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EARTH . . . . . AIR . . . . . WATER . . . . . LIGHT. . . . . SPIRIT

CREATING
THE VALUE OF LIFE

By Fumihiko Iida
Associate Professor of Fukushima National University,
JAPAN
This book became best-seller in Japan
and achieved more than 400,000 copies in 1996.
Translated by
Muneo Yoshikawa, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus, University of Hawaii

COPYRIGHT
If you want, you can distribute this file to all the world,
but please do not gain any profit !
Copyright (C) : Fumihiko Iida & Nuneo J. Yoshikawa
Fumihiko Iida
Faculty of Economics, Fukushima Univ.,
Matsukawa-cho, Fukushima City,
960–1296, Japan
Copy of The HTML file of Iida's HP by Yoshio Umeno.
—Why This Book is Being Sent Out From Japan to the World—
Muneo Yoshikawa, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus, University of Hawaii

In the latter part of March, 1996, a trusted friend sent me a copy of Professor
Fumihiko Iida's article, "The Dawn of Meaning." I read it immediately and was
amazed that a traditional academic journal at a major public university in Japan had published a research article on life after death and rebirth, especially since the topic is so remote from economics and management, the journal's usual genre. I was full of emotion as I realized that the new world-shaking paradigms (views of the world, of the universe, of nature, of humanity and of the corporation) have at last started to make inroads in Japan.

On the one hand, I was speechless with admiration for the bravery of Professor Iida in submitting such theories to a journal of economics and management. I have spent over thirty years in the academic environment of a public University in the U.S., and I know very well that a scholar of management must be prepared for the worst when he publishes theories such as Professor's Iida's within the discipline of management science, where they appear out of place, at least at first glance. I contacted Professor Iida immediately because I was convinced that he had some compelling reason, a reason beyond human knowledge, to act as he did. One week later I visited Professor Iida's office at Fukushima University.

As I suspected, Professor Iida did have a reason beyond human knowledge to write his article. I am unable to explain it simply, and Professor Iida has requested that I refrain from trying. However, the overwhelming response to his article made Professor Iida resolve to publish a greatly expanded version of his article as a book. As I spoke to Professor Iida, I felt very strongly that his theories were too important to be confined just to Japan; I felt that Japan must send his ideas out to the whole world. For that reason, I have been asked to write the introduction to this book, a task which I, a non-Japanese, perform with great hesitation.

Transpersonal psychology and molecular physics, disciplines on the forefront of global knowledge, are currently dealing with such concepts as the invisible world, the realm of the unconscious and idea of life fields. In philosophy, such concepts are termed the "celestial" realm and the realm of "nothingness." The Japanese have words for these astral realms in the world of art where the concepts are called yohaku (blankness, empty space), yo'in (reverberation, lingering note) and yojo (suggestiveness, lingering charm). These realms have meaning in a psychological and emotional sense. Fellow Japanese very clearly understand and share this realm of emotion.

In the world of business as well, Japanese have a shared understanding in this astral plane of the "life-field" called the "workplace." Just as in the world of art, this realm or life-field of work can also be understood psychologically or emotionally. For that reason, the realm of work has a nature that cannot ask "why" things happen.

As someone who is not Japanese, I think that Japan got so caught up with the question of "how to" during the days of high economic growth that the nation lost sight of the question "why." Corporations fulfilled their destiny as entities with the shared understanding that the goal is the pursuit of profits. When considered from a cultural perspective, there was virtually no consciousness of purpose to generate the question "what," nor was there any consciousness of vision to generate the question "why." And then one day the hyper-inflated "bubble" economy suddenly deflated, leaving Japan finally conscious of the emptiness of a materialistic civilization. Now Japan is starting to search for real wealth and seeking to find the meaning of life and the meaning of work.

Professor Iida grapples head on with these problems as a scholar of management. The conclusion he reaches is this: it is impossible to find the meaning of life or the meaning of work unless one changes one's human consciousness and set of values in the most fundamental and basic of ways.

This book proposes a "theory about the meaning of life," through a comprehensive treatment of scientific research findings about "life after death" and "rebirth," ideas that are found throughout the world.

