Buddhist Road Map



Based on a document by Scott Noble under the same topic.



 I will be focusing on Theravada Buddhism, since this form of Buddhism, found mainly in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Burma, Cambodia and Laos, claims to resemble the original teachings of Sakyamuni Buddha most closely. Other schools claim this as well, but historically speaking (not mystically speaking), the Theravada school's claims to be the most substantiated. Much of what has been written on Buddhism presents an idealized and incomplete portrait of Buddha's teachings. This is difficult to avoid due to the vastness of the subject, but is enhanced by those who focus mainly on the positive aspects of Buddhism, omitting the most difficult issues. In this paper I do not claim to provide a comprehensive portrait, but I will attempt to address some of the more obscure and lesser known issues and dilemmas of Buddhism, showing that it is indeed a fascinating system, but not one which will help a person fulfill his destiny in life. The paper will be presented under eight subtopics, namely No Soul (Anatta), Rebirth, Nirvana, Karma and God.



  



No Soul (Anatta)



Descartes is known for the phrase, "I think-therefore I am". My high school history teacher punished us with the following phrase: " I am pink-therefore I am Spam". Taking an entirely different approach to these evidences for identity, Buddhism concludes with the concept "I am not". In John Garrett Jone's book, "Tales and Teachings of the Buddha: The Jataka Stories in relation to the Pali canon", Jones takes a look at how popular representations of the Buddha's teachings, as seen in the Jataka Stories, compare with the more orthodox Four Nikayas of the Pali Canon (The four Nikayas are in the second basket of the Tripitaka, called the Sutta Pitaka. There are actually five Nikayas in this basket, but the fifth – the Khuddaka Nikaya – is considered to be less reliable, containing later additions. In fact many well renowned Buddhist scholars have very unceremoniously conceded that the whole canon is unreliable as the original teachings have been left out and many a new additions have been included. The following statements will make you to have a clear picture about the Buddhist canon:



“We cannot assuredly state that the 'Deega Nikaya' we have in present days was the one that was presented to the first reform council (Dharma Sangayana). There were many reform councils held after the first one. In all these reform councils, Nikayas and Divisions would have been subjected to many amendments. Therefore, the most accepted view would be that the present day 'Deega Nikaya' is a collection of Suttas subjected to amendments, additions and deletions done during many reform councils held after the first one. It is very difficult to state the exact historical details of these amendments. The view of the scholars is that there are differences of historical period between each 'Sutta' and even between parts of the same 'Sutta'. According to the scholars, 'Brahmajala', 'Samajjapala' and 'Thevijja' are supposed to be the oldest 'Suttas' in 'Deega Nikaya'. Similarly, 'Janavasaba', 'Mahasudassana' and 'Lakkana' have been considered by scholars as belonging to a later period of history……. It is evident from 'Lakkana' sutta how Buddha has been gradually transformed into a super human being. It is useful to read the 'Lakkana' sutta to know about the thirty two super human signs of Budda". (Chief Monk Akuratiye Amarawansa, Chancellor of the Vidyodaya Buddhist University (Pirivena), Maligakanda, Colombo; Scholar of the Tripitaka and Chief Monk of Southern Sri Lanka. In his preface to the Sinhala translation of Deega Nikaya)



 



'A few hundred years after his passing away, the disciples of the Buddha organized a religion around the teachings of the Master. While organizing the religion, they incorporated, among other concepts and beliefs, various types of miracles, mysticism, fortune telling, charms, talismans, mantras, prayers and many rites and rituals that were not found in the original teaching'. (Dr. Kirinde Sri Dhammananda Chief Priest (Singapore and Malaysia) in his book ' What Buddhists Believe' page 57).



 



'Some scholars assert that the Abhidhamma is not the teaching of the Buddha, but it grew out of the commentaries on the basic teachings of the Buddha. These commentaries are said to be the work of great scholar monks…….. From ancient times there were controversies as to whether the Abhidhamma was really taught by the Buddha.' (Dr. Kirinde Sri Dhammananda Chief Priest (Singapore and Malaysia) in his book ' What Buddhists Believe' page 71).



