I admit that I watched—or fast-forwarded most of—the panel of researchers from the University of Virginia discussing their work on life after death and before birth (i.e., leading to reincarnation as another person). The hour-long video was in itself a near-death-experience for me because I am highly skeptical that anything we do in the present can objectively determine the truth of paranormal experiences though coincidences and unexplained phenomena do occur.
This “sixth sense” stuff breeds undying debate. TNT’s Proof and other TV shows reveal our hunger for information. Those UVA researchers have spent their careers gathering stories and attempting to tie brain function to paranormal phenomena, such as people associating with past lives. The anecdotes are often interesting tales that invite both documentaries and full-length feature films with both scary and uplifting endings. And if all the Hollywood versions have anything in common, it is that at the end we are left with unanswered questions.
At the end of the panel’s discussion, I had unanswered questions. They take their work seriously, so I hesitate to denigrate it, but I have to say that I see little difference between such discussions and the Big Foot TV programs and UFO stories that never quite give us something solid. If a TV series about Big Foot was actually centered on a discovery, shouldn’t I think that some reporter somewhere would release a story entitled, “Hey, They Found Sasquatch”?
But the anecdotes about people recalling a past life are intriguing. How, for example, does a child born long after a military engagement remember flying a Corsair and dying in a World War II battle? How is that that child bears the same first name as the actual pilot whom the Japanese shot down? Coincidence? Ditto for the other anecdotes the researchers relate. Did someone feed the child false memories to garner attention? “Honey, I think I have an idea that will make us some big bucks. Let’s teach little Johnny about some Civil War soldier by reading him bedtime stories from the guy’s letters. Surely, someone will pick this up and run with it.”
Would it be unusual in a species that has over its lifespan of almost 300,000 years and that has had over 100 billion members to have unexplained coincidences? Surely, since we all share some very common behaviors, archetypes (Thank you, Jung), thought processes, and emotions, there has to be considerable overlap that makes itself manifest in “synchronicity” and paranormal phenomena. If the anecdotes are real, I cannot logically account for them. Certainly, I can’t explain the story of a toddler pointing to a picture of the site where his predecessor identity died during the Battle of Iwo Jima. I cannot understand the boy’s knowledge of the battle, the type of plane, and the name of the ship. I won’t bother you with all the details revealed in the video—something in me is saying “spoiler alert.”
I suppose my skepticism about people living previous lives and their reports of what people saw during near death experiences contradicts my own desire for an Afterlife. Yet, that skepticism is consistent with my view that regardless of our strong common bonds, each of us is truly an individual and not a soul harboring another soul. Why would individuals be recycled? I cannot accept that there is a limitation on the number of “souls” available for life, such that some reincarnation of Adam and Eve or Antony and Cleopatra now walk among us because the repository bank of souls is running out of funds. Did the Big Bang or God create a limited number of souls, making recycling inevitable? Or are people who report on their experiences with former selves simply retelling tales that coincidentally match some past lives? I’m not, for example, the first Donald.
That I cannot answer such questions objectively convinces me that a bunch of intellectuals received both grant money plus academic positions to explore the unexplorable. Of course, they would argue that their research can lead to insights about brains and minds and that I contradict myself by using my quite indefinable mind to refute their work on the intangible world of death. They might even point out that they have answered my questions before, Ala deja vu, that experience so common that when I mention it, you say, “Yeah. I’ve experienced that.”
What if the spirit world does, in fact, walk among us? Do the intangibles have any effect on the tangibles? Maybe the people who want to tie quantum effects to macro phenomena have some explanation that shows how the past, for example, can intrude the present or how an old life can intrude a new one.
Is there a connection between paranormal phenomena and the daily world of getting bread, milk, and eggs at the local grocery? Is spirit capable of controlling matter in a way other than my mind controlling my typing fingers? Let’s say that from the rise of Stalin to the fall of the Soviet Union a bunch of Catholic nuns prayed for the fall of Communism. In 1989, their prayers were answered. Were the prayers responsible for the outcome? Did the intangible affect the tangible? Or, in a complex world, did the oppression of the Communist Party simply weigh so heavily on the generations born after the 1917 Revolution that people just wanted a change and more freedom? Did praying nuns affect the world? Did the fall of the Berlin Wall initiate a multi-country response the way the Arab spring rolled across northern African countries. Did those nuns do that?
There was some discussion after 9-11 that random number generators were somehow associated with the attacks. ** But no one can say definitively that a change in the randomness that appeared in synchronicity with the attack wasn’t just a matter of coincidence or selective argumentation. Could I, for example, determine the outcome of a slot machine? If you have ever been in a casino, you might have noticed little old ladies frantically rubbing the monitors as the wheels spin. Apparently, they believe that they have control over the machine, a belief that is randomly rewarded when the right symbols line up. And what if they do have that control? Can I in any way repeat it in an experiment?
Rather than stringing you along as TV series on finding Big Foot, UFOs, or buried treasure do, I prefer to end by saying you aren’t going to have irrefutable proof. Go ahead, I encourage you to watch the UVA professors enlighten their audience. You will be entertained; you will be puzzled; and you will be convinced that there must be something to this paranormal reincarnation stuff. Why else would highly paid adults spend their lives doing what people have done for free around campfires for centuries?
*YouTube: Is There Life after Death? Fifty years of Research at UVA
**MOTLEY NEWS: The Princeton Random Generator that “predicted” 9/11
This “sixth sense” stuff breeds undying debate. TNT’s Proof and other TV shows reveal our hunger for information. Those UVA researchers have spent their careers gathering stories and attempting to tie brain function to paranormal phenomena, such as people associating with past lives. The anecdotes are often interesting tales that invite both documentaries and full-length feature films with both scary and uplifting endings. And if all the Hollywood versions have anything in common, it is that at the end we are left with unanswered questions.
At the end of the panel’s discussion, I had unanswered questions. They take their work seriously, so I hesitate to denigrate it, but I have to say that I see little difference between such discussions and the Big Foot TV programs and UFO stories that never quite give us something solid. If a TV series about Big Foot was actually centered on a discovery, shouldn’t I think that some reporter somewhere would release a story entitled, “Hey, They Found Sasquatch”?
But the anecdotes about people recalling a past life are intriguing. How, for example, does a child born long after a military engagement remember flying a Corsair and dying in a World War II battle? How is that that child bears the same first name as the actual pilot whom the Japanese shot down? Coincidence? Ditto for the other anecdotes the researchers relate. Did someone feed the child false memories to garner attention? “Honey, I think I have an idea that will make us some big bucks. Let’s teach little Johnny about some Civil War soldier by reading him bedtime stories from the guy’s letters. Surely, someone will pick this up and run with it.”
Would it be unusual in a species that has over its lifespan of almost 300,000 years and that has had over 100 billion members to have unexplained coincidences? Surely, since we all share some very common behaviors, archetypes (Thank you, Jung), thought processes, and emotions, there has to be considerable overlap that makes itself manifest in “synchronicity” and paranormal phenomena. If the anecdotes are real, I cannot logically account for them. Certainly, I can’t explain the story of a toddler pointing to a picture of the site where his predecessor identity died during the Battle of Iwo Jima. I cannot understand the boy’s knowledge of the battle, the type of plane, and the name of the ship. I won’t bother you with all the details revealed in the video—something in me is saying “spoiler alert.”
I suppose my skepticism about people living previous lives and their reports of what people saw during near death experiences contradicts my own desire for an Afterlife. Yet, that skepticism is consistent with my view that regardless of our strong common bonds, each of us is truly an individual and not a soul harboring another soul. Why would individuals be recycled? I cannot accept that there is a limitation on the number of “souls” available for life, such that some reincarnation of Adam and Eve or Antony and Cleopatra now walk among us because the repository bank of souls is running out of funds. Did the Big Bang or God create a limited number of souls, making recycling inevitable? Or are people who report on their experiences with former selves simply retelling tales that coincidentally match some past lives? I’m not, for example, the first Donald.
That I cannot answer such questions objectively convinces me that a bunch of intellectuals received both grant money plus academic positions to explore the unexplorable. Of course, they would argue that their research can lead to insights about brains and minds and that I contradict myself by using my quite indefinable mind to refute their work on the intangible world of death. They might even point out that they have answered my questions before, Ala deja vu, that experience so common that when I mention it, you say, “Yeah. I’ve experienced that.”
What if the spirit world does, in fact, walk among us? Do the intangibles have any effect on the tangibles? Maybe the people who want to tie quantum effects to macro phenomena have some explanation that shows how the past, for example, can intrude the present or how an old life can intrude a new one.
Is there a connection between paranormal phenomena and the daily world of getting bread, milk, and eggs at the local grocery? Is spirit capable of controlling matter in a way other than my mind controlling my typing fingers? Let’s say that from the rise of Stalin to the fall of the Soviet Union a bunch of Catholic nuns prayed for the fall of Communism. In 1989, their prayers were answered. Were the prayers responsible for the outcome? Did the intangible affect the tangible? Or, in a complex world, did the oppression of the Communist Party simply weigh so heavily on the generations born after the 1917 Revolution that people just wanted a change and more freedom? Did praying nuns affect the world? Did the fall of the Berlin Wall initiate a multi-country response the way the Arab spring rolled across northern African countries. Did those nuns do that?
There was some discussion after 9-11 that random number generators were somehow associated with the attacks. ** But no one can say definitively that a change in the randomness that appeared in synchronicity with the attack wasn’t just a matter of coincidence or selective argumentation. Could I, for example, determine the outcome of a slot machine? If you have ever been in a casino, you might have noticed little old ladies frantically rubbing the monitors as the wheels spin. Apparently, they believe that they have control over the machine, a belief that is randomly rewarded when the right symbols line up. And what if they do have that control? Can I in any way repeat it in an experiment?
Rather than stringing you along as TV series on finding Big Foot, UFOs, or buried treasure do, I prefer to end by saying you aren’t going to have irrefutable proof. Go ahead, I encourage you to watch the UVA professors enlighten their audience. You will be entertained; you will be puzzled; and you will be convinced that there must be something to this paranormal reincarnation stuff. Why else would highly paid adults spend their lives doing what people have done for free around campfires for centuries?
*YouTube: Is There Life after Death? Fifty years of Research at UVA
**MOTLEY NEWS: The Princeton Random Generator that “predicted” 9/11
RSS Feed