Centre for Brahmavidya

Centre for Brahmavidya presents the life and teachings of the Shankaracharyas of Sri Sharada Peetham, Sringeri beginning with Sri Adi Shankara.

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Scientific Evidence –
Vedantic Light

Gleanings from His Holiness
Jagadguru Śrī Abhinava Vidyātīrtha Mahāsvāmin

1. Rebirth: Conundrums and Insightful Solutions

1.4 (…) During my first tour (from March 1956 to July 1962), I was able to add much to my knowledge of banyan trees from a horticulturist. He loved planting various trees and requested me to plant a cutting from a banyan tree. I told him that while I was ready to do so, I would not be in a position to tend to it as I was to proceed from there in a couple of days. He assured me that if I placed a cutting in a pot, he would personally take care of it and, if it grew well, would later plant it in a suitable place. I agreed. He said he would get me a cutting but I told him that I would fetch one myself and that all he needed to do was to provide me a cutter and a pot. With him accompanying me, I went to the banyan tree nearby. Unaware that I was proficient at climbing trees, he exclaimed in surprise when I swiftly climbed it. I cut from a branch a piece that I felt would serve my purpose well.

Having readied the cutting, I put soil in his pot and duly placed the cutting in it. The piece that I planted was neither hard wood nor a fully green, fresh growth; it had sap and nodes in it and was about nine inches long and about half an inch thick. I catered to it on that day and the next and then handed it over to his care. I later received information from him, first that the cutting had started showing signs of development and, thereafter, that he had planted the sapling in the ground elsewhere and that it was growing well. Hence, it was with some first-hand knowledge that I asserted earlier that a banyan tree can develop even from a small portion of its branch.

(Contd…)

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Scientific Evidence –
Vedantic Light

Gleanings from His Holiness
Jagadguru Śrī Abhinava Vidyātīrtha Mahāsvāmin

1. Rebirth: Conundrums and Insightful Solutions

1.4 (…) His Holiness (continuing): There are banyan trees in India that have spread over an acre and are over a 100 years old. For instance, the ‘Dodda Alada Mara (Big Banyan Tree)’ near Bangalore covers an area of about three acres and is said to be about 400 years old; the ‘Thimmamma Marrimanu’ in Anantpur District of the state of Andhra Pradesh covers around five acres and is believed to be more than 500 years old. Year after year, a banyan tree, which, as I just illustrated, can be very large in size and live for long, produces numerous fruit, with each fruit containing many seeds. The ripe, red-coloured fruit of this big tree is only about half an inch in size and the tiny seeds are so light that even blowing lightly makes them fly away from one’s open palm. Each of the many thousands of embryo bearing, viable seeds that a tree produces, and that too periodically, can, in principle, give rise to a banyan tree. Apart from forming from a seed, a banyan tree can develop from a cut out part of the tree. I have read and heard that in the third century BC, Aśoka’s daughter Saṅghamitrā took with her to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) a branch of the Bodhi Tree (the banyan tree under which Gautama Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment), that it was planted there and that it developed into a big banyan tree, which is seen to be alive even after the passage of over 2000 years. Even a small piece of a branch can develop into a banyan tree.
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*The Guinness Book of World Records lists this (since 1989) as the largest canopy of a living tree.
*His Holiness (Sanskrit-Tamil): vaṭagarbhayuta-vyavahārya vitaikaḷ.
*The Guinness Book of World Records lists (commencing in 2011) this banyan tree in Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka as the oldest-known human-planted tree and as planted in 288 BC.

(Contd…)

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Scientific Evidence –
Vedantic Light

Gleanings from His Holiness
Jagadguru Śrī Abhinava Vidyātīrtha Mahāsvāmin

1. Rebirth: Conundrums and Insightful Solutions

1.4 (…) On the evening of 7th June 1976, before and partially during His walk in the fields and for a while thereafter, He spoke to me about plants and questions related to jīvas in them, as He had done in the case of planarians.

His Holiness: That the members of the plant kingdom are animated by jīvas is the clear position of our śāstras.

