The cycle of rebirth

According to the religions of India, the present life is not a person's only life. Before this life we have had countless previous lives, and if we do not practise to full liberation, countless more lives still await us.

When this life ends, we will be reborn into another life. That is the cycle of rebirth.

The cycle of rebirth is spoken of a great deal in Buddhism and has become one of the important teachings of this religion. The teaching of the twelve links of dependent origination explains clearly how the origin of the cycle of rebirth proceeds from the subtle to the coarse, from the subtle mind in the unconscious to outward conduct.

Recently, the physician Edgar Cayce, while searching for the causes of his patients' illnesses, spoke about many lives in the cycle of rebirth.

A white man harboured a terrible hatred of black people, because in a previous life in the Middle East he had been captured by black men and killed on a boat.

A person suffered from chronic anaemia because, in the past, fighting on the front line, he had caused many people to shed blood.

There are people who, under hypnosis, have recounted their previous lives in many small details.

Some others dream again of certain stretches of life in previous lives.

Tibetan lamas, while still small children, often tell of their previous lives. Recently the world press reported on the boy Tenzin Osel Rinpoche, a Spaniard only 6 years old, who already had a firm practice and learning like those of a Tibetan monk in Los Angeles (United States) who died in 1984. He was born in 1985 into a poor family in the outskirts of Madrid. He had a very unusual bearing from the age of three. At five he could sit in meditation for two hours without moving. He recounted his previous life, and when it was checked it matched the biography of the Tibetan lama Thubten Yeshe. The monk Thubten had emigrated to America in 1959 and died in Los Angeles in 1984.

This child was immediately taken under the sponsorship of a Spanish monk, Basili Lloria, who raised him and had him ordained. On one journey with Basili Lloria through Eastern countries to pay homage at Buddhist sites, the child came to Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), to the Thean Hou Buddhist centre. He knew many Buddhist sutras by heart, gave Dharma talks and prayed for Malaysian believers entirely like a senior monk. People hope that Tenzin will become an exceptionally learned lama of the twenty-first century.

Many Westerners have begun to believe in the cycle of rebirth. The following passage of the Gospel shows that the idea of rebirth had also appeared in the time of Jesus.

Nicodemus said to him: How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?

Jesus answered: ... Do not marvel that I said to you: You must be born again. The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes... Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and bear witness to what we have seen; but you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things (concrete) and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things (abstract)..." (John).

However, this idea was not developed further, and the question of rebirth became very foreign to Christians.

For the law of karmic consequences, the cycle of rebirth is an affirmed fact.

Everything changes and varies. Living beings all go through the same stages: arising, growing, ageing and the ending of life. Plants are the same and animals are the same. Yet in all this, karma is not formed in a simple, uniform way. For example, a person killed by a bolt of lightning is different from a person killed by a robber. Lightning has no intention. It is merely a physical phenomenon, arising from many conditions such as temperature and the collision of opposite electric charges (negative and positive) in the clouds. Besides the physical conditions, it is also governed by the law of karmic consequences in the Essence. Because the person has reached the time to receive a karmic result, the invisible force of karma drives the physical conditions to come together at exactly the right moment. Here there is only the one who receives the karmic result, and no one who causes the karmic consequence.

So, in the first definition, karma is an act (or speech, or thought) created by a subject who has intention and clear awareness. A dry branch that falls on a passer-by's head has no intention and no awareness, so it creates no karma; it is only that the passer-by receives a karmic result.

A bullet breaks a girl's arm. The bullet has no intention, so there is no karma. But the person who pulled the trigger, with intention and awareness, has formed karma.

Then a mentally ill man, in a fit of crisis, kills his wife. Is there karma? According to the law of society, if there is enough evidence of the illness, the person concerned is exempt from criminal responsibility, meaning he is regarded as not guilty. But according to the law of karmic consequences, it is clear that in killing his wife he knew very well what he was doing and had intention. A mental crisis and a fit of anger are alike, differing only in degree. A person who kills in a fit of anger and a person who kills in a mental illness are in the same psychological state of having intention and awareness. They know clearly what they are doing and are determined to carry it through. So karma has been formed!

