Please join us in prayers for our dear Godsister Aditya Devi Dasi, who left this world here in Vrindavan on Ekadasi evening!
Giriraj Swami: Aditya Dasi was a pure, devoted soul who sincerely served Srila Prabhupada and his Lords for the last forty-five years. She was our secretary in Juhu, and after Prabhupada’s departure she did wonderful service in his quarters, and then she went to Vrindavan to serve him. She was ill these last days and wanted to leave her body on Ekadasi, and Prabhupada fulfilled her desire. We feel her separation, but we take solace in knowing that she has gone to continue her service to him and his Lords in a better situation. Nonetheless, I am praying for her. And I am reminded of Sri Caitanya-caritamrta’s description of Haridasa Thakura’s funeral ceremony: “Thereafter, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu bade farewell to all the devotees, and He Himself, with mixed feelings of happiness and distress, took rest.”

(Kadamba Kanana Swami, 30 June 2012, Cape Town, South Africa, Bhagavad-gita Lecture)

The 5th Chapter of Bhagavad-gita gives us a metaphor of the lotus flower that sits on water but yet is not affected by the water. The water just runs off and the lotus is blossoming in that condition.

In this analogy of the lotus in water, the water represents the struggle for existence that everyone is facing  and the lotus is a symbol of one who is not affected by that struggle for existence. A lot of people are under the weather, a lot of people have a story to tell about how tough it is.

But here, we see a lotus – a symbol of beauty and a symbol of being the best while the conditions are difficult. The lotus is representing a self-realised soul, a person who is in this world but at the same time not in this world – who may be physically here but who internally lives in another reality, in another dimension.

The personal and dear servant of Srila Prabhupada, Srutakirti Prabhu, recovering after suffering a seizure.
Vishakha Fiorentino: My husband was discharged from the hospital. Cat scans for head and stomach didn’t show anything that could trigger seizures. All of his vitals are normal. He has bad pain in the middle of his back and it’s difficult for him to breathe if he is standing up or sitting straight.
Thank you all for all your love, care and prayers.
—
We were happily celebrating my husband’s birthday with our family and friends on the Big Island. My husband was talking about Srila Prabhupada and his mother. Suddenly he got quiet and started shaking in seizure. Thankfully there were 2 registered nurses. They took control of the situation. I will not tell you all the sad and shocking details. Later on, he regained consciousness. We are in the hospital now. He is going through checkup. Will update when we will hear anything from the doctors. Big thanks to Debra , Radhana Rupini, Mayapur and Campakalata and all the devotees for the help and prayers.
—
Urmila Devi Dasi: He was speaking at his birthday party about Prabhupada, and then said, “I need to go now” and then went into a grand mal seizure for a long time. He seems to be mostly ok now and is recovering at his son’s home. After many tests at the hospital, the doctors were not able to discover the cause. Prayers are welcome.
—
Further updates: https://goo.gl/JSgzKk

It was our great honour to receive the visit by Crown Prince of Udaipur Rajasthan His Highness Prince Lakshyaraj Singh Mewar who comes in the lineage of great king of Mewar (Rajasthan – capital is Udaipur) Maharana Pratapa and great devotee Meera Bai. I had the opportunity to receive him to our temple, took him around our temple area including our Tulasi house, he was very impressed with how Tulasai Maharani was well cared and looked after in Melbourne (cold place). As we were walking from Tulasi house to our new kitchen I asked the Prince in a quest to find out how much he knows about ISKCON, in a response he said by pointing out to rose flower bush ‘who doesn’t know ISKCON, just like everyone knows rose flower similarly ISKCON is well known to all’. I also gave him the tour our new kitchen along with Darpan, Nitin from Victorian Parliament who were accompanying the Prince. Darpan and Nitin who were highly instrumental to organise the grant of $500k from Victorian Government for our new kitchen. They were all extremely impressed with our new kitchen. Prince (owns 5 star hotel in India) commented ‘this is far better than any of our hotel kitchens, temple of Lord Krishna deserve such a nice kitchen to distribute Krishna Prasad to everyone’. They all had darshan of our Deities, took them to Srila Prabhupada house, naively I asked him to sit on the floor of Srila Prabhupada house he happily sat and listen to the glories of Srila Prabhupada for about 15 min, during our discussion he commented generally ‘Brahmanas are by birth’, at the end of our discussion he agreed that Brahmana is by action (characteristics and qualities) not just by birth. Finally they all honoured fruits and juice from 4pm offering and left happily. Continue reading "Crown Prince of Udaipur Rajasthan His Highness Prince Lakshyaraj Singh Mewar visits Melbourne Temple
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Some time back I was offered a gift - Caitanya Caritamrta, a multi-volume set of books which cradle eternal knowledge in biography format... the biography and philosophy of Caitanya Mahaprabhu who lived from 1486 to 1533 as a Vaisnava Saint; He founded the Gaudiya Vaishnava Sampradaya. Because of Caitanya Mahaprabhu, Russell Brand chants the Hare Krsna Maha Mantra in 2017; Because of Caitanya Mahaprabhu, food is distributed for free every Sunday at temples around the United States of America (a program created by one of Caitanya Mahaprabhu's grand-disciples - Srila Prabhupada - and which is maintained still by Prabhupada's disciples). Continue reading "A magic book
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“We never thought a spiritual event could be so much fun – we would love to come again!” wrote one family after attending the Children’s Summer Camp in New Vrindaban last year. “Wonderful event – we can’t wait till next year,” wrote another. “Our son says he will miss New Vrindaban very badly.” These families are in luck. After the very well-received first New Vrindaban Children’s Summer Camp drew around 25 families from up and down the East Coast, organizers Sundari Dasi and Mercy of Gopal’s Garden Preschool are turning it into an annual event. Continue reading "New Vrindaban Kids’ Camp Makes Spirituality Fun
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Last meeting with devotees in Bucharest.

