The Relevance of Rebirth in Indian Astrology

The concept of Rebirth has existed in various cultures around the world for thousands of years. The idea finds mention in the Sankhya Sutras of the Indian Sage Kapil authored in the 7^th century B.C.E. and there are references about it in the Riga Veda which is of unknown antiquity. This concept was prevalent in other ancient cultures too which is evident from the fact that the Greek scholars like Pythagoras, Socrates and Plato believed in the idea of rebirth. Many Shamanic and Tribal societies of Australia, South America, Canada, Siberia and North America hold this belief even today. New Religious and Spiritual Movements (NRMs) such as Theosophy, Scientology, Spiritism, Anthroposophy, and Wicca etc. have their doctrines centered on the concepts of transmigration or rebirth defined variously but being principally in the same realm of understanding. The Semitic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam however reject the idea of Rebirth but nevertheless there is mention of this concept in the Kabbalah which is a part of Judaism and many Christian schools are in agreement with this concept to the extent that the Unity church and its founder Charles Fillmore taught reincarnation. Fillmore even believed himself to be the reincarnation of Saint Paul of Tarsus. In his book ’30 most convincing cases of Reincarnation’ Trutz Hardo claims “Even Jesus and early Christians believed in it.” He further states “This (Reincarnation) was rejected by the main religions which continued to spread across Europe. In the laws of Reincarnation everyone has to become responsible for his or her own spiritual development and the healing of his or her own soul over many lifetimes. Seen in this light, highly organized institutions of belief (the Church) become unnecessary, and are robbed of their power over the people. For this reason it is totally understandable why, for example, the Christian Church of the 13^th Century destroyed the Cathars in their gruesome crusade. The Cathars believed in Reincarnation and had separated from the Papacy, and were a threat to the ruling order.”

Rebirth has many synonyms such as Transmigration, Re-incarnation, Metempsychosis, Punarjanma etc. however the basic idea remains the same. It can be defined thus:

Rebirth is the next birth of an individual soul / mind / consciousness as a new living form, by it (soul / mind / consciousness) taking up another physical body after the death of one physical body.

Rebirth as defined here, is not limited to one recurrence alone and is said to continue to happen after each death and therefore it is often referred to as ‘the cycle of births and deaths’ which continues till such time when the soul / mind / consciousness gets absolved of all its unexhausted consequences of desire based actions (karmic aggregates) accumulated during the innumerable births lived in the cycle. Even though the process of rebirth or re-incarnation is explained differently in different philosophies, the view held by the majority of the eastern philosophies such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism as well as by the New Religious Movements (NRMs) is that a rebirth can take place in any living form, be it as an animal, a plant, a bird or a human being. The living form of the next rebirth for a living being gets determined on the basis of the algebraic sum of the unexhausted accumulated consequences of all desire-motivated actions performed till the last death of the said living being (updated karmic aggregate- the Sanchit Karma).

The philosophies which propagate the concept of rebirth emphasize that the purpose assigned to each birth is to provide the living being an opportunity to reduce / neutralize / exhaust its accumulated karmic aggregate by the process of righteous living in the current life. If and when the said living being is able to exhaust the entire baggage of karmic aggregate by its righteous conduct in successive births, it gets freed from its bondage to the cycle of births and deaths and gets liberated to finally merge into the Supreme Consciousness (God / Divinity / Brahman). In this manner these philosophies are able to provide an explanation for the purpose of life and also the way to achieve the same i.e. the path and the goal of living. Without prejudice to the fact of the existence or non-existence of the phenomena of rebirth in the universe, it can be said that the philosophies which uphold this concept have successfully provided a fairly reasonable and convincing answer to the two crucial questions that occur in the human mind viz. ‘What is the purpose of life?’ and ‘How to live and lead a meaningful and fulfilling life?’ The very fact that the concept of rebirth has existed unchallenged for thousands of years in the societies which have unflinchingly held on to this belief, is in itself, a testimony to the enormity of the convincing power of the explanations associated with this doctrine.

A living being has two essential dimensions to its existence; one being Matter (as the physical body) and the other being the Spirit (as Consciousness). Death of the living being happens when the Spirit / Consciousness abandons the Body. While the body disintegrates into its elementary constituents and merges with the elements in nature; the spirit / consciousness which is a form of Energy does not get destroyed as per the universal law of energy conservation. What happens of the spirit after death is not known and probably cannot be known. However there can be two possibilities that either the spirit merges with the total universal energy (the Supreme Consciousness) after death of a living being or else it moves into another developing body to enliven another living being to undertake a fresh journey of life in the new life form.

If the first possibility be the case then the spark of spirit that enlivened the life of a living being serves no further purpose after its death and it loses its existence as a separate entity by becoming one with the total energy or Supreme Consciousness.