A course on "Death and Dying" has been part of the curriculum at the state-owned University of Hawaii for the past twenty-five years. Thinking about human life and death has become a respected academic discipline. Japan is behind the rest of the world in this regard; however, Professor Iida makes every effort in this book to elucidate the meaning of "life" and "death" in as scholarly a fashion as possible by giving specific examples, based upon the scientific research of scholars around the world.

What this book makes clear is that, "Human beings are creatures that create meaning and that create value." Dr. Victor Frankel, a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps, has stated that the people who survive even the most horrible environments are those people who are able to find value in their lives even in the midst of suffering. By publishing this book, Dr. Iida also hopes to emphasize strongly the following: "People who discover value in their own existence are strong people. Discovering value in your own existence provides the most powerful reason for living."

It has been reported that the chief cause of death in the U.S. is "the loss of a sense of meaning." Japan is no exception in this respect. Japan presently has no vision (why) nor does it have clear goals (what). Japan has lost its way and is buffeted about here and there by the immediate situation. Professor Iida makes us aware of the world we cannot see (past and future lifetimes) and, by thus raising our consciousness, draws our attention to the one, unbroken chain of life that continues forever. This book is essential required reading for most Japanese people because it reveals the importance of attaching meaning anew to the "celestial" realm and the realm of "nothingness."

As the author emphasizes, we are linked to all the objects, people and living creatures that surround us. When we understand the meaning of our existence, then for the first time, our ways of perceiving, of thinking, of understanding and of interacting spring out of the boundaries of "humanity," spring out of the boundaries of "nationhood," and spring out of the boundaries of the "world." Heightened in this fashion, our very consciousness acquires a bright and shining hope in dealing with problems which face all human beings such as racial issues and environmental issues.

This book is required reading not only for Japanese but for each and every one of
the many people living on this earth. I myself plan to translate this book into English shortly, so that I can spread Professor Iida's "network of meaning" throughout the world.
I fervently pray that even one more person will read this book.

