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Soul Research
In 1972, a distinguished panel met in Windsor, Ontario, Canada,
and discussed "problems associated with attempts to define the exact
moment of death." Panel members included
world-famous heart surgeon Dr. Wilfred G. Bigelow, Mr. Justice Edson L.
Haines of the Ontario Supreme Court, and J. Francis Leddy, president of the
University of Windsor. Dr. Bigelow upheld
the existence of the soul and urged systematic research to determine
what the soul is and where it comes from. Dr.
Bigelow's and other panelists' comments
were later published in the Montreal Gazette. When the article came to
the attention of Srila Prabhupada, he wrote a letter to Dr. Bigelow offering
substantial Vedic knowledge of the science of the soul and suggested
a practical method for
scientifically understanding it. The Gazette article and Srila
Prabhupada 's response follow.
Gazette Headline: Heart Surgeon Wants to Know What a Soul Is
WlNDSOR-A world-famous Canadian heart surgeon says he believes the
body has a soul, which departs at death and theologians ought to try to find
out more about it. Dr Wilfred G. Bigelow,
head of the cardiovascular surgery unit at Toronto General Hospital,
said that "as a person who believes there is a soul," he thought the
time had come "to take the mystery out of this and find out what it is." Bigelow was a member of a
panel which appeared before the Essex County Medical-Legal Society to discuss
problems associated with attempts to define the exact moment of death. The question has become vital in the age of
transplants of hearts and other organs in cases when the donors are inevitably
dying. The Canadian Medical Association has produced a widely accepted definition of death as the moment
when the patient is in coma, responds to no stimulus of any kind, and brain
waves recorded on a machine are flat.
The other members of the panel were Mr.
Justice Edson L. Haines of the Ontario Supreme Court and J. Francis Leddy,
president of the University of Windsor.
Bigelow, elaborating on points he had raised during the
discussion, said in an interview later that his thirty-two years as a surgeon
had left him no doubts that there is a soul."There are certain cases where you happen to be present at the
moment when people pass from a living state to death, and some mysterious
changes take place. One of the most noticeable is the sudden lack of life or luster to the eyes. They become
opaque and literally lifeless. It's difficult to document what you observe. In
fact, I don't think it can be documented very well." Bigelow, who became
world renowned for his pioneering work
in the "deep freeze" surgical technique known as hypothermia and for
his heart valve surgery, said "soul research" should be undertaken by
theology and allied disciplines within the
university. Some sections of a reply written by the founder-achaiya of ISKCON,
Srila Prabhupada, are given below:
Srila Prabhupada Gives the Vedic Evidence
My dear Dr. Bigelow:
Please accept my greetings.Recently I have read an article in the
Gazette by Rae Corelli entitled "Heart Surgeon Wants to Know What a Soul
Is," and it was very interesting. Your comments show great insight, and so I thought to write
you on this matter Undoubtedly the soul is present in the heart of the living
entity, and it is the source of all the energies for maintaining the body.
The energy of the soul is spread all
over the body, and this is known as consciousness. Since this consciousness
spreads the energy of the soul all over the body, one can feel pains and
pleasures in ar>y part of the body.
The soul is individual, and he is transmigrating from one body to another, just
as a person transmigrates from babyhood to childhood, from childhood to
boyhood, from boyhood to youth, and then
to advanced old age. Then the change called death takes place when we change to
a new body, just as we change our old dress to a new dress. This is called transmigration of the soul.
When a soul wants to enjoy this material world, forgetting his
real home in the spiritual world, he takes this life of hard struggle for
existence. This unnatural life of repeated birth, death, disease, and old age can be stopped when his
consciousness is dovetailed with the supreme consciousness of God. That is the
basic principle of our Krishna movement. As far as heart transplant is concerned, there is no question of success
unless the soul is there in the heart. So the presence of the soul has to be
accepted. In sexual intercourse, if there is no soul, there is no conception, no pregnancy
The undertaking of "soul research" would certainly mark
the advancement of science. But advancement of science will not be able to find
the soul. The soul's presence can simply be accepted on circumstantial understanding. You will
find in the Vedic literature that the dimension of the soul is one
ten-thousandth the size of a point. The material scientist cannot measure the
length and breadth of a point. Therefore
it is not possible for the material scientist to capture the soul. You can
simply accept the soul's existence by taking it from authority. What the
greatest scientists are finding, we've
explained long ago.As soon as one understands the existence of the soul, he can
immediately understand the existence of God. The difference between God and the
soul is that God is a very great soul,
and the living entity is a very small soul; but qualitatively they are equal.
Therefore God is all-pervading, and the living entity is localized. But the
nature and quality are the same. There
is a bona fide method for the attainment of spiritual perfection by the
spiritual spark of soul, and if he is properly cruided then he is very easily
sent back home, back to Godhead,
wherefrom he originally fell. It will be a great contribution to human
society if this authorized information from the Vedic literature is presented
to the modem world on the basis of modern scientific understanding. The fact is already there. It
simply has to be presented for modern understanding.
Yours sincerely,
A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami