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Word Gems
exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity
Reincarnation On Trial
the Small Ego
"turns everything into a Me"
including the future
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For many people, as I've learned, reincarnation is a quasi-religious belief, just one more cultish idea of the world; to these hapless, the facts don't matter -- something else, something hidden, is driving this mania.
I grew up in traditional Christianity, imbibing its orthodox views of the next world. Later in life, I encountered popular interpretations of reincarnation. Having just a little information at the time, it all seemed plausible; the evidence, I then reluctantly admitted, appeared insurmountable.
After all, what do you say to hypnotically-induced reports of past lives, speaking in ancient languages, identifying marks strategically manifesting on bodies, people knowing things they had no right to know. Unassailable and apodictic. Who could gainsay it? Reincarnation must be true, I guess. But, just as the sun only apparently rises in the east, not all surface-views of reality will pass muster of closer inspection.
Many years went by. As I learned more and more about the afterlife, and as my own spirit matured and opened, I grew increasingly disenchanted with the reincarnation teaching. Something troubled me deeply about this interpretation of reality. It would be awhile before I could verbalize my discontent.
My inner person began to balk at this plan. I could not stomach the idea of returning to this world, losing all of my memories, retrogressing, trading in my identity, starting all over in first grade - a gross immorality, it seemed to me! And I think even this small bit of enlightenment - a defiant humanism, resulting in a greater respect for myself - caused me to rebel at the thought that I should destroy who I am in favor of who-knows-what.
Happily, for me, I was allowed to discover better teachers, better views, better understandings, all of which saved me from this terrible doctrine. I rest easy now with the facts and the evidence; and, most of all, my sacred intuitions which had flashed red-warning lights. Reincarnation, beyond reasonable doubt, is revealed as a sordid hoax of the dysfunctional Ego.
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religion, not science! no research, just dogma!
Alexander Aksakof: "... from the beginning, reincarnation has not been presented as an object of study, but as a dogma."
Editor's note: Aksakof presents an important point. Reincarnation is a quasi-religious idea, a tenet of superstition, representing the fears of the small ego and hearsay evidence.
The doctrine of Reincarnation, in the main, with the exception of Dr. Stevenson's work, is not propounded by those who have spent long years investigating the issue! instead, it is simply dropped upon us, purportedly, as the ripest wisdom - an infallible dogma, from infallible high priests of spiritualism, who suggest to the rest of us, that only they know.
And, if defenders of "R" insist, "What about the research of Dr. Stevenson?" - well, I will just say, he wrote too soon. With a broader base of afterlife knowledge, he would not have concluded as he did. He should have studied the Wickland findings. Stevenson ended where I was a few years ago - until new information shattered earlier holdings. As Bertrand Russell wisely advised, we must withhold judgment until sufficient evidence warrants a decision:
Reincarnation has a soft underbelly, cannot defend against better research, is born of tortured intellectual inconsistency, and, at the end, becomes as credible as Santa Claus.
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Why does reincarnation, a horrid notion, appeal to many?
There are ordinary and honest seekers out there who hear the sensational claims of little boys who remember being fighter pilots. And we shrug our shoulders and say, "ok, I guess!" We grudgingly accept this as evidence for reincarnation.
But there are others for whom it is different.
Since I was in the former camp, I remember being shocked to learn that many accept reincarnation with little hesitation -- they really get into it and will defend this teaching with all vehemence.
Why? I wondered.
Why would anyone want to come back, as so many Spirit entities say, to this "cold and gray" world, this atmosphere like "muddy water," a virtual cesspool of dark and filthy energy.
And I came to see, as the Spirit Guides suggest, there's something wrong with you if you want to come back here. Granted, some people don't know very much about the wonders of the afterlife, so they might not understand what they're passing up. But there are many whom I've met who do have this information and still they persist in desiring to return to this troubled world. That's insane.
I asked a question, above, concerning hidden psychological drivers of this quasi-religious belief. The answer relates to our truest identity as human beings, our heritage having been "created in the image" - and our flight from it. Eckhart Tolle is the best source to help us here, and I will be featuring his research.
Editor's note: the following information, referencing Tolle's work, will be more meaningful when you become familiar with important terms such as "true self," "false self," "dysfunctional ego," "small ego," and others.
turning everything into a 'me'
Eckhart Tolle explains it well. He discussed his teachings in an interview and offered a new phrase that helped me to see things more clearly.
He asserted that the dysfunctional Ego "turns everything into a me."