For instance, it is said in the Chāndogya-upaniṣad with reference to the Banyan tree (Ficus benghalensis), “sa eṣa jīvenātmanānuprabhūtaḥ – This one is permeated by the jīvātman.” The Kaṭha-upaniṣad refers in general to rebirth in the plant kingdom in the passage, “sthāṇum anye ’nusaṁyanti – Others enter that which is devoid of locomotion (such as a tree).” The Yajñavalkya-smr̥ti, overtly speaks of rebirth as a grass, as a shrub, and as a creeper (tr̥ṇa-gulma-latātvaṁ).
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*Chāndogya-upaniṣad 6.11.1.
*Kaṭha-upaniṣad 2.2.7.
*Yajñavalkya-smr̥ti 3.208.

(Contd…)

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Scientific Evidence –
Vedantic Light

Gleanings from His Holiness
Jagadguru Śrī Abhinava Vidyātīrtha Mahāsvāmin

1. Rebirth: Conundrums and Insightful Solutions

1.3 (…) His Holiness (continuing): All these were the questions that I considered just out of interest a day after hearing the interesting information that Hari gave me about this flatworm with an extraordinary regenerative ability. I then readily answered them to myself in the light of the śāstra. I shall tell you about this on some other day.

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Scientific Evidence –
Vedantic Light

Gleanings from His Holiness
Jagadguru Śrī Abhinava Vidyātīrtha Mahāsvāmin

1. Rebirth: Conundrums and Insightful Solutions

1.3 (…) His Holiness (continuing): Hari said that there is some experimental evidence that a flatworm from which the portion containing the eyes has been removed is also able to move to avoid light, though less accurately than a complete worm. Does this imply that a flatworm has indriyas (organs) that are absent in humans? As per the Bhagavad-gītā, while in a body, a jīva presides over the mind and the five sense organs of hearing, sight, touch, taste and smell and, thereby, experiences objects; when the jīva departs from a body, it takes the mind and the five organs with it and proceeds to take up a different
body.

In the Brahma-sūtras, a question as to the total number of organs that are allied with a jīva is taken up; the conclusion spelt out by Bhagavatpāda in His bhāṣya is that the net number is 11, comprising the mind and the five sense-organs of hearing, touch, sight, taste and smell and the five organs of activity (such as of speech).

If the eyeless flatworm is able to react to light because of some means of sensing distinct from the five sense- organs of hearing, touch, sight, taste, and smell, would this not be incompatible with the position of the śāstra that a human may be reborn as a worm, that while in a body, such as that of a man, a jīva experiences objects, inclusive of light, by means of these five sense-organs, that it transmigrates with these five and that the total number of organs with a jīva is 11, which number would be exceeded were there to be a means of sensing apart from these five and the mind?

Hari spoke of a study in which flatworms exhibited sensitivity to weak magnetic fields. Like the eyeless flatworms’ reaction to light, is this reconcilable with the stated position of the śāstras and, if so, how?
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*Bhagavad-gītā 15.8-9. H.H. listed the organs as done in Verse 15.9.
*Brahma-sūtras 2.4.5-6. The Upaniṣads, Bhagavadgītā and the Brahma-sūtras constitute the triple cannon of Vedānta.

(Contd…)

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Scientific Evidence –
Vedantic Light

Gleanings from His Holiness
Jagadguru Śrī Abhinava Vidyātīrtha Mahāsvāmin

1. Rebirth: Conundrums and Insightful Solutions

1.3 (…) There are video recordings of planarians with more than one head trying to move in different directions at once; a planarian with eight heads from Reddien’s laboratory can, for example, be seen trying to move simultaneously in the different directions of its heads*; as a result of this, no useful movement is achieved in any direction.

There are also video recordings of planarians with more than one head moving in a direction due, perhaps, to a brain dominating here or to the brains co-operating. For instance, a planarian in Śanchez Alvarado’s laboratory with heads on both its ends can be seen advancing in the direction of one of its two heads, with the other head, which has a separate brain, yielding to what, for it, is an anomalous reverse motion.*

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*Pere Estupinya, Planaria 8 Heads Regeneration, YouTube, 25 April 2008, https://t.co/DcIf97W96t.
* HHMI BioInteractive Video, Identifying the Key Genes for Regeneration, YouTube, 9 November 2017, 00:06:30 – 00:06:42, https://t.co/02OlQ90AhN.