According to the learned Chief Priest, the authenticity of the nucleus of the present day Buddhism 'Abhidhamma' has been a controversial subject since the beginning.)



 



Let us be back with Mr. Jones' book. I.B. Horner, former president of the Pali Text Society, gives Jones the following recommendation in the forward to Jones' Book. "Mr. Jones is well versed in both Jataka and Canon, and is thus able to draw on both not only with apparent ease but also with aptness and accuracy and dependable documentation". Jones in his chapter on rebirth, addresses the doctrine of "no soul", pointing out that, according to orthodox Buddhist beliefs, souls are not reborn, because Buddhism admits to no such entity. "Consciousness (Vinnana) is one of the five Khandas (the five Khandas of which a person consists are said to be matter, sensations, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness) which are dissolved at death. Deprived of its physical basis, or, if we prefer it, its physical correlate, how could it possibly survive death? In Majjima Nikaya, Gautama does in fact vigorously refute the 'heresy' of a persisting consciousness".



The doctrine of "no soul" undermines the entire premise of the Jataka Stories, which are supposed to be rebirth tales of Sakyamuni Buddha. Without a soul, what is the connecting point from life to life of the same distinct individual? The answer usually given to that question is that the Karma of a being carries through. But, what does this "Karma" attach itself to, if not to the one to whom that Karma was due? Daniel J. Gogerly in his 1885 edition of "The evidences and Doctrines of the Christian Religion", after 44 years of Pali study, wrote the following:



"The Buddhist religion is that which Buddha taught, and which is found in his Sutras, and not that which persons may hold who are ignorant of these teachings. We shall in the first instance prove that Buddha teaches, that the person by whom the actions were performed is not the same with the person who is rewarded or punished: that the connection is not between the man who performs the action, and the good or evil resulting from that action, but between the action performed and its results, whoever may be the recipient of those results. This is contrary to every known principle of justice, which associates the doer of the good action with the reward, whereas in Buddhism the reward will follow the good actions, but the performer of the good action will not be the recipient of the reward. This results from Buddha's doctrine that there is no soul in man which transmigrates, but that the whole of a man, the whole of the Panchaskanda ceases at death.



A belief in Anatta would mean, for example, that when Adolf Hitler died, the aggregates of his "being" dissolved, and then his enormously bad Karma attached itself to someone or something (may be a lowly insect), having absolutely no consciousness of the evil deeds done, or the reason for the suffering. Can this be called JUSTICE? WHO is rewarded in this system? When the word "self" is used in Buddhism, such as "self improvement", "be a refuge to unto yourself", etc., this word is used for the sake of convenience, as opposed to describing an absolute self. Walpola Rahula Thero, in "What the Buddha Taught", responds to those who try to point to a self or soul in Buddhism:



"Those who want to find a 'Self' in Buddhism argue as follows: 'It is true that the Buddha analyses being into matter, sensation, perception, mental formations, and consciousness, and says that none of these things is self. But he does not say that there is no 'Self' at all in man or anywhere else, apart from these aggregates'. This position is untenable for two reasons: One is that, according to Buddha's teaching, a being is composed only of these FIVE AGGREGATES, and nothing more. Nowhere has he said that there was anything more than these Five Aggregates in a being. The second reason is that the Buddha denied categorically, in unequivocal terms, in more than one place, the existence of Atman, Soul, Self or Ego within man or without, or anywhere else in the universe". (Pages 56-57).



The following document published in the Pravda newspaper in Russia very categorically and scientifically proves the existence of another ENTITY along with the human body, which has a distinct existence as 'Self', 'Soul' or 'I'. These scientific discoveries have made the Buddhist concept of 'No Soul' to fall to the ground.      