Contents

PROLOGUE – A Small Miracle 1
HOW THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN; GRATITUDE TO ALL 2
FOREWORD 5
HOW IT BEGAN 6
1 MEMORIES OF PAST LIVES 9
1.1 HYPNOTIC REGRESSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.2 THE PAST REBORN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
(1) SWALLOWED BY THE FLOOD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
(2) ENVELOPED BY SMOKE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
(3) A JAPANESE WHO LIVED AS A GERMAN . . . . . . . . . 16
(4) MEMOIRS OF A WOMAN SUBJECT . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
1.3 PROOF OF PAST LIFE MEMORIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
(1) CONFORMITY TO HISTORICAL FACTS . . . . . . . . . . . 20
(2) CONSISTENCY IN DIFFERENT SUBJECTS'
MEMORIES OF PAST LIVES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
(3) TERROR AT AUSCHWITZ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
(4) CHILDREN TELL OF PAST LIVES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
(5) ENCOUNTER WITH ONE'S OWN CORPSE . . . . . . . . . 24
2 HOW THE PROCESS OF REINCARNATION WORKS 27
2.1 GOING HOME TO "THE OTHER WORLD" . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
(1) CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF AS "SPIRIT" . . . . . . . . . . 27
(2) A VIEW OF THE WORLD AFTER DEATH . . . . . . . . . . 28
VISIONS OF TUNNELS, RIVERS AND GATEWAYS . . 28
THE WORLD OF LIGHT AND UNDULATIONS . . . . . 30
(3) MEETINGS WITH THOSE WHO HAVE DIED . . . . . . . . 32
ONE HAPPY MOMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
MESSAGES FROM THE DEAD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
NO ONE DIES ALONE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
v
vi CONTENTS
(4) THE EXISTENCE OF "GUARDIAN ANGELS" . . . . . . . . 34
2.2 MEMORIES AND RECOLLECTIONS OF LIFE . . . . . . . . . . . 35
(1) PANORAMIC VISION OF LIFE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
(2) SELF-ASSESSMENT OF ONE'S LIFE . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
HOW MUCH DID WE LOVE OTHERS? . . . . . . . . . 37
TEARS OF SHAME AND GRIEF . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
A MESSAGE FROM THE BEINGS OF LIGHT . . . . . . 40
(3) KARMA IN HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.3 ONE'S OWN PLAN FOR LIFE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
(1) THE NEVER-ENDING QUEST FOR GROWTH . . . . . . . . 42
(2) HOW WE PLAN OUR LIVES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
A FLOW CHART OF CHOICES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
MOTIVE IS THE KEY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
THE DEFEATED CAN ALWAYS TRY AGAIN . . . . . . 45
(3) SELF-CHOSEN TESTS AND TRIALS . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
FACING THINGS HEAD ON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
HOW KARMIC JUSTICE WORKS . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
2.4 THE HUGE DRAMA OF KARMIC JUSTICE . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
(1) BIG EVENT ON BOARD SHIP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
(2) THE MAN HE KILLED BECAME HIS MOTHER . . . . . . . 49
(3) THE DETAILED WORKINGS OF HYPNOTIC REGRESSION 50
(4) CONVERSATION WITH HIS OWN KIDNEY . . . . . . . . . 54
2.5 THERE IS A TIME FOR EVERYTHING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
(1) DELIBERATELY CHOOSING A TOUGH ENVIRONMENT . 55
(2) WHY PEOPLE DIE YOUNG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
2.6 REUNION WITH SOUL MATES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
(1) THE "TIES THAT BLIND" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
(2) MYSTERIOUS FAMILY TIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
HATRED OF A SON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
RELATIONSHIP WITH A HUSBAND . . . . . . . . . . . 59
(3) SOULMATES FORTIFY AND HELP EACH OTHER . . . . . 61
A JOINT LIFE PLAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
GRATEFUL TO SOULMATES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
(4) THE MYSTERY OF SYNCHRONISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
(5) THE ART OF LOVING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
2.7 REVISITING THE WORLD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
(1) OUR SOJOURN IN THE NEXT WORLD . . . . . . . . . . . 65
(2) MEMORIES HINDERING SELF-DEVELOPMENT ARE
SUPPRESSED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
(3) BIRTH INTO THIS WORLD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
(4) WE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERYTHING . . . . . . . . 67
CONTENTS vii
3 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 69
3.1 REUNION WITH THE DEAD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
(1) EXPERIMENTS USING THE APPARITION BOOTH . . . . . 70
(2) CONVERSATIONS WITH DEAD RELATIVES . . . . . . . . 71
DAD ASKED WHAT SHE WANTED . . . . . . . . . . . 71
DR. MOODY'S EXPERIENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
ENCOURAGEMENT FROM A DECEASED
HUSBAND'S SPIRIT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
A VERY GOOD MARRIAGE PARTNER . . . . . . . . . 73
3.2 MESSAGES FROM THE DEAD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
(1) THE MIRACLE OF READINGS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
(2) CONVERSATION WITH A DEAD SON . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
(3) ENCOURAGEMENT FROM THE SPIRIT OF AN
ABORTED FETUS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
(4) I'll MARRY YOU EVERY SINGLE TIME I AM
REINCARNATED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
(5) A DEAD WIFE APOLOGIZES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
(6) THE IMPORTANCE OF PRAYER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
4 THINKING ABOUT "LIFE AFTER DEATH" 83
4.1 THE PERSUASIVENESS OF THE "LIFE AFTER DEATH"
HYPOTHESIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
(1) BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELIGION . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
(2) HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
(3) THE HUMILITY OF A SCIENTIST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
4.2 THE SUPERIORITY OF "THEORIES ABOUT LIFE AFTER DEATH" 86
(1) IT CAN NEVER BE PROVEN THAT "THERE IS NO LIFE
AFTER DEATH" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
(2) A DENIER WILL REALIZE HIS ERROR IF THERE IS
CONSCIOUSNESS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
5 THE THEORY OF THE MEANING OF LIFE 89
5.1 THE VALUE OF BELIEF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
(1) THE RATIONALITY OF CHOOSING THE
"NON-SCIENTIFIC" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
(2) WHAT WE MEAN BY "A FEELING THAT LIFE IS
MEANINGFUL" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
(3) SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE AS "A SOURCE OF MEANING" 91
(4) FUNDAMENTAL CHANGES IN OUR SET OF VALUES . . . 93
5.2 A MESSAGE FROM "THEORIES OF MEANING" . . . . . . . . . 94
(1) FOR THOSE WHO HAVE LOST A CLOSE RELATIVE . . . . 94
LOVE FROM WIFE AND CHILDREN . . . . . . . . . . 94
THE COURAGE TO ACCEPT THE DEATH OF A FRIEND 95
THE STRENGTH TO OVERCOME A MOTHER'S DEATH 96
viii CONTENTS
ADVICE FROM A SON'S SPIRIT . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
(2) TO THOSE WHO HAVE LOST A SWEETHEART . . . . . . . 98
(3) FOR THOSE STRICKEN WITH SERIOUS ILLNESS OR
HANDICAP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
PHYSICAL PAIN IS A SIGN OF SPIRITUAL PROGRESS 100
MESSAGES FROM COLLEAGUES . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF VOLUNTEER WORK . . . . . 103
(4) FOR THOSE WHO ARE SOON TO DIE . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
RETURNING HOME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
CHEERFUL INTIMACY WITH "DEATH" . . . . . . . . 105
(5) FOR THOSE TROUBLED BY HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS . . 105
WHY WE WERE BORN IN THIS WORLD. . . . . . . . . 105
LOVE AND FORGIVENESS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
GRATITUDE TO SOULMATES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
WHY WE CHOOSE OUR PARENTS . . . . . . . . . . . 110
(6) FOR THOSE WHO HAVE LOST CONFIDENCE IN
THEMSELVES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
WHY YOUR WORK IS WONDERFUL . . . . . . . . . . 112
THE "BREAKTHROUGH" CREATED BY
CHANGING OUR SET OF VALUES . . . . . . 115
VALUE IS BORN WHEN "KNOWLEDGE" IS PUT INTO
PRACTICE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
"POSITIVE THINKING" IS A SOURCE OF ENERGY . . 121
5.3 THE GOD OF "MEANINGFUL LIFE" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
(1) FREE TO BELIEVE; FREE NOT TO BELIEVE . . . . . . . . 123
(2) GRATITUDE FOR "A GOD IN ONE'S OWN IMAGE" . . . . 125
(3) IT'S NOT "PAINFUL HARD WORK," BUT "JOYOUS
SELF-CULTIVATION

