NOTE: See the August 30 post for a shorter, edited version.
IS
SURVIVAL OF CONSCIOUSNESS REAL, OR A FANTASY?
© 2018 by Edward R. Close
Conservation of Mass and Energy
One of the most basic laws of science, discovered by Russian scientist
Mikhail Lomonosov in 1756, is the conservation
of mass. Around 1850, James Clerk Maxwell intuited that there must be a
natural mass-energy equivalence. Other 1800-1900 scientists, like Max Von Laue,
James Prescott Joule and Lord Kelvin agreed that this must be the case, and in
1905, Albert Einstein provided the theoretical basis and the mathematical proof,
defining the equivalence of mass and energy with the simple equation E = mc2.
With the discovery of Gimmel as the third form of the essence of reality,
the conservation of mass, energy and
consciousness is a logical extension of the law of conservation. The
mathematical logic of the Calculus of Dimensional Distinctions applied to
quantum physics in TDVP, reveals the fact that the existence of a universe as
stable as the one we experience proves that consciousness is primary. Therefore,
TDVP suggests that we must conclude that the essence of mass, energy and
consciousness is conserved in all processes in the universe. What does this
mean for human consciousness. For you and me?
CONSERVATION
OF THE ESSENCE OF REALITY
AND
THE SURVIVAL OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Conservation of Consciousness
Because the essence of reality, whether manifested as mass, energy or
consciousness, is conserved, it stands to reason that the essence of your
consciousness and whatever progress toward enlightenment and Cosmic
Consciousness you may have achieved in your lifetime is not lost. The question,
and it is a very important one,
becomes: how is the consciousness of the soul conserved, and in what form?
It is likely, in my opinion, that the physical, intellectual and spiritual
aspects of consciousness are all preserved in the DNA in which your being is
encoded because the organic compounds that make up DNA have very high levels of
gimmel content.
If you are not one of the estimated 1.5 billion
people on the planet who believe in reincarnation, I am not asking you to
believe in reincarnation. I’m asking you to look at the question of survival with
an open mind. Put whatever you may have been taught by your parents, your
religion or mainstream science, and whatever you think you know, aside for a
moment, and look at the evidence. Are human souls reincarnated? More than half,
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. How can we
prove or disprove the hypothesis of the survival of consciousness and/or the reincarnation
of souls?
What does mainstream science have to say about it? For
those scientists who have accepted the metaphysical belief system of
materialism, the answer is that no form of survival is possible. But if one is a
scientist, one must recognize that materialism is a belief, not science. The belief that the universe would exist as it
does with or without consciousness 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 without consciousness cannot
be proved because proof depends upon repeatable evidence of observation,
measurement and logic, and no reality can be observed, measured or thought
about without the existence of a conscious observer. Quantum experiments show
that consciousness is directly involved in the way reality manifests in the real
world. As physicist John Wheeler said: “No phenomenon is a real phenomenon
until it is an observed phenomenon.” Furthermore, the discovery of gimmel has
proved that no reality could have evolved out of a big-bang explosion without
the involvement of non-physical gimmel acting as a conscious organizer of
stable atoms.
On the other hand, the hypothesis that
consciousness survives the death of the physical body is a valid scientific
hypothesis because it can be tested and proved or disproved. The evidence for
it is more logical, well-founded, documented, and convincing than the evidence
for the existence of the Higgs boson, or any particle of the particle zoo,
other than the electron! Dr. Ian Stevenson of the University of Virginia and
many others since, have documented over 3,000 cases of children who have
remembered past lives, not just in families in places like India, where
virtually everyone believes in reincarnation, but also in families, here in the
US and other countries, with no belief in reincarnation. The scientific
evidence is actually overwhelming, but reincarnation, if it exists, cannot be
the simplistic thing that people who try to disprove it, take it to be. The
common arguments used against it here in the West are based in belief, not
science, and they are easily debunked. I’ll address some of the most prevalent
ones here, but first, I must provide a little background.
HOW
REINCARNATION BECAME HERESY IN THE CHRISTIAN WORLD
The
Interpretations of the Teachings of Jesus of Nazareth
Survival of the essence of the soul, or human
consciousness is one of the simplest, yet most obscured and misunderstood ideas
there is. One has to pursue an unbiased, open-minded study of the history of
the organized religious and political institutions of this world to understand
why and how ideas regarding the
survival of the soul taught by Jesus and others have been distorted and
obscured. The roots of Christianity, for example, are found in the spiritual
practices of the Judeans of whom Jesus was one, over 2,000 years ago. Today’s
Christian institutions profess to embody the teachings of Jesus, who was born
in a Jewish community in the area we call the Holy Land, and, if the history
pieced together by Jewish and Christian archeologists and Biblical scholars is
correct, he affected the world we inhabit today in many important ways.
It is well-documented that the rebirth of souls was
a basic belief of Judaism before the time of Jesus, and there is no evidence
that Jesus discounted or rejected the idea, nor did any of his followers who
lived during his lifetime. In fact, in documents quoting Jesus, we find oblique
references to the reincarnation of Elijah, Elisha and others, even in the
highly redacted and altered versions of the scriptures that we have today. Once
you realize that the scriptures we call the Bible today have been heavily
edited by non-believers in powerful positions in the political and religious
institutions of the past, and changed multiple times to suit their political
and philosophical agendas, you can begin to see how some of the original
teachings of Jesus were distorted and, in some cases, even deleted from the
scriptures we have today.