(Contd…)

[Centre for Brahmavidya @cbvorg]

Scientific Evidence –
Vedantic Light

Gleanings from His Holiness
Jagadguru Śrī Abhinava Vidyātīrtha Mahāsvāmin

1. Rebirth: Conundrums and Insightful Solutions

1.3 (…) In a study on the effect of gravity on the regeneration of planarians, the heads and tails of some planarians were amputated; the fragments were sent to the International Space Station, kept in the weightless condition there for five weeks, and brought back. One headless and tailless fragment spontaneously regenerated a full head on both the ends. When, subsequently, this worm’s two heads were amputated, its headless and tailless fragment grew into a worm with heads on both ends. The two heads of the latter worm were removed; what developed from the fragment without a head and a tail was, again, a worm with heads on both ends.*

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* 1 J. Morokuma et al., Planarian Regeneration in Space: Persistent Anatomical, Behavioural, and Bacteriological Changes Induced by Space Travel, Regeneration, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 85-102, 2017.

(Contd…)

[Centre for Brahmavidya @cbvorg]

Scientific Evidence –
Vedantic Light

Gleanings from His Holiness
Jagadguru Śrī Abhinava Vidyātīrtha Mahāsvāmin

1. Rebirth: Conundrums and Insightful Solutions

1.3 (…) Researchers such as Alejandro Śanchez Alvarado and Peter Reddien have reported that when they inhibited the synthesis of beta-catenin, a multifunctional protein, in a planarian and amputated its tail, a head developed in its rear instead of a tail. Also, heads formed in the places where partial cuts were made in the body of a planarian
with inhibited beta-catenin.* Inhibition of beta-catenin
has led to the formation of planarians with two, three and
even dozens of heads.

Identifying membrane voltage’s role in head-formation in a planarian, Michael Levin and his group reported* that when the head and tail of a planarian are cut off and the fragment is treated with the drug ivermectin to ensure that the voltage on the inside of the cell membrane is positive, then heads invariably form on both the ends.

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*K. A. Gurley, J. C. Rink and A. S. Alvarado, β–Catenin Defines Head
Versus Tail Identity During Planarian Regeneration and Homeostasis, Science, vol. 319, issue 5861, pp. 323-327, 18 January 2008. C. P. Petersen and P. W. Reddien, Smed-βcatenin-1 Is Required for Anteroposterior Blastema Polarity in Planarian Regeneration, Science, vol. 319, issue 5861, pp. 327-330, 18 January 2008.
*W. S. Beane et al., A Chemical Genetics Approach Reveals H,
K-ATPase-Mediated Membrane Voltage Is Required for Planarian Head Regeneration, Chemistry and Biology, vol. 18, issue 1, pp. 77-89, January 28, 2011.

(Contd…)

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Scientific Evidence –
Vedantic Light

Gleanings from His Holiness
Jagadguru Śrī Abhinava Vidyātīrtha Mahāsvāmin

1. Rebirth: Conundrums and Insightful Solutions

1.3 (…) {His Holiness speculated in His last question to Hari that in the future, scientists might be in a position to trigger, by chemical, electrical, or other means, the formation of multiple heads in a planarian. Hari’s response that he was confident about this happening possibly motivated His Holiness to build on His conjecture and reflect, as described above, on the jīva-related implications of the induced formation of flatworms that have two or more heads with a brain in each and whose movements may be disharmonious. Induced formation of heads has since
been reported and instances of incongruous behaviour
recorded.