However if the second possibility be the case, the spirit gets reborn as the new living being which becomes the case of rebirth. It is not denied that there can be many more possibilities of the course; the spirit can take after death which is beyond human comprehension. What is being attempted here is to provide a plausible hypothesis based on limited human comprehension.

Dwelling upon the plausible hypothesis further, it can be stated that once the spirit leaves the body at the time of death, it should normally follow the first case i.e. merge with the Supreme Consciousness unless it is somehow blocked in this process. The advocates of rebirth have a point to make regarding this blocking of the merger of the individual spiritual spark with the total spirit i.e. the Supreme Consciousness. They claim that the spirit is not freed just by leaving the body on death but that it carries bondage in the form of the unresolved / unexhausted karmic aggregate that prevents its merger with the Supreme Consciousness. Therefore the individual spirit bound by karmic compulsions continues to seek another vehicle in the form of another physical body to be able to neutralize this karmic aggregate in and through a new life. This process repeats itself until the complete neutralization of the karmic aggregate happens and the individual spirit becomes free so as to merge with its source – the Supreme Consciousness. In this way the champions of rebirth actually uphold the primacy of the first case of the plausible hypothesis but they qualify it by bringing in the doctrine of Karma and make the second case as an intermediary stage justifying rebirth, thereby making rebirth a necessary prequalification for the fulfillment of the first case till the condition of karmic neutralization is fulfilled. Even though the explanations given by the rebirth protagonists are logical; at best their proposition remains within the realm of a possibility only; therefore it remains merely a hypothesis unless scientifically established to be undeniably true.

The proponents of rebirth further argue by asking: ‘Why is it that some are born in prosperous families where they enjoy all the luxuries and comforts of life which have not accrued to them as a result of their own earning or effort in their present life whereas some are born in conditions of utter poverty and they suffer all kinds of hardships for which they cannot be held responsible at the time of their birth?’ Similarly, they argue – ‘There are cases of criminals who are a nuisance for their own families and to society who remain unpunished for their deeds throughout their lives and they leave this world that way’. If there were a system which regulates the process of rewards and punishment for living beings then what is the explanation for such criminals getting away without facing  due punishment? These examples, they claim, may be extreme in nature but there are various shades & possibilities with regard to the beginning and the end of a life which raise similar questions. The advocates of rebirth contend that the laws of nature which govern the process of life cannot support such a chaotic scenario. It is therefore certain, (in their view) that there must be a method of accountability in nature which though not directly perceivable to the human mind, can certainly be inferred and derived. This law, they claim exists in the form of the doctrine of Karma which provides for the rationalization of the unexhausted consequences of past actions through the process of rebirth. No doubt this doctrine is inferential in nature but it prudently explains the apparent anomalies observed in ‘lives on Earth’.

It is not that the scientific community did not delve into the investigation of the doctrine of rebirth. In this context the observations made on the basis of the research carried out by the Russian physicist Prof. George Lakhovsky is noteworthy. Prof. Lakhovsky derived in his Doctrine of materialization & dematerialization and I quote:

“It thus follows that all beings who lose their lives are not dead in reality, in the absolute sense of the word, but continue to live with their full consciousness in other regions of the Universe. They could perfectly well be reborn, on earth through a previous rematerialization and relive with the fullness of their personality in flesh & bones.---This reincarnation of human beings ---- can explain certain facts otherwise difficult to account for----how can we understand the extraordinary aptitudes of a man of genius born of mediocre parents? The laws of heredity seem superseded and are powerless to account for the exceptional qualities of this man. On the contrary everything is explained by the effect of the transmission of a complex human range through space at the time of conception”.

The Science of Biochemistry has established that the individual cells in our body have a limited life span - from days to weeks, and even a few years. Using sophisticated Carbon-14 dating methods, Dr. Frisen and his team of stem cells researchers in the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden, have been able to determine that the average age of cells in an adult body would be between 7 and 10 years. This scientific evidence, unambiguously establishes the fact that as we age, our body cells are replaced regularly and that we have a constantly changing body even though our consciousness, as to who we are, remains unchanged. Our identification of ourselves, ‘the I Consciousness’ remains constant throughout. We may develop changes in our likes and dislikes and thinking over the years but we always know who we are in the sense of personal continuity or personal ‘beingness’. Extending this argument further it can perhaps be visualized that “I”, our consciousness is immortal, and travels through many different bodies in time. This is the rational explanation of reincarnation.

The Science of Genetics also supports the continuity of the living being after its death. As per the principles of Genetics, it is known that the genes of the parents are passed on to the progeny. The genes of each parent represent the basic design or the characteristics of the parent, in a way, the parent itself. The genes of the progeny born from the parent(s) are developed from the parental genes. Thus the parent(s) continue to live in a new life in the form of the progeny even after their own death. How the genes of the parents will get integrated to generate the new set of genes is yet to be established conclusively by Science. However it is known that even if the whole set of genes of the parents do not get actively manifested in the progeny, they lie dormant within the progeny and can manifest in the next or later generations emerging from their progeny. Thus the parents live through their progeny all the time. Is it not a form of rebirth?