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
FINDING OUT WHO YOU ARE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
IT IS STILL NOT TOO LATE TO CHANGE . . . . . . . 128
WE ARE ALL BRAVE TRAVELERS . . . . . . . . . . . 129
POSTSCRIPT 131
EPILOGUE - The World Will Be as One 133
Won't You Join the "Network of Life's Meaning?" 134
BIBLIOGRAPHY 134

1.

PROLOGUE – A Small Miracle
It happened one day in Autumn when their oldest son Hiro was four.

There is a family in Tokyo, composed of a cheerful husband who works for a large manufacturer, his practical wife, who is a full-time housewife, and their son. The couple are trustworthy and well-educated and not the sort who would tell a facile lie nor deceive others.

One morning, their son Hiro was absorbed, as he was every morning, in watching an 8:30 program on NHK Educational Television titled "Let's Play in English." His parents were eating their breakfast nearby.

Hiro was very quick at English. Without any formal instruction, he was able to easily remember and accurately repeat, not just words, but entire sentences of the English dialog spoken by the lady in the program.

Hiro was speaking fluently in English that morning too, and his mother casually remarked, "Hiro, you speak English so well!"

Hiro answered in a perfectly offhand manner. "Oh, that's because I used to live in the United States."

Of course, Hiro had never lived in the U.S. He had been born in Tokyo and had spent his entire four years of life in the same condominium.

His mother thought to herself, "I wonder how this child learned about the U.S. when we've never taught him anything about it. Could he have found out through T.V. or some child's magazine?" She said encouragingly, "Oh, really. And so that's why your English is so good." Hiro's parents had promised each other to always listen carefully to their child and to never make fun of what their child said.

Hiro then calmly concluded, "Yes, I used to be very happy when I was living in the U.S. That's why I decided to be reborn once more."

His mother was at a loss for words. His father, who had been eating breakfast and listening to the interchange, turned to look over in shock.

Hiro's parents were agnostics, and had never spoken of the concept of "reincarnation." In fact, they were totally uninterested in reincarnation, and knew scarcely anything about it. It seemed bizarre to them to hear their small four-year old easily using such a difficult expression as "reborn" when this was totally unlike Hiro's usual way of speaking. "How could this child, who probably doesn't even know the meaning of the word 'life' as yet, be speaking so fluently about "being reborn once more," his mother thought to herself, as she muttered non-committally to Hiro, at a complete loss for words.

Several months later, Hiro's mother was suddenly motivated to ask Hiro again about what he had said. She thought that if he answered her question the same way as before, even after several months had passed, it would prove that he had not just been speaking random nonsense before. She casually asked him, "Hiro, dear, where did you live in the past?" Hiro gave exactly the same answer as several months ago. But this time he made a surprising addition. "I used to live in the United States. I lived in the U.S. and I was very happy, so I decided to be reborn. Then someone told me to go to Japan, and so I flew here."

2.

His mother hid her agitation, and asked, "Who was it who told you to go to Japan?"

"Um... I don't know. But I was told to go to Japan, and that's why I flew here. Then I was inside mommy's tummy."

Just before he had turned three, Hiro had started to show her "the way I held my body when I was in your tummy." Naturally, his parents had never taught him anything about this, and it was impossible for a two-year old to have such knowledge.

His mother asked him once more in a serious tone, "Hiro, dear, do you remember being in mommy's tummy?" Hiro answered, "Sure, I remember. I could hear daddy's voice. And I could hear mommy's voice too."

As he was speaking, Hiro pulled his legs up and rolled into a ball. "This is the way I held my body. When I was awake, I stretched out my hands." He kicked his legs and stretched out his hands.

"Do you remember when you were born."

"Yes, I remember. I was upside down, and my body was turning around and my head came out first."

Hiro's mother could no longer deny what she had seen and heard with her own eyes and ears. She had never once taught Hiro any of the kinds of things he was telling her. While it is certainly true that a baby's body rotates in his mother's birth canal as it is being born, there was no way that Hiro could have learned that. She and her husband, who was standing nearby, were convinced that this was a true "memory" of what Hiro had actually experienced. Hiro spoke calmly, but his speechless parents were overcome by emotion.

"When I came out of mommy's tummy, it was so very very bright and cold." Several months later, at the end of my interview with her, Hiro's mother said in conclusion, "My husband and I feel that we have learned the meaning of life from our four year old son. Our son's words taught us that we should live happily, enjoying all the things that happen in our daily lives.

Hiro's words– "I was so very happy that I wanted to be reborn again."– will remain forever in his parents' hearts.

HOW THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN; GRATITUDE TO ALL

In September of 1995, I published some of my research in Shogaku Ronshu, the university academic journal. My article was titled "The Dawn of 'Meaning' – Regarding the Influence of Scientific Research on Reincarnation On Our Outlook on Life". [1] When I published it, I was terrified that the other professors would reproach me, that other people would laugh at me and that I would lose my precious friends.

However, the things I feared have not materialized, even though over six months have passed. On the contrary, requests have soared for copies of my article in response a comment that I had written at the end of my article, "Free copies will be sent to those who request them." I was eventually sending out over one hundred copies of my article every day. There were times when letters and faxes totaled over 170 per day. As a result, I ran out of the copies that I had prepared, and repeatedly had to make new copies at my own expense. Braced by warm support from all of you, I sent out over

3.

7,000 articles, including copies, in six months. Many people copied their own articles to send to friends, so there must be thousands and thousands of people in Japan who have seen my article.

Naturally there were heartless materialists who made unpleasant and gloomy comments; and there were some people who began to keep their distance from me.

However, there were hundreds more strangers from all over the country who sent me warm and appreciative letters and faxes expressing their support and opinions. This gave me great strength.

At this point, I would like to introduce some representative letters selected from the hundreds that I have received. I have been greatly strengthened by the heartfelt emotion which permeates these letters

Words cannot express my gratitude for this manuscript. I am terribly excited about it. I received the report on February 15. Just by thumbing through it, I knew instantly that what I had received was extraordinary. I felt as if the manuscript had grabbed that shining vital part of my heart, and shook it violently from side to side.

Before I had finished reading it all, I faxed seven or eight key people in my life, telling them about this report. I rejoice that your report had been published. I now feel that I have been reborn. As I read your report, I found myself sometimes nodding in deep agreement, sometimes breaking into tears, and sometimes smiling quietly. When I read on the train, those around me would vacate their seats, leaving me pleased that I could read in peace! I can feel the dawn of a new age

This is my first letter to you.

