Children of immortality

By Maria Wirth
July 2012
The belief in rebirth is in the blood of most Indians and it is not a blind belief. There is a lot of
evidence for it, as Maria Wirth discovered

I dont remember which Bollywood movie
it was. Two heroes were wooing the heroine. Naturally, one had to die in the end, because she could not marry both.
As it happened, he died fighting to protect the other two. It was a sad end, because he was a nice guy. Just then a
voice ended the movie by saying, Vapis aega dusre roop mein. It suddenly brought in a philosophical angle. The
movie had not touched me, yet this last sentence did. This can happen only in India.

Right from the beginning of my stay in India, I have felt that death is not so terrifying here. Of course, here too there is
fear of death. Friends and relatives suffer when a dear one is lost. Yet death is still part of life, as it were and, not as
final as in the West. One major reason why death is not so final and stings less is certainly the belief in rebirth. This
belief is in the blood of Hindus and it is not blind belief. There are many good arguments in favour of it. The law of
karma, for example, makes much more sense when it is not applied to only one life. The differences between human
beings appear in a different light. Why is someone born in a palace and another in a hut? Why does one baby have
loving parents and another not? Why is one man healthy and another sick? Why is one person bright and intelligent,
and another mentally retarded? Such questions cannot be answered and lead many people to despair about a just
god. Yet rebirth gives a reasonable explanation. Everything is always in a flux. Who cries today, may laugh tomorrow,
and who laughs today may cry tomorrow in a continuous circle of life and death.

Since several decades, some scientists support the theory of rebirth. Though I had studied psychology, I discovered
only in India that there exists a vast body of research on the subject. Some 3000 cases of rebirth have been
systematically studied, and are filed in the archive of the Division of Perceptual Studies of the University of Virginia,
USA. Ian Stevenson, who died in 2007 at the age of 88, was the initiator and main authority of the studies.

Their research came to the conclusion that rebirth is the most plausible and most rational interpretation of their
findings. Nothing new for Indians, yet in the West this theory got a mixed response. Many Western scientists still
refuse to consider the possibility of rebirth.




Everything is always in
a fl ux. Who cries today,
may laugh tomorrow,
and who laughs today

They cannot get over their brainwashing in childhood that there is only
one life. Ian Stevensons greatest frustration was not that people
dismissed his theories, but that most did so without even reading the
evidence he had gathered. Either (Stevenson) is making a colossal
mistake, or he will be known as the Galileo of the 20th century, a
psychiatrist wrote about him. It shows that academics in the West are either like frogs in a well or
extremely arrogant. A great part of humanity takes rebirth for granted. Yet this academic feels that
Stevenson will be credited with discovering this theory if it turns out to be confirmed.

In India, Professor N.K. Chadha of Delhi University worked together with Ian Stevenson. I met him in
1990 and though he had given me an half an hour appointment, he talked for two hours as the time just
flew.

Investigating rebirth

Here is how he proceeds with his research:
It happens occasionally that the professor gets wind of a child, only three or four years old, who claims
with all the conviction he is capable of, to be a certain adult giving details of the name, the life and even
the death. The professors team visits the child, gathers information, tries to identify the person who had
died, and if identified, crosschecks all insider information. A case is considered solved when the person
who the child claims to have been, has been identified, all insider knowledge of the child crosschecked
and no discrepancies found. Then it can be safely assumed that the child is a case of rebirth.

Prof. Chadha had examined 25 cases out of which 11 were solved at that time. Take the case of Titu
Singh.

Titu was born in December 1983 in a village near Agra. As soon as he could speak, he started to claim
that his name was Suresh Verma, that he owned a radio shop in Agra and that one evening, when he
came home, he was shot dead. Further, he said, he had two sons and a wife named Uma. He spoke in
detail about his death he had driven home in his Fiat and honked so that his wife would open the gate.
Suddenly, two men came running and fired at him. One bullet hit his head.

Titu was aggressive towards his new parents. He did not believe they were his parents. His real
parents, he stubbornly maintained, lived in Agra. Titus elder brother finally went to Agra and was shocked
to find, indeed, a Suresh Radio Shop in the bazaar. He gathered information: the owner a certain
Suresh Verma had died in August 1983, exactly in the way that Titu had described. Uma, the widow of
Suresh, went together with her parents-in-law and Sureshs three brothers to the village of Titu. Titu
immediately ran towards his parents and embraced them. He shyly glanced at Uma and then turned to
his brothers. Why did you not come in my Fiat? he deplored. They had sold the Fiat after Sureshs
death.

Titus case

Titu was taken to Agra. The brothers, all adults, drove past the radio shop to test him. However, the four-
year-old pounced on the driver, Stop! Here is my shop, he shouted.

Prof. Chadha and Dr. Antonia Mills of Virginia University examined the case over almost four years.
Once, when Prof. Chadha asked the little Titu to greet Mahesh, the 35-year-old younger brother of
may cry tomorrow in a
continuous circle of life
and death



Suresh, he refused. Interestingly. Mahesh was the only member of the Verma family who had some
doubts. He changed his stand after he tested Titu himself. He grasped the wrist of Titu, Prof. Chadha
narrated, and did not let go of it. Tell me what happened during my wedding? he demanded. The boy
reacted annoyed. I threw plates. Now, Mahesh was also convinced. It was true. Suresh had spoilt the
atmosphere of the wedding when he angrily threw plates.

The scientists discovered something else intriguing. Titu has a strange depression on his right temple.
They studied the autopsy record and found that the bullet had entered Sureshs head at exactly that
place. Strangely, in about four out of ten rebirth cases, the child remembered a sudden, violent death,
through either accident or murder.

The interval between death and rebirth was also significantly shorter, if the remembered person had died
of unnatura


Maria Wirth is a German national
who came to India for a holiday
and never left, drawn to this
countrys devotion to the Divine.l causes. In Titus case, it was only five months before he took rebirth. On an
average, such rebirths are below two years. The short span between death and birth, may make the
memory easier to access, and the identification with the earlier person dominates.

Do you personally believe in rebirth? I asked Prof Chadha. His answer was a clear, Yes. Most Indians
do not need scientific proof. It is logical, the best possible explanation for all the differences between
humans. However, parents usually dont want their children to remember an earlier birth, as there is the
superstition that such children die early. In rural India there are even methods to make children forget, if
they remember, like seating them on a potters wheel, Prof. Chadha explained.

From death to life

The Times of India reported in an article (dated 17.4.08) on a case where a boy, before dying, promised
to return, Their son died, but kept his promise to return. On April 29, 2005, 13-year-old Rakesh died five
days after sustaining severe head injuries when the scooter he was pillion riding on with his brother to go
to tutions met with an accident. Yet a few hours before he died, his mother Maniben started to hallucinate.
She claimed that Rakesh stood before her and wanted to bid adieu. He promised to return if she sent him
away with a smile. Finally she did bid adieu and within seconds, the hospital staff called to inform that
Rakesh was no more. A year later, on April 22, 2006, Maniben gave birth to a boy. They named him
again Rakesh. TOI published photos of the two boys when they were two years old, and indeed, the
similarity is amazing. When we visited our ancestral home in Palanpur, Rakesh called out to my niece
Anila. Anila, who is now 15, was Rakeshs playmate, This knowledge of rebirth is ancient probably as
ancient as mankind. It was there in ancient Greece and in early Christianity. Jesus himself (reported by
Matthew in chap. 17, 12/13) hints that John the Baptist was the prophet Elias reborn. Yet at the second
council of Constantinople some 500 years after Jesus death, Christianity did away with this belief for
good. Yet today 25 per cent of Americans believe in rebirth, a poll quoted by Newsweek magazine of Aug
31, 2009 suggested.

Reincarnation in Tibet

Tibetan society not only believes in rebirth, it has institutionalised it. When high lamas die, their
reincarnation is systematically searched for. The present Dalai Lama, the 14th in the line of Dalai Lamas
and born in 1935, is considered the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama who had died in 1933. In his
autobiography My life and my people, he describes in detail how the search party of high lamas found him
in the remote village that he was born in, and why they became convinced that he was the 13th Dalai
Lama reborn.

Yet in spite of all the evidence for rebirth, there is no rebirth on another, higher level of truth. Find out
whether you have been born in this life, the sage Ramana Maharshi exhorted a visitor who wanted to
know about his previous births. Moreover, when asked whether there is rebirth, Ramana replied, There is
rebirth, and there is no rebirth. He probably meant that on the appearance level it is there. In absolute
truth, where only one exists, there is no place for different persons to be born and reborn.