Image by Midjourney.com
We live in amazing times. I never thought I would write this, but: we now have very good scientific evidence for human reincarnation as a natural fact of life. Yes, you can read that sentence again.
This evidence mainly stems from the work of Dr. Ian Stevenson and his studies of children who can spontaneously remember very specific details of their former life. These details are then checked against the details of the former life being described (such as people, places and events), very often with uncanny agreement. So much agreement, in fact, that it really does seem that these people have lived as other people, and represent the rare cases in which this previous life-experience is readily accessible through memory.
When a high percentage of these life-details are verified as correct, a link between two different human lives is suggested. Our task is then to do everything we can to explain this link within our existing paradigm — i.e. by finding a physical mechanism that might link these two lives, or revealing some way that these children are getting these details correct by accident, and actually they’re just spouting imaginary fantasies.
But the thing is, Stevenson kept finding cases where there is agreement on a large number of life details: sometimes as many 25-30 correctly verified specific details such as people’s names, place names, life events, manner of death, geographical data, and so on.
The likelihood of all of these details being correct by chance is astronomically, preposterously, small.
Take this analogy: you attend a party and week later, you and I are having a conversation about it. After you’ve described a few details, I say “I was at that party!”. “No way!” you reply, “I didn’t see you there at all. Prove it — tell me what happened!”.
Imagine that I then went on to describe that Mike (who was wearing his yellow shirt) was singing songs with Annie (an artist visiting from France) out in the garden, to celebrate Vishal’s birthday. Vishal was dancing with Anja and Rupert and they got on the table and sung “All Night Long” before Vishal made a speech about love and proposed to Sylvia, his fiancee. She said yes!
Since you witnessed all these events yourself, then you would of course conclude that I was at the same party. With that level of detail, the only reasonable conclusion to draw would be that yes, I was indeed at the same party as you. You might suspect that I got the information some other way. But if I could also prove to you I was somewhere else at the time (e.g. with a picture of me in a restaurant that same evening), then surely your doubts would disappear.
Now coming back to reincarnation: with this level of accuracy over several life details, it is unreasonable not to conclude that reincarnation is happening.
Stevenson recounts the a particularly strong case of a child who “talked copiously about the life of a young schoolboy. He made several specific statements that ultimately checked out. He said he lived in a place called Balapitiya and traveled by train to a school in another town called Ambalangoda. He made comparisons between the families’ property. He referred to an aunt, by name, who had cooked chilies for him. Perhaps the most astonishing thing was that when the two families met, the boy pointed to some [writing] in a wall that turned out to be the name of the deceased boy he was remembering. The subject said he had made that when the cement was wet.” (New York Times)
Human reincarnation. Yes, it’s weird. Yes, it’s unexplainable. But it’s happening.
The next question is how it is happening. And nobody has even come close to suggesting a physical mechanism that would explain such accurate and precise agreement between all these memories and verified life-details.
If this was a one-off, we might let it slide as an anomaly. But Stevenson collected as many as 2500 cases of former-life remembrance in children, from different cultures all over the world.
What are the chances of all these thousands of specific life details being correct by chance? To suggest that this is all just coincidence is a massive claim — you’d need a damn good explanation for why these all details are correct by chance.
Stevenson scrupulously took many of the potential information-transfer mechanisms into account (such as suggestive parents who have already gathered information about the former life being described), but still, the evidence holds its own. Taking all these factors into account, and by identifying controlled cases where there is a verified lack of communication between a remembering-child’s parents and the former-life’s family, it becomes clear that something very unusual is going on here.
To say it’s all coincidence actually demands that we concoct a far more elaborate (or downright vague) explanation for this phenomenon than the obvious and reasonable conclusion that is staring us in the face: that there is indeed some kind of non-physical mechanism that connects these children to the lifetime they are describing so precisely and accurately. This has huge implications, as we’ll see.
First let’s address the question: why only some children? Why not everyone?
Well, clearly the vast majority of people undergo a sort of “amnesia” before birth, where we forget our previous lives — perhaps in order to focus all our energies on the learning to be gained within this current life. Interestingly, a high percentage of children who remembered their former life, remembered one in which the means of dying was either violent or sudden. The trauma of this supposedly left a deep imprint on their psyche that survived even through their next birth, allowing these children to access former-life memories.
I get it, you’re skeptical! Maybe you think I’ve finally lost the plot.
