How can one come to a certainty
about something as seemingly nebulous and intangible as reincarnation?
"Prove it to me, show me the 8x10 colored glossies," says the skeptic.
Actually, the glossies exist, but we're getting ahead of ourselves.
First of all, in order to know about something, it is a prequisite that
you want to know about something. It is not possible to know about
something you don't want to know about, because of the mind's amazing
capacity for denial. We can experience any tragedy, and the natural
ability of the mind to go into shock can prevent us from knowing it,
both physically and mentally. This ability can be called forth to meet
any challenge, including a challenge to one's world paradigm.
So, let's assume the reader is
not simply reading with a combative mind, but really wants to know.
What, then, are the avenues, the ways of knowing?
For convenience, I'm breaking
them into five categories: 1) memories and direct experience, 2)
scientific research, 3) what I'll loosely term "detective methods", 4)
philosophy and intellectual inquiry, and 5) authority, or believing
someone else who one is convinced does know. Each of these subjects
could and does fill volumes, so this is simply going to be an overview,
and I apologize for the length of it even so.
1) Memories and Direct
Experience
Direct experience of reincarnation most often
comes in the form of memories in childhood (i.e., experienced as a child
or reported to you by your child), dreams, and in a sense of
recognition, often mutual, with another person. Although there are no
statistics compiled as yet, Carol Bowman, who has studied this
phenomenon as it occurs among American children, suggests that it is
fairly common, if not universal. The reason it isn't recognized and
reported more often, is that parents don't know what they're seeing, and
because children lose the memories after about seven years of age and
thus usually don't continue to talk about it at an age where their
opinion is taken seriously. Judging by three years' worth of
correspondence with a cross-section of experiencers, repeating dreams
immersing the dreamer in a vivid landscape of a past-life are also
relatively common. But people usually keep this kind of thing to
themselves, lest their sanity be called into question.
The sense of recognition,
including mutual recognition, deserves special mention. This recognition
goes very deep, and can be either positive or negative. Instant
friendships or romantic relationships are formed on the first meeting;
people relate to each other as though they had years of history
together. Instant emnity can arise also, or a strong feeling that one
owes the other person something., or that one fears them for some
unexplained reason. All of these experiences may be past-life memories
breaking through into the present life.
Another form of direct
experience which appears to be more rare, is full-sensory flashbacks.
The person may vividly re-experience a brief scene from a past life in
all it's intensity, complete with colors, smells, emotions, and
sensations.
These types of experiences are
all spontaneous, sometimes triggered by encountering a person, a
situation, or a sensation such as a distinctive smell. Past-life
memories can also be induced, as through hypnosis or certain types of
therapy techniques. Sometimes these memories can be brief glimpses, and
often they are mixed in with fantasy and imagination. However,
occasionally these techniques can trigger the same kind of vivid,
realistic flashback that a few people have spontaneously. Despite the
skepticism surrounding hypnosis-induced past-life memories, some of
these memories have been verified, and thus the entire matter can't be
dismissed as suggestibility.
Inasmuch as it's important to
know when an author is writing from personal experience and when the
material is second-hand, suffice it to say that I have had glimpses of a
past life in a dream, once through hypnotic regression, once through
non-hypnotic therapy techniques, and on three occasions, very brief
flashback experiences while feeling a deep sense of recognition for
another person. Certainly not as extensive as some people have reported,
but enough to know from my own experience that it's real. I have also
spoken personally with people who have had more prolonged and more
detailed experiences.
2) Scientific Research
The scientific research into reincarnation
rests almost entirely on the work of Dr. Ian Stevenson and his
colleagues. Dr. Stevenson has painstakingly studied children, mostly in
India and the Middle East, but occasionally elsewhere, who show evidence
of remembering what is usually their most-recent lifetime. When I say
evidence, I mean very solid evidence, gathered with very good science.
In a typical case, a very young child might start complaining that he or
she wants to go home, doesn't belong with this family, and remembers as
many as 30 or 40 details which are later verified. The child acts
appropriate to the previous personality, even when severely punished for
it. When the identity of the past-life person is determined, say, in a
neighboring village, and the child is taken there, he recognizes and
acts appropriately toward his old family. There's much more, but I would
refer the reader to his books, including "20 Cases Suggestive of
Reincarnation" to get the full impact of these studies. Dr. Stevenson
will only say his findings are "suggestive", but the evidence is so
overwhelming the real question is how can it be so thoroughly ignored by
mainstream science.
3) Detective Methods
Dr. Marge Rieder, a hypnotherapist, is probably
the foremost researcher using these methods. I use the phrase "detective
methods" loosely, because she is after "just the facts, ma'am", as she
says, which she fearlessly pursues wherever the evidence takes her. She
is not, for example, convinced that past-life memories are primarily
about reincarnation. For one thing, she sees evidence in her work that
people under hypnosis not only can tell you about how things were
(things were subsequently verified), but also how they currently are
-- obviously involving some degree of psychic perception. In her
Millboro study (focusing on Millboro, VA), she hypnotized a group of
people in California who, under hypnosis, had very detailed memories of
living, and knowing each other, in this small town toward the end of the
U.S. Civil War. Dr. Rieder took the unusual step of hypnotizing people
together, and in a deep trance state, they would start relating to each
other as though they were their former personalities. Many things said
under hypnosis in this study were subsequently verified. In fact, both
Dr. Stevenson and Dr. Rieder have already provided the "8x10 glossies"
the skeptic asks for.