Bucharest morning program.

Kirtan Forever - Bada Hari Das Prabhu (6 min video)
Even a moment of Kirtan can change your life. What to speak of doing Kirtan day in and day out for the past 48 years. We are so honored to be able to share this interview with Kirtan legend @Bada.Haridas Prabhu. Listen carefully and you’ll save years quality chanting!
Watch it here: https://goo.gl/NxxhRm

Harinama at Broadbeach, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia - 18 June 2017 (Album with photos)
Srila Prabhupada: Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s transcendental mission is to distribute love of Godhead to everyone. Anyone who accepts God as the Supreme can take to the process of chanting Hare Krishna and become a lover of God. (Sri Caitanya-caritamrta, Adi-lila, 4.41 Purport)
Find them here: https://goo.gl/Fgz4BX

Tirupati is the place of Lord Sri Venkateswara Swamy, who is the all-pervading Lord of the Universe also known as the Lord of the Seven Hills. Tirupati is one of the holiest places of pilgrimage where Lord is worshiped in the mood of awe and reverence. Tirupati is the home to the world’s richest temple, where thousands of pilgrims visit daily to take darshan of Sri Venkateswara Swamy, also popularly known as Balaji. The magnificent temple of Lord Venkateswara Swamy is located on the 7th peak, Venkatachala (Venkata Hill) of Tirumala. It is by the Lord’s presidency over Venkatachala, that He has received the appellation, Venkateswara (Lord of the Venkata Hill). Continue reading "Tirupati Yatra – Sri Venkata-ksetra
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1. To Understand Vedic Culture…

If you want to understand Vedic culture, but don’t know how, realizing that studying the Vedas is an impossibly big and difficult ambition – then you should study the Gītā! Vyāsa wrote it especially to condense all the Veda, Upaniṣads and Purāṇas into a bite size, easy to digest cookie.

2. To Understand Yoga…

If you want to understand yoga and know it must be more than just breathing and stretching, (but also what to know what the breathing and stretching part is really all about) – study the Gītā! It succinctly teaches the essence of karma-yoga (the yoga of action), jñāna-yoga (the yoga of consciousness – which includes all the breathing and stretching, and also all the mind-stretching philosophy of the Upaniṣads), and bhakti-yoga (the most popular new trend in modern yoga, and also the most dramatically misunderstood and poorly imitated apex of all Vedic yogas), and shows how all three are integrated into a whole.

3. To Understand Life!

If you want to understand all-important perennial topics like karma, happiness, suffering, the nature of reality, the purpose of life, and the core of who you really are – study the Gītā! It’s interesting to hear everyone’s opinion about these things, and so much more so to hear the viewpoint of the ultimate conscious being, Śrī Krishna, as described by the world’s greatest narrator, editor, and poet: Śrī Vyāsa.

Paramparā! (It’s not “Dogma”)

When you learn Gītā with me, you will be learning it through a genuine, authentic paramparā lineage (Gadādhar Parivar of Rūpānugā Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava Sampradāya), so you’ll be getting a truly authentic, indigenous, native presentation. But don’t think that this means it will be old-fashioned, out-dated, bull-headed, fanatical or dogmatic in the least. Real paramparā brings out the vivid life and relevance of the original text without distorting or compromising its original meaning in the slightest.

When, How?

18 online class sessions, every week, starting Sunday July 9th, from 8:30 ~ 9:30pm Eastern Time.

Classes include the weekly online session (recorded for review or for those who miss class), question and answer discussion via group email, homework questions checked by me, beautiful class notes, and PDF format of the text book: A Simple Gītā (my translation).

Tuition is $220 (adjustments possible if necessary).

To ensure quality student-teacher interactions, I limit the class to 9 students, maximum. A few seats are still available, so contact me ASAP to reserve a seat or inquire.

Enroll here: http://vrajakishor.com/class_gita.php

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(This interview appeared originally at http://www.privytrifles.co.in/2017/06/behind-book-chaitanya-charan.html)

1. Welcome to Reviews and Musings. Talking about your latest book Demystifying Reincarnation, how important it is for us to understand the deeper meaning of our lives in today’s times?

Understanding life’s deeper meaning is especially important in today’s times because we have so many options to choose from. Just as it’s possible to spend a whole day surfing superficially on the net looking at this picture or that movie or that news without learning anything worthwhile or even enjoying anything substantially, so too can we spend our whole life surfing superficially, doing this and that, without ever connecting with our essence, without understanding what it is that makes us us, without manifesting that which we are meant to contribute during our life-journey.

The importance of meaning in life is higlighted by classic books such as Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankyl. Based on the author’s survival amidst the horrors of the Holocaust, it explains how without a purpose for life, we lose the drive to live. A lack of a sense of overall meaning and purpose of life is the cause of the many mental health problems facing society nowadays ranging from depression to suicidal urges. They all have their specific, complex triggers, but they also originate in a universal malaise: the alienation and disorientation coming from meaninglessness and purposelessness.

