SURVIVAL
AND REINCARNATION: REAL OR FANTASY?
©
2018, Edward R. Close
Conservation of the Substance of
Reality
A basic law of science, discovered by Mikhail Lomonosov in 1756, is the conservation of mass in physical
processes. Around 1850, James Clerk Maxwell intuited that mass and energy must
be equivalent. Other scientists, like Max Von Laue, James Prescott Joule and Lord
Kelvin agreed that this must be the case, and in 1905, Albert Einstein provided
mathematical proof that mass and energy are two forms of the same thing. The equivalence
of mass and energy is expressed by the simple equation E = mc2. With proof that mass and energy are
interchangeable, the law of conservation can be generalized to become the law
of conservation of the substance of reality.
In 1900, Max Planck intuited that “there is no matter as such”, and with
the discovery of gimmel, the third
form of reality in 2011, conservation of the
substance of reality becomes conservation of mass, energy and consciousness, the three interchangeable forms of reality, and
the mathematical logic of the Calculus of Dimensional Distinctions applied to
quantum physics, reveals that the existence of a universe as stable as the one
we experience is possible only if consciousness is primary and the essence of
mass, energy and consciousness is conserved in all processes. What does this
mean for human consciousness?
CONSERVATION
OF THE ESSENCE OF REALITY
AND
THE SURVIVAL OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Conservation of Consciousness
If the essence of reality manifested as mass, energy and consciousness, is
conserved, then the essence of your consciousness and whatever you may have
achieved in your lifetime may not be lost. The question becomes: Is your
individual consciousness conserved, and if so, how? Could it be that
the physical, intellectual and spiritual aspects of consciousness are all preserved
in the DNA in which your being is encoded? The answer is yes. It is no accident that the organic compounds that make up DNA have
high levels of gimmel.
I’m not asking you to believe in reincarnation; I
am asking you to look at the question of survival with an open mind. Independent
studies show that about 51% of the world’s population believe in some form of
survival of consciousness after the death of the physical body, and about 24%
of Christians in the US believe in
reincarnation. But belief and knowing are two
different things.
What does science have to say about this? For
scientists who believe in the doctrine of materialism, the answer is that no
form of survival is possible. But to be scientific, we must recognize that materialism
is a belief, not a science. Belief in
materialism does not rise to the level of a scientific hypothesis because a
scientific hypothesis must be subject to proof or disproof. The belief that the
universe could exist as it does without consciousness cannot be tested because scientific
proof depends upon repeatable evidence and no reality can be observed, measured
or thought about without the existence of a consciousness.
Quantum experiments reveal that consciousness is actively
involved in the way reality manifests. As Nobel physicist John Wheeler put it:
“No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.” Furthermore,
the discovery of gimmel has proved that no reality could have issued out of a
big-bang explosion without the involvement of the non-physical component we
call gimmel stabilizing atomic
structure.
On the other hand, the question of survival is a valid scientific hypothesis because it can be tested against
evidence. Dr. Ian Stevenson of the University of Virginia, and others, have
documented thousands of cases of children who remember past lives, not just in
families in places like India, where virtually everyone believes in
reincarnation, but also here in the US and other countries, in families with no
belief in reincarnation. But reincarnation, if it occurs, is not the simplistic
thing that most people take it to be, and in this article, we will see that most
arguments against it are based in subjective belief, not science.
HOW
REINCARNATION BECAME HERESY IN THE CHRISTIAN WORLD
An unbiased review of the history of organized
religious and political institutions reveals how and why knowledge of the
survival has been distorted and obscured in the West. The roots of Christianity
are found in the spiritual practices of the Judeans over 2,000 years ago, and today’s
Christian churches claim to embrace the teachings of Jesus, who was a Judean born
in the Holy Land, and their teachings have affected the world we inhabit today
in many ways. But it is a closely kept secret that reincarnation was widely
accepted at the time of Jesus, and there is no evidence that Jesus rejected
the idea. In fact, in scriptures quoting Jesus, we find references to the
reincarnation of Elijah, Elisha and others. The scriptures we have today have
been heavily edited and redacted by people in powerful positions in the
political and religious institutions to suit their own beliefs and political
agendas. They have distorted the teachings of Jesus and deleted certain parts
of his teachings from the Bible we have today.
Early
Christianity and the Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church claims St. Peter as their first
Bishop, or even the first Pope. The name Peter means rock, and Jesus said: “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will
build my church”, but Peter was never part of the Catholic Church. He died
before there was a Catholic church. He was a Jew like Jesus, and was crucified by
the Romans in 67AD, during the reign of the Emperor Nero. He was
crucified in a horrific manner in the public square in Rome because he was a
known leader of people following the anti-Roman Jewish teachings of Jesus of
Nazareth.
There was no such entity as the Catholic Church at
the time of Peter’s execution. The term “Catholic” comes from the Greek word καθολικός, meaning universal, or “of the whole”. It was coined by
the Greek theologian Origen around 200 AD , some 130 years after Peter’s death.
