Reincarnation: From Skeptic to Believer...

I have a teeny-tiny crush on Brian Weiss, MD. Perhaps it is his unbelievable mind: he is a graduate of Columbia University and Yale Medical School. He is also the Chairman Emeritus of Psychiatry at the Mount Sinai Medical Centre in Miami.

Or perhaps we had an epic love affair in another life.

You see, Brian is one of the leading researchers in the study of reincarnation. He did not set out to explore this controversial topic, he had a thriving psychiatric practice and only stumbled on the possibility of past lives when one of his clients began to regress in a hypnotherapy session. I think that is one of my favourite things about him: he truly struggled with moving from a resistant scientifically-trained mind to becoming a believer. Even though he is drawn to sharing the concepts of past lives with others, he still retains his practice and maintains a balance between seeking the answers to spiritual questions and being highly functional in the real world.

I had the opportunity to meet him in November at a conference in Phoenix. I was struck by his relaxed speaking style, as well as his subtle sense of humour. In his session, he regressed the crowd to a past life using hypnotic suggestions. He warned us that only 60-70% of the people would achieve a hypnotic state, it had taken him many tries before hypnotic regression worked for him.

I had an experience. I was picking firewood in a forest with my brother some time in the 1400's. I don't know whether I visited a past life or had a vivid imaginary fantasy, but I enjoyed the vision and gained some insight into my life. Dr. Weiss addressed the issue of imagination vs. real experience by saying the only way to know for sure is if there are historically verifiable details or if you start to speak another language in which you have no prior life experience. There are documented cases of both, but it was unlikely that each person in Phoenix session would be able to verify their experience.

He addressed the skeptics of reincarnation, citing examples of all the other cultures that commonly believe in reincarnation. Our Western reluctance to believe in reincarnation actually puts us in the minority compared to the rest of the world.

He also acknowledged the difficulty of quantifying this phenomena, but believes that more research is needed, rather than dismissing the idea altogether. To those who question the growing world population as being evidence against reincarnation (where are all these extra souls coming from?) he points to evidence of other dimensions and claims that Earth is a common destination for souls to learn life lessons, but there are many other places in which our souls can visit.

There are some neat experiments with virtual reality that show how easy it is to trick the mind into believing that it belongs to a different body. Researchers have been able to truly convince a person that a mannequin's body was his/her own. They have also measured stress reactions when a knife was held to a pseudo-body rather than the subjects own.

In addition to taking Dr. Weiss' workshop at the conference, I have read two of his books, "Many Lives, Many Masters" and "Messages from the Masters". In Many Lives, he references scientific studies of reincarnation such as the works of Dr. Ian Stevenson, who documented over 2000 examples of children with reincarnation-like experiences. He also cites research by Edgar Mitchell, Professor C.J. Ducasse, Dr. Martin Ebon, Dr. Helen Wambach, Dr. Gertrude Schmeidler, Dr. Frederick Lenz, and Dr. Edith Fiore.

I am interested in some of the research from other countries and cultures that have scientific support for studying reincarnation. I would also be interested to know if Dr. Weiss had made any progress in verifying the historical accuracy of the regressions for any of his clients.

I am intrigued by this idea and intend to research it further. Whether I am a poor girl picking firewood in a remote forest, or the queen of Brian's heart three lives ago, I've grown to enjoy the idea of reincarnation.

Entanglement.....What?

We all know that we leave fingerprints on everything we touch.... did you know that you leave a bit of yourself with every person you meet?

I have been very interested in "Quantum Entanglement" lately. It's possible that we are always connected to the people we encounter, even if we aren't aware of it.

Scientists have been studying electrons and have discovered that when they interact with each other ONCE they are always able to send messages back and forth, even if they are no longer anywhere near each other. It doesn't seem to matter how long they have been apart or the distance that is between them. The researchers have been looking for a way that these messages are being passed physically, but based on the speed of the communication it seems that the connection is happening in another dimension. Sounds like science fiction, I know.

They are just discovering that this concept is probably happening in the real world too (not just on the atomic scale). In the November 2009 issue of Scientific American, they share, "...you don't see quantum effects in everyday life ...because those events are camouflaged by their own sheer complexity. They are there if you know how to look, and physicists have been realizing that they show up in the macroscopic world more than they thought." (pg. 25).

So we can watch it happen on the small scale and some pretty smart physicists think it is probably happening in the real world: It seems that we are always connected in some way to the people we interact with.....despite distance and time. This information also points to the existence of other dimensions or the possibility of alternative ways to communicate with eachother.

