A Brief Guide to

KARMA AND
REINCARNATION

Judy Hall

Illustration: Buddha Weekly

1
Author
Best selling author of The Crystal Bible, The Book of Why and forty two other books
on karma, reincarnation, astrology and crystals, and an internationally known lecturer
and workshop leader, Judy Hall has been a karmic counsellor for forty five years.
During that time she has regressed over a thousand people to other lives. For further
details of her work and publications please see www.judyhall.co.uk

Contents
Introduction: Death and Rebirth
Chapter 1: The reincarnating soul
Chapter 2: Death and the Afterlife
Chapter 3: Reincarnation and religion
Chapter 4: Karma and Unfinished Business
Chapter 5: The Evidence

To explore karma and reincarnation in depth, see my Book

of Why (Flying Horse Publications).

2
Introduction: Death and Rebirth

It is no more surprising to be born twice than it is to be born once.

Voltaire

Reincarnation is the notion that life is eternal and occurs over a vast cycle of lives,
inhabiting different bodies. It is also known as transmigration or metempsychosis.
Reincarnation is one of those ideas that haunts the edges of the mind and never quite
goes away. The Catholic Enyclopedia states:

There is evidence that at one period or another metempsychosis has flourished

all over the world. This universality seems to mark it as one of those
spontaneous or instinctive beliefs by which mans nature responds to the deep
and urgent problems of existence.

Professor Ian Stevenson, a long-time researcher into past life memories came to the
conclusion that, on the whole, the weight of evidence is against it and yet subjective
experience supports it and over half the people alive today believe in reincarnation.
Believers hold that they have lived before and, after their death, they will
return again to earth in another body which may be human, or in some systems,
animal, insect or vegetable. For some people, it is a religious credo. But for an
increasing number of people, it arises out of personal experience. Spontaneous recall
and regression to past lives are convincing more and more people that they have lived
before and will do so again. For many, reincarnation explains the otherwise
inexplicable. A Polish concert violinist appeared on the BBC Radio Programme
Desert Islands Discs. Describing how she, aged 3, had picked up a violin and
confidently played it, she said that reincarnation was the only possible explanation for
her prodigious talent and she believed she had lived two hundred or so years earlier in
a male body.
Reincarnation is an ancient belief. The idea of rebirth occurs all over the
ancient world with surprising consistency as to the circumstances not only of a new
life on earth, but also the post-death state. In some views of the post-death state, the
soul appears to be housed in a body, in others it is pure energy but in virtually all
views the soul retains conscious awareness and memory. Closely interwoven with
archaic fertility or mystery religions in which the allegory of a grain of wheat or the
serpent that sheds its skin was used to signify rebirth, in numerous ancient myths
souls go into the cauldron of rebirth. Whilst there is little written evidence available,
mythology and early grave artefacts give strong hints at a belief in the continuance of
life right at the start of history. Ancient chieftains were buried in a foetal posture with
all they would need in the next world. By the time writing had developed to a high
degree, Egyptian pharaohs were entombed with explicit instructions for negotiating
the next world and for ensuring a good rebirth. In the East, the great religious texts
that arose at much the same time speak of the transmigration of the soul. In eastern
countries such as India and China, reincarnation has been a part of religion for
thousands of years. Hindu scriptures over 5000 years old set out the transmigration of
souls and the law of karma as basic tenets of belief. The ancient tribal peoples of India
spread out across Asia, North Africa and Europe, bringing with them teachings about
the soul, its connection with the divine, and its cyclical life and the modern spread of
Buddhism has created further adherents.

3
 Reincarnation is, however, not new to the West. Prior to Christianity, it was a
tenet of the Celts, Gauls, Germanic tribes, Native Americans, Greeks and Romans
amongst others. Gnostic Christians accepted reincarnation, as shown by the Nag
Hammadi scrolls, but orthodox Christianity banned the idea although heresies such
as Catharism revived reincarnation, as did Theosophy. In some countries, it still forms
part of orthodox Christian belief. The Syrian church in India, for instance, is said to
have been founded by the Apostle Thomas and its adherents firmly believe in
reincarnation within the sect. Within Islam, Sufis taught reincarnation, as did the
Kabala within Judaism.
Karma, which means the results of previous actions, is the driving force
behind many ideas of rebirth although it does not necessarily feature in western
reincarnation. In the eastern view, souls reincarnate to fulfil or pay-off their karma,
and to pursue enlightenment. There is little volition or free will. It is an automatic
process that ends with enlightenment. However, having reached enlightenment and
stepped off the compulsory wheel of rebirth, the choice may be made to voluntarily
remain in the world to aid the rest of humankind. Rebirth in the East is subtle and
complex. In popular Buddhism in particular, personality traits, skandhas, survive
death and reincarnate but without a continuation of ego-identity or a separate soul,
and a karmic seed creates the circumstances of the next life.
In western thought, free will has a place. This gives the soul the opportunity to
move beyond karma by its present-life actions. The soul is regarded as being on a path
of growth and development, the object of which is reintegration with the divine.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, was an ardent
Spiritualist. In his History of Spiritualism he gives the classic spiritualist exposition of
the continuous existence of the soul:

When the question is asked, Where were we before we were born? we have a
definite answer in the system of slow development by incarnation, with long
intervals at spirit rest between, while otherwise we have no answer, though we
must admit that it is inconceivable that we have been born in time for eternity.
Existence afterwards seems to postulate existence before.
As to the natural question, Why, then, do we not remember such existences?
we may point out that such remembrance would enormously complicate our
present life, and that such existences may well form a cycle which is all clear
to us when we have come to the end of it, when perhaps we may see a whole
rosary of lives threaded upon one personality.
The convergence of so many lines of Theosophic and Eastern thought upon
this one conclusion, and the explanation which it affords in the supplementary
doctrine of Karma of the apparent injustice of any single life, are arguments in
its favour, and so perhaps are those vague recognitions and memories which
are occasionally all too definite to be easily explained as atavistic impression.

Reincarnation in the modern world

Today, more and more people are accepting the concept of reincarnation. In part, this
arises from the spread of Buddhism to the west. But this is not the only reason.
Thousands of people are exploring their own past lives through hypnosis and allied
methods. Books based on information obtained through regression or from childhood
memories proliferate. Icons of the modern world such as Richard Gere, John Lennon,
John Travolta, Sylvester Stallone, Tina Turner, Martin Sheen and Princess Diana have
all professed a belief in rebirth.

4
 For the vast majority of modern believers, reincarnation is a pathway to
perfection. The soul is on a journey of evolution back to its spiritual home. It provides
an answer to the modern spiritual hunger for meaning - and causes. When it is viewed
as purposeful, self-generated and subject to free-will, it resolves all the great questions
of life concerning the reason for suffering, the fairness or otherwise of the situation
a person finds him or herself in, and the unjustness of one short life and it teaches
the current actions have consequences. Anyone striving for spiritual evolution is
likely to be more aware of the consequences of their actions rather than disregarding
them.
Reincarnation in most contemporary western teaching is based on the
theosophical idea of an on-going process of learning and evolving. A seemingly lowly
or difficult life, which would be seen as the result of negative karma in the East, may
in the Western view have been taken on for the souls growth rather than as
punishment or reparation.

5
Chapter 1: The reincarnating soul

I remember now,
I was in the pottery studio, clay and water are mixing
A new body being made, which is
Another workshop, another studio, my new home.
Rumi

Soul has been defined as the immaterial part of man, the moral and emotional
portion of man, or the intellectual part of man. In some views, it is immortal, in
others divine. It may be a vessel for divine spirit or a part of the universal mind. In
most religions, it is what survives death.
The concept of soul is fundamental to the Hindu and western notions of
reincarnation. It is the soul that transmigrates after death to another body, whereas in
Buddhist thought it may be an attitude of mind that transmigrates rather than
individual intelligence.

The Soul in Judaism and Christianity

In early Judaism, the soul goes to Sheol, a place of shadowy existence where it slowly
fades away. It has no inherent life of its own. Christianity inherited the notion of soul
from the Jews. In The First Letter of Paul to the Thessalonians, Paul refers to spirit,
soul, and body (523) suggesting that he at least believed that there was a separate soul.
(The spirit to which he refers is the indwelling spirit of Christ.) As with Judaism, the
notion of soul evolved through the years.

The Soul Pool

In modern esoteric belief, the soul splits off from a pool of spiritual essence and
devolves down through decreasing vibrations until it takes up residence in a physical
body. In the process, it may well split off from a larger soul group or group soul
several times. There is a difference between a soul group and a group soul. In a group
soul, one soul is shared by several people. In a soul group, each individual has its own
individual soul but the group has travelled together throughout many lives and may
well have been a greater soul at one time.
Esoteric understanding may also incorporate the eastern concept of the
oversoul, a kind of puppet master who has several souls in incarnation at once. As
the oversoul wants to learn, it manipulates the puppets into situations that are
suitable for growth and the puppets send information back to the puppet master the
oversoul. A group soul may also have the intention of learning through the different
parts of the soul in incarnation; and a soul group may also share what it has learnt.

The Etheric Body

The etheric body is the organising field of the physical body, comprising different
layers such as astral, emotional and mental which carry impressions at those levels. It
is one of the explanations for how past life memories can transfer into a new body. It
is vibratory in nature but the etheric body, or layers of it, can die or dissolve as it
progresses beyond physical death and experiences death on other levels of being. The
etheric body is visible to psychics it is often called the aura and many psychics
report seeing the etheric body leave the physical body at death.
The etheric body functions like a karmic blueprint. It holds impressions of all
that has been experienced. Following emotional, mental or physical trauma, the aura

6
will show dark patches. It is the etheric body that forms the physical body for the
next life. Unless healing takes place in the post-death state, these patches will create
a corresponding weakness in the new body, passing on trauma and creating scars,
birthmarks and a tendency to chronic disease such as back pain at the site of an old
back injury. Emotional or mental dis-ease can also be passed on.

The Permanent Atom

Theosophy adopted the concept of the permanent atom from Hinduism. The
permanent atom is another explanation for how memories can be transmitted through
families and how the soul can retain memories of former lives. It also explains how
patterns are repeated over many incarnations as the new personality responds to the
stimulus of the stored vibrations and its tendency to act in a certain way.
Hindus believe that evolution started with matter from an original Anu or
Atom which was part of Brahma. Brahma-Anu was the universal monad (or
wholeness) expressed in twin aspects of matter and form. This Atom was non-
physical and non-spatial, it inhabited the plane of consciousness from which all else
followed. Just as the universal had its permanent atom, so too did the individual. The
purpose of this atom was to serve as the nucleus of ever-changing form and to store
experiences in a vibrational state. The form, or body, in which the atom was stored
was transitory but the atom itself was a core around which successive incarnations
could be built. Its function was to act as a collector for the fruitage of lives. It
contained acquired tendencies from all the souls experience. Not only did the atom
pass from body to body as an individual reincarnated, it also passed into children as a
pattern of karmic genetic inheritance.

7
Chapter 2: Death and the Afterlife

Now if it be true that the living come from the dead, then our souls must exist
in the other world, for, if not how could they have been born again?
Socrates

The process of transmigration starts with death. In order to reincarnate, the soul must
leave the body, taking its memories and lessons with it. In Buddhism these memories
are believed to fragment, with no individuality to hold them together. In Western
esoteric thought, much of which arises out of the eastern view but which takes more
account of individuality, the soul moves through successive spiritual planes, gradually
letting go of subtle bodies.

The Process of Death

In the Hermetica, the stages of death are set out and include death at an emotional,
mental and sensory level:

At the dissolution of the body,

First the physical form is transformed
And is no longer visible.
The vital spirit returns to the atmosphere.
The bodily senses go back to the universe,
And recombine in new ways
To do other work.
Then the soul mounts upwards
Through the structures of the heavens.
In the first zone,
It is relieved of growth and decay.
In the second,
Evil and cunning.
In the third,
Lust and deceiving desire.
In the fourth,
Domineering arrogance.
In the fifth,
Unbalanced audacity and rashness.
In the sixth
Greed for wealth.
In the seventh,
Deceit and falsehood.1

This is similar to Theosophical and other occult ideas. After the body dies, the subtle
etheric bodies separate and pass to a Life Review where experiences and emotions
are re-experienced and then drop away with the emotional body. The soul is then
housed in an astral body in which it experiences its unlived out desires. It goes on to
detach from the ego and the desire nature. From here it moves into the mental body
where it reviews its ideas, beliefs and constructs. When the mental body is let go, then

1 Translation by Freke and Gandy.

8
the soul can receive higher spiritual teachings. Finally, the soul moves into a spiritual
body where it is freed from karmic patterns.

The Stages of Death

1. Subtle bodies leave the physical
2. Passing through a tunnel of light
3. Detach from the physical cord severs
4. Life Review experience old emotions
5. Detach from emotional body
6. Move into astral body. Live out unexperienced desires. Personality falls away.
7. Detach from desires.
8. Move into mental body. Review ideas, beliefs and constructs
9. Detach from beliefs and ideals. Receive higher mind teachings.
10. Move into spiritual body. Make decisions that are not simply a repetition of
karmic patterns.

From regressions to the between-life state, it appears that the soul can reincarnate
again at any of these stages. If it is pulled quickly back into incarnation, it will take its
old emotions and unlived-out desires. Such an incarnation may not be purposeful
other than to follow the old pattern. If the soul moves to the spiritual planes first, then
the incarnation is more likely to be well planned and purposeful, although old vows
and promises may pull it back to be with another soul again or to work on unfinished
business.

