Life after Death? Experiential Themes in Afterlife Narratives

A talk, with slides by Fiona Bowie, given at the Emmanuel Centre, University of Leeds, on 20th March 2015. The event was a public symposium organised by Dr Mikel Burley as part of the Immortality and Human Finitude project, funded by the John Templeton Foundation. The title of the day was Life after Death? Perspectives from Philosophy, Theology, Anthropology and Literature. The other speakers were Revd Dr Michael Armstrong, Dr Mikel Burley, Jack Hunter and Dr Matthew Treherne. The sessions were chaired by Dr Mikel Burley, Dr Tasia Scrutton, Professor Robin Le Poidevin, and Dr Fiona Bowie. 

Abstract: In this talk I discuss a methodology for studying the afterlife that bridges both scepticism based on a positive materialism and methodological agnosticism on the one hand, and complete relativism and uncritical acceptance on the other. It is based on cognitive, empathetic engagement, and can be seen as a kind of thought experiment in which the ethnographer acts 'as if' what she or she learns is true. I then sketch out some of the areas in which universal experiences of the supernatural or non-ordinary reality (from the perspective of Western science)  seem to underly religious and popular belief systems. This includes near-death experiences, shamanism and mediumship, reincarnation and after-death contacts.

Audio recording of talk

Slides

Immortality and Human Finitude

Anthropology and the Paranormal

From 13^th – 17^th October 2013 the Centre for Theory and Research at the Esalen Institute (CTR), in Big Sur, California, invited group of scholars to discuss the contribution that social and cultural anthropology, and related disciplines, can make to our understanding of the paranormal. The Esalen Institute was founded in 1962 by Michael Murphy and Richard Price, and is in the vanguard of the human potential movement (Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion, Jeffrey J. Kripal, University of Chicago Press, 2007). Michael Murphy, director of the Centre for Theory and Research, as well as being a most gracious host, took part in our discussions. Michael Murphy’s vision is one of transforming society through dialogue and personal growth. He has the courage to ‘think big’ and encourages others to do the same. Esalen’s stunning setting on California’s Pacific coast, with its abundance of wildlife, beautiful grounds and natural hot springs, provide a wonderful backdrop to the work carried out there. This includes a wide range of personal development workshops, holistic therapies, and symposia for people from the worlds of politics, economics and academia.

 Anthropology & the Paranormal symposium participants

From left to right, back row: Michael Murphy, Susan Greenwood, Jane Hartford, Jeffrey Kripal, Raphael Locke, David Hufford, Charlie Emmons, Jack Hunter, Eddie Bullard, Stanley Krippner, Ed Kelly, Loriliai Biernacki. Middle row: Edie Turner, Tanya Luhrmann, Ann Taves, Deb Frost. Front row: Geoffrey Samuel, Antonia Mills, Fiona Bowie, Sam Yau, Frank Poletti, Paul Stoller, Gregory Shushan.




Before we met email discussions between invited participants got underway on the use of the term ‘paranormal’.  The word is commonly used in a Western setting but less useful when discussing non-Western societies where the boundaries of what is considered normal may vary considerably. The symposium was built on a long-running series of discussions that had been looking at evidence for the survival of consciousness from a variety of scientific and humanistic perspectives (known as SURSEM or the Survival Seminar). One outcome from these meetings was the publication in 2007 of The Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21^st Century, edited by Edward and Emily Kelly a.o. A second volume is in preparation. Around half the participants at our symposium had been involved in the SURSEM discussions. The inspiration for the Anthropology and the Paranormal symposium was the journal Paranthropology edited by Jack Hunter. Jack, along with Jeffrey Kripal and David Hufford, were responsible for putting together the participants for this symposium, with Frank Poletti in charge of practical arrangements. Our discussions also benefited from the presence of the Chair of the CTR board, Sam Yau, and the symposium funder, Deb Frost. For some sessions we were also joined by Michael’s PA, Jane Hartford, and a young member of the Esalen workforce, Lauren, who won a ballot to join our symposium as community representative.

Common Themes

I identified three common, overlapping themes that emerged from our discussions, with different emphases, to some extent along disciplinary lines. These can be summarised as epistemological, hermeneutical and morphological concerns.

1)    Epistemological concerns: ‘We know that there is something real going on’.

David Hufford coined the term ‘Experiential Source Hypothesis’ (ESH) for phenomena that appear to manifest across time and culture, as a result of personal experience. In Hufford’s case the key experience was sleep paralysis accompanied by the sound of someone approaching, the sensation of being suffocated and the sense of an evil presence. Many years after his own experience he conducted fieldwork in Newfoundland and found that what he had regarded as an unpleasant, private, and for all he knew unique experience, was culturally recognised as visitations by the ‘old hag’ (work published under the title, The Terror that Comes in the Night). The key features of this experience turned out to be universal, although the interpretation of them varies from one culture to another. Another example of the experiential source hypothesis was given by Gregory Shushan, who has studied near death experiences (NDEs), across unrelated cultures. Shushan found that he could reconstruct the key features of a NDE, as widely recognised in the writings of Bruce Greyson (who produced the so-called Greyson Scale), and Raymond Moody’s nine elements of a NDE, from his sources, without reference to these more recent American studies. The main characteristics of a near death experience appear to be universal and relate to actual individual experience, not easily explained by cultural programming, expectation or neurology.

