Why Rebirth ?

Rebirth as a means of dispelling ignorance and provoking understanding, is the key to the continuity of this learning.To be born once is to open one's books, to be born many times is to undertake a course of instruction. Only through repeated births can there be growth and consolidation, the fulfillment of promise, the granting of spiritual significance to otherwise meaningless innovation.The greater the number or reincarnations - the better the individual's chances of understanding the plan behind the process. And as surely as birth follows death - human respect for life in all its forms advances with the developing awareness of our furthest beginnings

Reincarnation is as Natural as Breathing

There is nothing extraordinary about reincarnation.It's as natural as breathing and just as compatible with the increasing ebb and flow of the Universe. Unfortunately, our protracted alienation from primordial rhythms and our brainwashing by materialism's false assumption, cause Rebirth to be seen by many as a quaint indulgence, a corollary of wishful thinking held by the eccentric and the simple minded

Acknowledgement of Reincarnation brings Transformation

Yet consider the transformation of earthly existence were Reincarnation accepted into the soulstream of the global population as a guide by which to live.Acutely aware of reaping harvests of past deeds while simultaneously sowing the seeds of future lives, most people would behave very differently.Life on the planet would be overhauled and hugely for the better

Wars,crime,racism,nationalism and sexual chauvinism would be radically diminished.For who can harm or harbor prejudice against the kind of person one has been or will be, especially if retribution can follow in another life?. Doctors who strive to prolong life with the aid of every available artificial means would see themselves as sad clowns flaunting their ignorance of Cosmic renewal.Few would attempt either suicide or abortion.Care would be taken not to encourage the extinction of animal and plant species lest rungs be removed from the evolutionary ladder.And those who consign their corpses to graves of ice in hope of subsequent technological resuscitation would acknowledge they stand to inherit a new one free of charge

Acceptance of Reincarnatoin demands a complete overturning of prevailing attitudes inculcated by a civilization that has long overidentified with the body

Where is all this Evolution leading?

From Minerals to Plants to Animals to Humans? Just as a rock is brushed by swaying foliage, yet cannot divine its sensibility, so we are blindly rubbing shoulders with our future

That future lies in the development of superconsciousness - a state beyond the pull of bodily Reincarnation.It's conceivable that the denizens of this New Tomorrow of the mind will look upon humans in much the same way - hopefuly with greater compassion - that humans regard animals

Presumably,on some other plane of supersensible reality - Tomorrow is already here with the human race, even now, impaled like a butterfly specimen under its successor's gaze.That gaze would take in the interminable recurrence of the same old mistakes leading to the same old suffering. And yet, like the animal kingdom, the human race cannot be expected to evolve, of itself, into a state of perfection

Learning School - Earth

Progressive Stages of Development satisfy that requirement.The human race can be compared to a class in school that will never improve in overall performance,because those who learn their lessons move up to be replaced by others from a lower grade. The graduates,according to the discarnate Frederic Myers, a former Cambridge University classics professor who, after his death in 1901, communicated his experience to mediums in different parts of the world, gradually evolve through the higher planes, passing beyond matter and from to dwell 'not only outside of time,but outside of the Universe' and to become one with God

As far fetched as such celestial peregrinations might appear, they are surely no more impossible than the human procession from the mineral kingdom. Evolution will not be constrained by our narrow-minded image of ourselves

According to Sri Aurobindo, India's late Master Yogi

The soul is not bound by the formula of mental humanity - it did not begin with that and will not end with that

It had a prehuman past - it has a superhuman future

Modern Science

The findings of modern science support these claims that consciousness abides within all types of corporal envelopes.IBM scientist Marcel Vogel has shown through infrared photography that quartz crystals store and release energy, and he has also demonstated that crystalline growth can be modified by human thought patterns

Various experiments have shown that plants are 'living, breathing, communicating creatures endowed with the personality and attributes of soul

As for animals, their possession of mental and emotional faculties is self-evident, the nonphysical differences between the human and animal kingdom being intellectral rather than spiritual

At first glance, however, this progression of consciousness is hard to accept on sheer numerical grounds.The mind wrestles with an image of ,triliions of sand-grain souls competing among themselves for the eventual tenancy of a lone human body

Manly P.Hall

President Founder of the Philosophical Research Society

'The laws of Reincarnation and Karma make possible the constant progress of all living things.Not only does man grow, but the sticks, stones and stars grow with him.All are unfolding together, all life is growing up in space and toward space'

The existences and henceforth into the less plentiful bodies of animals and humans is explained by Manly P.Hall - president founder of the Philosophical Research Society based in Los Angeles.He argues that only the physical aspects of minerals,plants and animals are individualized, their entity and mind being collective.Whereas humans must grow separately, the types and species that comprise the lesser kingdoms develop through the evolution of group consciousness

The various natural kingdoms are linked by what Manly Hall calls pronounced 'transitorial forms'

Between the mineral and the plant there are lichens and mosses

Between the plant and the animal there are certain carnivorous plants as well as plants with elementary nervous systems

Between animals & human beings lies the anthropiods and

Between human beings and the next order stand the great initiates and teachers - the demigods of classical antiquity

Traditions,Myths,Belief-Systems & Experiences

Empedocles(490B.C. - 430 B.C.)

