Look at the Azalea flowers! How beautiful they were! This is the front yard of our house. I used to go out and see every day. All flowers, no leaves as you can see. I asked myself, why do they bloom like that? I am sure they have their own progression in life, what we call genetics.
On the other hand, we analyze them, and we plant them, and they are for our pleasure. I have enjoyed almost two weeks of those wonderful blooming of Azalea.
However, after two weeks they started becoming older and getting awful looking, like the second picture. The flowers were dead, and they looked ugly too.
Think about humans! So handsome or so beautiful, but in time peoples’ good looks are gone. The Azaleas now looked like the skin of an 80-year-old human. This is what we call aging. However, closely looking at the 2nd picture, you will find a few fresh leaves started appearing. This is no way something extraordinary finding. Most of the trees in the winter look dead but come back in the spring, including our huge pecan tree.
To me it’s like life (living), death and reincarnation (a new beginning) in nature. There are plenty of examples of these three episodes of life in nature.
What about religions? There are a few religions believe in reincarnation, namely Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism and Jainism. I know Lord Buddha spent his “Nirvana life” in the jungle under a Bhodi tree. He has seen much of nature.
On the other hand, Hinduism arises based on nature itself. Interestingly all the four religions of reincarnation originated from Asia, more specifically India. Sikhs believe in cycle of life meaning living, death and rebirth. Same is true for Jainism. According to them, rebirth is determined by one’s karma.
In 1835 while visiting the Galapagos Islands, Darwin established his ideas on natural selection. It is nature that gives you the clue provided you have inner eyes.
There are a few examples where the children can spontaneously remember their past lives. In Bengali, it is called “Jatishwar.” There are several movies made about this issue of reincarnation. The researcher, Dr. Ian Stevenson, established evidence for human reincarnation by studying several children in different countries and checking details of their former lives. The information included people, places and events that were found in almost exact agreement.
According to Hinduism, the body dies but not the soul (Atman). Long back, Carl Sagan asked the Dalai Lama about reincarnation. His reply was, “If science can disprove reincarnation, Tibetan Buddhism would abandon reincarnation, but it’s going to be mighty hard to disprove reincarnation.”
The Bhagavad Gita (The Hindus sacred book) states: “Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor all these kings; nor in the future shall any of us cease to be. As the embodied soul continuously passes, in this body, from childhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death.” However, all the religions including Christianity and Islam tell about the concept of heaven and hell after death. There is thus afterlife!
What do sciences say about life, death and reincarnation? In general, sciences do not tell anything unless proven experimentally. Lots of research conducted on near death experiences (NDE) describe “departing the body and travelling through a long tunnel, having an out-of-body experience, encountering spirits and a being of light, one’s whole life flashing before one’s eyes”.
Scientists including thanatologists, neurologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, physicalists, agree that between cardiac arrest where pumping of blood flows stops and brain death, there is a gap of a few minutes for the completion of final death.
One day the process of death will be reversed, and AI is going to help in that endeavor.
Jiben Roy, a native of Bangladesh, teaches chemistry and pharmaceutical sciences at Mississippi University for Women. He writes occasional column in the Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
Jiben Roy, a native of Bangladesh, teaches chemistry and pharmaceutical sciences at Mississippi University for Women. His email address is [email protected].
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