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 In last week's essay, I said that each of us is
responsible for our own situations...that, in other words, none of us is a
victim of anything except our own issues.
But, surely I can’t be referring to children! And, how
can this apply to people who are victims of disease, especially genetic diseases
or illnesses like polio or cancer?
But, I am referring to these people as well. The key to
understanding how this could be, is an awareness of the fact of reincarnation.
Since so much rides on an understanding of this mechanism, I will devote this
essay to detailing the proof of its existence.
Reincarnation is an ancient belief—perhaps the most
ancient philosophical belief in all of Earth. Even now, in these "enlightened" times, more people
accept reincarnation as a reality than do not by a factor of at least five. If
this belief was totally unfounded, it would seem likely that its adherents would
be fewer.
However, as an ancient belief, reincarnation was not
subject to tests. At best there were a few (or thousands) of anecdotes
suggesting its existence, but which, by themselves, proved nothing.
Beginning in the 1940s, however, interest in this subject
increased in the Western world; sparked, in large part perhaps, by the psychic
Edgar Cayce. When further study revealed at least some scientific basis
for believing in reincarnation, it became clear to anyone exposed to the
information that here was, indeed, revealed a mechanism by which the Universe
works.
The Sleeping Prophet
Edgar Cayce did not prove reincarnation. However, he did
provide the most rigorously documented psychic evidence of it to
date, and was largely responsible for the subsequent interest in it that led to
books such as Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation and The Search
for Bridey Murphy.
For those unfamiliar with this man's history, let me
provide a brief recounting of it.
Born in 1877 near Hopkinsville, Kentucky, Cayce was the son of an
uneducated farming family. A devout child of a religious family, it seemed
natural that young Edgar would wish to become a preacher. However, between his
educational challenges and lack of money, he could only attend school up to
ninth grade. Then, when he was 21, he developed an extended case of laryngitis
that seemed to end, forever, any hope of his serving humankind in that capacity.
Lasting over a year, the laryngitis resisted all attempts
at treatment, until a local man named Layne offered to try hypnosis. Skeptical,
but willing to try anything, Edgar agreed to the experiment. After putting him
under, Layne asked Cayce himself what the matter was. Amazingly, Edgar
answered in a normal voice--and suggested a treatment which, when followed, led
to his full recovery!
In the subsequent years, Cayce discovered he could diagnose and
prescribe cures for anyone's illnesses--even if he had never met the person-in this
hypnotically-induced sleep state. He had
no medical training, but that didn't stop
him from prescribing treatments involving patent medicines, herbs, magnetism,
electricity, chemicals, and other techniques that ranged far beyond the medical experience of most doctors of the time.
He performed these so-called "physical readings"
while in a sleep-like trance. Every session was transcribed--there
were often other witnesses present, as well--and the transcriptions were typed, indexed,
and filed, something no previous psychic had attempted. Associated with the
readings were follow-up interviews and statements from the patients, their
families, and their physicians. Amazingly, every patient who followed
Cayce's recommendations was healed! This is a success rate far beyond that which
conventional doctors can hope to achieve; so it is of little surprise that
Cayce's fame spread far and wide. Newspaper after newspaper investigated and
reported him. No one was able to prove any degree of chicanery whatsoever.
In retrospect, it is surprising that it took as long as it
did before anyone thought to wonder: If Cayce could so accurately answer
questions regarding the health of a distant stranger while under hypnosis, could
he answer other questions as well? Cayce was at once reluctant and curious. He
attempted, through the years, to locate oil, predict the winners of horse races,
and so on. His accuracy rating on these subjects was average, winning some,
losing some; but it may have been a byproduct of his religious upbringing. Not
only was his remarkable record tarnished by these failures, but he found the
attempts to be physically debilitating. He awoke from such sessions feeling
drained and headachy, and, after a few such experiments, decided to stick to the
physical readings, which obviously provided aid to his suffering clients.
Yet, when a wealthy Ohioan, Arthur Lammers, approached with
a similar proposal, Cayce couldn't turn him down. Lammers didn't want knowledge
to make himself rich; he was already rich. What he wanted was knowledge that
could be shared with everyone, knowledge that could enrich the whole world. He
wanted to know about life after death.
They agreed to start small. While Cayce slept, Lammers
asked him to cast his horoscope, a mathematical process for which Cayce had
never received training. Nevertheless, in his trance, Cayce pronounced a quick
horoscope, then added a puzzling statement. In reference to Lammers, he said,
"He was once a monk." The sleeping Cayce then explained that
astrology, as practiced at the time, was flawed because it didn't take into
account a person's many lifetimes!
Subsequent sessions revealed that each of us has many, many
lifetimes, each one affecting the others. And, as unlikely as this seemed to
Cayce, who was completely unaware that a majority of Earth's population
entertained this same belief, references to reincarnation began to appear in his physical
readings. A boy who
had wet his bed for years, Cayce explained, was doing so in reaction to his
having been a "stool dipper", a man who punished alleged witches by
strapping them to a stool and dunking them in a pond in Puritan America. A
college professor, born blind, had once been a member of a tribe that blinded
its enemies with red-hot irons. A girl with infantile paralysis had once
crippled others.