'Ere now have I been a youth and a maiden, a bush and a dimb fish in the sea.All things doth nature change, enwrapping souls in unfamiliar tunics of the flesh'

The Greeks

The Greek thinkers were similarly captivated by rebirth as an agent of human degeneration.While Plato explained the evolution of birds and animals by saying they arose from the deterioration of human souls

Pythagoras - Greek Philosopher & Mathematician

Was said to have exclaimed on hearing the yelping of a beaten dog: 'beat him no more! His soul is my friend's as I recognized when I heard his voice'

Plotinus - Founder of Neoplatonism

It was Plotinus, the founder of Neoplatonism, who, like Manu, dared to be most explicit about the kinds of bestial bodies that would result from human actions and desires

Those who sought only to gratify their lust and appetite pass into the bodies of lascivious and gluttonous animals

Those who have rule tyranically become Eagles

Those who have degraded their senses by disuse are compelled to vegetate in the plants.Those who have love music to excess and yet have lived pure lives, go into the bodies of melodious birds

Those who have spoken lightly of heavenly things, keeping their eyes always turned toward heaven, are changed into birds which always fly toward the upper air

He who has acquired civic virtues becomes a man - if he has not these virtues, he is transformed into a domestic animal, like the bee

Ovid - Roman Poet

In the first century before Christ, the Roman poet Ovid, put himself in the place of a victim of transmigration in penning his poem

Metamorphoses

I am ashamed to tell you, but I will tell - I had bristles sprouting on me.I could not speak,but only grunting sounds came out instead of words.I felt my mouth grow harder.I had a snout instead of a nose. And my face bent over to see the ground.My neck swelled up with great muscles and the hand that lifted the cup to my lips, made footprints on the ground

The Mystic Isaac Luria (1534-1572)

Author Ernst Muller writes in 'History of Jewish Mysticism' that the mystic Isaac Luria, was was said to recognize the souls of all he met. 'Looking at the forehead of a man he could tell at a glance from what particular source his soul was derived and the process of transmigration through which it had passed and what its present mission was on earth.He was able to tell men their past as well as predict their future, and to prescribe for them the rules of conduct calculated to make amends for their shortcomings in a previous existence'

Dr. Axel Munthe (1857-1949)

Though he lacked conscious knowledge of architecture, Swedish psychiatrist Dr.Axel Munthe, rebuild the temple of the Roman Emperor Tiberius on the Isle of Capri.Many believed that he was Tiberius reborn.English author Clare Sheridan wrote of Dr. Munte: 'he had the qualities and faults of Tiberius, his tyranny and kindliness...he might have been, and I believe he was, a reincarantion of the Imperator,drawn back to the scene of his past and doomed in this life to pay back an overburdened Karma'

Ancient Egypt

The Egyptian Book of the Dead

In ancient Egypt, magic spells from 'The Egyptian Book of the Dead' were buried with the newly deceased so they would be empowered to change themselves into 'whatever form they please'.The Egyptians believed they must spend a cycle of 3,000 years migrating from species to species before they were finally able to be reborn as human beings

This idea resurface among the Inuit,Dr.Hartley B.Alexander in his North American Mythology of Arcitic Tribes, tells how souls may be reborn as both human and beast ' and some have been known to run the whole gamut of the animal kingdom before returning to human shape

The Jewish Tradition of Transmigration

The unenviable fate of King Nebuchadnezzar is central to the Jewish tradition of transmigration.The book of Daniel (4:33) describes how the King ' was driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles' feathers and his nails were like birds' claws

The Kabala

The souls of the wicked were said to migrate into animal bodies

An adulterer, for example was destined to pass into the body of a stork as it was believed that storks punish adultery with death

Moreover, the mixing of various seeds and the crossbreeding of animals was prohibited so as not to cause suffering to the souls they contained

The Akashic Records

Seers and occultists have long talked about the Akashic Records as the indelible impressions left upon the Etheric substance of the Universe by everything that has ever happened.Edgar Cayce - US sleeping prophet, described in 1931, a typical OOBE (Out-Of-Body) journey, which gave him access to this warehouse in the sky

'I entered this temple and found in it a very large room, very much like a library.Here were the books of people's lives,for each person's activities were a matter of actual record, it seemed. I mereley had to pull down the record of the individual for whom I was seeking information.Far from being the sole preserve of great mystics, these Akashic Records, which Cayce said were 'to the mental world as the cinema is to the physical world' are open for inspection by anyone who is able to travel to the Astral Plane

J.H.Brennan says taht by an act of imagination it is possible for the individual to create an Astral Shell capable of interacting with a walk towards Cayce's library, visualizing the scene for no more than 10min daily for the first two weeks and thereafter, at least until complete identification if achieved, for no longer than 15min.The investigator's patience will be sorely tried as he is asked to do

1. For the first week, after relaxing the mind with closed eyes, visualize walking down a corridor towards a door.Clarify and add to the picture each day until the corridor takes on absolute familiarity 2. No earlier than a week later, when the corridor is as vivid as it can possibly be - picture opening the door and entering a massive library.Spend at least two weeks, preferably longer, building up minute detail of this library.Note the multitude of sections, the billions of bolumes on the shelves, the vast space involved.For in this collection is recorded every detail on every person who has ever lived

3. Attempt no short cuts, they will only ruin the project.Every possible detail must be assimilated before the vision is complete.When this happens, keep building and re-examining the picture for anogher week. Then walk to the section of the library which houses your life history and search the shelves for the volume that bears your name.Withdraw the book and read your Reincarnation history.Before acceptance, cross check all the resulting information - some of it visualized, some arising in pictur-image form - with known facts

Akashic Exploration may not always be so straightforward.Occultists Alice Bailey warned that fleeting glimpses of the Akashic film don't necessarily pertian to the viewer as much as the viewer would like to think they do.'This is not the case', she wrote ' any more than the people and activities seen out of any window in a big city reveal to the onlooker his own relatives, friends, and pursuits'. Certainly, only the most vigorous visualization can bring results.And even these results are suspect until proven sound

Edgar Cayce - The Sleeping Prophet

Edgar Cayce was the greatest American clairvoyant of the 20th century.His 'life' readings detected Karmic patterns, spanning hundreds,sometimes thousands of years.While using his trance powers principally for healing, Edgar Cayce, gave 2,500 'life' readings over the next twenty-one-years.Drawing on Akashic Records and the individual's unconscious mind, he described personal histories spanning many incarnations.The readings pointed strongly to the recurrent grouping of souls on Earth and detected ' karmic patterns' often tracing present infirmity to deeds or- lack of deeds - in Past Lives.Cayce believed each soul has subconscious access to characteritics and skills accumulated in previous lives while also being subject to the influence of lives ruled by negative emotions such as hate and fear

The sleeping prophet was bluntness itself.He once told a deaf person 'Then do not close your ears again to those who plead for aid' And a sufferer of tuberculosis of the spine was greeted with 'The enitity thwarted others and is meeting it now in himself' Again and again in readings given for children suffering from all kinds of afflictions,Cayce would sy 'This is karma, for both the parent and the child' The conventional conception of heredity was denied outright.When someone asked 'From which side of my family do I inherit most?' Cayce retorted 'You have inherited most from yourself, not from your family! The faily is only ariver through which the soul flows'

According to Cayce, the rapacious Conquistadors who stormed across Latin America, in the 16th century sufered for their slaughter and plunder by Reincarnating collectively in Spain in modern times.The cruelty they had unleashed against the Aztects and the Incas they vented against themselves retributively during the Spanish Civil War Similarly, those who participated in the destruction of Atlantis are now said to be on Earth in large numbers

Cayce declared ' Granting that Reincarncation is a fact, and that souls once occupied such and environ as Atlantis, and that these are now entering the Earth's affairs in their day as to bring destruction on themselves - can there be any wonder that they might make such like changes in the affairs of peoples and individuals today?

Almost half of the life readings , which trace a person's reincarnational history back to Atlantis, give data that can be verified and many, suspiciously, are linked with the lives of famous people.The Lord Jesus Christ (a number of children had been blessed by Him),Nero,Reubens and Caaptain Kidd, as well as a courtyard full of priestesses and regal persoanges, figure in the readings which show very little change of sex in successive incarnations

For all this, some readings were nothing short of astounding.In Many Mansions - Gina Cerminara tells how one of Cayce's visitors was informed he had been Barnett Seay, a Southern soldier in the Civil War, in his former life, He was told further that he had lived in Henrico County, Virginia, and that records pertaining to this former personality still existed.He set off for Henrico County to be redirected to the Virginia State HIstorical Library where many old registries had been relaocated.Pursuing the scent to the library's archives, he found a record of Barnett A.Seay who had enlisted in General Lee's army as a color-bearer in 1862, at the age of twenty-one

Cayce himself was said to have been last born in 1742 as John Bainbridge, and adventurer who ranged from Florida to the Canadian border involving himself in skirmishes with Indian tribes.But he also recalled other incarnations - including one as a priest name Ra-Ta who lived in ancient Egypt.He's on record as predicting that he will return to Earth in 1998, possibly as 'a liberator of the world'

The East

The ancient wisdom of the East, believes that Divine Spirit permeates all matter.This Spiritual Power that manifests as units of consciousness, embarks on an immense journey of progressive embodiment.Incarnation after incarnation as various minerals is followed by innumerable lives as plants followed by successive births and deaths as animals. When at last the human form is attained, the relentless cycle won't be stilled.Time rolls ever onward,fertilizing unto eternity the seeds of rebirth

Eastern Sages

What Eastern Sages had to say about the ascending consciousness of the Great Chain of Being was echoed by the 'Barddas of Celtic antiquity', a document which expounded a scheme of evolution in which the monad or soul passes through every phase of material embodiment before entering the human kingdom

Tibetans

According to Heinrich Harrer in 'Seven Years in Tibet' - a fly falling into a cup of tea is seen as a catastrophe by Tibetans.The fly 'must at all costs be saved from drowning, as it may be the reincarnation of one's dead grandmother. If at a picnic and an ant crawls up one's clothes, it is gently picked up and set down

Buddhists

The ancient Hindus - who believed there were 8,400,000 different kinds of births culminating in the human race, were not alone in anticipating lower lives.The Buddhists held a popular doctrine of rebirth in subhuman realms which may well have led them to institute the first hospitals for the care of animals.Initiates and adepts of the faith, however, regard this teaching to by symbolic rather than literal, believing that karmic hardship can be experienced more profitably in renewed human form.They would rather not accept, at face value, the warning in The Tibetan Book of the Dead - that when a bestial birth is imminent, the soul ' will see through a mist,rock caves and holes in the ground and straw huts'

The Dalai Lama

Spiritual Leader

The 14th Dalai Lama, self-exiled ruler of 6,000,000 Tibetans, is the most famus personification of rebirth in the world today.Each Dalai Lama - a Mongolian expression meaning 'greatest teacher' is understood to be not only his predecessor reborn but also the reincarnation of the entire line of Tibetan god-kings traceable to the year 1391

Whenever a Dalai lama dies, an exhaustive search is mounted for the infant reincarnation of the dead leader who,as the embodiment of Chenrizeg, the Buddhist god of grace,is considered to ruch back to earth in order to help the human race.Far from being a masquerade orchestrated by Tibetan king-makers to placate a public wiht metaphysical inclinations, the search incorporates stringent recognition tests not unlike those imployed by Western reincarnation researchers.While lesser candidates are easily disqualified by these trails, eyewitnesses have testified to the remarkable responses they elicit from the real Dalai Lama

The present Dalai Lama, whose personal name is Tenzin Gyatso, was born on June 6,1935.He was found after search groups had fanned out eastwards from Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, in response to mystical hints that the new ruler was to be found in the direction of the rising sun.First of all, the head of the late Dalai Lama (who sat in state after his death in 1933) was found mysteriously turned to the East from the traditional southerly position.When the state oracle was consulted about this development, the monk seer, deep in trance, flung a white scarf in an easterly direction

