Living in a Recycled World?

Is the Hindu doctrine of reincarnation 'true' or 'false'? That is, does the mechanism outlined by this doctrine correctly describe the structure of physical reality? There are two ways of approaching this question. One is to go around hunting for empirical data, say paranormal phenomena, psychic recollections of past lives and the like. (Though there is the complex question of whether such data would unanimously be regarded as ‘empirical’.) The other is to understand the reasons why the theory is put forward, and what possible arguments can be brought against it. In this post, I am interested in the second question. Let me first outline the theory of reincarnation. There are differences among the various Hindu philosophical schools in this matter, depending on whether they are monistic or theistic, but what follows now is a description that all of these would broadly agree to.

The theory of reincarnation is primarily a kind of theodicy. A theodicy is an explanation of how it is possible that if we live in a moral world there can be so much of grave moral disparity. How is it that we often find the good suffering and the wicked prospering? In other words, such experiences threaten to undermine our basic faith that we live in a world that is morally structured, down to the very ‘roots’. A person who is ‘moral’ could claim that she is so not simply because she chooses to be moral but also because she has a faith in her morality, a faith that ‘being moral’ is the ‘authentic’ way of being human. To put it bluntly, choosing to be moral is not like choosing to eat strawberry flavoured ice-cream instead of chocolate flavoured ice-cream. And to put it even more strongly, she could say that she chooses to be moral because she believes that there is no other way of 'being human'.

But we do see various kinds of disparities, physical, economic, temperamental, spiritual and so on, and the theory of reincarnation is an attempt to explain how these could have arisen. It argues that whatever we do (our moral actions or our karma) leaves behind a sort of imprint on our subtle bodies (suksma sarira), and over a period of time our good deeds and our evil deeds get collected there into a set of propensities. To be called good, a good man should not be someone who simply happens to do something kind and noble on one morning alone : rather, his goodness should flow from the very depths of his being. That is, his goodness should emerge from a set of good propensities.

One of the crucial claims of the theory of reincarnation is that when we die, this ‘death’ does not amount to the total annihilation of existence. If that were to be the case, this world will become, according to some proponents of this theory, a kind of moral chaos. Evil people will have a comfortable life at the expense of the sufferings of countless others and that will be, as we say, the end of the story. This will have grave implications, it is argued, for our faith that this world is a moral one : that is, the faith that being moral is not an idiosyncratic option but a genuine ‘necessity’ that produces ‘true freedom’.

Instead, the theory claims that the subtle body with its karmic propensities undergoes a transmigration into another pyscho-physical complex, called the gross body. Thereafter, this subtle body will be reincarnated several times until it attains liberation. There is no Hindu consensus on how this liberation is to be conceptualized or attained, but broadly speaking, most of the Hindu schools agree that the subtle body must purify itself of all human passions such as anger, hatred, and fear, and get rid of ignorance about the essential nature of the inner Self (atman). When this is accomplished, the subtle body will not be reincarnated anymore, and this cessation of transmigration is also the ultimate goal of human existence.

In a new existence, the person first has to face her karmic baggage (technically called : prarabdha karma) inherited from her previous existence, and this lays down the rules within which she can operate. For example, she might have inherited an irascible temperament and she will find it difficult, though not impossible, to remain calm and collected in this life. It is crucial to note that this is not the same thing as version of ‘predeterminism’. The past lives do not completely control the present life though they do exert a strong influence on it. So for example, the person with an irascible temperament still retains her free choice to try to remain calm, but her inherited baggage will ‘load’ him/her towards outbursts of anger.

Let me now come to some of the arguments that are given by proponents of the theory of reincarnation to show why it is superior to other cosmological arguments about the nature of our existence and also to some of the important counter-criticisms of this theory. Proponents of a theory of reincarnation claim that other religions (typically the three Abrahamic ones, Islam, Judaism and Christianity) cannot explain why there are so many disparities among human beings. Why are some people born blind, lame or ridden with terminal diseases? Why do some babies die stillborn, and some people die a slow and painful death? Proponents of this theory claim that the Abrahamic religions come very close to attributing these existential differences to God. It will not do to reply, they say, that a man is born blind because of certain genetic dysfunctions because the question can then be repeated by pushing it back by one stage : why did God not see to it that this dysfunctional behaviour did not occur? Since God is the creator of everything and everyone, it would seem to imply that it is God who has (ultimately) created people who are born with various limitations. And this, the proponents of the theory of reincarnation claim, is a serious inconsistency with the other claim that everything that God creates is good. Moreover, its proponents claim that the Abrahamic religions cannot 'make sense' of the reality of animal pain. Why are there so many forms of life such as animals and birds which seem to undergo apparently meaningless and unmerited pain?

These are surely grave problems that the Abrahamic religions have to deal with, but the theory of reincarnation too has its own nest of troubles. According to this theory, our present station in life can be explained partially on the basis of our (mis-)deeds in a previous existence. If that be so, this would seem to take away, so argue its critics, the very ground from every form of human compassion and love.

If I see a human being in pain I should not, on one possible ‘reading’ of the principle of reincarnation, do anything to help her. I have no right to interfere with her existence for she is working out the 'fruits' of a previous existence. Therefore, if I help her, I shall paradoxically be hindering her efforts to attain liberation; at the very least, I shall delay that attainment. Note that this is not to say that I cannot empathise with her; I can indeed feel her suffering deeply and be touched by it : I do not have to become an apathetic monster. But if I try to remove her pain in some way, that would hinder the working out of her previous karma : she has to live through the pain on her own.

Similarly, if a friend of mine dies tomorrow, I should not grieve over him : he died simply because his karmic balance ran out. I think that his death was sudden, but this apparent suddenness merely reveals my ignorance of the detailed working out of the law of reincarnation : if I had infinite knowledge, I would know why he had to die at that age at that time at that place on that day. Our suffering, therefore, ultimately is an illusion caused by ignorance.

Therefore, I might say that the ‘odds’ are evenly laid out between the proponents and the critics of the theory of reincarnation. On the one hand, the proponents of the theory of reincarnation have the merit that they are able to explain, without attributing 'evil' to a creator God, how there could be so much suffering in this world. Their answer is that individuals are only reaping the fruits of what they had sown in a previous existence. Strictly speaking, therefore, suffering is not a problem or a mystery : we do know why we suffer. The intricate details of why we are suffering in a specific context at a certain juncture in our lives may not be revealed to us, but we have a cerrain overarching principle of explanation. We may not know why John had to die at the age of 11, but we do understand that this was because of his previous misdeeds in an earlier life. In no way, then, is God responsible for his death at that early age, and that being the case, we cannot 'blame' God as being cruel or anything of that sort.

On the other hand, critics of the theory of reincarnation claim that it will cut the nerve of all our human interpersonal relations. Love/compassion will become a mere mockery of what we normally understand by that term. If A loves B and B loves A, they are simply playing out their roles governed (note that I say ‘governed’ and not ‘completely controlled’ : the latter is a predeterminism which the theory does not teach) by their past actions in previous existences. ‘Marriages are made in heaven’, but this is meant, so the critics go on, in a sense very different from the one in which the proponents of the theory might take it to be. In other words, it seems to reduce us to the status of actors who wear masks for a certain period of time, and then throw away these masks and put on a set of new ones in the next existence/s.