 

Scientists claim life after death exists



11/07/2005 22:27 – Pravda – Russia.



Death is only an interchange station between the two worlds



Every person at some point of his life questions himself what comes next after the physical death. Is everything to finish with the last breath or does the soul goes on living?



Russian language connects the notion of soul with the word to breath as these have similar roots. Since earlier times people observed dead and alive tribesmen and made a conclusion that there was something inside a human being connected with breath. They started calling it soul (or dusha in Russian).



Australian aborigines believe in soul's existence. They think that a woman gets pregnant if she passes a tree, a rock or some animal, whose soul moves into the body of her future child.



The existence of soul is acknowledged by the people in Asia, Europe, America, Africa and Australia. In the Ancient Egypt soul was considered a constituent part of a human body.



Each religion allots a certain place in the organism for the soul. People in the ancient Babylon, for instance, thought that soul lived in ears. Ancient Jews believed it could be found in human blood.



However, there is an opinion that this substance occupies the whole body, not just a single organ. One of the most prominent figures of Russian Orthodox Church Dmitry Rostovsky agrees with this point of view.



Not so long ago German psychologists of Lubeck University conducted a really interesting experiment. They asked children aged 7-17 where in the human body the soul could be located. The eldest ones said it could be found everywhere. Some said that the soul existed in the head while the youngest ones pointed to a part of body a bit to the left of the heart. Yet some even named eyes or solar plexus as "the residence of the soul".



In recent years the hypothesis of the soul occupying the heart has found certain confirmation.  A psychiatrist Paul Pearsall of Sinai Hospital of Detroit wrote a book The Heart's Code based on the answers he got from 140 patients with transplanted heart during the questionnaire. As a result, Dr. Pearsall concluded that it is in the heart that the personality is programmed. The heart controls the brain and not vice versa. Feelings, fears, dreams and thoughts are all decoded in heart cells. This cell memory - a soul - is transferred to another person with a transplanted heart. There are numerous examples in the book that support this idea. A 41-year-old who was transplanted the heart of a 19-year-old girl that had died in the railway accident changed drastically after the operation. He used to be really cool and sober but suddenly turned into temperamental and careless person.



Another interesting example is of Silvia Clair, dancing instructor from New York. At the age of 50 she had a transplantation of heart. When she came round after the operation the first thing she though about was beer. Afterwards at nights she started dreaming of some mysterious man called T.L. After secret investigation she found out that she had the heart of a guy who had died at the age of 18. His initials were T.L . and according to his relatives his favorite drink was cold beer.



At the end of 1990 sensational news spread around the world. Scientists at one of the US laboratories managed to weigh the soul. They discovered that people weighed 2.5-6.5 grams less after their death. However, this was not the first attempt to weigh the soul. In 1915, similar experiment was conducted in the US. At that time scientists came to the conclusion that the soul weighed 22.4 grams.



Even more sensational was the year 2001. At the beginning of the year British scientists Sam Parnia and Peter Fenwick suggested that consciousness might continue living after the brain has stopped functioning. The research involved 63 patients that experienced clinical death. 56 people do not remember anything of the period when they were clinically dead. However, seven patients had clear memories of what they felt at that period. Four of them said they were overwhelmed with joy and peace and the time was running faster. Then they saw a bright light and saw mythical creatures that looked like angels or saints. They claimed they had been to another world for some time and then came back.



It is worth mentioning that none of the patients was religious. Three of them confessed that did not attend church at all. Thus, these stories cannot be explained by religious fanaticism.



British scientists refuted the traditional idea that the brain stopped functioning because of the lack of oxygen. None of the patients showed a significant decay of oxygen content in the tissues of central nervous system.



Another hypothesis that was brought into challenge is that the visions may be caused by inexpedient combination of medicine during resuscitation. Everything was performed strictly according to the standard procedure.



Later in December 2001 three Dutch scientists under the supervision of Pim van Lommel conducted the biggest research involving people who had experienced clinical death. The results were published in the medical journal Lancet and were similar to those of the British scientists.