The unique combination of manifested genetic design in the progeny achieved through the mutation of parental genes cannot be arbitrary or random in nature but it must be according to some formula or law hitherto unknown to scientist. This missing link is the control in the hands of Creation by which it can design the next generation to suit its larger purpose- it’s Grand Design. This missing link too shall get revealed in future as the frontiers of Science keep expanding in search of the Ultimate Truth. In this context Prof. Lakhovsky’s following observations are most relevant:-

“We all know, besides, that fertilization often does not occur until the end of several months and even after several years. This delay of impregnation may be due to specific radiation of the male or female which are not always in resonance with the radiation of materialization. The organism from the first cell, in its development is the materialization of rays-----continues its development to evolve under the domination of the same specific complex of radiations coming from the being that originally gave its life.---All this explains how every living being microbe, infusoria, plant, animal, man reproduces itself to infinity----where its complex of radiations finds favorable conditions of resonance and so materialize themselves in various parts of the Universe to eternity. These materializations by the propagation of the radiations------can repeat itself indefinitely in the infinity of time & space.”

From the foregoing observations of Prof. Lakhovsky some hints of the missing link in the understanding of the process of Genetics for the mutation of genes in a new birth can be visualized. The above stated ‘favorable conditions of resonance’ for the materialization of life, are in the form of Creation’s intervention for the birth of a living being, the basis for which is provided by the doctrine of karma and which cannot be overlooked as Lakhovsky says :

“We should not put aside without profound examination the theories that place special importance to the marked influence on human destiny------at the moment of conception and birth of a human being.”

Studies carried out in the field of Psychiatry and Parapsychology support the theory of rebirth. The renowned Psychoanalyst Carl Jung talks about the collective unconscious, the energy that surrounds us and contains the memories of the evolution of the entire human race. These memories are a part of us and are continuously updated in the light of our experiences as they are carried forward in our journey of life through different births in different bodies. The pioneering work of Dr. Brian Weiss in this field is particularly noteworthy. Using the process of Past Life Regression, Dr. Brian Weiss was able to tap these memories to reveal the past birth experiences of the subject individuals successfully. He could establish linkages of the current behavioral patterns of individuals to their previous birth events and experiences. These researches do strengthen the case that there is continuance of life after the physical death of a living being and that there is rebirth. Scientists are still skeptical but are coming to terms with the limitless ramifications of the process of rebirth particularly in the fields of Medicine and Psychiatry.

Another psychiatrist Dr. Raymond Moody, M.D. observed that many people who suffered severe heart attacks saw their astral body getting detached from the physical body and that they watched the doctors and nurses carrying out the treatment on their physical body. Dr. Raymond gives an interesting instance of a person who was involved in a serious car accident and he saw his astral body getting out of the physical body. After he was restored back to life he recounted his out-of-the-physical-body experience.

Dr. Raymond Moody interviewed hundreds of men and women who had gone through “clinical death” and had been revived. He published in 1975 a report on his findings in his book Life after Life. He found striking similarity among the accounts. In fact, there were fifteen recurring points of likeness. A composite experience based on the common elements of one-hundred individual death experiences, has been summed up as given below:

“A man is dying and, as he reaches the point of greatest physical distress, he hears himself pronounced dead by his doctor. He begins to hear an uncomfortable noise, a loud ringing or buzzing, and at the same time feels himself moving very rapidly through a long dark tunnel. After this, he suddenly finds himself outside of his own physical body, but still in the immediate physical environment, and he sees his own body from a distance, as though he is a spectator. He watches the resuscitation attempt from this unusual vantage point and is in a state of emotional upheaval.

After a while, he collects himself and becomes more accustomed to his odd condition. He notices that he still has a body; but one with a different nature and different powers from the physical body he’s left behind. Others come to meet and to help him – the ‘spirits’ of relatives and friends who have already died. A loving, warm spirit – A being of Light – appears before him. The being asks a question, nonverbally, to make him evaluate his life. The being helps him along by showing him a panoramic, instantaneous playback of the major events of his life. At some point, he approaches a barrier which, apparently, represents the [threshold] between earthly life and the next life. But, he finds that he must go back to the earthly life because the time for his death has not yet come.

He resists because, by now, he is taken up with his experiences in the afterlife and does not want to return. He is overwhelmed by intense feelings of joy, love…and peace. Still, he reunites with his physical body and lives. Later…he tries to tell others, but he has trouble doing so for two reasons: First, there are no human words adequate to describe the unearthly episode. And, second, he finds that people don’t believe him. So, he stops telling other people, even though the experience affects his life profoundly, especially his views about death and its relationship to life.”

