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Talk given on Sunday 23rd April 2006 Since early childhood Jenny Cockell had memories and dreams of a previous life in Ireland. As a schoolgirl in England she had picked out on a map of Ireland the place where she believed she had lived. It was Malahide in Co. Dublin. Although she had never visited Ireland, she drew a map of Malahide marking the location of the cottage where she remembered living with a husband and seven or eight children. She knew that she had been called Mary and had been born around 1898 and had died in the 1930s in a room with white walls and high windows. These memories continued to preoccupy her for many years until eventually she travelled to Ireland and found that there had been a person called Mary Sutton who had lived in a cottage in Malahide and died in childbirth in the Rotunda Hospital in the 1930s. She managed to make contact with Mary Sutton’s children and they verified that most of her memories were true. The fact that clinched it for her was her memory of the children snaring a rabbit which was still alive when they brought it home. This small incident was only known to the members of Mary Sutton’s family. All of you have had previous lives! Luckily you don’t remember them. If you don’t believe that you have had previous lives, let me tell you about the research carried out By Dr. Ian Stevenson, a physician and psychiatrist at the University of Virginia. Dr Stevenson has looked into over 3,000 cases of children recalling previous lives. He has spent the last 40 years meticulously examining and verifying these cases from all over the world. He has published over twenty books and many more articles about his work, in academic journals He recounts thousands of cases where children have remembered where they lived in a previous life. They remembered the names of their previous husbands or wives and other relatives, and details of their family situations or even family secrets. These details have been verified by the living relatives. In many cases children have met their relatives and identified them by name. Although Dr. Stevenson’s research is carried out to the highest academic standards it has been largely ignored by the academic establishment. Scientists will not accept new evidence until they have a scientific explanation for it. Ideas and theories which have a spiritual or paranormal explanation get a particularly hard time. It is clear that reincarnation formed part of the beliefs of the early Christian Church. A number of leaders of the early Church, such as Clement and Origen of Alexandria are known to have expounded the doctrine of reincarnation. However, a view developed that Christians would be lax about their religious practice if they thought that they had many lives in which to achieve their eternal salvation and that they would postpone ‘being good’ and be too drawn to the pleasures of the world. This led to reincarnation being declared a heresy by the Council of Constantinople in 553A.D. Some writers say that this was never ratified by the Pope. It is interesting to note that the main Christian Churches have been silent on the subject in modern times and there is no official ban on Christians believing in reincarnation. A poll conducted in the US in 1981 found that 38 million Americans believed in reincarnation, of whom about 28 million were Christians. Considering that more than half of the world’s population lives in Asia, it is not unrealistic to conclude that about half of the people in the world, that is, about three billion people, believe in reincarnation. There are numerous references in the New Testament that point to a belief in reincarnation. For example, in Luke we read that Jesus asked his disciples, ‘Who do the crowds say I am’? They replied, ‘Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah; and still others say that one of the prophets of long ago has come back to life’’. For Christians it is useful to think of reincarnation as being similar to the concept of purgatory. Now I have never read a detailed description of purgatory anywhere but I think it is reasonable to suggest that purgatory could be a place or state of purification or re-education, where a soul is purified or perfected so that it is worthy to join with God. Who is to say that this does not consist of experiencing other lives on Earth until you have evolved enough to enter Heaven? I remember, when I was at school, wondering why it was (or so we were told) that little babies who die shortly after birth go straight to Heaven, while we, if we had been ‘very good’, might be lucky to make it into Heaven after some time in Purgatory. We on the other hand, have to brave all the trials and temptations of the world while these babies did not seem to have to pass any tests. I thought that this was unfair and did not square up with the concept of a loving and merciful God. Apparently, when souls reincarnate they have a choice. Having considered their past lives they can decide on an incarnation which gives them the opportunity to experience a type of life which will help their spiritual evolution. A person who might have been very violent or intolerant in a past life might choose to experience a life as one of the weaker members of society in order to get over his previous tendencies. Seeing things from the opposite perspective would give him a balanced view which would affect his future decisions. A useful exercise is to think about the implications of reincarnation for you personally. You may still have doubts about reincarnation, but try suspending them for the moment. Think over the following ideas: Imagine that you are a divine being. For example, think what it would be like to be an angel. Then imagine that this divine being has agreed to be confined to a human body for a limited period which is called a life. This body and this life are limited by space and time. There may be other limitations too, a limited amount of wealth or good fortune, problems with certain people, for example. Imagine that you have had many