From the time of Peter’s execution, the leaders of the Holy Roman Church
were appointed or elected by Rome, and until the end of the Roman Empire, Catholic
Popes were Roman or Greek, not Jewish, and they were controlled by Rome.
Because the teachings of Jesus challenged the
Olympian religion of the Roman state, the Emperor had Peter crucified, and
replaced him with Linus, a Roman. The early Christian Church
was renamed the Holy Roman Church, and was controlled by, and part of the
unholy Roman Empire. This was a political move by the Emperor to ensure that Rome
could control the followers of Jesus, a growing branch of Judaism that was seen
at the time by both Romans and orthodox Jews, as a radical cult.
Origen, a Greek, born in Alexandria, was the most
prolific Christian writer of the third century AD, producing more than 6,000
treatises on Christian philosophy and theology, including commentaries on the
Hebrew scriptures and the teachings of Jesus recorded in scriptures that became
known as the New Testament. He wrote about reincarnation in two of his major
treatises as follows:
"Each soul enters the world
strengthened by the victories or weakened by the defects of its past lives. Its
place in this world is determined by past virtues and shortcomings."
- From Origen’s “De Principalis”
"Is it not more in accordance with
common sense that every soul for reasons unknown - I speak in accordance with
the opinions of Pythagoras, Plato and Empedokles - enters the body influenced by its past deeds?
The soul has a body at its disposal for a certain period of time which, due to
its changeable condition, eventually is no longer suitable for the soul,
whereupon it changes that body for another." - Origen: “Contra
Celsum”
Origen was, and still is, regarded as one of the most important Christian
theologians of all time, and a founding father of the Catholic Church, yet few
modern Christians have even heard his name. Why were some of his documentation
of the teachings of Jesus eliminated
from Church doctrine? The answer is simple: It was not a Pope nor a member of
the priesthood who banned the doctrine of reincarnation from Church dogma, it
was the Emperor Justinian, about 500 years after the crucifixion of Jesus and
Peter.
By the year 500, the power of the Roman Empire was beginning to fade. The
Roman Emperors, like the rulers of civilizations before, had gained their power
and maintained it by brute force, and they claimed that the line of emperors
were direct descendants of the gods. They used the wealth gained by killing,
conquering and enslaving the peoples around them to glorify their gods and
their emperors as sons of gods. But, the Roman emperors were human, and their
absolute power quickly became absolute corruption.
The Emperor Justinian was a well-educated, ego-driven, evil man, known as
Justinian the Great, and he even became known as Saint Justinian in the Eastern
Greek Orthodox Church. But, his clearly stated goal was to “revive the Roman Empire's greatness and reconquer the
lost western half of the historical Roman Empire” . He knew the decline of
Rome’s influence was due in part to Christian teachings in anti-Roman groups,
mostly descendants of Jews who had been dispersed from Judea around 600 BC, and
coalesced under the teachings of Jesus. They claimed that Jesus was the Messiah
prophesied in ancient Jewish scriptures. Jesus was becoming a mythical character
challenging the authority of the Roman Empire.
When Justinian became Emperor, the decadence and debauchery of the rulers
of Rome was well known, and the ranks of the Judeo-Christians were steadily
growing. Justinian studied the writings of Origen,
the most influential of Christian theologians, and identified ideas that he
could use to control the followers of Jesus in the western provinces and
integrate them into the Roman theocracy that became the Catholic Church.
Justinian’s Anathemas Against Origen
The followers of Jesus constituted a serious threat to Justinian’s power.
Origen quoted Jesus, who had said: “Render unto Caesar the things that are
Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's”. And “All are sons of the most-high God”. Origen also articulated the
anti-Roman Christian belief that "Each soul enters the world strengthened by the victories or weakened by
the defects of its past lives. Its place in this world is determined by past
virtues and shortcomings." If people were allowed to believe that by
being virtuous, they could rise to the status of sons of God, a distinction
claimed by the Emperor, his power to control them would be threatened. Justinian
knew he must stamp out this heresy. The anathemas,
a list that he prepared for this purpose, read in part:
"Whosoever teaches the doctrine of a supposed pre-birth existence of the
soul, and speaks of a monstrous restoration of this, is cursed. Such heretics
will be executed, their writings burned, and their property will become the
property of the Emperor."
In 553 AD, the Emperor called for an assembly of the
Council of the Church Fathers to ratify the decree, but it was opposed by the
Pope. So, Justinian lured the Eastern Bishops into a secret meeting and presented
his ‘Anathemata’ condemning Origen’s writings.
He prevailed upon them, under threat of death, to sign the decree. This was a
bold ploy to undermine the Pope’s power and ban the offending writings of
Origen. The scheme worked. An official meeting of the Ecumenical Council was
held on the fifth of May 553, and the Pope was forced to accept the decree,
allowing the Emperor to issue it as if it were a cannon of the Church.
