Past-Life Recall
ONE OF THE MOST SEEMINGLY convincing and enigmatic arguments for reincarnation is that of past-life recall. This phenomenon, as the name implies, is the ability of a person to recall details of an alleged "previous life." Basically, recall falls into two categories, hypnotic regression and spontaneous recall. The former is induced by hypnotic trance in which the hypnotist directs the subject with various suggestions. In most instances, the hypnotist is able to evoke in the subject some sort of "past-life" imagery. Spontaneous recall seems a bit more genuine simply because the "memories" are not provoked by an intermediary. These cases usually, but not always, occur in children, who insist that they are really someone else who has lived in the past. In both types of recall, some of the historical detail may prove to be true, and these incidents fuel the speculative fires of reincarnationists.
There are thousands of stories and accounts of various types of recall of supposed past lives. One example which is quite representative appeared in the July 1915 issue of
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The American Magazine, and was entitled "Was It Reincarnation?" According to the story, the author's younger half sister, Anne, exhibited a difference in both appearance and behavior from the rest of the family. She was dark and swarthy, looking more French or Spanish than the rest of her lighter, Scotch-Irish family. As soon as she could talk, Anne would identify with another lifetime and when reprimanded for a bad habit would insist, "I've always done it that way!"
One day her father probed her at length about her past life. She insisted that she was formerly a soldier in Canada, stating proudly, "I took the gates!" Her father asked what her name was. "Lishus Faber," she answered. Impressed by her behavior and insistence upon facts, her sister researched Canadian history books for a year trying to verify the story. About to give up, she was leafing through a "funny old volume" that ended her search:
It was a brief account of the taking of a little walled city by a small company of soldiers, a distinguished feat of some sort, yet of no general importance. A young lieutenant with his small band — the phrase leaped to my eyes — "took the gates" . . . and the name of the young lieutenant was Aloysius Le Febre!1
The central problem with this and similar accounts revolves around the fundamental question of the historicity of the events and the veracity of the person relating them. And, assuming (or even proving) the facts to be true, do recall experiences necessarily validate reincarnation?
Of course, there is nothing quite so compelling as an idea whose time has come. Therefore it is not surprising that many psychics and hypnotherapists have turned their attention to reincarnation and recall phenomena. In 1977 Time magazine examined the trend:
Ralph Grossi, a Pittsburgh hypnotherapist, travels to ten clinics in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia where he treats some 25 people a week with past-lives
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therapy at $75 per session. An Arizona couple, Dick and Trenna Sutphen, who say they first met and married thousands of years ago, not only operate group seminars but also market tape recordings enabling patients to treat themselves at home. Typically Dick Sutphen hypnotizes 150 customers at a time; by unearthing the secrets of their past lives, he claims he helps them overcome depression, tension and sexual problems.2
Dick and Trenna Sutphen also publish a monthly magazine, Reincarnation Report, which is devoted entirely to the subject. The magazine "features the latest research and new directions in the field of past-life investigative therapy."3 The editors claim to have contacted "over 600 regressive hypnotists, occult practitioners and researchers" to contribute to their magazine.
Two of the most important researchers in the area of past-life recall are Dr. Helen Wambach of San Francisco, who specializes in hypnotic regression, and Dr. Ian Stevenson of the University of Virginia, who gives primary attention to spontaneous recall and has been researching this area for over twenty years.
Helen Wambach
Although she has engaged in past-life research only about half as long as Stevenson, Dr. Helen Wambach has attained an equal amount of public and scientific attention. A licensed hypnotherapist, Wambach claimed to have hypnotically regressed over two thousand subjects at the time she wrote her book Reliving Past Lives: The Evidence under Hypnosis in 1978. Her technique is quite similar to other past-life hypnotists. She often does her therapy in groups. After soliciting volunteers (usually people with more than a passing interest in reincarnation), she puts them into a hypnotic trance. Once the subjects are "under," she asks them to "go back to 1750" — or 900 or some other arbitrary date — and "describe your impressions." Sometimes she gets no response,
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in which case she tries another date. The great majority of her subjects come up with remarkably detailed descriptions of life in some previous place and time.