(Contd)

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Scientific Evidence –
Vedantic Light

Gleanings from His Holiness
Jagadguru Śrī Abhinava Vidyātīrtha Mahāsvāmin

1. Rebirth: Conundrums and Insightful Solutions

1.3 (…) On the other hand, is it that both in the earlier case and in this one, only one jīva is the animator and the uneven movement reported in the earlier case is not due to incongruent, dual control? I thought that with improved knowledge of and control over the flatworm’s regeneration in the future, researchers may, through chemical, magnetic, or some other interventions, engender the formation of worms with three or more heads, fully functional and
developed worms with a head on two ends but no tail, and such else. Perhaps, they may come across cases of worms with two or more heads giving rise, on being cut, to worms with two or more heads.

Continuing with my speculation, I thought that the study of worms with more than one head may, in the future, throw light on whether multiple heads with full brains demonstrably result in disharmony in the worm’s behaviour and also on whether the disharmony between the brains would become replaced by their co-operative co-existence.

If due to, say, chemical intervention, a worm with one
complete head develops two additional heads or, a cut-out segment becomes a worm with three heads and it is distinctly observed that the three-headed worm is trying to move, at one time, in the directions of the three heads, should it be supposed that it is animated by three jīvas? If it subsequently moves in one head’s direction, should it be conjectured that the three jīvas have started to co-operate, with one of them dominant at that time? Or is it that the assumption of multiple jīvas in such a worm is uncalled for?

(Contd…)

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Scientific Evidence –
Vedantic Light

Gleanings from His Holiness
Jagadguru Śrī Abhinava Vidyātīrtha Mahāsvāmin

1. Rebirth: Conundrums and Insightful Solutions

1.3 (…) His Holiness (continuing): Hari said that a researcher (Thomas Morgan) had found that a long thin segment cut out from the side of a worm curved and developed heads with brains on both ends; also, the curved two-headed, two-brained worm-segment moved unevenly because of attempting to move straight forward in the direction of each of the heads. Does what appears to be incongruent, dual control over the movement imply that the worm-segment with two heads was animated by two jīvas? If yes, is it that the number of animating jīvas is associated with the number of heads or, rather, the number of brains?

Hari mentioned that a cut made in the head of a worm that passed between its eyes and extended beyond its head but was not so long as to sever the worm into two could result in two full heads developing in that worm itself; he had seen two worms, each with two heads and a single tail. Before the cut, such a worm was animated by a jīva. Is it the case that, on the analogy of the curved two-headed worm, after developing two heads with brains, this is animated by not one but two jīvas? If so, is one of them the earlier jīva and the other a jīva that was already present but latent, or one that entered after the cut?

(Contd…)

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Scientific Evidence –
Vedantic Light

Gleanings from His Holiness
Jagadguru Śrī Abhinava Vidyātīrtha Mahāsvāmin

1. Rebirth: Conundrums and Insightful Solutions

1.3 (…) If, on the other hand, the worms that arise from the parts of a worm are presumed to have their own jīvas, which are distinct from the jīva of the initial worm, then it must be accounted how what was experienced by just the initial jīva is remembered by the distinct jīvas of the regenerated segments. Also, the question arises whether all these jīvas, which are distinct from the initial worms jīva and from one another, were present in the initial worm prior to its being segmented? If yes, then, since the initial worm may be cut into many parts that would regenerate and each of these must receive a jīva that
was latent in the initial worm, the initial worm must have at least as many latent jīvas as the parts into which the worm will be cut into later.

Suppose that the initial worm has ten latent jīvas apart from its own jīva and it is cut into ten parts. Then, every part would become endowed with one of the ten jīvas but would not have spare, latent jīvas within it. What would happen if, after one such segment becomes a full worm, that worm is sliced into ten parts and these, in turn, regenerate into ten worms? How do these ten parts and, hence, the worms that they transform into become animated, for the worm that gave rise to them has just its own jīva and not a single latent jīva in it to pass on to any part? The scriptural statements about worms having jīvas would, of course, be contradicted if it is supposed that these ten parts and the worms they become lack jīvas.