Throughout Europe and the Middle East, monks educated as scribes were put
to work expunging references to the transmigration of the soul from the
existing scriptures, so that Christian dioceses throughout the land would not risk
the wrath of Justinian, which they knew was very real. Where references to
reincarnation could not be eliminated without destroying passages vital to the
teachings of the Church, they were re-worded to imply spiritual, not physical
rebirth. No attempt was made to rectify Justinian’s repressive edict until
after the participants in the Council had passed away and even the memory of
the fact that reincarnation had once been part of Church doctrine had faded
from Christian thought.
If the Soul Survives, Are We
Reincarnations of Persons Who Lived in the Past?
You will have to
determine the answer to this question for yourself. Many people are positive
that they have had previous lives, and I personally have memories that seem to come
from lives lived in the past. The person I am today appears to be a composite of
past experiences, with minor personality traits from past lives faded into the
subconscious. I am the sum total of the experiences of numerous lives, with a
current personality overlay fashioned by my experiences in this life. It also
appears that new souls emerge from the process underlying physical reality as
older souls graduate this life and move on to higher dimensional domains.
Arguments Against Reincarnation:
Belief in the impossibility of reincarnation is a
difficult position to defend. You may have many reasons to believe that reincarnation cannot happen, and you may be able to
explain them very articulately, but it only takes one counter-example to prove
you wrong. As William James famously said: “If you
wish to upset the law that all crows are black, you mustn't seek to show that
no crows are white; it is enough if you prove one single crow to be white.”
There are Christians, Jews and Atheists who do
believe in reincarnation, but devout Muslims that I’ve known tell me that the
Koran only allows one resurrection, and that is on Judgement Day. However, some
Muslim holy men teach that multiple reincarnations do occur. One Sufi holy man
explained to me that Judgement Day is not just one day for all souls, but
occurs for each soul at the time of each death.
Interestingly, atheism and belief in reincarnation are not mutually
exclusive. An atheist can believe in reincarnation as a natural process that occurs
physically without requiring the existence of God. So even within groups that
generally do not believe in reincarnation, there are people who believe it happens.
Faith-Based Arguments
Faith-based arguments are not scientific arguments because they do not consider
reincarnation as a hypothesis; they start with the assumption of superior
knowledge. Arguments presented in this manner are circular because they assume
the negative conclusion they seek to prove. Such arguments are in defense of belief,
and are only acceptable if you share belief in the presenter’s faith. It is not
my intent to belittle anyone’s faith, or dismiss their arguments because of it,
but such arguments must be considered in their proper context.
Because I am writing in English, and live in a place and time where
Christianity is the most prevalent faith, I’ll focus on the Bible in its
historical context, and explain how the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible and
its many modern interpretations came to be.
The Origin and Evolution of English Versions of the
Bible
Justinian’s redactions of the writings of Origen, who was arguably the most
knowledgeable of early Christian theologians, have changed the Christian Bible
substantially. And, after Justinian, the Christian Bible has been re-interpreted
several times by less than perfect human beings. The King James Version of the
Bible, revered by the fundamental Protestants of the US Bible Belt where I grew
up, as the infallible word of God, was authorized by King James as the head of
the Church of England in 1604. But, the King James Version was not the first
translation of the Bible into English from the original Hebrew, Aramaic and
Greek. It was, in fact, the fourth.
The first English translation of the Bible, called “The Great Bible”, was
commissioned by King Henry VIII, hardly a model of Christian virtue. After his
first wife, Catherine, proved unable to bear him a son, Henry requested that
the Pope allow him to divorce Catherine and marry his mistress. The Pope
refused. In response, Henry renounced the Catholic Church, married his mistress,
and closed all of the Catholic monasteries in England, seizing the Church's assets and establishing the
Church of England with himself as its head. In 1536, literally thumbing
his nose at the Pope, he authorized the translation of the Bible into English as
the official Word of God, an
action strictly forbidden by Rome.
Henry continued to do whatever he pleased, producing children by various wives
and mistresses, and he imprisoned and tortured anyone who opposed him,
executing many, including two of his six wives.
The second English translation of the Bible was
the Geneva Bible, produced in1560. This came about when Henry VIII’s only
legitimate son, Edward VI, died after only six years on the Throne, and his
older sister Mary became
Queen. Mary was Catholic, and in order to re-instate the Catholic Church, she persecuted
and executed many English Protestants, earning the title "Bloody Mary”.
More than 800 English scholars fled to Europe to escape her wrath. They gathered
in Geneva Switzerland and produced a new Protestant version of the Bible.
The Geneva Bible reflected the thinking of a
movement of the time known as Calvinism, one of several emerging protestant
sects. The Geneva Bible was a threat to the Church of England because it
replaced control of the Church by Bishops appointed by the Monarch, with
government by lay elders.