Praying incessantly for further guidance, the Tibetan regent went on a pilgrimage to the lake of Chos Khorgyal, as all who peer into its depths are said to be able to see something of the future.The regent's gaze was met by a vision of a three-storeyed temple with a turquoise roof standing close to a house with carved gables and blue eaves.Details of the vision were written down and kept secret by the search parties which, in 1937, set out to look for the infant king in much the same fashion as the wise men of the East had ventured in search of the baby Jesus.Tibetans at large, knowing the recovery of their monarch was vital to the national interest, were eager for news of the mission's progress. To be without the Dalai Lama was to be an orphan nation

One search group, disheartened after months of arduous and fruitless wandering on horseback, had penetrated deep into Chinese territory.In their panniers were objects that had belong to the 13th Dalai Lama.Although several boys had been questioned along the way regarding these objects,none had come close enough in their answers to meet divine requirements.But as they entered the village of Takster in the Chinese province of Chinghai, the searchers' spirits revived dramatically at the sight of a three-storeyed temple standing not far from a family dwelling.The scene was just as the vision had described.Excitedly, the leader of the party exchanged clothes with a servant, a customary ploy during these all-important searches so that the royal inquiry could proceed in humble places without attracting unwanted attention.Entering the kitchen of the 'house of the blue coloured caves' the leader was greeted by a 2-year-old who demanded the rosary draped around this neck.The rosary had belonged to the 13th Dalai Lama and the disguised leader promised to hand hand it over if the boy could tell him who he was.The child replied 'Seraga' which , in the local dialect, means 'a lama of Lhasa's Sera monastery' The boy proceeded to name correctly each member of the search party.And, from an assortment of articles gathered to mislead, he identified, without the least self-consciousness, more rosaries, a drum and a walking stick that had belonged to the previous Dalai Lama.Futhermore, the boy's body was found to bear all the marks of a true incarnation of Chenrizeg - large, noticeable ears and moles placed on his trunk in precise accordance with traditon.The boy's parents turned out to be pure Tibetan, even though they lived in an area that had been annexed by China for 27 years.Satisfied they had located the reborn Dalai Lama, the party arranged for the future ruler of Tibet to be escorted back to Lhasa.The journey however,could not be undertaken before the researchers agreed to pay the blackmailing provincial governor 300,000 Chinese yuan - for their provincial governor

When the Chinese invaded Tibet in 1959, the Dalai Lama fled to India with many other Tibetans.He is still based there today,with headquaters at Dharamsala in the Himalayas, but spends much time visiting other Buddhist countries as well as Western nations. In his memoirs 'My Land and My People' - the Dalai Lama summed up his understanding of the rebirth principle

The immediate source of a body is that of its parents.But physical matter cannot produce mind, nor mind matter.The immediate source of a mind must, therefore, be a mind which existed before the conception took place, the mind have a continuity from a previous mind, This we hold to prove the existence of a past life

Although the Dalai Lama has only the haziest of recollections of being discovered by the royal search party back in 1937, he does remember recoginizing people and places known in Lhasa by his predecessor.And he chooses to interpret the continued oppression of Tibet by its Chinese conquerors in terms of national Karma engendred in another age 'The aggression must have come because we did something bad' the Dalai Lama told the New York Times in November 1967

India

In India, the swan - 'hamsa in Sanskrit - symbolizes the liberated soul.The holiest of sages are known by the title paramahamsa, which literally means 'supreme swan'

Hindus of Antiquity

The Laws of Manu

Once human, is it possible to be reborn into lesser lives? THe Hindus of antiquity believed that people lacking in virtue would surely be reincarnated as beasts and the dread Laws of Manu spelled out precisely how this involution could occur

Manu, a legendary legislator and saint who lived more than two thousand years ago, decreed that each person's life was influenced by one of three overriding qualities,goodness, activity or darkness.Those endowed with darkness, which he defined as the craving after sensual pleasure, were destined to be reborn as some form of animal, insect or plant. 'In consequence of attachement to the senses, and in consequence of the nonperformance of their duties, fools, the lowest of men, reach the vilest of births.' he declared. He gave pointed examples of the specific deeds that lead to particular bodies of the lower kingdom:

Thieves of grain - became rats

Thieves of honey - stinging insects

Thieves of milk - crows

Thieves of meat - vultures

The 'violator' of a guru's bed - enters a hundred times the forms of grasses,shrubs and creepers

A woman who is 'disloyal' to her husband - is born in the womb of a jackal

The list of punishments goes on and on

Modern Hindus

Modern Hindus tend not to take the 'Laws of Manu' quite so literally,preferring to believe that base appetites of inclinations, rather than individual souls, are reincarnated in animal form.They arque that as neither plants nor animals are capable of degenerating into lesser species,human beings,though they might lapse into a savage state,must never be less than human

Brahmin Priests

In the old days, Brahmin Priests, found the Law a great help in enforcing caste practices, there was nothing quite like the threat of subhuman rebirth to encourage obedience

Jains of India

No Eastern religion developed a wider world view around the idea of reincarantion than that of the Jains of India who teach that everyone passes through literally millions of earth,water,plant,fire,wind,insect,animal and human incarnations The water incarnations alone - each of which could last from less than 1 second - 7,000 years - range across seas,lakes,rivers,rains,dew,hoarfrost,snow,hail,ice,clouds and fog.Believing that every jot of matter accommodates living spirits trapped by their own misdirected will in the cruel round of rebirth, the Jains adopted the philosophy of 'ahimsa', or noninjury, towards all living things.Their axaggerated regard for life is maintained to this very day and devout Jains are expecxted to follow ahimsa to its minutest detail, with no concessions, e.g. they may not kill any grubs found in vegetation