The Small Ego, to bolster itself, seeks for psychological props and supports. It "identifies" with things and ideas of the world. To identify means to find one's identity in something else. The Ego attaches to these externalities, something like discarnate spirits attaching to mortals. My analogy fits well as the Ego adopts, as its own essence, a sense of existence, a surrogate identity, a derived life-force, from the coveted item.
Moreover, the Ego is energized by time. It will try to convince you that enlightenment is a super-human feat to be accomplished only in the future after the expenditure of much time - "I need more time," is the Ego's insistent mantra. Reincarnational theory, with its prospects of endless lives and endless time, is a veritable playground of "more time" for this "false self" residing within each human being.
In its efforts to create an identity for itself, the Ego turns everything into a 'me.' It injects a sense of distorted self into everything. It seeks for enhancements as support against "I am not enough." These might be designer jeans, farmland, the house with the right curb appeal, the right college attended, a favorite football team, church or political party: all these become invested with a sense of me, and become part of "me and my story." Through these borrowed elements of the world, the Ego finds its significance and value -- a pathological dynamic, as we are meant to find true worth only deeply within.
And it is this twisted psychological mechanism of me-ism that, for many, comes into play as the Ego expresses itself in reincarnational theory.
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yet to meet a plain John Smith
D.D. Home:
"I meet many who are reincarnationists, and I have had the pleasure of meeting at least twelve who were Marie Antoinette, six or seven Mary Queen of Scots, a whole host of Louis and other kings, about twenty Alexander the Greats, but it remains for me yet to meet a plain John Smith, and I beg of you, if you meet one, to cage him as a curiosity."
Editor's note: Daniel Dunglas Home (1833 - 1886) was a Scottish physical medium; as I have heard, one of the best of the latter nineteenth century. In my readings on the subject of “R,” I might add to Home’s observation concerning a “plain John Smith,” that I have never read of a past-life report of someone who was a lowly nameless serf on a plantation somewhere or the like.
While this issue of so many Cleopatras and Marie Antoinettes becomes obvious fraud, I’ve more often – quite often, in fact -- read in the “R” reports of someone serving in a temple close to Pharoah, or in the court of Caesar, or as a member of a Crusades regiment. This is curious. Where are the identity-less slaves or goat milkers or grape pickers or swineherd attendants of history? if you see what I mean. These are strangely absent from the past-life gallery, despite their overwhelming ubiquity.
Instead, the “memory,” more often than not, is linked to some dramatic episode of history, something that an ego would love to star in, such that the participant is close to a seat of power or a member of a force or significant movement. This drama sounds like rubbish to me. Most people, by far, down through the ages, have lived little nameless lives, worked themselves to death, or died young of some disease, all without fanfare, in a forgotten corner of history. Where are these "past lives"?
Special note: I just did a quick Wikipedia search on D.D. Home. This news agency is run by hard-core materials and can always be counted on to discredit the evidence for the afterlife. They speak of the “fraud that Home may have employed.” No evidence, just slimy innuendo. See Rupert Sheldrake’s encounters with the slippery and oiled TED and Wikipedia.
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Look at some of the evidence discussed in these sub-articles. For so many generations in the East, reincarnation has been a tool to oppress the disadvantaged. This is a blatant attempt by Dear Leader as Small Ego to lord it over others under the guise of religious self-righteousness.
And in the West, those who praise reincarnation do so, I submit, as proxy for their egoic dreams of coming back to gain what was lost; to have one more chance to prove themselves; to make it big; to become some adored icon; to "beat'em or show 'em."
- Editor's note: It's generally known that the "R" doctrine originates in the East - what is not known is that their version is different than the West's! During transportation to our side of the globe, the theory was sanitized to make it more palatable to the Western mind. "R" was packaged and merchandized for mass consumption over here - so much for "R" as eternal truth. Read James Webster's research on this.
Listen to what people say, and they will reveal their neediness, their sense of "I am not enough," their lack of self-love - the subtle self-loathing, the egoic fantasies and neuroses, which, for many, devolves to reincarnational theory. Listen to them turn reincarnation into a 'me,' an attempt at "salvation theory," which the Small Ego believes will save it from its own inadequacy.
Much can be said here. I would direct you to Eckhart's books for a plenary understanding.
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Editor's update: By invitation of Grahame MacKenzie, editor of "Spirit Today," I took part in an online discussion regarding reincarnation. The participants, from many countries, included some of the most noted afterlife researchers in the world. I offered the following, an assessment of "R" that must include a sensitivity to our own deepest intuitions:
It is midnight; Thanksgiving Day, here in the US. I am very tired but, having read this chain of discussion, felt compelled to rise from my bed to write some things; for whom, I’m not sure, maybe, primarily, for myself.