The Judgement or Life Review

The notion of post death judgement occurs throughout most religions and in near
death experiences from around the world. The Weighing of the Heart was a key factor
in the Egyptian view of the Afterlife. Judgement was by the god Osiris, who consulted
The Registers of Doom kept by scribe-gods. The heart of the dead person was
weighed against the feather of truth.
In Platos account of the last days of Socrates, he has the philosopher describe to his
companions what happens after death:

When any man dies, his own guardian spirit, which was given charge over him
in his life tries to bring him to a certain place where all must assemble, and
from which, after submitting their several cases to judgement, they must set
out for the next world, under the guidance of one who has the office of
escorting souls from this world to the other. When they have there undergone
the necessary experiences and remained as long as is required, another guide
brings them back again after many vast periods of time
The wise and disciplined soul follows its guide and is not ignorant of its
surroundings, but the soul which is deeply attached to the body hovers
round it and the visible world for a long time, and it is only after much
resistance and suffering that it is at last forcibly led away by its appointed
guardian spirit.2

2Plato: The Last Days of Socrates, translated by Hugh Tredennick, Penguin Classics
London l934 p.170ff]

9
 In one of the Apocryphal Gospels, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Judgement is
graphically described:

Now when the immortal angels of the undying God.. knowing all the evil deeds
that any hath wrought aforetime then out of the misty darkness they shall
bring all the souls of men to judgement, unto the seat of God the immortal
the judge of mortal men. And then unto them of the underworld shall the
heavenly one give their souls and spirit and speech; and their bones joined
together, with all the joints, and the flesh and sinews and veins, and skin also
over the flesh, and hair as before And then shall all men pass through a
blazing river and unquenchable flame, and the righteous shall be saved
whole.. but the ungodly shall perish therein unto all ages, even as many as
wrought evil aforetime, and committed murders, and all that were privy
thereto, liars, thieves, deceivers, cruel destroyers of houses, gluttons, marriers
by stealth, shredders of evil rumours, sorely insolent, lawless, idolaters.
[etc.] And all of them shall the undying angels .. chastise terribly with flaming
scourges and shall bind them fast from above in fiery changes.. And then shall
they cast them down into the darkness of night into Gehenna among the beasts
of hell, many and frightful, where is darkness without measure.. But the
residue which have cared for justice and good deeds, yea, and godliness and
righteous thoughts, shall angels bear up and carry through the flaming river
into light, and life without care, where is the immortal path of the Great God;
and three founds of wine and money

In many belief systems, the judgement is carried out by a god or gods. But in reports
from near death experiences and regression, the soul plays an active part in a Life
Review and is helped to identify unfinished business and patterns that will require
work in the next incarnation.
Many religions describe the post death state as having various realms. The
Tibetan Bardo contains, amongst others, the realm of the hungry ghosts who are also
consumed by their unsatisfied desires. Both Spiritualist and Occult literature describe
an astral plane the equivalent of the land of the hungry ghosts where little spiritual
progress is made and most souls remain close to earth experiencing and re-
experiencing their desires and expectations that keep them trapped.
According to Hinduism, the state of the soul at death determines where it will
go after death, and how it will reincarnate. Krishna states, in the Bhagavad Gita, that
there are three Gunas or strands which interweave together and constitute nature or
the mortal body. Each soul has different proportions of the three gunas and whichever
prevails at death will affect the realm to which the soul goes. If the soul meets death
when Sattva prevails, then it goes to the pure region of those who are seeking Truth
in Rajas, he is reborn amongst those who are bound by their restless activity; and if he
dies in Tamas he is reborn in the wombs of the irrational. The soul that surmounts
the three gunas is freed from birth and attains immortality.
The post death state for some is an experience of heaven or hell. From
reports from people who have near death experiences or are regressed to the between-
life-state, there is evidence that, at first, the soul will go to what it expects to find. So,
heaven and hell feature strongly but, equally, the soul can sometimes, seemingly, go
on living the old life for quite awhile before it realises it is dead. Once the illusions
from the mind have fallen away, then the soul either progresses onto other planes of
learning or it returns into incarnation.

10
Choosing a New Incarnation
How the body comes back into incarnation, whether the choice is made by the soul or
forced upon it, and the decisions concerning what is to happen, varies in religious
teaching and in regression experiences. From past life work, it would seem that most
souls have at least a modicum of choice, although there are some people who do not
progress far enough in the between life state to make an informed choice. They either
simply bounce back into incarnation because of a strong desire to be in a body or to
be with a particular person; or they are pulled back by ingrained patterns or old
promises or vows that have not been rescinded. The major challenge for the present
life may be to break the habits of lifetimes or to release someone or oneself from
an outdated promise. It is these people who incarnate without plan or preparation that
could be said to be fated.
On the other hand, someone who may appear to be fated because of trauma,
illness or difficult life situations may have actually prepared most carefully for the
incarnation and will have a profound reason for making that choice. It may be for
personal growth and learning, or to aid other people in their lessons or intentions.

The Life Plan

Under regression, many souls report attending a planning meeting to work out
details of the new life on the way back into incarnation. At this meeting, guides and
teachers help the soul to assess what progress it has made, to identify the conditions
needed for new growth and any reparation that may be appropriate, and to find
appropriate parents to provide the genetic inheritance and emotional ambience
required for the incarnation. Some souls find this process difficult, especially as it
involves taking a good hard look at progress up to the present point. They have to be
persuaded into an incarnation which will help them to grow rather than repeat old
patterns. However, even when the soul has agreed, as it nears earth it can be reluctant
to incarnate.
In the western view, incarnation is purposeful, with the possibility of growth.
A life plan, created at the planning meeting, includes the souls spiritual purpose in
incarnating and also brings in opportunities to confront repeating patterns or ingrained
attitudes that the soul wishes to change. If the soul has unfinished business, either as
karma or as promises that have been made in other lives, the soul may also plan to
deal with this in the present incarnation. The life plan is not rigid. It is an outline
rather than a line by line account of how the life will go. It is adaptable but it does
have structure. The soul choose a family situation, for example, which will reiterate
attitudes, experiences or lessons from the past which the soul wants to confront. The
life plan will have key moments mapped in so that karmic meetings or fateful
decisions occur. It may also incorporate a point when previous life memories will
become conscious once more to aid the soul in its evolution. For the most part, the
soul does not carry a conscious awareness of past lives, although these can be there in
the form of vivid dreams or memories almost from birth. Such memories usually
occur when the last death has been violent and premature.

The Timing of Incarnations

Many religions assigned fixed time periods to rebirth for the Egyptians 3,500 years
between births, for example. However, it is clear from past life regression that the soul
chooses a moment to be born that fits the experiences needed and that fixed and rigid
time plays little part in the cycle of rebirth. Rebirth may be almost instantaneous, or it
can take hundreds of years. Linear time is irrelevant to the soul. When the time is

11
right, or when an important moment occurs in the evolution of the process, the soul
will return.
Incarnation may even entail returning with an overlap between the last life
and the present life. Spontaneous memories have arisen where the soul has,
seemingly, gone back in time to incarnate; or has taken over a body immediately prior
to or at some time after birth. When linear time is taken out of the argument, it gives
the soul greater opportunity for incarnation. Many children remember having been
in the family previously but having to leave precipitously through an accident or
illness

Stages of Reincarnating
1. Decision to return
2. Attend planning meeting and formulate life plan
3. Choose parents, etc.
4. Leave the spiritual realms, taking spiritual imprint
5. Move into the mental body. Receive higher teachings
6. Conception
7. Move into the astral body. Reconnect to old skills and emotions.
8. Move into the etheric body. Organise the new physical body from etheric
blueprint.
9. Inter-uterine experience will activate old emotional and mental patterns.
10. Birth into new incarnation.

The River of Forgetfulness

Most philosophies envisage a river of forgetfulness in which souls are immersed
prior to death. In the Gnostic Pistis Sophia, Jesus speaks of the soul drinking from a
cup filled with the water of forgetfulness before undertaking the journey back into
physical incarnation.
The soul cannot bring the full weight of memories back into incarnation. It
would be swamped and unable to deal with it all. The former prime minister of India,
Mahatma Gandhi, said:

It is natures kindness that we do not remember past births. Where is the good
either of knowing in detail the numberless births we have gone through? Life
would be a burden if we carried such a tremendous load of memories. A wise
man deliberately forgets many things.3

Male or Female?
In some religious views, the soul retains its gender throughout all its lives. The Jewish
Kabala, however, warns that a man who behaves badly will be punished by returning
in the body of a woman. Yet it is clear from reincarnation memories and regression to
the between-life state that souls are essentially genderless and can inhabit different-
sex bodies according to the lessons and purpose of the incarnation. The soul may have
a preferred gender to which it returns after death but many people during regression
speak of having no sexual identity when in the between-life state.
Some souls may choose to retain the same
As with so much in reincarnation, the gender of the body to be inhabited is
dependent on what progress the soul has made since death of the last body. If the soul

3 Ghandi, Letters to a Disciple, Harpers l950

12
bounces back quickly, then it may be into the first available body male or female.
The same happens where there is considerable karma or the soul is attracted to a
family with whom karma is ingrained or which will provide it with appropriate
circumstances for learning. On the other hand, the soul may be inexorably drawn to a
body of the same sex because that is what it has always known. Where the soul has
evolved further, it chooses a body with more care. Even so, it is apparent from
regressions that accidents do happen and the soul may find itself in a body that is,
apparently, the wrong sex. This can be an explanation for someone who feels that
they were born with the wrong body as so many trangenders express it. On the
other hand, in the between-life state a decision may have been taken to experience a
different gender, and yet the soul finds it difficult to adapt without remembering the
reason why.

Animal, Mineral or Human?

Throughout the ages, teaching has varied as to whether humans can take up
incarnation within a plant, animal, insect, and so on. The Druids were said by Julius
Caesar to believe that the souls of the dead could transmigrate into animals and many
tribal people still share this belief. Today, in India, devout Jains wear a mask so that
they do not inadvertently breathe in an insect that could be the soul of a deceased
human, and they would not swat a fly for the same reason.
Other people believe that the evolutionary chain goes from the inanimate,
mineral, through insects and animals and then to human who, having reached that
level of soul evolution, continue as human. The Chinese Taoist sage Chuang Tzu
asserted at the beginning of the ninth century B.C.E:

To have attained to the human form must always be a source of joy. And then,
to undergo countless transitions, with only the infinite to look forward to
what incomparable bliss is that!

suggesting that he favoured an upward progression into the human form..

For some early Gnostic Christians the passage through the various realms of
creation was part of the evolution of being, it was an on-going progression. The soul
could be in an animal or insect early in its evolution before it became human:

the Apostle said: Once I lived without the law. That is before I came into this
body, I lived in a sort of body that did not come under the law, the body of a
beast or bird.

In regression therapy, however, the greatest number of reported memories are of

human lives.

13
Chapter 3: Reincarnation and religion

As a man casts off his worn-out clothes and takes on other new ones, so does
the embodied soul cast off its worn-out bodies and enters other new ones.
Bhagavad Gita 4

How and why rebirth occurs tends to depend upon the religious belief that supports it.
In the East, the new incarnation is based on karma credits and deficits from a
previous life. Rebirth is part of an on-going cycle striving towards perfection.
However, whilst the individuality of a soul is accepted in Hinduism, in Buddhism the
incarnating spark is not viewed as having individuality carried from life to life. It is
more a set of impulses. In the West, the soul is generally accepted as having
individuality, and, although the circumstances of a new life may also depend on what
the soul has earned in former lives, this is not necessarily so.

Hinduism
In a survey carried out in the l990s in Northern India, one in five hundred people
remembered a previous incarnation. Reincarnation is explicitly set out in the Hindu
scriptures. In the Bhagavad Gita, the Lord Krishna states:

As a man throweth away old garments and putteth on new, even so the
dweller in the body, having quitted its old mortal frames, entereth into others
which are new.

In Hinduism, the reincarnating soul that survives death is known as the atman. The
imperishable atman is part of the divine, to which it can return after death if certain
conditions are fulfilled. If the conditions are not met, then reincarnation takes place.
In the Katha Upanishad, the Lord of Death, replying to a question, says:

The knower is never born nor dies, nor is it from anywhere, nor did it
become anything. Unborn, eternal, immemorial; this ancient is not slain when
the body is slain.

Nevertheless, in Hindu thought, time is cyclical and the soul returns many
times over an enormous period which does, ultimately, end as a cycle closes. It is not
just the soul that begins and ends, everything in the world is created, lives and then is
destroyed as one of these great ages or yugas comes to a close. Hindu cosmic myth
tells the story of the creator god Vishnu who is eternally born, dies and is reborn
again. When he comes into being, demonic forces also materialise. Their function is
to oppose and destroy him - and his creation. This dynamic battle both sustains and,
ultimately, nullifies that creation. It allows for eternal regeneration as all that is
outworn is shed to make room for the new to emerge.
Hindu mythology also tells the story of the first born god, Kama, who arose
out of the primeval chaos. He rules the realm of desires (the karma loka) and carries
both the potential for the fulfilment of desire and the possibility of becoming trapped
within that desire and separated from the eternal Self. The soul trapped within the
karma loka realm enters the eternal round of birth, death and rebirth (samsara).

4 Bhagavad Gita 222 Penguin Classics, London l962, translated by Juan Mascaro, p.29

14
 Hindu cosmology posits three realms, between which the individual soul can
move. The lower realm, the infernal, is a place where desire totally dominates. The
soul that is held here is trapped by its own desires and it experiences bestial, hellish
spectres which are the ghosts of the imagination. The middle realm is the earthly
realm. Here desire prevails but does not totally dominate. The soul has the possibility
to free itself from its desires and move to the celestial realm. In the celestial realm,
desire no longer holds the soul in bondage. It is free to evolve. At death, the soul will
travel through all these realms until it finds the one with which it resonates most
strongly. If it holds unfulfilled desires, then it will find itself either in the infernal
regions, or the earthly realm once more. The soul that has moved beyond desire may
well inhabit the celestial realm for a space as it evolves. The soul that has evolved
little, being bound to desire, will reincarnate quickly but the soul that has received a
certain degree of enlightenment may well reincarnate more slowly.
Nevertheless, within the Hindu caste system, all souls that are bound to the
wheel of rebirth have little flexibility in the social circumstances of their lives. Their
movement is governed by caste, or social status, and it is believed that souls usually
reincarnate within their own caste. It is only when the soul recognises its own inherent
divinity that change can take place although this change is a spiritual one rather than
social.
The core purpose of Hindu rebirth is to restore unity with the cosmic reality
that lies behind the illusion of separation. In this process, incarnation time and again is
natural. The aim of human incarnation is to purify the individual soul (atman),
recognise that this soul is divine and reunite with the energy of universal soul
(Brahman). Until the individual soul does so, it will incarnate again and again into a
new body. According to Hindu Scriptures, the difference between the gods and
humans is that the gods know they are divine but may choose to incarnate and thus
have memories of their former births. The god Krishna told his disciple Arjuna:

I have been born many times, and many times hast thou been born. But I
remember my past lives, and thou has forgotten thine.5

In Hinduism there are three bodies, the physical body into which the atman or
individual soul incarnates; the causal body; and a subtle, invisible body (the linga
sharira or mind body) that survives death and which carries the karmic traces
(samskaras) that enter into a new incarnation. The linga sharira subtle body carries
traits, perceptions and emotions that pass at conception into the new body and modify
its genetic inheritance to reflect the souls karma:

Through his past works he shall return once more to birth, entering whatever
form his heart is set on.

In other words, the body and form are created by the reincarnating entity based on
what was known, accomplished and desired in the past.