Van Lommel and his colleagues claimed that the visions came at the very moment when the central neural system stopped functioning. This means that the consciousness is separate from the brain's activity.



Van Lommel provides a fascinating example of the Near Death Experience. A patient in coma was delivered to the resuscitation ward. All the attempts to reanimate him proved unsuccessful. His brain stopped functioning and the encephalogram showed a straight line. Doctors decided to try intubation (that is insertion of a tube into larynx and trachea for ventilation and airway management). The patient had a denture that was taken away by the doctor. In an hour the patient's heart started beating again and his blood pressure came back to normal. In a week, the resurrected patient asked the nurse: "You know, where my denture is! You took away my teeth and put them into a drawer of a trolley!" He said that he was observing himself from above at the moment of his own death. He described in a detail the ward and the doctors' actions. The man was really afraid that doctors would stop reanimating him and tried to show them he was alive.

 

Dutch scientists also discovered that women had more powerful feelings than men. Most of the patients that had very deep clinical death die in the next month after the reanimation measures. The visions of blind people do not differ from those who are able to see.



It looks like scientists are very busy with proving immortality of the soul. The only thing we can do is accept that death is only an interchange station between the two worlds.



Pravda – Russia.



Buddhism makes a fool of man by promising to guide him to safety, whilst it leads him to the very verge of the fatal precipice. We need not wonder at the moral circumstances of the people who profess this system. The result of a sincere reception of Buddhism, as its purpose is presented in the Pitakas, is to reduce man to the smallest minimum of vitality. The wisdom of sentient existence is, to seek to become non-sentient and non-existence, and as man does not possess an immortal soul, it is possible for this to be effected. To prove the impossibility of the existence of a soul, many a long and weary conversation is recorded in the Abhidhamma. All thought is regarded as a material result. The operation of the mind is no different in mode to that of the eye or ear, vision is eye touch, hearing is ear touch and thinking is heart touch. The man, as we have repeatedly seen according to the teachings of Pitakas, is a mere mass, or cluster and nothing more. He who can reduce himself to a state most resembling a fish when it lies stagnant in the mud, or an animal when it hibernates, is regarded as having attained to the most exalted state of existence. The world next to Nirvana, in the order of privilege, is the fourth Brahma Loka, where the Brahmas live 80,000 Maha Kalpas ( Dr. A.L. Basham, in his research work 'The wonder that was India' indicates in Chapter 7 that one kalpa is equal to 4.32 billion years), in a state of neither conscious nor unconscious, like the infant that lies in its cradle in a dim uncertainty of thought and feeling, partly sensible and partly senseless. Our own fair world, and all its scenes of beauty, with all the sweetness of social communion, is to be turned away from and despised. The act wisely in the highest degree, is to retire to the wilderness, and shut up all the senses, and get to be so near nothing that whilst yet living there shall be a universal paralysis of body and soul. The devotee has then only to commit the suicide of immortality, and secure non-existence, and he has reached the perfection of being, which is, NOT TO BE.



In such a system there can be none of the activities of benevolence. Words of kindness are whispered gently by the lip, because this can be done without an effort to be practically kind, and such words are plentiful. In a discourse connected with the Pirith, the following sentences are repeated: "May every being experience happiness, peace and mental enjoyment! Whatever sentient beings may exist, erratic or stationery, or of whatever kind, long tall middle sized short or stout, seen or unseen, near or remote, born or otherwise existing, may every being be happy, as a mother protects her child, the child of her bosom, so let immeasurable benevolence, prevail among all beings! Let unbounded kindness and benevolence prevail throughout the universe above, below, around, without partiality, anger or enmity! Let these dispositions be established in all who are awake, whether standing, walking, sitting or reclining, this place be thus constituted a holy residence"! Yet the priest who utters these words knows that if he were to make any movement whatever towards carrying the sentiments they express into effect, he would thereby expose himself to clerical censure. He blesses by words and not by works. He is an overflowing fountain of mercy, but receives back within himself all the streams that proceed there from. He receives and does not give. He is the kindness of the heart and not of the hand. It is forbidden for him to prescribe in cases of sickness or to prepare medicines or to perform any surgical operation (Deega Nikaya – Sutta Pitaka). One half of the human race is entirely shut out from his sympathy and regard, as he may not look upon a woman and the sound of her voice is represented as a snare (Maha Parinibbana Sutta – Deega Nikaya).       



