News, Announcements
and Comments

• New Announcement "In Another Life: Reincarnation in America", the documentary which this website was started to support, can be purchased directly from me at the retail price of $25 by anyone living outside the United States and Canada (PAL format now available). See the Purchase page of this website. Within the U.S. and Canada, it can be purchased at a retail price from Films Media Group, if you identify yourself as a home viewer. This is new information--I wasn't aware of this previously. Films Media Group is the oldest and largest distributor selling to universities and libraries, and normally they sell the program at the institutional price of $129.95. Note that the video quality of the streaming sample on the Films Media Group order page is poor because the contrast is way too high (at least on my computer and some other's I've tested it with), but the DVD they are selling is fine. If the program is broadcast, it may also be offered at the retail price at the end of the show, so feel free to recommend it to your local PBS station or other television stations.

• This story is for all the station managers, programming directors, festival judges and distributors who have screened "In Another Life" and saw nothing particularly worthwhile in it. You know who you are. (I suppose they just thought it was mediocre.)

• An article about Dr. Roger Woolger, a Jungian past-life therapist. Dr. Woolger is featured in "In Another Life", and I was fortunate enough to participate in one of his week-long workshops as a condition of filming. See also the video interview with Dr. Woolger on the "Interviews" page of this website.

• A brief video of a reincarnation case reminiscent of those studied by the late Dr. Ian Stevenson and colleagues on YouTube.

• An interview with Dr. Jim Tucker, successor to Dr. Ian Stevenson. See also the video interview with him on the "Interviews" page of this website.

• Desiree Bassett, a 15-year-old rock guitar prodigy who some have jokingly called the "reincarnation of Jimi Hendrix". Eric Johnson does quite a few Hendrix tributes, so I'd be curious to know his opinion about her style. In any case, from what I understand about reincarnation, she's probably the reincarnation of somebody who mastered rock guitar in a (presumably recent) past life, and by the looks of things, somebody really good... If the video player doesn't launch inside the article, here's her website.

• I draw a lot of articles from the British news source, "Ananova.com", and in particular, their "quirkies". I was musing about an article that pokes some light-hearted fun at Iranian reactions to the importation of Barbie dolls, and Western toys in general. Here's a screenshot of the top of the page I was looking at. Of course the article shows a fairy-tale princess Barbie with a unicorn; and the objection cited has to do with "lipstick". "Movies and video games" are cited as an afterthought. But we know what we subject our children to in the West is not so benign as princess Barbies and lipstick. Now, look around the page--at the top, the sacred word "Avatar" is cheapened to mean an online identity icon, and you can "make your own"...to the right, there is some kind of British theme park, a "Haven". How did I get myself born into this culture? Help!!"

• The writer of this article underwent a past-life regression, and had a profound experience. You will note his tone is not skeptical.

• A woman writes, describing her past-life memory experience as it relates to a relationship attachment.

• This article, which is basically a kind of blog, muses about reincarnation believers and reincarnation. It's mis-informed, but it does bring up some of the ways that the concept of reincarnation is misused. It is not accurate as regards the attitudes of people who have studied the subject in depth.

• What if Reincarnation is Real? An article bringing scientific thinking to bear on the question of reincarnation. My intuitive reaction is that it's still somehow reductionistic, but I can't put my finger on it. My sense is that this is what happens when science is forced to admit that the evidence is overwhelmingly for reincarnation; as that realization dawns, science will have to "regroup" and do damage control. I could be entirely wrong, but that's my gut sense. Bottom line, unless one gets from the reality of reincarnation that man is a spiritual being having a physical experience, one has missed the point. One has to flip-flop the entire materialistic paradigm. Anyone who is forced to admit the evidence and yet resists that turnover, still hasn't quite gotten it. It will be found, I believe, that genetics is the tool of the incoming mind. The incoming mind, guided by its past impressions, chooses (or is drawn to) the new parents with their genetic material, and then guides that genetic material in the growth of the embryo. Otherwise, it would not be possible for someone like Jeff Keene to be an almost exact physical duplicate of his past-life match, and still have absolutely no known genetic link to the past-life person's family tree. Dr. Stevenson's birthmark studies point in the same direction.

• This article about a dolphin that rescued two beached sperm whales has no bearing on reincarnation (that I know of); but it does have a bearing on reductionism, and on magical thinking within science. Love pervades and manifests through everything in the universe, by degrees. Therefore it is also found in the animal kingdom. Materialism, however, has no room for a spiritual origin of the manifested universe--it has no room for a "top-down" model which places spiritual realities at the top ("as above, so below"). So how would a materialistic science explain a dolphin rescuing two whales? If you try to do so within the soul-less materialistic paradigm, you have to resort to a form of magical thinking (there is another article further down this page wherein scientists speculated that arguments at holiday dinners are caused by chemical reactions in the digestive process). One would have to show that it has "survival value" for the dolphin to rescue the whales, or that it was a coincidence. What I'm trying to do is to isolate out the magical thinking inherent in defending the materialistic position, so it can be seen that this position does not necessarily hold the high ground of rationality when it comes to phenomena like reincarnation.

Signs and portents? I was walking the beach early this morning, and saw a party balloon washing up on the shore ahead of me. The thought came to me that perhaps the message on it was a sign. I know, sounds nuts. I actually began my spiritual search, some 35 years ago, as an avowed atheist, with the idea that sometimes the Universe tries to teach you things if only you will pay attention. I decided to test it by just paying attention, and I started noticing little things. (As in my comments above, Intelligence also pervades and manifests through everything in the universe, by degrees.) That was a long time ago and I rarely think about it, but this morning that thought popped into my mind. Trouble is, this balloon is from an oriental culture--Japanese? Korean? It's somewhat faded and deflated--it could be from a couple miles up the beach, but I'm not sure where you buy these in Myrtle Beach, SC. If anybody knows who this guy is and what he's saying, drop me a line, okay? (click on icon for larger image) And may the force be with you! (Before you poke fun at this, you might want to consider that Jeff Saganaw, former head of TriStar Pictures, has recently accepted my documentary for internet broadcast and promotion in territories outside the United States and Canada, for his new online station, "Paranormal TV", and they tell me they are especially interested in marketing to Asia.)

• An article about near-death experiences, including those in which a blind person was able to see once out of their body, and details of what they saw were corroborated. If these reports are accurate, they put to rest the idea that NDE's are mere hallucination. See also this review of "Mindsight" by Kenneth Ring and Sharon Cooper. The book is only $12.95, but apparently it's out of print and used copies are going for over $100. There's an address for the publisher at the bottom of this review. I recently obtained a copy through interlibrary loan. It describes a pioneering study which provides clear evidence, if not proof to a scientific standard, that there are, in fact, cases in which people who could not see were suddenly able to see--at least in some sense--from a vantage point outside their physical bodies, and that details of their reports were independently corroborated. In what I felt was one of the strongest cases, a blind man was hurriedly given a tie, not told what it looked like, suffered a medical emergency, and reported afterward the pattern on the tie. Maddeningly, the person who had given him the tie was contacted, and told researchers that after many years she could not remember the details of the tie's pattern, but confirmed the rest of the story. In a second case, a woman who could not possibly have seen, described her ex-husband and then-lover standing in the hallway as the hospital staff frantically wheeled her down the hall and tried to get into the elevator. She claimed that the gurney ran into the elevator doors--neither of the two men could confirm this crucial point, but did describe frantic activity. These kinds of frustrations in the research were typical. In at least one of the cases, there is a clear corroboration--a blind woman, while out of her body, viewed the kitchen dishes piled up unwashed. Her husband, embarrassed, admitted that was the case. Another blind woman, while out of her body, went to a friend's home and saw her throwing up after having drunk to much, and described her holding her long hair aside with her left hand. The friend confirmed the details. A much larger sample size is needed. But there is, I would say, just barely enough evidence here to indicate to any reasonable person that the NDE is a real phenomenon rather than being a brain-based hallucination. And that means that the materialistic paradigm is indeed cracking. This may be a "hairline fracture", but a hairline fracture in a huge dam is highly significant.

