Life after Death, part 2
Is there anything after death? Open-minded modern scientists have thoroughly investigated reincarnation with the means available.
Continued from “Life after Death, part 1”
Life between incarnations
When the individual “dies” or in other words, leaves his worn-out organism with its etheric envelope, he goes on living in his emotional envelope and, when this is dissolved, in his mental envelope. When this too is dissolved, he waits, asleep in his causal envelope, to be reborn into the physical world, which is incomparably the most important, since it is in this world that all human qualities must be acquired, and it is only in this world that he has the possibility of freeing himself from emotional illusions and mental fictions.
Life between incarnations is a period of rest in which man does not learn anything new. The sooner the self can free itself from its envelopes of incarnation, the quicker it develops.
At the same time as the etheric envelope frees itself from the organism in the so-called process of death, the emotional envelope frees itself from the etheric envelope which remains near the organism and dissolves along with it. Man’s life in the emotional world can prove completely different for different individuals, depending on their levels of development.
Like the physical world (49:2-7), the emotional world has six successively higher regions (48:2-7). Most people are nowadays objectively conscious from the beginning in the three regions that correspond to the lower three regions of the physical world. (Mental consciousness, however, remains subjective.) Objects in those regions are material counterparts of the material forms of the physical world, which fact often causes the newcomer to think that he still lives in the physical world. During this first period, the individual can also associate with his friends in the physical world when they are asleep. Without esoteric knowledge he believes, like everybody else, that the highest region in this new world of his is “heaven and his final destination in eternity”.
The emotional envelope dissolves gradually: first its lowest molecular kind, then the lowest but one, etc. When the lowest three have dissolved it is not possible for the individual to contact the visible physical world. There are those who already in the process of physical death are able to free themselves from the lower three molecular kinds of their emotional envelope. In the three higher regions of the emotional world, the existing material forms are imaginative creations made by the individuals in those regions. For emotional matter forms itself in accordance with the slightest hint from consciousness, the ignorant neither understanding the cause nor being able to grasp how it happened. The individual seldom learns anything really new while in the emotional world, and in the mental world never.
The life of the emotional envelope can vary as greatly as that of the organism. After the dissolution of the emotional envelope, the individual in his mental envelope leads a life of thought that is absolutely subjective, not suspecting the impossibility of apprehending objective reality in this world. But apprehension of reality, bliss, and perfection, omniscience and omnipotence are absolute. All his fantasies become absolute realities to him. Everything he wishes is instantly there and all his friends, all the “great ones” of mankind, are with him, all equally perfect.
The independent life of the mental envelope can vary from a minute or so (in the case of the barbarian) to thousands of years. It all depends on how many ideas the individual has collected during physical life and how vital they are. Platon is said to have material to work up for ten thousand years.
Upon the dissolution of the mental envelope, the individual in his causal envelope sinks into dreamless sleep that will last until the time comes for rebirth and an embryo has been formed for him in a physical maternal body. He awakens with a desire for a new life and forms instinctively, by means of his causal envelope, new mental and emotional envelopes, these being the necessary communication links. It will be the task of the growing child to use its latent qualities to develop the ability of consciousness in them.1
Not remembering previous lives is an advantage
The self (or monad’s consciousness) knows nothing about its previous personalities in previous incarnations because its memory has become latent. The disadvantage of the veil thrown over the past is outbalanced a thousand times by its advantages. That vision is more than the normal individual would stand. The knowledge of what remains to be reaped would paralyse without affording the least benefit, and would just complicate things. But when the self is ripe and ready, meaning that it is has acquired causal consciousness, which is the sum total of all the experiences and knowledge in the human kingdom and can then study its previous existences, it will remember everything.2
Modern scientific research into life after death
Though most people do not remember their previous lives, there are those, who for some time can remember and who are certain that they have lived before. Remembering one’s previous life is rare, but it occurs on every continent, though more frequently in countries and cultures in which the belief of reincarnation is stronger. A systematic survey of cases in a district of northern India in the 1970s showed that about one person in 500 claimed to remember a previous life.3
Hundreds of such cases have been recorded during the 20th and 21th century. Several scientists have studied them and dedicated their lives to collect an ample amount of evidence on those cases. One of the most thorough scientific researchers has been the psychiatrist Dr Ian Stevenson (1918-2007), who with his team at the University of Virginia conducted more than 2,500 case studies over a period of 40 years of children who had claimed to remember their past lives. He methodically documented each child’s statements and then identified the deceased person the child identified with, and verified the facts of the deceased person’s life that matched the child’s memory. He also matched birthmarks and birth defects to wounds and scars on the deceased, verified by medical records such as autopsy photographs.