However, mental illness is an illness caused by karma from the past. Once the illness has formed, abnormal mental states such as wanting to kill or wanting to burn a house secretly arise, and awareness cannot restrain them. Sometimes awareness even runs after that strange desire and gives it more strength. And when awareness takes part, karma is formed.

In Mr Kim Dung's series "The Return of the Condor Heroes", the character Cừu Thiên Nhậm is an evil man who has killed many people and later becomes a monk under the Master Nhất Đăng, Đoàn Nam Đế. But even after taking the precept against killing, Cừu Thiên Nhậm is still sometimes seized by the fierce arising of his old habit of wanting to kill. At those times he bound himself, as a precaution against his awareness being unable to restrain itself, going along with the habit and setting out to kill. The crisis that arose tormented him fiercely. Master Nhất Đăng stood to one side, advising him kindly, to help his awareness become strong enough to restrain the old habit. After many times in which awareness defeated the old habit, he became gentle like an ordinary monk, and the habit no longer arose.

Likewise, a person with mental illness, because of an abnormal brain structure (congenital, or from injury or crisis), has a weak awareness that cannot restrain the vicious impulses pouring out of the unconscious. Then awareness goes along with them and creates karma. A person who knows how to practise meditation, who knows how to separate the alert awareness from those agitated thoughts, neither restraining them nor going along with them, but only quietly seeing clearly the thoughts arise and cease as if watching an object outside, will find those sick, vicious thoughts gradually fade and finally end. For example, from the sick unconscious, a thought arises that he must burn the neighbour's house; calm awareness sees that thought as a foreign, false object, does not go along with it, and the thought vanishes of itself.

A monk once fell into a strange mental state. From time to time, from the unconscious, secret impulses made him kick and strike fiercely and dance boxing forms he had never learned, the thought "hit him! kill him!" echoing through his head just like a soldier fighting the enemy on the battlefield. But because he understood meditation, he kept trying to hold alert awareness and did not run after those strange secret mental states. Over time the illness ended. With no awareness running after it to add strength, the old habit weakened.

So a sudden, isolated thought arising in the head has not yet become karma. But once awareness enters in and runs after it, karma takes shape. And when karma is present, a karmic result immediately appears with it, from within the Essence.

Now consider the case of a person who, in a sleepwalking fit, with awareness completely absent and only the unconscious directing his actions, has killed someone. Is there karma? In his present state, this person's action is like a machine without awareness, with only the unconscious directly directing the body to act. But from where did the unconscious turn towards the act of killing? It is because earlier (in this life or another) that person's awareness had nurtured thoughts of hatred and of harming... These thoughts boiled but were suppressed and stored in the unconscious. When the time was ripe, with awareness absent, the unconscious rose up to act. So although awareness was absent at the moment of killing, earlier awareness had already had the wish to kill. Karma is still formed by the earlier awareness together with the later act.

Then a person carelessly throws a cigarette end into a waste basket, with the result that fire burns down dozens of houses and takes several lives. This person had no intention and could not know what the consequence would be. Is there karma? First of all, this is the karmic result of those families, whose time to pay had come. But there would be no new karma at all if it had been a sudden strong gust of wind that blew an oil lamp onto the floor and set it ablaze. Here the fire arose from one person's act. This person did not aim to cause the consequence of a house fire, but his ignorance and carelessness caused it. If we look closely we will see that his carelessness arises from a lack of respect for others. Because of that lack of respect for others, he is indifferent to checking whether the consequences of his actions will harm others. In truth, a person who respects others is careful in every word he speaks. And karma is formed from this ignorance, carelessness and lack of respect for others!

However, there are cases where it is impossible to know beforehand and there is no need to know beforehand. Vietnamese criminal law also does not pursue criminal liability in such a case. For example, a person driving on the road observes all the traffic rules. Suddenly, in a roadside house, a husband and wife are quarrelling; the husband chases and beats his wife so that she bolts out across the road. The car hits her! No one could know this beforehand and there is no need to know beforehand. The driver has not created karma; he is only in a little trouble over the police investigation. The karma belongs to the violent husband.