Well: the *key reason* I’m writing this post is because of the incredible strength, quality and rigour of Dr. Stevenson’s research, analysis and reasoning (this paper is a good introduction).
And, of course, because I want to share a discovery that doesn’t seem to be getting nearly enough attention. Because this is very very good news, if you ask me. As Christopher Bache writes, it means that we have an “unlimited amount of time”… an “open-ended number of lifetimes” with which to learn, grow and evolve.
With reincarnation, “Nature has found a way of preserving and carrying forward the life experience of the individual. Now we see that our unique way of experiencing life, our singular individuality has emerged out of an ocean of time so vast as to be almost immeasurable and that it can continue to develop for as long again still. Death is but a pause that punctuates the seasons of our life, nothing more. This insight brings us to the threshold of a new understanding of human existence.” (Bache)
Reincarnation might sound scary or spooky at first, but once you digest it, the sense of freedom and vastness this evidence brings can be totally life-changing. It can help us to find freedom from the “imprisonment of the one-timer’s worldview”.
It’s also worth mentioning the secondary body of evidence that is the anecdotal accounts of very many living people who have done various forms of introspective work (such as deep meditation, psychedelic work, past-life regression hypnotherapy, or just spontaneous remembrance) and began to uncover memories of their former lives. Check out this heartwarming story for a good example. There’s a lot of these people about, but in our society nobody really believes them, and most keep quiet about it because the backlash and ridicule is so fierce. But to the naysayers, I would challenge you to consider how your life a worldview might change if you started to remember past lives. Ultimately no second-hand account is going to be more impactful than uncovering our own experiences of reincarnation. Through internet resources and guidance, such as guided past-life regression therapy, this possibility is now becoming available to a vast number of people.
It’s worth asking: why is Stevenson’s evidence for reincarnation not more widely accepted in our society? Well, I think it is a difficult thing for us modern Westerners to digest because it challenges some core assumptions of our worldview. Assumptions like “death is the end”; “you only live once”; “my identity is defined by this lifetime, this body, this person I currently am”; “without the body, there can’t be a mind”.
But what if all of these assumptions simply aren’t true?
Evidence for reincarnation has the power to completely overturn our “materialist” worldview which takes matter to be primary (and mind/consciousness to be some accident that bubbles up out of matter when it gets complex and intelligent enough). It suggests that some essential part of ourselves is not bound by matter; that the mind is not reducible to the brain; that reality is indeed more multidimensional than the four-dimensional space-time that we can see and touch (where do we “go” between our embodied lives?).
But: we don’t like evidence when it challenges our assumptions. We are all still learning how to be rational and scientific, letting good evidence change our minds about things. If you feel like you’d like to read a critical inquiry: I recommend this article in Scientific American and the chapter “Beyond Reincarnation” in Bache’s book “Dark Night, Early Dawn”.
Take some time with all this and let it sink in.
We are on a far bigger adventure than we have been led to believe, my friends. Far bigger, and far more epic. We are so much more than we have been led to believe! Our stories are so much richer and more complex, than this “one life and then it’s over” myth that we have been living under. We have lived for hundreds if not thousands of lifetimes upon the Earth — and will do so for many more.
The implications of all this are staggering. It feels like a triumph of the scientific method, and clearly it’s going to take our society a long time to digest — much like Copernicus’ discovery that Earth orbits the Sun, and not the other way around, which took hundreds of years to become widely accepted fact.
A revolution is underway. The modernist materialist worldview is collapsing, and it couldn’t be better timing. We desperately need a bigger and richer vision of who and what we are if we are going to treat ourselves, one another and our living planet with all the respect, care and appreciation it rightfully deserves.
This is truly a revolution in how we understand ourselves, who we are, what the universe is — and what on earth is actually going on here.
How to Process Past Lives:
Step 1) Start processing your past.
Specifically, through the practice of Emotional Healing Processes (EHPs), in which one person holds space for another to enter into their emotions from the past.
Emotions are “incomplete feelings” that at the time of the original event were not fully felt and expressed. Their energy is then stored in our bodies. So our bodies each contain a storehouse of emotional anger, fear, sadness and joy (the four basic feelings), and this is what comes to the surface during emotional healing processes. Four emotions. Simple!
EHPs begin with activating emotions and feeling them. Like my anger from, say, that time when a school bully stole my football. I let it get big and find its full expression. In this case, probably the anger is providing energy to set a boundary that at the time, I was too scared to make. Such as “Hey Bully! It is not fucking okay that you steal my ball! This bullshit ends NOW!”.