To gain a livelihood by calculating eclipses or studying the motions of the planets or cultivating the ground is called as in the other instances just named, the seeking of an unworthy livelihood by an (Tirachchana) science) (Kutadanta Sutta, Brahmajala Sutta –Deega Nikaya). We need not wonder at the vacant look of the robed mendicant. The worship of the people can afford little satisfaction to one excluded from the smile of woman, the gleam of the stars, and all opportunity of doing good.



The proper idea of sin cannot enter into the mind of the Buddhist. His system knows nothing of a Supreme Intelligent Ruler of the Universe. The priest is to consider, "I am the result of Karma, this forms my inheritance, my state of birth, my relatives, my support, I shall be heir of all the actions I perform, whether they be good or evil". You must have the font kaputadotcom to read the following writings of Medagama Dhammananda Thera in Sinhala, on subject of Re-birth as explained in Buddhism.





As explained above in Sinhala, the learned monk reiterates that the one re-born after your demise is exactly NOT YOU.  It is another being but only carrying your good and bad deeds. But this method of retribution is imperfect and altogether unsatisfactory. It is one being that does good, and another that is rewarded. It is one being that commit evil, and another being that is punished. The Buddhist may say, "Why need I care about the being that is to succeed to my merit? When he is, I shall not be. His existence involves my non-existence. I can never know anything about him, and he will never know anything about me. And as, when he lives, I shall be broken up, gone out, and non-sentient, what matters it to me whether the heir of my acts be an angel or a dweller in the Avichi hell? Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!" How could Buddhist teachings help to uplift the moral and ethical standard of mankind, with this type of defective and unacceptable belief system about the life after death?



Upon these principles, there can be no transmigration (Punarbavaya), in the usual acceptance of the term. That which transmigrates is not the spirit, the soul, the self, but the conduct and character of the man, something too subtle to be defined or explained. The analogy of the flame and the tree is misleading and defective. The flame produces another flame of the same nature, but the existence of the one does not involve the going out of the other, and from one flame a thousand flames may be produced, all burning simultaneously. The tree lives, in some instances many hundreds of years, after it has begun to produce fruit, and it always produces its like, something after "its kind", from mango fruit comes a mango tree, and not a goraka, as from the goraka fruit comes a goraka tree, and not a mango. The tree is one but its fruits are many. But on the principle of Buddhism, when the man dies, he only produces ONE other being, and the being that he produces is most generally a being of a nature entirely different to himself, it may be an ant, a crow, a monkey, a whale, a dengue mosquito, an evil spirit, or a deity. The number of sentient beings in the universe must ever remain the same from the day one till the end of time, if each being inherits one separate and unbroken series of Karma, unless it be in the period in which men can receive Nirvana. And by what means does it happen that just as one being dies another is beginning to exist, as the new being is produced, not by the Upadana of the former being alone, but through the agency of other causes, entirely separate from itself, but required to act in unison with it. "Another difficult thing to understand about rebirth is whether the occurrence of rebirth is simultaneous or not. This is a controversial issue even amongst prominent Buddhist scholars. According to Abhidhamma, rebirth (conception) takes place IMMEDIATELY after the death of a being without any intermediary state" - 'What Buddhists Believe' Dr. Kirinde Sri Dhammananda – page 101. Even the above statement in Sinhala informs us that the rebirth of a sentient being takes place simultaneously. And how is it that these causes are always in simultaneous operation at the very moment they are required? There must not only be these causes in operation at the very moment of the death of the being that produces the new being, but the result, the position of the new being, must be of such a character as to give opportunity for the reception of the Karma that has to be transferred, with all its inherent properties, and afford facilities for its exercise, in its own essential character, whether of good or evil. To these grave difficulties, Buddhism offers no solution. According to Buddhism, if I am to be reborn as a filarial mosquito, as and when my death takes place, a male and a female filarial mosquito must co-habit simultaneously and my Karma must be transferred to the new egg that has been produced as a result of this sex relationship. What is the force in operation to co-ordinate all these activities of trillions of sentient beings in the Universe? Buddhism has no plausible answers to any of these questions. They only indulge in unscientific, disagreeable, and unsubstantiated belief system.     