There is a great deal of karma that is hard to recognise because of a lack of knowledge, such as the destruction of the Earth's living environment. The woodcutter ruthlessly devastates the forest, the factory owner lets thick smoke into the air; the farmer puts pesticide into the paddy water so that all the aquatic creatures die; medicine allowed DDT to be used everywhere, and only several decades later saw its harmful consequences.

In the famous short story "Bút Máu" (The Blood Pen) by the writer Vũ Hạnh, the character Lương Sinh, not understanding the whole situation, was skilfully bribed by the provincial governor Lý and so used poetry to praise his merits. Thanks to this, the governor escaped the court's inspection, because the inspector trusted Lương Sinh's writing more than the people's petitions of complaint. After the inspector left, Governor Lý had everyone who had accused him arrested and killed. More than a hundred miles away, Lương Sinh fell ill and seemed to see countless wronged spirits coming to demand redress. When Sinh took up his pen and ink, the ink turned red like fresh blood and gave off an extreme stench. Sinh did not know where this wrong had come from. Later, on the advice of his uncle, he quietly went to the region Governor Lý had once visited, to find out, and only then learned that his pen had shielded the wicked governor and caused the deaths of many people. He was filled with unending remorse.

Sinh created karma through "lack of understanding": he praised a wicked official who was harassing the innocent without having looked into the matter thoroughly. While the suffering people were filing petitions to the court and the inspector was coming to investigate, Sinh's poems were like a rampart protecting the governor's position so that he could go on committing crimes. Sinh had no intention, but he contributed to creating karma. Creating karma through lack of understanding is like lack of knowledge causing environmental pollution. Depending on how heavy or light the consequence is, the karmic result is established accordingly. Recently the press also reported several directors of state-owned businesses who, through lack of knowledge, caused losses of many billions of dong in public funds.

"Lack of understanding" is also one of the causes of wrongdoing.

A person who leads a group or a country and lacks understanding, causing harm to those under him, will receive a very heavy karmic result.

So, acts, words and thoughts are called karma (capable of forming karmic results) when:

- There is intention, awareness and planning.

- There is intention and awareness in a crisis caused by anger or by mental illness.

- There is no awareness at the time of the act, which is directed by the unconscious, but there was an earlier wish.

- There is no intention, but a lack of understanding causes serious consequences.

An action in one of these four cases is considered to meet the standard for forming karma, and each karma immediately has one (or several) corresponding karmic results, one (or several) related Affinities, and from the WHOLE COLLECTION of those karmic results and conditions we get a clear picture of the lives to come.

The formation of a later life is very complex. For example, Mr Thanh has enough affinity to become the father of Tâm in the future. But the karmic result for Mr Thanh in the next life is to be wealthy, while the karmic result for Tâm is to be born into a poor family. They have affinity with each other but their merit is not equal, so the affinity of father and child has to be put off to another life, when their merit is commensurate.

The whole of everyone's wrongdoing and merit, and the affinities between everyone, must be sorted out and then everything fitted together so that it all interlocks, to form the lives that follow. This work of the law of karmic consequences exceeds even the capacity of the most advanced supercomputer.

In each stretch of time in the next life, whom we meet, what ups and downs, joys and sufferings we have, how we succeed or fail, how our thinking changes... all involve many other people. So the formation of the picture of one person's next life must be coordinated with the countless affinities of other people. Only the law of karmic consequences in the Essence, both still and tightly exact, is able to direct the whole of that work.

In truth, we ourselves, through the law of karmic consequences, paint the picture of our own life in the next life. Each karma is a brushstroke, a dab of ink added little by little to complete that picture. The moment a wholesome word is spoken, a joy is immediately formed for the next life. The moment an unwholesome act is done, a suffering is immediately present for the next life. Life in the next life, with all its suffering and happiness, bitterness and glory, has already been formed in the previous life.

Which family we will be born into, with which parents, brothers and sisters, relatives, neighbours... Which friends we will have, which schools and classes, which qualifications we will gain, which positions we will hold... What illnesses and accidents we will go through, what lucky chances and praise we will receive... All has been arranged by the karma of the previous life; nothing is random.

