Chapter 26 - Rebirth

Tomo Géshé Rimpoché had promised to return to his monastery and to his pupils in due time, and his promise came true. Little, however, did I think that his rebirth would take place in the very house in which I had been staying as a guest during my first trip to Tibet, the very same house which I revisited during my pilgrimage to the Great Hermit: the house of Enché Kazi at Gangtok. It was from his own mouth that I learned the details of Tomo Géshé's rebirth and of his discovery a few years later with the help of the great State Oracle in Lhasa.

Knowing Enché Kazi as a sincere and deeply religious man, I can vouchsafe for the truthfulness of his report of which Li Gotami also was a witness. In spite of the fact that he had reason to be proud of being the father of a Tulku, his story was tinged with sadness, because he had lost his wife soon after the child was born^[1], and a few years later, when it became apparent that his son was none other than the rebirth of Tomo Géshé, he had to give up his only child. It was only in the face of overwhelming evidence and for the sake of the boy's happiness, who himself wanted to 'return to his monastery', that the father finally gave in and allowed him to be taken to Dungkar Gompa.

The Maharāja himself had pleaded with the father not to interfere with the boy's higher destiny, which was clearly indicated by the findings of the Great Oracle of Nächung and confirmed by the boys own utterances and behaviour. The latter had always insisted that he was not Sikkimese but Tibetan, and when his father called him 'pu-chung' (little son) he protested, saying that his name was Jigmé (the Fearless One).

This was exactly the name which the Oracle at Lhasa had mentioned as the name under which Tomo Géshé would be reborn.

The fact that the State Oracle had been invoked shows how much importance was attached to the finding of Tomo Géshé's rebirth. Apparently the local oracle at Dungkar had not been able to give a clear indication or had advised the authorities to seek further clarification from Nächung. The latter, indeed, had been most specific by pointing out not only the direction where the child would be found but by giving a detailed description of the town and the locality in which he was born. From all these details, it became clear that the town could only be Gangtok. Furthermore, the year in which the boy was born and the exact age of the father and the mother was given, as well as a description of the house in which they lived and of the trees that grew in the garden. Two fruit-trees, which stood in front of the house, were particularly pointed out as a characteristic feature of the place.

Thus, a delegation of monk-officials was sent to Gangtok, and armed with all these details they found the boy, who was then about four years old. As soon as the monks approached the house and entered the garden, the boy called out: 'Father, my people have come to take me back to my Gompa!', And he ran to meet them Jumping with joy, rather to the embarrassment of the father, who was not yet prepared to give up his only son. But the latter pleaded with his father to let him go, and when the monks spread out before him various monastic articles, like rosaries, Vajras, bells, teacups, wooden bowls, ḍamarus and other things which are in daily use in religious rituals, he immediately picked out those objects which had belonged to him in his previous life, rejecting all those which had been deliberately mixed up with them, though some of them looked far more attractive than the genuine articles.

The father, who saw all these proofs and remembered the many signs of the boy's extraordinary intelligence and unusual behaviour which had often surprised him, was finally convinced and--though it was with a heavy heart--he finally gave his consent that the boy should go with the delegation to his monastery in Tibet.

On his journey to Dungkar Gompa, the party met the Amchi, the Tibetan doctor who had treated Tomo Géshé during the last years of his life, and the boy, recognising him, called out: 'O Amchi, don't you know me? Don't you remember that you treated me when I was sick in my previous body?'

Also in Dungkar, he recognised some of the older monks and, what was most remarkable, the little dog who had been his special favourite in the last days of his previous life recognised him immediately and was beside himself with joy at being reunited with his beloved master.

