FRONTIER SCIENCE/SOCIAL CHANGE

by Paul Von Ward

A 2000 Perspective on Reincarnation

(Note: This article was published several years prior to my serious engagement with the evaluation of cases of the reincarnation type.)

People around the globe report personal memories that seem to derive from a specific person who lived before. In many cases the facts of the other life are verified by independent researchers. Some are reported by children too young, or otherwise unlikely, to have the facts from a contemporary source.1 Others come from therapy2 or hypnotic regression sessions. Can such ad hoc stories be taken as validation of the theory of reincarnation?

Reincarnation has been part of human cosmology prior to the poorly understood transition from prehistory to history between 6,000 and 10,000 BP.3 In reported history, it appeared in the earliest versions of the Hindu Vedas. The post-Neolithic Middle Eastern societies, including Persia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece, held it to be a truth. With institutionalization of Supernaturalism (belief in a separate divine realm), the orthodox texts of Judaism, Islam and Christianity now only contain allusions to the idea. The Early Christian belief in reincarnation was excised from the 4th century Bible approved by the Nicene Council. However, Gnostic, Kabbalist, theosophical and new thought traditions, as well as one out of four Americans, still believe in some sort of reincarnation.

[This subject matter relates to the Principle of Rhythm, one of seven Hermetic Principles.4 They comprise a basis for scientific study allegedly given to humans by an advanced being (AB) more than 5,000 BP. He is known by various names, including Thoth or Seth in Egypt, Manu in India, Hermes in Greece, and the Serpent of the Adam and Eve story in Genesis. They account for aspects of the universe's complexity not explained by the four laws of modern physics.]

The Principle of Rhythm

That principle governs cycles at all levels of the universe, asserting that all things survive, but undergo rhythmic phase shifts. One example is that energy cannot be destroyed, only converted from one form or the other. Recognized in Einstein's formula E=mc2, the principle manifests continual reciprocation from one form to the other. A wave changes to a particle, the particle back to a wave. Night changes into day and back again. Black holes eat visible matter; visible matter comes from black holes. "Virtual reality" is where ordinary matter lives in the factional second when it is not visible in this realm.

Plant life forms lie dormant in seeds or roots (composed of bions, the smallest repositories of organic life that can survive almost any conditions) during Winter and burst forth in all their glory in Spring. In the Summer and Fall they pass through several different epicycles of their annual cycle. All animals do the same, arising from seeds (sperm and egg) that are themselves composed of cells that have their own cycles, with components of particles that flash in and out of existence. All according to the Principle of Rhythm. Does a human personality live by the same principle?

Multidimensionality

The above examples come from the physical, five-sense realm. But more and more people from all walks of life, artists and businesspeople as well as scientists, now accept some model of a multidimensional universe. In my book OUR SOLARIAN LEGACY, I subsumed various dimensions into a three-faceted model.5 The model posits, in addition to the physical realm, a universal field of subtle energy and one of consciousness.

If consciousness is as indestructible as the energy of E=mc2-it appears from current research to be predominant among matter and energy-then it seems that it would always exist, changing form according to some as yet unknown cycle. In other words, consciousness would have its winters as well as its summers. It would have states corresponding to organic life and death.

To consider what this means for reincarnation requires that we accept the evidence that physical life is animated by consciousness and a subtle energy or life force. We must also accept that when physical death occurs the resident consciousness/life force is not extinguished, but goes elsewhere. For evidence one can read any number of books on near-death- and after-life-experiences, or be closely involved with one making the transition.

We know when an atom disappears, the subatomic particles of which it is comprised convert into an energetic wave form. Does consciousness incarnate undergo a similar transformation? Those of us who believe that electro-chemical actions of living cells create consciousness in the first place assume that it just dissipates when cell activity ceases. But we do not believe that the cessation of an animal or plant's cell function results in a reduction in the energy total of the universe. (Remember physics' Law of Conservation of Energy, formulated by M.V. Lomonosov in 1748.) So why would one assume the disappearance of consciousness from a dead body means a loss of some percentage of the consciousness in the universe?

Reincarnation

If a local consciousness lives on in the field of universal consciousness, as the physical cell's energy is reabsorbed into the plenum of space, what happens? Does it lose its character, like bits of clay added back into the potter's mix? Is its individual collection of memories lost, reincorporated into the general consciousness in some holographic manner? Do some or all personalities remain intact after death and reincarnate? We do not yet have the evidence to assert answers to these questions. (Buddhism's belief in reabsorption of bits of personalities into new beings and rebirth of only certain of an individual's attributes for karmic reasons takes a two-sides-of-the-road position.)

Application of a classical physics model of the universe to a dimension of consciousness would suggest that in death all individuality of conscious experience, and memory of it, would revert to the undifferentiated consciousness from which it came. That would mean that at the end each life contributes its unique perspective into the whole and gives up its separateness.

But what about the evidence for individual personalities having lived in another lifetime?

For that to be true, some mechanism must permit the holding together of conscious memories during the "virtual reality" phase when, like the subatomic particle that momentarily flashes out of physical existence, a local manifestation of consciousness (personality) temporarily flashes out of this realm. What level of force is required to keep an individual's memory pool concentrated and coherent during the "out phase" so that it doesn't simply merge with all consciousness? Do only certain personalities (conscious memories) hold together and reincarnate? If so, how are they different from others?

Some believe past-life cases can be explained by genetic memories, but that is not consistent with the evidence. Given that chromosomes merge from the blood lines of both parents and that well documented cases involve nonsequential gene pools, no viable chain of genetic transmission can be established for singlular, integrated personality survival.

Two possibilities for person-to-person reincarnation appear plausible from the Hermetic perspective. One, certain personalities have such a strong focus of conscious intent (morphic field) that their memory fields can survive the state shift of physical death and still have enough cohesion to inform a new being. Two, the trauma of transition is so strong for some that the emotional field (subtle energy body) survives and bonds with that of a new person.

These two approaches appear compatible with the idea that highly charged conscious intent is necessary for the development of archetypes and morphic fields that survive on their own. If this is true, then reincarnation is selective, typically involving people on a path of conscious development. We need much more confirmable research to reveal the nuances of this aspect of human experience.

Copyright 2008
Paul Von Ward
All Rights Reserved