The next life already has every detail through the karma of the previous life.

There are some theories that also believe in rebirth but hold that after death everyone's consciousness leaves the body and wanders in search of a womb to enter. This is not right! There is no selection or searching for the body of the next life, because the body of the next life is already there, there almost like a destiny. But this destiny is not ordained by deities; people create it for themselves.

For example, a person is now in Vietnam, but all the karma and affinity he has created has already prepared for him a next life in India. After he leaves his body in Vietnam, the new life is established immediately in India. There is no question of searching at all.

Here, we distinguish two kinds of karma.

- Mental karma, that is, thoughts and wishes that have not yet arisen as action or speech, that have not yet acted concretely on the people around, and that only infect the minds of others invisibly and faintly.

- Bodily karma and verbal karma (acts and speech), which act concretely on the people around, making them happy or sad, benefited or harmed.

Because bodily and verbal karma act on others, they are a clear kind of karma, strong enough to form a karmic result of joy or suffering later.

A person who robs and kills. This concrete karma forms the karmic result of poverty, misery and a wretched death later.

A person does charitable work, helps orphans, helps victims of natural disasters, helps true practitioners... This concrete karma forms the karmic result of glory and splendour later.

A state official who serves the people with dedication, always fulfilling his responsibilities thoroughly. The karmic result later is a still higher position.

A monastic who devotes himself to giving Dharma talks and teaching morality to everyone. This concrete karma forms the karmic result of becoming a saint, or of holding a high social position with many capable and virtuous associates.

Because bodily and verbal karma act on others, they are the CAUSE that forms the KARMIC RESULT of suffering and joy later. However, bodily and verbal karma are themselves the result of mental karma. Mental karma is the CAUSE of bodily and verbal karma. The mind must think before the mouth speaks and the hand acts. Everyone knows this because it is plain in life. In the law of karmic consequences, however, thoughts in this life form acts and speech in the next life. Why did that man choose the trade of robbery and killing? Because in a previous life he had thought a great deal about it and given rise to wishes about it.

Why does that man like to do charitable work? Because in a previous life he had thought a great deal about it and delighted in it.

Why did that person become a monastic? In a previous life he was filled with thoughts of renouncing the dusty world.

A person's conduct is the result of thoughts in a previous life. That is why it is hard for us to transform a person's character. Many families give an orderly upbringing, yet still produce defiant, cruel children who will not change however they are taught. Why? Because its conduct in this life is the result of thoughts in a previous life. The Vietnamese saying "Parents give birth to the child, Heaven gives the temperament" expresses the powerlessness of teaching a person. Some people seem full of virtue from the womb. Some have been cruel since before they were born. Some drift without any clear stance. All such characters are formed by thoughts from previous lives.

To transform a person's character we must be intelligent, methodical and work very hard, because we must sow new thoughts to erase old thoughts that have taken root too deeply. Moral education is something that can be done, but it is very difficult.

Some people say a person's character, thinking and tendencies are formed by social circumstances. This is true only to a small degree. The greatest formation of character is from thoughts created in previous lives.

If we want an extraordinary character in the next life, then right now we should carefully nurture noble thoughts and eliminate base ones. Let us always think of loving everyone. Let us hold in mind that even before danger, and when adversity tempts us, we never abandon morality. Let us give rise to the aspiration to attain deep meditation. Let us vow to carry the truth wandering through the cycle of rebirth to teach everyone without weariness... As for selfish and hateful thoughts, let us eliminate them strictly.

For example, a person with a hot temper who flares up whenever things go against his wishes, and who now wants to stop flaring up, should, while still calm and not facing anything that goes against his wishes, tell himself that he will stay calm even if someone curses him, even if people do not do things as he wishes... When he tells himself so regularly, then when something suddenly goes against his wishes, his mind will be calmer than before.

So bodily and verbal karma form the result of suffering and joy in the next life, while mental karma forms character in the next life. Combining both kinds of result, suffering and joy and character, we have a fairly clear picture of the next life.

