What If Reincarnation Is Real?, by Paul Von Ward
WHAT IF REINCARNATION IS REAL?
by Paul Von Ward
The Latin-based word "reincarnation" and its antecedents in Greek, Sanskrit, Bantu, and many other languages have focused conversations in all cultures for millennia. But what do they really mean?
Most concepts of reincarnation emphasize its role in a spiritual realm. Some books have led to a view that reincarnation involves only special cases of distinctive physical markings, unexplained memories, or a trauma from a previous life that can be healed in this one. Even secular discussions of reincarnation often use mystical terms, unrelated to everyday life.
The sole significant and systematic effort to gather every-day kinds of information on a large number of alleged cases is that initiated, and largely implemented, by the late Ian Stevenson at the University of Virginia. The status of this ongoing effort is well summarized by Stevenson's successor, Jim B. Tucker, in the IONS Number 17 issue of Shift magazine.
The different forms of alleged evidence for reincarnation have never been subjected to a mainstream, scientific examination of the possibility that it may be a natural phenomenon. Wouldn't it make sense that if the Dalai Lama or other special cases indicate some form of past-life links, it is equally likely that all of us are influenced by the same process? Given the widespread reports of hypothetical cases, could "reincarnation" be a universal aspect of Homo sapiens' physical and conscious evolution?
A project initiated by this author in early 2005 involves a scientific approach to answering such questions. Reported in the forthcoming book The Soul Genome: Science and Reincarnation—in press for March 2008, the effort evaluates various cases, examines alternative explanations, and considers their implications. It has completed tests of a theoretical model that suggests human reproduction (and maybe that of other species) involves an info-energetic psychoplasm that encompasses the physical genome. (See Figure 6.)
This concept evolved from a meta-analysis of various types of potential evidence. This analysis revealed different kinds of cases contained a number of overlapping factors, and numerous nonrandom correspondences linked the most robust paired-lifetimes.
These results point to some as-yet-still-unexplained, but multifaceted package of genetic, energetic, and informational transfers from one life to another. Subsequent, detailed case-studies found that predictable specific and verifiable traits or factors can be identified in the present and previous lives of the strongest reincarnation cases.
The Integral Model that emerged suggests that both physical (genotype) and personality (psycho-energetic) factors are involved. While they may be defined in different terms, the essence of the psychoplasm or "soul-genome" includes at least five core factors. They are the individual's phenotype (biometrics), cerebrotype (cognitive profiles), egotype (emotional predisposition), personatype (interpersonal style), and performatype (creative focus). (See figure.)
The evaluation scales used in this psycho-physical model measures the strength of correspondences (and differences) between a tentative case's two lifetimes. Combined, they provide an overall level of confidence for a past-life identification.
This initial work cannot be seen as proof of a general theory of reincarnation, or even as validation of a definitive mechanism to account for the obvious patterns of connections between two lifetimes. However, the model's multiple categories of evidence (with high inter-factor reliability) and its predictive capability make it a useful tool for research.
Independent analysts can use it to replicate evaluations of alleged reincarnation cases. This may encourage a multidisciplinary effort to test the popular conception of reincarnation, and to determine when researchers are simply creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The book and the project's evolving web site (www.reincarnationexperiment.org) invite public testing of the methodology and help in refinement of the model. While there is still much work to be done, the preliminary evidence highlighted in the book raises some tantalizing issues, including the origin of the knowledge and skills of prodigies in music, mathematics, and other fields.
What is the basis for precocious (unlearned) behaviors found in all groups of children? Where do childhood choices of successful careers arise? Can unexplained knowledge of people, places, and events reside in real memories? Are so-called instinctual or intuitive relationships based in more than the first "blink" of an encounter?
Thought-provoking evidence evaluated by the project suggests that your physical appearance, the way you think, how you react emotionally to life events, the way you interact with other people, and the creative activities and vocations you choose may be predisposed by the experiences of one or more humans who lived in the past. It raises the possibility that even if you don’t know who they were, their “soulprints” may be evident in who you are today.
Although this mini-hypothesis must still be labeled speculative, well-developed case studies may change the way you think about human behavior. It may cause you to contemplate that much of what you are today might have come from knowledge and experience gained in many lifetimes. You might consider the possibility that whom you marry, or not, what you study in school or college, where you live and work, how you spend your free time, who your friends are, and what you feel about it reflect the influence of events in centuries past. You may conclude that how you interpret global, national, neighborhood, and family affairs may be based on more than what you have learned since birth.
Why do I suggest these radical possibilities? Credible researchers have thousands of cases where people recall or intuitively act on knowledge and traits that seem to come directly from the private lives of individuals who lived before they were born. Individual life histories seem to be better explained by something like reincarnation than by present psychological development theories.
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[Paul Von Ward, an interdisciplinary cosmologist and independent scholar, in addition to The Soul Genome, is author of Gods, Genes, & Consciousness and Our Solarian Legacy. His interest in personality development involved graduate work at Harvard and Florida State University. Paul is a frequent write and speaker for the Association for Humanistic Psychology, International Conferences on Science and Consciousness, and IONS community groups. He can be contacted by e-mail at paul@vonward.com and on his web site www.vonward.com.]