The work done by the SURSEM group, and set out in The Irreducible Mind, provided a clear platform from which we could assert the reality of the paranormal, or anomalous experiences, and it was not necessary to go over that ground again.

The epistemological concerns expressed within the group took the character of:

(a) Problems of audience and translation. The dominant materialist paradigm in the academy and elsewhere in Western societies tends to lead to self-censorship and produces a deep-seated anxiety around finding terminology that is acceptable to the gatekeepers of this hegemonic discourse, while not wishing to deny the reality of spirits or paranormal phenomena. In published works most scholars, including those present, are therefore parsimonious with their statements, seeing their work as the ‘thin end of the wedge’, as Geoffrey Samuel put it, in a hostile academic environment. Many scholars in this field refuse to state their conclusions in public (such as Ian Stevenson with his work on reincarnation at the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia) lest it damage their reputation for scientific balance.

(b) ‘We don’t know what it is, or how to explain it’. There were various levels of engagement, knowledge and experience relating to the issues discussed. Some participants had many years experience as healers, shamans, witches and mediums, (as well as out-of-body travellers, lucid dreamers, practitioners of meditation and followers of various spiritual paths), drawing on many different cultural idioms and traditions. Others were newer to the field and at an earlier exploratory stage, or used a less experience-near form of knowing. There was not surprisingly a gradient from those who were testing initial hypotheses to those who had a deep personal knowledge of, and context from which to explain, the ‘paranormal’ (the term was not one that was generally adopted when referring to a non-Western context). 

(c)  Following from this, some discussions returned to questions of what we mean by terms such as ‘real’ and ‘know’. The role of personal knowledge based on direct experience was a sub-theme that ran throughout our discussions, without being fully explored. In fact the extent of experience-near knowledge within the group did not fully emerge until it was time to part at the end of the symposium. This may well reflect the caution that academics are used to exercising when it comes to revealing personal experiences and orientations, even within a ‘safe space’ such as that created at Esalen.

(d) Each contributor had around 30 minutes to introduce themselves and to give an informal summary of their work, followed by an hour for discussion (papers were distributed ahead of the symposium). In almost all cases participants described an ‘Ah-ha’ moment that persuaded them that what might be described as paranormal phenomena are real. For the social anthropologists this often takes place in a non-Western setting – as when Edie Turner saw a gray plasma blob leave an Ndembu woman during an Ihamba healing ritual, and Paul Stoller’s encounter with sorcery in Niger. Stanley Krippner described numerous personal encounters with the paranormal power of shamans and mediums. For Jack Hunter in his study of a physical mediumship circle it was personally losing control of his body whilst in a light trance that persuaded him that there is at the very least a real somatic element to physical mediumship. This moment of personal knowing could be more prosaic, but equally life-changing for the researcher. Such was the case with Ed Kelly’s encounter with Bill Delmore, a research subject at the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia, who consistently scored 35% or, 10% over chance, guessing one of four items on a random probability machine. For Fiona Bowie it was the recognition of the similarity in certain descriptions of the afterlife and how it operates in a wide variety of unrelated settings and cultures that led to a deeper engagement with the topic. The ‘ah-ha’ can therefore be cognitive and intellectual as well as somatic or sensory.

2)    Hermeneutical or interpretive questions

There was general agreement that studies in this field of research need to incorporate the perspective or standpoint of both researcher/s and subjects, and  be as inclusive as possible. Each issue needs to be examined from as many dimensions as one can find.  Another way of putting this is the necessity of using both left and right brain, to be open to phenomena that challenge our existing presuppositions. Ann Taves for example, in her work on Mormonism’s founding golden plates, revealed to Joseph Smith, was concerned to find a way of talking about the plates that overcame a dualistic true/false or believer/detractor dichotomy. Rafael Locke focused on what makes a good researcher, and the need for those involved in laboratory psi experiments to take account of cultural factors that they may not be aware of. Eddie Bullard tried to hold a middle ground in the contentious and divided field of ufology. Charlie Emmons and Susan Greenwood grappled with first-person research, in which subjective knowing and ‘going native’ are central to the enterprise but potentially compromising at the same time. BUT, it was clear that we all have our ‘boggle thresholds’ (such as one UFO contactee’s encounter with a giant ant in Eddie Bullard’s case), and we need to be aware of our personal boundaries and how we react to them. It is only then that we can come up with new interpretations and understandings of challenging phenomena. The process is essentially dynamic and dialogical.

3)    Morphological discussions, i.e. ‘What is it that we know?’