Psychologist William Sheldon of Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons echoes, “Deeper and more fundamental than sexuality, deeper than the craving for social power, deeper even than the desire for possessions, there is a still more generalized and universal craving in the human makeup. It is the craving for knowledge of the right direction—for orientation.”

This need for orientation is addressed by the world’s great spiritual wisdom-traditions, if we just open ourselves to them.

2. Reincarnation has always been an intriguing subject. Talked at length, discussed with curiosity but never accepted and believed widely. Why do you think it is so?

I feel there are two reasons: excessive skepticism and excessive sensationalization. The scientific method has made us all skeptical of things that seem spooky, that smell of the supernatural. Much of such skepticism is warranted – it has equipped us to reject the many superstitions that held sway over people in the past. Still, we can go overboard in our devotion to skepticism. It’s worth remembering that skepticism can only tell us what is wrong, never what is right. Using skepticism to gain knowledge is like using the brakes to move a vehicle; it can protect us from going off-course, but it can’t take us ahead on-course.

Unfortunately, such skepticism has been further indirectly fuelled by whatever cases of reincarnation do come in the public eye. This happens primarily through Bollywood movies where reincarnation is romanticized as a convenient dramatic tool to fulfill in another life a love that was thwarted in this life. Reincarnation ends up becoming just another concept, something akin to vampires, that’s acceptable in the fictional world, but not taken seriously in the real world.

Exploiting the intrigue created by such sensationalized and romanticized depictions of reincarnation, some books compile cases of celebrity reincarnations where pictures of supposed similarities of certain people with some celebrities are touted as evidence. All this titillates people’s minds, but it distracts them from the much stronger evidence that has been uncovered by serious researchers who are interested in investigating reincarnation, not sensationalizing it.

If we have more presentations on reincarnation that avoid the extremes of excessive skepticism and excessive sensationalization, I am sure that more people will be open to exploring and accepting it.

3. Apart from reincarnation you have also talked about ghosts and other paranormal things in your book and brought scientific evidence amidst it all to prove things. Was it something intentional, knowing that today’s generation needs assurance and there can’t be anything stronger than science to prove a point to them?

Yes, India has not yet made the transition from modern times to post-modern times. In the modern worldview, science has almost the same sacral authority that religious revelation had in pre-modern times. In post-modern times, that place is being increasingly taken by personal experience.

So, I have tried to draw on all these three sources of authority in the book – the first part draws on scientific evidence for past-life memories and near-death experiences, but also weaves in the experiential element by narrating human stories; and the last part draws from spiritual texts to explain how their content is rationally intelligible and even appealing.

But yes, given science’s respectability in today’s intellectual ethos and given that fields such as reincarnation are often dismissed summarily by being labelled as unscientific, I have devoted a significant portion of the book to report scientific findings that point persuasively to reincarnation as the most reasonable explanation.

4. The entire book is backed by intensive research with a lot of critical analysis. According to you, how important is research for a book? And how much of it can be called enough before putting a stop to it?

This was a dilemma I wrestled with for nearly ten years. Among all the twenty books I have written till now, this is my most researched book. I spent fifteen years in preparing the book: five years doing background work, five years writing it, and five years refining it, deciding what to keep and what to leave out.

Research and reasoning are foundational for the credibility and authority of a book on a topic such as reincarnation that is considered fringe and far-fetched. Yet too much research can make a book over-academic and inaccessible to general readers. During my research in the field of paranormal studies, I found several such books that were backed by stupendous research, but reading them required a level of interest and commitment that few people have.

So, how much research is too little or too much? I arrived at the balance by speaking what I had written and seeing how well the audience connected with it. I have spoken on science and spirituality at universities and corporates in India as well as in the US, Canada, UK and Australia.

During my talks, I noted which points resonated with the audience and at what depth of information or reasoning, they started appearing overwhelmed. Based on those experiences, I arrived at the level of research that was included in the book.

5. Given the current scenario globally, please share your thoughts on religion and its myriad interpretation by each one of us. 

While we all are free to interpret religion whichever way we want, we deprive ourselves of its uplifting potential if we relegate it entirely to the subjective realm of personal interpretation. Religion needs to be complemented by reason, by the systematic philosophical analysis of the truth-claims of religion. If we look at wisdom-texts such as the Bhagavad-gita, texts that are considered sacred by millions of religious people, these texts don’t focus so much on the practices that comprise religion – they focus on the principles that comprise spirituality. When those principles are understood and assimilated through practices appropriate for contemporary times, then that combination of religion and philosophy comprises a spirituality that is individually and socially empowering.

Religion can be a cause of confusion and conflict if it is divorced from rationality, from the open-minded reasoning that seeks something more than what the here-and-now has to offer. If religion is seen simply as a tool for getting material things, then it can easily be exploited by people interested in power and prestige; they can interpret things in any way that serves their vested interests, without considering whether their interpretations are spiritualizing anyone, even themselves.

But when religion is seen for what it is meant to be – a set of practices for channeling our consciousness to higher levels of reality, for reminding us that we are parts of something much bigger than ourselves and our daily world, for helping us rise to higher levels of experience – it can be a profound source of peace and self-empowerment.

6. If there is one thing you could tell the younger generation, what would it be?

There is much, much more to life than what our senses and our gadgets can offer us.