• An article in Newsweek on reincarnation which is mostly notable because it's in Newsweek. People who are skeptical and approaching the subject superficially seem only able to be aware of what confirms their perspective. Without dismantling the entire article, I'll point out two obvious errors in skewed reporting, one of commission and one of omission. First, Kaballah is not a "new-age movement". It is an ancient tradition being passed down through generations, a result of the hard-won insights of brilliant, deeply intuitive men of the past. It has been newly-discovered and has become popular as a result of the current hunger for deeper knowledge, because of the spiritual poverty of our current materialistic culture. Secondly, Carol Bowman is briefly mentioned as a therapist. Actually, she has become a therapist relatively recently. For years before, she was, and remains, an author and researcher, extending the findings of Dr. Ian Stevenson and colleagues into the Western world, popularizing them, and acting as an advocate for parents and children who remember past lives. She has presented a number of stunning proof cases, one of which you can find (on James Leininger) in the Articles page of this website. For the writer not to mention these things was tantamount to artificially weakening the case for reincarnation.

• About an upcoming movie based on the book "The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ". Among other themes, it suggests that Jesus traveled to India during the "lost years," and that reincarnation is true. See also the following websites: One Two Three Four Five.

• I was recently interviewed on the Australian radio show "Radio Out There" by host Barry Eaton. I discussed with him how my emphasis has shifted somewhat and how I view some of the successes and failures of the project, as well as deeper "meta" issues surrounding reincarnation education (program #144).

• A report on the recent conference on afterlife studies in San Francisco sponsored by the Forever Family Foundation.

• "Janne, Beyond Life," a free downloadable book by the parents of a young lady who died after being struck by a car, and then contacted them from the other side. I've read it, and if you've lost a child (I have), read this book. If you haven't lost a child, read this book.

• A video interview with guitarist Eric Johnson. He is known, especially among guitarists, as an exceptionally talented and accomplished musician, but his music is also deeply spiritual and his compositions are magnificent. I have speculated that he could be a reincarnation of Handel, but really-speaking that's just intuitive guesswork. How I can suggest such a thing in a website that purports to be rigorous, is simply this--one is always free to speculate, so long as one says one is speculating. If a scientist didn't speculate he'd never discover anything. But whether my hunch is right or not, this music is something you don't want to miss, and if you get a chance to see him on tour, I highly recommend you don't miss him. You will, by the way, have to watch the last video segment in the series before Eric says anything about the "vibes" behind his work, and even then he just touches on it casually. If, however, you have studied spirituality and you pay close attention to some of the lyrics in his latest album, "Bloom," and you are familiar with the habit of the Sufi poets who wrote on two levels about human love and Divine love at the same time, you will see something quite different. (I guess it's okay to blow his cover, since how many people read this page, anyway?) I believe he's working on an album these days, but here is his tour dates page. Don't miss him in concert if you have the chance, or you'll be kicking yourself in your next life.

• Retired attorney Victor Zammit, an Australian, who is bent on showing that the evidence for the afterlife is plenty strong enough to meet the legal standard of proof, has been kicking it into high gear with a series of video presentations. Here is one entitled "The Afterlife on Trial."

• A report of a rigorous scientific study on mediumship conducted at the University Arizona (link courtesy of Victor Zammit).

• Yet another link courtesy of Mr. Zammit. This paper is entitled "Pathological Disbelief" by Brian D. Josephson of Cambridge University (pdf file). See also my Update of 8/2/06, which, based on my website stats, seems to be getting quite a few direct hits lately on its own.

• A new CD released by singer Lori Cullen, on which Canadian composer Chris Dedrick created the brass arrangements. See also this second article. Excerpts from Dedrick's work with the Free Design open some of the pages on this website, and he also composed the excerpt that opens the home page. See my comments linked from the credit at the bottom of that page, or click here.

• Some more of my creative stuff...this is video of the beach at sunset. It occurred to me that waves on the beach are very much like incarnations. Water has long been archetypally associated with spirit. So as the wave approaches solid land, it begins to take a smooth, beautiful shape. Then it builds, becoming tall and majestic, and finally crests, spilling out over the sand, becoming thin and yet smooth as at the beginning, as it finally recedes back into the ocean from whence it came. Because the same archetypes are manifesting, a human incarnation behaves similarly as it takes form when spirit impacts gross matter. Note that this is a cyclical process (hence, reincarnation). I haven't read this analogy anywhere (that I remember), so I can't vouch for its authenticity, it just came to me as I was thinking about posting these videos. (I think my photographic ability stems from lifetimes involved in nature mysticism in the ancient Celtic, Japanese and Native American cultures, respectively. See the link to my photography on the home page. I'm about to update it with some more recent work.) For the heck of it, here is the same scene in fast motion, and in slow motion.

• If you ever wonder why there is so much suffering in the world, it's actually very simple. This story illustrates it clearly.

• Now, is this story coincidence? Okay, news reporting is such that the one time in several million that it happens, it would come to our attention in the press. Still, is this beyond any reasonable calculation of chance? It brings up the issue of whether there are any coincidences, or whether it is all karmic. According to my understanding, and the reincarnationist perspective, it's the latter.

• A man is found to have had a very small amount of functioning brain. (Here is another story where a woman is found to have only half a brain.) I suspect this is one of those phenomena which clearly indicates that the brain is a pass-through mechanism rather than the origin of consciousness, thought or memory. However, the idea that these things originate with the brain is so deeply engrained in our culture, that we must resort to very weak explanations within our world view to explain it. Could be wrong, of course--but if we need so little of the brain to function, it doesn't make sense that different parts of the brain, as mapped, could be responsible for all these different functions. I would theorize that to the extent, and only to the extent, that consciousness remains identified with the brain, does it mirror the brain's physical condition. This identification is a natural and normal state until one reaches an advanced stage of spiritual development, and it is deeply-engrained because it has been solidified throughout millions of incarnations. In abnormal cases such as this one, however, it is revealed to be a kind of symbiotic relationship, rather than a causal relationship.

• A child in India may be the reincarnation of Indian astronaut Kalpana Chawla, who died in the space shuttle Columbia. See also this second article with a photo.

• A cynical article from India on reincarnation, citing a couple of recent cases in the popular press (one of which is linked to, above). Note that 66% of the readers who answered the poll disagree. There are three serious errors in the logic of the presentation. First, the statement that there is "no scientific basis" is simply false. Such a statement is often cited by skeptics as though it is true by mutual agreement--if they repeat it often enough amongst themselves, they can believe in it (sounds like some other belief systems, doesn't it?). Secondly, the author indulges in the logical error of "straw man", which is, purposely citing weak examples and inferring that they represent all cases. Another logical error is to group reincarnation in with several other unrelated topics, damning by association. Lastly, if you look at the people posting responses, the "pro" responders sound more intelligent, generally, than the "con" responders. If the premise of the article were true, that reincarnation is a superstition, it should be the reverse--the "con" responders should generally sound more intelligent.

• A review of a Christian cautionary book entitled The Deceived. The error lies in blanket condemnation, which is based on black-and-white, dogmatic thinking. However, the author is not entirely incorrect, inasmuch as there is plenty of room for imagination, deception and misuse of the concept of reincarnation. Quite a few cases have come across my desk over the years that I've had a public presence, where people have gotten into trouble with a misapplication of reincarnation principles. For example, people can become obsessed with their past life; they can enter into and justify extra-marital affairs based on the concept; they can have persistent, lingering negative feelings or impressions from a past life, when that door is opened via hypnosis. They can also get a "big head" about who they mistakenly believe they were in a past life; they can make an inappropriate career move based on something they mistakenly believe they did in a past life. The list goes on. It is absolutely necessary, in my opinion, for the truth about reincarnation to come out; but it is not something to take lightly. In contrast to our Christian, above, this writer takes the opposite position. He views exploration of past lives as a completely harmless panacea for all ills. Some of what he says I know to be misleading. For example, any beginning student of the afterlife knows that there are unpleasant realms and entities in the astral world, and that one must know how to protect oneself and not tinker with things one doesn't understand. These two extreme views--that reincarnation exploration is entirely false and dangerous, or that it is entirely harmless and beneficial--are both erroneous. (For the record, in this website I am concerned about a correct understanding of reincarnation, rather than exploration of past lives; I recommend exploration, per se, only in a therapeutic context with a well-qualified practitioner.)

