html lv Kyabje Kalu Rinpoche, ‘Mind, karma, Ego formation and Liberation in Tibetan Buddhism’ - http://www.shenpen-
osel.org/issue6.pdf lvi Soni R. L. (1980) p58 lvii Soni R. L. (1980) p63-64
lviii Soni R. L. (1980) p65 lix Sogyal Rinpoche (2008) p4 lx Sogyal Rinpoche (2008) p5-6 lxi Harvey J. Irwin (2004). An introduction to parapsychology McFarland, p. 218. lxii Jim B. Tucker (2005). Life Before Life: A scientific Investigation of Children's Memories of Previous Lives, St. Martin's
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Post and Old Souls lxv Shroder, T (2001) p67 lxvi ibid lxvii Shroder, T (2001) p74 lxviii Houshmand Z., Livingston R. B., & Wallace B. A. (1999) p73-74 lxix Shroder, T (2001) p155 lxx Shroder, T (2001) p159-160 lxxi Shroder, T (2001) p77 lxxii http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_21_3_tucker.pdf p544-5 lxxiii ‘Birthmarks and Birth Defects Corresponding to Wounds on Deceased Persons p405 lxxiv http://healpastlives.com/aboutus/comment/isreibio.htm lxxv Margalit Fox (February 18, 2007). "Ian Pretyman Stevenson, 88; Studied Claims of Past Lives". New York Times. lxxvi http://www.skepdic.com/stevenson.html lxxvii ibid lxxviii ibid lxxix Sagan, Carl. The Demon-Haunted World, Random House, 1997, p. 302 lxxx AlterNet / By John Gorenfeld (2007-01-05). "Sam Harris's Faith in Eastern Spirituality and Muslim Torture". AlterNet. lxxxi Brahm, Ajahn (2011) p121 lxxxii Kyabje Kalu Rinpoche, ‘Mind, karma, Ego formation and Liberation in Tibetan Buddhism’ - http://www.shenpen-
osel.org/issue6.pdf lxxxiii Brunnhölzl, Karl (2011) p24 lxxxiv Walshe, M. (trans.) (1987) p104 lxxxv Walshe, M. (trans.) (1987) footnote – p546 lxxxvi Brunnhölzl, Karl (2010) p53 lxxxvii Goswami, Amit (2001) p136 lxxxviii Dalai Lama (Introduction) & Gyurme Dorje (Translator) (2006) xxviii lxxxix Lati, Rimpoche & Hopkins, J. (Editor) (1985) p10 xc Walshe, M. (trans.) (1987) p104-105 xci Moorjani, A. (2012) p65 xcii Moorjani, A. (2012) p67 xciii Kelly E. E, Kelly E. W, Crabtree A., Gauld, A., Grosso M., Greyson B. (2007) p597 xciv http://www.skeptiko.com/near-death-experience-skeptic-dr-susan-blackmore-responds-to-critics/ xcv ibid xcvi ibid xcvii http://www.skeptiko.com/steven-novella-dead-wrong-on-near-death-experience-research/