5 Gita 4.5 p.22

15
Buddhism
Buddhism arose out of Hinduism. As with many philosophies, Buddhism has mutated
into several forms. The Southern version, Theravada found in India, Sri Lanka and
South East Asia, teaches the concept of skandas or psychic residues with no identity
passing from life to life. In the Northern form, Mahayana, found in Tibet, China and
Japan, there are said to be remnants of teachings given by Buddha to his inner circle.
In this form of Buddhism, there is less reliance on the skandas as carriers, and more
on an on-going identity and continuity of mind.
Buddhisms founder, having been brought up in a privileged position from
which he broke free, pondered deeply on the nature of the suffering he saw around
him - and on the causes of rebirth. He identified Four Noble Truths that underlay life
on earth. In his view, the dissatisfaction or misery experienced in physical incarnation
arose out of desire or craving for pleasure, power and continued existence. It was this
craving, and the illusion of being a separate ego, that fuelled the wheel of rebirth. The
Buddha taught that attachment, especially to suffering, created karma which locked
into a cycle of reincarnation. Buddhists believe that, by gaining a state of complete
emptiness through discipline and meditation, one can leave the wheel of birth and
rebirth. By following the precepts of the Eightfold Path, a person achieves liberation
from desire. The aim is also to be freed from the delusion of having a separate
identity, or ego. But more than this, realisation that there is no separate, eternal Self
releases from rebirth.
Buddhism is complex and has various schools with somewhat different beliefs
and what a westerner might call soul is usually referred to as mind. As the aim of an
incarnation is to step off the wheel of rebirth, belief in a soul is seen as a trap for the
unwary. As Buddha put it:

whosoever believes in a soul, believes in things pertaining to a soul; believing

in things pertaining to a soul, they become attached to the skandhas as they
form a soul and things pertaining to a soul.

The Southern version, Theravada Buddhism found in India, Sri Lanka and South East
Asia, teaches the concept of skandas or psychic residues with no identity passing from
life to life. In the Northern form, Mahayana, found in Tibet, China and Japan, there
are said to be remnants of teachings given by Buddha to his inner circle. In this form
of Buddhism, there is much less reliance on the skandas as carriers, and more on an
on-going identity and continuity of mind.
Buddhists hold to what is known as Dependent Origination - from
consciousness arise name and form. That is to say, things change from moment to
moment and it is the ego that holds things together. Dependent Origination is
extremely subtle. It is often defined as a chain of causation that lies behind pain,
suffering and rebirth. One thing arises out of another that in turn arose out of prior
conditions. These things are links in a chain but Buddhism has no interest in first
causes as everything is in a state of becoming. Events happen in a series, one
interrelating group producing another, which creates bondage to rebirth due to
ignorance of the true state of affairs which would appear to imply that an entity such
as a soul is involved but Buddhism strenuously denies this idea. The bondage or chain
of causation has twelve stages: the first two of which relate to a previous life and thus
explain the present.

16
Chain of Causation behind the Cycle of Existence
1. Ignorance
2. Karmic Predispositions
3. Consciousness
4. Form and Body
5. Five sense organs and the mind
6. Contact
7. Feeling responses
8. Craving
9. Grasping for an object
10. Actions
11. Birth
12. Old Age and Death

The ego dissolves at death leaving the five skandas or elements: body,
sensations, perceptions, impulses and consciousness. Mental and physical aggregates,
conditioned by ignorance and actions, or karma, and motivated by craving, carry the
predominant impression of the last thought before death. After death these skandas or
psychic residues separate and can recombine with skandas from another person so
there is no personal reincarnation.
Skandas can exist in any or all of six realms, three of which are physical and
three non-physical. The metaphysical realm of hungry ghosts, for instance, is where
unsatisfied desires hold sway; whilst the realm of demons is a hell-like existence
where the deceased is tormented and menaced.

Six realms of transmigration

Realm of the gods
Realm of demons
Realm of hungry ghosts
Lower states of life
The animal world
The human world

Karmic tendencies are carried into incarnation. The karma in the skandas
becomes a vynana or germ that reincarnates into a new host. The last thought
determines the next existence. Karma becomes a kernel which seeds in to the womb
of a new mother but it is argued that no actual though-existence passes from body to
body, only an impulse. There is no on-going sense of identity or ego, although there
may be a continuity of mind in some forms of Buddhism such as the Tibetan (see
below). In taking on name and form, that is, individual identity, a false sense of ego
and separateness is created and the process of individuality begins. The five senses
and the objects they perceive lead to illusion as the mind co-ordinates sense
impressions and creates its own reality from these. The contact between objects and
the five senses leads to sensation, which gives rise to thirst or desire, which results
in grasping at, or holding onto, the object desired. This sets karma in motion.
So, for example, if a mans eyes look at a woman and the sensation is
pleasing, if the karmic predisposition is towards lust, he will lust after her but if the
predisposition was towards indifference, he would ignore her. He may then, in
seeking pleasure, have the illusion of ownership and of power over her. This creates a
bond, or karma, between them and could lead to rebirth:

17
 Beings are heirs to their deeds; bearers of their deeds, and their deeds are the
womb out of which they spring, and through their deeds alone they must
change for the better, remakes themselves, and win liberation from ill.6

Tibetan Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhism incorporated the ancient shamanistic Bon religion into Buddhist
thought. It is more mystical and metaphysical than Indian Buddhism. Most tulkus,
reincarnated lamas, can trace their incarnations back to the origin of their line and
receive their spiritual authority from this source. In Tibetan Buddhism there is,
therefore, more emphasis on permanent identity and the transmigration of the mind
rather than the soul. Its monastic tradition includes a rigorous search for the next
incarnation of a recently deceased lama.
The Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of the Tibetan people, is the
fourteenth incarnation of himself. In My Land and My People he wrote:

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
must have a continuity from a previous mind.

So, for the Tibetans, it is mind-stuff that reincarnates. As the Dalai Lama,
explains:

Reincarnation is part of the history of human origin. It stands as proof of the

mindstreams capacity to retain knowledge of physical, vocal, and mental
activities. The theory of reincarnation is integral to Tibetan Buddhist life-style
and applies equally to the good and bad mind. 7

When a high lama dies, the oracle is consulted as to where to find the new
incarnation. A diligent search is made by lamas who knew the deceased incarnation.
One of the first tests is that the child should recognise these lamas from his past. He is
also given objects to identify as his. When the new incarnation was confirmed, the
child used to be taken back to his monastery. With the occupation of Tibet by China
this became problematic and more and more high lamas are choosing to incarnate
outside Tibet.
The fate of the recently reincarnated Panchen Lama, second in authority to the
Dalai Lama, shows how vital the correct recognition of a lama can be. When the last
Panchen Lama died in China, a search was made in China by agents of the Dalai
Lama. A child, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, was found and confirmed as the new
incarnation by high ranking Tibetan lamas. The Chinese Government, however, put
forward their own candidate and took both claimants into protective custody. The
Chinese choice has been seen since as he is being trained, in China, to take over the
role of Panchen Lama. The Tibetan candidate, now l8, has not been seen since his
imprisonment at the age of 7 and there are grave fears for his safety. This is a serious
matter as the Panchen Lama will have charge of the search for the next incarnation of
the Dalai Lama. It is his responsibility to ensure that the unbroken line of incarnations

6Majhima 135
7His Holiness the Dalai Lama in a preface to The Case for Reincarnation Joe Fisher
Diamond Books London 1993

18
continues. Should this be in the hands of a Chinese-trained puppet lama, it is more
likely to be a political choice than a true spiritual one. Tibetan Buddhism could
quickly die out without its spiritual leader although it has now become one of the
fastest growing religions in the West. No western government has made a move
towards restoration of the true Panchem Lama or protested against the continued
occupation of Tibet by China.

The Druze of Lebanon

The Druze of Lebanon are the source of several well-researched and compelling
reincarnation stories. The Druze came into prominence in the 11th century and their
beliefs combine aspects of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Gnosticism, Tibetan
Buddhism and Zoroastrianism. The religion arose out of the coming together of
persecuted minorities and has a strong reincarnational aspect. Today there are almost
a million Arabic speaking adherents, all of whom believe they are the reincarnation of
former Druze. Scattered throughout Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Israel, all live within
a few hours of their sacred mountain, Mount Hermon.
The Druze believe that the souls of the righteous pass after death into
progressively more perfect embodiments until they are reabsorbed back into the
divine. However, those who were not righteous in life, pass into lower embodiments.
They also believe that all souls existing today came into being when the soul was
created. No new souls are made, and old souls cannot be destroyed. Reincarnation is
usually continuous, the soul taking a new Druze body immediately after death unless
there has been a war resulting in a large number of deaths.
Some Druze say that the Prophet Mohammeds brother Hemsa went to Tibet
in 625 A.D in search of secret wisdom. He then reincarnated as Hamsa, the founder
of Druze, in the 11th century. From that time on he has reincarnated successively in
the body of the Chief Druze in the same way that the Dalai Lama is reborn as himself.
As reincarnation is a fundamental doctrine and children are encouraged to remember
their past lives, several of the best documented cases of past life memory come from
the Druze community in Lebanon.

Judaism
Within the Old Testament there is no specific mention of reincarnation as a Jewish
belief, although some passages have been postulated as presaging reincarnation.
Several of the prophets, such as Elijah, are expected to return in time of need. The
book of Malachi closes with the prophecy:

Look, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of
the Lord comes. He will reconcile fathers to sons and sons to fathers, lest I
come and put the land under a ban to destroy it. 4:6

According to scripture, Elijah never actually died he was taken up to heaven, so his
body as well as his soul would be awaiting return. Traditionally he will return to his
people at a time of great crisis. This passage could presage reincarnation, but this is by
no means certain. However, the Jews were in Egypt and would have come into
contact with the notion of rebirth there and several Egyptian ideas and stories were
incorporated into the Old Testament.
Josephus, an historian who wrote around the time of Christ, states that out of the
three Jewish sects, the Sadducees believed that the soul died with the body, but the
Pharisees and the Essenes believed in rebirth:

19
 The Pharisees believe that souls have an immortal vigour in them. [The virtuous]
shall have power to revive and live again.8
For their doctrine is this, that bodies are corruptible, and that the matter they are
made of is not permanent, but that the souls are immortal, and continue for ever.

Despite Josephus assertions, in the collection of scrolls from the Essene community
at Qumran there is little evidence to suggest a belief in reincarnation. The Dead Sea
Scrolls appear to indicate a form of spiritual resurrection in a post-Messianic age
rather than rebirth into the physical realm. However, there is a thread of rebirth
running through Jewish writings. The Talmud brings together interpretation of Jewish
law by esteemed Jewish teachers and a collection of legends and traditions codified
between 50BCE-400 A.D. It was based on an oral tradition that was, in parts, much
older. It states that Adam was reborn as David and will come again as the Messiah;
and points to a certain number of souls whose destiny is to be reborn until the Day of
Judgement comes. It also mentions that Moses was Abel, son of Adam, who had in
between times been Seth.
Kabala is claimed to be the secret doctrine behind Judaism. It was traditionally
taught to a man in his forties, who was deemed mature enough to understand its
significance. The first Kabalists wrote in the third century B.C.E. Kabala was revived
in the Middle Ages and may well have been coloured by contact with Moorish Spain,
where the Jews sought refuge from persecution. The Kabala specifically points out:

If a man be niggardly either in a financial or a spiritual regard, giving

nothing of his money to the poor, or not importing of his knowledge to the
ignorant, he shall be punished by transmigration into a woman.9

Tradition assigns authorship of the following passage to Rabbi Simeon ben Jochai in
80A.D. whose work was edited and first published as a whole in 1280 by the Spanish
Rabbi Moses de Leon:

All souls are subject to the trials of transmigration; and men do not know how
many transformations and mysterious trials they must undergo The souls must
re-enter the absolute substance whence they have emerged. But to accomplish this
end they must develop all the perfections.. and if they have not fulfilled this
condition during one life, they must commence another, a third and so forth, until
they have acquired the condition which fits them for reunion with God.10

Kabala continued to exert a strong influence on Jewish thinkers and has widened its
sphere of influence right up to the present day. Sholem Asch (1880-1957), for
instance, elucidated why so few people have memories of their former lives although
a few have clear recall:

If the lore of the transmigration of souls is a true one, then these, between
their exchange of bodies, must pass through the sea of forgetfulness.
According to the Jewish view we make the transition under the overlordship of
the Angel of Forgetfulness. But it sometimes happens that the Angel of
Forgetfulness himself forgets to remove from our memories the records of the
8 Josephus Antiquity of the Jews, Book 18, Chap. 1, No. 3
9 Yalkut Reubeni. No1
10 A Talmudic Miscellany Paul Isaac Hershon

20
 former world; and then our senses are haunted by fragmentary recollections
of another life. They drift like torn clouds above the hills and valleys of the
mind, and weave themselves into the incidents of our current existence.

Islam
In Islam the soul that survives death is known as the ruh. In conventional Islam it
passes after death to another realm to await Judgement and Resurrection. However,
from the beginning of Islam, successors to the Prophet claimed that there was an
inner, esoteric teaching taught only to a carefully selected few. Accepted teachings in
early Islam were that an imam (a spiritual teacher) could reincarnate after death
(rijat) and that ordinary men could be reborn (tananusk) in addition to the occasional
incarnation of the divine (hulul). There is a glimpse of the transmigration of souls in
the Koranic verse:

Allah generates beings, and sends them back over and over again, till they
return to Him.

The Islamic religion split into two sects quite early in its history. Sunni
Moslems do not believe in transmigration but the Shiites and their offshoot the
Ismails do so and have a much stronger concept of freewill. The doctrine of
metempsychosis was prevalent in the tenth and eleventh century. The Persian-born
physician and philosopher, Avicenna, was particularly interested in the nature of the
soul. He asserted, however, that the idea of metempsychosis and the implied pre-
existence of the individual human soul was false. In his view, the soul arose at
conception. Nevertheless, he also stated that, if the soul did exist before the body, it
could exist as one or several forms. His conclusion was that the decomposition of the
body did not preclude the soul from continuing its existence.
Sufism, the more mystical arm of Islam, purported to be carrying on the inner
teaching of Mohammed. Sufis seek direct experience of the divine and perfection of
the soul through a complex, interweaving series of worlds. Of twelve Sufi sects, two
the Halulis and the Halljis were considered heretical because of their belief in
reincarnation (halul) and transmigration of the soul (naskh-I-arwah). Nevertheless,
the thread of reincarnation runs through Sufi writings:

O Brother, know for certain that this work has been before thee and me in
bygone ages, and that each man has already reached a certain stage. No one
has begun this work for the first time. (Sharf-UD-Din-Maneri)

But the position is far from clear and little has changed since the Spanish-born Sufi
poet Ibn Arabi (1164-1240) commented:

There is some difference of opinion among the Muslim learned men as regards
the method of Resurrection. Some of them say that Resurrection will be by
reincarnation and quote passages from the Quran and authenticated sayings
of the Prophet in support of their contention.

The Bektashee Sufi sect from Turkey are said to believe in the transmigration
of the soul into animals and for this reason forbid the killing of animals. Their
remote Turkish teckee contains documents from further east so that it is possible that
there was contact with Hinduism in the past and some of its beliefs were absorbed.

