Reincarnation Phenomena Explained
ONE of the objections to the theory of reincarnation is that the vast majority of people on earth have no recollection at all of having lived before. Furthermore, they do not even think that they could have lived earlier lives.
It is true that we sometimes have a strange feeling of recognizing a person that we meet for the first time. A certain house, town, or scenic area may seem familiar to us, although we know that it is the first time we have been there. However, these things can be explained without having to resort to the theory of reincarnation.
For example, certain places in widely separated areas may be somewhat alike, so that when we visit a new place, we may feel that we have been there before, though we have not. Many houses, offices, shops, towns, and scenic areas in some parts of the world bear a similarity to their counterparts in other places. That they seem similar to what we have seen before is not proof that we have been in those places in a previous life. They just resemble places we are familiar with.
This is also true regarding people. Some are quite similar to others in appearance, even having what has been called a double. A person may have mannerisms that remind us of someone else still living or even of one who has died. But we have known those people in this present life, not in some former existence. Similarity in looks or personality does not mean that these people were known to us in a previous life. No doubt all of us have at times mistaken one person for another. But both of those individuals have been alive at the same time as you and not in some former life. It has nothing to do with reincarnation.
The Influence of Hypnosis
Even experiences under the influence of hypnosis can be explained without having to resort to the theory of reincarnation. Our subconscious mind constitutes a storehouse of information much more comprehensive than we may imagine. Information reaches this storehouse via books, magazines, TV, radio, and through other experiences and observations.
Much of this information is stored away in some hidden corner of our subconscious mind because we have no direct or immediate use for it. Our subconscious mind is somewhat like library books for which there is little present demand and that have therefore been put away on a secluded shelf.
However, under hypnosis, the subject’s consciousness is changed so that forgotten memories can surface. Some people interpret these as being of a former life, but they are nothing more than present-life experiences that we had temporarily forgotten.
There are, though, a few cases that may be more difficult to explain in a natural way. An example is when a person starts to speak another “language” under the influence of hypnosis. Sometimes the language is comprehensible, but often it is not. Those who believe in reincarnation may say that this is a language the person spoke in an earlier life.
Yet, it is well-known that speaking in so-called tongues also occurs when people are in a state of mystic or religious ecstasy. Those having such experiences are convinced that it has nothing to do with a former life but that they are being influenced by some unseen power in the present life.
Opinions vary as to what power this is. In a joint declaration by the Fountain Trust and the Church of England Evangelical Council, it was stated with regard to speaking in tongues: “We are also aware that a similar phenomenon can occur under occult/demonic influence.” So to assume that such phenomena are proof that we have lived a former life would be jumping to a false conclusion.
Near-Death Experiences
What, then, of the near-death experiences that people say they have had? These have been interpreted by some as proof that a person has a soul that lives on after the death of the body. But such experiences are far better explained in several natural ways.
In the March 1991 issue of the French scientific magazine Science & Vie, the different stages of near-death experiences are called “a universal prototype of hallucination” that has long been known. Similar experiences have not been restricted to those in near-death situations. They can also occur in connection with “fatigue, fever, epileptic attacks, drug abuse.”
A neurosurgery pioneer, Wilder Penfield, who operated on epileptics who were under local anesthesia, made an interesting discovery. He found that by stimulating different parts of the brain with an electrode, he could cause the patient to have the feeling of being outside his own body, traveling through a tunnel, and meeting dead relatives.
An interesting detail in this respect is that children who have had near-death experiences meet, not their dead relatives, but schoolmates or teachers—those who are still alive. This indicates that such experiences have a certain cultural connection. What is experienced is connected with the present life, not with something beyond death.
Dr. Richard Blacher writes in the magazine The Journal of the American Medical Association: “Dying, or suffering a perilous physical situation, is a process; death is a state.” As an example, Blacher speaks of a person who for the first time is flying from the United States to Europe. “The plane flight is not [being in] Europe,” he writes. The tourist who departs for Europe, but whose plane turns around and returns some minutes after the start, can’t tell people more about Europe than anyone returning from a coma can tell anyone about death.
Those who have been near death have, in other words, never actually been dead. They experienced something while they were still alive. And a person is still alive even seconds before his death. They were near death but not yet dead.
Even those whose heart has briefly stopped and who have then been revived cannot really remember anything from those moments of unconsciousness when they could have been termed “dead.” What they remember, if anything, would be what happened at the time approaching that brief interruption, not during it.
The published near-death experiences are almost always depicted as being positive, although it is known that negative experiences also occur. The French psychoanalyst Catherine Lemaire explains it in this way: “Those who haven’t experienced a [near death] fitting the pattern imposed by IANDS [International Association for Near-Death Studies] have no interest in telling their story.”
No Memory
The fact is that we have no experience of life other than that which we now live, neither a former life nor a life beyond death. Hence, we have no legitimate memories of anything but the life we have actually lived.
Those who believe in reincarnation say that the very meaning of being reborn is to get a new chance to better our situation. If we really had lived earlier lives, yet had forgotten them, such a loss of memory would constitute a great handicap. It is by remembering our mistakes that we can profit from them.
Also, those who uphold so-called reincarnation therapy feel that you can better cope with present problems if, by means of hypnosis, you can remember earlier lives. The theory says that we are born again in order to better something, yet we have forgotten what that something is.
A loss of memory in the present life is considered a handicap. It must be the same in this case. Objecting by saying that such forgetfulness does not matter, since only good people are reborn as humans, is not a sound argument in this day and age when wickedness dominates the world scene more than ever. If only good people are reborn as humans, where did all the wicked people come from? Should not there be fewer and fewer wicked people? The truth is: Nobody, good or wicked, is ever reincarnated to begin another life as a human or anything else for that matter.
However, you may say, ‘Is not reincarnation a Bible teaching?’ Let us consider this question in the next article.
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Our subconscious mind is like a library of information that has been put away but may be recalled later
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“Death is a state,” not a process.—Dr. Richard Blacher in The Journal of the American Medical Association