Sorting It Out:
Possible Explanations of Past-Life Recall

IT IS SAID THAT BUDDHA ISSUED detailed instructions on how to recall previous lives, so the phenomenon is hardly new. We can assume that his disciples had reasonably good success in conjuring up past existences, judging from the doctrine's acceptance in contemporary Buddhism. Exactly what techniques Buddha prescribed is uncertain, but it is doubtful that they differed much from the current mélange of psychospiritual methods. In any case, people do recall something in the pursuit of past lives — but what is the source of these experiences?

Natural Explanations

Natural explanations of recall phenomena might also fall under the rubric of psychology. Here it is useful to turn again to Helen Wambach, who, despite her shortcomings as a scientist, honestly confronts some natural explanations for reincarnation memories. In her book she states,

We are told that we use 10% of our brain. I have come to believe that those portions of the brain that we think

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of as having no specific function — the remaining 90% — are indeed operating constantly . . . . Does our subconscious create past-life impressions from the scraps of our current life, in the way it creates our dreams? Or do these reincarnation memories under hypnosis reflect the real past? (emphasis mine)¹

   A California newspaper reporter had similar questions after she interviewed Wambach: "Wambach couldn't ignore . . . the sophistication of her subjects. All were aware that the hypnosis sessions were intended to reveal their past lives. And Wambach could not vouch for their knowledge of history, or lack of it."²

   It seems that Wambach answers her own rhetorical questions in describing her techniques. After telling her subjects to regress into a past life and giving them a date and place, she says things like this: "Now the spirit is leaving the body. Allow yourself to experience the spirit leaving the body. What are you experiencing now?" She says, "So I would include in my hypnotic technique instructions to touch, to hear sounds, to taste, to smell, or to have emotions."³

   Many authorities feel that natural explanations are more than adequate, particularly for explaining hypnotic regressions. Renee Haynes believes that the strong directives become self-fulfilling: "It follows that when a person is told to remember previous lives, he will automatically accept the implicit suggestion that he did indeed have such lives; an acceptance made the more complete because he is telepathically aware of the hypnotist's conviction that it is so."⁴

   Professor Ernest Hilgard, director of the Hypnosis Research Laboratory at Stanford University, considers all claims of past-life regression to be nonsense:

Hypnosis is a very dangerous tool best used by formally trained people. New identities claimed during trance are not uncommon and very easy to produce. Invariably, they're related to long buried memories, and anybody

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who makes claims to the contrary has not based them on scholarly judgments.⁵

   Several experts quoted in Time magazine echoed similar opinions skeptical of hypnotic regression:

British Psychiatrist Anthony Storr argues that recall of past lives is really an example of cryptoamnesia, a fantasy based upon subconscious recollections of some long-forgotten historical novel or magazine article. Says Storr: "Most of us have a B movie running in our heads most of the time." Alexander Rogawski, former chief of the Los Angeles County Medical Association's psychiatry section, is even less kind to past-lives treatment: "It's a mystic takeoff on psychoanalysis . . . one of those fads that come and go like mushrooms."⁶

   The National Enquirer provides an example of the extremes to which hypnotic recall can be put.⁷ Several years ago, they reported on the work of one California "hypnologist," Dr. John Kappas, who "progressed" actor Robert Cummings one hundred years into the future, where he gave vivid details of his "next" life. (If you can go back to your past, why not go forward?) Speaking in a hoarse mutter under hypnosis, Cummings claimed that he was / will be born in 1989 in Canton, China, where he becomes a doctor. He claims the average lifespan is 150 years in the year 2079, and humanity has solved many of its problems.

   Indeed, the entire episode as described is identical to hypnotic regressions of past lives in both detail and results, raising yet more vexing questions about the nature of hypnosis. Whatever the case, people are presently being conditioned on both subtle and overt levels to accept the possibility of reincarnation. The bombardment from the media definitely heightens the expectations of many people, who are thus more likely to interpret their dreams, deja vu and hypnotic experiences as evidences of former lives.

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Psychic Explanations

Natural explanations probably account for the bulk of regression experiences. But we cannot brush aside the substantial percentage of verified cases that cannot be explained naturally, where intersecting data has raised serious questions which indicate the factuality of the events recalled. Ian Stevenson feels strongly that there must be a paranormal, or psychic explanation (which to him includes the possibility of genuine reincarnation) behind many documented cases of spontaneous recall.