In 1977, Kenneth Ring, a brilliant young professor of psychology at the University of Connecticut also read Raymond Moody’s book ‘Life after Life’ and he got so inspired that he decided to carry out a more scientifically structured study to strengthen Moody’s findings. He sought out 102 near-death survivors from amongst blind persons and from among those who attempted suicide. He published a scientific paper in the Journal of Near-Death Studies about people who had near-death experiences (NDE) of a type providing verified evidence supporting Afterlife Hypothesis wherein they found themselves outside of their bodies, observing detailed events happening far away. This phenomenon called “veridical perception” is currently inexplicable by modern Science. Such verified veridical perceptions are highly suggestive of a reality where consciousness can survive apart from the physical body and perhaps survive even death. As and when conclusive evidence of veridical perception under strict laboratory conditions shall be found, it would be the greatest scientific discoveries of all times.

Many from the scientific community have criticized the findings of Moody and Ring on the grounds that the research method employed for the NDE studies violate the principles of valid research. Barry Beverstein, a professor in psychology has alleged that the evidences used for such studies are logically and empirically flawed. James Alcock another psychologist has accused Moody of ‘cherry picking’. The philosopher Robert Todd Carroll suggests that a typical NDE may be due to brain states triggered by cardiac arrest and anesthesia or the result of a dying, demented or drugged brain. The scientific community stands divided but Moody and Ring have triggered research studies such as the AWARE study where hospitals have attempted to monitor cardiac patients for possible NDEs. There already exists a substantial amount of data on veridical perceptions and it is only a matter of time before out-of-body veridical perception is proven under strict research controls which will satisfy the skeptics. The findings of Raymond Moody and Kenneth Ring after getting greater scientific concurrence and acceptance as an epistemologically justified true belief; shall be able to determine but one part of the rebirth process which is the confirmation of the continuation of the existence of Individual Consciousness after the death of the physical body. What happens of the surviving consciousness shall still remain to be traced to its actually ‘taking-up’ another physical body for the confirmation of the rebirth process. There however is another way of confirming rebirth by the process of scientific investigation and determination of  reported rebirth cases particularly in children who recall their past birth details. Dr. Ian Stevenson M.D., University of Virginia has done exactly that. He investigated many reports of young children who claimed to remember a past life. He methodically conducted more than 2500 case studies over a period of 40 years and documented each subject’s statements and then identified the deceased person, with whom the subject identified himself / herself and verified the facts of the deceased person’s life that matched the child’s memory. He also matched birth marks and birth defects to wounds and scars on the deceased person’s body, verified by medical records such as autopsy photographs. He also searched for disconfirming evidence and alternative explanations for the reports to rule out all possible ‘normal’ explanations for the child’s memories. He was criticized for basing his research in eastern societies where rebirth is a matter of strong belief. To counter this criticism he published a book on European Cases of the Reincarnation Type. He published twelve books on the subject. One of Stevenson’s associates Professor Satwant Pasricha has worked on similar lines as Stevenson, in India. She has investigated cases of Xenoglossy which is the ability of a person to speak a different language without having ever learnt it in the person’s current life. This research particularly becomes a clinching evidence for a past life of the person in a culture or region where the language in vogue is entirely different from the one of the person’s present birth and which the person is able to speak without any exposure to it in the current life. There have been many more researchers who have worked for proving and establishing rebirth on the basis of empirical data collected from a large number of case studies but at the same time there have been many skeptics. Stephen Blake who emphatically refutes Reincarnation argues that “no amount of data can demonstrate anything without an underlying theory to support it or give it meaning----reckoned as empirical evidence”. In his book Reincarnation Refuted he states “reincarnation research ---is notable for the absence of any coherent or testable theories (and) –is itself the product of armchair theorizing and as such should be subjected to the normal tests of logical consistency”. He has provided two kinds of refutations of reincarnation in his book. Firstly he refutes reincarnation by mathematically establishing the unviability of karma and secondly by establishing the unreality of Time. He states that if one accepts the scientific concept of the unreality of time then reincarnation stands refuted as reincarnation happens in the dimension of time however if one believes that time is real then reincarnation gets refuted mathematically by the Impossibility Theorem. Either way reincarnation gets refuted. Another skeptic Paul Edwards after analyzing many of the accounts of recorded cases of ‘claimed rebirths’ called them anecdotal. In his book The Demon Haunted World, Carl Sagan while referring to the empirical data and the explanations thereof as presented by Ian Stevenson has labeled them as mere parsimonious explanations for the stories. Other objections by skeptics are based on the fact that the vast majority of the people do not remember their previous lives and there is no failsafe mechanism known to modern Science that would enable someone to transcend death and travel to another body. Even researchers like Stevenson have acknowledged these limitations.