21
 For the Sufi poet Rumi, founder of the Mevlevi dervish sect, rebirth was part
of a great cycle of spiritual evolution through multiple realms:

I died as mineral and became a plant

I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was man.
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
Yet once more I shall die as man, to soar
With angels blest; but even from angelhood
I must pass on.

Where he would pass on to:

no man can conceive; we shall merge in Infinity as in the beginning.

The goal with Sufism, as with other eastern religions, is reintegration with the divine.

Christianity
Early Christianity was a collection of different sects, all having received their
teaching from disparate sources and all believing widely differing versions of Jesus
teaching. The early church taught resurrection and sold salvation. It was awaiting the
Second Coming after which the world as it had been known would end. So there
was little time for reincarnation. The concept of an afterlife was founded upon
physical resurrection of the body the soul being in a state of suspended animation
whilst it awaited the Last Trump. As a result of the dispersion of the early church,
there were some four hundred gospels and associated writings in circulation for the
first two or three hundred years after Christs death, some of which included
reincarnation and mystical Christianity. Eventually the Council of Nicea in 325 cut
these to the four gospels and the various acts and epistles found in the New Testament
today. But belief in reincarnation was difficult to eradicate. By 522, the church was
issuing an anathema against pre-existence of the human soul and, by implication,
reincarnation.
Jesus sayings reported outside the accepted Four Gospels point to the
possibility of a hidden teaching within Christianity regarding the transmigration of the
soul as indicated by Hyeronym:

The doctrine of transmigration has been secretly taught from ancient times to
small numbers of people, as a traditional truth which was not to be divulged.11

and even within the orthodox gospels there are indications:

When he came to the territory of Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asked his disciples,
Who do men say that the Son of Man is? They answered, Some say John
the Baptist, others Elijah, others Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. (Matthew
16:13-14)

11 Epistola ad Demetriadem

22
After the Transfiguration when Jesus took Peter, James and John to a high mountain
and they saw the spiritual forms of Moses and Elijah appear the disciples asked him:

Why do our teachers say that Elijah must come first? He replied: Yes,
Elijah will come and set everything right. But I tell you that Elijah has already
come and they failed to recognise him, and worked their will upon him; and in
the same way the Son of Man is to suffer at their hands. Then the disciples
understood that he meant John the Baptist. (Matthew 17:1-13)

In this, Jesus is directly saying that John the Baptist was Elijah come again. Although
it sounds an apparent contradiction to say this after the disciples had just seen Elijah
appear in spiritual form, in reality there is no conflict. In a mystical experience such as
this, ordinary, everyday reality is suspended as when Elijah was taken up to heaven
without dying first. In John 9:1-12 there is a more direct mention of reincarnation:

As he went on his way Jesus saw a man blind from his birth. His disciples put
the question: Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents? Why was he born
blind? It is not that this man or his parents sinned? Jesus answered: He
was born blind so that Gods power might be displayed in curing him.

In asking if the man had done something to cause him to be born blind, the disciples
and the onlookers are implying that he lived before his birth, and that his blindness
could be a punishment for some previous event. Jesus answer, however, brings out an
important aspect of reincarnation. The blindness is part of the greater purpose.
St Johns gospel is the most mystical of the four, clearly showing the influence of
Greek thought, which included reincarnation. St Paul as an orthodox Jew but even
Paul refers to the pre-existence of the human soul:

Rebecca when she had conceived children by one husband, our ancestor
Isaac. Even before they had been born or had done anything good or bad (so
that Gods purpose of election might continue not by works but by his call) she
was told: The older shall serve the younger. As it is written I have loved
Jacob but I have hated Esau (Romans 9:10-18)

There is no karma implied here, they have done nothing good or bad. But the clear
statement is made that God loved Jacob and hated Esau before their birth and so,
must have known them in a former existence. That existence might have been
spiritual rather than physical and cannot, therefore, be taken as proof of a belief in
reincarnation but it certainly confirms a belief in the pre-existence of the human soul.
Learned and esteemed church fathers wrote letters over a period of four hundred years
in which reincarnation was mentioned quite matter-of-factly and without
condemnation. Phololaus, the Pythagorean, taught that the soul was flung into the
body as a punishment for its misdeeds it had committed, and his opinion was
confirmed by the most ancient of the prophets.12 Arnobius wrote in 290: We die
many times, and often do we rise from the dead .13 He also informs us that Clement
of Alexandria wrote wonderful stories of metempsychosis (the passing of a soul from

12 St Clement of Alexandria, Exhortations to the Pagans (A.D.150-220)

13 Adversus Gentes:

23
one body to another). St Augustine (354-430), a convert to Roman Christianity, had
strong Greek Neo-Platonist leanings:

The message of Plato, the purest and most luminous in all philosophy, has at
least scattered the darkness of error, and now shines forth mainly in Plotinus,
a Platonist so like his master that one would think they lived together, or
rather since so long a period of time separates them that Plato is born
again in Plotinus.14

It was Augustine who asked:

Say, Lord to me did my infancy succeed another age of mine that died before
it? Was it that which I spent within my mothers womb? For of that I have
heard somewhat, and have myself seen woman with child? and what before
that life again, O God my joy, was I anywhere or in any body? For this I have
none to tell me, neither father nor mother, nor experience of others, nor mine
own memory.15

Augustine appears to believe that what God creates then exists forever and his
question regarding the possibility of a former life, certainly points to his belief in the
transmigration of the soul whether from the spiritual to the physical, or the physical
to the physical. His predecessor Origen (l85-254), one of the most prominent and
influential of all the early Church Fathers enquired in much the same fashion:

Is it not more in conformity with reason that every soul for certain mysterious
reasons is introduced into a body, and introduced according to its deserts
and former actions?16
And stated:

Every soul comes into this world strengthened by the victories or weakened
by the defects of its previous life. Its place in this world as a vessel appointed
to honor or dishonor is determined by its previous merits or demerits.17

Some two hundred years later, Origen was condemned as a heretic and his teachings
banned. At the time he was writing, however, he was one of the pinnacles of the early
church and there was no contention with his teaching of the pre- and continuous
existence of the human soul and its return into the body.

Gnostic Christianity
A large proportion of the early Christians were what came to be known as Gnostics.
In l945 fifty two texts were discovered at Nag Hammadi in Egypt which revealed the
less orthodox side of early Christianity. These suppressed gospels and writings are
much more mystically orientated. They became known as the Gnostic Gospels from
the word Gnosis or knowledge. Gnostic Christians sought direct experience of God
not as an external being, but as the God-within. To them, the soul was divine. From

14 Contra Academicos
15 St Augustine, The Confessions of Saint Augustine, Airmont Publishing Co. New York
1969 translator unknown, p.10.
16 Contra Celsum
17 De Principlis

24
the Nag Hammadi scrolls, it is clear that the Gnostics believed in the eternal nature of
the human soul. In The Exegesis of the Soul, the writer gives an account of the souls
fate after it has separated from God and entered into incarnation. In an extremely
graphic manner, the fall of the soul is charted and likened to a woman who separates
from her husband and enters into prostitution. The restoration to God is seen as a
spiritual marriage:

They will become a single flesh.

For they were originally joined to one another when they were with the
Father.18

In the Gnostic Pistis Sophia Jesus specifically mentions reincarnation and tells
the disciples that sins from one life will influence the next. A man who curses others
will, in his next life, be troubled in his heart; a thief will be cast into a lame, halt
and blind body, and a slanderer will be delivered into a body which will spend its
time being afflicted. It is not just sinful acts that warrant such treatment. An arrogant,
overbearing personality could be born into a deformed or demeaned body. A murderer
or blasphemers soul, on the other hand, will be destroyed and dissolved. Jesus warns
them:

Put not off from day to day and from cycle to cycle, in the belief that ye will
succeed in obtaining the mysteries when ye return to the world in another
cycle.

The mechanism of transmigration of the soul is an involuntary one, based on

ignorance and not having received the mysteries, but it is finite. When the cycle
ends, the souls who have not yet been perfected will be consigned to outer darkness
and will be without hope.
Also in the Pistis Sophia, Jesus is questioned about the fate of the righteous
man who has not received the mysteries at death. He describes how the soul will be
snatched up away from the hands of the retributive receivers and will spend three
days circling with it in all the creatures of the world. The soul will then be led down
into chaos and will go through all the chastisements of the judgements. It will then
be taken pity upon and removed from the fires. When led away to the region of
Yachthanabas, the pitiless, it will be held fast for a time and the fire will prove a little
troublesome. Finally the soul will be led before the Virgin of Light who, finding the
soul sinless but not of the kingdom of the mysteries, will then let it be cast down into
a body which will be good to find the signs of the mysteries of the Light and inherit
the Light-kingdom for ever.' However:

If on the contrary he hath sinned once or twice or thrice, then will he be cast
back into the world again according to the type of the sins which he hath
committed.19

The Pistis Sophia contains teachings given to the disciples which are said to be
post-resurrection that is they occurred after Jesus death. The documents of which it
is comprised were not for public consumption. This is a teaching for initiates into a

18 The Nag Hammadi Library in English, Coptic Library Project p.184, Leiden, l977
19 Pistis Sophia III v.263ff trans. G.R.S. Mead

25
mystery religion. In the text, the Pistis Sophia speaks of how Jesus brought to rebirth
the souls of John the Baptizer and of the disciples:

I found Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptizer, before she had conceived
him, and I sowed into her a power which I had receivedthat he might be
able to make proclamation before me and make ready my way. Moreover in
place of the soul of the rulers which he was appointed to receive, I found the
soul of the prophet Elias in the aeons of the sphere, and I took him thence, and
took his soul and brought it to the Virgin of Light and she gave it over to her
receivers; they brought it to the sphere of the rulers and cast it into the womb
of Elizabeth And the twelve powers of the twelve saviours of the Treasury of
Light which I had received from the twelve ministers of the Mist, I cast into the
sphere of the rulers. And the decans of the rulers and their servitors thought
that they were souls of the rulers; and the servitors brought them, they bound
them into the body of your mothers.20

Gnostic Christianity, incorporating the teaching of Origen, was declared a heresy in

the third century A.D. but its ideas continually resurfaced over the next two millenna,
and remnants of the church are found today in Syria and the near east.
The orthodox churchs campaign against Gnosticism culminated in the
Emperor Justinians Anathema against the pre-existence of the human soul. An
apocryphal story suggests that it was actually the Emperors wife who was the moving
force behind the Anathema. The story goes that she was a wild, hard-living woman.
Having heard of the torments to come in the next life if she continued her current
lifestyle, she decided to suppress the whole idea of reincarnation.
However, church-politics could well have been the origin of the anathema,
which was signed by the Bishops of the Eastern Churches. Whatever the true facts of
the matter, it is known that in 543 the Emperor Justinian (having already closed the
last Neo-Platonist University of Athens in 529, a school which taught Platos concept
of reincarnation) condemned the teachings of Origen. Ten years later in 553 he issued
the Anathema:

If anyone assert the fabulous pre-existence of souls, and shall assert the
monstrous restoration which follows from it: let him be anathema
If anyone shall say that the life of the spirits shall be like to the life which was
in the beginning while as yet the spirits had not come down or fallen, so that
the end and the beginning shall be alike, and that the end shall be the true
measure of the beginning: let him be anathema.

In other words, the Church was henceforth to believe that the soul comes into
existence at birth and when the body dies, it has to await a physical resurrection not
rebirth. The soul does not return to God and the spirit realms. After this, Gnostic
Christianity and reincarnation went underground but it was kept alive by sects such as
the Manicheans, Bogomiles, Cathars, Paulicians, and Nestorians.

Celtic Christianity
When Christianity came to Britain, it met and absorbed existing Celtic traditions that
encompassed reincarnation. The early Celtic church, especially in Ireland and

20 Book I, v.12-15

26
Scotland, was mystical and magical, setting up monastic communities that carried on
the Bardic tradition of teaching colleges and intense spiritual activity. But eventually,
orthodox Christianity prevailed and the Celtic church was outlawed.

Nestorian Christianity
Nestorian Christianity was the repository and successor to the Greek Neo-Platonist
view of the world. Founded in the fifth century by Nestorius, an excommunicated
Christian Bishop who refused to accept the Virgin Mary as the Mother of God,
Nestorianism incorporated Neo-Platonist ideas such as reincarnation into his theology.
After his death Nestorians followers emigrated to Asia Minor, China, Mongolia and
India and their influence infiltrated other religions including Islam.

Renaissance Christianity
Reincarnation arose during the medieval period in heresies such as the Cathars
who believed that the soul migrated from body to body - but came into prominence
during the Renaissance. Cosimo Medici founded a Neo-Platonist academy in Florence
under Marsilio Ficino. Several hundred original Greek manuscripts were translated
and the teachings of the Neo-Platonists rediscovered. This had a profound effect on
the innovative thinkers of the next century, and led to several of them being executed
for heresy. Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake by the Inquisition in l600 after a
lifetime spent travelling and teaching including a spell at Oxford University
lecturing on immortality and reincarnation. His ideas included the notion that the soul
was intended to progress from incarnation to incarnation, and that bad behaviour or
failing to take up opportunities would cause reincarnation into worse circumstances.
His profession of faith at his trial included the statement:

I have held and hold souls to be immortal. Speaking as a Catholic, they do not
pass from body to body but go to Paradise, Purgatory or Hell. But I have
reasoned deeply, and speaking as a philosopher, since the soul is not found
without a body and yet is not body, it may be in one body or in another, and
pass from body to body.

Cosimo de Medici had been influenced by a Byzantine philosopher Giorgio Gemistrus

Pletho (1335-1450) ambassador for the Greek Church at the Council of Florence in
1439. Pletho clearly believed in reincarnation:

As to ourselves; our soul, partaking of the divine nature, remains immortal

and eternal in the precincts which are the limit of our world. Attached to a
mortal envelope, it is sent by the gods now into one body, now into another ..
in order that the union of the mortal and immortal elements in human nature
may contribute to the unity of the Whole.

After the Renaissance, scholars continued to explore the nature of the soul and the
possibility of reincarnation, but much of the writing had to be encoded as the Catholic
Church continued to oppose the notion.

The thread of reincarnation runs through writers such as the Englishman Ralph
Cudworth who, in l678, published The True Intellectual System of the Universe,
subtitled: A storehouse of learning on the ancient opinions of the nature, original,
pre-existence, transmigration, and future of the soul. He was followed by David

27
Hume (1711-1776) with The Immortality of the Soul: Metempsychosis is the only
system of this kind that philosophy can harken to and Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)
stated: Death and birth are the vesper and matin bells that summon mankind to sleep
and to rise refreshed for new advancement.