After Bloody Mary’s death, her half-sister
Elizabeth, a Protestant, became Queen. As Queen, she was the head of the Church
of England. With her blessings, the Bishops of the Church of England denounced
the Roman Catholic Bible and the
Geneva Bible, as heretical and produced their own version, which became known
as the Bishops' Bible. Produced
under the authority of the Church of England in 1568, the Bishop's Bible
succeeded Henry the Eighth’s “Great Bible” as the official Bible of the Church
of England. The Bishop’s Bible was substantially revised in 1572, and with
changes in the spelling of Hebrew names in 1602, it became the base text for
the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible, completed in 1611.
If this were anything but the Bible, no one
would imagine that it could possibly be the unaltered word of God as given in
the Torah, and the unaltered Gospel as spoken by Jesus. The KJV was another revision
of the scholarly works of Origen, already heavily redacted for political
purposes and ego-based agendas.
The KJV’s tortured past is unknown to most
Christians in the USA of my childhood, and probably to most Christians today. I
remember some of the good people of the hill country where I grew up when asked
how the KJV Bible could be the original word of God, given its history, said
something like: “Priests, Kings and scholars may be less than perfect, but the
changes were guided by God, because God would not allow his word to be
distorted! One pastor I talked with said that the KJV was “the only true word
of God.” I thought: Why would God choose power-hungry politicians, murders,
ego-maniacs, atheists, and adulterers to shape the Bible, instead of spiritual
people and scholars? But, I didn’t ask, because I knew the answer would be:
“God works in mysterious ways!” There is no arguing with that kind of logic!
The Koran, the Holy Book of Islam
A brief review of the history of the Bible has shown that arguments for or
against reincarnation based upon the Latin or English versions are
questionable, and the same can be said for arguments based on verses of the
Koran. The root word of Koran (in Arabic القران) is either ‘Q’ar’, meaning to collect, or
‘Q’ara’, meaning to recite. The Sacred Scriptures of Islam were not written by
Mohamed, they were recited. Several years after the Prophet died, his followers
began jotting their memories of the recitations on camel bones and scraps of
paper, which were at some point collected, hand-copied and bound into the form
of the book now known as the Holy Koran.
Faith-based arguments are accepted as true by the faithful. But, a scientist must remain skeptical of such arguments. Belief is not proof, and science must provide proof before accepting a hypothesis as truth. Scientific truth cannot be based on subjective experience or belief. Without proof, an idea, however appealing, is just a hypothesis, a theory to be tested. So, we will leave faith-based “proofs” and move on to non-sectarian arguments.
Non-Sectarian Arguments
The most convincing non-sectarian arguments against reincarnation come
from materialists, atheists and agnostics. Materialists can accept that a
higher intelligence might emerge from an evolving physical universe, and an
agnostic, by definition, accepts the possibility of the existence of a higher
intelligence, but remains skeptical until he or she sees proof. Atheism, on the
other hand, is the negative position that there never was a god, is no god, and
never can be a god. Obviously, atheism is a belief, not a scientific
hypothesis, because it cannot be proved or disproved.
Rational arguments put forth by many non-sectarian skeptics boil down to:
1.
Reincarnation produces an unreconcilable paradox of
numbers
2.
There is no credible evidence
Is There a Paradox of Numbers?
The fact that there are more people alive today than at any time in the
known past, is given by some skeptics as an argument against reincarnation, but
on closer examination, it does not eliminate reincarnation as a logical
possibility because, even if there were only a finite number of souls, the
assumption that all of them were incarnated at the same time is unwarranted. Many
more people have died during the recorded past than live on Earth today, so it
is possible that everyone alive today may have lived before. There is no
paradox of numbers.
Science, by definition, is a search for truth. To determine whether an
idea is true, false, meaningless, or beyond our ability to determine, a
scientist must first frame it in the form of a hypothesis that may be
falsified, like William James’ statement “all crows are black”. We can do that
with the following hypothesis:
The
consciousness of an individual sentient being is produced by that individual’s
physical body and brain, and does not exist without them.
If this hypothesis is true, then when the body and brain of an individual
cease to function, the consciousness of that individual is simply gone. It no
longer exists. But, as professor James pointed out, there is no need to look at
all of the arguments that may be made supporting a hypothesis. If there is even
one counter-example, the hypothesis is invalid.
Evidence for Reincarnation
As suggested in the first section of this article, a rational argument for
reincarnation can be based on the logic of the laws of cause and effect and
conservation of the stuff of reality. But the final verdict about reincarnation
depends on real evidence.
Scientific Evidence
The largest body of scientific evidence of
the survival and reincarnation of consciousness is found in the work of Dr. Ian
Stevenson (1918-2007). Dr. Stevenson was a professor
and research psychiatrist at the University of Virginia School of Medicine for
50 years. He was Chair of the Department of Psychiatry from 1957 to 1967, the
Carlson Professor of Psychiatry from 1967 to 2001, and a Research Professor of
Psychiatry from 2002 until his death. He was also the founder and Director of
the University’s Division of Perceptual Studies.