FOMO (Fear of missing out) is a valid fear, and we need to apply it to the fear of our missing out on life’s deeper, richer, sweeter spiritual side because of being obsessed with the sensual and the digital.

Youth is the time of rebellion, the time when we don’t like to be told by anyone what we should do, the time when we want to be ourselves.

The best way to find who we are and to become who you are meant to be is not by adopting the latest fashions or getting the “recentest” gadgets, but by using spirituality to explore and discover your core self.

7. Having come across so many stories on reincarnation, is there any such story that left you spellbound. If yes, please share about it with us. 

I found most fascinating the case of Mushir Ali Shah that I wrote on in “Demystifying Reincarnation.”

What struck me was that the evidence left practically no scope or rationale for fraud; the emotions of the characters were so unpretentious; and the context of an inter-religious reincarnation here in India itself made the drama much more real and immediate for me.

Here is the relevant extract from the book:

Mushir Ali Shah, the eldest son of the Fakir Haider Ali Shah through his second wife Najima, had lived with his parents in the town of Kakori, Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, India. He worked as a horse-cart driver carrying fruits or vegetables from Kakori to the market in Lucknow. On 30 June 1980, when he was approximately twenty-five years old, a tractor struck him and his mango-filled cart, killing him on the spot. The fatal accident occurred on the road from Kakori to Lucknow at a half-kilometre distance from the village of Baj Nagar.

In Baj Nagar, which is about five kilometers from Kakori, in April 1981 was born Naresh Kumar Raydas as the third of four children of Guru Prasad Raydas.

1. When Naresh started speaking at the age of two, he would often repeat, to his parents’ puzzlement, the words “Kakori, Kakori” and also “karka, karka,” which means “horse-cart” in the local dialect.
2. Around the same age, he would kneel down at home as if to perform namaz, the Muslim form of ritual prayer and would stop if he noticed that he was being observed.
3. The Fakir from Kakori, who maintained his family by begging alms and offering blessings, would come to Baj Nagar and to Naresh’s house every Thursday. When Naresh learnt to walk, he would follow the Fakir to the next two or three houses and then return to his own home. Although his parents told him to address the Fakir by the Hindu term for a mendicant, Baba, he would address him as Abba, the Urdu word for father used by Muslims and some Hindus in that area of Uttar Pradesh.
4. By August 1987 when Naresh was about six, he would repeatedly say that he was a Muslim from Kakori. One day when he saw the Fakir, he again called him Abba and asked him, “Don’t you recognise me? In my house there are five neem trees. I was hit by a tractor.” He asked the Fakir to take him home, a request that the befuddled Fakir refused.
5. The next morning, Naresh compelled his mother to take him to the Fakir’s house in Kakori. Once there, he led her unguided through a part of Kakori that neither he nor his mother had seen before, until they reached the Fakir’s house. There Naresh again called the Fakir “my Abba,” and his wife Najima as Ammi (Mother). He also recognised Mushir’s brothers and a sister who was present along with her husband, whom he called by his name—Mohammed Islam. He asked Najima, “Where is my younger brother Nasim?” When she told him that he was sleeping, Naresh went to him and woke him up. As Nasim was trying to gather his wits, Naresh hugged him and started kissing him. When asked how many brothers and sisters he had, Naresh answered, “Five brothers, six sisters. One of the sisters is a stepsister.” This was correct in relation to the time when Mushir was alive. When Najima pointed to her six-year-old daughter Sabiah who had been born three months after Mushir’s death and asked who she was, Naresh replied, “She was in your stomach at that time.”

6. Naresh also correctly identified Mushir’s suitcase among the five metal suitcases inside the house and accurately described its contents before it was opened.
7. The Fakir and his wife also noted that Naresh had a slight depression near the middle of his chest at the same place as Mushir’s chest wound from his fatal accident.
8. Naresh recognised many of the people from Kakori who had gathered at the Fakir’s house. He even asked the wife of a man named Zaheed whether she had returned to the Fakir the 300 Rupees that he had deposited with her husband. Mushir had indeed deposited that amount with Zaheed who had returned it three days after Mushir’s death.
9. When the Fakir’s family prepared to send Naresh back with five Rupees, he demanded, “What do you mean? That you will send me off without giving me tea and eggs?” Mushir had been very fond of tea and eggs, and used to have them every day. Naresh’s demand for eggs was significant because his family, being vegetarian Hindus, did not eat eggs.

For our analysis, the critical point of this case is that the two families belonged to two different religions that have had a long history of mutual tensions in India. So, neither of the families was interested in establishing any reincarnational connection with each other.

Mills explains in her article that in many of these cross-religious cases, both the Hindu and the Muslim families tried to suppress the child’s speech and behaviour: “Hindu parents of a child who claimed to be a Moslem generally tried to take measures which they hoped would erase the child’s previous-life memories. The techniques used included simply ignoring the child’s claims, teasing, piercing the child’s ear, turning the child on a potter’s wheel, and taking the child to an exorcist out of fear that the child would go mad. One Moslem family tried a combination of rotating the child counter-clockwise on a millstone (to “undo” his past-life memories), tapping him on the head, and beating him.”

Might Naresh’s family have been interested in proving their belief in reincarnation? Possibly, but what interest would Mushir’s family have had in joining the fraud? Their religion opposed belief in reincarnation. So if religious bias had played any role here it would have made them deny or even disprove reincarnation.