This is where careful, descriptive ethnographic work comes to the fore, with analysis and interpretation following rather than preceding the ethnographic process. Although this direction of movement (from practice to theory) is central to most social and cultural anthropology, it is often problematic when faced with necessity of coming up with hypotheses and premature results in grant applications, based on a model of science or quantitative social science, in which hypothesis testing and theory form the basis of subsequent research, rather than arising from the empirical investigation. Within this arena, some of the research presented focused on sociological questions such as ‘who’, ‘why’, ‘what’, ‘when’, i.e. the social context and its actors. Other research and subsequent discussions were more concerned with the phenomenological content of the experience (while not ignoring contextual questions). These tended to be somatic and often deeply personal experiences that opened the researcher to new understandings of their ethnographic material, and their own path in life. In different ways these interests were reflected in Tanya Luhrmann’s work on prayer among Evangelical Christians, Geoffrey Samuel and Loriliai Biernacki’s deep engagement with Buddhist and Hindu religious practices, and Susan Greenwood’s cultivation of magical consciousness.  For Antonia Mills, working with native people’s in British Columbia, the experience of one of her children being recognised as a reincarnation of a member of the group she was studying, and her subsequent own ‘memories’ of a previous life as a member of one of these groups, transformed her understanding of reincarnation among these peoples, as well as informing her understanding of her own life trajectory. The importance of story telling, another sub-theme, identified as a central form in which knowledge about the ‘paranormal’ is disseminated, was introduced by Jeff Kripal. It was demonstrated by some wonderful formal and informal story telling throughout the symposium by a number of colleagues (most notably in an evening of paranormal tales around the fireside – a kind of academics’ karaoke!).

These fascinating, sometime challenging, and often humorous, discussions tended to flow around and across each other, weaving a colourful tapestry. They provided a platform from which to continue our various explorations but did not of themselves provide a unified vision of a way forward. It is in the nature of Esalen’s symposia that relationships and ideas nurtured here are likely to be maintained and developed. Several of the participants, for example, will be attending the 6th Exploring the Extraordinary conference in Gettysburg, PA, from 21^st-23^rd March 2014, hosted by Charlie Emmons (all are welcome!).

Snake healing ceremony

After the official discussions had ended, Rafael Locke invited those who were still at Esalen (and who could be out of bed before 7am) to take part in an Australian Aboriginal snake healing ritual on the lawn outside Murphy house. (Those up early enough got to see a full moon set over the Pacific Ocean, a wonderful counterbalance to the spectacular sunsets we had enjoyed each day). Rafael is a shamanic healer as well as a cultural anthropologist, and he started by telling us one of the founding dreamtime myths of the formation of the land and first creatures in Australia. It included a spider with her egg-sack of spiderlings, who crossed the land in the stomach of a python, creating the landscape and its physical features as they travelled towards the centre. At a certain point the spiderlings matured and burst out of the egg-sack. Finding themselves in the darkness of the snake’s stomach they ate their way through the stomach lining until they reached the light of the outside world. They were then scattered by the wind to form the creatures of the air, earth and water. The snake was wounded by their activity but not fatally, and after resting recovered. She sloughed her skin, which was given life to become her companion, and together the snakes became powerful healers who will come when summoned. I saw our symposium participants a little like the spiderlings, struggling to reach maturity and then to fight their way through the walls of ignorance, fear and doubt towards the light that is the birthright of every human being. Each one, like the different creatures who were formed from the spiderlings, has a different and unique role. The institutions through which we fight our way may be wounded, but can also be renewed and find a healing power that can be used for the renewal of society. This might seem rather a utopian vision but it is consistent with Esalen’s mission to renew and transform society through dialogue, and through connection with the earth and one another.

Paul Stoller summed up the mood of the symposium with his post-Esalen farewell: ‘The Songhay people have a lovely custom at farewells. They never say ‘goodbye’. Instead they say kala ni kaya which means, “until your return”. Looking forward to our returns’.

Women with a mission: Finding purpose through past and present lives

The Psychic Life of Muriel, The Lady Dowding: An Autobiography. Formerly published under the title Beauty Without Cruelty. The Theosophical Publishing House: Wheaton, IL., Madras, London. Quest edition (1981) pp.272, photographic plates. ISBN 0-8356-0564-7.

Bound by Destiny: a past life journey to the present by Kathleen Ross. Balboa Press – A Division of Hay House Books: Bloomington, IN. (2011) pp.288. ISBN 978-1-4525-4271-3. $19.99

These books, published thirty years apart, describe the authors’ quests to discover their destiny and fulfil their life’s purpose. Although Muriel Dowding and Kathleen Ross come from different social and cultural backgrounds they share many beliefs drawn from the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century esoteric traditions. In Muriel Dowding’s case, the influence of Theosophy, Spiritualism and the White Eagle Lodge are acknowledged. As was often the case these sat relatively easily within a broad Christian heritage and background. The notion that we come into this life within a web of relationships that have a past as well as present history, and that we have a particular lesson or lessons to learn and a mission to fulfil in each lifetime, is apparent in both works. There are however marked differences in style. Muriel Dowding (1908-1993) is discrete when it comes to personal details of those other than herself, and while she hints at difficulties and disagreements, in particular opposition to her marriage to Hugh Dowding, she does not name the protagonists. Kathleen Ross’s work, as indicated below, comes more into the ‘tell it all’ category.