Dr. Stevenson is
internationally recognized for documenting evidence that memories and even physical
characteristics are sometimes transferred from one lifetime to another. He
traveled extensively over a period of 40 years, investigating approximately 3,000
cases of children who recall past lives. His meticulous research revealed
evidence that children who recall past lives often have unusual abilities,
illnesses, phobias and knowledge which could not be explained by the
experiences of their current lives. The following summarizes a case
investigated by Dr. Stevenson.
The Case of Swarnlata Mishra
Swarnlata was born in Pradesh
India in 1948. When she was just three years old, she said she remembered a
previous life in Katni, a town more than 100 miles from her home. Her memories
contained details that enabled Dr. Stevenson to locate the family of the
deceased person she remembered being, and in the course of the investigation,
she articulated more than 50 specific facts that could be verified. She
said her name had been Biya Pathak, and that she had two sons. She recalled that
their home in Katni was white with black doors fitted with iron bars; four
rooms were stuccoed, but other parts were less finished; the floor was of stone
slabs. The house was in the Zhurkutia, District of Katni; a girl's school was
located behind the house, in front was a railway line, and lime furnaces were
visible from the house. She said the family had a motor car (a rarity in India in
the 1940’s). Swarnlata said that as Biya, she was treated in Jabalpur by Dr. S.
C. Bhabrat for a pain in her throat, and she died. All of these details,
written down when Swarnlata was three, were verified when she traveled to
Katni. Until then, the two families were unaware of each other’s existence.
Biya’s husband, son and eldest brother traveled
to the town where the Mishras lived to see if she really was a reincarnation of
Biya. They enlisted nine strangers to pose as family members. Swarnlata quickly
picked the real family members from the imposters and stopped in front of
Biya’s husband, lowering her eyes as Indian wives do in the presence of their
husbands. Many other verified facts are documented in the case file, and in Dr.
Stevenson’s book, “Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation” University Press
of Virginia.
Could this case be one “white crow” disproving the hypothesis that the
consciousness of an individual is produced by one physical body and brain? If
you accept the work of Dr. Stevenson, with the same level of skepticism of a
particle physicist reviewing evidence for the existence of the Higgs boson,
then you would have to say that it is. Critics of such investigations like to
use the phrase “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” made
popular by Carl Sagan; but just how extraordinary does the evidence have to be?
For some critics, no amount of evidence of reincarnation will ever be enough,
because, their objections are not scientific, they are belief-based. Dr.
Stevenson documented some 3,000 cases, most of which are difficult, if not
impossible to explain in any other way. Reincarnation is a fundamental belief
of 1.4 billion people (Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Taoists, Sikhs, etc.) and according to data released by the Pew Forum on Religion
and Public Life from a 2009 survey, 24 percent of American Christians believe
in reincarnation. Maybe it’s not so extraordinary as we think.
Credible
Evidence from Adults
Dr. Stevenson’s investigations focused on
children for a very good reason: As a scientist in a society that rejects the
idea of reincarnation, in order to undertake a serious investigation of the
hypothesis, he had to approach the hypothesis as a true skeptic, assuming that
the hypothesis might be either true or false. As a medical doctor and
psychiatrist, he knew that the clarity of the memory of an event usually fades
with the passage of time, and therefore, if it is possible that some people
live more than one life, and some memories of the deceased can carry over into
the brain of a newly born body, then it is most likely to surface shortly after
birth, and to be expressed as soon as the child begins to talk.
When memories of a past life occur to an adult,
he or she may suppress or exaggerate them, depending on societal conditioning
and personal beliefs. Dr. Stevenson was breaking new ground for western
science, so he could not allow preconceived beliefs or opinions about why, or
how reincarnation might occur, affect the investigations. But we can ask: Are there
adults who remember past lives?
Famous People Who Remember Past Lives
The list below is only a partial list,
consisting of quotes that are readily
available from public statements and published writings.
Benjamin
Franklin
“When
I see nothing annihilated (in the works of God) and not a drop of water wasted,
I cannot suspect the annihilation of souls, or believe that He will suffer the
daily waste of millions of minds ready-made that now exist, and put Himself to
the continual trouble of making new ones. Thus, finding myself to exist in the
world, I believe I shall, in some shape or other, always exist; and, with all
the inconveniences human life is liable to, I shall not object to a new edition
of mine, hoping, however, that the errata of the last may be corrected.”
- AZQuotes.com, Wind and Fly LTD, 2018.
https://www.azquotes.com/quote/1138496, accessed August 29, 2018.