It is not that the doctrine of rebirth has not been challenged from within the lot of eastern philosophers. One of the oldest and respected spiritual researchers of the yore from ancient India Maharishi Gautam did question the premise of the doctrine of karma as well as the idea of rebirth in his Nyaya Sutras more than 2500 years back. His Nyaya Sutras became a popular area of pursuit for the scholarly class however the priestly class who had their belief systems rooted in the doctrines of karma and rebirth were quite offended and they banned the study of the Nyaya Sutras and disowned sage Gautam. Those were feudal times and the royalty ruled supreme hence the scholars of the Nyaya Sutras were persecuted at the behest of the priestly class. Only when the followers of Gautam compromised and accepted the supremacy of the Vedas were the Nyaya Sutras and sage Gautam given their due respect and place. From the foregoing it is evident that there have been diametrically opposing views regarding Rebirth / Reincarnation since the ancient times be it within religious believers, philosophers, thinkers or the scientific community. The issue may finally get resolved either way, if and when, one of the two opposing views is nailed scientifically. Meanwhile there are certain missing links in the understanding about rebirth on which more light needs to be shed to complete the understanding of the process from death to rebirth to make it an epistemologically acceptable theory. Some of these points are being stated below for further contemplation and research on the subject: 1. Even though Raymond Moody and Kenneth Ring have been able to demonstrate the existence of an astral body separate from the physical body through their study of NDEs, it does not establish the fact that the astral body after leaving the physical body on death travels to another body to pursue another life through rebirth. The astral body or consciousness might as well travel to another realm hitherto unknown. It may also happen that under some special conditions a percentage of the astral bodies may move into another physical body for rebirth while the rest follow another path, in which case those special conditions which influence the further journey of the astral body also need to be established. 2. Through his experiments of Past Life Regression, Dr. Brien Weiss has demonstrated the existence of a person through many lives but most of such case studies have not met the epistemological requirements and have failed in accuracies with respect to historical evidence. Even if these case studies are taken to be true on face value, they do not determine the basis for the type of the following life or lives lived by the subject. It is also surprising that all reported past lives are in human form alone. If that be the case then how does the growth in human population get explained? Past Life Regression does not help in establishing a credible explanation for rebirth / reincarnation; at best it can merely support the occurrence of rebirth in some cases. 3. The doctrine of materialization and dematerialization proposed by Professor George Lakhovsky based on his extensive experimentation is an extrapolation of his findings and therefore it is hypothetical in nature. His hypothesis that ‘all beings who lose their lives are not dead in reality, in the absolute sense of the word, but continue to live with their full consciousness in other regions of the Universe. They could perfectly well be reborn, on earth through a previous rematerialization and relive with the fullness of their personality in flesh & bones’ has yet to be established in reality since no life form has been found as yet in any part of the universe. Moreover even if life is found on any other planet in another region of the universe, it shall need to be determined whether there is a sequential connection of such life ‘to or from’ life on Earth. The doctrine of materialization of Lakhovsky may be a strong scientific possibility but in the absence of any empirical evidence, it does not prove rebirth. 4. The research studies carried out by Ian Stevenson, Kenneth Ring and Satwant Pasricha based on the memoirs narrated by subjects about their past life particularly given by children and which have in many cases been found to have proven fairly accurate do give some credence to the hypothesis of rebirth. There are many missing links to these findings such as it is not known whether rebirth is a universal phenomenon or whether there is a basic premise on which the determination of the next life for the living being gets decided and if there be such a premise then what are the factors on which the premise is founded. It also needs to be determined whether all afterlife of human beings is lived in human form alone or there can be transmigration to other life forms? From the foregoing four points it can be claimed that the determination of rebirth as a scientific reality still has a long way to go and more research on all aspects of the rebirth phenomenon needs to be carried out in accordance to the tenets of strictest scientific methodology to establish a foolproof theory of rebirth / reincarnation. The doctrine of Karma which is strongly believed by the eastern religions and cultures is rooted in the occurrence of rebirth. If rebirth is proven to be nonexistent, the doctrine of Karma too, shall lose its significance. The doctrine of karma is based on the premise that the living being must experience all the residual (un-experienced or partially experienced) consequences of all its actions performed in ‘pursuit of’ or ‘motivated by’ ego-centric desires. Such residual consequences of ego-centric-desire motivated actions are carried forward to a hypothetical Repository titled Sanchit Karma. This lot of Sanchit karma needs to be exhausted during the future lives to be lived by the Jeeva in various living forms in different regions of the universe. The Jeeva is the equivalent of the astral body that transcends the death of the physical body. In the process of living through various lives in ‘the cycle of births and deaths’ (called the Samsara), the Jeeva may accumulate further residual consequences while exhausting some from the past which then gets algebraically integrated to the existing Sanchit karma. The karma doctrine defines the existence of fourteen Lokas (realms of experiencing) out of which there are seven upper Lokas starting from earth and there are seven lower Lokas. The form and span of life on each Loka is dictated by the extent and type of karma to be exhausted by the Jeeva i.e. the good karmas are exhausted by a life on a higher Loka and similarly bad karmas get exhausted by a stint on an appropriate lower Loka.  