incarnations and that this body is only a temporary resting place. Ask yourself who you really are. Are you the person named (whatever your name is), or are you much more than this? Thinking about this can help you to see worries and anxieties in perspective. Think of your loved ones and those you deal with every day. See them as fellow travellers on the journey through many incarnations. This can help you to be more tolerant of their apparent failings. Ask yourself what your purpose is for this incarnation. Have you made progress in fulfilling this purpose? I’m sure that many of you were here on Sunday the 19th of March when Bill came out of the closet about his ten years studying astrology. (It’s nearer forty years. ! ed.) He went on to say that you are born when you ought to be born, to fulfil your soul’s purpose at this time. He then went on to say that your purpose is based on your previous incarnation and the outcome of that particular life. Reincarnation and astrology are inextricably linked. From a cosmic perspective a life of 80 years is nothing. A human jawbone, found in Africa in 1994 turned out to be 2.3 million years old. Astrology allows us to run the clock backwards or forwards using ancient esoteric knowledge of observations which link human behaviour and characteristics to the movements of the planets and (I have to add), the sun and moon. Being a precise engineer, I cannot call the sun and the moon planets. The sun is a star and the moon is a satellite of the earth.* It’s nearer forty years. ! ed. Bill gave examples of some of his researches into human characteristics. He showed how many well known philosophers had been born in May and how many combative people like Ian Paisley were born at the end March to mid April. In my book “The Christian’s Dilemma” I give my birth chart done according to Vedic Astrology and show the correspondences between my predicted and my actual life. From a physics point of view we could say that we are limited by space and time. From a spiritual point of view we would say that we have agreed to be confined to a human body. We are higher dimensional beings who have agreed to limit ourselves in order to have the opportunity undergo a voluntary process of change - to perfect ourselves so that we can be one with God. The physical world is the world of karma which means action, and is based on the principle of cause and effect. An action takes place which results in the effect of that action. This is a principle of change, and time is merely a measure of change. It has no other meaning. If time stood still nothing would change, or if nothing changed time would stand still. Time therefore is a concept created out of action, and the sequential nature of cause and effect is merely the process by which we humans, trapped in our physical bodies, experience the evolutionary or learning process dictated by our chosen karmic path. Therefore in higher realms time ceases to exist. From a higher perspective everything is existing in one eternal “Now”. One way of understanding this is to explore what we means by dimensions. If we imagined that our world was two dimensional instead of three dimensional, we would live in a place mathematicians call ‘Flatland’. We would be like pieces of paper and our houses would be like architects’ plan drawings, viewed only from the top and completely flat. A flat person in one room could not move across the plan where a wall was drawn even though the wall had zero height. We, however, being in three dimensions could lift up the paper person and place her in another room. To those in Flatland, this person would appear to vanish from the first room and miraculously appear in the second room. The mathematical explanation is that people in Flatland live in a two-dimensional geometry. They therefore cannot exist in three dimensions in a way that makes sense in their world. Now we live in three dimensions of space. What if the spirit world is in four-dimensional space, or multi-dimensional space? Spirits in four dimensional space could just appear and disappear at will in our world, or make things appear and disappear by moving them into the fourth dimension. They could see and walk through walls since walls to them would be like the walls of zero height in Flatland. We can extend the Flatland analogy to help us understand how time could appear sequential to us but could be one continuous ‘now’ to a spirit being. The surface of the Earth is like Flatland to someone in a helicopter. Imagine the pilot of a helicopter looking at a train speeding along way below him. He then sees that the bridge over the river a mile away has collapsed. He knows that if the train keeps going it will fall into the river. He can see the present and he can also see what is likely to happen in the future. This does not deny free will because the driver is still free to stop the train. The picture above, though imperfect, can help us to appreciate how our perception is limited by space and time. By knowing the limitations of our physical state, we can appreciate the illusory nature of our world and feel less caught up in it. We may then be able to feel more detached about the ups and downs of life. With a acceptance of the concept of reincarnation we may be more easily able to accept our present setbacks as something we agreed to undergo for our spiritual development. The important point to remember is that we agreed to it. Another point is that you do not have to come back. We hear too much about ‘bad karma’ and punishment. I think it is depressing to imagine many miserable lives stretching out in front of you, but this is only a negative slant. Why not think of your next life as one of happiness and fulfilment. Or maybe you will not come back and will become a spirit guide helping souls to free themselves from their problems on this earth. This talk is based on material from “The Christian’s Dilemma: A guide to the new spirituality” by Kieran Comerford. www.kcomerford.com Dublin Unitarian Church April 2006
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