PSI Annual Journal 2004

The contemplation of reincarnation may be beneficial to us for a number of reasons. Perhaps it can answer these questions. Is little Johnny afraid of water because he drowned in his last life? Can the sudden attraction between a young couple be traced back to a close relationship in a previous life? Is my friend’s daughter really the reincarnation of his grandmother as he believes? What is the source of genius in people? Is it true that some psychological problems can be solved by hypnotically regressing a person to the moment of its origin in a previous life? Do we believe in reincarnation as an escape from the thought of death or is its promise of continuous evolution real and meaningful? Does reincarnation give us a better concept of our own selves and offer more meaning to life? And finally, why do so many people in the world believe in it? In the USA in 1994, 27% of the population believed in the theory. As the belief has been so widely prevalent in early history and in many aboriginal peoples, what happened to the belief in our own culture?

In the teachings of Jesus and in the early church reincarnation was taken for granted. There are a few examples from the bible such as when Jesus accepted the disciples implied acceptance of reincarnation when He was asked why this man had been born blind, was it because he had sinned or because of his parents’ sins. They were obviously trying to understand how reincarnation worked. At another time Jesus stated that John the Baptist was the reincarnation of Elijah, but few Christians accept this. Some Christian beliefs also reflect the idea of reincarnation, such as the idea that children are born in sin, a reference to the concept of karma that the sins of a former life will catch up to us in the next or as Jesus had expressed it, “You reap what you sow”.

The fate of reincarnation as a doctrine in the church started getting into trouble in year 312 when the Roman emperor Constantine became converted to Christianity. The Roman emperors liked the idea of being deified when they died. It meant that they would go to a blissful state in the next life no matter how corrupt their present life had been. This belief in and desire for instant salvation no matter how corrupt one had been was to influence the future of the church and reincarnation was an obstacle to this desire; it did not promise instant salvation, but teaches that it has to be earned by virtue of good karma.

In the early 3rd century, Origen was an influential writer who believed according to Webster’s dictionary, ‘that human souls existed before their union with bodies; that they were originally holy but became sinful in the pre-existent state; and that all men will at last be saved’. So he was like us, a Universalist. Over the next 300 years Origen and his teachings were widely venerated although never fully accepted by the church authorities.

In the 6th century, the weak minded emperor Justinian, dominated by his ambitious wife, Theodora, was swayed to deny his former support for Origen. Theodora then attempted to appoint her own supporter as a patriarch in the church a move that was courageously opposed by Pope Agapetus but he died soon after in the year 536 a.d. The next pope, Pope Silverius also stood up against her and as soon as he did knew that he had signed his own death warrant. She soon found reason to depose him and he died in prison a short time later. She finally got someone to support her concept of Christianity. She is the only empress in history to have succeeded in appointing her own pope, Pope Vergilius, in 538.a.d. She had risen from a commoner, actress, harlot, mistress and when Justinian’s mother died, empress. Her next goal was to be deified when she died. To accomplish this she had to have the teachings of Origen renounced. Justinian completed this for her after her death when he convened the Fifth Ecumenical Congress of Constantinople in 553a.d. Here the church condemned Origen and his teachings of reincarnation. The curse issued by Justinian read in part ‘If anyone assert the fabulous pre-existence of souls: let him be anathema’, that is, cursed and excommunicated.

The church embraced the freedom it found from this belief and was then at liberty to find ways to enforce their beliefs onto the populace. Salvation could be purchased by a donation to the church. Non-believers were condemned to eternal hell fire. The idea of reincarnation was despised as belonging only to the heathen and uncultured peoples. Hans Holzer wrote, “The church needed the whip of Judgment Day to keep the faithful in line. It was therefore a matter of survival for the church not to allow belief in reincarnation to take hold among her followers”.

Today we are gradually becoming free of the overbearing influence of the church and can explore other ideas, but some of their ideas still cling to us and limit the extent of our imagination. Some of us are reactionary, totally denying the spiritual and locking our imagination into the material realm and only those things that can be proved by the scientific method. Unfortunate for belief in reincarnation as much of the evidence for reincarnation is anecdotal. How much credence can we give to the stories of others?

Sometimes we have a hard time accepting things in our own experience. In a discussion group I was involved in a few weeks ago at the library, someone mentioned reincarnation and it was talked about for a while and then the discussion went on to other things. In our concluding statements, a nine year old boy stated, “ When I was about three years old I could remember being 16.” The boy seemed to get some insight into the possible meaning of that experience, that he was remembering a former life. Sceptical minds might find this interpretation of a memory difficult to accept, even if it was their own experience. I wonder how many children would remember their past life if their parents were open to the idea. The testimony of children between the ages of 2 to 6 is actually fairly abundant, even when the parents find it impossible to believe in reincarnation.