Muriel Dowding rather delightfully describes seeing fairies as a child, which ‘seemed to be of a substance similar to that of a soap-bubble; semi-transparent and of beautiful colours. They came in different sizes and during the time my parents lived in London I used to see them in Kensington Gardens’ (p.12). As is so often the case with children with psychic abilities, she did not realise that not everyone saw them. As Muriel’s mother was also psychic and had esoteric interests, Muriel was not ridiculed for the ability to see what she later, through Theosophical studies, came to know as ‘elementals’.

Muriel’s life, while outwardly comfortable, was far from easy or stable. Her parents’ relationship broke up when she was still young and she spent a period in hiding, moving from place to place, until discovered by private detectives paid for by her father. Her mother lost custody of Muriel and her sister, although her sister was allowed to return to their mother due to her poor health. Nominally in her father’s custody, Muriel was brought up by a kindly and well-to-do childless couple their parents had met on holiday. After leaving school she was given the choice to go to finishing school and be presented at court, or to return to her mother and live in relatively humble circumstances. She chose the latter, and claimed that much of what she was and became she owed to her mother.

Muriel was married at an early age to a dashing airman, Max Whiting, somewhat to her own surprise, as since childhood she had had a recurrent dream of an older man who would comfort her nightmares. ‘He was a figure in khaki, a soldier, and somehow I knew his that his name was Hugh’ (p.31). The nightmares she came to believe could have been fragments of earlier lives, and they faded as she grew older, but the soldier in khaki remained with her. From an early age she was convinced that he was to be her husband in this life.

Hugh and Muriel Dowding

Max and Muriel had a son, David, but after nine years of marriage Max, a pilot in bomber command during the Second World War, was declared missing in action. It was the need to achieve some certitude as to whether Max was dead or alive (despite several experiences that told her that he was in fact very much alive, and protecting her, but from the ‘other side’), that led eventually to Muriel’s meeting with Hugh Dowding. A famous and somewhat controversial figure, Dowding had been widowed many years before and had recently retired from the RAF as Air Chief Marshall. From 1936-1940 Hugh Dowding had been in charge of Fighter Command, and it was the brilliance of his tactics that are generally credited with Britain’s outnumbered and outclassed fighter pilots winning the decisive Second World War Battle of Britain. Lord Dowding had become interested in spiritualism as a result of his experiences with the families of missing and killed airmen, and was involved in ‘rescue circles’ that sought to help those who had suffered sudden and violent deaths to move into the spirit world. After reading Dowding’s book, Many Mansions, which set out his views on life after death, Muriel’s father-in-law suggested that Muriel write to him. Lord Dowding invited Muriel to lunch at his London club, and when she first got a chance to look at him properly she realised that ‘He was the person I had known as a little girl, the figure in khaki who calmed me after my nightmares and promised that we would marry… ‘(p.87). Much to her embarrassment she gasped ‘Hugh’, and then retreated embarrassed at her over familiarity. Fortunately Hugh was charmed, and they were eventually united in a deeply compatible and happy marriage.

     Through various mediums, intuitions and circumstances, Muriel was aware of being prepared for some mission or work, but it was only after her marriage to Hugh Dowding, and with his support, that it really came into focus. Her life-long love for animals and espousal of causes such as the Anti-Vivisection Movement led to the development of a company, Beauty Without Cruelty, which aimed to provide positive alternatives to clothes and cosmetics produced through animal cruelty. She travelled and spoke, organised and lobbied, and had a considerable influence on animal welfare nationally and internationally. The book contains several tributes from colleagues and friends, which make it clear the extent to which Muriel overcame her natural shyness, fear of flying, and poor health (following a riding accident in her youth) in order to promote the causes about which she felt so passionately.

Kathleen Ross was born in Canada, and describes herself as ‘one of those ex-flower children who have tried just about everything in the search for that nebulous nirvana’ (p.1). In some respects her search provides a journey through the eclectic religious landscape that has been a feature of Euro-American life for the past half century. The Transcendental Meditation techniques of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, which Ross first learned in 1975, have evidently played an important role in her life. She also admits to having taken up Yoga, absorbed Self-help literature, and taken an interest in psychic phenomena. The starting point for the book is none of these familiar features of modern religiosity. It was past-life regression that unlocked what seemed to be visions and memories of previous lives and, key to the present story, previous loves. To be more precise, a relationship with one lover or soul-mate with whom Kathleen felt she had shared many lives. In some of these past lives they were siblings, or master and apprentice, but in most a similar pattern emerged. Kathleen played the part of relatively powerless, usually female, sexual partner to a man who loved her deeply, but who was unable to fully commit to her. In many lives this was due to a parallel commitment to another woman (or less often a man), who had some kind of hold over him. The narrative of the book interweaves the meeting and struggles of Kathleen and this lover/soul-mate in her current life, with past life encounters involving many of the same characters. In order to identify the dramatis personae they are given the same initial for their first name in each life. The message is that unless we learn to deal with certain patterns of behaviour and tendencies in our character, they will continue to repeat themselves. This is karma not as destiny, but as a force of habit. Understanding the patterns is not enough in itself. It takes determination and courage not to repeat our mistakes in one life after another, and to move forward in a way that it true to our higher self.