I lost a person I loved in an automobile accident on (date deleted). He and I had built up a very strong relationship together. I respected him very much. I wanted to learn more about him. Now it is all gone. I was unable to put my mind to anything the first four or five days after his death, and I agonized over what would become of me.

After about a week had passed, a friend gave me a report and asked me to read it. It was Professor Iida's article, "The Dawn of 'Meaning.'" I read it through the first time in about an hour. Then I slowly read it over again and again and again. I am still unable to express my feelings very well in words. The best I can do is to say, "Professor Iida saved me."

I had been secretly thinking about killing myself. But then I found Professor Iida, and learned the meaning of living. I began to think seriously about "reliving" my life. "The Dawn of 'Meaning'" is my bible.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I'm sure there will be many days when I feel miserable; however, I will be able to move forward optimistically because I have "The Dawn of Meaning." I will never forget the past as I move forward with my life,

4.

and I will sometimes stop and look back at the road I have taken. But I will be able to choose my path and calmly accept all that happens around me.

I will go on living so that I may become a truly, truly good person. With your help, Professor Iida, I now want to go on living. Please forgive me for getting carried away and writing so exclusively about myself in such messy handwriting. I am so happy that I read your work. From now on, I will put my heart into living. I will put all my energies into living on. I offer you my deepest gratitude for giving me my life back.

I've just finished rereading your article. Words cannot express the overwhelming gratitude that I feel as I wonder how to incorporate into my everyday life the strong impressions that were engraved on my heart by each phrase of "The Dawn of 'Meaning.'" I am ___ years old and operate a small store. I also have some young people working for me and managing the store cheerfully and happily. Still, some people leave me each year because of their inability to share the same dreams and hopes. This fills me with sadness, even though my own powerlessness
and lack of education may be the cause.

However, after being exposed to Professor Iida's ideas, I have sensed my innermost feelings slowly becoming brighter. We have been placed on earth in order to perfect ourselves through discipline. His ideas have allowed me to resolve one by one many of the strange and naive doubts that I had. I see now that there is a reason for the unexpected words of others. And I now understand with painful clarity that nothing can be resolved or settled through grief and anger alone. Most important of all, I believe that I have started to understand the meaning of my own life.

I want to start now to change my own way of living. I want to spend each day consciously aware of my gratitude not only to my wife and family but also to my parents, my friends, my employees, my business connections, and most of all, my customers.

I see now that there was a reason for everything that happened. Each event was a big link to the meaning of my life.

I do not want to selfishly hoard my blessed peace of mind; I have decided to make every effort to impart this lesson to those around me.


I am a Director of a trading company. Thank you for sending me your article.

I read it right away. As the world becomes more and more virtual, there are fewer and fewer things that truly make a strong impression. For the first time in ages, I felt emotions that seemed to well up from deep inside me. Since reading "The Dawn of 'Meaning'" I have become aware of my reason for being alive in "this world," and I want to share your article with those around me in my network. Please continue your research

5.

and lectures, secure in the knowledge that you have many supporters like
me.


Along with letters like this one, many strangers wrote to say, "I want my loved ones to read your article, but the bookstores don't carry academic works. In any event, your style and wording are too difficult and scholarly. Please create a more readable book, and have the bookstores carry it." I was grateful for their chastisements and entreaties. To tell you the truth, their reprimands were completely unexpected, but welcome.

That is how this book was born.

The true parents of this book are those many letter-writers with their words of encouragement.
Thank you all very much.

FOREWORD

This book is a simplified, readable presentation of the results of scientific research on reincarnation and the afterlife. It is a book about the "meaning of life," written from a new perspective, which shows how wonderful our everyday lives will become and how our views of human nature will change when we apply the knowledge gained from this research. This book does not aim to prove the existence of "reincarnation" and the "afterlife." No one could possibly provide sufficient proof and no method would suffice to convince. [100]

To give an example, suppose a dead soul came back to this world as a ghost and gave a press conference on television for all the people of the world to see. Those who do not wish to believe could use circuitous logic to deny the phenomena that they saw before their very eyes. They could refuse to believe to the very end, explaining away what they see as a collective hallucination or as an illusion caused by some mental mischief or as a trick played by the television station or as something that is impossible by the laws of physics. They are perfectly free to deny what they see, and, in fact, it is their right to do so if they wish.