For these parts to have jīvas, it will have to be assumed that the original worm had at least 110 latent jīvas and that it passed on 11 of these jīvas to each of its ten parts; each of the ten parts was animated by one of the 11 jīvas received by it and the remaining ten jīvas were latent in it; subsequently, when each of these ten parts became worms and those worms were cut into ten parts each, each worm passed on one of its ten latent jīvas to each of its own ten parts. The assumption of 110 latent jīvas in the original worm will suffice only up to the second level of segmentation into ten parts. If even a few more such generations of regenerated worms are considered, to cater to them having jīvas, it will have to be supposed that the original worm had thousands of latent jīvas to start with.

All this is the consequence of supposing that the jīva that animates a cut-out part is different from the jīva of the worm that is segmented and also that this jīva of the cut-out part was present and latent in the parent-worm prior to the parent-worm’s division.

Suppose, as done till now, that the jīvas of the parts into which a flatworm is cut are distinct from the jīva of the initial worm and from one another, but that these were not present and latent in the initial worm prior to its segmentation. Then, it need not be assumed that the initial worm must have thousands of latent jīvas in it to
cater to even a few generations of regenerated worms originating from it. However, it will have to be supposed that thousands and thousands of jīvas are at hand so that no sooner is any segmentation of a worm carried out, or occurs naturally, anywhere and at any time, each and every one of the parts that arises is straightaway animated by one of these.

(Contd…)

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Scientific Evidence –
Vedantic Light

Gleanings from His Holiness
Jagadguru Śrī Abhinava Vidyātīrtha Mahāsvāmin

1. Rebirth: Conundrums and Insightful Solutions

1.3 (…) Is it that the jīva that animated the initial worm animates all the segments into which that worm is divided and, in this way, the full worms that form from the segments? There are, however, problems with conceding this. Suppose the initial worm is divided into ten parts and all the ten parts become full worms in a few weeks. At this stage, the initial jīva would have to be animator of ten different worms.

Suppose that each of those ten worms is divided into ten parts and that, in a few weeks, each of those parts becomes a full worm. At this second stage, the initial jīva must be said to animate 100 worms.

Proceeding in this fashion, in a matter of months, the initial jīva would have to be the animator of thousands and thousands of worms. This is farfetched.

Moreover, while the Yoga-śāstra makes known that a yogin with powers can generate bodies and endow each of them with a mind that functions in accordance with his mind*, it never gives even a mild hint that ordinary worms can do so.

There is, thus, no scriptural support for the assumption that the jīva of the initial worm is the animator of all the worms that develop from the initial worm’s segments.
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* Yoga-sūtra 4.4 and Yoga-sūtra 4.5. That a yogin may produce
multiple bodies and equip them with minds that conform to his
mind is the Vedāntin’s position too. Thus, Bhagavatpāda has said in His bhāṣya on Brahma-sūtra 4.4.15, “It is only this that the Yoga-śāstras convey about how yogins take up multiple bodies.”

(Contd…)

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Scientific Evidence –
Vedantic Light

Gleanings from His Holiness
Jagadguru Śrī Abhinava Vidyātīrtha Mahāsvāmin

1. Rebirth: Conundrums and Insightful Solutions

1.3 (…) Hari said that the regenerated worms – even those that develop from a segment without a head or tail – can exhibit some retention of what the initial worm learnt.* Since the norm is that the one who experiences something is the one who recalls it, does the regenerated worm’s retention imply that the jīva of a regenerated worm is, in essence, only the jīva of the initial worm?

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*In his account to His Holiness, Hari relied upon the experiments from 1959 to 1970 on the retention of learning in flatworms after decapitation and head-regeneration. These were manually done and some of the experiments failed to be reproduced. However,
automated studies performed decades later have provided reliable evidence that trained and then decapitated planarians can exhibit memory retrieval after regenerating new heads (Tal Shomrat and Michael Levin, An Automated Training Paradigm Reveals Long-Term Memory in Planarians and Its Persistence Through Head Regeneration, J. Exp. Biol., vol. 216, no. 20, pp. 3799-3810, 2013

(Contd…)

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Scientific Evidence –
Vedantic Light