• The famous Reader's Digest study in which realistic-looking wallets with $50 in them were strategically placed where they could be found. This study has received far less attention than it deserves. If it suggests, as I believe it does, that a huge percentage of people will look after "number one" when they believe no-one is looking, this explains a great deal about society and its struggles. If this phenomenon cuts across all organizations and institutions, suddenly a number of enigmas become much clearer. It explains, for one thing, why reincarnation has been proven but mainstream academia continues to ignore it--i.e., experts do not want to admit they have been wrong, and that everything they have ever published has been wrong, and thus lose their status and position. Therefore this same percentage of academicians and scientists, who by the very nature of their work are supposed to be torchbearers in the quest for truth, are prepared to lie. By the way, be careful about mentioning this study to your friends and acquaintences. Some of them will be outraged--but some of them may surprise you by not being particularly impressed.

• An honest beggar returns jewels he found in a dust bin. Just as the manifestation of a high degree of talent is an indication of reincarnation, so a manifestation of a high degree of honesty or strength of virtue of some kind is an indication that this strength was built up in previous lives. The beggar himself credits his parents--but lots of children have been taught the principles of honesty, but would not be able to adhere to them under such extreme circumstances. Something made him receptive to this teaching, and made him take it to heart. That something was prior experience, resolve, and decisions made and acted upon in past lives. As to the question that arises, of why an honest man should be a beggar, this goes into karma and the deeper laws of spirituality. If, as Swami Vivekananda said, life is a "moral gymnasium," it may be that this man was ready for some "heavier weights." That does not mean he may not have caused his condition by past-life actions--these things all work together in a process toward eventual Enlightenment. See also this similar story about an honest taxi driver.

• A new website dedicated to media about Meher Baba, including photographs, video, music and audio books. The video includes a portion of a documentary by Tim Thelen which includes teachings on reincarnation, and there is also a newsreel from 1932; the audio books are narrated by Don Stevens, who originally edited them for Meher Baba (I audio-edited these narrations and proofread them very carefully, so they are accurate). These books are also available in printed form online (see below). This website is still having the final touches put on it, but I'm jumping the gun a bit because I want people to see it. No doubt there will be more material added as time goes on.

• Several of Meher Baba's written works have recently been published online. "God Speaks," which lays out the entire circular theme of creation, evolution and the involution of consciousness, also explains how integral reincarnation is to this process, and thus ties it in with its deeper meaning. "Discourses" includes several chapters on "Reincarnation and Karma." "Listen, Humanity" contains a jewel of a discourse opening Part II called "Death and Immortality" which, in my opinion, is the single finest source on the subject of death.

• I'll keep all of the Meher Baba announcements in one place here, since there have been several new developments lately. This is a full-length online film about Meher Baba, done this time by an Eastern filmmaker. The film ignores Western conventions of fast cuts, sound bites and continual special effects, and is not as technically perfect in all spots as the high-budget productions we are accustomed to viewing in the West. But it is powerful and sincere and creatively done, and it will give you a very good idea of who Meher Baba was and why his followers (including myself) are drawn to him. (One can argue pro and con as to whether I am using this website to proscelytize. My view is that if I sincerely believe that Meher Baba's writings are one of the best, if not the best, source of information on the topic of this website, then I feel I should not be constrained in presenting them. It's my impression that people recognize Meher Baba spiritually when he allows them to, anyway. So if that's true there is no real possibility of convincing anyone--I just put it out there, in the same spirit that I keep announcing Eric Johnson's concert dates, in case anyone might take me seriously.)

• A new mystery novel incorporating reincarnation concepts.

• A study reported in Scientific American which reports that past-life regression subjects were more likely to commit a "source monitoring error" in remembering. Dr. Jim Tucker, successor to Dr. Ian Stevenson, responds suggesting that it was a poorly-designed study, because of potential selection process issues inherent in those who seek out past-life therapy and are hypnotizable. (See Dr. Tucker's complete comments as given to the reporter.) I have two comments of my own on this one. First of all, there is, in my opinion, a lot of imagination going on in past-life therapy taken as a whole. I videotaped four hypnotic past-life sessions for my documentary, "In Another Life," and I was not convinced that any of them were genuine instances of past-life memory; for that matter, in three of the four, I was not convinced that the subject went under hypnosis at all. So such a study should only include, in my opinion, people like Bruce Kelly, Capt. Robert Snow and Angela Grubbs (a corporate executive, the head of homocide investigation for the City of Indianapolis, and an attorney, respectively), whose past-life memories were historically verified. That immediately cuts out the issue of whether the subjects were having real memories or not, anyway. There are enough of these cases that that issue is a moot point. If Scientific American thinks it is impacting the issue of whether the memories can sometimes be real via this study, then they are committing a gross intellectual error in not taking into account and respecting the obvious validity of the historically verified cases. Not an error, actually, it goes further, to the use of psychological denial on their part. My second thought is that mainstream science must be running scared if they include a study about this phenomenon in Scientific American at all, photo of Napoleon notwithstanding.

• If you don't think this society is getting ever-closer to ancient Rome and its Collesium, take a look at this article about new lows in reality TV...

• A story about the reincarnation of a Tibetan spiritual master.

• A description of a past-life therapy session in which the past-life cause of a mysterious allergic reaction to jewelry is uncovered, and the "allergy" is cured.

• Actress Cameron Diaz's thoughts on reincarnation. The article title seems wholly inappropriate, suggesting that the editor who titled it completely missed the point that this soul has had the experience of fame and would prefer to pass on it next time.

• Another case in which a child is recognized as a reincarnation of a former Tibetan master and taken from his parents. I'm going to stick my neck out to suggest that the purpose of reincarnation is to provide varied experience; and one of the primary bases of Buddhism is non-attachment. So it may go contrary to both the underlying purpose of reincarnation, and Buddha's teachings, to try to make a soul repeat his former occupation, even if that occupation is that of a spiritual teacher with a high position in an organized religion. In short, this may sometimes be a misuse of reincarnation understanding. It could be, for example, that being an accountant in New York City would further this soul's spiritual growth more than repeating the life as a Tibetan spiritual teacher.

• The website for PBS's Antiques Road Show. Sometimes you have those little insights, and it just occurred to me that, from the point of view of consciousness, each one of us is a walking "Antiques Road Show". We carry around with us so many lives from the past, which are part of our daily life but which we hardly notice or appreciate. And then buried beneath those is what Jesus called the "Pearl of great price," the real Self, so valuable that sacrificing all those lives would be no sacrifice at all; but we're unaware of it.

• A man with a food phobia can eat only cheese. This is the type of case that might lend itself very nicely to past-life therapy. Someday the fact that we stood by scratching our heads and letting such people suffer needlessly, because of prejudice against reincarnation, will seem primitive and inexcusable.

• A new book with a reincarnation theme entitled "The Road Back to Heaven" by Linda Lewis.