Modern Day Christianity

Reincarnation continued to be revived periodically, with a surprising number of
church theologians and philosophers stating their belief to support or condemn it. In
the modern church, many people have embraced the idea. In Britain, the Churches
Fellowship for Psychic and Spiritual Studies conducted a lively debate on
reincarnation through the pages of its journal The Christian Parapsychologist. Bishop
Hugh Montefiore was typical of those Christians who looked on reincarnation as a
positive challenge. He questioned why opportunities should be limited to one life?
The Fellowship also stimulated a debate between Max Payne and Oxford theologian
the Reverend Professor John Hicks who asserted that reincarnation was not accepted
by the early church, and that Origen believed in the pre-existence of the soul but that
after one earth life, the remainder of life would be spent in the heavens.
Nevertheless, Hicks was open to the possibility that whilst reincarnation is not and
never has been an orthodox Christian belief, it could in principle become one, and that
the theological arguments for an absolute incompatibility are not nearly as strong as
they may at first appear.

Theosophy
The revival of the doctrine of reincarnation in the west owes a great deal to
Theosophy. Theosophy teaches that the divine must be directly experienced and that
there is an inner, esoteric meaning to religion. One of its major tenets is that of the
transmigration of the soul into successive bodies, although not necessarily on earth. It
follows on from Pythagoras, Neo-Platonism and Renaissance thinkers such as Bruno
and Paracelsus but its fundamental source is in the Upanishads, Vedantas and
Buddhist teachings of India. Its main proponent in the modern world is the
Theosophical Society, founded in New York City in l875 by the Russian mystic,
Helena Blavatsky.
Madame Blavatsky claimed to channel teachings from Great Masters, spiritual
beings who guided the evolution of humanity. The language she used is convoluted
and difficult to follow, especially as she included many eastern words without clear
definition as did her early followers. She postulates a complex, interweaving
hierarchy of races, beings and rays evolving over great cycles of existence. The
evolution is from a lower state back to the higher force from whence it came. She also
sees the possibility of higher beings becoming involved in human evolution to aid
the transition:

In ancient Symbolism it was always the Sun though the Spiritual, not the
visible Sun was meant that was supposed to send forth the chief Saviours
and Avataras. Hence the connecting link between the Buddhas, the Avataras,
and so many other incarnations of the highest Seven. The closer the approach
to ones Prototype in Heaven, the better for the mortal whose Personality
was chosen, by his own personal Deity as its terrestrial abode. For, with every
effort of will towards purification and unity with that Self-God, one of the
lower Rays breaks, and the spiritual entity of man is drawn higher and ever

28
 higher to the Ray that supersedes the first, until, from Ray to Ray, the Inner
Man is drawn into the one and highest Beam of the Parent Sun.21

For Blavatsky, transmigration of the soul is an onward progression, so that

reincarnation is not necessarily back into a physical body on earth. Indeed, in Isis
Unveiled she specifically says that rebirth onto the same planet is not a rule of
nature but rather an exception that takes place when, for reasons of lunacy, abortion,
accidental death and such-like, the souls spiritual evolution is frustrated. In these
cases, the soul is thrust back into physical incarnation because man cannot skip over
the physical and intellectual sphere of the terrestrial man, and be suddenly ushered
into the spiritual realm above.22 However, in other material, she lays out time
periods between physical incarnations so this issue was not clear cut.
In the Secret Doctrine, Madame Blavatsky insists that: Man must know who he
was, before he arrives at knowing what he is. She felt that this was extremely
difficult for Europeans because in their early education, tradition and training they are
taught to believe that the circumstances are of their life are the result of blind hazard
rather than karma. But, in her view only karma and reincarnation can explain those
circumstances:

For, when one unacquainted with the noble doctrine looks around him, and
observes the inequalities of birth and fortune, of intellect and capacities, when
one sees honour paid to fools and profligates, on whom fortune has heaped
her favours by mere privilege of birth, and their nearest neighbour, with all
his intellect and noble virtues far more deserving in every way perishing of
want and for lack of sympathy; when one sees all this and has to turn away,
helpless to relieve the undeserved suffering, ones ears ringing and heart
aching with the cries of pain around him that blessed knowledge of Karma
alone prevents him from cursing life and men, as well as their supposed
Creator.

But she warns against blaming everything on karma:

Karma creates nothing, nor does it design. It is man who plans and creates
causes, and Karmic Law adjusts the effects, which adjustment is not an act,
but universal harmony, tending ever to resume its original position, like a
bough, which, bent down too forcibly, rebounds with corresponding vigour.
Karma has never sought to destroy intellectual and individual liberty. Karma
is an Absolute and Eternal Law in the World of Manifestation.

Notwithstanding, for her, karma and reincarnation are inextricably linked:

Intimately, or rather indissolubly, connected with Karma, then, is the Law of

Re-birth, or of the reincarnation of the same spiritual Individuality in a long,
almost interminable, series of Personalities. The latter are like the various
characters played by the same actor, with each of which that actor identifies
himself and is identified by the public, for the space of a few hours The
inner, or real Man, who personates those characters, knows the whole time

21 Secret Doctrine, Vol.I, Theosophical Publishing House, London l928 page 700
22 Isis Unveiled Vol. 1, p.351-2

29
 that he is Hamlet only for the brief space of a few acts, which, however, on the
plane of human illusion, represent the whole life of Hamlet. He knows also
that he was, the night before, King Lear, the transformation in his turn of the
Othello of a still earlier preceding night.

Following Eastern teaching, Blavatsky states that skandhas (germs of life) control
rebirth:

A mental change, or a glimpse of spiritual truth, may make a man suddenly

change to the truth even at his death, thus creating good skandhas for the next
life. But the karmic effects of the past life must follow, for the man in his next
birth must pick up the skandhas or vibratory impressions that he left in the
Astral Light.. since.. there must be a link between the lives. New skandhas are
born from their old parents.

For Theosophists, the germs of that old life are carried in the Permanent Mental
Atom, a particle that travels with the astral body after death and then incarnates once
again, but which can also pass down through the family. Charlotte E. Woods defined
the Permanent Mental Atom as a collector of the fruitage of lives[a] storehouse of
the acquired tendencies of lives. Nevertheless, for Madame Blavatsky it is the ego
that incarnates again and again, driving reincarnation: Thus the Ego incarnates in a
thousand bodies, taking upon itself the sins and responsibilities of each body.
Blavatsky also taught that the number of souls available to incarnate was
limited and finite: No fresh Monads [souls] have incarnated since the middle-point of
the Atlanteans. And she goes on to say that:

save in the case of young children, and of individuals whose lives have been
violently cut off by some accident, no Spiritual Entity can reincarnate before a
period of many centuries has elapsed, and such gaps alone must show that the
number of Monads is necessarily finite and limited. Moreover a reasonable
time must be given to other animals for their evolutionary process.

Early in Theosophy, the period between evolutions was set at at least l500
years but this was later amended to a figure closer to 500 years.
When Annie Besant, a follower of Blavatsky, looked at rebirth, she
propounded:

The theory of Reincarnation in the Esoteric Philosophy, asserts the

existence of a living and individualist Principle, which dwells in and informs
the body of a man, and which, on the death of the body, passes into another
body, after a longer or shorter interval. Thus successive bodily lives are linked
together like pearls strung upon a thread, the thread being the living
Principle, the pearls upon it the separate human lives.23

Besant defined the Principle as the mainspring of all evolution, the impelling
force at the root of all things. It was part of the cosmic soul, and yet had an
individuality of its own. She describes a man who identifies with the body alone as

23 Besant, Annie, Reincarnation Theosophical Publishing Society, London, l915 p.8

30
someone who confuses his clothes with himself. The clothes- and the body - being
merely the garment that the Principle puts on to face the world.
As Theosophy developed, Blavatskys complex system was simplified into a
more basic model of the soul and its bodies. This model has at its basic level, the
vehicle for the soul which is vibrating at the densest rate. Bodies become finer and of
a lighter vibration the nearer they are to the spiritual planes and to cosmic union. In
incarnation, there are four basic levels: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. Out
of incarnation, in which there are further subdivisions, the body inhabits the etheric
and then the astral body rather than the physical or emotional body.

Madame Blavaskys understanding of the world passed into the modern

mystery schools. Virtually every Western esoteric tradition has, at least in some part,
its roots in her work. Other late nineteenth/early twentieth century metaphysicans
such as Rudolf Steiner, a former theosophist and founder of the Anthroposophical
Society, and P. D. Ouspensky also contributed to the debate on reincarnation.
Ouspensky taught eternal recurrence rather than reincarnation. In individual eternal
recurrence, the soul goes over and over the same lesson, gradually progressing and
almost imperceptibly changing events as it evolves. In a much wider kind of eternal
recurrence, the cosmos too undergoes great rounds of repetitive action.

Anthroposophy
Rudolph Steiner (1861-1925) sought to re-establish a spiritual science, of which
reincarnation was a fundamental tenet. For Steiner, spiritual evolution had been
blocked by an increasing attachment to materialism. He taught that spiritual precepts
were accessible to the highest mental faculties of humankind. One of Steiners
fundamental teachings is that of reincarnation as a basis of soul-learning and it is his
suggestion that, for instance, those souls who incarnate into a disadvantaged body
may well be evolved souls who return with the specific intention of allowing others to
learn through caring for that body - that is, they practise redemptive karma. Steiners
view of the soul was the familiar eastern one. The soul or atman was the inner spirit
man. He differed from eastern religions, however, in that rather than seeing
reincarnation as circular, he envisaged spiral evolution. Consciousness was evolving
upwards and although a certain amount of repetitive experience would be required, on
the whole the soul was moving ever onwards.
For Steiner, thought was the creator of matter and the world responded to a set
of spiritual laws or principles. He postulated that a soul would make use of factors
such as heredity and the collective unconscious or racial memory in its incarnations,
but would not be governed by these. So, thought would create both the physical body
and the environment around it. It would also form a matrix which would
interpenetrate the physical body and the more subtle bodies that survive death. In this
way, memories and karma could be carried from life to life and into the spiritual
planes where they would be held in the Akashic Record, a record of all that has or will
happen that exists in a non-physical form but which can be accessed from earth. This
matrix would then be moulded by the new ego which Steiner thought of as a
spiritual force rather than a personality-based ego to form the next incarnation
experience. To Steiner, a man could become one with his fate. It was his
understanding that:

However the blows of fate may have fallen, whether bringing good or ill we
are now what we are now through all the hard and kind blows of fate: we are

31
 in the end nothing but the result of this fate of ours.. and in making this
reflection we grow into our fate.

By allowing fate to flow through the inner being, the Separate Self became one with
the stream of events in its fate and a soul could see how it made itself what it was in
the present incarnation. It became what it was meant to be. Steiner also posited that
the soul, by expanding its awareness through his spiritual science of self-knowledge
could explore its past incarnations:

Through this spiritual-scientific research the human soul learns what expands
memory beyond the horizon along which alone it can otherwise roam... When
the will extends itself over fate and man becomes one with fate, and when the
will in man grows to such power that he embraces the hard and gentle blows
of fate and knows that he has made them himself memory grows back beyond
former experiences, back into the times that represent earlier human
experience on earth intimately connected with the extension of will to cover
fate is the knowledge that man does not only complete one life on earth, but
that this one life is the sum of earlier lives on earth, that this preparation of
the fate-will has taken place in earlier life on earth. And so our consciousness
experiences that what we now learn through the will becomes the origin of
later life on earth and influences it.24

Steiner taught that certain souls, such as the prophet Elijah who became John
the Baptist, the Renaissance painter Raphael and finally the German poet Novalis
incarnated again and again to help humanity evolve through their teachings. These
great spirits were responding to an evolutionary rhythm by which souls first
incarnated in lives thousands or hundreds of years apart but then gradually shortened
the period between physical sojourns as less and less time was needed in the spiritual
realms to overcome, or prepare for, earthly incarnations.
Steiner formulated various laws that governed reincarnation. He saw three
stages of soul evolution. An archaic stage where there was only a glimpse of
individuality, a middle stage where individuality held sway, and then the present stage
where individuality would begin to give way to a desire to reunite with the divine
whole. He envisaged groups of souls travelling together, drawn together by a common
intent and supporting each other and learning from joint experiences. He also stated
that souls alternated their gender from incarnation to incarnation, coming back first as
male and then female.
Steiner also postulated three types of memory, linked to the bodies that the
soul inhabited. There was the day to day memory which had the possibility of
awakening to individual consciousness if the spiritual faculties were integrated.
However, this individual awareness fell away after death unless it had been linked to
the etheric rather than the physical body. The next level of memory was a universal
one. Personal memories passed into the Akashic Record and became part of the soul
memory of the planet. Finally, memory could pass into the astral body which existed
after the physical and the etheric bodies had passed away. It was through the astral
body that memories of other lives could be accessed and karma could work itself out.

24Rudolf Steiner, The Human Soul in Life and Death The Rudolf Steiner Publishing Co.
London l914 p.25

32
Steiner saw one further memory unit, that of the I which preserved karma and
previous life memory. This was earth-based rather than spiritual because it recorded
experiences whilst in incarnation, and held memories of karmic responsibilities. There
was, however, a complementary spiritual-I. If the spiritual-I was awakened in an
incarnation, it would combine with the memories and intention of the earth-I and
bring to mind spiritual purpose. This would awaken the ability to aid humanitys
evolution. In Steiners view, in the past advanced spiritual beings had incarnated to
aid this transition but it was now time for humanity itself to take on this task.

33
Chapter 4: Karma and Unfinished Business

Once you believe in the connection between motivation and its effect, you will
become more alert to the effects which your own actions have upon yourself
and others.
Dalai Lama

Karma is a Sanskrit word meaning work or action. It can be expressed: for every
action there is a reaction but its true meaning goes much deeper than this. In the
conventional, eastern view of karma, an act takes place, something is set in motion,
and reward or punishment is reaped in another life. In other words, karma is the fate
that shapes the new life and that underlies suffering. Whatever a man, or woman,
experiences is the product of previous behaviour. As expressed by the Buddha it
becomes: If you want to know the past, look at your present life. If you want to know
the future, look at your present.
However, in modern western understanding of karma it is a process rather than
a reaction. It is purposeful, concerned with growth and evolution, rather than
punishment. It is all-embracing and has many manifestations. Karma operates at
different levels, from the personal to the universal. It shows where balance is needed
and may involve reparation, or retribution for past actions, and reward and restitution.
It does not simply stem from actions and events. It encompasses attitudes, thoughts
and desires - and ingrained habits. Purposeful, karma can occur at any time, not just in
a future life. Part of the evolutionary journey of the soul, karma is neutral and
impartial, neither 'good' or 'bad. However, as Edgar Cayce pointed out: the
weaknesses of the flesh are the scars of the soul and many souls do incarnate to
overcome or to make reparation for previous misdemeanours.