When the Fakir was asked about his response as the case had unfolded, he said that he had not believed in reincarnation before this case. During his weekly visit to Baj Nagar when Naresh had identified himself as his son, he had felt deeply troubled. Unable to sleep that night he had prayed at midnight, “Allah, what is this mystery?”

The next day when Naresh came to his house and recognised several people and things correctly, he felt that Allah had solved the mystery for him: Naresh was indeed his son Mushir, reborn. Najima, though initially shocked that an unknown Hindu boy was claiming to be her son, soon became convinced by his many correct recognitions.

When they recounted these events, both of them were moved to tears and his voice trembled with emotion. Thus, the sheer force of the recognitions transformed their attitude towards reincarnation from disbelief to belief.

The reactions of Mushir’s other family members were revealing and reflective of the general Muslim attitude towards reincarnation. Mushir’s sister Waheeda described how Naresh had correctly identified her by stating, “You are my sister.” But when asked about her conclusion from the recognitions she replied bluntly, “We don’t believe in reincarnation.”

In general, what was typical among Muslims was not just denial of reincarnation but denial even of the permission to investigate the possibility of reincarnation. Researchers sometimes faced covert or overt opposition from the Muslim community when they attempted to investigate past-life-memories cases involving Muslim children.

8. Though the book is detailed with proper chapters and outline, the topic is still exhaustive. Do we see a sequel for the book coming out soon?

Yes, building on this book on a specific topic, I plan to write a book, maybe several books, on the broader field of science and spirituality. These two sources of knowledge are often seen as contradictory, but they can be complementary if their respective domains and purposes are understood.

I have spoken on “Spirituality in the age of science” at universities in Cambridge, Toronto, Washinton  as well as of course in India. Everywhere, I have seen deep interest, even hunger, for reconciling these two forces that shape human life in today’s world. So, I intend to address this need in the near future.

9. What are the other projects you are working on currently?

I have just completed video recording for courses on “Science, Spirituality and Life’s Big Questions” as well on “Demystifying Reincarnation.” I plan to follow it up with other video courses on similar topics.

I have a blog on the Bhagavad-gita called gitadaily.com, where I have been writing daily on the Gita for the last seven years. I am working on an introductory course – in all three formats, textual, audio and video – that explains the basic concepts of the Gita and how they are relevant in today’s world.

I will be doing a course on “Bring out the best within you” in Sep-Oct this year for students of Florida University.

I have done a 75-session video course on “Fascinating Mahabharata Characters” and am working on a similar course on the Ramayana. That course will correlate broadly with one of my upcoming books with Fingerprint – “From Me to We – Reflections on Ramayana.”

Another upcoming book is semi-autobiographical – “The becoming of a monk.” Through an analytical QA-based narration of my becoming a monk, I explain the rationale for giving our spiritual side its due in today’s world.

10. A message for all your readers. 

Life is too precious to be spent merely in living – we need to be learning while living. And the best way to learn is through books, especially books about life’s deeper meaning.

Reading for learning can seem demanding, but at the other end of the demanding hides the fulfilling.

I am honored to be a part of a community of readers and writers (every writer is first and foremost a reader) that seek the fulfillment of living fully by learning.

Thank you so much for your time! 

My thanks to you for giving me the opportunity to share the story behind the story of “Demystifying Reincarnation.”

Demystifying Reincarnation is available at all leading books stores in India as well as online.

Amazon:

India: https://goo.gl/VDZT2Q

International: https://www.amazon.com/dp/8175994339

Infibeam: https://goo.gl/DrHapq

The post Behind the book – Interview with Chaitanya Charan, author of “Demystifying Reincarnation” appeared first on The Spiritual Scientist.

Thousands of cases of past-life memories have been documented by Dr Ian Stevenson and other researchers. When skeptics fail to explain away such cases, they resort to the fraud hypothesis.

The parental fraud explanation holds that the parents spin the entire story of a past-life memory and drill the child to perfection to play the critical part in the fraud. Stevenson, Tucker and other past-life researchers have carefully analysed this possibility, and we present here a systematised summary of their analysis.

What might the parents gain through a fraud? The possible gains can fall in three broad categories:

1.    Validation of Personal Beliefs?

Might the parents be driven by the agenda to prove their personal belief in reincarnation to others? Perhaps, in some cases. But this agenda is entirely inapplicable to the many cases found in America and Europe in which the parents didn’t believe in reincarnation.

In fact, in many of these cases, the parents had been predisposed by their religious teaching and cultural upbringing to explicitly disbelieve in reincarnation and so, would have had reason to expose a fraud if it occurred and not set one up themselves. And Tucker, who has focused on investigating cases primarily in America, has found a significant number of strong cases among such disbelieving parents.

Even in the cases in Asia and other places where the parents believe in reincarnation, validating their beliefs is not particularly important for the parents for they, as well as most of the people in their social circle, believe in reincarnation implicitly. Because the parents rarely find their belief in reincarnation challenged, which is the norm in more westernised societies, they don’t feel any need to prove their belief, leave alone orchestrate a fraud to prove it.

Tom Shroder, an editor at the Washington Post, journalistically investigated the past-life research of pioneering researcher Ian Stevenson. He documented his findings in a fascinating book entitled Old Souls: The Scientific Evidence for Past Lives. There, Shroder wrote, “Family members admittedly interested in and open to the possibility of reincarnation had nonetheless refused to leap to any conclusions or embellish the child’s statements. If anything, they had played them down.”

