Chapter 3
1. S. L. Miller and L. E. Orgel, The Origins of Life on Earth (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973).
2. E. A. Speiser, Genesis, The Anchor Bible, Vol. 1 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964). See also Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology (Berkeley: University of California, 1976). In this work the origin of death is also dealt with.
3. James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, abridged edn (New York: Macmillan, 1972), pp. 805–6.
4. James George Frazer, though lived a long life, 87 years, did not make any field study. For his conclusions he relied mainly on the books and records available in such Universities as Glasgow, Liverpool and Cambridge where he studied and taught. His magnum opus, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, 3rd revised edn. (New York: St. Martins, 1955), runs into 13 volumes. Many books on this work have appeared. Those of E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witch Craft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1937) and Edmund R. Leach, Political System of Highland Burma: A Study of Kachin Social Structure (London: Athlone Press, 1954) may be mentioned in this context.
5. R. S. Broughton, Parapsychology: The Controversial Science (New York Bellentine Books, 1991). See also N. Cartwright, How the Laws of Physics Lie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983).
6. See R. Balasubramanian (ed.), Theistic Vedanta (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2004).
7. Pierre Simon Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities, tr. F. W. Truscott and F. L. Emory (New York: Dover, 1951).
8. G. Gutting, Michel Foucault’s Archaeology of Scientific Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
9. Herbert Feigl, ‘The “Mental” and the “Physical”’, in Minnesota Studies in the Philosophical of Science, Vol. II, Concpets, Theories and the Mind-Body Problems, eds Herbert Feigl, Michael Seriven and Grover Maxwell (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1963). See also R. M. Adams, Leibniz: Determinist, Theist, Idealist (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); and R. Balasubramanian (ed.), Advaita Vedanta (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2002).
10. D. Armstrong, The Nature of Mind (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980). See also E. Husserl, Ideas, tr. W. Gibson (New York: Macmillan, 1962).
11. The term karman and its surrogates are available in many canonical languages. Its various connotations—ethico-religious, physical, chemical, etc. Birth, death and various other happenings of the human life are attributed to the doctrine of karman. The most problematic aspect of this doctrine relates to the invisible vicarious aspects of the acts of commission or omission of the moral agent.
12. This term has two main aspects—positive and negative. Sometimes such terms as mythical and mythological are used in derogatory senses, suggesting that what is mythical or mythological is an unjustifiable belief or practice. Positively speaking, this very term has been used as a proto-scientific or pre-scientific, that is, speculative, anticipation of hypothesis or theory, which may turn out to be scientifically impregnated.
13. The life and death are two very tangled ideas of religion, philosophy and medical science. There are innumerable myths and views about death. Life and death have been referred to as two different but related modes of being. Death has been variously described, viz., (1) it is imperfection inherent in life, (2) it is due to some or other form of guilt and (3) it is rooted in the very desire of the human being itself. The main mundane way of identifying death is attribution of it to overpopulation, unsustainable by the food and drink produced by or available on the earth. On the origin of death, understandably, there are innumerable myths. The most intriguing view about death is said to have a being of its own, transcending death itself.
14. The arts and sciences of mummification, surprisingly enough, are found in many civilizations unrelated to one another. How the concerned technology appeared among the peoples in such distant lands as Egypt, Mexico and the western parts of South America is not reliably known. It is widely believed that mummification is expressive of the human desire to keep the dead alive in memory and imagination beyond its physical end.
15. The importance of the concepts of life and death are evident from its religious varieties spread over the whole world. Interestingly enough, religious views on death or rebirth are found to be widely different. It has remained a persistent question if the innate ideas of the human beings are same, why there should be such wide diversity on less important issue like life, death and rebirth or mortality.
16. On the subject of karman I have already said certain things above vide 11.
17. On the diversity of what life is like after death there are many views. See, for example, Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, revised and enlarged edn (New York: Pantheon, 1964) and Yoga: Immortality and Freedom, 2nd edn (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969). See also Giuseppe Tucci, The Religions of Tibet, tr. Geoffrey Samuel (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980).
18. W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, Vol. 4, Plato, The Man and His Dialogues: Earlier Period, Vol. 5, The Later Plato and His Academy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975 and 1978). See also G. Vlastos, Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
19. In this connection, the works of such thinkers as S. Radhakrishnan, The Brahma Sātra: The Philosophy of Spiritual Life (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960), S. G. F. Brandon, Man and His Destiny in the Great Religions (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1962), Alfred Bertholet, A Transmigration of Souls (London: Harper & Brothers, 1909) and Joseph Head and S. L. Cranston (eds), Reincarnation: An East-West Anthology (New York: Julian Press, 1961) are very important.
20. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1970). See particularly Vol. 18, Ch. XX, ‘Death, Desire and Incapacity’. See also Vol. 19, Ch. XX, ‘The Philosophy and Rebirth’.
21. The interested reader may profitably look into Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Vol. 19, Chs XX, XXI and XXII.