• Billy Graham answers yet a third question on reincarnation in his column. For my comments on the first two columns, see the Articles page of this website. This column's response, based on simplified Christian dogma, is, from my perspective, such a mixture of truth and falsehood that it would take yet another lengthy article to try to separate them. One would have to deconstruct it sentence by sentence. I'll just start it here for purposes of illustration. The Incarnation of the Avatar--who repeatedly incarnates at certain intervals through history, one of those incarnations being Jesus the Christ (Christhood being a state of spiritual authority and consciousness), is not the same as the reincarnation of ordinary individuals. One does not preclude the other as Rev. Graham suggests--this is an apples-and-oranges comparison. The Word is the primal vibration from which and by which God created everything. The Christ can be described as an embodiment of that primal vibration, the first manifested thing down from God the Absolute (also called the "Son" of God). The word Son in this case is figurative language. It means that Jesus of Nazareth held the spiritual office and consciousness of the Christhood, which is, that position just first-removed from the Godhead Itself (and at the same time not separate from It), that he was the Christ and the Incarnation of God for that era of history. (This also means that he was, in fact, the Messiah, and thus the Jews are really wrong about this--I might as well offend them too, while I'm at it.) The esoteric understanding has survived, passed down by various secret societies, but some of that message appears (to me) to be somewhat garbled after 2,000 years. One can get a clean rendition of it from the teachings of the Christ of this age, Meher Baba, or from the teachings of God-Realized beings like Sri Ramakrishna and his disciples. One can get a garbled version of it from other sources (i.e., garbled in different ways than Christianity has garbled it). There's another way to look at this. Reincarnation has been proven to exist to a pretty high standard. So logically, you are left with only a few choices. Either Jesus was wrong; or Paul was wrong and didn't accurately reflect Jesus' teachings; or fundamentalist interpretation (which as near as I can tell is based as much or more on Paul as it is on Jesus) is wrong. My take on this is that, as regards reincarnation, Jesus was right (see the quote on the home page), but his message, especially that given for the masses, has been distorted; Paul, assuming his letters have been accurately preserved and translated, was wrong; and fundamentalist interpretation is likewise wrong. But the bottom line is that arguing that Christians "reject" something that has been shown to be factual is another way of admitting that they are going into denial. Facts don't care if you reject them.

• A British woman from Bath begins "babbling in French for weeks," and it is attributed to a rare brain disorder which can be brought on by stress. Having found a shorter article, I had thought this could be a case of "xenoglossy" brought on by the emergence of past-life memories, perhaps triggered by changes in the brain. However, when I passed the article on to Dr. Jim Tucker, he sent me this one, which states that the woman lived in France. So there is no proof of reincarnation here. From my perspective I would continue to suspect past-life French influence, because that's the most likely source for an obsession with any locale or culture. Apparently, when the brain or brain function is altered, it is more likely that past-life memories will bleed through. This is true in hypnosis, LSD intoxication, and apparently in certain types of brain illnesses. I don't believe it's logical that a brain disease could act, as the sole agent, in so specific a manner as to cause a person to adopt the particular delusion that they are from another country. But for proof of xenoglossy, one will have to go to the literature. A few unproven examples are also included among the personal accounts on this website.

• The skeptical viewpoint of the ongoing debate on Darwinian evolution vs. intelligent design. Comments

• This fascinating article suggests to me what can happen when my work is successful--when I, and others attempting the same kind of work, manage to convince an atheistic skeptic of reincarnation. Note that he pricks the balloon of irrational fundamentalist beliefs--as I do--and takes the work of Dr. Ian Stevenson seriously--as I do. But he also advocates torture, apparently, suggesting that it works and it is a small price compared with the deaths of large numbers of people in war. Well, justifying things like this is a very tricky business. I think that morality is in the smallest act as well as in the biggest. It is a "holographic" model of morality--the whole is contained in each of the parts. If each part of your life is moral, then your life will be moral. How you treat a store clerk on Friday is as important, in this sense, as how you administer your corporation. Besides, if one believes in reincarnation, one then very quickly encounters the idea of karma. I am not sure I'd want the karma of torturing someone to come back around, which it will if my motives are not 100% pure. (Fooling yourself with regard to your motives does not impress karmic law.) Remember when we talk about reincarnation, we are talking about something that has now been scientifically proven to exist. If the sages were right about reincarnation, it follows they were probably right about karma also.

• A new book entitled Renaissance II which explores the history of early Christianity and reincarnation. (See also the Links section of this website for more information on this subject.)

• A little reincarnation humor...the "PPPPPhd." We reincarnationists can take a little ribbing...but the reality is, whenever a student shows natural ability, this didn't come out of thin air, and it's not (solely) due to "genes" (modern society's equivalent to "the gods")--it's due to abilities brought forward from past lives.

• Exiled Chinese poet Huang Xiang includes frequent references to reincarnation in his oceanic poetry.

• Daredevil stuntman Evel Knievel, looking back on his life and thinking about ultimate matters, "wishes there were such a thing as reincarnation." (No comment)

• A magnificent essay in Jason Stern's "Esteemed Reader" column for Chronogram.com exploring the deeper issues around being a "revolutionary." (see also the page on this website about compassion and karma)

• Rock guitarist, Pete Townshend of The Who, believes he may have been a Sufi mystic in a past life. The reporting is a little bit askew in this article, inasmuch as Townshend did not physically meet Meher Baba, but he continues to be a follower (see the MEFA website, which includes a preview of his film about Meher Baba, "O Parvardigar").

• Deepak Chopra questions the materialistic interpretation of genetics and gets blasted by the majority of readers leaving comments.
  

• A Canadian television series in which people were hypnotically regressed, and then the memories were investigated. Here's a review lacking the usual cynical tone. Are we finally getting through to people? Keep in mind that a handful of these hypnotic regression cases have been solidly proven, in my opinion, at least to a legal standard, i.e. "beyond a reasonable doubt." See the "submarine man" case, Capt. Robert Snow's case, or the work of psychologist Peter Ramster in the Articles page, Cases page, and Recommended Books page of this website.

• A pro-and-con article about reincarnation. Note in particular the psychologist who states, "The basic problem is that there is no good evidence that anyone has led past lives." This is a bare-faced lie. Directly below this item is one such case with very good evidence, and even this isn't the strongest we know of. The question then revolves around one's operational definition of "good evidence." Capt. Robert Snow, head of homocide investigation for the City of Indianapolis, wrote in his book, "Looking for Carroll Beckwith," that if his case was a murder case, the prosecutor would be assured of a conviction. This is still not the best evidence, which I would say is reserved for the work of Dr. Ian Stevenson and colleagues. This statement by skeptics, that there is "no good evidence," is an example of the technique of sophistry wherein you lead with a lie, and then proceed to build what seems to be a logical case, based on that lie. It's sort of like those prescription drug ads on TV. Now that they're legally required to cite all the horrible side-effects that could occur, it spoils their sales pitch, doesn't it! ("May cause your teeth to fall out, severe vomiting, stomach distension and headache. Discontinue immediately if you wake up with a purple, scaly rash covering your face. In a small percentage of cases, fingers or toes have fallen off. If you are a human being between the ages of 25 and 80, consult your doctor before using this product...") Similarly, if skeptics had to admit just how strong the evidence is for reincarnation, their arguments would sound pretty unconvincing. While such skeptics pretend to hold the high ground of logical objectivity, a statement such as "there is no good evidence" is not logical and it is not objective. You will find quite a few strong proof cases both within this website and linked outside the site.

• James Leininger's case was recently re-broadcast on Good Morning America (it was originally shown on Prime Time). You can watch a segment of the program at this link, or read an article about the case. Prompted by the broadcast, a fundamentalist Christian sent me an e-mail, thinking he was writing to Dr. James Tucker. It was the same official Christian dogma we all know quite well, explaining past-life memories away as familiar spirits. The irony is that Dr. Tucker considers possession as a possibility, but must logically rule it out in most cases. In a very few of these cases, possession seems the more likely explanation. I didn't attempt to reason with the writer myself. Dogma is self-contained, disconnected with reality and impenetrable. It has a certain internal consistency, and this internal consistency gives it the appearance of being logical, but you can't have a fruitful discussion with someone who has fallen under its sway. Below an on-line article citing this case, where there is room for reader comments, one reader left the following message: "I think the parents 'helped' this boy remember stuff to get attention. Sorry...but I'm far too skeptical of everything." This interpretation isn't logically possible if you study the case point-by-point, but at least the commenter acknowledges the real problem. Perhaps that bit of self-honesty will lead to eventual acceptance of reincarnation when he or she is ready for it.

