Updates

Since I don't have TV these days, in the evenings while I'm eating dinner I've been watching my collection of reincarnation programs. I have some 20 or more. Of course I can't help comparing them to my program, "In Another Life". These producers had a hugely larger budget than I did, and so they were able to travel. They got permissions I couldn't hope to get; they created special effects I couldn't create. All of these programs are narration-driven, which means, the narrator tells the story. Most of the programs cover that narration time with plenty of scenes of people walking around, standing around, looking weird, etc. A child stands there like a zombie, with a ghostly light streaming out of his eyes while the camera spins around him. Of course that has absolutely nothing to do with reincarnation.

So another difference is that most of these programs "spookify" reincarnation. My program created an ambiance of mystery, but not a carnival atmosphere of spookiness.

And I must be candid here that when I started my program, and set the tone for it, I did not really understand the accepted practice of starting from a narrated script and "filling it in" with occasional supporting interviews and a whole bunch of "b-roll" (scenes) and special effects. I was relatively untutored and thus hadn't been told what I couldn't do. I had the idea that I wanted to let the people I interviewed speak for themselves. I wanted the viewer to get to know them. Thus, I wanted it to be interview-driven. I did not know, then, that it would be considered an amateurish attempt for this reason. Broadcasters condescendingly referred to it as having too many "talking heads".

I also didn't know just how hard it would be to get funding for travel, artwork, stock footage, and copyright permissions. Really, only the Vedanta Society cooperated fully with me. It seemed that I offended everybody else in one way or another--like putting every kind of animal in a room, so that they all began fighting.

But my program was an overview of how Americans are discovering the phenomenon of reincarnation--so it had to include all these elements.

Did you notice what I just said, above? The phenomenon of reincarnation. My program started out assuming the reality of reincarnation. And so it was accused of being propaganda, of being biased.

But my program was a sociological overview. The reality of the social situation with reincarnation acceptance, is that it has been proven to both a legal and a scientific standard. The only things holding it back are what held back the round earth theory--ignorance and prejudice.

This was the theme of the program. Not only how the fact of reincarnation is being discovered, but how the fact of reincarnation is being received.

Before the Wright Brothers flew their plane, there were no-doubt scientists who would sit in a panel discussion and tell you why it was impossible to fly. At that point, it would have been rational to create a documentary on man's flying that took a pro-vs.-con approach.

But after the Wright Brothers flew their airplane, it would have been irrational to create a documentary with a pro-vs.-con format. Any broadcaster or distributor who insisted that all documentaries on the subject of flight had to take both sides, or else charge them with being biased, would have been unfair and irrational, as well.

Reincarnation has been proven. Therefore it would have been irrational for me to take a pro-vs.-con approach about something I already knew was decided. I couldn't do it with a straight face. I had to be true to myself and tell it the way I saw it.

Now, all that leads me to what prompted me to write this Update. I just watched a very slick program that must have had a budget of several hundred thousand dollars. They traveled all over the world with top researchers, they had all kinds of eerie special effects. They featured Dr. Jim Tucker, the foremost expert, extensively and described a couple of his American cases. They did not, however, really set forth the case adequately. They did not explain, for example, that in about 250 of these cases, the child comes up not with one, or two, or three details, but 20 or 30. Had they done that, the entire pro-con format would have been destroyed, because it's a done deal.

But one of the skeptics fascinated me. In years past, I was incensed when I watched this program. Now it just sort of amuses me. Because what the fellow did was to interview young children and ask them to make up a past-life story. He doesn't say how many children he interviewed or how many got results like this one case he presented. That's important information to know.

But in this one case, the little girl, who the researcher assumes is imagining because he has asked her to imagine, starts describing a case in which a little girl was abducted and killed. And the story checks out--something like 13 details, as I recall. The researcher exclaims, "If this was a reincarnation case, it would be the case to end all cases!"

But Carol Bowman's research indicates clearly that a very high percentage of children, if not all children, have past-life memories. We also know from so many cases checking out historically, that many if not all of these are real memories. Therefore, from my perspective, the most likely thing is that the researcher was inadvertently tapping a real past life. He made the comment that it is so easy to fool ourselves and fool others. Unfortunately, I think he was the one being fooled.*

He made the one crucial mistake that he assumed the child would give only imagination because he had asked her to use her imagination. But if past-life memories are real, and all children have them, then it only took finding a child with memories of a violent death (causing her to have more intense memories) that he could verify historically. Ask any child to make up a story about a past life, and 99 times out of a hundred, the child will probably respond with a real past-life memory. Even if they start out imagining, at age three, like this child was, they will slip into a real memory.

So it was this researcher's assumptions which, I suspect, led him astray. If this case was coincidence, the cases studied by Dr. Ian Stevenson and Dr. Jim Tucker, in which the child remembers a whole string of first and last names, plus extremely obscure details, are not. Many times in these cases, no-one needs to publish a story in the newspaper or scour an entire city to find a match, because the child knows where it was and says so. The child begs to go back to the village he or she names, even if punished, and then when the child is finally taken, he or she leads people right to the house. There is no coincidental matching against a large number of possible histories. There is only the question--did this child's 20 or 30 specific memories match the particular small village he names, at the house he leads people to, or didn't they? There is only one house, or at best one small village, in which to produce a coincidence. In such a small field, you might hope to find one or two details matching. But in case after case, a host of very specific memories matched this one village and this one house. Where someone buried the money; what a woman's sex life was like with her husband. That someone had carved his name inside the door. The first and last names of people, and their correct relationship. Along with the correct emotional reaction to persons from the past-life. And there's more.