Henry
Ford
“I
adopted the theory of Reincarnation when I was twenty-six. Religion offered
nothing to the point. Even work could not give me complete satisfaction. Work
is futile if we cannot utilize the experience we collect in one life in the
next. When I discovered Reincarnation, it was as if I had found a universal
plan. I realized that there was a chance to work out my ideas. Time was no longer
limited. I was no longer a slave to the hands of the clock. Genius is
experience. Some seem to think that it is a gift or talent, but it is the fruit
of long experience in many lives. Some are older souls than others, and so they
know more. The discovery of Reincarnation put my mind at ease. If you preserve
a record of this conversation, write it so that it puts men’s minds at ease. I
would like to communicate to others the calmness that the long view of life
gives to us.”
- The San
Francisco Examiner, 1928
General
George S. Patton
This American World War II general spoke of
memories of a number of past lives There are numerous reports of General Patton
talking about reincarnation. He believed that he had always been a warrior in
one form or another. During World War I, he told his mother that he had
been reincarnated. Later in life, he said: “So
as through a glass and darkly, the age long strife I see, Where I fought in
many guises, many names, but always me.” – From the poem Through a Glass Darkly by General
Patton, 1922.
Paramahansa Yogananda
The founder of Self-Realization Fellowship wrote
in his Autobiography of a Yogi”:
“I find my earliest memories covering the
anachronistic features of a previous incarnation. Clear recollections came to
me of a distant life in which I had been a yogi amid the Himalayan snows. These
glimpses of the past, by some dimensionless link, also afforded me a glimpse of
the future.” – Autobiography of a Yogi,
Chapter 1, page 3, 12th edition, 1987.
Salvador
Dali
The famous Spanish artist remembered several of
his previous lives. He spoke of being St. John of the Cross in a previous life:
“as for me, … I am also the reincarnation of one of the greatest of all Spanish mystics, Saint John of the Cross.
I can vividly remember my life as Saint John . . . of
experiencing divine union, of undergoing the dark night of the
soul . . . I can remember many of Saint John’s fellow
monks. – The Secret Life of Salvador Dali,
an Autobiography, 1942.
Shirley MacLaine
“When I walked across
Spain on the pilgrimage called the Santiago de Compostela Camino, I
encountered myself in a former life. I discovered a part of me that lead to a
greater understanding of myself. I also realized the karmic importance of some
of the people that have been close to me in this existence. These realizations,
and numerous others, have helped, inspired and added to my whole being. They
have assisted in my better understanding myself and those around me. It doesn't
matter if this type of realization is imagination or if it is memory. It is a
truth that I have experienced on some level, in some form of reality and I
embrace it as a gift from the Divine.
“Three quarters of the
Earth's people believe they have lived before and will live again; thereby
enabling their Soul's journey a continuous learning experience. Stories abound
regarding how people find each other again - for good or otherwise.” – Shirley
MacLaine’s website: https://shirleymaclaine.com
Sylvester
Stallone
Sly Stallone is sure he had at least four past lives, and he experienced a gruesome end in one of them. In an interview early in his career, he said, “I’m quite sure I lost my head in the French Revolution.” His success with his screen persona Rocky Balboa may have something to do with Stallone’s claim that he was actually once a boxer who was killed by a knockout punch in the 1930s. – People Magazine interview, June 21, 1982
Sly Stallone is sure he had at least four past lives, and he experienced a gruesome end in one of them. In an interview early in his career, he said, “I’m quite sure I lost my head in the French Revolution.” His success with his screen persona Rocky Balboa may have something to do with Stallone’s claim that he was actually once a boxer who was killed by a knockout punch in the 1930s. – People Magazine interview, June 21, 1982
John
Lennon
“I’m not afraid of death because I
don’t believe in it. It’s just getting out of one car, and into another.”
George Harrison
"Friends are all souls that we've known in other lives. We're drawn to each other. Even if I have only known them a day, it doesn't matter. I'm not going to wait till I have known them for two years, because anyway, we must have met somewhere before, you know."
"Friends are all souls that we've known in other lives. We're drawn to each other. Even if I have only known them a day, it doesn't matter. I'm not going to wait till I have known them for two years, because anyway, we must have met somewhere before, you know."
Edgar Cayce
According
to those who knew the ‘Sleeping Prophet’ and studied his readings, “Edgar Cayce found that the concept of reincarnation was
not incompatible with any religion, and actually merged perfectly with his own
beliefs of what it meant to be a Christian. Eventually the subject of
reincarnation was examined in extensive detail in over 1,900 Life Readings.”- Edgar Cayce on Reincarnation, https://www.edgarcayce.org/media/8610/edgar-cayce-on-reincarnation.pdf/
Mark Twain
“I have been born more times
than anybody except Krishna.” – Charles Neider, The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 1958.
Carl Jung
"This
concept of rebirth necessarily implies the continuity of personality. Here the
human personality is regarded as continuous and accessible to memory, so that,
when one is incarnated or born, one is able, at least potentially, to remember
that one has lived through previous existences, and that these existences were
one's own, i.e., that they had the same ego form as the present life. As a
rule, reincarnation means rebirth in a human body.
