Cosmic Citizen
Personhood, Bodyhood, and the Right to Not Be Aborted
Part Twelve
Reincarnation and Spirit Possession
Marcus Tullius Cicero, the celebrated Roman statesman and orator (106-43 BC), declared that,
To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.
Cicero was speaking of history and the need to understand the many important lessons embedded in this vast and nearly boundless tableau of human activity. If we remain ignorant, we will doubtlessly repeat the mistakes of the past, to our detriment. What about our unique, individual past—the past of the individual souls, the spiritual sparks of life in the material world? Does our history matter? Does remaining ignorant of what happened to us before we were born keep us in a philosophically and existentially childish state?
Understanding the process of reincarnation—the transmigration of the living being from one body to another—is to understand an important aspect of our own personal, ethereal history. What could be more important? Doubtlessly, that knowledge will assist us in understanding and navigating our future. We may not know who we were in a previous life, but if we remain inquisitive and open to being properly informed, unhindered by ill-informed sentiment and emotion, there’s no telling what might unfold.
As Cicero also pointed out:
Wise men are instructed by reason;
Men of less understanding, by experience;
The most ignorant, by necessity;
The beasts by nature.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
We are not beasts. But are we men and women wise enough to be persuaded by reason? Despite the fact that reincarnation is taking place all the time, everywhere around us, relatively few people have accepted this simple, reasonable, and logical truth. Admittedly, it is difficult to accept things we cannot see or otherwise directly experience. For this reason, some may reject the idea of disincarnate spirits inhabiting our world, co-existing with us invisibly, and then reincarnating. If only we could see the invisible life force entering and exiting a body, we would be convinced. Right? The truth is that those disincarnate beings are us. At different stages of our own ethereal journey, we remain in the ether, enveloped by our subtle, unseen bodies, waiting to secure a gross body.
Sadly, it appears that wherever modern, empirical, scientific thinking is prominent and wherever the Garden of Eden religions have gained a foothold, reincarnation as an explanation of the soul’s journey in the world of matter is rejected. Science teaches us to be skeptical of topics that appear to be religious, and the Garden of Eden faiths preach vehemently against reincarnation. Western countries, therefore, have the fewest number of people who embrace reincarnation. In the East and among so-called primitive peoples, the belief is more prominent, as they seem to have a greater familiarity with and acceptance of the "spirit world".
It is a fact that science cannot explain the presence of the living entity, where it comes from, or where it goes upon leaving the body at death. Therefore, it cannot offer us any information on this topic. In addition, wherever Christian missionaries have ventured, they have subverted or outright eliminated local religious practices, replacing them with their own. Repudiating the natural process of reincarnation, they offered the assertion that we only have "one life", turning this into official dogma. When that "one life" is finished, they tell us, we are resurrected and sent to heaven or hell. It never seems to occur to them that the resurrection, wherever it leads, is proof that the person within the body is immune to death, as only the body can die. If the soul survives death, it is deathless and thus immortal. Why, then, is it in a world dominated by rebirth and death?
Indeed, it is "one life", but that life is eternal and uninterruptible. Conception, birth, and death pertain only to the fragile body, not to the eternal living force that temporarily animates it. The living being merely puts on different materially visible suits adapted to the particular environment in which he will appear. For this reason, we see that the bodily constitution of land creatures is different from those that inhabit the oceans or those that fly in the sky. The astronaut puts on a space suit, and the scuba diver puts on a wet suit, because those are specially designed for exploring environments alien to the wearer’s natural earthbound surroundings. That the powerful soul accepts and discards successive bodies is the conclusion of the ancient Sanskrit treatise, the Bhagavad-gita:
As a person puts on new garments, giving up old ones, the soul similarly accepts new material bodies, giving up the old and useless ones. (Chapter 2:22)
The person, the living, eternal spark, accepts new bodies via conception and gives them up at death. We can all agree that this process has happened at least once. We are living proof of the veracity of that statement. If it has happened once, can it happen again...multiple times? How do we dismiss this process when there are those who recall previous lives? Reincarnation shows us that having unlimited opportunities to be reborn is the design of nature. Additionally, when we understand that our next bodily situation is dictated by our personal karma—the reactions to our desires, thoughts, words, and deeds—we can see how reincarnation explains the great disparities and differences we see among people. Consequently, responsible living is recommended.
Followers of the New Testament, more than 2 billion of them worldwide, are left with no excuse for rejecting the science of soul migration. In fact, it was Jesus Christ himself who gave them their first important lesson on karma and reincarnation. This account is found in the Gospel of John, Chapter 9. Here, Jesus’ disciples, encountering a man blind from birth, would ask him:
Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? (Vs. 2)
It is an important question that shows that Jesus’ disciples had a working knowledge of both karma and the science of reincarnation. They did not ask him to explain whether the man’s blindness was the result of sin, for in that case, they would have asked a different question:
Master, is this man’s blindness the result of sin?
What they wanted to know was who had committed the sin that caused the karmic reaction of blindness to occur. In other words, they had already made the connection between sin and blindness and were not seeking an exposition on karma. Jesus could have answered, "The man". Or he could have said, "The parents". Since the man had been blind from birth, when could he have sinned? There is no possible way the sin could have been committed in his current life.
If the disciples had not accepted the basic principles of reincarnation, they would not have posed the question. It would have been obvious that the blindness was the result of the parents’ sin or due to some problem occurring in the womb or at birth. Why would the disciples be in any doubt? In this case, however, Jesus assured his disciples that no sin had been committed but that the man had been made blind so that,
...the works of God should be made manifest in him. (Vs. 3)
The result was a miraculous healing that helped spread Jesus’ fame. The fact that the disciples asked whether the man had sinned, indicates that they knew the spiritual spark was present, in some form, prior to conception. The present-day blind man was previously in a different body, capable of sinning. If he had committed the sin that would lead to blindness, he had now been reincarnated as a blind man. If Jesus had replied that it was the man who had sinned, it does not appear that answer would have been unacceptable to them.
In their rush to establish and reinforce various sectarian dogmas, believers in the Biblical narrative often overlook its historical, social, and cultural contexts. Here, they fail to perceive and understand the disciples’ grasp of this difficult subject matter. Nevertheless, the story clearly indicates their tacit acceptance of karma and reincarnation. We are left wondering how they arrived at their understanding, and why such important topics have not received more attention in these scriptures.
The ancient wisdom of the Vedas describes karma as inseparable from the process of reincarnation. The eternal, spiritual spark gets a body according to his consciousness, which has been progressively conditioned and developed by his thoughts, desires, words, and activities. This is because, as we have shown in Part Eleven, the subtle body of mind, intellect, and ego carries all the impressions adhering to it from the person’s previous lives.
Another of the essential teachings of the Christian faith is that the Son of God was "made flesh". (John 1:14, Romans 1:3). This is a model for the process of reincarnation, and it might be necessary to study these statements to catch what the gospel writers are factually saying. "Made flesh" is another way of saying "incarnated", "carne" meaning flesh, giving us the term "carnivorous". In other words, according to this narrative, the eternally existent Son of God entered a fleshly body via the traditional route of being placed in a womb, whether "immaculately", as some claim, or otherwise. His mother became pregnant and would later give birth to him in the usual manner.
What would have happened if Christian theologians had spent the last nearly two millennia broadcasting and teaching this knowledge of karma and reincarnation to their multitudinous followers? Undoubtedly, today, we would be living in a world where people exhibited full awareness of themselves, and others, as spiritual entities. We would be more mindful of spiritual matters and less preoccupied with the incessant turmoil of temporary, material life. The lower animals, billions of whom are slaughtered annually for humans to gorge on their flesh, would be treated with greater compassion and respect. And we certainly would not endorse or participate in abortion. This knowledge is not only life-changing and life-saving, but planet-changing as well.
In reincarnation, the living, eternal spark accepts a new body made possible through the process of conception and birth. Sometimes, however, disincarnate living beings, for various reasons, may enter the body of an unsuspecting person. This is described as “spirit possession”. The effects may be imperceptible, but at other times, they may be troublesome.
Stories of spirit possession can be found the New Testament. In one account, "demons" whom Jesus had cast out from two "possessed" men entered the bodies of a herd of pigs. Naturally, Christians have concluded that all possessing spirits must be demons or evil, and Hollywood has responded by crafting an entire genre focused on these scary spirits.
So-called "primitive" people often worship these disembodied souls, or spirits, seeking to connect with them directly. Umbanda is an Afro-Brazilian religion that incorporates the use of powerful plant medicines, like ayahausca, in its rituals. Practitioners invoke the pretos velhos, the disembodied spirits of old, departed slave priests, and allow them to occupy their bodies. Spirit possession is common, and it is not limited to Amazon jungle tribespeople. Apparently, it is everywhere.
Umbanda celebrants, Brazil
It is not as if Westerners are unfamiliar with the idea of spirits, ghosts, and other disembodied creatures, but such entities are relegated to the special category of "evil spirits" in the service of Satan. "Fright Nights" and haunted houses are popular in the US, and ghost and goblin costumes are a favorite among Halloween celebrants. However, not everyone considers these disincarnate beings to be evil. In Mexico, November 1 and 2 are celebrated as El Día de Los Muertos, The Day of the Dead, when Mexicans gather in the local cemetery, elaborately decorated for the occasion, to honor their departed relatives. The souls of these relatives are understood to be alive in their place of rest, which some say is Mictlan, the Aztec Underworld. In other parts of the world, some Catholics celebrate November 2 as All Souls Day, praying for the deliverance of their departed relatives who may be stuck in what they call Purgatory.
El Día de Los Muertos celebrants, Mexico
In a "possession", the possessing soul does not have an authentic body of his own. He can only obtain one through the processes of conception and birth. In other words, he will need to incarnate again into a body that Nature has selected exclusively for him. For the moment, he has managed to hitch a ride in or on some unsuspecting living being, nourished by the subtle pleasures the host derives from their sensory activities.