Western tourists in Idia are puzzled by the tedious progress of white-garbed Jain monks who, wearing masks to prevent murderous inhalations, are careful to whisk away all possible insects from their path.The most pious Jains, decline to travel by car because of the havoc wreaked on insect life and they arrange, when ascending mountains designated as shrines, to be carried aloft in sedan chairs by Hindu bearers whose regard for life doesn't extend to the meticulous preservation of the gnat, grub and beetle population

Vegetarianism

Vegetarism rests on the principle that living creatures infused with divine spirit should not be consumed by human beings

South American & African Tribes

Deep-rooted in the lore of African & South American tribes is the belief that one's enemies can reincarnate in the bodies of wild beasts.In Latin America, the most feared form adopted by reborn adversaries is the South American tiger or jaguar

Shamans of the Cherokee Indians

Devised by ingenious way to pardon the tribe's hunters for killing animals for food.After assigning to every animal a definite lifeterm which could not be curtailed by violent means, the Shamans ruled that, should any animal die prematurely, the death is only temporary.The body would be resurrected immediately from spilled blood drops to renew its existence until the close of the predestined period

The Hurons & Ottawa Indians

They never burned their fish bones for the same reason, fearing they would antagonize the fish bones for the same reason,fearing they would antagonize the fish souls and drive away from their nets the embodied fish that remained

The Mohave Indians

Traditionally believe that their dead are reincarnated in a series of animal forms until at last, they disappear

Waroa Tribe of Venezuela

Native belief has not always required human souls to migrage into animal bodies.In many parts of the world, animals are thought to reincarnate as their own kind just as regularly.In fact, when food is at a premium, the pressure is on for human beings to do all they can do to hasten this process.To this day, fish bones are thrust into the pole walls and plam-leaf thatch of homes belonging to members of the Waroa tribe of Venezuela.This architectural contribution is made out of respect and anticipation, for it is believed that from the old bones new fish will be born

Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia

To ensure their salmon supplies remain plentiful, the Kwakiutl Indians take great care to throw the bones and offal of gutted fish back into the sea so that the reincarnating salmon soul is able to reanimate them.Setting fire to the bones, they strongly believe, would eliminate the possibility of rebirth

Garcilasso De La Vega - Peruvian Historian

He wrote if jaguar-worshipping tribes whose members would offer themselves unresistingly on enountering the beast.Speaking as if they were these jaguars reborn, cannibals have been known to explain their fondness for human flesh in terms of tigerish apetites

Explorer - Hans Staden

Held as a slave among the Tupinambi of the Brazilian coast, many years ago, described a grim visit to his Indian master

He had before him a great basket of human flesh, and was busy gnawing a bone.He put it in my mouth and asked if I did not wish to eat.I said to him 'there is harldy a wild animal that will eat its kind,hown then shall I eat human flesh? 'Then he, resuming his meal said

The Zulus of Southern Africa i

They accepted that their dead pass, according to rank,into various kinds of serpents and lizards

Tribespeople in the Zambezi Region

Tradition among the tribespeople in the Zambezi region proclaimed that a man could select his own soul-animal for the next life by swallowing maggots from the putrefying flesh of his chosen species

Bagesu & Wanyamwesi Tribes of East Africa

A common practise among the these tribes of East Africa was to throw out their dead to be devoured by hyenas.Consequently, the cry of the hyena in the evening was always fraught with meaning, it was the voice of the last person who had died in the neighbourhood

The Betsileo of Madagascar

They tied nobles' corpses to the central pillar of the family hut and allowed them to putrefy - believed that serpents called 'fanany' were formed in a pot placed beneath the dead body.The soul-bearing infant 'fanany' was carried to the tomb after the human remains had been buried and, several months later, a full-grown python emerged to be treated like royalty. These soulsof ordinary members of the Betsileo were assumed to pass into crocodiles while any undesirables in the tribe languished as eels

The Eskimos of the Bering Strait

Believing that seals, walrus and whales remain attached to their bladders after death,practised a ritual to speed up the rebirth of game so essential to their survival.Hunters carefully removed and preserved the bladders of all the sea beasts they killed, presenting them at a solemn annual festival.After being honoured with dances and offerings of food, the bladders were taken outside and thrust through the ice into the frigid water.By returning the bladders to the sea, the tribesmen imagined that the souls of animals, flattered by such gracious treatment, would return willingly in new bodies for a fresh round of spearing and harpooning

Jean Silbelius - Composer

Once said that 'millions of years ago, in my previous incarantions, I must have been related to swans or wild geese - because I can still feel that affinity

The Rosicrucians

The Rosicrucians, as mystical order of indeteminately ancient origin, have long held that every mineral contains an 'eager fire' or 'jewel of light' - the essence of evolutionary development.The worldwide Rosicrucian Order - with 250,000 members in more than 180 countires, has preserved and developed more than eighty different types of exercises for the restoration of Past-Life Memory.The underlying motive of these mental work-outs is that of the Rosicrucian movement itself, to awaken Cosmic Consciousness in the individual. Taking various approaches to meditation and guided visualization, the exercises are directed at answering the question - How can I be more effective, more creative and more whole today?

Rosicrucians stress that the value of the Reincarnational experience is determinded by its usefulness during this lifetime 'The most important point to remember' notes the Rosicrucian Digest of October 1979, is that at the individual level, Reincarnation becomes not a question of proof or faith, but of personal experiences that give meaning and dimension to our present life

Dorothy Maclean

The Findhorn Community

Her psychic & remarkable ability to converse with plants, was one of the major inspirations behind the spectacular Findhorn Community in the north of Scotland where enormous flowers and vegetables flourised on land that had harbored only gorse bushes and spiky grass, has the same perception of the group soul concept.It became apparent that what was coming through was not a spirit attached to one particular pea plant or tomato bush, but rather a spirit which was the plan, the mold, and architect of all peas on Earth

Past-Life Regression

Confirmation of our animal heritage - can be found not only in Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, but also in e histories of Past-Life Therapists, many of whom find that patients, if carried back far enough in an altered state of consciousness, will feel and see themselves in animal bodies