Bear in mind that, presumably, the skeptical researchers interviewed for these documentaries should have read these cases. The studies they designed, however, don't really address the strongest elements of them. They have designed their research as though they hadn't read the cases at all. Because when a child keeps begging to go back to a particular village, and no newspaper article needs to be published, and some 20 details check out historically, the issue of coincidental matching within a city-wide field of possibilities is a moot point.

If a skeptic read this Update, would it convince him or her? Probably not. But in 50 or 100 or 150 years, however long it takes, reincarnation will be accepted just as we accept airplanes today. These documentaries will be quaint and amusing. Even though I had only $1,300 as opposed to $130,000 or more, mine will still be watchable, whereas these programs will be anachronisms.

Two or three years ago, I was determined to break through society's denial. Today, I don't care so much. To each his own. If you are skeptical, well, join the club. So were most of the people I included in my documentary and who I have quoted or interviewed for this website. If you are cynical, you won't find anything here that convinces you, because you go into irrationality to avoid it. (After all, you are on my website now, so I'll tell it how it is.)

But that's okay. Reincarnation advocates are still ahead of their time. When I'm 90 years old and too decrepit to care, I may be awarded an honorary degree and called up to the microphone to accept it, and I'll drool on the mic and mumble something...but I'll know I contributed to the effort. When I come back next life, reincarnation will be understood and accepted. At that point reincarnation will be misused, and this will be the issue to be addressed. People won't listen, of course.

2/27/08
Sometimes I get fresh insights awhile after I've written something. Since writing the above, I continued watching the remainder of my collection of reincarnation programs. What occurs to me is that just as my commitment to create an interview-driven piece led me to a certain kind of result, so the programs produced for the major networks are created with a commitment to a pro-vs.-con format. In the same way, that commitment leads those producers to a certain result. They have assumed at the outset that the matter is undecided, and, in fact, only programs which take this format are ever considered for broadcast. The reason is not what you would think. It is not for the sake of objective journalism. It is because the pro-vs.-con format sells soap. The pro-vs.-con format is the "mysteries" format--the roller-coaster ride format, the "scary movie" format. The "we're going to give you a good scare and then rescue you" format.

My program is like a theme park ride that actually leaves you in the deep ocean.

So what's fascinating to me, re-watching these commercial programs, is that they skew and adjust the weight of the evidence to make sure that it comes down about 40-60. That is, 40% in favor of reincarnation, and 60% skeptical explaining it away. It's not an honest inquiry after the truth of the subject. They water down the pro position and intensify the skeptical position so as to be able to maintain the pro-vs.-con format convincingly, so as to be able to sell soap. Then the selection process insures that it is these programs that get accepted for broadcast.

The only way I would know this is from having intensively studied this particular topic area for about 11 years now. I know, for example, that the research done by Dr. Stevenson and colleagues is much stronger than what is presented in these programs. If it was presented in its full strength, the pro-vs.-con format would be blown. I also know that the logic used by the skeptics in these programs has serious flaws. In programs about near-death experiences, for example, if there is even one credible case of a person seeing something in an adjoining room while flatlined during an operation, logically, this could not possibly have been due to hallucination. And there are such cases, reported by credible people like cardiologist Dr. Michael Sabolm. In reincarnation, also, if there is one credible case of a child knowing precisely where his past life was, begging to go back, showing the way, remembering some 30 specific details including names and relationships and things no-one could have possibly known by any normal means, reacting with appropriate emotion, with the details having been written down before the past-life family was located; then it isn't coincidence, it isn't fraud, it isn't imagination, it isn't some statistical trick, and it isn't embellishment by the families. If you are serious about objective inquiry, you can tick off each of these variables and eliminate them, as Stevenson meticulously did.

So there is no rational basis for using a pro-vs.-con format; there is, however, an economic one. This is one reason my documentary wasn't accepted for broadcast. An honest inquiry into the truth doesn't sell, because it isn't a safe roller-coaster ride.

It may be that in the larger scheme of things, the economic pressure to sell roller-coaster rides instead of actual deep-sea journeys may inadvertently protect the public from information that is too disruptive for them at present. This I can't really judge. But when you see a documentary, as I did last night, in which a skeptic states unequivocally that there is absolutely no evidence for reincarnation that would convince any reasonable person, this is simply a lie. The question then becomes, how was a flat-out lie allowed to stand in a documentary which purports to be fair-minded, in the name of a pro-vs.-con format?

All this goes to what the search for truth is. I think truth is elusive. Something can look like a sincere search for truth and yet be far from sincere. Just because a program takes on the structure of pro-vs.-con does not mean it portrays a sincere search for truth. Currently, in this society, if you present the truth about reincarnation, first of all you can't get funded. Then no-one will cooperate with you for copyright permissions. Finally, you can't get the program accepted for distribution. Therefore such programs never see the light of day, and so far as the public is concerned, they don't exist.

I have a radio interview this evening--it may be my last, since I'm thinking I won't initiate any more of them. In preparation, I was reading how the "Bridey Murphy" case was attacked dishonestly by debunkers. It makes a fascinating read. That case was never truly debunked--any more than reincarnation was really officially removed from Christianity. Reincarnation has been the poor red-headed step-child for millenia. Ask the Cathars, who were persecuted in the Inquisition. It's an inconvenient truth. It stands at the door of a much wider vista of life, and that door has been bolted and covered over and the weeds have grown around it until it is relegated to the realm of myths and fairy-tales. But it won't go away. Reincarnation is the 75-cent accounting error that leads to the international hackers--it's the mouse that has the potential to challenge the entire materialistic paradigm, and to strip the errors of centuries from organized religion at the same time. It's no safe theme park ride.

*It occurs to me she might also have seen the case on the evening television news. If so, it would represent cryptomnesia, but it would be irrelevant for the cases documented by Dr. Stevenson and colleagues, because his best cases eliminate this possibility.

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.