Anyone of us can pick up an unseen spirit hitchhiker. It appears that when our psychic vibration is lowered due to certain lifestyle practices, possession becomes much easier. Possession can alter our mood and consciousness and prompt a change in our personality. Sanskrit writings explain that uncontrolled sensory addictions (alcohol, drugs, sex), murder, theft, lying, gambling, poor personal hygiene, and the slaughter or consumption of the bodies of animals are some of the personal frequency-lowering activities to avoid on our cosmic journey. These recommendations are made to illuminate our lifestyle choices and to enable us to live a peaceful, harmonious life free from unwanted or bad karmic reactions and potential spirit possession.
These physically disembodied souls are not always the scary demons imagined by some, with horns, tails, and pitchforks, but ordinary living entities that have died. Some may be recently-departed relatives, friends, neighbors, or, as in the case of Umbanda, pretos velhos, who have not moved on but remain earthbound and are vying for the chance at another human body. They depend on the process of reincarnation, or the transmigration of souls, to again appear in the visible world. When successful, their prāṇa-covered, subtle bodies of mind, intellect, and ego (see Part Eleven) will once more manifest an outer covering consisting of the five gross elements: earth, water, fire, air, and ether, supplied by a compassionate mother. Does this mean that all disembodied entities are good? Hardly.
If disembodied souls can "possess" the bodies of human beings or other living creatures, why would they not utilize the normal procreative channel designed for their entry into this world? For anyone who wishes to understand this subject, there is an enormous body of knowledge available from both ancient and modern, secular and religious sources.
Two psychologists, Drs. Edith Fiore and Shakuntala Modi, are among those who have attempted to subject the mystery of spirit possession to scientific scrutiny. Their tentative steps in this largely taboo area of research led them to some startling discoveries that are consistent with Vedic thought. In her book, The Unquiet Dead: A Psychologist Treats Spirit Possession, Dr. Fiore presents evidence for the existence of these disembodied souls and how they are able to enter the bodies of other human beings. She writes:
Howard and Brenda are two of the more than five hundred possessed patients I have treated during the past seven years. They came to my office suffering the gamut of psychological and psychosomatic symptoms and problems.
Since I became aware of this phenomenon, I’ve found that at least seventy percent of my patients were possessed, and it was this condition that caused their dis-ease. Most of these people were relieved—through depossession techniques—of more than one entity. Occasional patients were unwitting hosts to as many as fifty or more! (Page 3)
Dr. Modi’s book, Remarkable Healings, confirms the veracity of Dr. Fiore’s findings and work.
Ian Stevenson, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia, devoted some 40 years, until his death in 2007, to researching and recording cases of reincarnation. He found a few accounts in the US, but the bulk of his research covers cases reported in the Middle East and Far East. He was struck by the consistent pattern he observed in the stories of the children he interviewed. His young subjects often could recall where they had lived in their previous life and even lead their new parents to those villages and specific dwellings. They could identify former family members, and ask for things they previously owned. Others were able to describe the circumstances of their deaths, while others bore birthmarks indicating where they had been fatally injured in their previous lives. Race and gender also did not stay the same, although, in some cases, they could be reborn into the same family. His work is invaluable for those interested in learning more about actual reincarnation cases.
Because I have been able to recall three of my past traumatic deaths and have a birthmark as evidence of one of those deaths, I found Dr. Stevenson’s research particularly fascinating. For me, reincarnation—the transmigration of the eternal spiritual spark from one body to the next—is an immaculate and beautiful process. It makes available to us the means by which we will always have access to a brand new body, tailor-made for us and designed to facilitate not only the fulfillment of our earthly ambitions, but our gradual spiritual perfection as well.
Quadrillions of life forms exist on earth, their numbers dwarfing into insignificance the supposed 7 billion human beings that we are constantly told are overpopulating the planet. The human form of life is therefore extremely rare, and the Vedic science of the self advises that it is only after millions of other lower births that the soul eventually obtains a human form. It is an extraordinarily special form, for it has the capacity to develop spiritual intelligence. By developing our spiritual intelligence, we can learn to distinguish between matter and spirit and become aware of our true identities. We can then enter into yoga—a divine connection with our eternal source. If, while in the human form, we fail to begin the journey of self-discovery, that form is considered wasted, and we remain trapped in the mṛtyu-saṁsāra-vartmani—the cycle of rebirth and death.
It is probably the ultimate act of hubris for those of us who began this incarnation as a fragile, microscopic "clump of cells", to believe that we now have the right to dictate who should live and who should die. What deadly fate tempts us to conclude that a living being that has attained the shelter of a human womb after a long and arduous journey, should be aborted? The ancient Greeks believed that such hubris provoked the anger of the gods. They even had a name for the implacable and unrelentingly vicious chastiser of those afflicted with this hubris: Nemesis, Retribution.
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Absolutely Fascinating!!