This issue of reincarnation is a contentious one. I have been an afterlife researcher for almost 20 years, have read nearly 200 books, possess my own extensive bank of stories, not only about visits with psychics, but other very personal encounters with the Spirit world. And this is what I know: The scientific method, empirical investigation, while critically important – especially, in terms of presenting information to “newcomers” - will take us only so far down the road of certitude.
In this world and the next, people debate the reality of reincarnation! I remember when I first began looking into these things - I was surprised to learn of this lack of settled opinion. How could this be? Surely they, over there, would know about these things. But no. We on Earth, using the services of a psychic-medium, find that the answer one receives depends upon the “neighborhood” one visits. To make matters even more confusing, as Michael Tymn has pointed out, semantics muddies the waters with non-standard definitions of “reincarnation” offered by Silver Birch and Frederic Myers. Their version of reincarnation is no reincarnation at all; at least, nothing we would recognize or need to worry about.
I have come to see this: People here and over there debate reincarnation because this whole area subsumes another, even more uncharted, foundational domain. Allow me to offer an analogy.
Professor Daniel Robinson of Georgetown University once gave a lecture on the ancient Greeks and their concept of government. He said that we can’t answer the question regarding how men should be governed until we first establish what kind of life is the right kind of life for us to live; and we can’t answer that question until we first settle what kind of beings are we! And until we do that, we can’t have much of a position on the problem of ethics, which means we are flying blind to know what the polis should be. In other words, there is an interconnectedness of these questions, each one, a particular facet of a larger problem.
And I submit that, before the problem of reincarnation can be credibly addressed, we must first explore its foundations; that of, what is its purpose? We are instructed to accept, by some, that it is a kind of “salvation theory” that leads men to higher ground. But before we can answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ here, we must decide, what kind of beings are we, anyway? How do we learn? How do we progress and is it discontinuous? Is it possible to lose one’s hard-won enlightenment? Why would a Dark Realm exist if one could simply deposit oneself into the existential hopper, like new sausage, and be spit out the other end as who-knows-what? Are we beings-of-love? If so, which one of us, thus afflicted, would move a micrometer toward attainment of a new identity, as this would surely mean losing a dearly beloved. Do we have any measure of free will? – some say it’s the “prime directive” over there. What kind of self-respecting person, possessing such divine gift, would agree to lose his personhood? And if, as some say, we are involuntarily sent back to the Earth, then, what becomes of free will? There are many such questions that might be asked, but I will leave those for the moment.
In my meditations of these mysteries, I have not abandoned the scientific method. Science, here and there, will always be important. But I have come to see that it cannot compete with something else. I am reminded just now of Elizabeth Fry’s testimony (via Leslie Flint); she was also speaking, in a sense, of “the concept of government.” She said that, in her "neighborhood," so to speak, there is no competition; that no one wants to overrule another; that each person intuitively knows within him or herself what needs to be done and where to fit in. And I will strongly suggest to all that this mystical sense of the “inner oracle,” a profound subliminal knowing, but not by the scientific method, is where our future lies. I have begun to taste – so briefly, but the perception grows - of this method of accessing knowledge. And this, I sense, is our future. When we get to the other side, unless we begin to access this inner true self of ours, we shall still be endlessly debating reincarnation. No one will pass out a leaflet and say, here it is, here’s the truth, believe this. Unless we learn to do what Elizabeth and her friends do, we will be stuck on the lower levels of Summerland until we figure this out.
After reading all that is worth reading and hearing the interminable debates regarding reincarnation, I will tell you why I have utterly rejected it as a fairy tale. It is anti-humanistic and loathsome to my deepest person.
It is a deluded invention of the ego, the “false self,” that has not come to terms with who we are and how we work. Enlightenment does not require endless lives, but only one sacred moment of clarity. And many people are confused “over there” because many are still operating on the “false self” and have not yet discovered the real person, the “cosmos within.”
I completely reject reincarnation because it is repulsive to my soul and offends my every sensibility regarding my most heartfelt desires and aspirations. Therefore I know it is a lie. How do I know it? I know it because I trust myself and my own inner guidance system. And this inner knowing is all I have, it’s all you have – it’s all that each of us will ever have, without which, we shall never gain a sense of absolute certitude about anything.
Best regards to all,
Wayne Becker
Wayne, you were certainly compelled by inspiration (inspirers) to rise from your bed and write this wonderful response. It fits perfectly with my own understanding and I hope others will also get that same feeling. I would like to keep a copy of it and send it on to others (with your permission.) Many could certainly do with it!
Warmest best wishes
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