"What happens
after death is so unspeakably glorious that our imagination and our feelings do
not suffice to form even an appropriate conception of it... The dissolution of
our time-bound form in eternity brings no loss of meaning."
William James
Renowned American
psychologist and philosopher, William James delivered a significant
science-based lecture, called "Human Immortality", at Harvard, in
1893. He later expanded his concepts to specifically include reincarnation. On
this he wrote:
"... I am the same personal being who in old times upon the earth
had those experiences." -
Ralph
Waldo Emerson
"The soul comes from
without into the human body, as into a temporary abode, and it goes out of it
anew it passes into other habitations, for the soul is immortal. It is the secret of the world
that all things subsist and do not die, but only retire a little from site and
afterward return again... Jesus is not dead; he is very well alive; nor John,
nor Paul, nor Mahomet, nor Aristotle; at times we believe we have seen them
all, and could easily tell the names under which they go."
Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau wrote in
"Letters":
"I lived in Judea eighteen hundred years ago, but I never knew that there was such a one as Christ among my contemporaries."
"I lived in Judea eighteen hundred years ago, but I never knew that there was such a one as Christ among my contemporaries."
Jack London
London, author, best known for
book “Call of the Wild”, wrote:
"I did not begin when I was born, nor when I was conceived. I have been growing, developing, through incalculable myriads of millenniums. All my previous selves have their voices, echoes, promptings in me. Oh, incalculable times again shall I be born."
"I did not begin when I was born, nor when I was conceived. I have been growing, developing, through incalculable myriads of millenniums. All my previous selves have their voices, echoes, promptings in me. Oh, incalculable times again shall I be born."
Walt
Whitman
In "Song of Myself", the famous
poet wrote:
"And as to you, Life, I reckon you are the leaving of many deaths, (No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.)"
"And as to you, Life, I reckon you are the leaving of many deaths, (No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.)"
Albert
Schweitzer
"Reincarnation contains a
most comforting explanation of reality by means of which Indian thought
surmounts difficulties which baffle the thinkers of Europe."
Thomas H. Huxley wrote in "Essays Upon Some
Controverted Questions":
"I am certain that I have been here as I am now a thousand times before, and I hope to return a thousand times."
"I am certain that I have been here as I am now a thousand times before, and I hope to return a thousand times."
Voltaire
"It is not more surprising to be born twice than once; everything in nature is resurrection."
"It is not more surprising to be born twice than once; everything in nature is resurrection."
Arthur Schopenhauer
"Were an Asiatic to ask me for a definition of Europe, I should be forced to answer him: It is that part of the world which is haunted by the incredible delusion that man was created out of nothing, and that his present birth is his first entrance into life."
"Were an Asiatic to ask me for a definition of Europe, I should be forced to answer him: It is that part of the world which is haunted by the incredible delusion that man was created out of nothing, and that his present birth is his first entrance into life."
Napoleon
Bonaparte
The “Little” Emperor believed that he had been
born many times. He is reported to have discussed who he had been in
previous lives with many people. Napoleon died in 1821. Twenty-eight years
later, Adolf Hitler was born. Both men were Catholic, both tried to take
over Europe using the same methods, fought Russia to a loss, and were defeated
in nearly the same way. Both were also considered to be the anti-Christ
during and after their lives by many people. Could it be Hitler was Napoleon
reincarnated?
Cicero
A Roman Nobleman (106 B.C. - 43 B.C.) who is
considered one of the great philosophers of that time. In his composition,
"On Old Age", he wrote:
"The soul is
of heavenly origin, forced down from its home in the highest, and, so to speak,
buried in earth, a place quite opposed to its divine nature and its
immortality... It is again a strong proof of men knowing most things before
birth, that when mere children they grasp innumerable facts with such speed as
to show that they are not then taking them in for the first time, but
remembering or recalling them."
Josephus
(Well-known Jewish historian from the time of
Jesus)
"All pure and holy spirits live on in heavenly places, and in course of time they are again sent down to inhabit righteous bodies."
"All pure and holy spirits live on in heavenly places, and in course of time they are again sent down to inhabit righteous bodies."
Jesus of Nazareth
Perhaps most shocking for Christians, is evidence
that Jesus accepted reincarnation and discussed it with his disciples. Under the
edict of Justinian, monastic scribes expunged overt references to reincarnation
from the New Testament, but some references that could be explained as special circumstances remain. For example, from Luke 9:18 – 21:
And it came to pass, as he was alone praying,
his disciples were with him: and he asked them, saying, whom say the people
that I am?
They, answering said, John the Baptist; but
some say, Elijah; and others say, that one of the old prophets is risen again.
This is a clear reflection that people in Jesus’ day believed in
reincarnation.
