Updates

As I write this I'm sending a simple text e-mail to libraries across the United States; the same text I sent to university professors a few weeks ago. As with the universities, I visit each individual website, and try to find the appropriate individual. With libraries, of course, I can't gauge potential interest or receptivity as I could with the professors' online bios. Rarely, I hear back, always a brief, polite response. One librarian said it sounded very interesting, but there had been no requests for that topic.

That's fine. But as often happens, two or more things that are happening in my life come together in my mind. Recently I was sent an introductory e-mail, inviting me to the website of a person who sincerely believes he is the reincarnation of the apostle Peter. Another came to my attention recently, of a person who believes he is the reincarnation of the apostle John, equally sincere. Frankly, I don't believe that they are. Some of these people may be quite sane, but sincerely mistaken. Some of them are clearly delusional (i.e., in the broader, clinical sense, not just in the literal sense that they believe something that isn't true). And there are a handful of famous past-life matches that I think are probably genuine, though very few I've seen have what I'd call proof even to a legal standard, no less to a scientific standard. At best, most of these famous-person matches are, to use Dr. Stevenson's phrase, "suggestive of reincarnation." (Capt. Robert Snow's case is a blazing exception, and to a somewhat lesser degree, Jeff Keene's. Their past-life matches are also a little easier to accept, because they were just famous enough to be historically known and traceable, but not so famous as to give their claimants a great ego-boost--not that this is a valid criterion of legitimacy or illegitimacy, just a subjective criterion of plausibility.)

Where my mind goes with this, however, is that when I send out hundreds upon hundreds of these e-mails, to university professors and librarians, some percentage of them no-doubt perceive me to be delusional, as well. I'm philosophical about it--in this kind of unsolicited e-mail sales, you are lucky to hit 1% anyway. From the strictly sales point of view, you can't let yourself worry about what the 99% think, except of course I'm sorry if they feel I've spammed them unethically. Spam is another issue--how you define it, what's ethical and what isn't. I think it's an overreaction to say that a legitimate sales letter sent by e-mail is always unethical, and to classify it as spam along with all the penis enlargement ads and Mr. Okonobi from Nigeria who respectfully, in the name of Christ, needs your help in bilking you out of your life's savings.

But here's the thing. I am not delusional (even though, without having any proof or asserting it as a certainty, I think I may have been John Greenleaf Whittier's younger brother in a past life), and the information I'm presenting is good information, with solid science and logic, and the elite of spiritual teachings, behind it. It may superficially resemble the presentations of delusional people who latch onto the idea of reincarnation for inner reasons of their own. But recipients of my e-mail who automatically throw me into that category are simply making an error in discernment. (Note that if you, the reader, are operating out of your prejudices, you will have automatically and unconsciously turned me off at this point, thinking you are being rational.)

Sometimes it is not easy to discern the false from the real. They can look nearly identical on the surface. In this society, we do not even value discernment. In fact, we discourage it; we encourage being led around by the nose, so to speak, by advertising. The last thing that large companies spending millions of dollars on advertising want, is a discerning public. Nor does government want discerning citizens, for the same reasons.

Still, the ironic side-effect of continually trying to fool the public, is that they are unwittingly being trained, over time, in the way of discernment, even though they are also developing a deep cynicism. Thus the tendency will be to reject everything as bullshit, because of having been fed on a steady diet of bullshit, especially by the media.

Into this social climate comes an independently-produced documentary which says that Americans are encountering reincarnation in a society which, as a whole, denies its existence. How do people react when presented with this message? I suppose they throw it out with the bullshit. They don't have any idea what has come knocking at their door, and what they have discarded along with the trash. But it will come to them again--as a dream, a memory, an experience with past-life therapy, as a grandchild telling them about "when I was big," as a book, or even as another documentary. It's just a matter of time.

And this is why I send out hundreds of these e-mails, one at a time, spending days at my computer. Because for that person it may simply be an introduction to the subject, and that introduction may stay dormant in the mind until the next time it is encountered.

So what are these letters--sales letters, propaganda letters, seeds sown on rocky ground and good earth? I don't know how to categorize them. I know this is important for society, because of what it leads to, which is, spirituality free from the suffocating, stultifying bonds of religious, or of materialistic, dogma. I know that I am not the only one chipping away at this problem. And so I am simply doing my part, chisel and hammer in hand.

Some of these people may receive all they can tolerate right now from the letter itself; some, from the streaming video sample, if they watch it. When their child or grandchild talks about a past life, perhaps they will hesitate a moment before dismissing it as childish fantasy; if they have a past-life dream or flashback, perhaps they will not automatically assume they are going crazy. And perhaps they will be a little more open to the possibility of presenting good information on reincarnation to their classes, or to their library patrons, because I have introduced my own work, whether or not they purchase this particular documentary.

Music opening this page: "High Landrons," Eric Johnson (Ah Via Musicom album)
All I can say is, if you have a chance to see Eric in concert, don't pass it up...
sell the car and hitch to the concert if you have to.