Rebirth and the Western Buddhist - Khamkoo

Details of Rebirth 75
This is in full agreement with the answers to Wambach's
question, "When does your soul enter the foetus?" Thirtythree
percent entered just before or during the birth
process-two twins, for example, entered shortly before
birth, fighting over which body to pick. Twenty percent
were outside the foetus and nineteen percent in and out of
the foetus during the period before birth, five percent were
able to leave the foetus at will even after birth, twelve
percent attached to it after six months' gestation, and only
eleven percent were inside it in the first six months. She
also found that eighty-six percent were aware of feelings,
emotions and thoughts of the mother before they were
born. 140 Story 141 too reports a striking case of a Thai man
who became the child of his younger sister, born the day
before he died. At his funeral, he remembered the birth
and straight away was beside his sister and the baby. She
twice told him he was dead and should go away, but he
was strongly attracted, then lost consciousness and had a
sensation of falling. Next he found he was a young baby.
When he could talk, he retained considerable detailed
knowledge from his previous life, such as the names of his
former relatives, and the abilities to read Cambodian
characters and to speak Laotian. These data cast grave
doubt on the validity of models such as Losang Gyatso's,
which insist that the very subtle body from the previous
existence must be present for the foetus to develop. They
show that the process of conception is not necessarily
governed by the karma of the person to whom the body
will belong.
To sum up the four points investigated here, it would
appear that while some points of Buddhist teaching on
rebirth are realistic, others are mythic or symbolic rather
than literal, and others again are mere speculative elaborations
that will have to be discarded when further investigation
has given us a clearer picture of what actually