   This, of course, brings up the question of the nature and reality of psychic phenomena. Science has recently been trying to quantify and prove the reality of existence beyond our five senses, and so the terms psychic and psychic phenomena have been applied to things that people in past times have always called "spiritual." These include such paranormal occurrences as extrasensory perception (ESP), clairvoyance and telepathic communication. The existence of psychic phenomena has now been well documented, and most people believe in the reality of the spiritual / psychic world in one form or another. Assuming its validity, we should view some reincarnation experiences and evidence in this context — but with caution, discernment and objective skepticism.

   Although rationalism with its scientific skepticism has been a powerful force in recent history, its influence is beginning to wane, and people are turning again to look for spiritual answers to life's meaning, as they have throughout history. And, while natural explanations for reincarnation phenomena are valid, they do not answer all the questions that are raised. The existence of paranormal phenomena is not in conflict with the Christian world view. In fact, biblically speaking, one cannot deny the reality of spiritual powers. The essentially spiritual nature of humanity and the reality of the afterlife, to say nothing of angels and demons, are central to a Christian understanding of human life and

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the struggle of good and evil. After all, is not God himself "supernatural"? The Bible assumes the existence of disembodied spirit creatures, both good and bad; however, it also teaches that the evil ones seek to deceive us. The teachings of the New Testament on this subject leave little doubt that supernatural agencies are at work "behind the scenes," acting strategically to influence events. What are the ramifications of such spiritual warfare for regression phenomena and past-lives experiences?

Spiritism and Reincarnation

One of the more obvious explanations of genuinely paranormal cases of reincarnation recall would seem to be direct spirit influence, as the great majority of cases exhibit features parallel with those of spiritism, seances, mediumship and demonic possession.

   Stevenson says that if information about a past life could be proved to come from spirit communication, it would cause serious problems: "Such a case, if we find one, would severely shake confidence in the subjective experience of memory."⁸ It would also disturb reincarnation theories based on past-life recall. Stevenson agrees nonetheless that "the influence of some discarnate personality" is indeed an option, along with telepathy and clairvoyance. He even admits that mediums can duplicate the feats of detailed recall, saying, "Perhaps the children who remember previous lives really add to this number."⁹ While he himself leans toward reincarnation as the genuine meaning of past-life recall, he notes that many features of the cases "do not permit a firm decision between the hypothesis of possession and reincarnation."¹⁰ He does state that a "significant minority" of his subjects exhibited ESP or mediumistic tendencies.

   Regression therapist Edith Fiore, who has a long waiting list of clients, makes a similar observation. "Sometimes multiple personalities emerge under hypnosis. Sometimes they're nonintegrated past life personalities and sometimes

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they're from a splitting up of the personality of this life. They could also be entities of some sort" (emphasis mine).¹¹

   Wambach, too, tells of encounters with spirits in her early hypnosis experiences: "I knew that many people active in the occult field felt that demonic possession was a danger when people were hypnotized . . . . I was now to enter a bypass. As ghosts and spirits, seances, strange messages and automatic writing began to appear, I learned far more than I ever anticipated."¹²

Connection with Spirits

A good example of what may be called "the spirit connection" is the well-known novelist Taylor Caldwell, author of Great Lion of God and Dear and Glorious Physician among others. While under hypnosis, she allegedly recalled over a dozen previous lives, including that of Mary Magdalene's mother, through whom she claims to have met Jesus. She drew on a reservoir of psychic abilities in order to reproduce the historical details in her novels; as one observer said, "The information just poured out of her."¹³ Not surprisingly, the generator behind all this psychic voltage was a spirit which was innocuously dubbed "The Presence":

Without her specifically saying so, I knew she often wondered how some of the material for her books had formed in her typewriter . . . She felt at times an overwhelming link with a universe full of shadowy personalities. A nameless Presence, to whom she hesitated to give a name, was sensed at times even by her husband, a very practical man. This hovering Presence had the eeriness of another life, and another planet, and its largeness seemed to fill the room. And yet she could neither see nor touch it. She could only sense it. The Presence came and went unexpectedly.¹⁴

Stevenson tells about an interesting case of actual possession, although he inexplicably treats it as a case of reincarnation. In the spring of 1954 an Indian boy named Jasbir,

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aged three and a half, took ill with smallpox and then lapsed into a coma which his family temporarily mistook for death. A few hours later he stirred and finally revived. Upon regaining his faculties several weeks later, he displayed a remarkable transformation of behavior, claiming to be a Brahmin named Sobha Ram, who had died in an accident at the age of twenty-two on May 22, 1954. This case displayed all the normal features of Stevenson's subjects except that it clearly was not a case of reincarnation, since Jasbir was three-and-a-half years old at the time of Sobha Ram's death. Instead, we seem to have a clear case of possession — either by the discarnate personality of Sobha Ram, or by a spirit or demon impersonating him.

   This was confirmed by "the voice of Sobha Ram" speaking through Jasbir. "Mr. Ram" stated rather matter-of-factly that after death he had met a sadhu (holy man) who told him to "take cover" in Jasbir's body.¹⁵ Complicating matters, Jasbir's family said that the time of his illness was in April or May of 1954: Ram died late in May. So the time of initial possession may well have taken place before Sobha Ram's death. If so, and it seems likely, this only increases the probability of spirit possession. Stevenson says that the facts of this case do constitute an "unusual feature," but he never pursues the persistent hard questions that are raised: First, it cannot be considered a case of classical reincarnation because Jasbir had his own personality prior to the possession. Any parent will attest that three-and-a-half-year-olds do have personalities. Second, Jasbir and Sobha Ram lived in nearby villages during the three-and-one-half-year period from 1950 to 1954. Third, two "souls" were inhabiting one body, contrary to what the doctrine of reincarnation teaches. Yet in every other respect this case has exact parallels with the examples that Stevenson treats as reincarnation: Jasbir, for example, was able to recall many details of Sobha Ram's life. It seems that there has been a miscue here by someone or something; in

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theatrical parlance, "the mask has slipped."

   In his general discussion at the back of his book, Stevenson relates a similar story with darkly humorous overtones:

Some of the [spirit] communicators addressing Wickland [a spiritualist author] through the mediumship of his wife asserted that they had erroneously "possessed" an incarnate personality's body in the mistaken idea that they could reincarnate. When they discovered their error, they apologized and withdrew.¹⁶

How do they do it? Two of the big questions concerning mediumship and demonic possession revolve around what may be called "spiritual technology": How do spirits gain access to the great wealth of mundane details about a person, and how are they able to "possess" a person so as to take over all of that person's functions?

   Sir John Eccles once said that "the brain is a machine that a ghost can operate." Perhaps this nonchalant one-liner is close to the truth. Mediums and occultists who are taken over or possessed by a spirit generally do it by entering a deep trance and relinquishing control over the mind and body. Thus, in the absence of the human spirit, no one is at the controls, and a discarnate spirit can conceivably slide in and take over.

   Paul Twitchell, a medium and eclectic occultist who founded Eckankar, "The Ancient Science of Soul Travel," details this "technology" in one of his esoteric writings. He describes two techniques used by spirits in mediumship:

They are the trance, in which the communicator uses the mind by shutting off the thoughts and making it blank. It [the spirit] then takes advantage of this condition and uses it as a vehicle to pass the message on to the audience. . . .The other method is often known as mind-to-mind contact, a state in which the entity [spirit] uses its power and force to inject ideas into the medium's mind with the medium's own consciousness being withdrawn.¹⁷

To explain the great number of details that spirit beings

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seem able to know, several options are possible. One is that spirits, having been presumably living and active for thousands of years, have accumulated a great deal of information, whether by observation or through accumulation in some sort of spiritual "data bank." The biblical concept of familiar spirits derives from this familiarity with a particular family, cultural / ethnic group or geographical area. Edmond Gruss in his booklet on the Ouija board offers some further insight:

One J. Raupert gives this account: "Some years ago I had a striking experience of this kind, the spirit for many months claiming to be a deceased friend of mine and furnishing many remarkable proofs of his identity. Upon being discovered in a manifest contradiction and falsehood, however, and charged in the name of God to reveal the true source of his information, he declared that he got it all out of our silly 'thought boxes,' it being possible for him to read the contents of the passive mind with the same ease with which we read a book or newspaper."¹⁸

While any such "spirit confession" must be as suspect as its source, the basic technique described here seems plausible and correlates with other spiritualist lore. Another theory holds that spirits are able to affect the physical realm through manipulation of the electromagnetic spectrum. Since the human brain and nervous system operate on electrical impulses, it is conceivable that a spirit might read our mental broadcasts or transmit its own into the human mind.