Another person who has used
detective methods is literally a detective. Robert Snow is head of the
homocide department of the Indianapolis police department. He underwent
a hypnotic regression session on a dare, from a co-worker who had seen
it used in child molestation cases. After 45 minutes of experiencing
nothing except an aching backside, suddenly he was plunged into one of
the vivid flashbacks described earlier in this article, where he
experienced full tactile sensation and yet never lost the experience of
being in the hypnotist's office. His book, "Searching for Carroll
Beckwith", describes the third of three past-life experiences he had in
that session and how he tried his best to disprove their validity using
standard police detective methods. Instead, he ended up proving 26 of 28
provable points as recorded on the audio cassette he made of the
session.
4) Philosophical Arguments
This is obviously too big a topic to delve into
at length. However, one example will suffice to give the idea. The case
for reincarnation is often advanced by referring to the law of
conservation of energy, and by pointing out that nature moves in cycles
rather than in a straight line. Anyone who has studied ecology
understands this, and through increasing environmental awareness, the
principle has become widely known. Water, for example, changes shape
from air-borne moisture, to rain, to rivers or lakes, and back to
air-borne moisture. This "recycling" model is logically applied to the
process of reincarnation. Skeptics can always shoot down any
philosophical argument, especially if they are willing to engage in
sophistry and throw in some fashionable derision (which they usually are
if backed into a corner). A philosophical investigation is extremely
useful for the serious inquirer, but basically useless for convincing
anyone who "doesn't want to know".
5) Authority
By authority I mean, relying on someone else's
opinion, out of faith in that person's knowledge. The type of authority
I consider most significant is faith in someone else's direct
experience. In this broad sense, your child can be an authority on
reincarnation, if he tells you about how he died in a past life and you
believe her, because you know she doesn't make up stories and had no
opportunity to learn about the subjects she's talking about. However,
there are two kinds of authority that have most influenced a belief in
reincarnation in the West--psychics, and spiritual teachers from the
East.
There are quite a few psychics
who claim to be able to "read" past lives. Based on my limited personal
experience, they are accurate some percentage of the time. I arranged
and videotaped a psychic reading given for Jeff Keene, who has memories
of being Confederate General John B. Gordon. He also has memories, both
spontaneously and through a form of meditation, of a more recent
lifetime as a British special officer during WWII. At the time I booked
the reading, I had already read Keene's manuscript describing his
memories of both lifetimes. The account of the second lifetime was much
less detailed, but there was enough information to know that he had been
what was called a "Fucillier" and had been dropped behind enemy lines in
Germany en route to France. The psychic was given absolutely no
information about Keene other than his name and birth date, and the
camera was turned on. After her "invocation", the psychic immediately
began describing Keene in a uniform crawling on the ground with a gun in
wartime. She described the terrain, and then further explained, "This is
in another country. You're either in France or Germany, somewhere
there--and boy, do I feel like it's France." As I stood there filming, I
immediately remembered the paragraph in his manuscript relating to the
Fucillier. Keene's manuscript (again, this was written by him and read
by me before the session), reads in part: "I remember thinking (while
riding in a military airplane), 'I'm not part of the crew, they don't
even know who I am or what I am. All they know is they are dropping me
over Germany. I am going to France by way of Germany.'"
The statistical chances of a
psychic hitting this close with NO prior information, as her very first
utterances in the session, are very slim. From what I could gather from
this and other psychics, the information is actually obtained through
disincarnate spirits who have access to some kind of "database" in their
present condition, not unlike an ethereal "internet". But my impression
is also that the information coming from psychics about past lives is a
mixed bag, so that you don't know what to believe. Beyond that issue,
it's difficult to determine which psychics are genuine. If I had the
money, and I wanted to seriously try this method, I'd have several
readings given by several different psychics, and compare notes, taking
care not to give them any prior information about myself at all. If
several psychics hit on the same theme or themes, it probably would have
some validity. Incidentally, I did videotape two blind readings (no
information given by me ahead of time) for Jeff Keene, and several
themes such as leadership ability came up in both, including the
suggestion by the second psychic that Jeff had been someone in authority
"like a general". However, the Fucillier life did not appear in the
second reading, which was a numerology reading focusing more on
present-life issues than on past-lives.
Finally, there have been no
small number of teachers and gurus from India and elsewhere coming to
the West in the last 100 years or so. A handful are genuine; the vast
majority simply have second-hand knowledge. I have spent a lifetime
studying this area and I feel I can point with confidence to about 9 or
10 of these teachers who I believe were genuine. But I would be unable
to prove my conclusions to anyone else. Nonetheless, these teachers
claim to have verified reincarnation from their own personal experience,
and furthermore, to understand its larger place in the fabric of life.
This is really the royal road to understanding reincarnation, because
the Eastern teachings are much more advanced than our current state of
knowledge. However the entire matter rests with whether the authority
you choose really knows or is just guessing from second-hand knowledge.
Some of the pretenders know they are pretending, while many of them have
convinced themselves. Either way you run the risk of getting flawed
information, just as you do with psychics.
Scriptures -- which after all
are mainly the written record left by an authority and codified by their
followers -- also provide information on reincarnation. Some, like the
Bhagavad Gita, are quite explicit, while the Christian New Testament has
only retained a few veiled or indirect references. The Gita, for
example, says: "Just as the dweller in this body passes through
childhood, youth and old age, so at death he merely passes into another
kind of body. The wise are not deceived by that."
In the Gospel of John, at the
beginning of Chapter 9, is found the following story: