PureInsight | December 24, 2006
[PureInsight.org] Supernormal Capabilities
- fact, fallacy, superstition or simply coincidence? Those stories of
people with super-minds; minds that delve into the past, minds that
have the power to move objects and perceive things the rest of us
cannot with our ordinary senses; minds that operate independently of
the body. Since ancient times, these enigmas have intrigued rational
people but only back in the 70s are scientists - the Mind Detectives - beginning to understand something of the mysteries at work inside of us.
Do we have one life only or several? Have you ever experienced that
feeling of déjà vu or a sense of "been here before"? According to mind
detectives, we have experienced many previous lives in the past and
we'll go on being born again, into other forms, until we reach an
absolute state. Here are three interesting cases of experts' experience
on the subject of reincarnation:
Case Number 1
Arnall Bloxham was a Welsh hypnotherapist from back in the 70s who,
over a 20-year period, hypnotized a few hundred people and recorded
what appear to be descriptions of previous lives. Do the Bloxham tapes
prove reincarnation or can they be explained in some other way? Mr
Arnall Bloxham is an expert in what hypnotists call 'past lives
regression experiments.' Under hypnosis he can take a person back to
the moment of his or her birth, and even beyond that. Mr Bloxham was
the president of the British Society of Hypnotherapists then and he was
using hypnosis to cure people of physical ailments, like smoking, for
instance.
What happens during his experiments on hypnotic regression defies
common human logic. His clients could relate, in meticulous detail,
lives of people who existed hundreds of years ago.
As unbelievable as it may seem, Bloxham produced over 400 tape
recordings of hypnotized subjects reliving their previous lives. In
addition, many detailed records, cross references from these tapes,
have been substantiated as facts. According to Bloxham, this strong
evidence strongly supports the ancient belief of reincarnation as the
truth.
One of Bloxham's high-profile cases is that of Jane Evans. Jane's
regression into her past lives began in 1971 when she saw a poster that
reads: "Arnall Bloxham says rheumatism is psychological." Jane, a
32-year-old Welsh housewife who suffered from rheumatoid arthritis,
found the statement incredible, so she decided to get in touch with the
man responsible for this poster. Indeed she did, through a friend of
her husband. And ultimately got in touch with six of her past lives as
well. They were: as a tutor's wife in Roman times; as a Jew who was
massacred in the 12th century in York; as the servant of a French
medieval merchant prince; as a maid of honour to Catherine of Aragon;
as a poor servant in London during the reign of Queen Anne; and as a
nun in nineteenth-century America.
The story of Jane Evans and several other examples of reincarnation
were brought to light by BBC television producer, Jeffrey Iverson in
his book, "More Lives Than One?" In 1975, in pursuing verification of
the theory of reincarnation, Iverson asked Jane's permission to let
Bloxham hypnotize her again into regression, this time in the presence
of a BBC television camera and tape recorder. Iverson then set out to
uncover whether she did, in fact, have more lives than one.
Iverson researched the detail of these lives and verified that the
details of Jane Evans' recorded regressions were indeed founded on
fact. At the end of the book he considers that Bloxham's twenty years
of work signify strong support for the concept of reincarnation. He
also produced a BBC documentary film, called "The Bloxham Tapes" based
on all these materials.
Case Number 2
Skeptics have attributed this phenomenon to what mind detectives call
"cryptomnesia," a term that simply means remembering facts you forgot
you ever knew! If such a distant memory could be culled from a person's
mind, it might logically explain Jane Evan's supposed 'reincarnation.'
However, for Dr. Arthur Guirdham, Britain's other great authority on
reincarnation, this explanation cannot account for the cases he had
seen and heard. Dr. Arthur Guirdham relates these experiences in his
books, "We Are One Another," "The Cathars & Reincarnation" and his
autobiography, "A Foot in Both Worlds."
Dr Guirdham, a retired national health psychiatrist in the UK, heads a
small group of people who believe that they were Cathars in their past
lives, a heretical religious group which existed in the Languedoc area
of south-west France in the 13th century.
The incident that led to Dr Guirdham's reincarnation theory began in
Bath, 1962, in a hospital's outpatient department, where Dr Guirdham
worked as a psychiatrist. His last patient on one particular day was an
attractive, apparently normal young woman who had had a recurring
nightmare occasionally since her teens, but was now experiencing it two
or three times a week. In her dream she was lying on her back on the
floor while a man approached her from behind. She did not know what was
going to happen but was absolutely terrified.
Although Dr Guirdham remained calm and detached, he had to hide his
surprise while listening to his new patient for the woman was
describing the same nightmare that had plagued him, too, for more than
30 years. The doctor was intrigued but said nothing to his patient. She
never had the nightmare again and, as for Dr. Guirdham, his dream
stopped within a week of meeting this new patient.
Their meetings continued, though. Dr Guirdham was certain there was
nothing mentally wrong with his patient and her knowledge of the past
intrigued him. Later she gave him a list of names of people she said
had existed in the 13th century and described things that
happened to them. She also told Dr Guirdham that he, too, had been
alive then and was called Rogiet de Cruisot.
As a psychiatrist, Dr Guirdham had picked up some basic information
about the theory of reincarnation, but never had much interest in the
subject. Nevertheless, intrigued by this case, he decided to
investigate. He found that the names given to him by his patient were
indeed accurate, though only mentioned in fairly obscure history
records of the Middle Ages. Those records had been written in French
though, and had never been translated into English. The people Dr
Guirdham's patient described were all members of the Cathar sect, a
group that had flourished in southern France and northern Italy in the
Middle Ages. Among other things, the Cathars believed in reincarnation.
Over time, Dr Guirdham met more and more individuals, 11 in total, who
had memories of their past lives living together in a Cathar group.
None of the subjects were drugged or hypnotized; past names and
incidents simply appeared in their minds, said Dr Guirdham. Dr Guirdham
also produced one of the most remarkable pieces of evidence he had. It
was the sketchpad of a seven-year-old girl, containing drawings of a
bygone era. The sketchpad also includes many members' names of the
Cathar sect. Amazed, Dr Guirdham said, "It's beyond me how a
seven-year-old child could know these names when I shouldn't think
there was an expert in medieval history in England at the time who knew
them."
The sheer amount of memories, names and contacts convinced the doctor
that he and his group had all lived together, not just once, but
several lifetimes before. He said, "With 40 years of experience in
medicine, it is either that I know the difference between a
clairvoyant's experience and a schizophrenic one or I am psychotic
myself. None of the people in my group is mad in any way - and none of
my colleagues have found me psychotic."
Case Number 3
If the world's top experts on reincarnation were to be named, Dr. Ian
Stevenson, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia would
be on that list. He has traveled all over the world to investigate
various reports of reincarnation and has devised a rigorous test to
rule out fraud, cryptomnesia, etc, etc. Out of 200, only 20 cases
survived this tough test by Dr. Stevenson to be suggestive of possible
cases of reincarnation. Seven of these cases occurred in India, three
in Sri Lanka, two in Brazil, one in the Lebanon and seven among a tribe
of Indians in Alaska.
Take the case of a very young girl, born in 1956 in central Sri Lanka
with a tongue-twisting name of Gnantilleka Baddewithana. Soon after she
had started learning to talk, she began mentioning another mother and
father in another place, where she said she also had two brothers and
many sisters.
From the details the little girl gave, her parents were able to fit her
descriptions to a particular family in a town some distance away. They
found that this family had lost a son in 1954. When Gnantilleka was
taken to visit this family, she said that she was their dead son and
correctly identified seven members of "his" family. But until then the
families had never met each other or even visited each other's town.
Conclusion
Skeptics may dismiss the theory of reincarnation as fallacy, while
non-believers in reincarnation may brush it off as baseless
superstition.
Regardless of whether you believe it or not, since time immemorial,
eastern religions such as Buddhism and Taoism have been advocating the
theory of reincarnation in their beliefs. They believe in the theory of
causation, in other words, the connection between cause and effect.
They believe a person's conduct in this present life matters and all
the good deeds and misdemeanors committed by one will be accounted for.
But, well, who is the bookkeeper?
Theory has it that the natural forces of the Cosmic Law, or you may
call it Nature's Law, will take precedence over this. A person's deeds,
good or bad will manifest their effects in one's present life or the
next, as good fortune or destiny versus bad destiny or retribution, and
so on, according to the case itself.
The atheists would probably consider this theory as an example of
"fatalistic syndrome." The atheists believe life is what one makes out
of it; one's destiny is in one's own hands.
On the contrary, Taoists believe a person reaps what he/she has sown.
Perhaps, this explains one of the theories of Taoism about the eight
types of people's reincarnated destinies; such as, wealth vs. poverty,
honor vs. ignobility (lowliness), longevity vs. short-life, and the
like.
Perhaps this is also the reason why Buddhism has promoted the theory of
the "six paths of samsara (reincarnation)" beginning some 2,500 years
ago until today.
And perhaps this could be the reason for the often heard advice of our
forefathers and parents to follow the maxim of, "Doing good deeds will
be rewarded with virtues and doing bad or evil deeds will beget
retribution".
References:
(1) Iverson, Jeffrey's book (1976) "More Lives Than One? The evidence of the remarkable Bloxham Tapes". Souvenir Press, London. ISBN 0-285-62239-0.
(2) Dr Ian Stevenson founded "The Division of Perceptual Studies
(DOPS)" in 1967, a unit of the Department of Psychiatric Medicine
at the University of Virginia. Utilizing scientific methods, DOPS
investigate apparent paranormal phenomena, especially on children who
claim to remember previous lives (reincarnation), near-death
experiences, out-of-body experiences, apparitions and after-death
communications & deathbed visions.
http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/personalitystudies/