There is no law, because there is no lawgiver, no authority from which law can proceed. Buddha is superior in honor and wisdom to all other beings, but he claims no right to impose restrictions on other men. He points out the course to be taken, if merit is to be gained, but he who refuses to heed his words, does the Gautama Buddha no wrong. Religion is a mere code of proprieties, a mental opiate, a plan for being free from discomfort, a system of personal profit, a traffic in merit, a purchasable process.



In addressing itself to the individual man, apart from its honied words, it is a principle of selfishness, and yet, though this is its beginning, centre and end, it seeks to hide its selfishness by denying that there is any self. As there is no infinite and all-worthy Being, to whose glory we are called upon to live, when we commit evil the wrong is done to ourselves and not to another. There is no baseness about it, it is not an iniquity. Hence the impossibility of making Buddhist feel that he is a sinner, when the attempt is made to bring the commandment home to his conscience. A native of this country has been heard to say that he never committed sin since he was born, unless it were in catching fish, and some free themselves from the consequences of this transgression by saying that they only take the fish out of the water and they die of themselves.



In spite of teaching that there is no soul, but that there is rebirth, Sakyamuni Buddha still held to a conviction that this is a moral universe, Jones concludes: "He could not claim that this conviction had a sound basis in the rational, analytical part of his teaching, indeed, it would seem to me not too strong to say that there is a hopelessly irreconcilable contradiction between the two". But, if there is no soul, why does a Buddhist go to such great lengths to be free from rebirth, and why is it said that Sakyamuni proclaimed at the time of his "last" birth, that it was his last birth? WHOSE last birth?



REBIRTH                                                                                                                                                            



In the popular story of Sakyamuni's final birth and renunciation of worldly pleasures, several questions arise. If Sakyamuni had really passed through virtual countless lives previous to that one, why did his father need to shelter him from the harsher side of life – why was Sakyamuni so startled by the sites of death, poverty, and old age, when he finally ventured out of the palace to see things for himself? If we are to take Jataka re-birth tales at face value, he would have been quite familiar with all of these harsher realities of life – in fact according to the Jataka tales, he was sometimes a participant in the cruel side of life, "…. Within this group is the one which depicts the Bodhisattva himself as being, in one way or another, involved in killing or injuring. The stories concerned are JSS 93, 128, 129, 152, 178, 233, 238, 246, 315, 319, 384" (Jones – 61). Among the 547 Jataka stories, he was twice said to have been a robber, once a gambler, and twice a giant snake (Jones 18 – 19). He would also have been familiar with suffering according to Jataka 538, which states he had to spend eighty thousand years in the Ussada hell (Jones 43). So why was Sakyamuni so struck by the fact of death or suffering, as if he had never experienced or seen these things? The common answer given to this question is that previous lives must be remembered in a state of meditation, when the mind is free from distraction, and more capable of reaching these deep levels of memory. But how can the mind store such information when the mind and everything of which people are said to consist (the five aggregates) are said to not survive death? Actually though, this popular story of the Buddha's renunciation is not found in the Pali Canon.



