Updates

3/23/03
In Another Life was broadcast by PBS affiliate KBDI in Denver, Colorado this past January 11th. It was extremely difficult to get station decision-makers to take a documentary on this topic seriously (though on at least a couple of occasions lower-level employees were cheering me on). Obtaining airtime on one station sounds like a small accomplishment, but it was actually miraculous considering most station managers probably viewed it with skepticism.

In Another Life is now available on VHS tape through this website. It's comparable in artistic quality to documentaries that had many times the budgetary resources I did, and in some significant ways the content is superior. While each of the shows I've seen has its strong points, In Another Life draws on my 30 years' study of reincarnation and mysticism to present what I believe to be highly accurate information, genuine cases, and some of the best experts. This is the "insider's film". It's also the spiritually-grounded film. It's designed to bridge East and West, material and spiritual.

By definition, large commercial projects that rely on outside funding can't produce something that goes beyonds the boundaries of what sells soap, in terms of content. It takes an independent producer who isn't afraid of going completely outside the box to do that. That means validating something that needs validating regardless of what anybody thinks, and challenging something that needs challenging, regardless of what anybody thinks. It allows me, as producer, not only to titillate the viewer's sensibilities with strong cases and then bring them safely back to social reality (as the majority of commercially-produced shows do), but to challenge the very roots of society's fundamental beliefs and leave the viewer there.

A producer working for a big commercial channel can't do what I did, because they have to get funding and they have to sell the production to the channel executives, who thus have control over the content. They can appear to be groundbreaking and revolutionary, but they can't go past certain limits. Their primary mandate by the people paying the bills is to be entertaining, to tantalize but not to offend too much--in short, to ride the line. I think economics (bowing to the constraints of social reality) is thus the real reason you see shows getting aired nationally which have strong, genuine cases, but then shoot each case down with a skeptic. (A seeming exception is John Edward's show "Crossing Over", until you notice in the credits that he's paying for most of that show out of his own pocket. It took a blazingly accurate medium who can demostrate his ability time and again under pressure, in front of the camera, to put that together. Dr. Gary Schwartz's study has already proven scientifically that Edward is genuine. The entire scientific establishment should be admitting they've been basing their work for 100 years on fundamentally mistaken ideas about what man is at this point, if they were honest.)

These skeptics you see in other shows on reincarnation infuriate people who have studied the subject carefully. For the most part they offer very weak arguments. They pronounce, with the authority of science, "It's explainable in materialistic terms." It definitely isn't. In my opinion--and I have a master's in counseling--most of these skeptics, including the skeptical scientists, are going into psychological denial to avoid facing a major paradigm shift. It's no accident that in my show Dr. Robert Almeder, professor of philosophy at GSU, talks about the role of denial in believing or not believing in reincarnation. I'm not presenting this simply out of bias--it's part of the social landscape of American reactions to reincarnation.

So, now it's up to public response. In these difficult economic times I've struggled with how much information to give for free. I'm no fool, I know it probably cuts deeply into tape sales. There are people in this field who have decided to make their website one big advertisement for their products, and there are others who have decided that public education is more important, and who give substantial portions of their work away. I've taken the latter track. (The fact that I charge "$25.00" instead of "$24.95" should give you some idea what I think about commercialism.)

As opposed to this website which has been added to a bit haphazardly over the years, In Another Life is carefully built to present the information in a logical and entertaining way, and furthermore it's a work of art in itself. Even if you believe in reincarnation already and don't feel you'd need to see the show, it's a perfect way to introduce other people to the subject, including in small groups or classes. (Interestingly, most of the people who bought it with educational purposes in mind were in other countries--Ireland, Brazil, Portugal and Africa so far.)

Through the website and the tape, it's my hope that this project is making a contribution to bringing reincarnation back into Western society after being suppressed, overtly and subtley, for about 1,500 years.

Best regards,

Stephen S., Producer