I am looking for people measuring things in the physical world that could prove concepts from the spiritual world. What does this mean for the philosophy of the World Soul, the idea that there is a spirit that animates all matter in the world? How does this relate to the ideas of synchronicity or coincidence? What are the implications of this research for Cleve Backster's work (see below)?

Perhaps nothing....but I am enjoying thinking about it.

How Cleve Backster Changed the Way I View the World

Cleve Backster is a guy who has dedicated his life to truth. As a former CIA interrogation specialist, he’s one of the reasons that you know what a polygraph (lie detector) is. His school Backster School of Lie Detection is the generally recognized leader in teaching polygraph techniques in North America.

It’s a little intimidating meeting a guy like that....you really want to make sure you’re feeling truthful that day.

Stephen and I went to meet Mr. Backster to learn more about his research. On the night of February 2nd, 1966, Cleve spontaneously put his polygraph equipment on the leaves of a dracaena plant. After some experimentation, he found that the plant “screamed” when he had the intention of burning it’s leaf. If he pretended to take action, there was no reaction. If he was actually going to act, the sensors on his equipment went crazy.

This began forty years of experimentation on living organisms with polygraphs and EEG machines, direct combat with the traditional scientific community and an ongoing battle of sharing the outcomes of his research with the world. The book “Primary Perception: Biocommunication with Plants, Living Food, and Human Cells” is Backster’s first hand account of this amazing journey. His research can also be found in “The Secret Life of Plants” and “The Secret Life of Your Cells”.

Backster’s research did not stop with plants. He also measured the reactions of living human cells. What he found was that the cells in the lab would react at the exact same time that their former body reacted to emotional situations... 12 miles away. It seems that we are always connected to our living cells.

Reading his research drastically changed the way that I view the world. It appears that he has been able to measure a “connection” that is outside of the accepted properties of the physical world. So what is he measuring?

Despite ongoing pain from his knees, Mr. Backster was very welcoming and shared a lot of personal insights about his work. His peaceful manner showed that his search for truth had wielded some answers for him. He also has a great sense of humour and is quite a conversationalist.

In our meeting, Cleve patiently addressed his critics with slight exasperation. He welcomed the opportunity to recreate his findings with other scientists and researchers using the controls that he has learned are the most effective. He points to other experiments that support his research and other countries in which his work has been accepted because it fits more closely with their cultural beliefs. I recommend buying a copy of "Primary Perception" as he refutes each negative review of his work critic by critic (and in quite an entertaining manner).

After a tour of his lab, both Stephen and I agreed with Cleve: more people in the world, particularly people that are open to untraditional ideas, need to hear about his research.

The Wisdom of Brother John

I looked away when I first saw Brother John. I didn’t want him to ask me for money or to make me feel uncomfortable about our differences. I just kept walking and talking with Stephen, acting like he wasn’t there.

As we were passing, Brother John quietly called out, “God Blesses you and your family.” I walked about twenty steps and stopped in my tracks. I had to talk to this guy. Stephen thought I was crazy when I went running back with money.

It was Stephen who kept us standing listening to the wisdom of Brother John for just over an hour. When Brother John began to speak and share his ideas, I thought that I had made a mistake and that he probably had a severe mental problem. Stephen started asking John questions about his meaning and it was like he reached clarity...he began to tell the most entertaining and rational stories about his encounters with police, family, death and God.

He didn’t attach any science to his sermon, but he did share some real truths. Stephen and I both took away a new perspective on life and spirituality from this unlikely preacher. Thank you Brother John.

The Creation of Science of the Soul

Four years ago if you would have asked me my spiritual preference I would have answered a flat-out atheist. I didn’t start out that way: my Christian mother made sure that I was in church weekly while my atheist father made sure that I wasn’t baptized until I was old enough to choose my spirituality. I truly believed that God could read my thoughts and that kept me in line until I became a rebellious teenager and decided that the only one in charge of my destiny was me. I dabbled in tarot cards, runes and ouija boards as a party trick to delight my friends and to make my mother as uncomfortable as possible. When I got my history degree I could only see the problems with the institution of religion, not all the good that they had done over the centuries.

It wasn’t until I had my first child that I started to believe. I had an intense awakening that I couldn’t understand. All I knew was that there was something there, something big, and that I better start looking into it before I went crazy. I looked into every religion that I could find and always found pieces and explanations that I liked, but nothing that was an exact fit. It was at the same time that I started reading science magazines, websites and old text books and suddenly things began to click for me. I could see that there were people measuring things in the physical world that proved ideas from the spiritual world. The more I learned, the more I wanted to share the information with others. Thus, Science of the Soul.