Friday, July 27, 2018

SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE FOR REINCARNATION FROM UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA



REINCARNATION



Whether We Believe In It Or Not

There Is Actual Evidence From Published Studies



It’s easy for me to imagine a non-physical existence beyond the body because I have experienced remote viewing and non-physical travel to other geographical locations as well as other dimensions. But I believe our culture is afraid to think of these things for three reasons. First, they are afraid because they are confused about the distinction between healthy multidimensional awareness and mental illness.

Second, many mental health experts fear social or professional ridicule for discussing theirs or their clients’ multidimensional experiences publicly. Third, we fear death. Although we all leave the physical body during portions of our sleep, most people who become lucid during these experiences become frightened and jerk back into the physical body. This reflexive action seems to be related to our fear of ‘dangerous’ heights, of falling to our death.

We depend on gravity and we have learned to respect it can kill us; so we back away from the cliff at the Grand Canyon when we get too close. But everyone’s degree of discomfort is different, and you see seasoned climbers who have become familiar with heights sit on cliff edges without anxiety. Psychologists call that desensitization; a gradual increase in exposure that is used to treat phobias.

The fears associated with our physical body’s survival can be a barrier to familiarizing ourselves with movements of our non-physical body, especially when we discover that once in another dimension, our bodies are an energetic field directed by our consciousness; therefore, subject to changes depending on what dimension we are in.

It takes time and practice to understand that among many other activities, one can move ‘back’ in time to review prior cycles: of birth, physical life, death, then review the ascension of their consciousness to a non-physical dimension where one chooses the next physical incarnation. In addition to moving back in time, we can visualize possible future incarnations and understand how our current life choices limit or expand the experiences we will be able to have.

I wish you the ability to discern healthy skepticism from reflexive fear. You may not like the idea of sky-diving, either, but because the entire exercise takes place in the physical dimension, you don’t feel the need to ridicule sky divers. Yet you might make fun of people who discuss non-physical experiences, or you may fear others will disapprove of you if you took it seriously.

If you avoid exploring the non-physical while you are incarnated, you will miss the evolutionary value it could add to your current life. You will miss out on the profound experiences of healing and creativity that are available to us at the intersection of the non-physical and physical dimensions.





How Does This Relate to Reincarnation?



All these considerations are an encouragement for you to temporarily suspend your disbelief and consider how a very young child can describe many vivid, verifiable facts about a city, a home, a family, that he or she recalls experiencing in a prior lifetime. For example, if you lived in Oregon, and met a four-year-old child who told you she was Alicia Chow from San Francisco, had died in 2001 at the age of 30 in in a mudslide near Santa Cruz while visiting a former college roommate named Mary Lewis from UCLA, and you verified every one of these facts, along with names of Alicia’s close family members, what would you think?

This requirement, to verify highly detailed personal facts about a deceased individual’s life that the child could in no way have known, is the foundation of a growing body of research on human consciousness and reincarnation.  

Jim B. Tucker, M.D. author of Life Before Life (2005) and Return to Life (2013) describes actual evidence of extraordinary cases of children who remember verifiable past life events. Tucker examines each case, and determines validity based on statistical probability. How probable is it that a child could produce prior family nick names, dates, location, profession, cause of death, and odd unpublished details about incidents in the life of the deceased person and her family members? Yet in case after case, Tucker has documented verification.

Dr. Tucker is a Bonner-Lowry Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia. He is the Director of the UVA Division of Perceptual Studies, where he is continuing the work of psychiatrist Ian Stevenson, who, prior to Dr. Tucker, spent 40 years of his career interviewing families around the globe, verifying over 2,500 descriptions by children who reported memories of previous lives. Tucker’s exhaustive logical analysis of other possible explanations for the child’s knowledge is dry reading compared to the descriptions of the children themselves, but he is determined to model the most evidence-based research methods possible under field circumstances.

People who have experience with multidimensional travel have no problem accepting they will likely travel to a soul dimension and possibly choose to incarnate again. They are comfortable having a trained psychiatrist or psychologist facilitate their examination of past life experiences, and in-between life ‘soul realm’ experiences with other souls. It makes sense that we evolve over centuries with a cluster of familiar relationships we have incarnated with over time. When we feel as if we ‘knew someone’ at a ‘first’ meeting with them in this life, we are likely right.

I mention the relationship between our highly conditioned gravity-related reflexes and our anxieties (even when we only imagine defying gravity) because I am convinced that our evolution on this planet is being stymied by our personal, religious and ‘scientific’ fears, as we cling to our familiar narrow band of “acceptable” reality.

Einstein had a multidimensional space-time vision that he received through his intuition; on paper it became the Theory of Relativity. Every scientist who has broken barriers of religious and philosophical beliefs throughout history has met with massive resistance and ridicule. Galileo (later called the father of modern science) was imprisoned for life by the Catholic Church in 1642, for his promotion of Heliocentrism: the fact that the earth and planets rotate around the sun.

Intuitive visions of valid physical realities come from non-physical dimensions of consciousness, such as Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and are later described mathematically or philosophically, to serve as foundations for new applications in the physical dimension.

New frontiers of science start with subjective observations of multiple dimensions and the reports of mystics (Jesus, Buddha, Muhammed) and are later explored by research scientists (Galileo, Einstein). Studies in quantum physics and the effects of observation bridge with studies in consciousness (Robert Monroe, Eben Alexandar M.D, Jim Tucker, M.D.) and collide with our current culture’s white-knuckled attachment to a significant number of religious and scientific beliefs. Those beliefs are currently in the straightjacket of folk tales, religious superstitions and reductionistic materialism.