Moreover, a widespread belief among Indians, especially rural Indians, is that those children who talk about their past-life will die young. Stevenson stresses that he has found no statistical basis for this belief—the mortality rate of children who remember past lives is no higher than that of those who don’t. Still, most rural parents continue to believe this and so, they often discourage their children from speaking about the earlier life even when the children want to. Therefore, it seems extremely unlikely that they would initiate a fraud that would require the child to speak about past-life memories repeatedly.

2.    Monetary Benefits?

Stevenson and all subsequent past-life researchers follow a standard policy of not paying anything to the parents for conducting their interviews as they want to ensure that the case doesn’t get corrupted; that is, the parents and other interviewees don’t exaggerate or invent points in the hope of getting money. So there is no monetary gain for the parents in the investigation itself. In fact, the investigation that extends for hours and hours often constitutes a financial strain for some of the parents—especially those from financially challenged backgrounds and need to work throughout the day to make ends meet. Consequently, they sometimes even resent the precious long hours spent in giving exacting interviews to the researchers.

In some of the cases, a child born in a poor family believes himself or herself to be the reincarnation of a deceased member of a wealthy family. Might the parents be conniving such a relationship so that they can get some money from the wealthy family? Possibly. But general patterns in the detailed case histories show that even when the poor parents develop a relationship with the wealthy family during the course of the investigation, very rarely do these parents ask for gifts from the wealthy family— and even rarer are the occasions when they actually do get gifts.

So overall there’s no monetary benefit for the parents in contriving these cases.

3.    Fame or Prestige?

Might the parents be setting up the fraud to gain fame and prestige? Possibly. But again, detailed analysis of case patterns shows that in most cases the parents don’t appear eager to publicise their child’s past-life memories. Even when the children speak about a past-life, the parents, being believers in reincarnation accept that their child must have been somebody in a previous life and don’t bother about who he or she was. So they don’t pay much attention to the details spoken by the child. In a few cases, the child requests repeatedly, and insistently to be taken to the arena of the previous lives and even threatens to go off alone if the parents do not take him or her there. Only in such cases do most parents start broadcasting the details to locate the previous personality.

Prestige, as a driving motive of the parents is plausible in those few cases in which the child claims to be the reincarnation of a celebrity. Consequently, researchers always treat such celebrity reincarnation claims, whenever they occur, with extra scepticism. (Abiding by their spirit of reasonable scepticism, we have avoided discussing any celebrity cases in this book.) But most of the children with spontaneous past-life memories recall fairly normal lives as ordinary, unknown, or little-known people. Such claims, even when proven to be true, don’t bring any prestige at all.

Thus, in a majority of the cases no tenable reason seems to exist for parents to commit a fraud. Additionally, there are two strong arguments that go against the fraud explanation.

4.    The Practical Difficulty in Executing a Fraud

To pull off a fraud would involve:

1. Onerous drilling of the child: The parents would have to drill the child, repeatedly and thoroughly, to make him or her repeat the same false story accurately, over and over again and spontaneously feign the apt emotions that go along with the story. Such meticulous drilling would be extremely difficult and troublesome; but it might still be possible when the child is old enough to be drilled. However, in many cases the children start speaking about past-life memories as soon as they learn to speak. This early age seriously problematises the fraud hypothesis, as Shroder points out in his book Old Souls: “That extraordinarily young age made the idea of some form of fraud almost unthinkable….Believing that a child could learn and repeat complex, accurate biographies at an age when his peers are struggling to learn the names of colours is almost an absurdity.”

1. Ensuring the collusion of multiple witnesses: In many of the past-life-memories cases, more than a dozen witnesses report having heard the child’s statements or seen the child’s recognitions and emotions, or both. Making all these people give a consistent, deceptive account would require not just fraud but a systematic and intricate conspiracy. As the parents don’t gain anything tangible by proving that the cases are true, it seems extremely unlikely that they would go through the massive effort necessary to organise a conspiracy.

5.    The Displeasing and Embarrassing Behaviours of the Children

Most importantly, in several cases the parents find the child’s past-life memories displeasing and even embarrassing; they explicitly wish and try to make their child “normal.” In such cases, the fraud explanation fails completely. Why would the parents set up a fraud by which they would lose face?

Case with Displeasing Behaviour:

A Muslim-to-Hindu Reincarnation

In an article in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol 4, No 2, 1990, University of Virginia researcher Antonia Mills provides an overview of various cross-religious Indian cases, that is, Hindu-to-Muslim or Muslim-to-Hindu cases, and then provides a detailed analysis of one Muslim-to-Hindu case.

Mushir Ali Shah, the eldest son of the Fakir Haider Ali Shah through his second wife Najima, had lived with his parents in the town of Kakori, Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, India. He worked as a horse-cart driver carrying fruits or vegetables from Kakori to the market in Lucknow. On 30 June 1980, when he was approximately twenty-five years old, a tractor struck him and his mango-filled cart, killing him on the spot. The fatal accident occurred on the road from Kakori to Lucknow at a half-kilometre distance from the village of Baj Nagar.

In Baj Nagar, which is about five kilometers from Kakori, in April 1981 was born Naresh Kumar Raydas as the third of four children of Guru Prasad Raydas.