Some say that bodily, verbal and mental karma always go together. If someone does good and speaks good, it is only because his mind thinks good. If all three karmas are wholesome, then surely in the next life he will be both happy and of respectable character. The truth is not so simple! We see everywhere in life many people who are very rich and powerful but cruel and selfish; there are also people who are poor but kind and generous. The results are like this because bodily and verbal karma go one way while mental karma thinks another.

For example, an employee, obeying his superior's orders and striving for promotion, diligently organised the building of a great bridge. This act, beneficial to everyone, brings him a comfortable life in the next life. However, his thoughts are otherwise; he cares only for himself. In the next life, in comfortable circumstances, he is still a selfish person.

If we say that bodily and verbal karma are the cause of circumstances of suffering and joy in the next life, then mental karma is the cause of bodily and verbal karma. If in this life we often do charitable work, it is only because in the previous life we thought about it a great deal. So mental karma is the cause of bodily and verbal karma. Bodily and verbal karma are the cause of circumstances.

Mental karma > Bodily and verbal karma > Circumstances.

We are still living this life but are painting, with our own hands, little by little, the picture of the next life for ourselves. The picture of that next life is called BECOMING (HỮU) in the teaching of the twelve links of dependent origination.

The teaching of the twelve links explains that BECOMING leads to BIRTH (... craving conditions clinging, clinging conditions becoming, becoming conditions birth...).

Only when there is Becoming is there rebirth in the next life. When we have created enough karma and affinity for the next life, we have finished painting the picture of the next life. That is also when we end this life and step into the new one. In the next life there is nothing left to choose; it has been laid down clearly in every small detail! So spiritual life after death is not an important factor for rebirth.

However, as we have said, when this life ends we immediately "step across" into the next life. So what is it that "steps across"? Is it a soul, some kind of consciousness? Is it a consciousness that has left this body and entered that womb, connecting the two lives?

In the original Nikāya scriptures, the Buddha said, "Dying here and being born there."

This simple saying needs further explanation, through the reasoning of later people.

Some say the meaning of that saying must be understood as: at the moment a person breathes his last here, he is at the same moment born from his mother's womb over there. This explanation has a gap: then, whose time is it in the womb? Is the foetus not yet a person?

The Abhidhamma explains: "When the last death-consciousness ceases, the very first rebirth-linking consciousness immediately appears"; the final consciousness of the old body has just ended while an initial consciousness has just formed in the new body.

So the consciousness that has just vanished from this body immediately appears in the next body. Put more plainly, the life that has just ended in this body is immediately a new life that has just appeared in the next body. A person has just died in this body, and at that very moment the father's sperm enters the mother's ovum so that a foetus is formed. Life continues without a single instant of interruption.

There is no need for any consciousness to enter that womb, because the next body is already there in Cause and Effect and karmic consequences. In the case where spiritual life exists for some time after death, it goes out the moment the foetus of the next body has just formed. The moment the father's sperm enters the mother's ovum, the old consciousness immediately dissolves.

In physical space, the two lives are separated by a considerable distance. A person may die in Vietnam and be reborn in Sweden, die in China and be reborn in Indonesia... It is precisely because the distance of physical space "blindfolds" them that people do not see the continuity of the stream of life; they think that if there is separation by space, life must be interrupted too. There is a continued existence of spiritual life after death depending on the conditions of each person. Some, the moment life ends in this body, are immediately present in a new womb. Others continue to exist as spiritual life for a further period of time.

In terms of time, the two lives are continuous and uninterrupted. In terms of physical space, there is a certain distance between the two lives. Spiritual life after death still belongs to the previous life.

In physical space, distance, far and near, is a category of great importance. To go from Moscow to Tokyo, people need many costly means. But for the law of karmic consequences in the Essence, that distance is entirely meaningless. All spatial positions are in one place and are still not confused with one another. So dying in this body and being reborn in the next body, however far apart the two bodies may be, is of no importance to the law of karmic consequences; there is nothing to go to the trouble of searching for and no time lost at all. It is only because we do not understand the law of karmic consequences deeply, and look only through physical space, that we imagine it takes much effort to go from one position to be conceived in another place.