Thus Tomo Géshé had fulfilled his promise, and people again streamed from near and far to Dungkar Gompa to pay their respects to the Guru and to receive his blessings. The little boy impressed everybody with his self-assured and dignified behaviour when he sat on his throne in the great hall of the temple, conducting rituals, presiding over the recitations on festive occasions, or receiving pilgrims and blessing them, while otherwise he was natural and spontaneous like any other boy of his age. But during religious functions it was as if through in the innocently pure and transparent features of the child, the face of a man, mature in years and wisdom, could be seen. And soon it became clear that he had not forgotten the knowledge which he had acquired in his previous life. His education was nothing but a rehearsal of his former knowledge, and he progressed so quickly that soon there was nothing left that his tutors at Dungkar could teach him. Thus, at the age of seven he was sent to Sera, one of the great monastic universities near Lhasa, for higher studies and for obtaining again his degree of Doctor of Divinity (Géshé).

Ah! this may appear incredible to the critical Westerner, and I admit that I myself would have found it difficult to believe had I not come across similar cases, which not only proved that the idea of rebirth was more than a mere theory or an unfounded belief, but equally demonstrated the possibility of remembering important aspects or achievements of former lives. The scientist who only believes in physical heredity never asks himself what the fact of heredity actually means. It is the principle of preservation and continuity of acquired characteristics which finally results in the faculty of conscious remembrance and conscious direction under the guidance of organised knowledge, i.e. through co-ordinated experience. Heredity, in other words, is only another name for memory, the stabilising principle and the counter-force of dissolution and impermanence. Whether we call memory, a spiritual or a material property or a biological principle is beside the point, because 'material', 'biological', and 'spiritual' signify only different levels on which the same force operates or manifests itself. All that matters is that it is both a form-preserving as well as a formcreating force, the connecting link between the past and the future, which finally manifests itself in the experience of the timeless present and of conscious existence. The simultaneousness of preservation and creation is achieved in the process of continuous transformation, in which the essential elements or form-principles remain present like an ideal nucleus out of which new forms crystallise according to inherent laws and under the influence of external stimuli.

If, as is obvious, no physical or purely materialistic or scientific explanation is possible, and we have to admit that an unknown force is the agent that forms and determines the conception, formation and development of a new physical body and its consciousness, according to the inherent directive impulse of that force, then nothing could be a more natural explanation than to ascribe this impulse to an already existing individualised consciousness, which in the moment of its release from its bodily basis (as in death) or from the dominance of physical functions (as in states of trance, or deep absorption and concentration) seizes the still undifferentiated, pliable, and receptive germ of life as the material basis of a new individual organism. Even if we want to take into account physical heredity, since the parents of a new being provide the 'material' out of which the new organism is formed, this would not contradict its capacity to respond to the impulse of a conscious force, especially if the latter is in tune with the qualities of the former or the circumstances under which the 'material' originated. It is not the material on which an organism feeds, or which it takes from its surroundings to build up its bodily frame, which determines its nature, but the formative force of consciousness (in its widest sense), which transforms the crude material. It goes without saying that there must also be a certain affinity between the assimilating organism and the material of which it makes use. If heredity would proceed in a purely biological manner through permutations of chromosomes and the like there would be no point in the development of an individual consciousness, capable of reflective thought and higher reason and the awareness of its own existence. The instinct of an animal would serve its purpose far better, and any mental development beyond this level would appear meaningless. 'Due to his reflecting mind, man has been lifted above the animal world and demonstrates through his mind that nature in him has put a high premium on the development of consciousness' (C. G. Jung). Indeed, the whole gigantic process of biological development through millions of years seems to have had no other purpose than to create the necessary conditions for the manifestation of higher consciousness.

To the Buddhist, consciousness is the central factor, from which all other things proceed and without which we would neither have a notion of our own existence nor of a world around us. Whether the 'world around us' is a projection of our consciousness or something that exists in itself, and only appears to us in the form in which we experience it, is of secondary importance. It does not change the fact that it is our consciousness which by its selective faculties of perception and co-ordination determines the type of world in which we live. A different kind of consciousness would create a different world around us, whatever the existing -- or non-existing -- raw material of the universe may be. It is only in our consciousness that we get at the root of it, and only through our consciousness can we act upon it. We cannot change the world other than through our consciousness, which is the world as well as that which transcends it: Saṁsāra and Nirvāṇa, bondage and liberation.