1. When Naresh started speaking at the age of two, he would often repeat, to his parents’ puzzlement, the words “Kakori, Kakori” and also “karka, karka,” which means “horse-cart” in the local dialect.
2. Around the same age, he would kneel down at home as if to perform namaz, the Muslim form of ritual prayer and would stop if he noticed that he was being observed.
3. The Fakir from Kakori, who maintained his family by begging alms and offering blessings, would come to Baj Nagar and to Naresh’s house every Thursday. When Naresh learnt to walk, he would follow the Fakir to the next two or three houses and then return to his own home. Although his parents told him to address the Fakir by the Hindu term for a mendicant, Baba, he would address him as Abba, the Urdu word for father used by Muslims and some Hindus in that area of Uttar Pradesh.
4. By August 1987 when Naresh was about six, he would repeatedly say that he was a Muslim from Kakori. One day when he saw the Fakir, he again called him Abba and asked him, “Don’t you recognise me? In my house there are five neem trees. I was hit by a tractor.” He asked the Fakir to take him home, a request that the befuddled Fakir
5. The next morning, Naresh compelled his mother to take him to the Fakir’s house in Kakori. Once there, he led her unguided through a part of Kakori that neither he nor his mother had seen before, until they reached the Fakir’sThere Naresh again called the Fakir “my Abba,” and his wife Najima as Ammi (Mother). He also recognised Mushir’s brothers and a sister who was present along with her husband, whom he called by his name—Mohammed Islam. He asked Najima, “Where is my younger brother Nasim?” When she told him that he was sleeping, Naresh went to him and woke him up. As Nasim was trying to gather his wits, Naresh hugged him and started kissing him. When asked how many brothers and sisters he had, Naresh answered, “Five brothers, six sisters. One of the sisters is a stepsister.” This was correct in relation to the time when Mushir was alive. When Najima pointed to her six-year-old daughter Sabiah who had been born three months after Mushir’s death and asked who she was, Naresh replied, “She was in your stomach at that time.”

6. Naresh also correctly identified Mushir’s suitcase among the five metal suitcases inside the house and accurately described its contents before it was opened.
7. The Fakir and his wife also noted that Naresh had a slight depression near the middle of his chest at the same place as Mushir’s chest wound from his fatal accident.
8. Naresh recognised many of the people from Kakori who had gathered at the Fakir‘s house. He even asked the wife of a man named Zaheed whether she had returned to the Fakir the 300 Rupees that he had deposited with her husband. Mushir had indeed deposited that amount with Zaheed who had returned it three days after Mushir’s death.
9. When the Fakir’s family prepared to send Naresh back with five Rupees, he demanded, “What do you mean? That you will send me off without giving me tea and eggs?” Mushir had been very fond of tea and eggs, and used to have them every day. Naresh’s demand for eggs was significant because his family, being vegetarian Hindus, did not eat eggs.

For our analysis, the critical point of this case is that the two families belonged to two different religions that have had a long history of mutual tensions in India. So, neither of the families was interested in establishing any reincarnational connection with each other.

Mills explains in her article that in many of these cross-religious cases, both the Hindu and the Muslim families tried to suppress the child’s speech and behaviour: “Hindu parents of a child who claimed to be a Moslem generally tried to take measures which they hoped would erase the child’s previous-life memories. The techniques used included simply ignoring the child’s claims, teasing, piercing the child’s ear, turning the child on a potter’s wheel, and taking the child to an exorcist out of fear that the child would go mad. One Moslem family tried a combination of rotating the child counter-clockwise on a millstone (to “undo” his past-life memories), tapping him on the head, and beating him.”

Might Naresh’s family have been interested in proving their belief in reincarnation? Possibly, but what interest would Mushir’s family have had in joining the fraud? Their religion opposed belief in reincarnation. So if religious bias had played any role here it would have made them deny or even disprove reincarnation.

When the Fakir was asked about his response as the case had unfolded, he said that he had not believed in reincarnation before this case. During his weekly visit to Baj Nagar when Naresh had identified himself as his son, he had felt deeply troubled. Unable to sleep that night he had prayed at midnight, “Allah, what is this mystery?”

The next day when Naresh came to his house and recognised several people and things correctly, he felt that Allah had solved the mystery for him: Naresh was indeed his son Mushir, reborn. Najima, though initially shocked that an unknown Hindu boy was claiming to be her son, soon became convinced by his many correct recognitions.

When they recounted these events, both of them were moved to tears and his voice trembled with emotion. Thus, the sheer force of the recognitions transformed their attitude towards reincarnation from disbelief to belief.

The reactions of Mushir’s other family members were revealing and reflective of the general Muslim attitude towards reincarnation. Mushir’s sister Waheeda described how Naresh had correctly identified her by stating, “You are my sister.” But when asked about her conclusion from the recognitions she replied bluntly, “We don’t believe in reincarnation.”

In general, what was typical among Muslims was not just denial of reincarnation but denial even of the permission to investigate the possibility of reincarnation. Researchers sometimes faced covert or overt opposition from the Muslim community when they attempted to investigate past-life-memories cases involving Muslim children.

Thus, in Mushir’s case, the parental fraud explanation fails utterly.

It is apt to sign off with a quote from Shroder: “Neither self-delusion, intentional fraud, peer pressure, nor coincidence could explain how the children Ian investigated could have known all that they knew about strangers who’d died before they were born.”