If Cayce had made these claims and stopped there, we would
have little of a case for reincarnation. However, he didn't. In many cases he
provided detailed information, such as names and addresses and occupations; and,
in some of these cases, the lifetime described was recent enough so that the
information could be verified...and, in every such case, it was.
It would seem, then, that Cayce alone had
"proven" the concept of reincarnation. However, though Cayce had carefully
documented his readings, scientists were reluctant to accept his evidence
because Cayce, himself, was not a trained scientist. And so scientists, and
those who faithfully follow the priesthood of science, had to wait for a
scientist to gather additional evidence. They did not have to wait for long.
Bridey Murphy
Edgar Cayce died in 1945, leaving behind a staggering legacy of data
regarding health, history, and reincarnation. Slowly, the public gained interest
in the possibility that reincarnation might be fact. Hypnosis, first discovered
by Franz Mesmer in 1772. was also becoming widely known and used as a tool for
quitting smoking (actually, in the 1950s, people were trying to cure themselves
of "excessive" smoking), for relief of panic attacks and other
psychological problems. It was only a matter of time before someone other than
Cayce would attempt to use hypnosis to recall a "past life."
Actually, Morey Bernstein had no intention of dredging up a previous lifetime when he
first hypnotized Virginia Tighe, a West Virginia schoolteacher. She simply
wanted to quit smoking, and to this end Bernstein, a professional hypnotist who
specialized in this, planned to regress her, using a common
technique, to her fifth birthday. Perhaps she misunderstood; perhaps she just
overreacted. Whatever the cause, when the hypnotist stopped his backward counting,
Ms. Tighe was, indeed, experiencing her fifth birthday party...however, it was
as Bridey Murphy, a toddler living in Ireland two centuries ago!
Bernstein was horrified but he couldn't resist further investigation. In
subsequent sessions, "Bridey Murphy", who spoke with a distinct brogue
and could even dance Irish jigs while hypnotized, described the town in which
she lived, roads she had taken, and the people who were her family and
neighbors. Because of the distance in time, it was difficult to check out all
these details; but Bernstein felt it was necessary. They all checked out,
save one: Although they had been able to locate a road that had long since
washed away, and an abandoned town that had been a lively village in Bridey's
time...no one was able to locate the baptismal records for Bridey, herself.
In spite of all the other evidence supporting the idea that Ms. Tighe had had
a previous life in Ireland, whatever her name, the whole case was declared closed
when a Chicago reporter uncovered the fact that an Irish immigrant named Bridey Murphy had lived across the street from Ms. Tighe when she was a
little girl. The
fact that this Bridey Murphy had come from a different area of Ireland, a
century later than Ms. Tighe had recalled for herself, was lost in the
collective sigh of relief of thousands who were grateful they didn't have to
rethink their places in the Universe; and so the case was laid to rest, now
mostly forgotten.
Yet, a present-day study of The Search for Bridey Murphy remains compelling in its careful
documentation and conclusion that no other
explanation than reincarnation explains all the facts.
And a search of the Internet now for the name, "Bridey Murphy",
turns up several unrelated hits. Apparently, the name isn't that unusual, after
all...and Ms. Tighe's neighbor's name may have been a mere coincidence...or Ms.
Tighe may have gotten her name wrong, out of several hundred pieces of data she
got right.
Twenty Suggestive Cases
Fortunately, not all scientists gave up on the search for proof. Dr. Ian
Stevenson, a psychologist who studied more than 600 cases of claimed
reincarnation, painstakingly documented each one and chose just 20 for inclusion
in his book, Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation.
One of the most impressive cases is that of a young Indian girl, Shanti Devi,
who was born in Delhi in 1926. At the age of three, she began to recall details
of a former life in the town of Muttra, some eighty miles away. She said she had
married a cloth merchant, given birth to a son and died ten years later. People
in India already believe in reincarnation so Shanti was not scolded or ridiculed
as most American children are when they report similar memories. But Shanti went
on and on about this previous life, to the point that her frustrated parents
sought help. They were concerned that she might not ever release these old
memories so that she could live the life of a little girl.
Finally, when she was nine years old, her family wrote to her alleged former
husband, who then visited her home unannounced. He was immediately recognized by
little Shanti. Plans were then made for her to visit her former family, in hopes
that whatever business she had left uncompleted there, if completed, would free
the little girl to live her new life.
A committee was set up to witness her visit to Muttra. Although her alleged
former family was present, they stood back while other villagers masqueraded as
them. Nevertheless, Shanti ignored the imposters and correctly identified every
one of the family members. She then led the way to her former house, which she recognized
and, in fact, revealed that she had hidden money there. She pointed out the
hiding place, but it was empty: Her former husband admitted he had removed the
money.
The prestigious American Medical Association reviewed one
of Dr. Stevenson's earlier books, written on just ten meticulously investigated
cases of reincarnation specifically from India. In the review they said,
"In regard to reincarnation, he [Stevenson] has painstakingly and
unemotionally collected a detailed series of cases from India, cases in which the
evidence is difficult to explain on any other grounds."
How much proof is needed? We have a world history in which
reincarnation is accepted, specific examples which have been studied and verified
in all important points. If this was a murder trial, the suspect would have been
hung on less evidence. It is time to stop wondering if reincarnation occurs, and
get to the next step: figuring out how it occurs, and working out how our
lives should be affected by this knowledge.
References
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