Joe Fisher, the author of The Case for Reincarnation, the book where I am getting much of this information, tells of a number of remarkable examples. There is the case of a little girl named Romy Crees. She insisted that her name was Joe Williams, husband of Shiela and father of 3 children and she wanted to go home and see her former mother and tell her that everything was okay. Over the next couple of years, Romy kept describing memories that she was having including a graphic description of her death in a motorcycle accident. This vivid description jolted the parents to do something. How could a little girl know anything like that? They called in a professional investigator and they and two journalists all travelled the 140 miles to see Romy’s former family. Romy insisted that they buy some flowers because ‘Mother Williams loves blue flowers’. When they arrived they found the house and Mrs. Williams just as Romy had described it. Astonished by the flowers, Mrs. Williams disclosed that her late son’s last gift had been a bouquet of blue flowers. Romy recognized the pictures of her former wife and children. Mrs. Williams warmed to the little girl and yes, confirmed that her son and his wife had been killed just as Romy had described.

There are many of these types of stories. Usually children who died violent deaths in the previous life, remember the most clearly and hundreds of cases have been verified. Parents usually dismiss children’s references such as ‘When I was big---‘, or as one lady I know did when she was young she remembers asking her mother, ‘Are you the only mother I ever had?’ Her mother she says was really upset by this question. Some children regret not being the same sex, or yearn for food that they used to eat including alcohol or tobacco. Some miss the companionship of their previous family. They may suffer from phobias related to the way they died: fear of knives, automobiles, or water, or perhaps of other people.

One young 2-year old in Oklahoma, insisted that his name was Jimmy but each time he would be told ‘No, it is Jeremy’. Jeremy saw a picture of a wagon in a book and told his grandmother, ‘The wagon hit me. I was dead and I was angry with the man who drove the wagon.’ Another time he asked his father, ‘What’s wrong with your back? Is it killing you? My back got hurt one time and it killed me.’ When Jeremy was 5 yrs old, he was taken to a scene of an accident where a nephew of his father had been killed. His name was Jimmy. In a serious car accident the car that 14 yr old Jimmy had been driving, ran into a truck. When Jeremy saw the scene he became quite emotional and demonstrated how he had fallen out of the car. “I was going like a bullet,” he said. “It was like a bomb.”

Examples such as these may not completely prove reincarnation. There may be something else going on such as thought transference, spirit possession, manipulation by parents but the alternatives often prove harder to believe.

Another somewhat famous case today, is the reincarnation of the Panchen Llama. This is a man in Tibet second in authority to the Dalai Llama who has similarly incarnated in this role numerous times. In the 80’s he was lanquishing in a prison in China, where he died in 1989. He was reborn and located by dreams and signs at the age of 5 in 1995. After the usual tests Tibetans use, such as recognition of items that belonged to the previous Panchen Llama, and recognition of individuals who had been close to him, he was accepted by the Dalai Llama as being the actual Panchen Llama. The Dalai Llama, in making this announcement, had hopes that the Chinese would relent in their attitude towards him. But the Panchen Llama’s karma was very persistent in that the Chinese refused to relent and kidnapped the boy and those close to him and introduced their own candidate, another 5 yr old. Now 14, he is still in Chinese custody. The Tibetans are well known for their ability to locate their leaders after their deaths.

Many other examples can be described from such sources as people who have been regressed, perhaps to find a way to heal their problems. It seems when people can understand the source of their problem, the simple understanding may be sufficient to relieve them of fears, or headaches or whatever their problem was. There are also examples from people who have had deja vous experiences, such as General George Patton. In the second World War, when he was in Longres, France, an officer offered to show him around as he had never been there. He replied, “You don’t have to. I know this place. I know it well”, and he proceeded to show his driver around, pointing out the ancient Roman ruins. He said he had been a soldier in many previous lives.

Well, how can all this be explained? Perhaps we should first dispense with some modern day myths.

In my view, we are being a way too gullible when we believe that we are simply a product of the chance alignment of our DNA structure. Evolution we are told is brought about by chance. It’s a lucky change in the DNA structure brought about by a chance encounter with a cosmic ray that happens to change the DNA in a favourable way allowing the development of better and more numerous life forms. But I am convinced that if chance were the only thing guiding evolution, then life would have degenerated a long time ago, if it had ever made any progress in the first place. Our world is based on a very fine balance. If the amount of oxygen were increased slightly then everything would burn up, if it were lowered slightly then we would not have enough oxygen to live. There are many, many checks and balances like this, far too numerous to be explained only by chance. And yes, DNA is a very complex molecule and influences the patterns of growth in us, but to me it is more like a sign post directing the flow of energy in our bodies. Or, perhaps DNA is like a holographic film, where each tiny segment of the film can reproduce the entire image. In the case of DNA, the light shining through this film is the light of our consciousness.