In the Pali Canon, as a baby, the Buddha (Siddhartha) was said to have walked uprightly and proclaimed that it was his last birth: "Chief am I in the world, Eldest am I in the world, Foremost am I in the world! This is the last birth!" – Deega Nikaya, Mahapadana Sutta. How can a baby be so mature as to speak these lofty words if there is no enduring soul? In the non-canonical story, the problem of Anatta arises because meditation does not explain how the 35 year old Bodhisattva could "remember" that which according to his own doctrine was not an enduring soul. In the canonical story, the problem of Anatta is still there, because his doctrine of no enduring soul stands in contrast to a baby speaking from the perspective of an enduring soul, relieved to see the end in sight.



The doctrinal mismatch between Anatta and rebirth leaves the intellect unsatisfied, while an attempt is made to appease the conscience with an invented morality: "When two propositions conflict, the simplest possible solution is to ignore one of them – which is precisely what Jataka does. There is no contradiction in the Jataka between the doctrine of Anatta (no soul) and the doctrine of a series of lives in the same individual because the doctrine of Anatta is simply ignored" (Jones 39). Sakyamuni did not want to let go of morality, but his system is one which leads people to contradiction, both intellectually and in 'merit distribution' – both the villainous and the virtuous are said to have no soul connection from one life to the next – and thus the ones receiving a particular 'lot' are not the ones 'earned' it.



But apart from these difficulties with rebirth, what about real life cases of people who claim to have been reborn? Ernest Valea, in his online article "Past – life recall as modern proof for reincarnation", quotes Ian Stevenson, who is one of the foremost authorities in the field of rebirth/reincarnation research:



"In my experience, nearly all so-called previous personalities evoked through hypnotism are entirely imaginary and a result of the patient's eagerness to obey the hypnotist's suggestion. It is no secret that we are all highly suggestible under hypnosis. This kind of investigation can actually be dangerous. Some people have been terribly frightened by their supposed memories, and in other cases the previous personality evoked has refused to go away for a long time (Omni Magazine 10-4: 76-1988".



Valea points out that this phenomenon is called "false memory syndrome", and that, "Courts of Law know these dangers and most do not accept testimonies produced under hypnosis or from witnesses that have been previously hypnotized". What about other cases, where the 'memories' are not evoked by hypnotism? Valea brings our attention to the demographic of people who are usually targeted for this:



"Almost all cases of spontaneous past life recall experiences are produced by children who manifest them between the age of two and five, when their spiritual discernment is almost nonexistent, especially concerning spirits. This situation makes them easier to be manipulated by external spirits. As the child grows up, the entities lose their power of influence upon him, which could explain why the past life memories are lost after the age of ten".



In one case researched by Stevenson, a person actually had two personalities expressing themselves at the same time. As in the cases of the children, where manifestations took place when the individuals were at a vulnerable time in their lives (especially if their parents were taking them to centers of spiritual activity), spirit possession or the person acting as a 'medium' is a likelier explanation. This interference by outside spirits shows the extremely subjective nature of rebirth research. Valea concludes with Stevenson's conclusion:



"For this reason Ian Stevenson, the well known researcher of this phenomenon, was forced to admit in his book "Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation" that the cases he studied, as the very title of his book indicates, are only suggesting reincarnation and cannot be considered proofs for it. Stevenson admitted: 'All the cases I have investigated so far have shortcomings. Even taken together, they do not offer anything like proof' (Omni Magazine 10-4 : 76-1988). If this is the case, they could also be suggestive of spirit possession".



 



 



Seeing the possibility of outside spirits to deceive in this way, how are we to suppose that a monk or nun who is meditating is immune to this outside influence? Meditation actually swings the door wide open to such an influence. The monk or nun may experience many things during their meditation and  count them as confirmation of the Buddha's doctrine. Are they though? Can we really count this as a confirmation when they were trying to have such 'memories' in the first place, and when the experiences are largely subjective? Even if a person can reveal information they would not naturally know, this information is something which outside spiri<