The Roman Catholic Church claims that St. Peter was
the first leader of the Catholic Church, because the name Peter means rock, and
Jesus said “Thou art Peter, and upon this
rock I will build my church”, but it is very unlikely that Peter was ever
actually part of the Roman Catholic Church during his lifetime because Peter,
like Jesus, was a Jew, and he was crucified in Rome, by 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 identified as the Jewish leader of
people following the anti-Roman teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.
The teachings of Jesus challenged the Olympian religion
of the Roman state, and after the Emperor had Peter crucified, he replaced him immediately,
according to Church historical records, with Linus, a Roman, and the early
Christian church was renamed the Holy Roman Church, and was controlled by, and
part of the Roman Empire. It
is obvious to any objective observer that this was a political move by the
Emperor and the Roman government, to ensure that they could control of the followers
of Jesus. Groups that became known as Christians formed a rapidly growing
branch of Judaism, that was seen at the time, by both Romans and orthodox Jews,
as a radical Jewish cult.
There was no such entity as the Catholic church at
the time of Peter’s execution in 67AD. 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 Popes of
the Holy Roman Church were either appointed or elected by Rome, and until the
end of the Roman Empire, Popes were either Roman or Greek, controlled by Rome
to give the Church credibility in the eyes of Roman citizens.
For several hundred years, Christian teachings
included numerous references to reincarnation, as they had from the beginning
as a dissenting sect of Judaism. 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 Bible and the teachings of Jesus recorded in scriptures that became
known as the New Testament, as well as several other scriptures later rejected
by the Catholic Church as too Jewish or too pagan. 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 work: “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." - From “Contra
Celsum”
Origen was, and still is, to this day, highly regarded as one of the most
important Christian theologians of all time, and a founding father of the
Catholic Church. So how did some of his writings about the teachings of Jesus,
especially the belief in the survival and continuation of souls get so
vociferously eliminated from Church doctrine? The answer may surprise you: It
was not a Pope nor any member of the Catholic priesthood who banned the
doctrine of reincarnation from Church dogma, it was Justinian, Emperor of the
Roman Empire.
By the year 500, the power and influence of the Roman Empire was beginning
to fade. The Emperors of Rome, like the rulers of many civilizations before
them, had gained their power by use of brute force and violence, and had
maintained it by force, claiming that the line of emperors were direct
descendants of the gods, i.e., in this case, Zeus and company. They used their
wealth gained by killing, conquering and converting the peoples around them to
slaves to perpetuate and glorify their gods and images of their emperors as
descendants of the gods. But, in the end, they were only human after all, and
their absolute power gradually became absolute corruption.
The Emperor Justinian was a clever, well-educated and thoroughly ego-driven evil man,
also known as Justinian the Great, and he would even become known as Saint
Justinian in the Eastern Greek Orthodox Church. But, his stated goal was to “revive the Roman Empire's greatness and reconquer the
lost western half of the historical Roman Empire”. In his mind, the decline of
Rome’s influence in the western part of the Empire was due in large part to the
ascending influence of Christian teachings, as disparate anti-Roman groups,
mostly descendants of the Jews, who had been dispersed from Judea around 600
BC, had coalesced under the teachings of a Jew who claimed to be the Jewish
Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus the Christ was becoming a mythical legend,
challenging the divinity of the line of Roman Emperors. Justinian was smart
enough to see that he couldn’t openly declare war on the offending churches, so
he cleverly plotted to undermine their influence and integrate them into the
Roman theocracy.
By the time of Justinian, the decadence and debauchery of the rulers of
the Roman Empire had been well-known for hundreds of years, and the ranks of
the Judeo-Christian Religious Sect had also been steadily growing during the
same period of time. He carefully studied the
writings of Origen, the most influential of the Christian theologians, and
picked out a list of ideas found in Origen’s writings that he could use to
subvert the teachings in the western provinces and integrate them into the Roman
theocracy.
Justinian’s Anathemas Against Origen
Justinian realized that some of the teachings of the followers of Jesus
constituted a serious threat to his power; e.g., according to Origen, Jesus 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”. And Origen had also written: "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." Such teachings
were in direct conflict with what Justinian saw as his divine right to rule the
world, so he seized on this statement and related ideas in Christian doctrine,
as documented by Origen, that undermined the Roman ruler’s claim of divinity.
If people were led to believe that by being virtuous, they could rise to the
level of an Emperor, i.e., to the status of a god, or sons and daughters of
God, then the Emperor’s power would be seriously threatened. He decided that he
must declare this idea to be heresy and take strong measures to stamp it out. The
anathemas, an edict 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 immediate assembly
of a Council of the Church Fathers to ratify the decree, but the meeting of the
Council was opposed by the Pope. The Emperor then cleverly forced several Eastern
bishops to attend a secret meeting where he presented his ‘Anathemata’ to them, condemning much of Origen’s writings. He
prevailed upon them, under threat of death, to sign the decree. The meeting
with the bishops prior to the Council was a bold ploy to undermine the Pope’s
power and promote the ban on the teachings of Origen. The scheme worked. An
official meeting of the Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church was held on
the fifth of May 553, and the Pope was forced to accept the decree, allowing
the Emperor to issue the ban as if it were imposed by the Pope, the Council of
Bishops and the Catholic Church.
As a result, throughout Europe and the Middle East, a group of monks
educated as scribes were hurriedly put to work, urgently expunging all
references to the pre-birth existence and transmigration of the soul from all
of the existing versions of Biblical scripture, so that Christian dioceses
throughout the land would not risk the wrath of Justinian, which they knew was
a very real threat. The purge of references to rebirth was very thorough, and
where it could not be eliminated without destroying whole passages vital to the
teachings of Jesus and the Judean prophets, it was re-worded to imply a
spiritual rebirth, not a physical one.
In this way, the ban on the belief in reincarnation was brutally forced
into Church doctrine, and no attempt was made to rectify Justinian’s
self-serving actions until after the participants in the Council of 553 had
passed away and even the memory of the fact that belief in reincarnation had once
been part of Church doctrine had faded from the consciousness of the Christian
world.
So, are You the Reincarnation of a
Person Who Lived in the Past?
I can’t answer this
question for you. You will have to search your consciousness and determine the answer
to this question for yourself. My wonderful soulmate Jacqui has had memories of
past lives and, due to recent revelations while hospitalized, will serve as a
messenger for many as never before. As for me, in deep meditation, I see the essential
consciousness of several people, at least six or seven, who lived in the past, surviving
in my consciousness, but, the person I am today is a composite of the basic
spiritual nature of people of the past and the changes wrought by the
experiences of this life. It appears that many of the personality traits,
habits and minor characteristics unique to their lifetimes faded with the
demise of their physical bodies and brains. So, my conclusion is that I am the
sum total of spiritual experiences of numerous past and present lives, with a
current cultural overlay fashioned by my personal experiences in this life, - not
the simple reincarnation of a person or persons who lived in the past. It is
also my impression that the infinite intelligence underlying reality may be
drawing forth new souls as older souls learn the lessons of this Earth life and
move on. I believe that this is in general agreement with Origen’s
documentation of the teachings of Jesus.
Arguments Against Reincarnation
With this brief historical background, let’s look at the most common
arguments put forth against the reincarnation hypothesis by some Christians,
Jews, Muslims, Agnostics, Atheists, and Materialists today. Interestingly, the
belief that reincarnation cannot be possible is one of the few things that some
members of all of these groups might agree on - but for quite different
reasons. Before we get into the arguments against reincarnation, some general
observations are in order.
First, arguing that reincarnation does not or
cannot occur, is an attempt to prove a negative. It certainly is not impossible
to prove a negative, but it is generally much more difficult than proving a
positive proposition. It is also a difficult and even dangerous position to
defend logically because you may have dozens of reasons why you believe reincarnation does not happen,
and you may be able to spend hours explaining each one of them very
articulately, but it only takes one indisputable 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.”
Second, there are Christians, Jews and Atheists who
do believe in reincarnation, but most devout Muslims will tell you that a
Muslim cannot believe in multiple reincarnations, because the Koran only allows
one, and that, according to the Prophet Mohamed, happens on Judgement Day.
However, some Muslim holy men who claim to have attained enlightenment, teach
that reincarnation does happen. One such 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. When I asked him about the verses in the Koran that seem to
dispute that, he said: “The words of the Prophet Mohamed, may He rest in peace, are for the common man, not enlightened
saints.”
Third, Atheism and belief in reincarnation are not mutually exclusive. An
Atheist can believe in reincarnation as a natural process that may occur
without requiring the existence of a god. So even within groups that generally
do not believe in reincarnation, there are people who do believe in
reincarnation. With that, let’s turn to the arguments against reincarnation.
There are plenty to be found in books and articles, and on the internet.
Faith-Based Arguments
Faith-based arguments are usually not scientific arguments because they do
not begin by considering reincarnation as a hypothesis to be proved or
disproved. They start with the assumption of superior knowledge, by basing
their argument on specific scriptures, such as verses of the Torah, Koran or
Bible, which they consider to be the Word of God. Unfortunately, arguments
presented in this manner are circular because they have already assumed the
negative conclusion they seek to prove. Such arguments are simply arguments in
defense of a point of faith, and therefore can be accepted or rejected,
depending on whether or not you share a belief in the dogma of the presenter’s
faith.
It is not my intent to belittle anyone’s faith, or
to dismiss their arguments against reincarnation because of it, but such proofs
must be considered in their proper context. The person who presents faith-based
arguments is relying on what he/she believes to be unimpeachable authority.
Because I am writing in American English, and because I live in a place and
time where Christianity is the prevalent faith, I will first put the Bible, the
written authority upon which Christians rely, into its historical context. In
other words, let’s look at how the Bible, in particular the King James Version
(KJV) and its many modern re-interpretations, came to be what they are today.
The Origin and Evolution of English Versions of the
Bible
Arguments depending upon the belief that specific scriptures are the
infallible word of God should be viewed with some skepticism, because, as we’ve
seen, the elimination of the teachings of Origen, arguably the brightest of the
early church theologians, by the Roman Emperor Justinian’s ban, has changed the
content of the Christian Bible substantially. And, if we accept the claim that
the scriptures upon which the New Testament is based were originally the word
of God, spoken by Jesus Christ, a truly Enlightened Being, then we still must
recognize that it has come down the ages through the lenses of many less than
perfect human beings. For example, the
King James Version of the Bible, revered by the fundamental Protestants of the
hill country 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 official
position of the Catholic Church was that divorce was a sin, so the Pope
refused. In response, Henry renounced the Catholic Church and married his
mistress. He then proceeded to close all of the Catholic monasteries in
England, seize the Church's assets
and establish the Church of England with himself as its head, and in
1536, as an act of defiance, 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,
trying to obtain a male heir, and he imprisoned and tortured anyone who opposed
his actions, even executing many, including two of his six wives.
The second English translation of the Bible,
now almost forgotten, was the Geneva Bible, produced in 1557 to1560. This
version of the Bible came about when Henry the Eighth’s only legitimate son,
Edward VI, died after only six years on the Throne, and his older sister Mary became Queen of England and Ireland
from 1553 to 1558. Mary was Catholic, and in order to re-instate the Catholic
Church in England, she heavily persecuted and executed many English Protestants,
earning the title "Bloody Mary”. More than 800 English scholars fled to
Europe to escape her Catholic wrath. They gathered in Geneva Switzerland in
1557 and proceeded to produce a new Protestant version of the Bible.
The Geneva Bible reflected the thinking of a
movement of the time known as Calvinism, just one among several emerging protestant
sects, including the Lutherans, Presbyterians and Episcopalians. The Geneva
Bible was considered to be a threat to all Christianity by the bishops of the
Church of England because it replaced the government of the church by bishops,
with government by lay elders. After Bloody Mary’s death, her half-sister
Elizabeth became Queen. She was a Protestant and as Queen, 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 minor changes in the spelling of some Hebrew
names in 1602, it was used as the base text for the King James Version (KJV) of
the Christian Bible completed in 1611.
If this were anything but the Bible, no one
would imagine that the KJV could possibly be the unaltered word of God as given
to the Jews in the Torah and the unaltered Gospel as spoken by Jesus in the
form of the New Testament. The KJV is a version of original Christian and
pre-Christian scriptures, filtered through several secular interpretations, and
all of them that occurred after the scholarly interpretations of Origen, who
from all reports was a deeply spiritual man, were for political purposes and
ego-based agendas whose instigators were far from virtuous.
The KJV’s twisted past was completely unknown to
most of the fundamental Christians in the USA of my childhood and teen-age
years (1936 – 1955), and probably to most of the Protestants around the world.
I remember statements of some of the good people of the hill country where I
grew up when told about the history of the translations of the Bible, were
asked how they knew the KJV Bible was the original word of God. They said something
like: “Yes, Priests, Kings and scholars may be less than perfect, but the
changes and interpretations were guided by God and God would not allow his word
to be distorted. The KJV is the only true word of God.” I thought: “Why would
God choose power-hungry politicians, murders, ego-maniacs, atheists,
adulterers, and sinners of every sort to shape His word, instead of honest
scholars and spiritual people?” But, I didn’t say it, because I knew what their
answer would probably be: “God works in mysterious ways!” There just is no
arguing with that kind of logic!
The Koran, the Holy Book of Islam
A brief look into the history of the organized Roman Catholic and
Protestant Bibles has shown us that any argument for or against reincarnation
based upon specific wordings in the Latin or English versions of the Bible are
questionable, and the same can be said for arguments against reincarnation by
Muslims 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. Both of these roots seem to
fit the facts of the origin of the Koran because the Islamic Sacred Scriptures
were not written down by Mohamed, but recited from memory. Several years after
the Prophet died, his followers began jotting their memories of the recitations
they had heard on camel bones and scraps of paper, and at some point, they were
collected and hand-copied and bound into the form of a book.
According to Muslim belief, the revelation of the Koran (also spelled ‘Quran’
in English to approximate the guttural sound of the Arabic consonant) began in
610 AD, when the angel Gabriel (
Arabic:
جبريل,
Jibrīl or جبرائيل,
Jibrāʾīl) appeared to Muhammad in Hira Cave
near Mecca, reciting to him the first
verses
of
Sura Iqra (
al-`Alaq). Throughout his life, Muhammad
continued to recite revelations until his death in 632. The Quran as it exists today
was compiled into a book format by
Zayd ibn-Thabit and other
scribes under Uthman, the third Caliph, a political leader of the Islamic
Caliphate, a theocratic government, sometime between 644 and 656. This was
about 100 years after the reign of Emperor Justinian of Rome, and about 450
years after Origen of Alexandria translated the original scriptures of the
Torah and the collected sayings of Jesus and wrote his interpretations of the
scriptures, much of which became the basis of the Christian Bible as it began
its torturous transformation into the Bible we have today.
Faith-based arguments are not scientifically valid arguments. They can be
accepted as true
only if the tenants
of the faith in question are accepted, either on the basis of personal
experience, or by accepting the authenticity of someone else’s experience and
the authority of an institution established by them. So, as a scientist, I must
remain skeptical of such arguments. This doesn’t mean that I reject the
teachings of Jesus. I certainly do not. On the contrary, I believe Christ Consciousness
is real, and that it is the only road to Cosmic Consciousness. But, faith is
not a basis for proof, believing is not knowing, and science must prove the
reality of something before announcing it as truth. A scientist cannot accept a
concept as indisputable truth based on someone else’s experience or belief. A
scientist must have direct proof. Without direct proof, an idea, however
appealing, is just a hypothesis; a theory to be tested, nothing more.
Unless you have direct two-way communication with Christ, you have no proof
and must rely on hear-say and very questionable authority, because Jesus, like
Mohamed, wrote nothing down. Neither did Gautama Buddha. Isn’t this remarkable?
Is it possible that the founders of three major world religions were
illiterate? No. They wrote nothing down because they knew that words in any
language, misrepresent and distort as much as they reveal. Their revelations of
the truth were much more complete, and on a much deeper level of consciousness
than can ever be conveyed in words. It was their inspiring presence and
extraordinary spiritual energy that convinced their followers that they knew
the Truth, as much or more than the words they spoke. So, let’s leave
faith-based “proofs” behind and move on to non-sectarian arguments against the
idea of reincarnation. Can science prove or disprove the reality of
reincarnation?
Non-Faith-Based
Arguments
The most convincing non-sectarian arguments against reincarnation come
from those scientists who are materialists, atheists or agnostics. These groups
are not mutually exclusive, but they are not synonymous either. A materialist
can believe in God as a higher intelligence emerging 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 completely negative position that
there never was a god, is no god, and never can be a god. Obviously, this is a
belief, not a scientific hypothesis, because it cannot be proved or disproved.
Rational arguments put forth by materialistic, agnostic, and atheistic
scientists boil down to two positive statements:
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 many, many more people alive on the planet today
than at any time in the recorded past, is given by some skeptics as an argument
against reincarnation, and at first glance it may seem like a good argument.
However, on closer examination, it does not eliminate reincarnation as a
logical possibility because even if there were only a finite number of souls,
say 10 billion, the assumption that all of them would eventually be on the
planet at the same time is unwarranted. Also, many more people have died during
the recorded past than exist on Earth today, so it is logically possible that
everyone alive today may have lived before. So, there is no paradox of numbers.
Science is by definition, 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
question of whether reincarnation is a reality or just wishful thinking with
the following hypothesis:
The
consciousness of an individual sentient being is wholly produced by that
individual’s physical body and brain, and cannot exist without them.
If
this hypothesis is true, then when the body and brain of an individual cease to
function, or when they are destroyed, by whatever means, the consciousness of
that individual is simply gone. It can no longer exist, period. But, as
professor James pointed out, there is no need to look at all of the arguments
that may be made supporting this hypothesis. If there is even one counter
example, the hypothesis is invalid.
Evidence for Reincarnation
The strongest rational argument for reincarnation is based on extending
the logic of the laws of cause and effect and conservation of substance, which
apply to mass and energy, to include consciousness. The discovery of the
existence of the impact of consciousness as gimmel in every stable structure in
the universe establishes the link between mass, energy and consciousness,
suggesting that consciousness is subject to conservation and cause and effect.
But the final establishment of the reality of reincarnation depends on the
documentation of indisputable evidence.
Scientific Evidence
The largest body of scientific evidence of
the transmigration of souls is found in the life’s 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 of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies.
Dr. Stevenson is
internationally recognized for discovering and documenting evidence that
memories and physical injuries can be transferred from one lifetime to another.
He traveled extensively over a period of 40 years, investigating approximately 3,000
cases of children around the world who recalled having past lives. His
meticulous research revealed evidence that children who recalled past lives
also had unusual abilities, illnesses, phobias and familiarities which could
not be explained by the experiences and environments of their current lives or
heredity. The following is a summarization of one of the cases investigated and
documented by Dr. Stevenson.
The Case of Swarnlata Mishra
Swarnlata Mishra started
talking about memories of a previous
life when she was 3 years old. Her memories contained many details that enabled
Dr. Stevenson to locate the family of the deceased person she said she
remembered being, and in the course of the investigation, she remembered more
than 50 specific facts that were verified. Her case was different than many of Dr. Stevenson’s investigations in that
her memories were happy memories rather than memories of violent and traumatic
events, and they did not fade away as she grew older.
Swarnlata Mishra was born in Pradesh India in 1948. When she was just three
years old, she told her father about her previous life in the town of Katni
more than 100 miles from their home. She related many details of her previous life
in Katni. She said her name was Biya Pathak, and that she had two sons. She recalled
details of their home in Katni, including the following: It was white with
black doors fitted with iron bars; four rooms were stuccoed, but other parts
were less finished; the front floor was of stone slabs. The house was in in the
Zhurkutia, District of Katni; behind the house was a girl's school, in front
was a railway line, and lime furnaces were visible from the house. She added
that the family had a motor car (a very rare item in India, even in the 1950's,
and especially before Swarnlata was born). Swarnlata said Biya died of a
"pain in her throat" and was treated by Dr. S. C. Bhabrat in
Jabalpur. All of these details, written down when Swarnlata was three, and they
were verified later when Swarnlata was 10 years old and they actually traveled
to Katni. Until then, the two families were unaware of each other’s existence.
After learning of Swarnlata’s claims, In the
summer of 1959, Biya’s husband, son and eldest brother traveled to the town
where the Mishras lived with the intention of testing her to see if she really
was a reincarnation of their Biya. They enlisted nine strangers to accompany
them to the Mishras’ home to pose as friends or family members that Biya had
known well. Ten-year-old Swarnlata quickly picked the real family members from
among 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 factual
verifications in this case, hard to explain by any theory other than
reincarnation, are found in the case files and in Dr. Stevenson’s book, “Twenty
Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation”, University Press of Virginia. Also see
“Children Who Remember Previous Lives” written for the layperson, McFarland
& Company, Inc., Publishers, 2001.
Could this case be a “white crow” disproving the hypothesis that: The
consciousness of an individual sentient being is wholly produced by that
individual’s physical body and brain. If you accept the work of Dr. Stevenson,
a scientist whose work in other areas is not questioned, with the same level of
skepticism exhibited by a particle physicist reviewing the evidence for the
existence of the Higgs boson, then you would have to say that it is. Critics of
Dr. Stevenson’s reincarnation investigations like the phrase “extraordinary
claims require extraordinary evidence” made popular by Carl Sagan; but just how
extraordinary does the evidence have to be? I submit that for most of the
critics of the study of reincarnation, no amount of evidence will ever be
enough, because, their objections are not scientific, they are belief-based,
derived either from a religious faith, or from a belief in simplistic
scientific materialism. Dr. Stevenson documented some 3,000 cases, most of
which are very difficult, if not impossible to explain any other way.
Why is reincarnation considered to be an extraordinary claim? How can
something that is a fundamental belief of 1.4 billion people (Hindus,
Buddhists, Jains, Taoists, Sikhs, and Shinto followers) be “extraordinary”? It
is considered extraordinary mainly in western cultures, but, 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.
Credible
Evidence from Adults
Dr. Stevenson’s files on reincarnation
primarily contain cases of children who report having memories of past lives.
The reason Dr. Stevenson focused on children is easy to understand. As a
scientist born, raised and trained in a society and scientific community that
largely rejected the idea of reincarnation on the basis of religious dogma
and/or materialism, in order to undertake a serious Investigation of the
reincarnation hypothesis, he had to behave as a true skeptic and allow the
possibility that the hypothesis might be in fact, either true or false. If
true, the most likely place to find evidence would be in the newly born. As a
medical doctor and psychiatrist, he knew that the clarity of the memory of an
event generally fades with the passage of time; and therefore, if it is
possible that some people live more than one life, and if it is possible that
some memory of past life events stored in the brain of the deceased can carry
over into the brain of the newly born body, then it is most likely to surface
shortly after birth, and to be expressed by the child as soon as he or she
begins to talk.
If such memories occur, they are likely to
fade with time, and become categorized as dreams by the individual and others,
as the body and mind go through the overwhelming stages of growth, including
the emotions of puberty, and the influences of other people. Also, an adult may
suppress or exaggerate such memories, depending on his societal conditioning
and beliefs. As a scientist, 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. This explains why Dr.
Stevenson focused primarily on reports of other-life memories by children. But,
are there adults who claim to remember past lives?
Some Famous People Who have professed
belief in Reincarnation
The list of 25 famous people below is only a
partial list, consisting of quotes that
are readily available from public statements and published writings. There are
many more who believe in reincarnation as completely logical, or from direct
experiences remembered in this life.
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.”
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
American World War II general spoke of memories of
a number of past lives There are numerous reports of General Patton talking
about being reincarnated. 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.”
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.”
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.
Shirley
McLaine
On her website, Shirley
says: “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.”
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.
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."
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.”
Mark
Twain
From his autobiography: “I have
been born more times than anybody except Krishna.”
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."
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."
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.)"
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."
Voltaire
"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."
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 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 that Hitler was his next
incarnation?
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."
Jesus of Nazareth
Perhaps most stunning of
all for Christians, is evidence that Jesus believed in reincarnation. We know
from the writings of Origin and others that Jesus spoke about reincarnation and
that it was recorded by his followers. But these records were banned from the
Bible by the Roman Emperor and others for philosophical and political reasons.
Under the edict of Justinian, monastic scribes expunged overt references to
reincarnation from the scriptures, but some reincarnation references by Jesus
that could be explained as special circumstances, were left in. For
example, from Luke 9:18 – 21. [My comments are italicized
in brackets]
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 of the fact that the Jewish people in Jesus’
time believed in reincarnation]
“But what about
you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
Peter answered, “God’s
Messiah.”
And he straitly charged them, and commanded them to tell
no man that thing
[Jesus was asking these questions
in order to establish with his followers that he was the Messiah predicted in
the Jewish Book of Prophets.]
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.
[A clear
reference to the reincarnation of Elijah as John the Baptist. And the statement that “Elijah
must come first” (before the Messiah) is referring to the prophecies in the
Tanakh.]
In the Old Testament
(Extracted and translated from the Hebrew of the Jewish Tanakh):
And fifty men of the sons of the prophets went
and stood to view afar off: and they two stood by the River Jordan. And Elijah
took his mantle, and wrapped it together, and smote the waters, and they
were divided hither and thither, so that they two went over on dry ground.
And it came to pass, when
they were gone over, that Elijah said unto Elisha, “Ask what I shall do for
thee, before I be taken away from thee.” And Elisha said, “I pray thee, let a
double portion of thy spirit be upon me.”
And he said, “Thou hast asked a hard thing: nevertheless,
if thou see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee; but
if not, it shall not be so.” And it came to pass, as they still went on,
and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses
of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into
heaven. And Elisha saw it.
(Second Kings, 2:9)
[Elijah was
reincarnated as John the Baptist. Could it be that Elisha, with twice the
spiritual power as Elijah, was reincarnated as Jesus?]
In Malachi, the last book
of the Old Testament, we find the prediction:
Behold, I am going to send you
Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the LORD.
(Malachi 4-5)
[It is no
coincidence that the Jordan River played a central role in both the elevation
of Elisha by Elijah and the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist. In the
scriptures, the River Jordan symbolizes the crossing of a barrier and the
transcendence of Spirit over matter. I visited
the spot where John baptized Jesus in 2010, and have memories of standing on
the banks of the River Jordan in more than one life.]
In addition to the texts
that became the Christian Bible, texts written around and shortly after the
time of Jesus by a group called “Gnostics” also recorded the sayings of Jesus,
but because they contained some things the religious institutions of that time
did not want propagated, they were banned as either too Jewish on the one hand,
or too Christian on the other.
Gnosticism (from Ancient Greek: γνωστικός, gnostikos, "having
knowledge", from γνῶσις gnōsis, knowledge) is the name
given to the ancient religious ideas of Jewish-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 believed that the material world is created 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.
Gnostic Christians taught that periodic saviors of
the world, from Krishna to Christ, were able to rekindle the divine spark in
those in whom it had gone out. But organizers of the political doctrine that
became the basis of the Catholic Church held that man was created by God as a
physical being, not a spiritual one. Man, therefore, has no
intrinsic connection to God, no divine spark through which he can reach God
according to Church doctrine.
Rejecting the part of original
Christian teachings that held that the soul is spiritual and immortal, an idea
that Church Fathers like Clement of Alexandria and Origen documented,
misguided Church theologians developed the concept of creatio ex nihilo, or
creation out of nothing. This belief in something from nothing is reflected in
the belief in the big-bang theory of the origin of all things as originally
posited by physicalists.
Thanks to the Emperor Justinian, and the Catholic
Church that accepted his decree designed to suppress ideas that elevated the
potential of the consciousness of human beings to cosmic consciousness, that
doctrine persists to this day. The New Catholic Encyclopedia says:
"Between Creator and creature there is the
most profound distinction possible. God is not part of the world. He is not
just the peak of reality. Between God and the world there is an abyss....To
be created is to be not of itself, but from another. It is to be
non-self-sufficient. This means that deep within itself [the soul] is in a
condition of radical need, of total dependence.... It means to accept the fact
that the world has no reality except what the Creator thinks and
wills." (Emphasis added.)
In other words, according to institutionalized
Church doctrine, there is not, as the Platonists believed, a great chain of
being linking the creation to the Creator and enabling the creation to return
to the Creator. There is no divine spark inside each heart. God created
everything to run on its own, without any further involvement on his part. This
dogma allowed the Church to promote itself as the only path to salvation of the
soul.
But, this enforced doctrine of the Church contradicts
several Biblical passages like Psalms 82:6:
“I have said,
Ye are gods; and all of you are children of
the most High.”
John 10:32-34: When a
mob threatened to stone him,
Jesus answered them, “Many
good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye
stone me?”
The Jews answered him, saying, “For a good work we stone thee not; but for
blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.”
Jesus
replied, "Is it not written in your Law: 'I have said you are gods' ?
Jerimiah
1:4-5: Concerning the
pre-existence of souls:
Then the
word of the LORD came to me saying:
“Before I formed thee in the
belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified
thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations”.
Conclusions Regarding the
Reincarnation Hypothesis
The weight of evidence, in
terms of the number of highly intelligent people, past and present, who believe
in reincarnation, and the numerous cases of remembered past lives with
validated details, far outweighs the anti-reincarnation dogma of the Catholic
and Protestant Churches that are based on non-Christian ideas institutionalized
purely as social and political agendas.
The idea that there might be a certain finite number of souls stems from
the illusion of finite forms with beginnings and ends. Because we become identified
with finite physical bodies, and inhabit them for a while, physical bodies that
are born, grow, decay, and die, we forget that we are immortal souls. While,
because there are a finite number of organic life- supporting bodies at any one
given point in time, and there are a finite number of souls incarnate on the
Earth, we forget that the matrix of Primary Consciousness from which we come is
infinite, and can project any number of souls into the physical universe at any
given time. But, is all this proof that you or I, or any person currently alive
has actually lived before?
An Overview of the Reincarnation of Souls Hypothesis
Reading the writings of reincarnated souls that we have not met in this
lifetime, and talking with those that we have met, we can begin to piece
together a picture of how reincarnation works. The mechanism and driving force
behind it is spiritual evolution, not physical evolution, and the logic of the
mechanism is as mathematical and irrefutable as the dimensionometric
mathematical logic that reveals the existence of gimmel, the spiritual aspect
of physical creation.
There are ‘old’ souls, as we saw above, like Paramahansa Yogananda, Mark
Twain, Salvador Dali, Edgar Cayce, the Dahli Lama, and there are ‘younger’
souls, like Sylvester Stallone and George Harrison, and there are many, many
‘young’ souls who do not remember past lives at all. The terms ‘Old’ and ‘young’
in this context, do not necessarily relate to time spent on this Earth, but to
lessons learned. It appears that progression and regression in a given lifetime
- or lifetimes, are the results of the desires, choices, actions, and focus of
the soul in question.
