Michiel
Hegener is a Dutch journalist who has kept his personal memories of
reincarnation to himself for many years. He immediately sensed , and is now in
a position to confirm from his own and his interviewees’ experience, that
openly expressing a belief in reincarnation can damage one’s career. His book Leven op herhaling (in Dutch: “Living in
repeat mode”) started as a journalistic search into the truth of reincarnation
which the leading Rotterdam daily NRC refused to publish.
The writer
looks at the existing proof for reincarnation. This proof is mainly the
spontaneous testimony of children, the testimony of adults brought into trance
by regression therapists, and the procedures of the Tibetan Tulkus and others
who consciously deal with reincarnation. He does not hesitate to map out their
weak points, but concludes nonetheless that what remains is still very
persuasive: memories from past lives are a fact, and reincarnation is this
fact’s most credible explanation.
Proof
Persuasive
proof is for instance provided by the case of James Feininger, an American child
of Christian parents who at first set out to disprove his reincarnation
“fantasies”. He reported many facts, which were all verified, about the life of
fighter pilot James Huston, shot down by the Japanese in World War 2. His
parents Bruce and Andrea Feininger devoted the book Soul Survivor to the long and tortuous process of verification and
their conversion to reincarnation belief. Many cases of children reporting past
lives have been studied by Ian Stevenson and his successor Jim Tucker, and by
the Indian woman researcher Satwant Pasricha. Adult cases of regression have
been tested and largely or fully verified by the Australian researcher Peter
Ramster, such as the case of the Australian housewife Gwen McDonald who reports
having lived in 18th-century Britain, by the Icelandic researcher
Elendur Haraldsson, and a few others. US police inspector Robert Snow
documented how he discovered and fully verified how he lived in the 19th
century as the painter Carroll Beckwith.
No two
people remember the same life, which would have been an argument against
reincarnation and for a lesser paranormal explanation such as telepathy. Two
large samples of adults both show an almost equal division of past lives as man
or as woman, which is an argument for their testimonies’ veracity.
Skeptics
The writer
also cites some Tulkus (consciously reincarnating Lamas) such as Gyalwang Karmapa, Dutch regression therapist
Lowie de Bie, and researcher Titus Rivas. Finally, he crosses swords with the
skeptics Steve Hales (student of reincarnation researcher Robert Almeder) and
Rob Nanninga.
In
particular, he reports rather negatively on an article on reincarnation research
by the leading Dutch skeptic Rob Nanninga. Skeptics have this knee-jerk
reaction of alleging fraud. They are paranoids living in a world full of
deceivers eager for money. Indeed, they are very money-oriented. They will say,
for instance, about natural diets that “they don’t make you lighter, except
your wallet”. From my experience in the New Age world, I have found there are
far more deluded people than outright frauds, who don’t believe what they say
but make others believe it. At any rate, the allegation of fraud is a serious
affair, and should only be made if you can provide positive proof, not as an
automatic alternative when a real explanation of unexplained facts is lacking.
But the
good side of the hostile attitude of the skeptics and of the Western
establishment is that nothing but the best evidence is good enough. The sloppy
evidence common among internet Hindus, who claim to have “proven” reincarnation
where it turns out that from their armchairs they have only argued that it is
more rational and just than Christianity’s eternal afterlife (which plays upon
the fond expectation that the world is just after all), will not do. Here, the
anomalies are so strong that a explanation other than reincarnation becomes
very unlikely. The interpretation of a karmic connection between lives, already
disputed and practically undiscussed in this book, is much harder to prove, and
is at any rate very different from the mere fact that we reincarnate. The
Hindu-Buddhist belief in karmic reincarnation is now perhaps the best-known
version of the reincarnation theory in the West, but is by no means universal.
Some peoples believe that reincarnation is desirable, not something that must
be ended (as Buddhists believe), or that it is simply a fact of life.
One thing
that strikes me, as an Orientalist and decennia-long student of Hindu-Buddhist
traditions involving reincarnation, is that this book, like every regression
therapist or reincarnation researcher that I have heard lecture or with whom I
have talked, treats reincarnation without encountering any fact that points to
karma. There seems to be a continuity between lives, e.g. birthmarks are at the
spot where the earlier incarnation suffered wounds, and an obvious tendency is
reported to be reborn in roughly the same neighbourhood, family or
circumstances. But there seems to be no evidence of reward or punishment, of
being born blind as a punishment for past sins.
There is
only little reference to existing ethnic beliefs about reincarnation. The
Tibetan Tulkus are merely cited for their practice of “recognizing” new
incarnations, not for their doctrines. Even the selection of interesting cases
strongly discriminates against people from nations that already have a widespread
belief in reincarnation. This is done on purpose: the numerous cases reported
in India would be shot down by skeptics as cases of encouragement by the
environment, which applauds recognized cases of reincarnations as prestigious
or at least as welcome. In the West, and especially in atheist, Muslim and
militantly Christian circles, claims of reincarnation are resolutely
disbelieved, so cases are reported which were actually discovered by people who
were at first out to disprove reincarnation.
Implications
Among the
implications of reincarnation are a far greater attention to children’s rights.
We are our children or grandchildren. Thus, children should not be given
lifelong bodily interventions such as circumcision. They should not be forced
into a religion. Of course, if reincarnation is recognized as a fact, it will
be very harmful for the religions that deny it. So, this research has an
inherent bias against Christianity and Islam, unless it concludes negatively.
Meanwhile,
the belief in reincarnation should also stimulate interreligious tolerance.
Those against whom we now fight on the streets (or otherwise hate), might be a
community to which we once belonged ourselves. In India, 19 cases of
reincarnation in a sample of 387 turned out to have changed religion between
lives. But again, such a scenario is anything but religiously neutral: it
confirms a widespread (though not a defining) Hindu belief and refutes the
official Muslim position.
Another
implication is ecology. We must leave the earth in good condition to future
generations, because we ourselves are the future generations. A related issue
is animal welfare, to whom Hindus and Jains pay so much attention:. That cow
you see on the streets, or in the meadow, may (at least according to some
reincarnation researchers) be the temporary abode of a soul normally incarnated
in humans.
The writer
is inclined to the oft-heard position that we shall never fully know, but that
is to be doubted. Isaac Newton formulated the law of gravity, which became just
another line in textbooks, then died in 1727. Two centuries later, people were
applying his finding by flying in airplanes. Later, they set foot on the moon,
and now satellites form an important and irreplaceable part of our
telecommunications. If reincarnation proves to be true, our gaining of knowledge
will be accelerated by more generous funding (the main problem so far) and a
larger focus on this line of research. Even without those, we will soon
investigate such questions as: what is the relationship between successive
lives (maybe there is karma after all)? Is reincarnation in non-human life
forms possible? What is the beginning of this cycle and how does it end? Know
the truth, and the truth shall set you free.
Michiel Hegener: Leven
op herhaling. Bewijzen voor reïncarnatie, Ten Have 2012.
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