Consciousness is based on two functions; awareness and the storing up (or preservation) of the fruits of experience, which we call memory. Consciousness as a storehouse of experience by far outweighs consciousness as awareness. While the latter is momentary and more or less limited to one object, the former is universal and not affected by time, persisting even while we are not aware of it. It is for this reason that the vijñānavādins defined the deepest consciousness as ālaya-vijñāna or 'storeconsciousness' in which not only the experiences of our present life, but those of all our 'ancestors', reaching back into the infinity of time and space, are preserved, and which therefore is ultimately a consciousness of universal character, connecting the individual with all that exists or ever has been in existence or may come into existence again^[2].

Consciousness is a living stream which cannot be caught in the vessel of a narrow ego, because its nature is that of movement, of flowing; and flow means continuity as well as the relationship between two levels or two poles. Without this polarity there can be no movement, no life, no awareness and without continuity no meaningful relationship. The greater the distance or the difference between these two levels or poles, the more powerful is the stream or the force that results. The highest consciousness is the product of the widest range of experience: the amplitude between the poles of universality and individuality.

The average consciousness, however, is confined to the narrow circle of temporal aims and desires, so that the great flow is hampered and diverted, its energy scattered and the resulting light of awareness dimmed. When individuality thus loses its conscious relationship with universality and tries to become an end in itself by clinging to its momentary existence, the illusion of a changeless separate ego is created, the flow is arrested, and stagnation sets in. The cure for this is not the suppression of individuality but the realisation that individuality is not the same as egohood (in the above-mentioned sense) and that change, which is a natural and necessary condition of life, is not arbitrary or meaningless but proceeds according to an inherent and universal law, which ensures the continuity and inner stability of movement.

Individuality is not only the necessary and complementary opposite of universality but the focal point through which alone universality can be experienced. The suppression of individuality, the philosophical or religious denial of its value or importance, can only lead to a state of complete indifference and dissolution, which may be a liberation from suffering, but a purely negative one, as it deprives us of the highest experience towards which the process of individuation seems to aim: the experience of perfect enlightenment or Buddhahood in which the universality of our true being is realised.

Merely to 'merge into the whole' like the 'drop into the sea', without having realised that wholeness, is only a poetical way of accepting annihilation and evading the problem that the fact of our individuality poses. Why should the universe evolve individualised forms of life and consciousness if this were not consistent with or inherent in the very spirit or nature of the universe? The question remains the same whether we see the universe with the eyes of a scientist, as an objective universe of physical forces, or with the eyes of a Buddhist, as an emanation or projection of a spiritual force, subjectively experienced as an all-embracing universal 'store-consciousness' (ālaya-vijñāna). The very fact of our individual existence must have a meaningful place in the order of the universe and cannot be brushed aside as a deplorable accident or a mere illusion, whose illusion? one might ask.

However, more important than our intellectual reasoning are the observable facts which -- long before any explanations were offered by either religion, philosophy, or psychology -- led to the conviction not only of a survival of individual consciousness beyond death in some higher or lower realms beyond our own but of a rebirth in this our human world. I will, therefore, relate two outstanding cases that came under my personal observation.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

It is a common belief in Tibet that a Tulku's mother generally dies soon after his birth, and I remember several cases where this was so, the present Dalai Lama being a great exception. Also the mother of Buddha Śākyamuni, Queen Maya, died a few days after she had given birth to the future Buddha.

[2]:

Mere awareness without relationship to former experience, without the process of identification and co-ordination, is as futile as a merely automatic reaction (as found in lower forms of life). Systems of meditation, which claim to practise 'mere awareness', are pure self-deception, because it is impossible to be fully conscious of anything, without reference to previous experience; and even, if this were possible, no spiritual or any other gain would result from it! It would merely be a temporary regression into a state of vegetative or animal-like existence which, if persisted in, would lead to a state of mental stagnation and unjustified self-complacency.