Dr. Morris Netherton - Regression Therapist

States, that whenever he delves into the earliest source of a patient's particular problem - that patients 'almost always' describes an animal wound or death.Lying on the couch in Netherton's office, people commonly regress to lives as rodents, shrews, insects and every so often, prehistoric creatures

Joe Keeton - Regression Therapist

Many of his patients do likewise.Among the most convincing re-enactments he's observed have been those of a woman who saw herself covered in reddish-brown fur and lying under a boulder

Another who envisaged herself picking insects from a dead tree trunk

And a builder who told of being close to the ground and covered in scales

Dr. Helen Wamback - Regression Therapist

Although she hasn't tried to retrieve data from animal lives, some of her subjects have found themselves on four legs whtether they like it or not.They look down and see their furry little paws

Dr. Stanislav Grof's LSD Experiments

Participants in Dr.Grof's experiments, have also reported identification with various ancestors.These feelings of identity usually apply to other mamals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and various species of fish.Grof says that his subjects can have 'illuminating insight into what it feels like when a snake is hungry, when a turtle is sexually excited, or when a salmon breathes through its gills'. Less frequently, plant and mineral existences are related.Grof's subjects have experience themselves as germinating seed, as roots reaching out for nourishment and as the consciousness of such material as diamond, granite and gold.'Similar experiences', he says, 'can reach even the microworld and depict the dynamic structure of the atoms'

English & Scottish Ballads

Early English & Scottish Ballads rhapsodize about the souls of men and women migrating into various animals, birds and plants, and Breton folklore speaks of the spirits of fishermen and sailors materializing in the bodies of white seagulls.Seagulls themselves are remarkably eloquent on the subject of reincarnation as Richard Bach illustrates in his ever-popular novel Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Sullivan the gull is saying

'Do you have any idea how many lives we must have gone through before wer even got the first idea that there is more to life than eating, or fighting, or power in the Flock? A thousand lives,Jon, ten thousand! And then another hundred lives until we began to learn that there is such a thing as perfection, and another hundered again to get the idea that our purpose for living is to find that perfection and show it forth.The same rule holds for us now, of course, we choose our next world through what we learn in this one'

Mrs. Josephine Ralst

Mrs. Ralston had watched a starling swoop down to attend her daughter's wedding service.Later she declared ' I have never been more certain of anything in my life.That starling was my husband, George.George Ralston died two year earlier, had often told his wife 'I believe in reincarnation.If I come back to Earth it will be as a bird'

The starling ont only percedd beside Mrs. Ralson for most of the service, but also fluttered to join the bride and groom at the altar and later followed the wedding party into the vestry for the signing of the register.As the congregation dispersed, the bird flew to a tree outside the church, chirped louldy and flew away

Mary Alling Aber

'One of the most painful sights on the Earth, is to see a man followed by a dog which contains the soul of his own father, a woman driving a horse whose soul is that of her mother, and children tormenting animal pets whose souls have been human relatives, perhaps elder brothers & sisters'

Rosemary Brown - Author

For Years Rosemary Brown - author of 'Unfinished Symphonies' wrote down music dictated to her by the spirits of dead composers from Bach to Debussy.When Franz Liszt was asked why she, having no musical knowledge, should have been chosen for the task, he replied that her services had been volunteered 'in an earlier life'.He also did his best to explain the process of reincarnation 'What happens is rather like the putting out of a fresh shoot on a tree or a plant' On Earth, you think of yourselves as complete beings.But actually only part of you has namifested through the physical body and brain.The rest is still in spirit,but is linked and one with you'

Desider Mockry-Meszaros - Hungarian Artist

This Hungarian Artist painted prehistoric scenes which he claimed to remember from remote incarnations.He was quoted in 1930 saying 'The memory of the mammoth I used to fear then has come back to me crystal clear.I knew the face of the Earth when it was barely cooled off from the volcanic age.And memories of a still earlier incarnation as a dweller in the underworld of another planet supply me with subjects for my brush and pencil '

J. Paul Getty

The late oil billionaire and art collector, J.Paul Getty, was rumored to have fancied himself as the Roman emperor Hadrian reincarnated

Xenoglossy

People who speak spontaneously in an unknown, perhaps extinct foreign language are compelling witnesses for the reincarnation hypothesis.This rare, involuntary talent is known as Xenoglossy - a term coined by the Nobel prize winning French Physiologist and Psychical Researcher Dr.Charles Richet and stems from the Greek xeno - meaning strange or foreign and glossa - meaning tongue.Never lacking in dramatic impact, xenoglossy suggests the outpouring of subconscious memory

In a case reported in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research - 1980, Dr.Ian Stevenson and Dr.Satwant Pasricha argue that Uttara Huddar, a single woman living in west central India who suddenly changed personality and started speaking 19th-century Bengali, was probably giving vent to memories of a former life

Uttara (32), whose native tongue was Marathi, became Sharada in 1974 - a shy, married woman with a taste for Bengali clothes, food and devotional songs.Uttara and her family had to communicate with gestures until speakers of Bengali could be located.While Sharada was poorly educated and subservient - as might be expected of a housewife of West Bengal in the early 1800's, Uttara was outgoing and highly educated,having obtained a master's degree in English and public administration.Uttara couldn't remember what took place during her times as Sharada who was utterly lost in the modern world, being a stranger to cars,trains and modern appliances as well as Uttara's locality and family to whom she referred in Bengali as 'these people' . Futhermore,Sharada, whose appearances lasted for days or weeks at a time, seemed unaware of anything that followed as snake bite on the toe which appeared to have ended her life at the age of twenty-two.Sharada's linguistic style (her abillity to carry out conversations in Bengali is defined as 'responsive xenoglossy' was devoid of all modern terms which have crept into the language since the industrial revolution.The researchers establisahed that there was very little chance that Uttara could have inherited or acquired through normal channels her sudden fluent knowledgge of Bengali.And they found genealogical records bearing the names of family corresponding to information given to Sharada.An 1872 property agreement between relatives named by Sharada was brought to light

