It is rather odd that secular Buddhists believe in the liberation of mind, and seem to be somewhat open to the fact that nirvana is deathless according to the Buddha. Why is it odd? It is because it chimes with the survival hypothesis, namely, that something does survive our corporeal death. Yet, these same Buddhists refuse to accept survival in the form of rebirth which may well be a natural part of our life. In this respect, they have become rebirth-deniers. On the same track, these same Buddhists also, vehemently, deny psychical phenomena. Much of this tension arises from an ideological standpoint they harbor which is uncompromising materialism. This is the same materialism that believes mind/consciousness is an epiphenomenon of the brain which is a ludicrous hypothesis.
Buddhists who wish to confront such heterodoxy would be wise to read Chris Carter's book, Science and the Afterlife Experience: Evidence for the Immortality of Consciousness. It is the third in a trilogy of books attacking the underpinnings of materialism together with their bogus assumptions, which has been the reigning philosophy of the West.
The present book, contains important elements of the first two books. For the average Buddhist who needs a cannon—not just the canon—this book is an important weapon. Carter shows that the evidence for rebirth has not, in anyway, been falsified. While this book is not going to convince hardcore rebirth-deniers, for the open-minded this book contains the most important evidence and the best arguments. Carter meets all challenges being well aware of the counter arguments.
The book has everything interested minds wish to know about the after life (maybe after death would be better way of putting it) such as children's past-life recollections including mediumship (communicating with spirits and the deceased) and other related subjects. Most of all, Carter's presentation of the evidence really says that we are, to use Dr. Donald Hoffman's term, conscious agents. This resonates with the Buddha's teaching which says that consciousness is the transmigrant. It is what survives death and is eventually reborn into another body living another life.
What we need are men and women of sharp and accurate logical, philosophical and scientific minds and lofty moral character and ideals, that are prepared to analyse and draw balanced conclusions and bold intelligent theories from the weighty evidence and data furnished by such works as this and many others. My fear is that "the corruption of the best is the worst", and that the more wide ranging, other-wordly and powerful a science becomes, the more prone it is to be appropriated or falsified as an instrument of fraud, deceit, manipulation and evil. Perhaps most atheists and materialists are precisely the kind of people who would have been the most gullible to all shady "occult" and "new age" charlatans and manipulators we see today, that promise money, success, luck, pleasure, and solutions to all life's problems. The psychic scientist is a little like a naturalist exploring an unknown jungle, aware of the danger, not out for personal gain or pleasure, but there first of all for pure knowledge.
Posted by: Augustinus | June 02, 2015 at 02:25 PM