I believe that reincarnation is a theory that helps us to look beyond DNA and chance evolution to find more satisfactory answers. The suggestion is that consciousness may be a guiding principle to the organization of our DNA. It may be that within our bodies, within our minds there are electro-magnetic forces, or even finer and more subtle forces that originated in conscious experience. These subtle forces may be in part those pictured in Kirlian photograpy, where the aura around a person is perceived. Operating according to the law of karma these forces then materialize at conception to give structure to our DNA. The concept of karma does suggest that there are subtle energies from our thought and experience that give structure to our next life. We may find meaning and purpose in feeling that what we are doing and learning now will help us in a future life.

A special recent edition of Scientific American magazine focuses on trying to explain the source of consciousness. In a discussion on the nature of free will it states, “ freedom requires a person, a “self,” that must determine itself. …What is this “self”? It is not an internal soul or homunculus (a little person inside) that steers our fate. Instead it is a kind of core containing the most fundamental personality traits and convictions that define a human being”. (end of quote) I am asking “Where is this core located?”

Other articles describe how they can map the areas of the brain that are active when certain parts of the brain are stimulated, such as when listening to music. They are very good at this. But another article states, “Almost all the models for neural function are based on 19th century physics. Why? Perhaps the real clues lie in quantum mechanics.” (end of quote). I suspect that this is true and a better understanding of quantum mechanics will bring us closer to understanding the source of consciousness.

Quantum particles are the tiniest of particles such as an electron or a photon, a particle of light. These are the kind of particles that make up our DNA molecules. Photons can be interpreted as waves of energy, and I suspect all the quantum particles could be shown eventually to be waves of light energy. If consciousness is seen as sourced at the quantum level, then it could be viewed as light and as it is more fundamental then the DNA molecules could be shown to be instrumental in forming the DNA of our bodies. This interpretation comes very close to what mystics in an elevated state of consciousness experience as the light body. The light body, or perhaps thought body, is the core self within us that evolves through repeated incarnations, first incarnating in simple life forms and finally evolving into the human, and then as Nietzsche affirmed, the superhuman.

Evidence for the superhuman amongst us can be found by those who are willing to suspend their disbelief. Such persons with superhuman abilities are often born in India where the teachings have been developed over millenia. One was Swami Sivananda, a remarkable person, who trained many disciples. Two of his disciples started ashrams here in Canada. Swami Vishnu started one north of Montreal and Swami Sivananda Radha, a German lady and the first woman to be initiated as a swami in India, started an ashram in British Columbia. Another is Paramahansa Yogananda who started an organization which emphasized meditation. He lived mostly in Los Angeles and died in 1952. He writes in his autobiography, “I still remember the helpless humiliations of infancy. I was resentfully conscious of being unable to walk and to express myself freely….My strong emotional life was mentally expressed in words of many languages. Amid the inward confusion of tongues, I gradually became accustomed to hearing the Bengali syllables of my people. The beguiling scope of an infant’s mind! adultly considered to be limited to toys and toes”.

And a third, and perhaps the greatest, is Satya Sai Baba. He is living in southern India and is widely known as the Man of Miracles, not only because so many miraculous things happen in his presence, but because of the millions of people worldwide who have been transformed by his teachings. When he was a boy of 14 his name was Satya Narayana, but he announced to his parents and friends that his name was actually Sai Baba, and he was the reincarnation of a saint of that name who had lived more than a 1000 miles away. His parents and townspeople were dumbfounded to say the least as no-one had ever heard of him. All these three have demonstrated, phenomenal intuitive abilities that we normally look at with disbelief, not being able to comprehend them. It is to be hoped that with better understanding of quantum mechanics and how it relates to consciousness we will not only be able to understand better these men and their works but also our own selves better.

Contemplation of reincarnation is a step to understanding the deeper mysteries of our pysche. For example, reincarnation may explain how Mozart could write a difficult piano concerto and sonata at the age of 4, and the origin of genius wherever we see it. It may help to explain the source of psychological problems and offer a cure through regression. Through the understanding of reincarnation people will be able to find hope, justice and meaning, in a world that otherwise seems unjust and incomprehensible.

PSI Symposium Annual Journal 2004