   Not all psychic explanations necessarily involve demonic spirit beings. In his general discussion Stevenson mentions two similar historical examples which have parallels with the Jasbir-Sobha Ram case. In one, an engraver named Thompson suddenly felt compelled to paint certain scenes which arose vividly in his mind. Although he had little interest or skill in painting, Thompson turned out paintings

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identical to those of a local painter named Gifford, who had died six months before. Stevenson speculates that Thompson had apparently fallen under the influence of the "discarnate personality" of Gifford. Thompson writes, "During the time I was sketching, I remember having the impression that I was Mr. Gifford himself, and I would tell my wife before starting out that Mr. Gifford wanted to go sketching, although I did not know at that time that he had died early in the year." In the second example, similar manifestations occur:

The case of Lurancy Vennum suggests a more complete possession. In this case, for several months (and occasionally afterwards) the personality of "Mary Roff" [who died when Lurancy Vennum was a year old] entirely displaced that of Lurancy Vennum and apparently occupied the vacated body of that girl. At the end of several months, "Mary Roff" departed and Lurancy Vennum resumed control. During her tenancy of the body, if we may call her manifestation such, "Mary Roff" never claimed to be Lurancy Vennum. She merely claimed to be herself, i.e., Mary Roff, occupying the temporarily available body of Lurancy Vennum.¹⁹

Whatever truthfulness these cases may or may not have, there seems to be a shadowy nether world of overlapping personality manifestations common both to mediums in seances and to reincarnation experiences. Stevenson says it is hard to draw the line: "Some sensitives or mediums also experience a kind of identification with the persons living or deceased about whom they received information. They may use the first person in describing the experiences of the person cognized."²⁰

   A surprising parallel to this syndrome pops up in an unlikely place — in flying saucer lore. Many UFO investigators have concluded that there is a definite tie-in between UFO appearances, "close encounters of the third kind" (occupant sightings), and run-of-the-mill spiritism and

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occultism. John Keel, one of the world's best-known and respected UFO researchers reports that "in many modern UFO contact cases, the visible and apparently physical entities nearly always establish at the outset their complete knowledge of the contactee's past, often coming up with information about distant relatives unknown to the contactee which, when checked out, proves to be valid."²¹

   In summarizing this discussion of the psychic and spiritistic parallels with past-life phenomena, several things should be noted. First, the relatively few examples of apparently genuine spontaneous recall cases can hardly be taken as proof of the doctrine of reincarnation. Of the logical interpretations remaining, it would seem that these cases resemble psychism, mediumship and spirit possession more closely than they do genuine rebirth. The biblical portrayal of familiar spirits or demonic possession seems more likely than actual reincarnation. But even without a biblical or Christian bias, parapsychologists should admit that the recall phenomenon, when it cannot be explained by natural means, is most correctly interpreted in the context of (1) extrasensory perception and clairvoyance; or (2) mediumship, trance communications or spirit possession.

Summing Up

As we have seen, authenticated recall phenomena can be understood by a variety of overlapping explanations. Three observations need to be made at this point. First, in those cases where hypnosis is used, it must be noted that hypnosis is not a purely neutral state and that the patient is highly susceptible to suggestions and other mental or psycho-spiritual transmissions. The nature and mechanism of the hypnotic state is still largely unknown. Second, the information gathered through ESP and other paranormal means is highly subjective, elusive and generally unreliable. Much of it is patently bogus and imaginary. For example, some eight hundred books and articles have been written

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on the recently publicized "life after death" research, regaling the public with an endless variety of psychic impressions, out-of-body experiences and beatific visions of celestial beings and spheres. Yet much of this alleged revelation is conflicting and confused, if not rather absurd, typifying the haphazardness of ESP. Third, recall experiences — especially those documented cases of spontaneous recall, which are the most reliable — are not at all common. Yet for those few that do exhibit seemingly genuine features of a supposed past life, we may consider a number of explanations that might account for the phenomenon.

1. Conscious or unconscious fraud. Fraud must be regarded as a strong possibility, especially in hypnotic regressions and in cases where the data is presented by proponents of reincarnation. It is not necessary to allege conscious bad intent in every instance, for there may be a strong element of subconscious motivation when proreincarnation people are dealing with the possibility of rebirth. And, it should be remembered, most if not all reincarnation researchers and hypnotherapists make their living through their research and practice, a fact which can affect their findings whether consciously or not.

2. Cryptoamnesia. A well-documented occurrence, cryptoamnesia most likely accounts for a large percentage of recall cases, both hypnotic and spontaneous. In fact, it is probably the most common source of past-life recall experiences. The case of Bridey Murphy discussed in chapter five is a good example.

3. Genetic memory. Some people hold that certain memories or characteristics of ancestry may be stored in our chromosome and DNA structure; each person is a combination of all the ancestors who have preceded him. In some ways such a theory seems reasonable and scientific, as the basic mechanism (the genetic structure) is known. But science has yet to document such a link in any way that would explain past-life recall.