This is healthy, conscious anger: anger that I need if I am going to live with full authenticity, without being stepped on by others, and to create the life that my soul intends to. It is all about taking responsibility for past experiences and finding out the old decisions you made (such as “it’s not safe for me to express my anger”) and updating them with new decisions (“my conscious anger is a force for creating the life I want”).
You cannot really predict where — or should I say when — an EHP will take you, before you do it. You simply bring an emotion, like “I’m feeling sad about X”, and use this as the starting point. Allowing this sadness to grow in an EHP, you will naturally be led to the memory of its origin. This “sadness about X” is your “EHP doorway”. You can start writing these down in the back of your notebook whenever you feel a strong emotion, ready to bring to future processes.
You can read more about EHPs on this website. There is a global movement of people holding space for EHPs for one another, both online and in person. Really amazing, caring people dedicated to empowering one another. Check out this Telegram group (simply introduce yourself and request your first EHP) and/or feel free send me a message if you want to get started.
Another suggestion is to find a friend who is up for trying this out and begin taking turns holding space for one another; you can meet up and do two 45-minute EHPs. It might sound scary but I can tell you, will not regret it: to reclaim your energy from past events means you can arrive more fully, wholly and consciously in the present. Because it can be a LOT of energy that is tangled up in past events!
It is so beautiful, activating and life-affirming to experience this and to facilitate it happening for others. Note that EHPs are quite different from conventional “therapy” which disallows intensity of emotion (or feeling); only hundreds of people are now discovering this is the essential factor for healing! It also differs in that it’s not about “fixing problems” but rather, beginning from the viewpoint that “there is no problem”, find your radical responsibility for, and authorship of, the events and decisions that you have chosen — for your own learning and individuation! Only then can the learning take full effect; only then can the energies locked up in the past become concentrated in your embodied presence NOW.
Step 2) Keep going!
And at some point you are going to hit an emotion that has its roots and origins in a past life experience.
You can’t really predict when this is going to happen. You simply go into an emotion as usual, letting it get big and express its energy through you. You may then notice images arising, be led into memories that are quite clearly not from this current life. “I’m in a room”… “I’m with a person”… “I’m looking at…”
The spaceholder will then ask: “Is this from a past life?”
A “yes” can come to this question very quickly, without thinking or rationalisation. Interestingly, this happens to people with no interest, belief or inclination towards reincarnation and past lives (which is most people, in modern culture).
A good spaceholder will then draw out details with a string of questions, leading you deeper into the memory that is surfacing.
“Are you a man or a woman?”
“How old are you?”
“What’s going on?”
“Who is the other person?”
“Why are you sad/scared/glad/angry?”
And so on. And amazingly, answers to these questions will come, very quickly and without need for thinking about it!
To me this is an incredible discovery about life and the human condition: that intensity of a emotion is a sufficient factor to transfer our consciousness across the boundary between lifetimes.
It is enough to take us from the personal realm of consciousness, through the perinatal, and into the transpersonal (to use Stan Grof’s classic map of consciousness).
So we learn that the boundary between lifetimes is permeable! We really can access the memories and experiences of past lives. Choosing to feel my emotional anger now, in this lifetime, can give me access to a memory in which I was angry in a past life. Isn’t that amazing? Knowing this, we can continue integrating past life experiences into our present-moment individuality and identity.
This happened to me after a mere three or four EHPs. I have no idea if this is common number but I expect that it varies widely. Hence “keep going”! Because sooner or later, if you commit to the path of clearing up your emotional past, you are going to hit up against some ways that your emotional and energetic bodies are still “snagged” or “caught” in past events. You will inevitably find out how decisions you made in past lives are affecting you even today. This is the only way to make the unconscious conscious and thereby gain the choice to make a new decision!
Don’t get me wrong, this may well lead you into ugly, painful, traumatic experiences. Two out of three of my past life EHPs have involved being executed (once for being an underground Christian in the Roman empire, once for preaching magic and love in a town square). I’ve heard many stories of similar occurrences; actually it’s nothing exotic but something we are all invited to work through. Really it’s no wonder that these have left an imprint on my soul’s development. Because this shit needs processing! I’m incredibly grateful to have discovered a way to find healing and resolution in horrific events.
You know, I have been in a room of 60 people where the trainer asked “put your hand up if you remember being burnt at the stake as a witch”. And HALF THE ROOM put their hands up. I was dumbfounded by this. Still am, to be honest. Now that’s a life-changing moment! That’s when I knew this EHP thing is no joke. That it really works, and can be a truly effective (not to mention rapid) method for getting our power — and magic — back! A way to find and reclaim our conscious adult authorship of past events and stop playing victim to them. And of course, to make bold new decisions!
“I’m powerless”, “its hopeless”, “it’s not safe for me to speak up”… these sorts of decisions stick with us over lifetimes and will influence how we move through the world. Our survival strategy (or Box) is made up of all these old decisions collected together, most of which are completely forgotten and now unconscious. This makes us feel like we don’t have a choice and that this is “just the way it is”. I’m powerless, and that’s that.
We can only make new decisions when we remember that these “facts of reality” are fictions of our own making! Only then can they be radically rewritten. To consciously decide and declare “I AM POWERFUL”, “I SPEAK UP FOR WHAT I CARE ABOUT”, “I TAKE A STAND FOR THE PEOPLE I LOVE”… will undoubtedly be a life-changing experience! Now you’re living freely and responsibly, and it was not possible without first reclaiming your conscious decision-making power from past events!
Over the course of several “past life EHPs”, I have particularly loved the way that broad themes and “story arcs” begin to emerge, gradually revealing the work and project of my reincarnating soul’s individuation over many lifetimes. I’m tantalised by where this process will lead!
You may well ask “yes, but how do you know it is a past life?”. And I say you don’t, not for certain. But when the spaceholder asks “is this from a past life?” and the answer “yes” comes very quickly and intuitively, why not trust it. The additional impetus to believing the “yes” is the undeniable logic of how this past-lif event has effected your current life (by carrying around emotional fear of being punished, for example).
The other possibilities that I see are that a) you are simply accessing (and processing) the past life of someone… some life-event that is stored in the collective psyche (or memory) of humanity. Or b) that it is not a “real” or historical memory but is an imaginal sequence of persons and events. To which I say, okay, if it still allows you to process an emotion, heal, and arrive more fully in the present, then it is still totally worth doing!
Another nice point is that it is not all blood and guts and grief. Because there is emotional joy to integrate too! Possibly there were moments of ecstasy in your past lives that were not fully felt and expressed. Moments of devotion, love, bliss, praise, gratitude, celebration. Perhaps they happened in nature, with family, at rituals or ceremonies, when dancing or drumming or working. And these feelings can come through, right through into your body in this life, filling it with that vibrant, joyous brightness and aliveness that makes every cell in your body leap and sing!
It appears that we are finally learning how to “gather up” all the energy we have dissipated across many lives and many experiences, allowing it to enter our current bodies and minds… channelling and intensifying and expanding our consciousness to new levels of responsibility and creativity! And without the need for psychedelic medicines to expand our consciousness to the transpersonal realm(s).
This is essential work for the ongoing birth of the soul within embodied human form. For engaging with our life and person and world with increasing attention, subtlety and refinement. This process continues (apparently) to a point where ALL past lifetimes and experiences have been integrated into a highly concentrated singularity (or presence). I will leave you with an anecdote from psychedelic researcher Professor Chris Bache; it speaks to tantalising culmination of this incredible process (of integrating the past into the present).
“The universe is very intensely interested in birthing an individuality and in refining and maturing that individuality so that in the end, we die, but we die in order to grow up, and we die again in order to grow up.. sooner or later we reach a point where all of our former lives, and all of the history, all of the experiences and wisdom and mistakes we’ve made, all of it comes together into an integrated singularity… and when i experienced that singularity i was catapulted into a state of awareness beyond anything I had experienced up to that point in time… I was an individual, but an individual in pure shunyata, emptiness condition, transparent open to all existence… I was individual but within a boundless existence.. I had my full memory intact… and I think this is where the universe or the divine is taking all human beings… individuality is not the problem: separation or ego, boundedness is the problem… individuation is the great beauty, it’s one of the great gifts that the creator is giving us… the opportunity to be an individual” — (Quote from the Deep Transformation Podcast)
Will Franks – https://medium.com/the-phoenix-project/the-evidence-for-human-reincarnation-is-here-2a8df4351412 https://medium.com/predict/how-to-process-your-past-lives-8bf8bf48003b