Karma in the East

In Hinduism and Buddhism, karma is divine justice and it is what drives
reincarnation. In the Bhagavad-Gita Krishna defines karma as the force of creation,
wherefrom all things have their life and warns that because thou art in the bondage
of Karma, of the forces of thine own past life; and that which though, in thy delusion,
with a good will dost not want to do, unwillingly though shalt have to do. In other
words, what a person does in one life influences what has to be done in another. This
view of karma is fateful and not a matter of choice. In Eastern eyes, all suffering is
caused by karma.
A man who has what Krishna describes as a dead soul will not have a good
rebirth. This is the man who had had insatiable desires and is full of deceit, insolence
and pride and whose highest aim is sensual enjoyment. It is this man of whom
Krishna says:

In the vast cycles of life and death I inexorably hurl them down to destruction,
these are the lowest of men, cruel and evil, whose soul is hate. Reborn in a
lower life, in darkness birth after birth, they come not to me, Arjuna; but they
go down the path of hell. And so they will continue, life after life.

34
Karma in the West
The ancient Greeks taught a concept of karma, it was what underlay their notion of
rebirth. So, in Timaeus, Plato set out the fate of men, not all of whom will come back
as human beings:

Cowardly or unrighteous men will, in the next life, be women. Innocent light-
minded men, who think that astronomy can be learnt by looking at the stars
without knowledge of mathematics, will become birds; those who had no
philosophy will become wild land animals; the very stupidest will become
fishes.

Although the orthodox Christian church does not have a concept of

reincarnation, it does have one of karma. St Paul in Galatians 6:7-10 says:

Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. Make no mistake about
this: God is not to be fooled; a man reaps what he sows. If he sows seed in the
field of his lower nature, he will reap from it a harvest of corruption, but if he
sows in the field of the Spirit, the Spirit will bring him a harvest of eternal life.
So let us never tire of doing good, for if we do not slaken our efforts we shall
in due time reap our harvest.

Paul, of course, is alluding to rewards to be reaped in the afterlife but in Gnostic

Christianity, karma created the circumstances of the next incarnation. After
undergoing terrible torments and retribution in the between-life state, robbers and
thieves are first handed the cup of forgetfulness and then are cast into: a lame, halt
and blind body.
In the modern esoteric view of karma and its part in reincarnation, it is a
continuous process working towards a balance. The rewards, or otherwise, of actions
may be reaped in the next moment or at any time in the future. However, it is not
simply a matter of reward or punishment. It is part of an on-going rounding out of
experience. So, a soul may deliberately choose a difficult incarnation in order to learn
or experience a given set of circumstances. Equally a soul who feels a need to make
reparation, could well choose a life of service or to take on some of the collective
karma of humanity.

An on-going process
Karma is not static and unchanging. It is continually set in motion. Karma is active in
the present moment, not just in the past. What is set in motion today will have
consequences. These consequences may become apparent in five minutes, a week, in
a year or two, or in another lifetime. Positive, constructive karma can be set in motion
and reparation can be made to overcome negative karma. Although karma is neutral,
its effects may be experienced as difficult and, therefore, perceived as 'bad karma'
coming home to roost. On the other hand, the same situation could be perceived
differently. It all depends on the attitude of the soul involved. Karma may be seen as
fate but is really an evolving future.
Some schools of thought teach that everything has to be experienced. So the
soul has to know sorrow and joy, pain and happiness, longing and fulfilment. It must
be both murdered and murderer, warmonger and appeaser, rake and celibate. In
another school of thought, rather than getting itself murdered, the soul of a murderer
could become the parent of the soul it had murdered and thus learn to cherish that

35
soul. Once the process is looked on as one of balance, fault and judgement drop
away. All is experienced because the experience is needed.
Balance is also created through fundamentally opposing attitudes to life
arising in different incarnations. Someone who is now very introverted and sensitive
could well be balancing out lifetimes of extroverted egoism. Another soul who had
led many lives as an aggressive male might choose to inhabit a female body or could
be a softer, intuition male who might well choose to relate to other males rather than
women and thus quite likely experience what it was like to be on the receiving end
of a macho-mans aggressive fear reaction when confronted with someone who was
different to himself.

Fate or Freewill?
Karma implies a belief in continuous causality, what is experienced now is the result
of personal or collective prior action. Nevertheless, what one experiences in the future
will be the result of present action. The exercise of choice and free will is possible.
Therefore, the doctrine of karma adds a dimension of personal responsibility to
destiny and anyone aligned to Western thought who takes reincarnation seriously is
likely to want to: Get it right this time, rather than to accept fatedness. In other
words, to follow the souls urge to evo1ve towards perfection and reintegration into
the divine force.
Many people who believe in karma look on it as their fate. They hold a fatalistic
view that what will be, will be. The future is fixed and unmoving, with no evolution.
Fate implies, in the traditional, Eastern approach, an unseen hand at work and that
the soul is reaping penalties for past actions. Fate is, in some systems, capricious and
punitive. It is predestined. It is what happens, there is no choice. It leaves no room for
growth. Fate offers no explanation as to why people suffer, other than this is what
they deserve, or perhaps the medieval Christian belief that suffering has merit in its
own right. In the fatalistic approach to karma, the rule is an eye for an eye, a tooth for
a tooth. If a man murders, he will become a victim; if he injures, he will be injured.
However, there are many ways of making reparation or restitution. The murderer may
achieve a degree of spiritual enlightenment and choose a life of service. Once the
incarnating soul has found another to whom a similar debt is owed by another soul, to
perform the appropriate task will be sufficient reparation. Neither does it seem to be
necessary to fulfil every last duty or debt. The karma of grace operates. There is a
point when enough has been done, understanding has been reached, and the soul is
freed from the karmic round.
However, belief in karma and reincarnation does not exclude chance or
freewill. Fate means: It has been written but freewill suggests: There is an
opportunity to change. Fate says: This is the future you have earned but freewill
says: Yes, but you have the ability to change it. Freewill is the power to change the
future. It is the ability to grow and to find a positive outcome for karma. The
incarnating soul can choose to encounter the result of its own handiwork or to make
reparation for the past - no matter how hard a present life that may lead to. It may also
be a positive choice, taking on collective karma, helping someone else learn a lesson,
and so on.
It is possible to believe in karma and reincarnation and still maintain that the
soul is in a purposeful incarnation and that you are fulfilling your destiny. Destiny is
an evolving future whereas fate is firmly fixed and cannot be changed. The soul has a
pattern that has been laid down - the fate or destiny as it were. But it also has freewill.
It is difficult to evaluate the long-term spiritual effects of traumatic or painful karmic

36
experiences upon the eternal Self; the working of karma is in any case, subtle and far
from straightforward.
The concept of freewill is one of growth and change on all levels. It is in direct
antithesis to all those people who say: I cant help it, its my karma. This pathway
says: You are responsible. Clean up your mess. But it also says: You only have to
do enough.
The pathway of freewill allows use of the skills, abilities and potentials brought to
the current life, and healing for the wounds of the past. However, it would seem that
there are two pathways and maybe more. The first is that of freewill and personal
responsibility. The second is a surrender to divine will which could well reverse the
extreme wilfulness of a former life, for instance. Hindus and Buddhists believe that
by submitting to their fate, as it were, and aligning themselves with divine purpose,
they can move off the wheel of rebirth.
Surrender to divine will may be a genuine commitment to divine purpose. It
all depends on how clear the alignment is and how clearly the guidance from the
divine is heard. Many people who believe they are following divine will are actually
trapped in the patterns of the past. They attract the same old scenarios over and over
again. Regardless of how cunningly disguised, abuse, for example, is abuse no matter
whether it is perpetrated by a parent, a lover, or a guru under the guise of aligning to
higher will and opening spirituality. An enormous amount of self-awareness is called
for on the path to enlightenment.

Types and Levels of Karma

There are many types of karma, and these operate at the personal, group, collective
and cosmic level. Not all types of karma will be active at any one time. The soul
usually works on two or three during a lifetime but may concentrate on only one if it
involves a major life lesson such as a chronic illness.
Three things strongly affect karma: desire, purpose and grace. Desire is a
powerful manifestor of karma. What is wanted, needed or craved for creates a
situation that will provide it but this is not always a beneficial experience. Part of
the souls lesson may be to let go of that desire and the pattern it continually creates.
The strength of desire can transcend death and pull a soul back into incarnation to deal
with unfinished business or to recreate once again a situation where the desired object
can be achieved. Desire creates lifescripts, plans that are involuntarily followed. Much
karma accrues from desire or will.
Purpose is what the soul needs to do in order to evolve. Purpose can overcome
destructive desires, as when an addict goes into recovery. Grace strengthens purpose
and helps it to manifest. Grace is an offer to release karma. Grace operates when
enough has been done. There are some lessons or situations that simply cannot be
continued with, perhaps because another person is concerned who is unwilling to
learn. Grace says that, when the soul has done all it can, it can let it go and no further
karma will accrue.

37
Karmic levels
Personal Karma is carried from life to life by an individual soul. It has been created
in the past and the soul incarnates to deal with it in the present or to fulfil its purpose.
Group or Racial Karma belongs to a group of people. The group can vary in size
from a family, or group of friends, to a tribe or race. Most people who become
involved in group karma will have incarnated into that group before but this is not
always so. Group karma overcomes the individual. So, a soul who has no aggressive
karma, may nevertheless become caught up in a war or other mass movement, for
instance.
Collective Karma arises from all that has gone before. It is the karma of the human
race. Although positive collective karma is generated, negative collective karma is
what creates problems for future generations. No one is responsible for collective
karma in the sense of having personally created it although individuals may have been
part of its source in wars, purges, ideologies and other mass movements. Certain
people incarnate with the intention of taking on part of this collective karma and
clearing it for the wider whole.
Cosmic Karma is the need for the whole to grow and to evolve. Cosmic karma is the
spiritual purpose that can override all other karmas. It is connected to the need for
each soul to evolve and to recognise, and take responsibility for, their part in the
whole.

Types of karma
Merit Karma
Merit karma is a reward for things the soul got right in other lives, the lessons learned,
the insights put into practice. It is money in the karmic piggy bank. Merit karma may
be the reason why someone has a smooth and easy life or receives help as and when
it is needed. It often manifests as a talent in the present life. So, a musician can carry
that ability over into the next lifetime, to become an infant prodigy or a natural
musician. Equally, a soul may have learnt how to manifest abundance and to trust in
divine providence. It will return as someone who can always find a way to make
money, or who is naturally lucky.
Retributive Karma
Retributive karma is something which boomerangs back to punish former actions. For
example, if someone chopped off another person's hand in a former life, they could
have a withered limb in the present life, or to become crippled in some way.
Disembowelling someone could lead to gut problems in the present life. In other
words, what is done to others comes back with a recognisable connection between
cause and effect.
Recompense Karma
Recompense karma also comes back, but positively. Reward is given for the things
that the soul 'got right', or for the sacrifices made to help others. If, for example, an
ambition was put on hold to care for someone who was ill, then that person could well
come back as a parent or good friend who helps out in the present incarnation.
Redemptive Karma
Some souls incarnate to help others or to do something specific for the world.
Disabled children may have chosen to come back to help their parents learn a lesson
such as compassion and caring. Other souls take on tasks that will help to clear
collective karma
Attitudinal Karma

38
Attitudinal karma builds over several lives. It arises out of an intransigent attitude,
ingrained behaviour or an intractable or habitual emotional stance. It often manifests
at the physical level. So, for example, believing there would 'never be enough', or that
there always has to be more, could precurs an addiction. Arterial or heart problems
can develop from 'hard-heartedness' or a former broken heart, or from being too open
hearted. Mental states such as doubt can also affect the next life. Positive attitudes,
such as a loving nature or innate trust, brought forward would creative positive effects
in the present life.
Organic Karma
Organic karma reflects injuries or conditions from other lives. Over-indulgence, for
instance, could manifest as obesity or liver problems. Too much blood-letting in the
past could create anaemia. A previous life back injury could underlie a chronic back
problem; tuberculosis could result in present-life lung disease and so on. Positive
organic karma can arise when the soul has worked hard to strengthen an organ such as
the heart in a past life. Organic karma can also arise from soul choices that have
caused other people to suffer, and when the soul reincarnates, it has to learn what it
feels like to go through that pain or trauma.
The Karmic Treadmill
Destructive patterns that have not been outgrown go round and round. The soul is on a
karmic treadmill. Many kinds of suffering are related to the karmic treadmill.
Alcoholism is one example, relationships can provide many. If a soul believes: There
will never be enough love, or I dont deserve to be loved it will manifest
relationships where there is no love. The expectation is reinforced, and round the soul
goes again. Not only that, children will most probably inherit the attitude so that it
multiples.
Karma of Work
What a person did in another life, how they behaved with regard to work, what they
experienced or the skills they possessed may manifest again in the present life. The
karma of work arises from causes such as past behaviour, ethical decisions or choices
made. Previous lack of integrity, for instance, could manifest as someone who, in this
life, has a business partner who commits. Positive work karma creates skills and
vocations in the present life.
Technological Karma
The karma of technology stems from having had to make ethical decisions about of
the use, or misuse, of technology in the past. It can also apply to having fought against
the introduction of new technology especially when this would have been beneficial
to humankind. Technological karma can relate to all periods in history but often
involved industrial and technological revolutions and their effects on modern life. It
can also occur with someone who misused or was abused by technology in the past
and now finds it difficult to adapt to modern technology.
Vocational Karma
In vocational karma, work is carried over from another incarnation. A soul who has
been a doctor, for instance, may bring into the present life the urge to heal. A former
monk or nun could well feel that they still had a vocation, a musician could heed the
urge to continue with the music. Vocational karma is an opportunity to capitalise on
past skills and abilities.
Symbolic Karma
In symbolic karma, the present life condition symbolises what was done in the past. It
can be a form of allegory. A witch-ducker in a former life incarnated again as a bed-