The most frequently occurring event or common denominator relating to rebirth is that of a child remembering a past life. Children usually begin to talk about their memories at the age of two or three and may talk about a previous family or the way they died in a previous life. Such infantile memories gradually dwindle when the child is between four and seven years old. There are of course always some exceptions, such as a child continuing to remember its previous life but not speaking about it for various reasons.
Most of the children talk about their previous identity with great intensity and feeling. Often they cannot decide for themselves which world is real and which one is not. They often experience a kind of double existence where at times one life is more prominent, and at times the other life takes over. This is why they usually speak of their past life in the present tense. Almost all of them are able to tell about the events leading up to their death.
Some unusual forms of behaviour frequently observed by Dr Stevenson were the following:
In 35% of cases he investigated, children who died an unnatural death developed phobias (e.g. drowing in previous life connected to fear of water etc)
Frequently observed form of behaviour were so-called philias, which concerned children who expressed the wish e.g. to eat different kinds of food or to wear clothes that were different from those of their culture. Also, if a child had addiction as an adult in a previous incarnation, he may express a need for these substances at an early age in a new incarnation.
Often children who were members of the opposite sex in their previous life show difficulty in adjusting to the new sex. These problems relating to the ‘sex change’ can lead to homosexuality later on in their lives. Former girls who were reborn as boys may wish to dress as girls or prefer to play with girls rather than boys.
During his original research into various cases involving children’s memories of past lives, Dr Stevenson did note with interest the fact that these children frequently bore lasting birthmarks which supposedly related to their murder or the death they suffered in a previous life. Stevenson’s research into birthmarks and congenital defects has such particular importance for the demonstration of reincarnation, since it furnishes objective and graphic proof of reincarnation, superior to the – often fragmentary – memories and reports of the children and adults questioned, which even if verified afterwards cannot be assigned the same value in scientific terms.
In many cases presented by Dr Stevenson there are also medical documents available as further proof, which are usually compiled after the death of the person. In the cases he researched and “solved” in which birthmarks and deformities were present, he didn’t suppose there was any other apposite explanation than that of reincarnation. Only 30%-57% (a range according to different studies) of these deformities can be put down to birth defects which related to genetic factors, virus infections or chemical causes (like those found in children damaged by the drug thalidomide or alcohol). Apart from these demonstrable causes, the other 43% to 70% of cases have been assigned by the medical profession to the category of “unknown causes” and has no other explanation than that of mere chance.4 So, according to Dr. Stevenson, the three different values of the cases with birthmarks and birth defects are the following: they provide objective types of evidence, they suggest the influence of a discarnate personality on a later-born baby, and they help us understand why, in some cases, a person with a birth defect has it at a particular location.5 He has described his research into birthmarks and defects in a 2,268-page, two-volume book, Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology and Birth Defects (1997).
After Dr Ian Stevenson’s retired in 2002, his work was carried on by Dr Jim B. Tucker, a psychiatrist at the University of Virginia, who has recorded a number of children in the USA with same kind of memories. He has published notable books Life before Life and Return to Life.
In India, professor Satwant Pasricha of NIMHANS University at Bangalore has been for decades a collaborator with Dr Stevenson in researching reincarnation and near-death experiences. Since 1973, she has investigated and participated in about 500 cases of reincarnation involving children who claim to remember previous lives. She has written a book Can the Mind Survive Beyond Death? In Pursuit of Scientific Evidence in 2008 and co-authored Making Sense of Near-Death Experiences in 2011.
Conclusion
There is rebirth of everything and everything is subject to transformation. In the human kingdom this means that human beings do come back in flesh (in Latin re means “again” and in caro means “flesh”) to the physical world in order to develop their consciousness. Tens of thousands of incarnations are needed for that as development of consciousness is a remarkably slow process and takes time.
Reincarnation is an essential part of the profound knowledge of reality. Pythagoras’ teaching of hylozoics explains its role and functioning in a comprehensive way and connects it with the broader view of existence. Most people do not remember anything of their previous lives, but there are few who do in certain circumstances. Some courageous scientists have in the 20th century conducted research on those who claim to remember their previous life, but those are just first steps in discovering the rich “invisible” world around us.
The quicker humanity accepts the fact of reincarnation and the meaning of life as consciousness development, the better are its chances to thrive and increase its comprehension on the meaning of life and how to fulfill it.
Henry T. Laurency, Knowledge of Reality, 1.34.25-34
Henry T. Laurency, The Philosopher’s Stone, 3.65.1.
I.Stevenson Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect (1997), p 1
I.Stevenson Birthmarks and Birth Defects Corresponding to Wounds on Deceased Persons, Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 7 , No. 4, pp. 403-410, 1993
I.Stevenson Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect (1997), p 3
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