• An interview with Dr. Jim Tucker, successor to Dr. Ian Stevenson at the University of Virginia, who investigates reincarnation cases.

• A woman feels she has found the reincarnation of her cat.
  

• A mother describes her son's reincarnation case.

• Catholic theologians consider getting rid of the concept of "limbo." This is the mess that resulted from the political intrigue that made Origen's teachings about the pre-existence of the soul anathema in 553 AD, at the urging of then-emperor Justinian, against the protests of then-pope Vigilus, resulting in reincarnation being banned as a heresy. I am having trouble commenting on this without being disparaging. These people have used the beauty of Jesus's teachings to convince grieving parents for hundreds of years that their unbaptized babies are hanging for eternity in some blah existence, and now a group of theologians are going to change the policy--and presto-chango, all the babies from now on (and all the babies of hundreds of years in the past, if the policy is made retroactive, I suppose) will graduate into heaven. Is this fair? Do the theologians imagine they have this kind of power? Isn't anybody questioning this nonsense? Would a loving, all-powerful God allow these theologians to decide such a thing--not only for Catholics, but for everybody else? Or, if the Catholic church made a mistake and they are admitting it, what happened to the dogma that the Catholic church is infallible? If it is infallible, could it have been wrong about reincarnation? Wouldn't anybody like to know about what really happens? Does anybody doubt the kind of suffering that clinging to mistaken dogma can cause? So the result is that people lose yet more respect for the teachings of Jesus, associating this stuff with him, when he actually taught with an understanding of reincarnation.

• A parapsychologist reports a study verifying that the feeling of knowing when a person one is close to is about to call on the phone, is a real phenomenon. I'm linking to it here as much to show the reaction of other scientists as to show yet another indication that the mind can operate independently of known physical laws. The sociology of scientists going into denial is as fascinating to me as the paranormal itself. It's a paradox--science, the pursuit of truth, being put in the service of the ego to suppress truth, because results would undermine its cherished assumptions (and its individual members' professional careers).

• A new age interpretation of reincarnation, citing the popular concept of "parallel lives." This idea draws on the teaching that everything is happening in the Eternal Present, something taught by some of the genuine spiritual masters (as listed on the Links page). However, while it is correct in a sense, I think it is off in the sense that you, as a 16th century merchant, are obviously not currently alive in some other dimension. That's why they call it the past, you know? Because while you can relive the impressions of that life, you can't go back in time and change it (all the time-travel movies we've watched notwithstanding). So this teaching must mean something else. The problem is that in the state beyond time, where everything is in the Eternal Present, nothing is happening. It is a state beyond "things happening." It is also a state beyond "things," period. Further, there are not separate individuals in that state. Therefore, this concept attempts to intellectually imagine a state beyond time, but it conveniently neglects to move beyond a state of individual people. What this means--and you can't intellectually grasp the whole truth, but I think this is closer to the truth--is that each of our lives on the planet is, right now, one of the parallel lives. Somewhere, there is someone right now being the merchant. Right now, there is someone being the rich man, and the poor man, and so-on. The roles keep trading off, but all the roles are going on all the time, like a huge game of musical chairs (represented in Hinduism, I believe by the Dance of Shiva). Each of these is "Us." Even on this plane of existence it is all happening right now, but we experience it in a fragmented way--fragmented into linear time, and also fragmented into separate, individual selves. The master who has reached the highest state of consciousness, however, experiences the true Self simultaneously in all these supposedly individual selves (note it is Shiva's dance, not my dance). So you, the reader, are one of Our "parallel lives," and so-on. This is still not the whole truth of the matter, but I think the idea of parallel lives is somewhat misleading and I want to put in my two cents to question it, while so many reincarnationists are accepting it as reincarnation dogma. I get a sense that it's potentially troublesome for the future. Certainly, it makes the general public shy away from reincarnation as nonsense, just as the idea of incarnating backwards into animal bodies does, because intuitively it just doesn't make sense. We all know people can't go back to being animals; and we all know that the past isn't alive and can't be changed. So, whatever other problems these kinds of teachings may lead to in the future, they have the immediate effect of decreasing the overall credibility of reincarnation, as a concept, in the general population. Further comments

• An Indian article [POP-UP WARNING ON THIS LINK] about one of Dr. Walter Semkiw's reincarnation cases, written in a skeptical tone. My reaction to Dr. Semkiw's work is mixed. I like and admire him personally, and appreciate that he gave me 15 minutes to speak at one of his presentations (thanks in part to my friend Jeff Keene also being on the bill). I think he's sincere, and I think his major premise, that it is possible to identify famous people in recent history who have reincarnated and who often show similar personal traits and facial features, is correct. His methods concern me because he has the authority of being a medical doctor and he claims that they are scientific, but in my opinion they fall short of a scientific standard. For that matter, most of the time they fall short of even the legal standard of proof, i.e. "beyond a reasonable doubt." Still, some portion of the cases are genuine, in my opinion. More troubling is his reliance on one medium to confirm his findings. I had the opportunity to see that medium in action at the presentation where I spoke, and I thought he was acting. He supposedly channeled two spirit entities, but used the same idiosyncratic mannerism in both personalities, which was a strong indication of fraud in my opinion. Using mediums is not necessarily a bad idea--but one would need to use several of them under controlled conditions, and then compare their responses. They would have to be given less information in advance. You can't just approach one medium, present a proposed match, get their official stamp of approval on it, and call that science. So the good news is that Dr. Semkiw is creating public awareness of reincarnation case comparison. The bad news is that he is inadvertently tempting the public to ridicule it even further, especially if it is ever shown publicly that, as I suspect, the one medium he relies on (made famous by his association with actress Shirley Maclaine) is fraudulent. How will the public ever get past a knee-jerk, black-or-white reaction to reincarnation? Maybe this is part of the protective function of the universe. People who aren't ready for reincarnation come across pseudo-science and reject the whole idea out-of-hand. People who are ready for reincarnation encounter pseudo-science and say to themselves, "That's a little fishy but something about it is intriguing--I wonder what else there is being done in that field?" And then they look into it a little more and find Dr. Jim Tucker or Carol Bowman. Meanwhile, the people who weren't ready for it are left (safely) ridiculing Dr. Semkiw's work, when there are actually some genuine matches and some valid ideas in it. Famous person cases are comparatively easy to find, so Semkiw can find quite a few of them, and out of such a large number, patterns and principles emerge. His observation that one can compare facial architecture, personality traits, abilities, and life-course are, in my opinion, correct, and it's actually a significant contribution. It's not completely invalid science, it's just extremely sloppy science (I would encourage him to tighten it up by combining Dr. Gary Schwartz's methods of working with several proven mediums under controlled conditions, plus Dr. Ian Stevenson's methods of insisting on documented and verified past-life memories). It's going to take a balanced approach to come to grips with it adequately, but very few people are willing to approach it in this way so far.

• A brief essay on the Buddhist perspective on reincarnation. Comments.

• A rather dramatic movie made for LMN.tv, entitled "Past Tense." In a way it's a shame that past-life therapy has to be overly-dramatized and sensationalized in order to break into the popular consciousness, but I suppose it's a start. The trailer seems to suggest that, like a ghost who hangs around to right some wrong, the girl had to reincarnate to set things right, which is, well, true in a way, but since everybody reincarnates to get things right, it's a bit misleading. I'm curious as to whether it has a trick ending like "Birth" which negates the reality of the reincarnation premise. Note also the mini-documentary on past-life regression on the same page (as of 8/23/06).