Although possession by a discarnate entity cannot be ruled out, much of the evidence points to the persistence of Past-Life memory.Uttara had a phobia about snakes as a child and her mother suffered nighmares, when pregnant with Uttara, of being bitten on the toe by a snake.In summing up the case, Stevenson and Pasricha declared 'We cannot say how Uttara obtained these memories of a previous life, but the feature of responsive xenoglossy tells strongly against the interpretation that she acquired them by extrasensory perception.We are, therefore, entitled to conjecture, at least provisionally, that Sharada was a previous incarantion of the person now indentified as Uttara

In Nov 1930,the New York Evening Post reported that a four year old girl living in Warsaw was able to speak Gaelic even though her parents conversed only in Polish

Dr. Morris Netherton

More recently, the popularity of hypnotic regression has encouraged a greater incidence of xenoglossy.Normally English-speaking Californians have surprised themselves by talking in all kinds of languages, including jungle dialects, while lying on Dr.Morris Netherton's couch. Most extraordinary of all was the case of a 11 year old boy who was taped for 11 minutes as he spoke in a Chinese dialect.The tape was taken to an elderly Chinese professor at the Department of Oriental Studies at the University of California, who confirmed, much to his amazement, that the boy was reciting a text from a forbidden religion of ancient China. Netherton said that: 'With some people there is no language at all.All I get are grunts and groans and I get them to translate

Thorwald Dethlefsen - Regression Therapist

Thorwald Dethlefsen reports that while conducting a regression in German, he can actually extract certain answers in the 'original language'. But some hypnotherapists would rather avoid altogether Xenoglossy's confusing exoticism

Dr. Joel Whitton

Toronto - Psychiatrist,Neurophysiologist & Past Life Therapist

Dr. Joel Whitton of Toronto whose anonymous subject - a psychologist with a responsible position in the assessement and treatment of children with learning and behavioral disorders - remembered under hypnosis two ancient languages that,presumably, he had spoken during previous incarantions.The first language was Norsk, the precursor of modern Icelandic.In deep trance, he remembered a life as a raiding warrior in a small Viking army about the year A.D. 1000 and heard the voice of Thor, his assumed previous personality, respond to questions about his ship and life at sea.He then wrote down a phonetic rendering of these responses which were later examined independently by specialists fluent in Icelandic and Norwegian.Several words and phrases were identified, most of them relating to the sea and ships.The psychologist also described living as a young man in Mesopotamia (part of Persia) in A.D.625 and proceded to write in the language of the day (Xenography rather than xenoglossy). Samples of his spidery, childlike script were verified by Dr.Idrahim Pourhadi of the Near East Section of Washington Library of Congress of being Sassanid Pahlavi - a form of writing that has not been used since A.D.651 and bears no relation to present-day Iranian

Professor Ian Currie

Canada's only University Professor on Empirical Evidence for Reincarnation

Ian Currie adopted a purely academic approach to his subject - but he had reckoned without Pat-Life reprisals. After writing 'You cannot Die' - a best-selling documentation of immortality, Currie developed a personal ailment which left him in nagging discomfort at the height of the book's American promotion during the summer of 1979.For the next three years, doctors could do nothing for him, attributring the physical symptom to psychological causes.And this, in turn, set Currie wondering about the hidden influence of Past Lives.So he approached Toronto's Dr.Joel Whitton, psychiatrist and Past-Life Therapist, in the hope of ridding himself of the troublesome symptom

Regular weekly hypnotherapy sessions with Whitton enabled Currie to tap 7 Past-Life personalities ranging from a builder in ancient Egypt to a 1`7th-century nun in the Low Countries - before making contact, earlier in 1983, with what he describves as the 'key-life' - a priest/astronomer living in Central America over 1,000years ago.The priest Currie said, did not live up to his vow of celibacy, and this led him, eventually to stab a rival lover to death.Since examining this Past Life through the veil of a light hypnotic trance, Currie has experienced a gradual diminishing of the symptom as well as a growing awareness of reasons for certain depressive, authoritarian and ascetic personality characteristics.Currie - a former skeptic, who came to believe in Reincarantion after assessing the wealth of documented evidence - said that ''The Past-Life Images' carry a strong sense of emotianal and intellectual conviction

Currie feels that his interest in occult matters can be traced to this Central American existence where he failed to wield his power and influence responsibly. 'I blew it' he confessed.'Now I am trying to advance knowledge of Life After Death in a more positive way'. In 4 of the lives contacted so far in his continuing Past-Life inventory, Currie's wife, has figured prominently, though not necessarily as marriage partner.Other relatives and friends have also made appearances

The regressions have convinced Currie that his waning ailment is rooted in guild repressed for centuries.He has also been assured of long arm of Karmic Retribution.For after witnessing his knife murder in Central America - all those years ago, he saw himself tortured, mutilated and dispatched by a knife blade under similar circumstances while living as an Indian in hte American south west - before the Spanish conquest

Deja Vu

Reflecting common experience, literary archives are replete with deja vu episodes,although it happens seldom, it happens to almost all of us - an intestinal shock of recognition when encountering, ostensibly for the first time, a particular scene or individual. Deja Vu (already seen) belies the presumed originality of all life experinces and suggests the arousal of subconscious memories from other lives

General George Patton

'Blood & Guts' Patton, America's irascible hero of World War ll, was convinced he had lived berfore and backed up his claim with a wartime deja vu experience at the French town of Langres. Patton was assuming his first command and a French liaison officer offered to show him around the town's fine Roman ruins. 'You don't have to' Patton retorted. 'I know this place, I know it well' Although the general had never been there before, he directed his driver around the ruins, pointing out the old amphitheatre, the drill ground, the forum and the temples of Mars and Apollo.Besides laying claim to having fought wiht Caesar's legions in a previous existence.Patton maintained he had Reincarnated many times as a warrior.This conviction is forcibly expressed in a verse from his poem Through a Glass Darkly in 1944 - the year before his death

So as through a glass and darkly

The age-long strife I see Where I fought in many guises

Many names - but always me !

