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Back to the Forum 2006
Archives Reincarnation is a religious philosophy. Briefly, reincarnation is the theory that we do not die when our body dies, nor do we go to heaven or hell. Instead we go into some kind of spiritual space-time wherein we consider our next move. What we do will have to do with our karma and what we want to do about it. Our karma is the result of what we have done in past incarnations. The idea of karma is that our situation in this life is the result of physical and mental things we did in past incarnations and that what we do in this life can determine our conditions in future incarnations. Karma is a rather impersonal law of moral cause and effect. It just goes on and on and on. There is a final escape from this cycle of death and rebirth for folks who finally gather enough good karma to attained nirvana. According to Buddhist tradition Nirvana is the ineffable ultimate in which one has attained disinterested wisdom and compassion. One is tempted to say whoopie! At any rate, according to the theory, most people will have to reincarnate into a new cycle of life on earth. The idea of this is, a person who is seeking enlightenment will choose a life that will help them to grow. For some people, that will mean a life of poverty or some other kind of miserable existence. This is a handy concept for the upper cast folks in India as it dovetails neatly into the concept of dharma. It nicely explains the condition of the untouchables as a life they chose and brought on themselves. They are not poor buggers who are taking it in the butt because of the conditions of their birth. They are simply souls who are becoming enlightened through their suffering. Whoopee again! People who believe in reincarnation are a subgroup of the same people who believe in God, Allah, Ram, or Brahman. They all come with the same mind set. They have made up their minds and their search is for affirmation of what they believe, rather than a search for truth. When we read their tomes, we should be aware they are presenting the evidence that supports their case and suppressing all contrary evidence. In spite of that, the evidence for reincarnation is still rather flimsy. This theory of reincarnation, as I see it, hangs from some very slender threads. The main thread seems to be the Déjà Vu experience which is rather common to all people. The second thread is even more tenuously based on alleged input from spirits. A third thread is based on a parlor trick technique of hypnotic recall and so-called readings. Really? In reading Ruth Montgomery's book, "Here and Hereafter," I found page after page of descriptions of these kind of experiences. It was a huge listing of very identical events. I suppose, it was intended to be convincing by the sheer mass of cases presented, but I did not find it so. As to the Déjà Vu experience, who has not had one or more of these? As I said, it is a common human experience. When it happens, we may search for explanations, and most of us will finally write it off to a trick of perception or memory. The reincarnation people don't see it that way. In the first few pages of her book, Montgomery goes into a number of the Déjà Vu experiences of several people. With them, she tried to make a case that these scene and situation recognitions were simply memories from previous lives and somehow proved that these people had lived before. Sure! A thin thread indeed. In the situation of messages from people in the spirit world, the evidence is even slimmer. There is only one witness, that being the allegedly paranormal person who is giving us the details. In some cases, the spirit takes control of the psychic person and speaks through them. In other cases the psychic holds a writing instrument, a pencil for instance, and the spirit guides the hand in writing. Okay! This is very similar to the hokey seance situation wherein people try to communicate with dead relatives through some kind of medium. Finally we come to the situations which these true believers consider to be the knockout blow of evidence. These are the hypnotic state readings where a hypnotist puts a willing victim into a state of hypnosis and takes them back in time to previous lives. These people then recall experiences that supposedly happened in previous incarnations. From the evidence I have found, these hypnotic sessions are always set up in someone's home with a group of true believers. The central figure in all of these sessions is a hypnotist showman. We should get clear on this. Hypnotism in an informal group setting for show is not science. It is a parlor trick. If I am impressed at all by parlor tricks it will be by the skill of the performer. In no way will parlor tricks convince me of the proof of anything. Scientists, healers, and real spiritual people do not do parlor tricks. Parlor tricks are done by performers. Now, my take on all of this nonsense is, it does not matter. If you want to believe it you will, but not by real evidence. There is not enough scientific evidence to make the case. All of this stuff that I could find is more in the character of parlor tricks done by skilled performers with naive participants, people who want to believe. There are no true scientific studies that I know of. I addition, I can offer this one personal thought. What we
ought to do is try to get it right now. It does not matter if
we are immortal. It does not matter if we lived before or will
reincarnate. The only important thing is to get it right now,
to do the task before us as impeccably as possible. Everything
else will fall out if we do that. Immortality will become irrelevant.
If we live, we live and if we die we die, but if we don't get
it right, we might as well be dead now.
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