• An article on rebirthing. An interviewee in "In Another Life" describes a past-life memory experience which occurred during a rebirthing session, which apparently is not unusual. Dr. Roger Woolger explains that past-life traumas create a knot of unresolved emotions which in turn creates a pattern that can manifest in the birth experience, in childhood experiences, and in adulthood as phobias and other psychological problems. In short, these are all part of a whole and are not mutually exclusive. Note the sad report of misuse of rebirthing techniques, and the legal overreaction. The same types of issues may surface in past-life therapy, and the same kind of overreaction may prevail for awhile.

• Oriundi, Anthoni Quinn's last film, about reincarnation. Similar to "Birth," "Oriundi" builds up a conviction that a lost love has returned through reincarnation, only to undo that conviction with a trick ending. I have watched a screening copy of the film (my distributor lent it to me), and I thought it was extremely well shot, directed and acted, despite my copy being very badly reproduced. The film appears to be languishing in no-man's land--a film set in Brazil, in Italian, with English subtitles about reincarnation, and the producers can't even send out a copy that doesn't freeze throughout playback, or bother to write back to the distributor who has an interest in it. A thousand obstacles appear in any effort to bring ideas about reincarnation to the public, apparently.

• A discussion of the official Catholic refutation of reincarnation. The problem with this is that it is argument after-the-fact. Reincarnation has been shown by various methods to be a phenomenon, not simply a belief (see the quote by Jerome Ellison toward the bottom of the home page of this website). It's a done deal, and the more the Church argues against it, the more it divorces itself from reality. I can't sort through all of this tangled skein of logic, but I can point out that most reincarnationists, now and presumably in the early days of the Church, did not accept "transmigration," or the incarnating of human souls backwards into animal forms. So, much of what is presented in this article as a refutation of reincarnation by these early Church leaders, was actually a refutation of transmigration. This distinction is surely known by Catholic scholars, which makes me wonder if using these quotes in this manner constitutes intentional sophistry. (Note that quotes I have read by Pythagorus support transmigration, though I do not recall ever having seen this idea taught by Plato.) I will also point out that the early Church father Origen has been quoted both ways, for and against reincarnation. Not to present both quotes, while knowing they exist, is a form of intentional sophistry itself. (If opposing views expressed by the same man are historically genuine, there are still a number of possible explanations, including that he changed his mind at some point. One possible explanation for one of the "pro" quotes is that he was citing the pro position by way of setting it forth, not advocating it, and a fair discussion should quote it in full context and let the reader decide. Comments) Meanwhile, the Church declared his views on the pre-existence of the soul (a pre-requisite for reincarnation) as being "anathema"; so now they are having their cake and eating it too, by continuing to maintain that Origen's teachings about the pre-existence of the soul are "anathema," but citing him against reincarnation, while conveniently ignoring that he also appears to have spoken for it. As for the quote from Hebrews, I personally believe that Paul was a troublemaker masquerading as a Christian leader, and that his words have erroneously been encorporated into the Bible as scripture, causing no end of confusion in Christianity to this very day. See my thoughts about this on the Articles page, in my response to Billy Graham's newspaper column, on the second page linked from the bottom of the first page. Have you ever noticed that sermons get boring when Paul is quoted, and they get spiritually juicy again when Jesus is quoted? And how attending Church, on an energy level, is like a continual see-saw battle between these two? Paul's teachings leach off the power of Christianity, as I believe he consciously intended them to.

• A more general treatise released by the Catholic Church regarding the "New Age Movement." My comments.

• A woman in a supposedly vegetative state is found to be consciously aware. This is one of the tragedies of materialistic medicine, and our modern culture's ignorance of consciousness studies, that when people are outwardly comatose they are assumed to be unconscious. I have a host of things to say about this, but I'll list them briefly. When I was a volunteer at a nursing home, in my college days, I served juice to patients. One of them was a young man with brain stem injury from a car accident. He was in an adult "high chair," and did nothing but moan and move around aimlessly. I created a series of little cardboard squares with letters on them (based on the alphabet board that my spiritual master, Meher Baba, who I had only been following for a year at that point, used during a period of his life). I put the letters on the tray in front of him, and asked him the question, "Are you aware of what's going on inside, but you just can't communicate it? If so, use the letters to spell out words." And that's just what he proceeded to do, with the heel of one hand. When the caretakers saw that, they whisked him away to special therapy, and the last time I saw him, he was walking with a walker in the lobby, and he thanked me. Now, there is a man who has learned, from his association with Native American shamans, how to enter a trance state wherein he can communicate with comatose patients. He has seen objective evidence--as when picturing running through a field, and the comatose person (who has shown no movement whatsoever) starts moving their feet. Here's the link. Do you think anyone in the medical establishment takes this seriously? Can you see how our fundamental materialistic assumptions are causing our collective suffering in this society, while we imagine we are so culturally advanced? This is just one small area of relevance. I am doing my best with this "News, Announcements and Comments" page to point out that relevance in an entertaining way... Look elsewhere on this page for the website about brains (do a page search on the word "brain"). Once I videotaped a completely paralyzed man in the hospital for a legal case. His eyes were open but he was assumed by the doctors to be comatose. I had a very, very deep spiritual experience while inwardly praying for him, and just at that moment, tears began to roll down his eyes. One of his relatives decided he was crying at that moment because she was near, but I'm guessing otherwise. How can science address these things? But, how can it afford to ignore them? Reincarnation studies form a bridge between materialistic science and the realm of the spirit.

• Another "small world" story. This kind of interpersonal synchronicity is written off as coincidence and selective reporting by skeptics, but it is simply one facet of how karma operates. If people have strong karmic connections, they will find each other somehow. It is said that it is not possible to become close to someone if you haven't had past-life connections; and it may be impossible to even meet someone if there hasn't been at least some past-life contact. This becomes understandable in light of the very high number of incarnations, much higher than is sometimes cited in new-age literature. If we have lived literally hundreds of thousands of lives, as my Eastern sources say, then it is possible for everyone we meet and have any significant dealings with in a given lifetime to have been a past-life contact, to one degree or another.

• The law of karma operates through, and occasionally supercedes, the physical law of cause and effect. On rare occasions, where they conflict, a so-called miracle occurs, as when this toddler survived a 50-foot fall unhurt. And, here is yet another news story of a grown man surviving a 50-foot fall, onto concrete no less. Wait, here's a man who accidentally drove his car off a 100-foot cliff and is seen posing next to it with the cliff behind. But we can top that one--this fellow survived driving his car off a 700-foot cliff (don't try this at home, air bags or no air bags)! No, wait, we can still top this one--how about 15,000 feet? (I'm sorry--a blackberry bush? Somebody who knows physics, do the calculations for me here and while you're at it, come up with some odds. If you e-mail me I'll post them.) I might as well keep adding these as they come up--here's a parachutist who survived a 2,000 fall with no injuries at all. Lest it be thought that I am trying to explain away Grace on the basis of karma, Grace can supercede both the physical law of cause and effect, and the law of karma. But I personally think that many instances thought to be miracles and evidence of God's direct intervention, are a result of the operation of karmic law. (If you want to get philosophical, you can say that God's Will operates through all these layers of laws.) Karma is a very complicated subject; it is best for us ordinary mortals to always admit we are guessing, no matter how many years we have studied it. Based on my 30+ years study, I could generate hypotheses about what might have been happening in this case, but I wouldn't dare assert that I really know. I have observed that drunks and babies occasionally appear to emerge unscathed from things that should have killed them, leading me to wonder if the state of consciousness doesn't affect the outcome. Since karma ("fate") is intimately connected with mental impressions stored in the mental body, and these impressions operate through the subconscious, then there should logically be a tie-in between the subconscious mind and fate. This is also presumably how synchronicity works, as well as the various positive thinking courses. But monkeying with these principles for selfish gain may be snarling up one's karma for future lives.

• A five-year-old who is physiologically male, but since she could talk has said she feels she is a girl. Given all of the data we have about reincarnation and past-life memory, this is almost certainly a past-life recall issue, the etiology of which modern materialistic science is completely ignoring.

