I have recently engaged in some communication with several old Buddhist friends on the subject of rebirth. I have been surprised to discover that there are some Buddhists out there who cling to a materialist/nihilist view i.e. that consciousness dies along with the physical body. This philosophical standpoint, I would suggest, is incompatible with Buddhist thought and practice, but there we go. I have ended up pointing out that rebirth - or 'continued consciousness', as I would prefer to call it - is actually more 'scientific' than the materialist view. Though I suppose that it depends on what you consider 'science' to be.
My dictionary defines science as 'the study, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of the nature and behaviour of phenomena in the physical and natural world.' I have no argument with this definition. My point about 'rebirth' is that there is no empirical evidence, despite vast amounts of 'experimental investigation', for the termination of consciousness with physical death. The materialist/nihilist view will assume that consciousness is produced and created by the brain - it does not, I believe, have any other choice. Millions upon millions of pounds have, over recent decades, been lavished on brain research. Nowadays, neuroscience knows a lot about the functioning of the brain: which bits are involved in this disease and that condition; which bits are activated by music, by meditation; which parts connect and contact each other under various circumstances; and the rest. Yet, despite this torrent of research, orthodox science is no closer now than it was twenty years ago to the Holy Grail of its research: the location of consciousness itself. However and wherever they look, our scientists just can't find the location point of consciousness in the brain. The only logical conclusion to draw is that they can't find it because it's not there at all. They're looking in the wrong place.
Set against this the wealth of reliable material available on consciousness as a faculty that can function outside and independent of the brain. Verifiable memories of past lives, near-death and out-of-the-body experiences, and more besides. The materialist/nihilistic view doesn't stand up to scientific scrutiny whatsoever.
So what's going on, then? The notion of 'science' has been hijacked by a certain philosophy or ideology in order to make its ridiculous tenets appear more credible. The belief systems of materialism have conjoined the concepts 'science' and 'materialism' for the benefit of the popular consciousness, creating the misnomer 'scientific materialism'. The aim being to deceive people into thinking that 'materialism' is scientific, and everything else is accordingly airy-fairy, namby-pamby superstition. This is a massive manipulation of perception, a largely successful piece of mass mind control. This is the way that things are done. Scientific materialism, which is really a dogma, blind to the whole spectrum of evidence and empiricism central to real scientific enquiry, is presented as the truth, the only truth. It's actually an enormous con trick.
The subject of the nature of consciousness as introduced by the nihilism/rebirth question is not a matter of purely academic curiosity. Its implications are far-reaching. If the consciousness disappears in a puff with the dissolution of the physical body, there's really not a lot of point in anything. We may decide to live ethically, in order to render this life a bit more bearable for ourselves and others, but that's about it. If, however, consciousness extends beyond, taking up temporary residence in this particular physical body as just one small step in a much bigger journey, then whatever happens here takes on far greater significance. What I do now - what I seed consciousness with - will have an influence into a future stretching out to I don't know where.
To make it personal: I have turned up in a fairly favourable rebirth this time round. I don't need to work sixteen hours a day to obtain the means of physical survival. I have access to information, and sufficient personal freedom to follow up most things that I want to. My health does not present an insurmountable obstacle to most activities I may wish to pursue. I have been granted the opportunity to really chip away effectively, to make serious inroads into some quite basic psychological/emotional habits, which do no favours to me or to others. Any real difference I can make now will benefit an indefinite number of future lifetimes, both for 'my' consciousness and for whatever other energetic configurations may interface with 'mine'. Conversely, I can just fritter away this lifetime. If so, I can expect my obstructive habits to come back and hit me even harder next time round.
'Empire is an ethos that seeks to control humankind by restricting it to a lower state of being' (Neil Kramer, Invisible Empire, May 22nd 2014). Restricting us to a lower state of being: a major feature of mainstream western civilisation as it has rolled itself out over the centuries. In particular, it has been concerned to take out of the public domain any knowledge of dimensions/existence outside the immediate physical, material world. In other words, it has taken materialism, scientific or not, as its preferred ideology for the masses. Its propagation has been a long, protracted matter, and one which continues to this day.
I used to regard the centuries-long battle of Christianity against the indigenous, 'pagan' people whenever it encountered them during its conquest of Europe, the Americas, and elsewhere, as a matter of conflicting belief systems. A long, bloody, and bitter moral (or immoral) crusade for what the Christians believed was right. This is, I suppose, the 'official', exoteric, version of events: a great struggle about who's got the Truth. More recently, I've come to see that it's deeper and far more sinister than this. It's not a question of 'Truth', of 'right versus wrong'. It's a matter of manipulation, power, and control. Taking access to higher dimensions of reality out of the discourse and experience of ordinary folk has been a number one priority in wresting control. Self-empowerment is to be denied the general populace, since it poses the prime threat to effective control over their lives. Firstly, people are granted access (often fake) to anything beyond the material only through a carefully-managed hierarchy of priests. Then they are denied all knowledge and access whatsoever, through philosophies and belief-systems that assert materialism and nihilism (these belief systems trickling down into everyday behaviour and attitudes, influencing the most trivial and mundane affairs). In the end, scientific materialism is revealed as a tool of Empire, of those who would have control over the rest of us by restricting us to a lower state of being. Our philosophies are not a matter of purely - or mainly - academic interest, intellectual ping-pong, and cerebral entertainment. They are a matter of life and death. Or life after death.....
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