The voice of the higher self, given the name Ezekiel by Ross, is expressed through a short excerpt at the beginning of each chapter. Although not stated explicitly, the implication is that Kathleen receives these messages directly rather than through a third party, although the process is not actually described. She is a little vague as to the identity of ‘Ezekiel’, who is described as being possibly an angel, spirit guide or holy spirit, as well as her higher self. The terminology or exact source is clearly less important to Ross than the content of the messages, which often take up themes of personal choice and responsibility, and of life as a school of spiritual development. On page 42, for instance, Ezekiel takes up themes familiar to those who have read Michael Newton’s accounts of Interlife regression (see my review on this website) and other similar sources:

As an evolved human being you decide the journey you are to follow on Earth. Before you enter the physical body, you construct a blueprint for your life. You choose where you will be born, who your parents will be and all the lessons you need to learn. … It is all planned.

I found Bound by Destiny a riveting read, but also voyeuristic at times. Ross’s alcoholic husband and her lover’s possessive wife are not spared in this life or in previous ones. We do not hear their side of the story, and there is none of Muriel Dowding’s polite discretion. It is very much the perspective of Ross herself that dominates. By using diary entries and letters along with a narrative account of her current life, we get deeply personal view, although whether these texts are imaginative narratives or verbatim accounts is not clear. The publicity surrounding the book describes it as ‘a metaphysical novel based on a true story’ and it is left to the reader to decide whether the cast are closer to fictional characters or real people.

The use of past-life stories raises interesting questions as to the boundedness of the individual. For Ross, past life memories (which sometimes appear to be ‘seen’ or shared by others) clearly provide a rich source of material from which to work on her present life dilemmas. The characters are both the same and not the same person. She recognizes emotional patterns that provide a thread through many lives, and which may explain why people so often respond to situations in the ways they do. Whether this knowledge is empowering is less obvious. At an intuitive level, the idea that we respond to some people not just because of common interests, or chemical attraction (or dislike them for similar reasons), but also because of a ‘past history’ strikes me as plausible. We may feel at ease with virtual strangers, or wary of someone for no apparent reason, feel a deep connection with others, or visceral distrust. No doubt there are chemical and other physiological analogues to these reactions, but they can be hard to explain in rational terms. The title of the book may, however, be a little fatalistic to do it justice. We are not bound by our past, whether in this life or past lives. Our future depends on choices made in the present, and there is always room for creativity, agency and new beginnings. As this book itself demonstrates, the past is material with which we work, not a destiny to which we are bound. A determination to work for the good of others and not just for one’s self, as Muriel Dowding’s life so amply illustrates, is probably the surest way to live a fulfilled life without regrets, whatever the struggles and lessons along the way.

Notes on Abortion

Abortion can be a painful and emotive topic. Religious teachings, secular beliefs, emotional and psychological factors, lead to strongly held views. I don't wish to make any claims about the veracity or facticity of these notes, but to present a composite picture of what the issues might be from an Afterlife perspective. I draw on a range of sources, primarily accounts from recently deceased souls communicated telepathically, clairvoyantly or through automatic writing, from those on earth accessing information via hypnotic regression or as a result of a NDE. While there is no proof that any or all of the accounts are more than the product of the imaginations of those concerned, they are internally consistent. Evidential clues are often given. These include things like a person under hypnosis giving accounts of conversations, and the emotions that accompanied them, that took place in their presence before or shortly after birth, never again alluded to but verified by the mother. This suggests a mature consciousness in the unborn or newly born infant, highly aware of his or her surroundings and able to access more than the immediate sensory environment.