• Although discussing them is discouraged even in grief support groups, people are beginning to acknowledge that at least some signs from people who have passed on may be actual phenomena and not just coincidence. Note the Afterlife Discussion Groups and Sign Registry, and the Forever Family Foundation radio program. (Note that the Sign Registry requires a fee to participate.)

• Physicists consider a multi-dimensional universe.

• A stroke victim gets a new accent. I think it's really stretching it to hypothesize that neurological changes affecting speech and vocal cords would create a recognizable foreign accent, like a Jamaican or a German accent. It will come as no surprise to you that I would sooner suspect past-life memory bleedthrough as a result of brain damage, which somehow makes a past-life accent more accessible. This could be confirmed if in regression, the person experienced a past life that corresponded to the accent, with verifiable historical details about that life, as has occurred in several cases, some of which are presented on this website.

• A brief exposition on the true nature of death, as carried by the Nassau Guardian.

• An announcement for a fundraising event for the London Abused Women's Center entitled "Reincarnation is a Fact," presented by London author Pamela Evans.

• "Miss Witherspoon," a theatrical comedy with a reincarnation theme playing at ACT Theatre in Seattle. Although the metaphysics are a tad off-the-beam when the main character reincarnates as a dog, basically it sounds like the playwright had some knowledge of the subject and treated it respectfully.

• A 20-month old prodigy drummer. We are entering an age when people who lived in the 1960's and 70's, and then passed on, are starting to reincarnate. I predict we're going to see more child prodigies with advanced skills in areas specifically related to modern life (perhaps this four-year-old racing prodigy is one of them). Check out the video of Julian playing at 20 months.
  Here's another video of prodigy Tony Royster, Jr., who was 12 years old at the time this was filmed. I'm not a drummer, but when I say this is good, I mean this is one of the best, and most mature, drum solos I've ever heard. Here's another link to it in case the first one goes offline.

• Here is a six-year-old child on his way to becoming a medical doctor. The only question here is not whether he was a doctor in a past life, but why this particular doctor is recouping his past life expertise more easily than most.

• Skeptical mainstream article about Near-Death Experience (NDE) research, "The Science of Near-Death Experiences." See my article on Reductionism on the Articles page of this website. The entire study, its guiding hypothesis and its interpretation, are based on the erroneous assumption that wakefulness, sleep, dreaming, and consciousness itself are solely biological phenomena. It's circular--once that assumption is made, the interpretation of the results can never transcend it. In effect, near-death experiences are interpreted as being caused by biology, because consciousness itself is interpreted as being caused by biology--and this is a belief. There are no solid philosophical grounds for this assumption. It's a paradox, because if the mind is purely a biological phenomenon, then no intellectual theories or conclusions beyond physical observations and measurements have any substance or reality. Therefore, the intellectual theories and conclusions of science (including these theories and conclusions about near-death experiences) would have no value. What began in science as a decision to study only those things that can be measured physically (while respectfully leaving non-physical realities to philosophy and religion), has gradually been distorted into a belief (an irrational belief) that only the physical exists to be studied, combined with derision for anyone who believes in non-physical realities.(To see just how irrational it can get, see the next item.)

• Sometimes you need an extreme example to illustrate a point. Here, scientists are resorting to reductionism in a way that ought to make that principle clear enough to anyone, by trying to explain arguments at holiday dinners strictly in terms of body chemistry. Theories which suggest that reincarnation, NDE's, and other afterlife phenomena can be explained (away) by brain function or dysfunction rest on exactly the same type of logic, but can get quite sophisticated and convincing, so long as you don't recognize the primary assumptive twist.

• A moderately skeptical popular article about reincarnation, entitled "Do you think that it's possible that we've lived before?" See also my response to him (unanswered to date).

• Higher Education Fuels Stronger Belief in Ghosts.This strongly skeptical article expresses concern that higher education increases a belief in "...haunted houses, psychics, telepathy, channeling and a host of other questionable ideas" (this was supposed to be a straight news story by the science editor). In their poll, however, the movement from the 2001 poll to the recent poll indicates a drop in belief in reincarnation from 25% to 14% (the most recent Gallop poll for the general population I have seen went from 25% to 21%--though a Harris Poll taken in 2003 cited 27%). Almost all the movement went from the "believe" category to the "not sure" category. A possible interpretation is that we are in the middle of a movement from a naive acceptance of reincarnation as an uncritically examined belief, through a state of uncertainty, toward a mature acceptance of reincarnation as a phenomenon. We will see. Higher education, at least what I experienced of it in college, is heavily skewed towards materialism, with the occasional exception. There is a war raging for the minds of students in colleges today. Students who have had class after class of reductionistic explanations, may yet run into information like "In Another Life" in a philosophy, religion or psychology class.

• This woman's irrational fear of peas might make perfect sense if she died in her previous life by inhaling a pea. Sound ridiculous? Someday these kinds of phobias will be easily and routinely cured by one or two past-life therapy sessions. We also see this article in which a mutant gene is claimed to be responsible for eczema and asthma. If you read Dr. Ian Stevenson's "Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect," you will see that skin, in particular, is very reflective of subconscious, mental suggestion. I also believe that a tally of the existing records of past-life therapy sessions would reveal a strong connection between asthma, and past-life deaths through asphyxiation. There is not one physical symptom which occurs in a vacuum, without its corresponding mental component. Relegating the mental influence on illnesses to a "placebo effect" is to minimalize a factor that should be at least an equal partner. I suspect that the mind either chooses, or actively molds, a new body with abnormalities which reflect the deepest mental impressions carried forward from past lives. So a mutant gene may play a role, but not the controlling role. However, I also think that science is a lot more subjective than most people realize--and that researchers tend to find what they are looking for depending on their prior unspoken assumptions, such as that a person is a physical body and that genes can be the real root cause of physical abnormalities--assumptions rendered invalid by the clear evidence for reincarnation.

• Cryonics Founders Cremated. The ironies of a culture that has lost sight of knowledge about the afterlife, the existence of finer bodies, and reincarnation. These two people could already be reincarnated, though admittedly it would be a bit quicker than usual.

• A young man saves the life of a nurse who had saved his some years previously. I would attribute this to karma, which normally doesn't manifest this quickly but apparently can in certain cases. One would guess that these people have past-life connections and the real story would be inexplicable unless you could see the whole history.

• Another reporter undergoes past-life regression, having an experience of a past life of an obscure person, which she was unable to verify historically with a brief internet search. However, in this case the regressionist was also a psychic, and in the psychic reading which followed he made a number of strong "hits" on specific information he had no normal way of knowing (which is what genuine psychics are capable of doing, and what separates them from the charlatans).

• Abstract of a scientific article by Dr. Jim Tucker, successor to Dr. Ian Stevenson, and a colleague, answering the alternative hypothesis that parents of children with past-life memories had shared information which they later attributed to the child's own report. I think Dr. Stevenson's existing work taken as a whole has already eliminated that hypothesis, but Drs. Tucker and Keil have addressed it specifically with some fresh cases. One would have to accept that the vast majority of parents learned some 30 or 40 specific details from the other family after they met, but then mis-remembered the details as actually having come from the child. This alternative explanation doesn't make sense in the cases where the child clearly reported very personal, specific memories that were verified.

• The first portion of a 10th-grade term paper on reincarnation. The teens section of this website (accessible from the home page) provides source material for such papers, and from feedback I've received I know it's been used for that purpose at least a few times.

• Alfred Russel Wallace developed a spiritually-based theory of evolution parallel with Charles Darwin's materialistic version. I ran across an article about Giuseppe Sermonti, an Italian geneticist who is criticizing Darwin's theory. The text read that if one believed in reincarnation, one might think he had been a poet in a past life because of his writing style. So, it occurred to me on a whim to compare photographs. I'll list the websites where I found these images. Understand I have no idea if this is a genuine past-life match, except that it would be consistent with commonly-observed patterns. I do not feel that these kinds of comparisons are proof, to a scientific standard, in and of themselves, but they are very interesting. See also Jeff Keene's page and my Update of 6/6/05.
  Source of Wallace image (website in Spanish)
  Brief article about Wallace with photo
  Source of Sermonti photograph, website in (I think) Italian
  

• An unabashedly pro-reincarnation article from the Philippines.

