Reincarnation Part 1

Well, good evening. Most of you know that one of the, among the central tenets of Buddhism is the doctrine of karma and its associated belief in reincarnation. Now Buddhism has a certain twist on that belief. Arguing that what’s incarnated is not an essential self, but rather an aggregate of characteristics. Nevertheless, it tends to assume, with other Asian traditions such as Hinduism and Jainism, that something consistent with individual personalities cycles through earthly and spiritual dimensions in multiple lifetimes. What, what we have here is a Tibetan thangka with Yama, the god of death, holding the cyclical wheel of life depicting the six realms of existence into which one might return. The notion of reincarnation has permeated other cultures as well, including Western ones. It had a place in ancient Greek and Egyptian thought and in early Gnostic Christianity. It continues to have one in Hasidic Judaism, Sufism, and in African and Native American traditions.

So to glance at its place in early Western thought, we’ll take a look at the— take note of the West’s foundational philosopher. Book 10 of Plato’s The Republic relates what’s now regarded as the first recorded near-death experience. It’s known as the Myth of Er. Er was a, a soldier who was taken for dead on the battlefield, but as he was being carried to his funeral pyre, he stirs to life and relates his experience in another dimension. And there he says He witnessed souls choosing their next lifetime based on characteristics that they had incorporated in the previous one. Turning to early Christianity, and this is a more of a Western depiction in the center there, the church father Origen of Alexandria He was an intellectual and saintly giant of the 3rd century. He accepted the notion. Every soul, he wrote, comes to this world strengthened by the victories or weakened by the defeats of its previous life. Its place in this world is determined by its previous merits or demerits. Origen’s teaching was disparaged in official church circles around the time of the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 CE, and thereafter the idea of reincarnation was rejected in Catholic doctrine and more generally faded from the Western mind. But in the words of the scholar Christopher Bache, it has been accepted by approximately half the human race for thousands of years. So, Roger, we can, we can, uh, put, put the screen share for preacher for a moment. We can readily see that as a religious myth or archetype, the idea of reincarnation has ethical and spiritual value. It connects us with the greater web of all being, and it inculcates a sense of responsibility not only for our present ephemeral lives, but for future generations. Together with the notion of karma, it implies that our individual lives have purpose and intention, that they’re implanted in a series of lifetime experiences dictated by meaningful moral order in the cosmos. Choices that we make in one lifetime determine our needs and circumstances in the next, and we, we reincarnate in order to learn specific lessons that ultimately guide us along a path that teaches in the end that we are interconnected with all life, and that ultimately all lives manifest single divine reality. Reincarnation, remarks Beisch, weds our individual evolution to the larger evolution of the universe. For the individual, belief in reincarnation offers a sense of hope in contrast to the modern materialist idea of death as total annihilation, or in contrast to the traditional Christian threat of eternal damnation. It depicts afterlife as multiple chances to improve ourselves, to grow progressively over lifetimes towards blissful harmony with ultimate reality. In all of these ways, viewed as myth, the belief reinforces a basically comforting outlook on our struggles with all our flaws in this veil of tears. But religious systems that accept that belief don’t see it as a myth but as fact, as a literal truth behind the dynamic of our lives. If it really might be that, we in this scientifically dominated age naturally want to search for proof. Is there concrete evidence that in fact humans reincarnate from one life to another? Well, that’s a question that I’m addressing in these two lectures this week and next. Let me lead with an anecdote. Now this, this is drawn from the experience of, of the self-exploration and therapeutic technique that I facilitate called Holotropic Breathwork. It’s a story told by the creator of the breathwork, Stanislav Grof, about a man he calls Carl. The premise of this tale is that if we delve deeply enough into our own unconscious minds, induced by trance-like states that we call non-ordinary states of consciousness, memories of what seem to be past lives can bubble to the surface. The first of Carl’s related experiences began in another form of therapy called primal therapy, and in those earlier sessions he seemed to relive memories of his own birth, which actually is quite a common occurrence in transpersonal therapies. And then he began visualizing fragments of scenes that seemed to be in a foreign land, in another country, another century. He had visions of what seemed to be parts of a fortress— thick walls, military barracks, ramparts— and then he saw soldiers. But it was puzzling to him because the soldiers seemed to be Spanish, while the scenery had greenery, hills, and seaside cliffs that he associated with Ireland or Scotland. Carl then entered holotropic breathwork workshops at the Esalen Institute in California, and there the process continued. The scenes returned in more detail. A fortress on a rock overlooking the ocean shore. Oh, can we— yeah. Now Carl had skills as an artist, and after sessions he drew a series of these scenes, including this view of the fortress. Visions came up of fierce combat, He saw himself as part of battle scenes, but not as a soldier, but rather as a priest. In one of these sessions, he saw a seal ring on his hand with legible initials. He then experienced his own death, being lanced by a British soldier thrown over the ramparts and dying on the shore below. Now here are his drawings of the ring and of being Lance. At one point after these sessions, Carl impulsively took a trip to Ireland, just a vacation. He enjoyed life as a tourist. And took photos of the picturesque West Coast. It was only when he got home and was reviewing his slides— this was the epic of transparencies— that he realized he had taken 11 pictures of the same landscape. And he didn’t even remember doing that because he consciously, he didn’t feel that this something was particularly interesting. I would imagine that his slides look something like this one. In any case, he examined a map and reconstructed where he had been on the top at the time. It was on the Dingle Peninsula, and he discovered that the structure in the distance of his shots Barely visible on the slide was the ruin of an old fortress called Dun Anwar, or Golden Fortress. This photo is of that area, but taken by me from the internet, but Carl’s drawings and slides, I should emphasize, predated the internet. His curiosity was piqued. And he researched the fort’s history. In 1580, during what was called the Desmond Rebellion of the Irish against the British, a small force of Spanish invaders came to the support of Irish fighters at this fort. They were then besieged by a much larger British force. Sir Walter Raleigh negotiated on behalf of the British and promised the Spaniards their freedom if they opened the gates and surrendered. The Spaniards agreed. Once inside, the British slaughtered them all, throwing their bodies over the ramparts onto the beach. During his series of prior sessions, Carl had done this drawing of the cliffs covered with blood. And so you would— you’d have to imagine the darker ink there as in red. This is done on watercolor today. Taken from the other side than our earlier internet photo. Eventually Carl turned up a document indicating that a priest had accompanied the Spanish expedition and was killed with the soldiers. The initials of his name were the same as those that Carl envisioned on the ring. So, well, if we can talk about what do we do with that in the empirical investigation of this kind of thing, this is called a CORT experience. C-O-R-T. It’s an acronym for cases of the reincarnation type. Is it— can we take this as proof of reincarnation, or that Carl really was that priest from the 16th century? Well, many cultures would have no problem with the premise, but we can also imagine other ways of making sense of this tale. One alternative explanation might be that Carl was somehow connecting with a— some flicker in a collective unconscious, not necessarily continuous with his personal ego. Some have speculated that all memories are somehow stored in what William James called a mother sea or reservoir of consciousness. A memory bank akin to Carl Jung’s collective unconscious, or what others have called Akashic Records. Alternatively, alternatively, perhaps this was a case of what’s called cryptomnesia, or hidden memory, in which Carl had once read of the Battle of Dunanwar and long forgotten it, but that it remained in his subconscious. That would be more consistent with conventional materialist assumptions, but Carl was sure that that was not so. I’m sure there are other explanations. Interestingly enough, Carl did feel connections between the story of the priest issues of his own personal life in the present. Uncovering that story proved therapeutic for him. In the 1950s, um, some psychotherapists began practicing past life regression therapy, inducing non-ordinary states by hypnosis Basically, they were trying to extend Freud’s initial method of probing childhood, used hypnosis initially, into what could seem previous lives. Bobby, can you go back to— I am old enough to remember my older sister-in-law who was all enthused about, uh, a book and phenomenon called The Search for Bridey Murphy, which was made into a film. Now let me say that in this case, and also in others of this past life regression therapy, we somehow sometimes had really startling results with Subjects showing precise knowledge of a past epoch’s architecture, dress, food, and even individuals in their personal circle. The search group for Bridey Murphy was— I recounted the hypnosis of a housewife in Pueblo, Colorado. Who claimed to be an Irish woman born in 1798 in County Cork, and who could report on that life in really remarkable detail. Eventually, that case was largely pinned on cryptomnesia. It was discovered that in her, um, early childhood in Chicago, the subject, Virginia Teague was her name, lived across the street from an Irish-born woman whose maiden name was Bridey Murphy, and it was full of stories about the old country. However, others have noted that Bridey didn’t have nearly the extent of historical information that came through the voice of— that came from the voice that spoke through Virginia Eve. In any case, past life regression took hold among various psychotherapists who found it an effective treatment in reliving psychological— and occasionally, I’m sorry, in relieving psychological and occasionally even physical problems. Just as uncovering hidden memories from our past in this life can have therapeutic effects, so too they found in uncovering memories, or perhaps spinning fantasies, of past lives, usually with themes related to their current issues or problems. Practitioners have now written numerous books on the topic, claiming therapeutic success. And I will say that in preparation for this talk, I did arrange a session of past life therapy, but we’ll leave that for the discussion. An early And perhaps the best-known American practitioner of past life regression therapy is Brian Weiss, who’s author of several books on the topic. His first account was called Many Lives, Many Masters, and it tells about his own transformation as he delved into the psyche of a 27-year-old patient named Catherine. Now, at the time, Weiss was a scientifically minded psychiatrist. He majored in chemistry as an undergraduate and attended the Yale Medical School. Uh, there he wrote a thesis on brain chemistry and neurotransmitters. He was author of numerous scientific papers of that sort, and on those grounds was appointed chief of psychiatry of a large university-affiliated hospital in Miami. He distrusted, he tells us, anything that could not be proved by traditional scientific methods. When Weiss first encountered Catherine in 1980, she was suffering from high anxiety, panic attacks, nightmares, depression, and phobias, including a particularly strong fear of water. He tells us that for 18 months he tried conventional methods, including anti-anxiety medication. None of those, however, seemed to work. Finally turned to hypnosis, hoping to uncover childhood traumas that hadn’t surfaced in their sessions. With that hypnosis, she did remember a trauma at age 5 and another at age 3, um, but her symptoms didn’t change. They remained intact. So looking for another childhood trauma, Weiss told her, oh, this is his quotation, go back to the time in which your symptoms arise. Go back to the time in which your symptoms arise. Now, Catherine, I should note, came from a traditional Catholic family. She had little knowledge of reincarnation and certainly no belief in it, but to Weiss’s astonishment, her mind leapt to a scene from, she reported, 1863 BCE, when she was 18 years old. Her visualizations were sharp, vivid, detailed, They followed that life in several scenes, ending with her death and that of her baby by drowning in a flood. In the same session, she pictured another life, this one from the 18th century CE, when she was sickened and many around her died from contaminated water. In still another life in that session, she declared that Weiss had been her teacher. When she returned the following week for her next session, she was radiant and happy, saying that her fear of drowning had disappeared. In subsequent sessions, Catherine continued recounting past lives, finding more traumas that seemed to explain her current symptoms and alleviating them in the process. Perhaps most impressively for our purposes, her knowledge in these trance states induced by hypnosis, her knowledge of the customs and culture of societies that she pictured far surpassed anything she could have acquired by ordinary means. As too did knowledge she showed about Weiss’s personal life. She was becoming more and more psychic. As for Weiss, he stated that after Catherine’s first past life session, his own life would never be the same again. He delved into the literature on reincarnation, and as he accepted it as a real possibility, he found himself transformed both intellectually and personally. I was more calm and patient, he reported. I felt more hope, more joy, more purpose, more satisfaction in my life. I was losing the fear of death. You can turn that off now, Janet. Past life therapy, psychotherapy, is one of two principal strains of evidence that can lend credibility to the idea of reincarnation. But scientifically minded observers, for them it is largely considered weak evidence. Although they do occur, it’s rare to find a story like that of Carl, which seems subject to some external validation. Since most past lives, remembered or not, leave little or no surviving documentation, there’s usually no way to determine if the past lives reported actually took place. Even among practitioners, there are discussions about whether the stories coming out of hypnosis and altered states are fantasies or actual past lives, or perhaps a mix of both. But the therapeutic advantages, they argue, might imply in either case Besides past life therapy, there’s another principal strain of evidence, one that seems to involve more compelling verification, and that is children’s memories of immediate past lives. We’ll take a look at that next week. So I thank you for your kind attention. And, um, we have, we have some time for, um, comments or questions. I’d like to just open with the question of whether any of you feel like you have had some kind of a past life experience.