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4. Spirit communication. In speaking of spirit communication, we are dealing with two types of "spirits": the spirits of dead persons and those spirits that were never human, that is, demonic (or angelic) spirits. The Bible has much to say about demonic possession, but it says little about communication with the dead. However, it is clearly prohibited, as King Saul well knew. Wanting the dead Samuel's advice, he sought a medium to contact Samuel's spirit; and Saul did talk with the the dead man (1 Samuel 28:7-19). The possibility, though forbidden, is similarly implied in Isaiah 8:19: "And when they say to you, 'Consult the mediums and the wizards who chirp and mutter,' should not a people consult their God? Should they consult the dead on behalf of the living?" It is possible that the souls of the unredeemed may linger in some twilight zone, a zone where deception and struggle continue, such as C.S. Lewis describes in The Great Divorce. The question for Christians is not so much whether it is right. And the possibility remains that some recall instances may have put the receptive subject unintentionally in touch with the spirit of a dead person.

   An even more sinister possibility is that a recall experience may have put the subject into contact with spiritual beings that never held human form. And, as Christianity holds, many of these spirits are demonic; that is, they are fallen beings whose intent is to deceive or harm. Distasteful as this possibility is, it must be considered as one explanation of recall phenomena. The methods and expressions of recall experiences and spiritistic experiences are very similar. Parallels between the utterances of mediums in seances and the trancelike statements of recall subjects have a strong correlation, as has been noted.

5. The "collective unconscious." Swiss psychologist Carl Jung has postulated a theory of the "collective unconscious" of the human race, an ethereal pool in which the thoughts, impressions and experiences of all humans mingle. His

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theory is not unlike the occult theory of the aksahic records: the akasha are said to be a vast cosmic data bank of information, containing impressions (or cosmic "videotapes") of all lives and events that have occurred. If there is any truth in such a theory, then the possibility would exist that a person in an altered state of consciousness could have access to this treasure-trove of information. As Illinois psychotherapist Lyn Tinsley has observed,

I don't know that [recall] means the theory of reincarnation is true. The phenomenon may be retrocognition, a process whereby individuals have knowledge of events that occurred in the past. They may tap into something in the air. It's like precognition where people have images of a future event. It's the same thing only it's in the past.²²

Jung's thought has been used as a springboard by Morton Kelsey, an Anglican clergyman and former professor of psychology at Notre Dame. Kelsey, who has written a number of books on the supernatural, postulates a "psychoid realm" which is similar to the theory of the akashic records. He feels that this is a much more likely explanation for past-life recall, stating that

the idea of participation in a spiritual or psychoid realm is a simpler theory than reincarnation, and it explains more phenomena. In that non-physical world, events and people both continue to exist in a real sense. One can be in touch with any element from any time or place in this realm that sometimes seems like a vast bank of non-physical data.²³

While Kelsey's views, as well as the theory of the akasha, may have dubious biblical warrant if any, they are at least options which merit some consideration. It has been said half facetiously that "there are more things in heaven than on earth." There is no good reason to doubt this, and the only question that remains unanswered is where the boundary lies.

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1. Wambach,, Reliving Past Lives, pp. 14, 41.

2. Chris Westphal, "There May Be Reincarnation," Contra Costa Times, 2 September 1977.

3. Wambach, Reliving Past Lives, pp.87, 85.

4. Quoted in Paternoster, "Reincarnation — A Christian Critique," p.136.

5. San Francisco Examiner, 17 March 1977, p.24.

6. "Where Were You in 1643?" p.53.

7. Henry Gris, "Robert Cummings Tells of His Next Life 100 Years from Now," National Enquirer, 11 September 1979, p.26.

8. Stevenson, Twenty Cases, p.313.

9. Ibid., p.317.

10. Ibid., p.351.

11. Long Beach Independent-Press Telegram, 6 June 1980, p. A-24.

12. Wambach, Reliving Past Lives, pp. 41-42.

13. Jess Stearn, "Could She Possibly Have Known Jesus?" Ladies Home Journal, October 1972, p.88.

14. Ibid.

15. Stevenson, Twenty Cases, p.48.

16. Ibid., p.345.

17. Paul Twitchell, The Eck Satsang Discourses, 1st series, no.3 (Las Vegas: Echankar, 1970-71), p.2.

18. Edmond Gruss, What about the Ouija Board? (Chicago: Moody Press, 1973), p.16.

19. Quoted in Stevenson, Twenty Cases, p. 340.

20. Ibid., p.321.

21. John Keel, UFO's: Operation Trojan Horse (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1970), p.122.

22. Knoxville News-Sentinel, 22 August 1979.

23. Morton Kelsey, Afterlife (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), p.233.

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