However, what is death?

We need to distinguish two kinds of death: clinical death in medicine, and real death.

According to medicine, the clinical manifestation of death is judged by the cessation of brain activity, followed by the heart ceasing to beat, the lungs ceasing to breathe and body temperature falling gradually. So, for patients who volunteer to donate body parts after death, doctors monitor brain activity, and the moment the brain stops they immediately operate on the body to take the parts that are still good and graft them onto other patients. That is clinical death.

But between clinical death and real death there is quite a distance. Death means the complete cessation of all the activities of life, among which the activity of the brain is decisive, and the activity of the brain also means the activity of consciousness. The activity of consciousness is very complex. The activities of awareness are easy to measure with machines. The activities of the unconscious have become "invisible" to machines. Only extremely sensitive machines can catch the vibrations of the unconscious mind. As for the kind of consciousness the Abhidhamma calls the final death-consciousness, it is extremely subtle. It is the last activity of consciousness before ceasing entirely. This final consciousness is too fine, too small, and modern machines have almost not yet recorded it.

Sometimes a person already shows the signs of clinical death: the body has gone cold, the heart has stopped beating, the brain (the coarse part) has stopped working. But in truth they are sunk in the last subtle form of consciousness and have not ended completely. According to medicine and the law, this person has died. But according to the definition of the cycle of rebirth, this person has not died, because the final death-consciousness has not yet passed. Sometimes, from this last faint mind, consciousness suddenly becomes strongly active again, and they revive! The press has also reported some yogis in India and Tibet, and tribes in Africa, who are able to bring the dead back to life, provided they have not been dead too long. Not dead too long means not yet having passed the threshold of the final death-consciousness, still in the faint form of consciousness close to death (the near-death mind). Then, by their spiritual power, the yogis add strength to the brain of the dead person, increasing its ability to resume activity. For clinical death this is truly a marvellous revival. But in fact this person had not really died. If he had passed the final death-consciousness, this person could not come back to life.

Some people, under anaesthesia for an operation, or in a coma from injury close to death, have seen themselves leave the body and fly about wandering in a strange world with many unusual images, with tunnels leading to the other world. Some even turn back and see clearly the operation on their own body. Some researchers call this the NDE phenomenon, Near Death Experience. For these people the conscious mind was in a coma, but the unconscious was still strongly active. They had not died completely, but the spiritual mass had once separated from the physical body.

If the threshold of the final death-consciousness is truly passed, immediately a "very first consciousness" appears in another womb as the father's sperm enters the mother's ovum. These two events always coincide. The ending of the final consciousness is always at the same moment as the sperm entering the mother's ovum. A new life begins! The state of existence in the invisible world still belongs to the previous life. When life begins in the new womb, that spiritual life will vanish.

The Chinese Earth Store Sutra says that 49 days after death the person enters a new womb. The figure of 49 days is only symbolic, hinting at the time from clinical death to real death. This time is not the same for everyone. For some, from clinical death to real death is only a few hours, for some a few days, for some a few months. Even for those who have trained deep concentration, at death they gather the mind in concentration and the time of the "near-death mind" can last many years before they die completely.

Some experienced elders in northern Vietnam say that when a person has died (clinically) and one waits and waits but the body does not stiffen (real death) so that it can be laid out, one only has to place the body directly on the ground, and the body will quickly turn cold and stiff.

This can be explained thus: during clinical death, the person is sunk in the near-death mind and has not died completely. His brain still holds a little electricity to nourish the activity of the near-death mind. Now to let his body touch the ground is to let that little electricity go down to "earth" completely. With no electricity left to operate, the near-death mind ends, and this person really dies.

Conversely, when we see someone dead whose body does not go cold and stiff, we should think at once that this person is still in the near-death state (NDE, Near Death Experience). If someone can transmit life force to strengthen the activity of the brain, this person may come back to life.

The sage Plato (428-348 BC) tells of a warrior killed in battle, but ten days later, when his body was carried home, it was seen to be still intact and not decayed, and they went on carrying it to his home town. On the evening of the twelfth day, as the family was beginning the funeral, the soldier suddenly came back to life, though without the strength to move away from the funeral pyre. That soldier was named Er, son of Armenius, from Pamphylia.

In the eighth century the monk Bede of England told of a man named Canninghame in Northumbria who fell ill, grew weaker and weaker until he was critical and breathed his last late one night. But at dawn he suddenly sat up before the terror of everyone mourning around the bed. They fled in all directions. Only his wife, who loved her husband deeply, stayed, but she was so horrified that her whole body trembled.

The Old Testament, in the Book of Kings, volume 2, chapter 4, tells how the prophet Elisha (850-800 BC) restored the son of the Shunammite woman to life.

"Elisha came into the house - Behold! the child was dead, laid out on his bed! He went in, shut the door upon the two of them, and was alone with the child [...]. He lay upon the child, putting his mouth upon his mouth, his eyes upon his eyes, his hands upon his hands. He stretched himself upon the child. Suddenly the child's flesh became warm. Then he got down, walked once to and fro in the house, then went up and stretched himself upon him again. Suddenly the child sneezed seven times and opened his eyes [...] He said to [the mother]: "Take up your son." She came and fell at his feet, bowing to the ground in reverence, then took up her son and went out.

Clearly this is a method of transmitting life force to bring someone back to life.

The Greek historian Philostratus (175-249) told of the philosopher Apollonius of Tyana (around the first century AD).

On a visit to Rome, the sage suddenly met the funeral of a young maiden from a noble family. Seeing the weeping, Apollonius was moved to compassion and said: "Set down the coffin, for I have a means of stopping the tears you shed for that unfortunate maiden!" Then he asked her name. Many people were sure he meant to recite a eulogy of the kind commonly heard at funerals to ease the grief of relatives and friends. But no: Apollonius raised the head of the maiden's body and softly whispered in her ear... And the maiden suddenly woke, bewildered, uttered some questions, then sat up and returned to her parents' house.

From this story we see that the sages of old had very strong spiritual power, and were not merely reasoners.

Hundreds of witnesses who suffered clinical death and were later brought back to life by doctors can confirm the near-death spiritual state (near-death mind). Dr Raymond Moody, in the book "Life After Life" (published recently), gave hundreds of accounts of similar cases. They said they heard clearly all the exchanges between specialists and relatives, and sensed fully the events near them during the time they lay in the recovery room. An American doctor and traveller, George Wright, wrote in the book "Witness of Magic" (1970) that he had personally witnessed a revival in Benin (Africa).

"A man with no sign of life lay on his back on the sand.

I asked a local companion to take me to him and said: "I am a doctor. I would like to examine him to know for certain whether he is completely dead." They gladly agreed. I sat down, raised the dead man's eyelids and tested the pupil reflex by the Argyll Robertson method. The eyes were still dull and the heart had completely stopped... Then the sorcerer waved his hand to signal the crowd to begin singing. The sound of the song was half a wail, half a sob of lament. They sang faster and higher and higher. It seemed those sounds were heard by the dead man himself. I was stunned, for I had never witnessed anything like it in my life.

The dead man suddenly raised his hand and stroked his chest, trying to turn on his side. The shouting of the crowd suddenly became a long howl. Drums and gongs began to sound, faster and faster. At last the dead man turned over, folded his legs, then slowly got up and squatted on the sand. His eyes, which minutes before had stayed dull when a torch was shone straight into them, now suddenly opened wide and stared fixedly at the crowd around him..."

The people of Benin also told G. Wright that the sorcerers of their land can revive many people, provided the unfortunate has not been dead too long. Many white people who had lived there for years fully confirmed their words, since that ritual is performed every month.

Here, it is not the sound that makes the dead rise, but the strong subjective wish of everyone, that is, spiritual power, that has awakened a brain resting in the near-death mind. Yet it is strange that, lying on the sand, he did not lose the last little bit of electricity as in Vietnam.

There are also some people who, during the near-death mind, see themselves strolling in hell (without being tormented) or strolling in heaven and meeting saints of old. When they revive they tell what they saw, and this adds to everyone's belief in the metaphysical world.