1. Birth is preplanned, and in most cases the soul/spirit has been through the process before, on earth or elsewhere. The soul here refers to the accumulated experience and personality built up over many lives, and periods of growth and reflection between incarnations on the astral and mental planes. The spirit is what is sometimes referred to in Theosophy and other esoteric sources as the Higher Self, Causal Self, Over Soul, or Buddha Nature. Whatever the term the implication is that we have a core of being that pre-exists incarnation. All sources agree that it is of the same nature as the Supreme Being from whom all things come. At some point the soul (or group soul, but that is to digress too far at present) reunites with the Higher Self or spirit, although both are always present.
2. Both soul and spirit wrap themselves in layers of denser matter or vibrations - acquiring a mental body (the realm of the mind and imagination), an astral body (the source of emotion), an etheric body (an envelope for the physical that gives it vitality), and finally uniting these with the physical body. This is referred to as a downward descent through a tunnel before entering the physical with a jolt.
3. More experienced souls might wish to enter at or near conception or in the first trimester. This gives them time to feel their way into the growing baby, help align with him or her, help make brain connections and help the mother. Less experienced souls are more likely to enter later in pregnancy and pass the time in a semi-slumber.
4. The soul does not reside permanently in its host until the umbilical cord is cut. Prior to that time it will move freely between the growing foetus, its immediate physical environment and the astral plane. After birth, travel outside the body is restricted, in most if not all instances, to periods of sleep.
5. Souls choose their parents and life circumstances, with the help of their guardians and other advanced souls, in order to fulfil a particular life plan. They will almost certainly have incarnated with some of their immediate circle before.
6. Life is a school or opportunity for experience and growth on all levels. The final goal is to become a being of pure unconditional love, and to be reunited with the Source, enriched by this experience. It is possible to go forwards, coast through life, or spiritually regress, in any one incarnation. Past relationships, successes and failures may be worked at in successive lives.
7. We are never alone. We are accompanied by a bigger soul group of which we are a part, and by a guardian or guardians - souls who have chosen this work of guidance as part of their service. They do not interfere with our free will but can give help when asked and give hints, implant ideas, inspirations and dreams to help us realise the goals we set ourselves before birth.
8. A short life, even one terminated before birth, may be planned in this way in advance for a number of reasons. This could be for the soul that for some reason wishes to have this particular experience. More often it will be to provide a learning opportunity for the mother or others involved with the mother.
9. Some aborted embryos and foetuses will not have been ensouled, although an animal cannot actually live independently of its mother after birth without its etheric and astral bodies (and in the case of animals with an advanced intelligence, a mental body as well).
10. Some terminations, whether intentional or spontaneous, are not preplanned. The soul may leave easily and will probably look for another opportunity as quickly as possible to have a birth that will fulfil the same or similar goals (the time scale may not relate to that on earth and rebirth could pre or post date the interrupted pregnancy by decades or even centuries).
11. In other unplanned terminations, unplanned in terms or pre-birth agreements that is, the soul will receive a shock. It may not have been ready or willing to leave the growing host body and will be disoriented. There will be guides ready to help the expelled soul, but it may bear some trauma that carries over for a while, possibly into successive lives and relationships. These souls usually reincarnate quickly, whereas infants who die are more likely to spent some time on the astral plane to continue their growth. There is no suggestion that aborted foetuses spent time in a shadowy realm until their planned natural time of death is reached, as happens in cases of suicide. There are recent Chinese/Taiwanese traditions of ghost foetuses who will haunt the mother unless appeased.
12. Prayer and positive thoughts and intentions can be powerful tools to help aborted souls and those around them to reorient themselves and to move on with minimal spiritual damage.

Location:UK

The Earth's Future, Reincarnation and Population Reductions

I've been reading with great interest Bruce Moen's Voyages into the Afterlife series, based on his experiences of non-physical states of consciousness using a bi-aural sound technique known as 'hemi-sync' developed by The Monroe Institute in Virginia, USA. There are many parallels between Moen's accounts of what Monroe calls 'Focus Levels' and Theosophist and other descriptions of the various planes of existence, their inhabitants, characteristics and general appearance. There are also many parallels with the accounts given in Cynthia Sandys' Awakening Letters and other writings, and not infrequently links to various items in New Scientist. So, here are some of the passages and themes that caught my attention.

In Volume 3, Charting Unknown Territory (p.97ff), Moen is on an'Exploration 27 Program' at TMI. The object of the programme is for participants to visit different parts of this focus level or non-physical plane and bring back information that remains in their consciousness. Such data usually requires mediumship, a NDE or OBE if it is to reach the consciousness of those still in a physical body. One of the exercises of the Exploration 27 program involves a visit to the Coordinating Intelligences Centre. One of the tasks of those working there is to coordinate collisions in time - but not necessarily space - and to understand their consequence for Earth life systems in terms of probable outcomes. Objects in space appear to Moen as points of light with spiral lines coming out of them at cross-over points. One of the examples Moen is shown is a comet of frozen gasses and water that passes very close to the Earth without actually colliding with it. Apparently its existence is already known but information has not yet been released to the general public. The spiral lines indicate that it will not signal the end of the Earth but there is a bend or deflection in the Earth's line, and they are studying and trying to influence possible outcomes.When prompted to ask about the next steps in Earth's evolution, Moen is told that there is: 'In general, an accelerated pace of individuals graduating in preparation for great reductions in physical life experience opportunities. Many individuals are accelerating toward graduation by moving through, or experiencing, collapse of the ecosystem because of greed". At the Planning Center Moen is again prompted by the tape to ask a question about the Big Plan for the Earth. The answer chimes with some of the future life scenarios recorded by clients of Brian Weiss during hypnotic regression sessions. The Earth's near future involves preparation for large population reductions which will reduce human impact on the ecosystem. "There's been a steady buildup of too many time/event line crossings, which is driving toward ecosystem collapse". The primary cause is, apparently, "indulgence in the emotional energy of greed" - consumption of the Earth's resources not for direct use but for the accumulation of wealth, coupled with a growing human population. This is of course a theme well within human consciousness, from deep ecologists who see the Earth throwing off its profligate humans, to anti-capitalism and anti-globalisation protesters and religious teachers preaching moderation and cooperation rather than individualism and greed. One of the tasks of the Planning Center, Moen is told, is to prepare support for the huge volume of people "trying to finish out their ELS (Earth Life System) degrees". The Earth-school analogy is one that also recurs in many sources - the Earth as a training centre, life as a series of lessons to learn and exams to pass. Not necessarily a comfortable analogy for those who do not wish to relive their school-days, but perhaps close enough, if life really is intended as a series of challenges and opportunities for human/spiritual growth.