39
wetter, for example. In the same way, someone who misused communication in the
past could incarnate with a speech defect.
Communication Karma
How and what was communicated can lead to communication karma. Words have
been used to stir revolutions, to revile and condemn people, and to gain power over
others. People have passed on gossip and scandal, made or ruined other peoples
reputations. They have told truths and untruths; been open and honest or secretive and
devious. This can create difficulty in communicating thoughts, feelings and beliefs in
the present, but such difficulties may also be part of a repeating inability of the soul to
express itself.
Ideological Karma
Attachment to a belief, no matter how worthy, can create ideological karma. Imposing
beliefs on other people also creates this karma. The beliefs may be religious,
philosophical or purely secular.
Karma of Hypocrisy
Having said one thing, or done things a certain way, and yet believed something
different gives rise to the karma of hypocrisy. As does the 'anything for a quiet life'
approach to life. Hypocrisy arises from a lack of spiritual conviction and inner truth,
or a betrayal of truth. A life then arises when that inner foundation has to be regained.
Karma of Mockery
Mocking other people's afflictions, thoughts, beliefs or actions gives rise to the karma
of mockery. It is based on not valuing the pathway that another person travels. One
such example is when someone else is debased in some way by the words used. The
person judges the circumstances of someone else and mocks them through words. The
person who mocked in a past life often finds him or herself living out in the present
life the circumstances that were so despised back in that another life.
'Sins of Omission and Commission'
The 'things that have been done that ought not to have been done, and the things that
have not been done that should have been done'. If a soul always behaved in a certain
way, or consistently refuses to take action, or to learn a lesson, then the karma comes
around and around until the message is understood. Lives can be experienced as
sinning or sinned against as the soul struggles to find a way out of the repeating
pattern. Greed, avarice, lust and the like are experienced over and over again, but so is
the inability to move beyond something known and comfortable. The souls failure to
take a risk can accrue karma just as strongly as the soul who takes an unwise risk and
fails.
Relationship Karma
Relationship karma has many aspects. It can operate in families, love affairs,
friendships and business relationships. Sometimes a bond of true love units a couple
down through the ages, but this is not always so. Hatred can be the cause of powerful
attachments. Some people will not let go of someone they 'love', and have to come
back with that person until they can do so. The lesson can be painful, especially when
the other person does not recognise the 'love'. Retribution can be part of relationship
karma, as can recompense and reparation.
Pacts and Promises
The pacts and promises made in another life can strongly affect the present. They may
involve another person or be personal. If a soul promised to always be there for
someone or to always look after you, it can create relationship karma. The vow
holds the two souls together beyond death. Vows of celibacy can strongly affect
sexual functioning in the present incarnation and vows of poverty require rescinding

40
before abundance can be enjoyed. Declarations that: Ill never have another
child/relationship/etc or I will always love/hate you can have a powerful effect
through many lives.
Phobias
Phobias often have a past life cause and stem from overwhelming fear. They have a
karmic root. Drowning in the past can create a terror of water, falling off a high tower
a fear of heights, for instance
Karma-in-suspension
As not all karma can be dealt with at once, some of it remains in suspension to be
dealt with at some other time - which may or may not occur during the present life
depending on how other factors progress.
Karma-in-the-making
What goes on at the present time creates future karma. Each thought, deed, action and
belief creates karma for the next life.

Karmic Patterns
Many people experience karma as an endlessly repeating cycle. This is because of
deeply ingrained reactive patterns that have arisen over many lifetimes. The soul
becomes stuck in a grove, going over and over the same old ground, unable to move
forward. So, a soul may become stuck in a feeling of unworthiness and will attract
many situations that, apparently, confirm that unworthiness. The soul will look to
others for support, seeking worth through their eyes rather than finding it within itself.
The pattern will be reiterated life after life until the soul can break out of the bondage
of unworthiness and learn to recognise its own innate worth.
The grove-type pattern frequently happens in relationships where two souls,
or whole families, incarnate together again and again, despite the fact that they have
long ago learned everything they had to learn from each other, and had repaid any
karmic debts they had. They return together from habit. At some point, they have to
learn to let go of each other and move on.
There can be the swinging pendulum pattern where in one life one extreme is lived
out and then in the next the other extreme, and then back to the first and so on. The
pendulum can swing between the spendthrift and the miser, for instance. At some time
the soul must learn how to be able to both spend and save money instead of swinging
wildly between the two extremes.
The pendulum can also happen, for example, when a man (or woman) indulges in
irresponsible, promiscuous behaviour, often finding it impossible to commit to one
partner. There may be many affairs, outside marriage, or the soul simply moves from
person to person using them to gratify sexual desire but giving nothing in return.
Then, in the next life, the soul may strive for celibacy or may tie itself to an unsuitable
partner for life, perhaps as a result of a momentary whim or lapse. A child may
result who suffers because he or she is aware that there is no love between the parents
and who feels his or herself to be an encumbrance without which the parent could be
free. The unfinished business of karma may be to find a new way of responding to
situations.
The unfinished business of a relationship pattern is often concerned with one
soul taking responsibility for itself; giving up responsibility for someone else; or
learning to be independent. Co-dependence is a common pattern in which the soul
feels it will die without the other person. Similar patterns include saviour-rescuer and
victim-martyr, or persecutor and persecuted scenarios in which one soul can take the

41
dominant role or the partners can alternate roles. Walking away from the role can be
an enormous challenge but is the only solution to the recurring motif.

42
Chapter 5: The Evidence

I accept reincarnation as the best explanation for a case only after I have
excluded all others normal and paranormal.
Professor Ian Stevenson

Most evidence for reincarnation comes from memories of other lives. Children are,
seemingly, born with memories of being someone else or with vivid dreams of
another time. Adults have flashbacks, a feeling of dj vu, or undergo regression to
what seem to be valid lives. People believe they were characters from history, or a
minor player on the stage of life. In some people, the recall is extremely detailed, in
others it is more vague. In certain people, phobias and chronic illnesses which have no
basis in the present life are, apparently, explained by previous life experience.
People ask why memories of other lives are so varied and why they can
contain inaccuracies. It is not surprising really. Five witnesses to an event will give
five different word pictures of what went on, at least two accounts will contradict each
other in minor details. Memory fades quickly, unless it is of a deeply traumatic event
in which case it might be blotted out altogether. Even within a present life,
something that happened five or ten years ago is often misremembered or entirely
forgotten. So, for the details of a past life to be hazy is more likely than that it will be
presented in impeccable detail.
From evidence obtained in hypnosis and other altered states of consciousness,
it appears that the further a soul progresses beyond death, the less memories of the life
it has just left matter. If the soul hangs around, staying close to the earth and
reincarnating quickly, then memory is likely to be stronger. This is particularly so if
the life has been cut short and the soul wants to return to earth which can explain
why so many children remember having been someone who has died violently or
accidently.

Childrens Memories
To prove reincarnation, the facts of the past life have to be ascertained to be true and
it has to be shown that there is no way that the information could have been obtained
other than by having been present at the actual events of the other life. Researchers
prefer to work with children rather than adults. Childrens recollections are much
fresher although several years can elapse between the initial memory and the case
being investigated. The longer the gap, the more the accuracy is doubted and the more
possibility there is envisaged for the initial facts to have been altered to fit known
information.
American Professor Ian Stevenson conducted research for over thirty years and
examined more than 2600 cases in South Asia, Lebanon, Turkey, West Africa, North
America and Europe. Many of the children claimed to be men who died in the recent
past and Professor Stevenson was able to talk to their widows to confirm intimate
details of which the new incarnation would, under normal circumstances, have no
knowledge. The previous death of a number of these children was violent or
accidental, which could be a factor in recalling the other life.
Dr Satwant Pasricha worked with Professor Stevenson and has been
researching childrens memories for a quarter of a century. She has published a
statistical analysis of the cases she investigated and the pattern that the memories
follow. Children usually began speaking of their memories by the age of three and
they fade around age seven a finding which correlated with Professor Stevensons

43
cross-cultural study. In addition Dr Pasricha tabled significant personality traits and
abilities that carried over from life to life. All the children she studied expressed a
desire to return to their previous family. Her conclusion is that, where the root of a
childs distress or disfunction does not arise in the present life we can justifiably
conjecture that it derives from events even earlier than those of childhood or infancy,
namely those of a previous life.

Birthmarks and scars

One of the areas Professor Stevenson and other researchers feel is most evidential are
birthmarks and scars which appear to pass from incarnation to incarnation. In one
such case in Alaska, William George had told his son, saying: If there is anything to
this rebirth business, I will come back as your son. He gave his son a gold watch and
told it to keep it for him. He told his daughter in law that when he came back he
would have two birthmarks similar to the ones he then showed her. He was
accidentally drowned nine months before his grandson was born. During the labour
his daughter-in-law was aware of him in the room. When the child was born, he had
two moles in the same place as his grandfather. He exhibited attitudes towards the
family that were consistent with his grandfather but not with a young child. When
he was between 4 and 5 years old his mother laid out on the bed the contents of her
jewellery box including the grandfathers gold watch. Coming into the room, the
child announced: Thats my watch and clung to it tenaciously. The mother was
adamant that the child had not seen it before as it had been locked in the box since the
grandfather handed it to his son.

A Father and Son Reunited

Checking the evidence is much easier when the characters concerned have lived
recently, which is why researchers working with the Druze in Lebanon find much to
interest them. The Druze take reincarnation for granted, and believe that they are
reborn immediately after death. In a complex case l9 year old Aiz Nouhad Abu Rokon
claimed to have been killed on a deserted road near Baalbek in February l975. Aged
three, Aiz told his parents that he was Ali Badawi, a truck driver from southern
Lebanon. When he was six, he walked up to a woman visiting relatives nearby and
announced: You are Nebiya, my wife.
He told the astonished woman that he her husband had been killed on a
snowbound country road when thugs stopped his vehicle and demanded money. When
he refused, they shot him in the stomach and shoulder, and buried him by the side of
the road. When he visited Nebiya at home some years later: I knew it all so well. I
went to the closet and looked for my clothes, all my little treasures. Everything was as
I remembered, and the family was incredibly moved to see me again. By the time he
was sixteen, he was the father at his last-life daughters wedding.
In l983, Aizs father was killed. Three years later, a small boy walked into the
Abu Rokon home, pointed to a picture of Nahoud taken shortly before his death, and
said to Aiz: Im your father. The little boys mother, Nabilla Abuassi recalls that as
soon as Adib learned to speak he would ask for someone called Aiz. He became
extremely fractious when the right Aiz was not produced. He said that his aunt knew
his Aiz. The aunt taught Aiz at school. Arrangements were made for the two to meet.
When Adib walked into the house, he told Aizs mother that he had left one cigarette
in the pack he had on him when he died and that it was in his jacket. Aizs mother
looked in the jacket, and found the cigarette. Adib is now eleven and the families live
close together so that the two boys can continue their previous relationship.

44
 Adibs mother says that at first she and her husband found it hard to believe
but the preponderance of coincidences convinced them: How do you explain a two
and a half year old child who can direct us to a house in a town where hes never
been, go to a closet and pick out another mans clothes as his own, recognise friends
by name before he meets them, look at a photo of himself with his wife and know
the date it was taken on the Golan. These are just facts. Can you explain it?

I Froze To Death
A modern-day hypnotic regression for a sixteen year old revealed a story of a death on
the Titanic and the source of a phobia. Mark Wiles was referred to a hypnotherapist
by his doctor as he had an extreme terror of water. From the age of seven or eight he
had suffered from a recurring dream in which the bow of a ship was coming towards
him. He also saw crystal chandeliers, grilles and pink furniture underwater. As a
young boy, he played with his sisters Barbie dolls, putting them under water and then
placing them in the freezer. Under regression, he died in freezing cold water unable
even to open his eyes which were stuck together with ice.
Mark believes he was a steward on the Titanic. In two taped regression
sessions, he gave numerous details of life both on and off the ship, including cabin
numbers and the people occupying them. He had a picture of serving the last meal
which included a strong smell of fish. He also saw the class system on the ship rather
differently to a modern liner (where the classes are stacked one on top of each other,
with first class on top). In his reliving, First Class on the Titanic was at the bow of the
ship, with vertical divisions working back towards Third Class at the rear. Steerage
was in the stern of the ship below decks. He was later able to confirm that this was
indeed how the Titanic was organised.
Marks regression took place after the film of the same name came out. But he
says his memory was markedly different. The colours were much more muted, not so
bright And when the ship went down, it was not noisy like in the film, it happened
much more quietly. Details he recalls are not covered in the film, nor in a book his
mother had given him earlier: In case you were there. Much research was required
to confirm the details he gave under hypnosis.
One synchronicity in connection with his story was quite extraordinary. He
phoned an English television programme This Morning in response to a piece on
reincarnation memories. Mark happened to phone on the anniversary of the ship
sailing at exactly the same time as it left Southampton. Something of which he was
unaware until it was pointed out to him when he later appeared on the same show.
What did not appear on the show was that Mark has the berth number at Southampton
from which the ship sailed, but so far his research has not been able to confirm that it
is correct.

45
Chapter 6: Alternative Explanations

Numerous theories are put forward as an alternative explanation for apparent

reincarnation memories. Some are psychological, others psychic. All have their
strengths and weaknesses. Serious researchers are always on their guard against such
things, but people who experience past life recall may not stop to analyse memories in
the same way. Conversely, however, just because there could be an alternative
explanation, it does not mean that the memories may be not real.

Cryptomnesia
Cryptomnesia means 'hidden memory' and it is the explanation most often put forward
by psychologists to explain past life memory. It is said that something heard, read or
seen and then forgotten is brought to the surface as 'my' memory. In other words, it is
a regurgitating of 'facts' without remembrance of their source. The person
remembering may have read a history book or a novel in childhood, or seen a film,
and years later produce it as a past life. It is always wise however to bear in mind that
graphic details and so-called 'evidence' can come from cryptomnesia. What is harder
to fake are the deep feelings and emotions, especially the body sensations, that can
accompany a true reliving.

Paramnesia
The definition of paramnesia is the illusion of recognizing something that has never
actually been part of one's previous experience. It is akin to fantasising and may well
come from reading a book or watching a film about someone's life and feeling: This
is all very familiar. An unconscious identification takes place and makes the leap to:
"This must have been me". From regression therapy, it is clear that people carry
'themes' from past experiences whether it be betrayal, great love, loss, unavailability
or any of the other motifs that run through human experience. When that person hears
the same theme, or soul story, then there can be an unwitting identification with the
underlying truth of that experience. The details become 'mine' instead of 'similar to
mine'. In other words "similar things are seen as the same".

The power of suggestion

Cultural or religious belief can have a strong influence on memory. So, for example,
in places like India or amongst the Druze in Lebanon, where reincarnation is taken for
granted, it can unconsciously affect or elaborate upon facts that are, apparently,
recalled. In some cultures, children are expected to be the reincarnation of their
ancestors and parents openly talk about such matters when they are very young. They
recognise, and endorse, in their children characteristics of the deceased.
Many people are extremely suggestible and language is a powerful tool. The choice of
words and the questions that are asked when someone is in an altered state of
consciousness, such as hypnosis, for instance, affect memory. This is particularly so
when past life memory arises through hypnotic regression and the regressee may
enter into a fantasy in fancy dress rather than an actual reliving.
Who people believe they were can influence past life recall. They may go into
regression believing that they were, or might have been, a particular person. They
may well have read a great deal on that person. In which case, they are 'pre-
programmed' to bring up that memory. If someone has a fantasy about being famous
then this can easily produce a detailed 'life' that seems to be true and can be checked

46
out from historical evidence, and yet can have an essential element missing. The
'reliving' will somehow lack an authentic feel even though the words are 'right'.
The power of suggestion can work in a subtle way. People can have identified
in the present or another life with a figure who was something of a hero to them at the
time. They avidly absorbed details of that life and perhaps fantasised what it would be
like to be that person. Their soul took on so much of that memory that it became
incorporated into their own. As their life was perhaps dull and mundane, it was much
more exciting to be that other person. Then when it is time to 'go back' into a soul
memory, the subconscious mind, which has access to all the soul's memories, will
bring forward that much more exciting possibility rather than the dull experience
which really belongs. Of course, straightforward fantasy can also play a part. Children
imagine what it would be like to be someone else, they take on different roles and
characters in play. So too do adults. It can pass through people's minds when they
come for a regression, "I wonder who I was, I've always had an affinity with." So
if the person carrying out the regression is not careful, this fantasy can be triggered as
a past life.