Past Life Artistry

Isolde Bauer - Past Life Artist

For Past-Life artist, Isolde Bauer - the incarnations are in the eye.Staring into a person's eyes, be they alive or gazing from a photograph, she enters a trance with the aid of Yoga breathing.She then concentrates on the images the trance produces, images of her subject's previous existernce.Gradually, the mind pictures, faces from the past, are translated to paper or canvas with her left hand. This in itself, is extraordinary because Isolde is normally right-handed

German-born Isolde, who now lives in Fresno,California, was originally a portrait painter who counted politicians and business people among her clientele.But in 1974 an OOBE (Out-of-Body Vision Experience) - while undergoing surgery - radically altered her way of working.She said: 'I felt as if a veil had been lifted from my eyes.Everything was bright and sharp.Colours were incredibly beautiful. When I looked at people , I could see the psychic energy of their Auras.I began having flashes of Past-Life Images flickering across the faces of those around me.When I told my friends, what I was seeing, they kept asking me to describe their Past Lives.I decided that I would paint what I was seeing

A Past-Life reading accompanies each portrait which is executed in monochromatic black or brown, charcoal,oils,pastels,acrylics or which ever medium the subjects prefer.Isolde works from photographs in the quiet surroundings of her home.She insists that the eyes are the key. 'When I get the eyes done, the way I want them,past-life images begin to reveal themselves.The modern day face changes for a split second.In many ways it is an automatic process - I merely get things started and then the painting constructs itself'

Isolde maintains that most of her subjects - who includes such meta-physical heavyweights as Dick Sutphen,Hans Holzer and Peter Hurkos - are gripped with a sense of familiarity on seeing their Past-Life grouping

Dr. Ronald Wong Jue of Fullerton - Californian Clinical Psychologist

The ability to see faces in split-second transformation is not confined to Isolde and her Past-Life artistry.Ronald Wond Jue of California, tends to see people in Past-Life images while working to relieve psychosomatic illness. 'I focus on the energy of my clients and the images comes',says Jue.It's an inner movie in my mind.Sometimes, my clients share the image, they go into a regression.It's an intuitive approach

Jo Kirby - British Hypnotherapist

67 year old British hypnotherapist will never forget the awakening of her clairvoyant powers one day in June 1980.She was travelling on the London subway and her head was reeling from the sudden transformation in the people seated nearby.A pretty girl in a short dress - became a tramp with a chin of grey stubble. A plump middle-aged housewife, was changed into a much young woman in a nun's habit.A young man, dressed casually in T-shirt and jeans, appeared as a last-century naval officer dressed in a uniform with brass buttons 'It was like a fancy dress party' Joe recalls.'And it ended up driving me mad.After a lot of meditation, I eventually found a way of shutting off the images'

The Population Conundrum

Marcia Moore & Mark Douglas

According to Marcia Moore & Mark Douglas in Reincarnation: Key to Immortality - souls are now cycling in and out of incarnation at such a great rate that their rapid transit is causing a veritabel traffic jam of entities commuting between the planes.As a result, we have confusion and congestion at Earth's heir port of incoming souls'

Critics of Rebirth like nothing better than to point at the fast-rising world population and exclaim ' If Reincarnations is a fact, where do all these 'new' people come from?' Certainly the global population doubled from A.D.25 to 1500, doubled again by 1800, and has more than quadrupled sinced then.But the skeptics fail to take into account the length of the Between-life or Bardo State, which the evidence from hypnosis suggests, has been steadily diminishing as world change has accelerated.This alone could create the rise in population.It might well be that when there was little change from generation to generation entities chose longer breaks between incarnations, whereas today's rapid advances act as a magnet for souls ever hungry for new experiences

Dr. Edith Fiore

Dr.Edith Fiore's hypnotherapy casebook tells her that anyone under forty years of age has probably lived before during this century, while many people are experiencing their third or fourth life since 1900. Dr. Helen Wambach, whose subjects have reported increasingly shorter periods out of incarnation as they made pointed references to impending global destuction, says of the current burgeoning population: 'In my own mind, I liken it the case of a musical gathering onstage for the finale.' One of Dr. Wambach's studies, involving 1,100 people who were invited to locate at random three incarnations from ten time periods scattered across 4,000 years, reproduced the estimated upward population curve of the Earth.The hypnotized subjects apparently demonstrated that increasingly faster reincarantions have boosted population figures over the last few centuries

Dr. Annie Besant - Theosophist

Leading Theosophist Dr.Annie Besant noted in 1893 that the answer to the vexing population growth question lies in the number of unbodily egos always being 'enormously greater' than those incarnate. She wrote:

'The globe is as a small hall in a large town,drawing the audiences that enter it from the total population.It may be at one time half empty,at another crowded without any change in the total population of the town'

Not to be left out of the debate are the supposed additions to and subtractions from the human race - entities graduating to human bodies from the animal kingdom and the rebirth of highly evolved humans on a higher plane.Joe Keeton is quick to point out that as the human population rises, the animal population goes down. 'Where have all those pieces of life force gone? He asks.' Is that where we get such human beings as concentration camp guards?' Dr. Ian Stevenson notes that plausible estimates of the total number of people who have lived on earth range from 69 billion - 96 billion.This would leave each member of the human race - currently estimated at 4,8 billion people - with approximately 15-20 past lives

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