Demystifying Reincarnation is available at all leading books stores in India as well as online.

Amazon:

India: https://goo.gl/VDZT2Q

International: https://www.amazon.com/dp/8175994339

Infibeam: https://goo.gl/DrHapq

The post Are past-life memories frauds? – Analysis with the case study of a Muslim-to-Hindu reincarnation  appeared first on The Spiritual Scientist.

Demystifying Reincarnation is an engaging read that analyzes how one of humanity’s oldest questions – what happens after death? – is most coherently and empoweringly answered through reincarnation.

**

“An intellectually stimulating and spiritually uplifting book that will expand the readers’ conceptions of life and its meaning”

–   Padma Vibhushan Dr Vijay Bhatkar, Chancellor, Nalanda University

**

The book has three major sections: scientific, inter-religious and metaphysical.

The first section makes the scientific case for reincarnation using evidence and theory: evidence drawn from past-life memories and near-death experiences, and theory built on the inadequacy of materialist attempts to explain consciousness. The phenomena of past-life memories and near-death experiences are presented using progressively stronger cases so as to anticipate and negate alternative explanation such as guesswork, prior general knowledge, exaggeration and fraud.

The second section explains how belief in reincarnation has been present in all ages and in all the inhabited continents. A careful study of the core texts of Abrahamic religions shows that their present antipathy towards reincarnation originates not from their central beliefs, but from later historical accretions.

**

“A major breakthrough work on reincarnation and related subjects”

–   Steven J. Rosen, author of The Reincarnation Controversy and thirty books on spiritual topics, and founding editor of The Journal of Vaishnava Studies

**

The third section presents diagrammatically the Bhagavad-gita’s model of the self and evaluates the model’s explanatory potential for illuminating the aspects of past-life memories, near-death experiences and consciousness that remain incomprehensible within a materialist paradigm. Drawing from the Gita and Upanishadic texts, the mechanism of reincarnation is delineated. The book concludes with the positives of a reincarnation-centered worldview: its robustness in reconciling God’s goodness with the world’s inequities; its social inclusiveness in taking us beyond body-based discrimination; its trans-human inclusiveness in intuiting purpose and meaning for the existence of all living beings; and its profound optimism in changing our vision of the world from a jungle to a university, wherein we all are meant to graduate by learning lessons in immortal love.

The book also has three appendices that deal with the problematic interaction of consciousness with matter, the possibility of machine consciousness and the phenomena of ghosts.

Chaitanya Charan is a mentor, life coach and monk. Building on his engineering degree from a premier engineering institute in India, he complemented his scientific training with a keen spiritual sensitivity. For over two decades, he has researched ancient wisdom-texts and practiced their teachings in a living yoga tradition. Author of over twenty books, he writes the world’s only Gita-daily feature (gitadaily.com), wherein he has penned some 2,500 daily meditations on the Bhagavad-gita. Known for his systematic talks and incisive question-answer sessions, he has spoken on spiritual topics at universities and companies worldwide from Australia to America.

**

“A scientific book with a critical eye.”

–  Dr A P Sankhe, International President for Global Foundation for Ethics and Spiritual Health

**

An extract from Demystifying Reincarnation can be read here:

Are past-life memories frauds? – Analysis with the case study of a Muslim-to-Hindu reincarnation 

An interview with Chaitanya Charan about the book is available here:

Behind the book – Interview with Chaitanya Charan, author of “Demystifying Reincarnation”

Demystifying Reincarnation is available at all leading books stores in India as well as online.

Amazon:

India: https://goo.gl/VDZT2Q

International: https://www.amazon.com/dp/8175994339

Infibeam: https://goo.gl/DrHapq

The post Demystifying Reincarnation – Chaitanya Charan’s latest book is now available on amazon.com appeared first on The Spiritual Scientist.

6th Annual Jagannath Rath Yatra Bloomington IL June 18.
Damodarananda Das: We successfully conducted our 6th annual Jagannath Rath Yatra attended by app 700 people. HH Romapada Maharaj was the Chief Guest along with many few more Prabhupada’s disciples. Afterward, there was a cultural program followed by a free feast and kids’ Mela.

(Kadamba Kanana Swami, 20 March 2013, Cape Town, South Africa, Srimad Bhagavatam 8.12.6)

When the disciples of Prabhupada saw him lying on his bed, in his final days, they said, ‘How can such a terrible condition happen now? How can this happen?’

Prabhupada said, ‘Don’t think it will not happen to you because it will.’ So, this is the situation. Pure devotees also go through the processes of the material energy. Pure devotees are also embodied. Pure devotees also face hardships – heat and cold, hunger and thirst, disease and old age – they face it all! But they are not taking it seriously because they know that is just the body, it is happening to the body. So this understanding of, ‘I’m not the body,’ really means that whatever happens is not serious, ‘I‘m not the body,’ and therefore the whole material world which is related to the body, is not important!

The material world, we can just write it off but something which we can use for the service of Krsna, those things we will take but for the rest of the material world, write it off.

Pure devotees dedicate their lives to service. We may not recognize them at first but then they emerge very clearly for all to see. Those extraordinary persons who give their lives, who begin faithfully, who carry on faithfully and then still go on faithfully until the end – those persons become glorious!

The post Daily Darshan: June 20th, 2017 appeared first on Mayapur.com.