One of the implications of a relatively rapid (or perhaps sudden and seemingly catastrophic) reduction in the human population is that after the population reductions "there will be far fewer people living on Earth, so the total number of births worldwide will drop to an extremely low number. It will take Earth's population a very long-time to build back up, causing a long-term shortage of available incarnations. " The reductions are described as coming from a great many forces coming together, and many intelligent beings are said to be working to mitigate the ecosystem situation. When Moen comments that it sounds remarkably like mass murder, he is reminded that everybody dies and it is just a matter of timing, and that "everyone who decided to enter physical world lifetimes during this time frame made an informed decision. No one who decided to live on the Earth during these population reductions entered without full knowledge of this situation." [cf. Robert Schwartz on pre-birth planning].

Moen is then concerned at the number of people likely to come over unprepared who could get stuck in 'Focus 23' (those who don't realise they have died who try to continue with their physical life - ghosts - people who do not believe in life-after-death who are unable to move on without help, and so on). With fewer people on Earth there would be fewer people who know how to help those who get stuck by 'retrieving' them (cf. the rescue circles that became popular during the First and Second World Wars and religions dedicated to retrievals, such as the Vale do Amancecer).

Much of the work of the Planning Center, Moen is told, "involves bringing awareness of the Afterlife into physical world reality". Those participating in TMI programme and others are spreading the knowledge that "what comes after death isn't an unknowable secret". I have to admit a strong resonance when reading this. After all, this is precisely my own push to explore these areas, individually and through collaboration with others in ARC (the Afterlife Research Centre). I'm sure it is no coincidence that there is such an upsurge of interest in and serious exploration of the Afterlife from many different angles and disciplines, popular and academic, at present.

At another point Moen is told that the near future of Earth will involve the alignment of the Earth Core Crystal - a giant crystal formed from the heavy metals that coalesced in the centre of the earth when it was still in its molten state of formation - with a distant planet. Power points on Earth are, apparently, often linked to the remains of crystalline structures that once pointed to magnetic north, but were left out of alignment when the Earth's axis shifted. This new alignment will signal an opportunity or window for those on Earth for new forms of consciousness, although Moen could not determine whether this was going to be a process that lasted minutes or hours, weeks, months, or years. He was also told that one of the signals or time-line crossovers (I don't have the passage in front of me) involved the birth of a human baby. Moen was brought up as a Christian, as I am myself, and it is hard at this point, assuming one has followed the story so far, not to see this as a relatively long process, perhaps nearing its culmination, starting with the Incarnation - a new fusion of love into the world. Unconditional love is the reason, the motive, the start and end point of all existence, we are told, and in Cynthia Sandy's writings many of her discarnate communicators talk about the power of Christ energy. I think it was Welesley Tudor Pole who wrote about the birth of Christ as a way of giving humanity a kick start - a boost of energy to accelerate the lessons of unconditional love. Cynthia Sandys was also told that she and most of her family and friends would not reincarnate, they have finished their Earth lessons and graduated, as it were. I am a recent convert to the concept of reincarnation - the weight of evidence points, in my view - to its likelihood, but having accepted that I have probably had many past lives I also had a strong sense that I wouldn't come back - or didn't want to come back - to Earth (a feeling Oliver says he shares). Weiss's  clients who describe a future life in the not too distant future invariably talk of a much more peaceful earth with a very much smaller population. It is not the Lord of the Flies scenario or complete social disintegration sometime imagined by novelists and film-makers - although who knows that might also be a phase - but something gentler and wiser. We might have been here before of course, whether at the time of populations reductions remembered as the Biblical flood, Lemuria or Atlantis. I'd love to know from those who apparently remember future lives just what is recalled of this last human population reduction and how it is recorded in myths, archaeology and religious texts, and what if anything they managed to learn from and change in our wonderful but seemingly suicidal human nature.