Another important point to be noted here is that the opportunity for the Jeeva to exhaust all its Sanchit karmas to finally attain freedom from the cycle of births and deaths is available only on earth or Bhuloka and hence every time its Sanchit karmas are close to such a possibility it is sent back to the Bhuloka. In other words the visits to other Lokas (whether a higher or a lower Loka) only absolves the Jeeva of a certain degree of a type of good or bad karmas. A general classification of the higher Lokas is in the form of Heaven i.e. the upper Lokas are together called the heavenly abodes and the lower Lokas are together termed as the Hell. Lives lived in the heavenly abodes or in the realms of hell are transitory and not eternal in nature. Even on earth the Jeeva can take up any one of the various life forms which inhabit the earth. All life forms on earth whether within the animal kingdom or the plant kingdom except the human being are called the Bhoga-Yonis. Bhoga-Yonis are the life forms in which the Jeeva only exhausts the Karmas and does not create or accumulate any residual consequences since the actions performed in Bhoga-Yonis are instinctive and not ego-centric-desire motivated actions. The human being is the ‘crown jewel’ of Creation as it is only the human being that is endowed with the unique opportunity of transcending the cycle of birth and deaths- the Samsara. The whole process of generation of karmic aggregate and its exhaustion through the cycle of births and deaths leading to the final emancipation of the Jeeva and its final integration with the Supreme Consciousness is described by the doctrine of karma. The doctrine of karma as described here cannot be ascertained by any of the epistemological processes except probably in bits and pieces such as by establishing the existence of an astral body that transcends death; by establishing rebirth atleast in some definable proportion of all births; by finding some forms of life on other planets in other regions of the universe and by establishing some definable connectivity of such other life to life on earth. Even if and when these portions of the rebirth cycle get established, the entire doctrine of karma shall continue to have many missing links which shall defy any form of epistemological substantiation. Thus the existence of the doctrine of karma shall always remain in the domain of Faith. The doctrine of karma is probably even more challenging to prove or accept for modern Science than finding the hitherto elusive God Particle to ascertain the building block for Life itself. Therefore the existence of this doctrine shall always remain a topic for debate with skeptics and believers taking extreme positions on either side. This is one case where Faith and Logic can apparently never have a meeting point. There are a few counter points to the traditionally enunciated doctrine of karma which need to be pondered upon. These points are: A. The unique identity of the living being assigned to ‘a life’ does not transmigrate to the next birth. The consciousness or the astral body gets a completely new identity through rebirth. Moreover there is no connection whatsoever between the past life’s identity and the new identity obtained at rebirth. The experiencer in each case is the living being with the present identity. In such a scenario how the good or bad experiences of a uniquely identified living being in the current time frame, can be said to be an experience of reward or punishment for deeds performed by another uniquely identified living being in some past time frame. The following simple analogy shall clarify this further: Mr. X committed a crime and died before he could be caught and punished for his crime. Mr. X takes birth as Mr. Y in his next birth and suffers throughout his life in his new form as a consequence for the crime he committed as Mr. X in his earlier life. It is alright as per the doctrine of karma but Mr. X and Mr. Y are two uniquely different living beings so far as the experiencing is concerned. There is no way in which Mr. Y can connect his present experiences to his past deeds as Mr. X and therefore he fails to get the message of leading a righteous present life to absolve himself of the crime committed earlier. If the purpose of the doctrine of karma is to educate a living being towards righteous living and absolve itself of the past karmic aggregate, then that purpose is not really fulfilled as is clearly brought out by the afore narrated analogy. B. The doctrine of karma states that the process of the neutralization of karmic aggregate ends only through the last journey in Bhuloka (earth) as a human birth. It is difficult to imagine a human birth lived without performing any desire-motivated-ego-centric action(s). In which case it is really difficult to imagine-of any possibility of release from the cycle of births and deaths. Even in the Hindu mythological stories there has been only one case of a human birth wherein the new born has walked away to the forest at birth itself to do penance and lead the life of an ascetic. This is the story of Shuk Deva son of sage Veda-Vyasa. Thus there is a record of only one case in thousands of years of mythological history wherein the individual lived a life of absolute desirelessness. As it stands the doctrine of karma gives scant hope for liberation and may even be dubbed as impractical by some. C. The doctrine of karma explains the process of accumulation of karmic aggregate and its neutralization however each cycle of births and deaths must have a beginning. Where was the Jeeva placed at the beginning of the cycle and in which form and why did the Jeeva take birth at all without any karmic aggregate to begin with. And if