In other instances, she uses the "world tour" technique: We're going to float back all around the world, back into past time. When I call out the name of a place, let the images come into your mind. An image for the Far East . . . an image for Central Asia . . . an image for Europe . . . an image for the Near East and Africa . . . or an image for North, Central or South America . . . Now choose your character.4
Obviously there is considerable suggestive give-and-take between Wambach and her patients. She sometimes prods them with verbal questions to elicit more detail, which usually has positive results. Wambach once stated that up to eighty per cent of her subjects "telepathically anticipated my questions . . . so I purposely 'ask' some questions mentally."5 In altered states of consciousness such as hypnosis, people seem to be susceptible to paranormal or telepathic communications from a variety of sources, including the spirit world or psychic realm, but the exact nature of the hypnotic state, including the sources of information which the subject recalls, is still very much an unsolved riddle.
Needless to say, such techniques do yield a volume of detail, some mundane, some semiarcane and some interesting; much of it is charted and catalogued in her book. How does she explain it? On the record Wambach is scientific and cautious, claiming that her research does not prove reincarnation. In one TV interview she simply said, "People are actually reproducing the past. I don't know how they're doing it."6 On another occasion she speculated on the dynamics of the hypnotic state: "I think the brain is just like a receiver and it just tunes in on what 'is.' "7
Concerning her personal belief and practice, Wambach is quite open. In her book she describes her early parapsychology experiments with surprising naiveté and candor.
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She and a group of students attempted to contact the spirit world through "table tipping," a form of seance in which the participants sit around a table and summon the presence of unseen spirits, not unlike the Ouija board. She claims that an entity calling himself "Ethan" arrived and began to demonstrate his prowess by tipping the table. According to Wambach, he virtually possessed one of the group, a girl named Anna, and spoke through her in a male voice. Despite persistent interrogation, Ethan never revealed his true identity, preferring to wax eloquent on matters of occult and gnostic philosophy. Later, Ethan or some other entity apparently possessed Wambach herself, and she began to produce automatic writings, which are common among spirit mediums. In a trance, she wrote very complex mathematical formulas of which she claimed to have no prior knowledge, and she also produced the following cryptic rendition of gnostic theology: "The God concept is on its way out in the hierarchical sense . . . Jesus tried to alter this concept . . . by this he [Jesus] meant that we were all co-creators of the universe."8
While she explains her automatic writing as simply a natural phenomenon of tapping into some form of ethereal hidden knowledge, it is well known that automatic writing has long been associated with mediumship. Considering her admitted participation in seances in which she was the group leader, it is quite possible that Wambach is indeed a practicing medium — whether she knows it or not. Of course, this had deep implications for her work as a hypnotherapist. Having observed her firsthand as she lectured to a group of amateur parapsychologists and New Age spiritual dabblers, I can say that she is indeed a sympathizer with the growing movement of occultists, spiritists and psychics.9 Aside from her spiritual allegiance, it should also be noted that she draws a considerable portion of her income from her vested interest in reincarnation. In 1977 she charged twenty dollars per person per session, and she
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has regressed some two thousand people; she is also paid lecture honorariums and book royalties.10 While I do not intend to imply that she is financially unscrupulous, one can easily see that Wambach is not purely objective in her approach to the subject of reincarnation.
Various inconsistencies have appeared in her data and methods. While she claims that only 11 of 1,088 data sheets showed factual or historical discrepancies, she admits that she did not have the time and resources to trace many details. Another problem which she has not recognized concerns the dating procedure she uses with her subjects. For example, one of her clients claimed in a former life to be living in 2083 B.C.11 Since the subject was in a trance telling the story as if she were that person, how could she use such wording? People who lived at that time had no knowledge that they were living "before Christ," nor did they have a dating system that would reflect this. Her subjects frequently use this "B.C." terminology.
Many hypnotherapists such as Wambach claim that the phobias and neuroses of this life can be resolved by finding their source in such a past life. For example, a fear of water could be traced to a drowning experience in a previous incarnation. But this does not prove the historical reality of such a life. Wambach, a trained psychologist, admits that "it is true that people release symptoms much faster with this kind of explanation (being provided) for themselves. It is a pretty effective means of therapy, but it doesn't prove reincarnation" (emphasis mine).12 In assessing Wambach's personal spiritual experiences and allegiance as well as her techniques, one must conclude that her research is far from scientific; it cannot substantiate a belief in the validity of reincarnation.
Ian Stevenson
Dr. Ian Stevenson is a careful and painstaking researcher, having flown many thousands of miles to all parts of the
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globe since 1960 in order to check out the facts and details of spontaneous recall cases. His reputation as an authority on reincarnation has spread swiftly; his files at the University of Virginia now contain over two thousand reports of alleged recall cases from around the world.
The cases he deals with in his book Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation all concern children ten years old or younger. Typically, the subject begins to manifest personality quirks as early as age two. These quirks soon develop into a pattern in which the child insists he or she is really someone else — someone who has lived and died in the surrounding area in the recent past. Stevenson, usually aided by interpreters, arrives on the scene and interviews the child, taking copious notes on all the details the subject remembers from the past life. Stevenson then checks these details with the family of the deceased person alleged to have been reincarnated.
Of those cases which Stevenson has researched in depth, he has found a remarkable degree of accuracy (about ninety per cent) in the data. The details are not general but quite specific, including names, locations, events and descriptions of households and family relations. In some cases the subject will insist that a certain object or previously owned item is kept in a location unknown to anyone else; upon checking, Stevenson finds the item and verifies the subject's knowledge of it.
Stevenson has carefully constructed his methods to allow for fraud and other cultural and coincidental influences. His work has been reviewed by other scientists, and none has faulted his scientific method. The technical publication Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, highly respected in medical and scientific communities, devoted the majority of its September 1977 issue to Stevenson and his work. The serious consideration of reincarnation research by such a group of "hard scientists" underscores both Stevenson's reputation and the influence of rebirth speculation and
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psychic research in contemporary Western society.
Stevenson approaches his subject with a healthy skepticism. In laying the foundation for possible conclusions, he says that "the statements attributed to the subject are memories of some kind, and the question is whether they are memories of what he has heard or learned normally, or what he has experienced paranormally, or of what he has experienced in a previous life" (Stevenson's emphasis).13
It is possible that his subjects learn their information normally, although Stevenson doubts it because of the mass of paranormal evidence he has gathered. To decrease the possibility further, he discounts cases where the subject is an adult: "I'm suspect of cases in which the subject is an adult because you can't really control the subconscious influences derived from information to which the adult has been exposed."14
However, Ian Stevenson is, by his own admission, a parapsychologist, and all parapsychologists lean toward a paranormal or "spiritual" explanation for their work and findings. Stevenson himself does not divulge his personal spiritual belief and practice, and claims neither to believe nor disbelieve in reincarnation, although it is evident that he leans toward some form of rebirth as the best explanation for his findings.15
Stevenson compares the establishment of the possibility of reincarnation to the task a historian or a lawyer faces in proving facts. He points out that some cases are, in fact, "weak in both detail and authentication." Some cases "suggest reincarnation," others "furnish considerable evidence for it" and finally the "evidence can be persuasive even when not compelling."16
However, his analogy is not quite valid. Lawyers and historians have access to written records, photographs, objects and so on, which constitute empirical data much less subject to interpretation than spiritual or paranormal phenomena. Stevenson admits the strong possibility of spiritistic
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influence, whether by the "spirit" of the deceased or even by demonic possession. And until humans know all there is to know about the cosmic or heavenly worlds, reincarnation can hardly be proved via these methods. The introduction of the possibility of spirit communication carries with it the danger of spiritual deception. Since Stevenson seriously entertains the theory of demonic possession, purposeful deception must be considered.
Dr. Stevenson's scientific skepticism is a healthy sign and laudable trait, especially in an area with as many pitfalls and sinkholes as psychic research. Nonetheless, several problems still remain in his work: (1) The information he relies on is not written down prior to attempts at verification. "A central difficulty in all such enquiries," acknowledges Stevenson, "lies in the unreliability of the memories (and even perceptions) of the experiments and the witnesses."17 (2) Recognitions of the people and places of the alleged previous life are usually not observed by neutral parties.18 (3) There is an average gap of three to five years between the first symptoms of previous existence and the generation of publicity. (4) In the general cultural milieu of all his examples there is a consensus regarding the validity of reincarnation; the recall experiences that "check out" are not uniformly scattered throughout the cultures of the earth. As Stevenson says, "The incidence of reported cases varies widely between different cultures . . . [American cases] are much weaker in details [and less frequent in occurrence] than cases in Asia."19
Stevenson's scientific method and sane, cautious approach to his work undoubtedly must be considered an important contribution in the growing area of psychic and paranormal research. Yet, the significance of his contribution has to be determined by an evaluation and definition of the things he has reported, not to mention the identity and nature of the forces that produce the phenomena and data. Fundamentally, this all boils down to the question of
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spiritual discernment — the ability to determine whether paranormal phenomena are good, neutral or bad. A fundamental assumption of the Judeo-Christian world view is that there is a spiritual kingdom of darkness which has actively opposed the kingdom of God since the dawn of human history. The Prince of Darkness exerts his influence behind the scenes in many ways and on many levels of human endeavor; one of the principal methods of deceit is through the propagation of false religion and erroneous spiritual ideas. Hence, any body of data and persistent occurrence of phenomena which tend to promote belief in reincarnation must be viewed with spiritual discernment.
Some further questions must be asked concerning the motives and presuppositions of the people who report these cases. (Remember that Stevenson has been deluged by such reports and has over two thousand of them on file.) The very fact that these cases are directed to a world-renowned reincarnation researcher is significant and indicates at least partial affirmation of the doctrine on the part of all involved. Are these people believers in rebirth theories before the cases are reported? How much subtle or overt reinforcement of the doctrine of reincarnation and the alleged reality of the "previous life" goes on in the months or years that elapse between the first symptoms and the arrival of Stevenson or other researchers? How does this affect the body of factual detail?
All these questions and objections need to be considered, for this type of research goes far beyond the realm of science, and the real inquiries need to be made in the areas of philosophy and theology. One medical doctor summed up Stevenson's work in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease thus: Either he is making a colossal mistake, or he will be known (I have said as much to him) as 'the Galileo of the 20th century.' "20
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Problems with Past-Life Recall
Having detailed the work of Wambach and Stevenson, I want to offer some general critical observations about the subject of past-life recall. First is the problem of spurious or "faked" cases and faulty or misleading data. Most of the research and tales detailing past lives comes from people who favor reincarnation, and therefore the tendency is to promote or publicize the favorable cases and ignore the ones that don't check out.
One of the best-known cases is that of "Bridey Murphy," a Colorado housewife named Ruth Simmons who claimed to have lived previously in nineteenth-century Ireland. While some reincarnationists still cite the Murphy case as evidence, occult authority Walter Martin, president of Christian Research Institute in San Juan Capistrano, California, has shown that "Bridey" picked up all her knowledge both consciously and subconsciously from her Irish nanny. Renee Haynes, editor of the British Society for Psychical Research's Journal of Proceedings, concurs with Martin and concludes that Bridey Murphy has been debunked and laid to rest.21
Another debatable case is that of Edward Ryall, an Englishman who describes his former life in seventeenth-century England in his book Second Time Round. Stevenson directed considerable attention to the Ryall case and felt that Ryall's claims were so accurate in detail that he could command the respect of historians of Restoration England. Haynes, however, has also looked into this case and says that Ryall's book
has much in common with Blackmore's Lorna Doone and Conan Doyle's Micah Clark, as well as containing various snippets of anachronistic archaism . . . and exhibiting an almost total incomprehension of the assumptions, manners, customs and cookery of the period. Recent investigations, moreover, have shown that the well preserved local church registers do not mention his "remembered"
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name, and that the site of the farmhouse in which he claims to have lived was unreclaimed common land until after the Enclosure Acts.22
Where to draw the line between outright fakery and some sort of inadvertent or subconscious manipulation of spurious facts and details is hard to determine. Many people subjected to hypnotic regression come up with details that are hidden or stored deep in their minds. For example, it is generally believed that most or all sensory impressions, including facts assimilated through reading, conversation and so on, are permanently stored in the brain's molecular "memory bank." The great majority of this information is suppressed in normal consciousness, but in an altered state, especially hypnosis, the brain is able to recall these details. This phenomenon is referred to as "cryptoamnesia." Cryptoamnesia undoubtedly accounts for many of the minuscule historical details which come to light during spontaneous recall or hypnotic regressions into alleged past lives. A good example is given by Harold Rosen in his book A Scientific Report on the Search for Bridey Murphy:
For example, under hypnosis one man began speaking in Oscan, a language spoken in Italy in the third century B.C. He was even able to write down an Oscan curse. Only later, during additional sessions of hypnosis, was it discovered that the man had recently looked at an Oscan grammar in the library. Several phrases had registered in his unconscious mind and found expression in the hypnotic state.23
Another fabrication was exposed by English Jesuit Joseph Crehan. He had dealt with a woman who claimed a previous existence as a seventeenth-century Jesuit. Crehan had access to Jesuit records of the period but could find no evidence at all of such a person having existed.24
It is noteworthy that these discrepancies are usually pointed out by people with no vested interest in reincarnation. Those writers who are favorable to rebirth theories
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usually avoid mention of examples which might challenge their beliefs.
A second problem surrounding past-life recall is that of contradictory findings by researchers. Conclusions of the more thorough researchers sometimes clash; for example, Wambach claims that the races are intermingled from life to life, whereas Stevenson's research tends to negate this. In all of Stevenson's twenty cases the subjects were allegedly reborn in their same ethnic group. The span between incarnations is also divergent. Wambach says about fifty-one years pass between births, while Stevenson reports five to ten years. Geddes MacGregor takes a rather dim view of recall as a proof of reincarnation, pointing out that many cases have proven bogus. He comments, "The literature on this subject is considerable; the results, though they leave many unresolved puzzles, are inconclusive."25 All in all, if this type of research is to be accepted as scientifically valid, the methods and data of researchers will have to be compared and cross-referenced. Furthermore, more attention should be given to the percentage of faked, debunked and spurious cases and those with questionable or faulty data.
A third consideration concerns the motivations and personal spiritual beliefs of the researchers themselves, which need to be clearly stated. All scientific and historical work is undertaken with certain "agendas" or assumptions. In an area as highly charged as reincarnation, they need to be forthrightly spelled out.
A fourth problem with recall findings centers on the very nature of hypnotic regression. Stevenson, who does not deal with hypnotically regressed subjects, tells why:
The "personalities" usually evoked during hypnotically induced regressions to a "previous life" seem to comprise a mixture of several ingredients. These may include the subject's current personality, his expectations of what he thinks the hypnotist wants, his fantasies of what he thinks his previous life ought to have been, and
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also perhaps elements derived paranormally.26
J.B. Rhine of Duke University, often called "the father of American Parapsychology," commenting on Bridey Murphy, says there is no way of knowing whether Ruth Simmons did not already have the facts stored in her mind via cryptoamnesia, and then raises the possibility of extrasensory perception (ESP) as a source for her knowledge:
It is also possible that this young woman could have gained her knowledge through telepathy or clairvoyance, two forms we call extrasensory perception (ESP). . . . [Also] for a careful study of so important a matter as reincarnation, it would be necessary to know what went on in the conversations that took place with the girl awake, between sessions, as well as when hypnotized.27
A fifth and final consideration when dealing with recall phenomena is that of cultural and religious conditioning. This is especially relevant in spontaneous recall cases. What is the spiritual or religious background of the subject? Since most subjects are children, what are the beliefs and practices of the parents and how might these influences be exerted? This question is particularly important when dealing with any type of psychic manifestations. Occultists frequently have psychic experiences dating to early childhood, particularly if the parents are adherents of some form of occult belief and practice.
In every case of Stevenson's study, the subjects were surrounded by a cultural and religious milieu that encouraged belief in reincarnation. Stevenson spent considerable time researching spontaneous recall among the Tlingit Indians of Alaska, who have a highly developed belief in reincarnation. Consequently Alaska has the highest percentage of recall cases in the United States, according to Stevenson. The Druses of the Mideast believe in immediate reincarnation, in which the soul of the deceased is immediately reborn. While researching a case of spontaneous recall there
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Stevenson observed, "We should therefore feel no surprise that the incidence of cases among the Druses is perhaps the highest in the world."28
However, in Western culture Stevenson has found a much different pattern. In 1978 he remarked that
[American cases] are much weaker in details than those in non-Western countries, such as Asia. American children who say they remember previous lives rarely recall many details that would permit verification. When they do remember some verifiable details, they are usually those in the life of another member of the family.29
In light of these difficulties many psychologists are cautious or skeptical in assessing past-life recall. Time concluded its article with some salient observations of the whole scene with this trenchant note and a quotation from Alexander Rogawski, former chief of the Los Angeles County Medical Association's psychiatry section:
Indeed, the past-lives movement is cashing in on the disillusionment with conventional therapies, fear of death and the current interest in the occult. "But all that the therapy's popularity proves," says Rogawski, is that "suckers are born every minute and customers can be found for everything."30
Dr. Lucille Forer, member of the board of directors of the Los Angeles County Psychological Association, said that most of her contemporaries were skeptical about regression therapy:
A good therapist may be able to use any material brought up from a patient's subconscious, but if a person believed past lives were actually being tapped, it could lead to disturbed feelings. A person could develop psychosis if the fantasy material was extreme. He could feel guilt about what he thought were past acts. I would warn anyone who wants to do this sort of thing to do it with a trained person who can handle any problems that might arise. Just as with the body therapies of the 1970s, people are
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looking for shortcuts that don't exist.31
Whatever the case, there is some kind of experiential reality behind many past-life recalls. Rather than write them all off as products of overactive imaginations or contrived and jury-rigged accounts, it may prove fruitful to delve deeper into this phenomenon in order to make some sense of it, as chapter six attempts to do.
Chapter Six || Table of Contents
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1. Quoted in Head and Cranston, The Phoenix Fire Mystery, pp. 396-98.
2. "Where Were You in 1643?" Time, 3 October 1977, p. 53.
3. Public relations pamphlet from Valley of the Sun, Malibu, Calif., p.3.
4. NBC TV, "In Search of Reincarnation," aired in San Francisco, 8 April 1978.
5. Houston Chronicle, 27 November 1977.
6. ABC presentation on psychic phenomena, aired in San Francisco, 5 December 1978.
7. Contra Costa (Calif.) Times, 2 September 1977.
8. Helen Wambach, Reliving Past Lives: The Evidence under Hypnosis (New York: Harper & Row, 1978), p. 52.
9. Lecture in Palo Alto, Calif., 15 July 1979.
10. Houston Chronicle, 27 November 1977.
11. Wambach, Reliving Past Lives, p. 151.
12. San Francisco Chronicle, 10 March 1978, p. 24.
13. Ian Stevenson, Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation (Charlottesville, VA.: Univ. Press of Virginia, 1966), p.13.
14. Indianapolis Star, 10 December 1978.
15. One curious and revealing statement appears in the acknowledgments of Stevenson's book: "For early financial assistance and much encouragement, I am grateful to Mrs. Eileen J. Garrett, President, Parapsychology Foundation." Mrs. Garrett is considered by many to have been the most authentic and influential medium in Britain in recent times.
16. Stevenson, Twenty Cases, pp. 2, 42.
17. Ibid., p.4.
18. Ibid., p.5.
19. "Have You Lived Before?" Family Circle, 14 June 1978, p.39.
20. Harold I. Lief, "Commentary on Dr. Ian Stevenson's 'The Evidence of Man's Survival after Death,' " Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, September 1977.
21. Paternoster, "Reincarnation—A Christian Critique," p.136.
22. Ibid., p.137.
23. Harold Rosen, A Scientific Report on "The Search for Bridey Murphy" (New York: Julian, 1956), p. 54.
24. Joseph Crehan, Christian Parapsychologist, March 1980, p.56.
25. MacGregor, Reincarnation in Christianity, p.118.
26. Stevenson, Twenty Cases, p.3.
27. Quoted in Head and Cranston, Phoenix Fire Mystery, p. 429.
28. Stevenson, Twenty Cases, p.246.
29. "Have You Lived Before?" p.39.
30. "Where Were You in 1643?" p.53.
31. Long Beach Independent-Press Telegram, 6 June 1980.