The Shiva-Sumitra Possession Case – Notes on the frustrations of a quick return

On 12^th May 2011 I attended the Gwen Tate Memorial Lecture organized by the Society for Psychical Research in London. The introductory blurb for the lecture with a summary of the study and background to it is reproduced below. The case basically involved a young Indian woman who was probably murdered, who apparently took over the body of a similarly aged woman from a different caste and village who had been very ill in a coma. While Dr Mills gave a very reasoned and factual account of who said or wrote what to whom, it was in the subsequent question and answer session that questions of motivation and speculation as to what might have happened at a non-material level arose. Possession cases of this type, in which one personality seems to have been completely and permanently replaced by another are rare, although there are parallels with cases of (apparent) rapid reincarnation. In this case of possession the woman who was killed was both angry at her sister-in-law and husband’s family for murdering her and covering up the murder, and concerned about her two young children who were left with her husband, who cut them off from her family. The motivation, sudden violent death and extreme concern for others, especially for surviving children, that often seems to generate rapid reincarnation, was similar in this case. Taking over the body of a woman whose spirit had left, could plausibly have been an opportunistic decision, agreed or not between the two women (in spirit) or even, less plausibly, part of some pre-birth plan (see Robert Schwartz on Pre-Birth Planning). The frustrations and futility of attempting to return in another’s body became apparent through the lecture and subsequent discussion. If an adult returns (reincarnates) as an infant they may be able to remember and identity their former family and this may even be accepted and details verified, but a baby or child cannot look after others, and the original desire to continue with the previous life is not possible. The search for and identification with the previous life can pose limitations on living the current life in the new body (see, for instance, Jenny Cockell’s account of her search for ‘her’ children in a previous life; Yesterday’s Children, Platkus 2004).

            In the possession case described here the husband and family of the woman who had been in a coma, Sumitra Singh, were understandably upset to have their wife/daughter/mother claim to be someone else, and to say that she didn’t belong with them. While both she and they came eventually to accept the situation, and the new Sumitra re-learnt to live her life as a rural Khastiya woman, it was not a happy solution. For the murdered and reborn Shiva Tripatri the situation was arguably even worse. As her former husband’s family had seen to it that her body had been rapidly cremated to remove any evidence there was no way the police, although suspicious, could actually press charges for Shiva Tripatri’s murder. Not surprisingly they refused to recognize the revived Sumitra Singh as Shiva Tripatri, maintaining that she was a fraud. She was never able to see ‘her’ children again, who remained with her husband’s family, although she never stopped trying. Sumitra’s own natal family did accept her as their daughter/sister/relative in a different body, but that gave little comfort to any of the parties involved and did not change the situation for the better. The lesson one might draw from this and other similar cases in which a strong sense of unfinished business leads to a quick return to earth, is that whatever the circumstances of death one needs to detach and move on. Any help that can be given will need to be from the ‘other side’, and that little is to be gained by trying to relive or regain a life that has passed.

Athropologist Dr Antonia Mills gives the Gwen Tate Memorial Lecture. Dr Mills will report on her recent follow up investigation of the Shiva-Sumitra possession case originally studied by Ian Stevenson. The talk will include photographs, letters and new assessments made by various members of Sumitra and Shiva's families. The speaker will argue that the case presents strong evidence of the survival of Shiva's consciousness after her bodily death.

Antonia Mills received her PhD in Anthropology & Child Development from Harvard University and has been engaged in studies of Cases of the Reincarnation Type since 1984, both among North American Indian peoples and in India. She was a Research Assistant Professor in Ian Stevenson's Division of Personality Studies at the University of Virginia from 1988-1994 and since has been teaching First Nations Studies at the University of Northern British Columbia, Canada. Ian Stevenson and Satwant Pasricha, researched and reported on the case of Sumitra Singh, a young woman of the Khastiya caste, who apparently died and then returned to consciousness but experienced herself as Shiva Tripatri, a young college-educated Brahmin housewife and the mother of two who had died under suspicious circumstances. The two families were unknown to each other. Sumitra had never gone to school although she had learned how to write somewhat from her cousin. Stevenson and others documented that Sumitra and her family had no knowledge of Shiva and her family, and yet Sumitra recognized Shiva's father when he came to see her, and other family members when Sumitra and her husband went the 75 kilometers to the Tripathi home. Last year, Dr Mills and Dr. Kuldip Dhiman conducted a follow up study to translate and assess letters written by Sumitra/Shiva and to compare them with a letter written by the original Shiva.  Dr Mills will argue that the case presents strong evidence of the survival of Shiva's consciousness after her bodily death.

For a comparison to this case see Mary Roff and Lurancy Vennum: http://www.mysteriouspeople.com/Lurancy_Vennum.htm  Brian Haughton.

Ian Stevenson compares cases of reincarnation and possession at the end of his book 20 Suggestive Cases of Reincarnation, University of Virginia Press 1974.