Human culture has evolved through insights that became habits of self-preservation. But our habits condition our beliefs, beliefs focus our perceptions, and any major change in belief can be unconsciously or consciously experienced as a threat to our survival. People who are on the cutting edge of a new cultural or scientific paradigm are rocking the boat; passengers who can swim may not be frightened, but the rest protest vehemently. New paradigms, if embraced, can cause embarrassment and fear of rejection in one’s social or academic sphere.

So, if these ideas create discomfort, that is to be expected. What is hoped, however, is that enough people resist being intimidated, and embrace their curiosity and willingness to evolve in consciousness. Our global culture and ecological balance are faltering in the mire of reductionist materialism. We need insights from the higher levels of our intelligence to create a sustainable future for our children and grandchildren.



Final Considerations: Studies of Adult Memories of Prior Lives



Another category of witnesses to our soul’s development comes from experts who have devoted entire careers to phenomena they encountered while regressing psychiatric or psychotherapy clients to examine the origin of a psychiatric disorder, a chronic physical disorder, or relationship trauma. This technique evolved since Freud’s time, with the discovery that having a patient recall a repressed (forgotten) trauma can put an end to emotional or psychosomatic pain. Whereas replaying a known trauma repeatedly just embeds it in the brain more tenaciously.

Psychiatrist Brian Weiss, M.D. authored Many Lives, Many Masters, (audible version available free on You Tube) Through Time Into Healing, Only Love is Real, and recently authored Same Soul, Many Bodies (his first book about Progression Therapy––helping a client progress into the future to see how their current choices are going to impact what kind of future lives they may have).

Dr. Weiss, a graduate of Yale Medical School, was Chairman Emeritus of Psychiatry at Mount Sanai Medical Center in Miami when he first heard a client describe a past life experience. He was completely skeptical of reincarnation until this experience changed his research and clinical path forever. He had asked a patient to regress under hypnosis to the time when her symptoms of panic attacks, nightmares, choking and severe anxiety originated, to ascertain whether or not the patient had repressed or forgotten a childhood injury.

When directed to take her awareness to the trauma that originated her symptoms, she regressed to prior life traumas which she described in detail, releasing the repressed trauma in her therapy session. When Weiss was able to corroborate her prior identity from the information she revealed, he admitted his view of conscious awareness had been highly limited. Many Lives, Many Masters is the story of his groundbreaking clinical discovery and how he validated his patient’s prior life history. Decades of evaluating his patients’ healing experiences are chronicled in his writings and demonstrated at his workshops. He describes his surprise when he ‘went public’ with this work and didn’t lose his job! To the contrary, each colleague who read his research kept a more open mind ‘privately’ than Weiss anticipated. More skeptical colleagues continued to refer resistant chronic cases to him anyway, because the patients were actually being relieved of their phobias and recurring nightmares, and that’s what mattered most for the patients’ well-being.

Michael Newton, Ph.D., a Clinical Psychologist specializing in hypnotherapy, had similar experiences. His books, Destiny of Souls (2010) and Journey of Souls: Case Studies of Life Between Lives (2012) provides verbatim descriptions he recorded in which clients described experiences in the ‘soul dimension’ following their death in a prior lifetime: a time of reuniting with their teachers, and with other souls they had known and incarnated with in many prior lives. See the Newton Institute online for information on this therapy.

Like Brian Weiss, Newton was an agnostic who had a therapy patient spontaneously regress to a prior lifetime. Newton proceeded with the therapeutic work despite this surprise, and the patient was healed. After more experiences, he could not discount the accuracy of foreign languages spoken fluently, historical accounts of prior lives, nor could he discount the healing they experienced in the soul realm dimension in between incarnations.

From thousands of sessions with clients, he catalogued the descriptions––not only of the meeting places where these reunions happened, but the activities that were considered important––such as evaluating the life recently lived, clarifying whether or not the developmental goals that had been set prior to the incarnation had been met, and if not, choosing non-physical activities for recuperation, healing and study, and eventually choosing yet another life that would be likely to provide personal growth in that area. The Newton Institute trains psychotherapists in their techniques and welcomes therapists who have a sincere interest in expanding their repertoire of healing options.

The Journey of Robert Monroe: Out-of-Body Explorer to Consciousness Pioneer by Ronald Russell. For over 30 years, Monroe, originally a sound engineer in radio, began having spontaneous out-of-body experiences after he became the was Vice President of NBC in New York. He studied their purpose and nature in a scientific and well-documented manner. This book is a 400-page overview of the career and work of Robert Monroe, who was an agnostic, a wealthy businessman, and an innovative sound engineer whose Monroe Institute scientifically researched the OBE experience and developed a sound technology to facilitate out-of-body experiences called Hemi-sync.

While his first OBE’s frightened him and led him to psychiatric inquiries which gave him no reasonable explanation, eventually he learned the mystical literature of numerous cultures had documented and explored this phenomenon for millennia. Monroe was a hard-core scientist and determined to examine his experiences as objectively and scientifically as possible, regardless of any prejudices toward such uncommon inquiries. His first book was Journeys Out of the Body (1971). Monroe also wrote Far Journeys (1992) and Ultimate Journey (1996).

 Author’s note: I read Journeys Out of the Body in 1972, and with a small group of participants in a meditation class I was teaching, we were able to duplicate a ‘beginners’ level of OBE within a few weeks of practice. For some people, it requires more training and support.

Monroe likened multidimensional travel to an endeavor that required exploration similar to a geographer’s scientific mapping of any new frontier, including detailed descriptions of how he developed his navigational skills as well as records of who and what he found. His colleagues who worked with him at the Monroe Institute revered his stable scientific approach to well documented laboratory research, and his determination to accept what he had learned to be true about our multidimensional awareness. Since his passing, the Monroe Institute continues its classes for people from all over the globe; many of them are psychotherapists.

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