• Prof. Doris Wilsdorf, Professor of Applied Science at the University of Virginia, teaching her last seminar on Science and Religion. Note the statement, referring as I assume to the work of her colleague, Dr. Ian Stevenson: "Using the mathematical 'Theory of Theories,' Wilsdorf has shown that reincarnation can indeed exist by multiplying the probabilities of the unusual aspects of particular cases together, convincing her students that there is a point when 'coincidence' cannot describe thousands of scientific cases and studies."

• A reporter undergoes a past-life hypnotic regression, has a vivid, emotional experience, and finds at least one possible historical verification, but remains personally unconvinced of reincarnation because she has had experience with the country and culture of the memory in her current life. Note that it would be typical to have some recapitulation of the previous life in the shape of a phase or contact in one's present life. The interpretation that this contact caused the past-life memories is a reductionistic one (see article on Reductionism in the Articles page). This was also the rationale used by skeptics to dismiss the famous "Bridey Murphy" case. The headline of this article puts quotes around the phrase "past lives". When journalists can do without these tiny marks, we will know we've taken a huge step forward.

• Boxing champion Johnny Nelson undergoes a hypnotic past-life regression for British television show "Inside Out."

• The holographic model of reality. Link courtesy of Victor Zammit's site, an excellent source for information on afterlife research and evidence.

• A wish to die well--story of Stephen Keale.

• Here is a British article about reincarnation, primarily focusing on Dr. Stevenson's work. The skeptics--and journalists always must quote a skeptic--continue to drag out the same tired argument that it would be possible to find matches for the child's statements in any city. This is nonsense. Why? Because, just for starters, the child will name the town where they lived in the past life. Then without any assistance they will locate the house, give people's names, and describe details, including intimate details. These kinds of specific details--20, or 30, or 40--simply do not exist in any other town with people of those names. But as a fair debunker, you don't get to sift through an entire town, because in many of the best cases I've read this is not a selection process where an entire city is sifted for a matching situation. You only get to choose one house, because in these studies, the child knows exactly where he or she lived. The odds of a child picking one house in a single town, with 30 or 40 specific memories including people's names at that house being accurate, are astronomical. So this skeptical theory evaporates when you compare it with the actual cases. The thing is, it is not poor science at all. It is excellent science, and these kinds of objections were already anticipated in the investigation design. The problem is that it's poor criticism. What the skeptics do is a version of "straw man"--they set up poor science when they test the theory and then criticize their own bad mockup, claiming they've debunked the method. If you wanted to try to fairly debunk these findings, you would have to choose one house only (as the child does) at random in a particular town. You would have to create (in some random way which prevented unconscious use of psychic abilities), say, 30 specific imaginary details including names, and some of those details would have to be intimate details not generally known except to one or two people. These are the kinds of details that would apply only to those people, like details of a couple's sex-life, or where money was buried (actual examples from Stevenson's cases). And then, all or most of those imaginary details including names would have to turn out to be spot-on for that one real household and the people in that household. No debunker I know of has tried this, because of course they know they would be checkmated before they started. You could probably run this fair version of the test for a thousand years and never get a match, but it would still not replicate some aspects of Stevenson's findings, like the child's emotional reactions to the past-life family, xenoglossy and birthmarks. In order to do that, you'd have to randomly choose a young child who would turn out to be able to speak a language he had never been taught (as a debunker you're dead in the water right there), and would have birthmarks corresponding to the death wounds of a child that the family just happened to have lost in the house that you randomly selected from the one town. He would also have to display appropriate, sincere behaviors and emotions toward the people in that randomly-selected household (it would not be easy to randomly select a very young child who could convincingly feign great joy at being reunited with total strangers, for example, no less persuade one to insist on staying with the strangers). See additional comments.

• Occasionally I search for reincarnation news on search engines, and I came up with these comments from a retiring Catholic journalist, who relates: "I flew into America in 1958 on a one-year lark two days after John XXIII was elected pope. I had already seen much of Europe (including, as a hitchhiking teenager, still-poor Italy. I decided if there’s reincarnation, I would come back Italian.)" This seemingly innocuous remark in a Catholic publication brings up some interesting questions, to my mind (maybe I think too much?). Does he take the possibility of reincarnation so lightly that he assumes all his readers will take it that way? Or is he a closet Catholic reincarnationist and this is as far as he dares go? Beyond that, I'm surprised he can get away with even this degree of ambiguity in an officially Catholic publication. Is reincarnation gradually moving within Catholicism at a grass-roots level, to such an extent that he can make this comment without it being entirely clear whether or not he's joking? Or, maybe this has something to do with why he's retiring...

• A scientist is caught faking his results. I think it's very important to realize that this happens, and in my opinion, that as with all crimes, the ones that get caught are just the tip of the iceberg. No-one knows how common this may be, but given that the scientific method itself hinges, for its validity overall, on honest reporting of data, the reliability of science as a whole may be compromised by this kind of behavior. A study conducted by Reader's Digest Magazine, wherein realistic wallets with $50 inside them were placed where they could be found, suggested that a much larger percentage of people will act dishonestly when they believe no-one is looking than what we usually assume (according to one report I read, 50% took the money in my home town of Atlanta, Georgia). If this extends to all groups, including the scientific community, then the entire scientific method (which relies on peer validation) may be inherently flawed, because human nature is not up to the task of implementing it honestly. In the area of reincarnation studies, one can see intellectual dishonesty by the scientific establishment in the form of denial, application of "straw man" logic and other types of sophistry. Additional comments

• The most recent Gallup poll shows 20% of Americans believing in reincarnation, down a full 5% from the 2001 poll [note this was in June 2005; a November 2005 poll has risen to 21%]. I have no explanation for the result, assuming it is not a polling artifact of some kind. Perhaps current political upheavals and disasters are driving people back into familiar religious beliefs, or the converse, driving them into cynicism about all beliefs. Meanwhile, a Harris poll from 2003 is quoted at 27% of Americans believing in reincarnation. One cause of these fluctuations may be that belief in reincarnation is generated partly by personal experiences, which cuts squarely across all demographic categories. Thus, if I am understanding statistics correctly, ordinary demographic categories wouldn't apply for this variable, and a larger than normal sample size would be required. A too-small sample size might inadvertently skew the results by capturing more or less people who had had these experiences. (Anyone versed in statistics, please correct me if I'm mistaken.) Here's a fascinating thought--the people who constructed the poll may, perhaps, assume that there is really no such thing as reincarnation--i.e., that it is simply and only a belief. Therefore, they built this subtle bias into the poll by not taking into account the possible variable of personal experience. Which goes to show that one's unconscious assumptions can skew even professional pollsters' results. I'm guessing they would be very surprised if they asked those people who profess belief in reincarnation, whether or not they had had a personal experience which proved reincarnation to them. See also the poll I maintain on the home page of this site, and the comments attached to that link. My poll (which cannot be directly compared with the Gallup or Harris polls) has gone up over time from 54% "firmly convinced" in reincarnation, to 55%, as of this writing on 10/08/06. See also this informal online "About" poll on assessments of the evidence for reincarnation.
  
  
  

• From "Today in History," for October 22, 1926:
  "The Ladder," J. Frank Davis' drama about reincarnation, opens today for a 789-performance run. Among its stars, Antoinette Perry, later namesake of the Broadway awards. The show is unusual in that its producer will keep it running long after it begins to lose money, often allowing people in for free, because he thinks the world needs to hear its message. He will lose a half million pre-Depression dollars on it.

• Child prodigies are one type of evidence for reincarnation. Here is a six-year-old black belt in karate. Note how young he was when he started, and how he begged to be allowed to do karate.