the Jeeva was granted birth to fulfill some requirement of Creation then how is it responsible for whatever happened thereafter. The points A, B and C remain unanswered by the doctrine of karma till date. Astrology as it developed in India surely made the doctrine of karma its mainstay and the go-to doctrine for explaining the questions related to destiny; birth in a particular environment; the purpose of a current life and for deciding upon astral remedies for minimizing adverse effects in ‘a life’ etc.. The connectivity of Indian astrology to the philosophy of karma is based on the premise that living beings exist in three concurrent layers as three distinctly identifiable bodies namely the Sthoola Sharira or the gross physical body, the Sookshma Sharira or the Astral body and the Karana Sharira or the Causal body. The three bodies exist concurrently for the living being and are interlinked having a common identity and single underlying consciousness. The Karana Sharira or the Causal body is consonant with the updated karmic orientation or the updated current status of the being’s karmic aggregate. This Causal body creates the Sookshma Sharira or the Astral body which is actually a unique radiation package reflecting the Causal body. The unique radiation package emanates from the cosmic radiation and remains connected to the Cosmos. The solar system consisting of the Sun, the Moon and the rest of the planets is the major contributor of the unique orientation of the Astral body. Thus the karmic aggregate represented in the Causal body get condensed in the form of the cosmic radiations creating the Astral body. The Astral body takes birth in the form of the Sthoola Sharira or the gross physical body at the time & place when the configuration of the solar system matches with the design of the Astral body. The design of the gross physical form of the living being is therefore guided by the Astral body which in turn reflects the Causal body that is tuned by the karmic aggregate of the living being in question. The gross physical body including the faculties of the mind, intellect and the ego reflect the Astral body of the living being at the time of birth. The same consciousness of the living being permeates all the three bodies in a new birth. The death of the gross body does not mean the death of the living being as the being lives on through the Causal & the Astral bodies albeit with the updated orientation of the karmic aggregate. This aspect of existence of the Astral body is also called the ethereal state of a living being by the scientists. This arrangement of the astral body taking birth as a new living being is the foundation for the astrological mapping of the current updated karmic orientation of that living being in the form of the Astrological Horoscope drawn for the time & place of the birth. The horoscope of the individual thus reflects and connects to the Astral body of the individual thereby indicating that individual’s Destiny for the present birth. The astral connection of the destiny of a living being in the present life is thus visible in the horoscope and can be read and interpreted by learned astrologers. This connection of the astral body to present destiny of a living being can be influenced or maneuvered-with under certain conditions which forms the basis for the remedies used by astrologers for mitigating difficulties or for promoting good. Destiny needs to be understood as an integral part of human existence and not as merely an element reflecting Fate, Chance or Probability. Thus the doctrine of karma and Indian astrology are in complete sync. Western astrologers, since the early twentieth century, have integrated the doctrine of karma and the concepts of rebirth / reincarnation into their practice of astrology. The developments were inspired by the major works of Helena Blavatsky such as Isis Unveiled and the Secret Doctrine. Renowned western astrologers such as Alan Leo Charles, Marc Edmund Jones and Dane Rudhyar have been the pioneers who integrated the Hindu and Buddhist concepts of rebirth into Hermeticism and Neoplatonism that formed the bedrock of the principles of Western astrology. This dynamic integration has continued into the modern era with the works of Western astrologers like Steven Forrest and Jeffery Wolf Green. The new school of evolutionary astrology is based on the principle that human beings are reborn in a succession of lifetimes in the cycle of births and deaths as propounded by the doctrine of karma. Astrology and the doctrine of karma, as is evident from the preceding narration are inextricably inter-twined giving the impression that if the doctrine of karma gets negated completely the very foundation of Astrology shall get destroyed and Indian astrology in particular shall lose its significance. This understanding is as far away from truth as any that can be. There can be an alternative narrative for the birth of living beings on earth which can easily and suitably replace the foregoing narrative of the doctrine of karma without disturbing in any way the concepts, principles, processes and procedures that make up the practice of Indian astrology in particular and astrology in general. One of the plausible counter narratives of the doctrine of karma could be based on the principle that each life lived by a being on earth is complete in itself without any connection to a past or a future existence indicating thereby that nothing is brought forward-to or carried forward-from the present journey of life of a living being. In this way each being, inhabiting the planet earth or any other part of the universe is only playing a unique and specific role assigned to it by Creation to fulfill the requirements of the divine agenda. The individual destiny assigned to each being therefore is but a small subset of the overall Universal Destiny that guides the happenings within the Grand Design of this universal phenomenon. As a corollary to this concept, it can be stated that the sum total of all the individual destinies of all entities of this universe at any given time shall reflect the Universal Destiny at that moment in time. Thus Creation or the Divine Power creates beings of specific forms as per the requirement of the Grand Design of the universe from time to time to play their ordained roles through their individual journeys of existence. These individual destinies are determinable through the principles and procedures of the Science of astrology. A question that arises at this juncture is ‘What is the relevance of astrology in the scenario described here?’ The answer to this question lies in the fact that even the knowledge and practice of astrology exists as a part and parcel of the Grand Design and hence it must fulfill some role in the unfolding of the universal agenda. The universal phenomenon is dynamic in nature which necessitates the reorientation of programs of all entities from time to time. A river changes its course when it encounters a hill on its path or a new scientific discovery brings about a change in the way human beings live their future lives thereafter. Any intervention in the way things / beings exist whether such an intervention is through medical, psychological, philosophical, legal or any other advice or through the influence of nature, politics or social dynamics does reorient the sentient and insentient entities to meet the requirements of the universal agenda. Astrological intervention for those, who are ordained to receive it, also serves a similar requirement for the human being(s) by enabling a reoriented future role-play for the fulfillment of the universal agenda. Who or which entity shall get reoriented by which kind of intervention for following a modified future course on its journey is also ordained by Creation or the Divine Power that guides the course of universal functioning. The following analogy may serve as a simple illustration of the counter narrative to the doctrine of karma: A village clay modeler in India makes dolls, idols, human and animal models. He decides upon which models to make based on the coming future occasion in his vicinity. If a fare for children is to be organized in the near future in and around his village, he would probably create dolls and animal models keeping the children’s fare in mind but if a religious festival is in the offing then he would probably create idols of gods and angels to suit the occasion. What he shall create is dictated by the requirement of an occasion. The clay he uses is inert and devoid of any past or futuristic prejudice. The clay does not in any way influence his creations or the selection of the type of his creation. Neither do the models created by the clay modeler on earlier occasions come back to him to be remodeled into new models. Much in the same way Creation creates the type and form of beings as per the requirements of the Grand Design of the universe from time to time. There need not be any role for the karmic orientation of beings of the past to influence the future creations of Creation. Similarly there is no case for any rebirth or reincarnation in such a scenario. Another question that is likely to come up at this juncture is: ‘How does the counter narrative to the doctrine of karma explain the various inequalities and anomalies at birth and death atleast in human lives? This question arises from the observation that some humans take birth in affluent and comfortable surroundings while some are born in abject poverty and extremely difficult circumstances and also from the fact that some people do not suffer due punishment for their criminal actions while on the contrary some suffer throughout their lives having done no wrong. These questions emerge from the fallacious and shallow understanding of the universal phenomenon based on the limited and ego-centrist definitions of equality and justice. First of all it needs to be emphasized here that any journey of life in any form is not a consequence of the choice of any being but is purely to fulfill the requirement of the universal agenda. For example if a peon is to be recruited in an organization only a peon shall be recruited by the organization and the duties of a peon shall be assigned to such a recruited person. Similarly when a senior officer is required only a senior officer shall be recruited in the organization and assigned appropriate duties. The salaries and perquisites also shall be disbursed according to the organizational rules appropriate to each role. The contradiction arises from an obsession with the myopic view of ‘the person’ taking precedence that blocks the larger vision of the Grand Design. Similarly all actions of human beings when merely seen as some individual’s actions are judged from that individual’s perspective alone, thereby crediting / discrediting that individual for the quality of the action without an appreciation of the fact that there can be no action outside the domain of the universal agenda which certainly is not as per the choice of the said individual hence such action is not that individual’s responsibility. The two questions raised here-in have been answered purely from the perspective of the counter narrative to the doctrine of karma and rebirth. The same questions shall undoubtedly get answered quite differently using the doctrine of karma. It is therefore difficult to say which of the answers is the correct answer unless and until either the doctrine of karma gets finally established or it gets ultimately rejected. It may also be stated here that the counter-narrative to the doctrine of karma explained in the foregoing paragraphs is not the only plausible counter-narrative; there can be many more such counter-narratives which can effectively substitute the doctrine of karma. Whichever is the case, whether the doctrine of karma holds true or does not hold true, there is an existence of destiny in every human life which can be determined through the tenets of astrology. Moreover there can also be effective modifications to the future course of a life which can be brought about by astrological intervention. In other words the concepts, principles and procedures of astrology are not dependent on the doctrine of karma and rebirth. In conclusion therefore it can be emphatically stated that there is little or no relevance of the doctrine of karma and the philosophy of rebirth for the concepts, principles, processes and practice of astrology.