False memory syndrome

False memory syndrome has been making the headlines, mostly with regard to alleged
child abuse. Therapists, usually with the best intention in the world, are bringing
memories to the surface in their clients which later turn out to be false. It is extremely
easy to induce a false past life memory. Clients can be desperate to come up with
something. They may want to please their therapist - and it is worth bearing in mind
that some people who bring about past life memories are anything but therapists.
Hypnotists can re-run a memory and then, apparently, erase it again.

Brain disorders and psychiatric illness

With a few notable exceptions, most conventional doctors put forward theories of
brain disorder, such as temporal lobe epilepsy, or psychiatric diseases like
schizophrenia, to explain past life memories. When psychiatrists and psychologists
look at memory of any kind they equate it with the brain rather than the mind. For
them, memory depends on a fully functioning, healthy brain. Some researchers have
demonstrated that, by electrically stimulating the brain, they can duplicate out of body
or near death experiences and can, apparently, induce past life memories
particularly of trauma and pain. They argue that such experiences must be a function
of the brain, they cannot exist independently.

Multiple personality disorder

Multiple Personality Disorder or MPD is a rare but nonetheless medically recognised
condition. It is seen by psychiatrists as having its roots in childhood experiences,
although any severe shock can set it off. Two or more distinct personalities emerge,
usually but not necessarily under hypnosis. Each personality has a separate and
independent life, and may or may not be aware of other personalities sharing the same
body. If the personality has split off in childhood it tends to 'grow up' as the body
matures. Occasionally a personality will remain a child, but this is rare.
Each personality has distinct memories and a specific character which it does
not share with any of the other personalities - which can number anything from two to
infinity. There may be a central organising personality who will 'allow' the multiple
personas to come forward, or the different factions may vie amongst themselves for
supremacy. In hypnosis it is possible to use one of these figures to communicate and

47
for integration of the other personalities to occur. In a considerable number of cases
specific personalities come forward to deal with particular situations, in other words
there is an underlying coping mechanism at work.

The collective unconscious

C. G. Jung postulated the existence of the collective unconscious, a repository for all
memories and experiences that have ever been. These are the archetypes, potent
symbols of ubiquitous human experience. Jungs archetypes - universal figures - crop
up time and time again in the human story: heroes, victims, devouring mothers and
the like. People are drawn to 'memories' of particular characters in history who carry a
strong archetypal charge such as King Arthur and his Knights. In essence, the story is
carried by these somewhat larger than life figures depending on which character in the
drama is associated with 'me'. Figures from history can become archetypes, especially
when their tale is told repeatedly.
Psychologists and psychotherapists, as well as lay people, explain away
reincarnation memories as arising out of the collective unconscious.

Genetic memory
Just as physical characteristics such as blue eyes and red hair are carried in the genes,
and predisposition to alcoholism or manic depression can be passed on through DNA,
so too, it is argued, can a kind of psychic memory of all that has gone before in all a
persons ancestors. A psychogene is postulated as the carrier - a kind of 'memory
particle' in the genes. If past life memories are of a previous family member, then it is
possible that such 'knowledge' is passed down through the family.

Possession by dead spirits

To accept this explanation, it is first necessary to accept that discarnate spirits who
have survived death, especially ones who are 'trapped' close to the earth, can
communicate. This is another subject that keeps parapsychologists extremely busy but
no one has yet come up with a definitive answer. Nevertheless, serious researchers do
put it forward as an explanation for apparent past life recall.
It is also suggested that, at times, a discarnate spirit takes over the living and
communicates his or her memories - and before applying twentieth first century
rationality to this idea it is as well to remember that 'possession by spirits' has been
regarded by all cultures as a major cause of illness for at least 35,000 years.

Psychically reading a place

This explanation presupposes that human beings have psychic ability. It is posited that
places 'hold' an impression of what has happened there previously - especially
traumatic events - and anyone can pick up that event. It is rather like seeing a ghost.
Indeed part of the theory is that the 'spirits of the place' communicate. Someone who
is sensitive to atmosphere can tune into the memories of a soul who has lived there
previously.
'Reading a place' usually applies to an experience which spontaneously happens when
the person concerned is in that place. It is like stepping back into history on the spot
where it occurred. It is quite common on the sight of old battlefields. People who go
there suddenly experience what seems to be a previous life in which they took part in
the battle. It can also happen at sites which have seen dramatic events or where the
feelings are strong.

48
Reading the Akashic Record
The Akashic Record is an esoteric version of the collective unconscious. It appears in
Eastern philosophies and was adopted by the Theosophists and others when
reincarnation theory returned to the West. The Akashic Record is believed to hold the
imprint of all that has ever happened. It is rather like a film library of everything that
has ever happened on earth and, in some views, what will occur as well. It can be
accessed both by the living and in the post death state where it may be used in
reviewing other lives and making a study plan for the next life. Alternative
explanations for past life recall using the Akashic Record vary somewhat. In one
view, souls are imprinted with experiences from the Record that fit what they intend
to learn on earth. In another view, someone in hypnosis is reading the record and
accepting it as their own experience, whether this is so or not. Psychics can also
access the Record to read past lives.
One explanation of why so many people remember being a particular famous
person is that they are, unknowingly, accessing the Akashic Record for that life. The
Record can be somewhat cold and clinical, or it can be emotionally charged. In the
case of a famous person energy is built up around the persona in exactly the same
way as archetypes form in the collective unconscious. It may be easier to access these
highly-charged personas rather than personal memory.

49
Chapter7: Who Was Who

It is conceivable that I might well be reborn as a Chinese coolie. In such a

case I should lodge a protest.
Winston Churchill

The American film star Steven Seagal has been recognized by the head of the
Nyingma Tibetan Buddhist school as the reincarnation of a 17th century lama from
eastern Tibet. The actor has not been enthroned and has not undergone the extensive
program of training and study that it is customary for a tulku. He is not the only
famous person to be involved in reincarnation.
John Lennon, the former Beatle, was convinced that he was the reincarnation
of Napoleon and that Yoko Ono had been Josephine. Leonon looked on Yoko as a
soul mate of the kind described by Plato. Literally his other half who had been torn
from him when the gods became angry at the overweening pride of humans. At that
time, humans were two headed beings with four arms and legs and overwhelming
pride. The gods split them asunder and, as Plato tells us, Each half yearned for the
half from which it had been severed. As John Lennon put it:

Before Yoko and I met we were half a person. You know theres an old myth
about a person being one half and the other half being somewhere else, in the
sky or somewhere, like a mirror image. But we were two halves and now we
are whole.25

Lennons controversial biographer Albert Goldman claims that John Lennon also
thought that he and Yoko had been other famous lovers and that they had been
Pharaoh and Queen in ancient Egypt. Apparently a psychic told Yoko Ono that a
sarcophagus that was coming up for sale contained the body of herself in this former
incarnation. Yoko and John hurriedly purchased it but Yoko was furious to find that
the mummy mask looked nothing like her. When the two travelled to Egypt, John
Lennon wandered around the Step Pyramid at Saqqarah murmuring: This is a
magical, magical place. Ive been here before!26
Napoleon Bonaparte himself had believed in reincarnation and asserted that it
is peoples past that befits them for their present destiny. Bonaparte, who rose from
humble beginnings in Corsica to become Emperor of the French, claimed he was the
reincarnation of the Emperor Charlemagne. He gave instructions to his marshals to:
Tell the Pope that I am keeping my eyes open; tell him that I am Charlemagne, the
Sword of the Church, his Emperor, and as such I expect to be treated. In his
memoirs, Prince Talleyrand, a diplomat who held high office under Napoleon,
describes a stormy meeting between Bonaparte and Church dignitaries at which
Napoleon insisted: You wish to treat me as if I were Louis le Debonnaire. Do not
confound the son with the father. I am Charlemagne.
At the end of the twentieth century, reincarnation gripped the entertainment
industry. Many stars came out about their previous lives. Some took on the belief
having become either Buddhists or Scientologists both of whom accept
reincarnation. Tom Cruse, John Travolta, Lisa Presley and Kirstie Alley all belong to

25 A friend of John Lennon quoting a personal conversation with Lennon

26 Goldman, Albert, The Lives of John Lennon Bantam Books London l989 p.744

50
the latter sect whilst Richard Gere is a strong supporter of Buddhism. Actress Shirley
MacLaine may have started the reincarnation trend with her published belief that she
was a handmaiden to Nefertiti, the wife of Charlemagne, and a model for Toulouse
Lautrec amongst other lives. Sylvester Stallone believes he was a boxer killed by a
knock-out punch in the l930s and before that he was a French aristocrat executed by
Madame La Guillotine and, prior to that, an American Indian. Fashion guru Paco
Rabane has also expressed his strong belief in reincarnation in two books. He says he
was one of the priests who helped to kill and then embalm Tukankamen in ancient
Egypt and he also remembers being a prostitute in l8th century England, a Mongol
prince, a usurer in Lombardy and an Inquisition priest.
Singer Tina Turner took off to Egypt on a quest for her past life as
Hapshepshut, the woman who took control and became Egypts first woman Pharaoh.
Tina Turner had been told by a psychic that she had been this powerful Queen, but in
her travels with author Moyra Caldecott, who was also researching her own place in
the story, the two found no definite indications. However, both have voiced their
continued belief in reincarnation.
Almost from pre-history, records exist that tell the reincarnation stories of the
famous and not-so-famous. Diogenses Laertius in the Life of Pythagoras states that:

Pythagoras was accustomed to speak of himself in this manner: that he had

formerly been Aethalides, and had been accounted the son of Mercury; and
that Mercury had offered him any gift he pleased except immortality.
Accordingly he had requested that, whether living or dead, he might preserve
the memory of what had happened to him At a subsequent period he was
reborn as Euphorbus, and was wounded by Menelaus at the siege of Troy, and
so died. In that life he used to say that he had formerly been Aethalides; and
that he had received as a gift from Mercury the memory of his souls
transmigrations, also the gift of recollecting what his own soul and the souls
of others had experienced between death and rebirth.

Some well-respected people have had particularly strong reincarnation memories.

Charles Emerson (1808-1836) a scholar and the brother of Ralph Waldo Emerson
recalled his own experiences:

The reason why Homer is to me like a dewy morning is because I too lived
while Troy was, and sailed in the hollow ships of the Grecians to sack the
devoted town. The rosy-fingered dawn as it crimsoned the tops of Ida, the
broad seashore covered with tents, the Trojan hosts in their painted armor,
and the rushing chariots of Diomde and Idomeneus all these I too saw: my
ghost animated the frame of some nameless Argive. We forget that we have
been drugged by the sleepy bowl of the present.

Many creative people have a close connection to their previous lives. Salvador
Dali claimed:

As for me, I am not only a mystic; I am also the reincarnation of one of the
greatest of all Spanish mystics, St John of the Cross. I can vividly remember
my life as St John of experiencing divine union, of undergoing the dark night
of the soul of which he writes with so much feeling. I can remember the
monastery and I can remember many of St Johns fellow monks.

51
 American poet and philosopher Henry David Thoreau had a strong memory of
his previous lives and those of his friends:

I lived in Judea eighteen hundred years ago, but I never knew that there was
such a one as Christ among my contemporaries. And Hawthorne, too, I
remember as one with whom I sauntered in old heroic times along the banks of
the Camander amid the ruins of chariots and heroes As the stars looked to
me when I was a shepherd in Assyria, they look to me now a New Englander.27
An inventor gave reincarnation as the reason for his abilities:
Genius is experience. Some seem to think that it is a gift or talent, but it is the
fruit of long experience in many lives. Some are older souls than others, and
so they know more.

His name was Henry Ford and, as he explained in a newspaper interview:

I adopted the theory of Reincarnation when I was twenty six Work is futile if
we cannot utilize the experience we collect in one life in the next. When I
discovered Reincarnation it was as if I had found a universal plan. I realised
that there was a chance to work out my ideas. Time was no longer limited. I
was no longer a slave to the hands of the clock.

Even the greatest of sceptics Harry Houdini who spent much of his time trying to
prove that Spiritualist mediums were a fake nevertheless believed in reincarnation:

I myself, have entered some Old World city for the first time in my life, so far
as I was aware, and found the streets familiar, known just where to go to
locate a certain house.

Edgar Cayce
Edgar Cayce was an American psychic. During his life he gave over 15,000 psychic
readings and over 2,500 of those referred to past lives, many of which were devoted to
the karmic cause of illness. A devout Christian, he nevertheless came to believe in
reincarnation from the readings he produced when in trance. He saw himself as
Pythagoras and several early spiritual teachers. If he did not do the work he was
intended to do his readings then his throat closed up and he could not speak.
Cayce stated that he had accrued karma as an Egyptian priest who broke his
vow of celibacy in order to create a perfect child. He was reborn twice as John
Bainbridge, once in the l7th and then against in the l8th century. Both men had a
lustful disposition and were restless and unhappy. Cayce said that he had had to
undergo those lives as he needed to know extremes before he could help others. At the
end of the second John Bainbridge life, he gave his own life to save that of another.

27 Santesson p.93

52
To explore karma and reincarnation in depth, see my Book
of Why (Flying Horse Publications).

Bibliography
Hall, Judy, Patterns of the Past (The Wessex Astrologer 2000)
Hall, Judy, Karmic Connections (The Wessex Astrologer 2001)
Dalai Lama My Land and People
The Apocryphal New Testament Clarendon Press, Oxford, l924
The Nag Hammadi Library in English Coptic Library Project Leiden l977
Besant, Annie, Reincarnation Theosophical Publishing Society London 1915
Besant, Annie, A Study in Karma The Theosophist Office Madras (no date)
Blavatsky, H.R., Secret Doctrine Theosophical Publishing House London l928
Blavatsky, H.R., Secret Doctrine Theosophical Publishing House London l928
Stevenson, I. Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect Praeger Westport,
Connecticut 1997
Goldman, Albert, The Lives of John Lennon Bantam Books London l989
Mead, G.R.S., Pistis Sophia
Steiner, Rudolf, The Human Soul in Life and Death The Rudolf Steiner Publishing
Co. London l914

53