The law of cause and effect, or karma, as it is called in Eastern philosophy,
largely governs the physical aspects of reincarnation, including the when,
where and how of birth, social and economic position in life and death, time
after time, but has no effect on the spirit, the essence of Primary
Consciousness, which is the heart of the soul. Finite expressions of your
unique experiences may carry over from previous lives into this one in the form
of birthmarks and other physical characteristics. Evidence strongly suggesting
this is found in the case studies of Dr. Ian Stevenson, and the documented
readings of Edgar Cayce. Deeper soul characteristics, including the level of
enlightenment attained, are also carried over, but re not necessarily displayed
for all to see in this lifetime.
If, in a previous incarnation, you attained sharply focused awareness, involving
a high level of intellect and a deep level of compassion and love, you will
recognize friends and foes incarnate in this life. This can be helpful in
maintaining and improving your focus and awareness amid the challenges and
struggles of this life. People who have attained high levels of success in past
lives are more likely to achieve success in this life also because, at a deep
level, memories of purpose, focus, and methods for attaining alignment with the
laws of the universe are still there. Unfortunately, the same is true of bad
habits. Just like physical patterns, psychological patterns persist unless steps
are actively taken to change them.
Personal Experiences Suggestive of Past Lives
Disclaimer: As a
scientist, I am, by definition, a professional skeptic. This means that I will consider
the transmigration or reincarnation of human consciousness, including my own, from
a past living body or bodies into current living bodies as a scientific hypothesis,
something that may or may not have happened. Ultimately, reincarnation must
remain a hypothesis, something to be proved or disproved by each individual.
But,
the evidence is strongly suggestive, if not overwhelming that many of us have been
here before, with another name and face, and may return again until we have
evolved spiritually to the point that we can move on beyond the merely physical, into the
much greater domain of the Cosmos.
I will, on the other hand, stand behind the declaration of the existence
of the third form, not measurable as matter (mass) or energy, because it has
been proved to be true with mathematical logic and the empirical evidence of
scientific data. This discovery supports the hypothesis of the survival of
consciousness by extension of the law of conservation of mass and energy to
include all three forms of the substance of reality. Certain experiences and
memories may be strongly suggestive of reincarnation, but it is possible that they
might be explained in other ways as well. For example: memories that appear to
be from past lives could be somatic, i.e., memories of ancestral lives recorded
in the DNA, that surface in the brains of descendants.
I have had a number of distinct personal memories and experiences that are
suggestive of past lives, some of which I wrote about in “The Book of Atma”
Published in 1977. My memories are suggestive of at least seven distinct lives
in specific past time periods. Some have been validated by physical evidence,
relevant information and unusual experiences in this lifetime. Still, they
could be somatic memories of other human beings recorded in my DNA, that
somehow, my conscious mind has tapped into. But I don’t think so. If asked what
I believe regarding my experiences suggestive of reincarnation, I will have to
say that I believe that my soul did not appear from nothingness on October 7,
1936, and will not disappear anytime in the future, because there is no
evidence that anything appears and
disappears without cause.
All of the laws of nature discovered so far, especially the laws of
conservation of mass and energy, tell us that nothing is ever created from
nothingness or destroyed absolutely, and that all things change and evolve. The
idea of the existence of nothingness is completely illogical and not supported
by the evidence of scientific data. The discovery of gimmel strongly suggests
that the same is true for consciousness. It may change and evolve, but there is
no basis to believe that it will ever cease to exist. In addition, the
existence of the complexly ordered physical universe only makes sense, and has
purpose and meaning, if the progress made in one life actually carries over in
some form into the next life. I am convinced by the evidence of experience and
mathematical logic that there is something instead of nothing because there
never was a state of absolute nothingness. Without gimmel, the laws of mechanics
and the second law of thermodynamics tell us that no structured universe
consisting of spinning objects like electrons, protons and neutrons could ever
exist.
The fact that I exist now as a conscious being, implies that I have always
existed, and will always exist in some form, as indicated clearly in the
Judeo-Christian scriptures, especially before they were redacted by the heavy
hand of Justinian I, Emperor of Rome.
Post
Script:
Jacqui plans to post
messages regarding things both mundane and spiritual revealed to her during her
near-death experiences on her YL Abundance site, and we will be posting
together on this blog as well. This is a change of focus that may be
distasteful to some who think scientific investigation and spiritual experience
are mutually exclusive, a view sometimes held by both materialists and
religious people. Everyone is free to accept or reject what we have to say,
and, of course, to refuse to read anything we post if you please. But, in my
opinion, rejection of ideas that do not agree with your belief system is a
short-sighted and misguided attitude that inhibits intellectual and spiritual
growth. Real science, e.g., should seek to investigate all real experiences and
phenomena, physical, mental and spiritual. Excluding anything for consideration
that cannot be fully explained as the interaction of matter and energy in space
and time is unscientific and ignores most of the most important questions we
have as conscious human beings. To reject ideas that are not consistent with
your own materialistic, intellectual or spiritual belief system is an indolent
choice, but one chosen by many, if not most people alive in the world today.
Comments and questions are
welcomed.
Edward R. Close 8/25/2018