Gleanings from His Holiness
Jagadguru Śrī Abhinava Vidyātīrtha Mahāsvāmin

1. Rebirth: Conundrums and Insightful Solutions

1.3 (…) If the worm is cut into, say, five parts, five full worms arise that are replicas of the original worm. Being worms, these must, in the light of the scripture, be seen to be sa-jīva (with a jīva). If we take it that any of these regenerated worms does not have a jīva, that supposition would be discordant with our scripture. It cannot be justifiably contended that the scripture has referred to natural worms only, these are unnatural as their formation is initiated by splitting, and, therefore, the presumption that none of these has a jīva would not be incompatible with the scripture. This is because, as revealed to me by Hari, even in nature, there are such flatworms whose mode of multiplication is by splitting. Further, even the flatworms that commonly reproduce by laying fertilized eggs may, under some conditions, reproduce in nature through self-division. Moreover, the worms that form from a cut-out part of a worm are not only indistinguishable externally and internally from other worms, but also behave and reproduce like the latter. Hence, these too should, as said in the scripture, possess jīvas.

(Contd…)

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Scientific Evidence –
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Gleanings from His Holiness
Jagadguru Śrī Abhinava Vidyātīrtha Mahāsvāmin

1. Rebirth: Conundrums and Insightful Solutions

1.3 His Holiness indicated to me to wait and silently proceeded to complete His āhnika. He then continued.

His Holiness (continuing): Later, with this information about flatworms as the basis, I considered, on my own and as a matter of interest, some transmigration-related questions and answers to them in line with the scriptures.

As per our scriptures, worms have jīvas and a human may, on account of adharma, be reborn as a worm. For instance, in the Anugītā, while listing to Arjuna what those who sin persistently may be reborn as, Lord Kr̥ṣṇa includes, “kryādā dandaśūkāś ca kr̥mi-kīṭa-vihaṅgamāḥ – creatures that feed on carrion, snakes, worms, insects and birds.”* That a worm has prāṇa and, thus, a jīva is discernible from the statement, “ā śvabhya ā kr̥mibhya ā kīṭa-pataṅgebhyaḥ – up to (that of) dogs, up to (that of) worms, up to (that of) insects and moths,”* in the Br̥hadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad about prāṇa’s food. In view of the scriptural statements, which are the means of valid knowledge* in such matters, we must accept that the flatworm with amazing regenerative abilities too has a jīva.

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*Mahābhārata 14.36.23 (Gita Press Edition).
*Br̥hadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 6.1.14.
*His Holiness: pramāṇa.

(Contd…)

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Scientific Evidence –
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Gleanings from His Holiness
Jagadguru Śrī Abhinava Vidyātīrtha Mahāsvāmin

1. Rebirth: Conundrums and Insightful Solutions

(…) The flatworms of other species have both ovaries* and testes; while they can fertilize their eggs with their own sperm, such worms usually lay eggs fertilized by other worms; even such flatworms that produce new worms through eggs may, under some conditions, reproduce by dividing themselves. I asked him, “When a flatworm is cut into three, there must be internal constituents that ensure that the segment with the head develops a tail at the other end, the part with the tail grows a head at the opposite end and the portion with neither a head nor a tail forms a head on the side in which the worm’s head was and a tail where the worm’s tail was. Is my assumption correct, at least to some extent?” Hari said that it was.

This led me to pose my main question, “You had spoken of a thin long piece cut from the side of a flatworm curving and forming a head on both ends. This indicates that the internal process leading to the formation of a head at the upper end of the strip and a tail at the lower end was, somehow, muddled. While this happened without the experimenter’s intervention, can chemical, magnetic, electrical or some such means be deliberately employed* to force a head with a brain or a tail to form on any chosen side of a headless and tailless piece or to cause a worm with cuts to develop multiple heads?” Hari said that while he had not read of this having been reliably accomplished till then, he was confident that with improved understanding of the flatworm and the factors impacting its regeneration, such control over a flatworm’s development would be reported.

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* His Holiness said,‘aṇḍāśaya.’
* H.H.: rasāyana-cumbakaśakti-vidyucchaktyādi-prayoga-dvārā.

(Contd…)Rebirth: Conundrums a