And in Matthew 17:10-13:
And the disciples asked him, saying, “Why then do the scribes say
that Elijah must come first?” But he answered them and said, “Elijah indeed is
to come and will restore all things. But I say to you that Elijah has
come already, and they did not know him, but did to him whatever they wished. So
also shall the Son of Man suffer at their hand.” Then the disciples
understood that he had spoken of John the Baptist.
This is a clear reference to the reincarnation of Elijah as John the
Baptist.
In addition to the texts
that became part of the Christian Bible, texts written around the time of Jesus
by the Gnostics also recorded the teaching
of Jesus; but because they contained references to reincarnation and other
things the religious institutions did not want propagated, they were banned by Christian
authorities as too Jewish, and by Jewish authorities as too Christian.
Gnosticism (from Ancient Greek: γνωστικός, gnostikos, "having
knowledge", from γνῶσις gnōsis, knowledge) is a name
given to the ancient religious ideas of Judeo-Christian groups in the first and second century AD. The earliest Christian sects from the time of Jesus
believed in the Gnostic doctrine of emanation from one eternal Source: the idea
that all individuals have their origin in God, and all have, in their inmost
being, an eternal spark of God. They taught that the material world is sustained by emanations from God,
and that there exists within each human body a Divine spark that can be
gradually liberated in the course of lifetimes by the attainment of gnosis,
i.e., true knowledge.
Rejecting the original Christian teachings that held that the soul is spiritual and immortal, an idea documented by Church Fathers Clement of Alexandria and Origen, later Church theologians developed the concept of creatio ex nihilo, or creation out of nothing. This belief in something from nothing is also reflected in science in the belief in the big-bang origin of all things as originally posited by physicalists.
Conclusions Regarding the
Reincarnation Hypothesis
As a scientist, I am, by profession a
skeptic. This means that I must consider the reincarnation of any conscious
being, including myself, from past living bodies into current living bodies, as
a hypothesis, something to be proved or disproved. But, I believe the evidence is
strongly suggestive that many of us have been here before, and may return again
and again, until we have evolved spiritually to the point where we may
transcend the limitations of physical
existence into ecstatic reunion with Cosmic Consciousness.
From memories of past lives, we can begin to piece together a picture of
how reincarnation works. It appears there are ‘old’ souls, like Mark Twain; there
are ‘younger’ souls, like Shirley McLaine, and many more ‘young’ souls who do
not consciously remember past lives at all. The laws of cause and effect govern
the physical aspects of reincarnation, including the when, where and how of
birth, social and economic position in life and death, but have no effect on
the essence of consciousness, which is the heart of each soul. Evidence
strongly suggesting this is found in the case studies of Dr. Ian Stevenson, in
the documented readings of Edgar Cayce, in the writings of Paramahansa
Yogananda and others. Core aspects of an individual, including enlightenment
attained, are carried over, but are not necessarily remembered or displayed for
all to see in this lifetime. You may recognize friends and foes of the past incarnate
in this life, which can be helpful in maintaining and improving your focus and
awareness amid the challenges and struggles of this life.
I have had a number of distinct personal memories and experiences that are
suggestive of lives in specific past time periods, and some have been
validated. I think it is possible that memories of past lives are recorded in
the mass. energy and consciousness of DNA, and under certain circumstances, they
may be accessed by the current conscious brain. None of the laws of nature
discovered so far, tell us that anything is ever created from nothingness or
destroyed absolutely, there is only change. Why should consciousness be an
exception? I do not believe that my consciousness appeared from nothingness in
1936, and will cease to exist sometime in the future, because there is no
evidence that the mass/energy substance of reality is created or destroyed. The
discovery of gimmel strongly suggests that the same is true for
consciousness. Change occurs, but there
is no basis to think reality will ever cease to exist. When the body I
currently occupy dies, the essence of the I that I am will simply move on,
hopefully to increasingly higher levels of consciousness.
I love this essay, but I do wonder how you came to believe that memories of past lives may be encoded in our DNA. Did Dr. Stevenson find a connection based on heritability between a person and a remembered incarnation?
ReplyDeleteHi William. Thanks for your question. I thought about this when I had my DNA analyzed a couple of years ago and saw that my ancestry corresponded pretty well with with my memories of past lives. I suggested it as a possible research project for the Academy for the Advancement of Postmaterialist Sciences. I plan to post a discussion of TDEVP and DNA today or tommorow.
DeleteI thoroughly enjoyed reading this.
ReplyDeleteThank you for letting me know. I realy appreciate your interest.
DeleteDo you have a testable hypothesis as to how we could recover some of our past life memories within our dna sequence or is it more complicated than that? If some souls are on their first unique life on Earth, what differences might we find in their DNA? Finding any kind of past memory seems nigh impossible as genetic networks are far beyond the understanding of mere humans. But maybe it could be broken down into something simpler. This is extremely interesting, thanks for posting.
ReplyDeleteI haven't developed a testable hypothesis for past life - DNA correlation yet, but I plan to post a brief discussion on the hypothesis today or tomorrow.
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