For that reason, when I am asked whether "reincarnation" and "the afterlife" are "real" or not, all I can answer is, "Well, you'll find out for sure after you die." However, regardless of what is true, as a researcher into "the meaning of life," I find it tremendously worthwhile that the results of my research on various phenomena have greatly strengthened and revitalized many people.

Consequently, my interests lie not in "truth," but rather in those "phenomena" that heighten the feeling that life is worthwhile. This is because I am not a psychologist nor am I a philosopher nor am I a physicist; I am instead a results-oriented teacher of management, whose role is much like that of a physician, in the sense that I "heal the heart." For this reason especially, this book is not about the unusual themes of "reincarnation" and "rebirth," but really about "the meaning of life."

There is a big difference between "believing" and "confirming." To "believe," one
does not need any evidence or basis for belief, but only the will to believe. Until now, this has been the province of "religion." In order to "confirm" something, however, one

6.

must have sufficient evidence to be convinced, and one must investigate, thus entering into the realm of science.

In that sense, this book first will explain in easily understandable terms the results of scientific research on "reincarnation" and "the afterlife." Whether or not these scientific results will be enough to elevate a "desire to believe" to the level of "a confirmation" will be at the discretion of each reader. I am sure that there some who will deny it, saying that there is insufficient proof, but there are others who will say in astonishment, "There's so much evidence, that I'm convinced."

At this point, what I want each of you to ask yourself, based on the research results presented in this book, is the following, "How would my life change if I started to believe in reincarnation and an afterlife?" I am not stubbornly insisting that you recognize these as truths. This book is not intended to convince the disbelievers. Instead, it is intended to encourage those who are in doubt about what to believe, and to provide scientific information to those who already "believe," in order to encourage and support them in their lives.

Furthermore, this book never quotes without very good reason writings by psychics or religious figures, nor private therapists nor journalists, nor those who term themselves social commentators and entertainers. Of course, I do not deny that their numerous publications include several excellent works; however, in order to maintain a scholarly and objective viewpoint, the quotations used in this book are chiefly from the research of renowned university professors, of researchers who hold Ph.D. degrees and of clinical physicians.

In addition, my family and I do not belong to any religious group, but instead
follow the typical Japanese religious hodgepodge, visiting Shinto shrines during the big Shinto New Year's festivals, visiting Buddhist temples during the Buddhist festival of the dead, and putting up a Christmas tree at Christmas. It is true that once I had a paranormal experience that convinced me concretely of the existence of "spirits;" it is also true that I was aided in writing this book by the strong encouragement of the "spirits." However, I wish to stress strongly once again that neither the contents of this book nor I have any connection with any religious group.

If you are a person who "will never accept" the existence of "reincarnation" or of "the afterlife," please go ahead and enjoy this book as an ornate and colorful fantasy.

If you are a person who "is in doubt" about acceptance, please open up this book with excitement.

If you are a person who is already a fervent believer, please nod your head deeply in agreement as you read, as you confirm what you already know.
Let us begin the narrative.

HOW IT BEGAN

I am a professor of management. For my research in "human resource management," I constantly think about the questions of "what makes work fulfilling," of "what makes life worthwhile," and of "what brings feelings of happiness."

7.

These days in particular, I have been getting an increasing number of requests from all over for speeches on the theme of "Managing the Meaning of Life," and I have become more and more keenly aware of the importance of this theme.

Originally, I did research in what is called, in technical parlance, "organizational culture," or "communal group values." I pursued my theories within the rubric of traditional "management science," from the viewpoint of "increasing work fulfillment by changing value systems." In other words, managers and superiors were to reform the organization, using the rallying call "human values" as a means to attain a type of "desirable mind control."[2]

However, I have recently noticed that managers and supervisory personnel share an awareness of a common problem. What worries them is this: "We tried various methods to increase employee motivation; however, these were no more than superficial fixes. At best we were temporarily able to trick the employees into thinking that they liked work." Therefore, these managers and supervisory personnel want to know how to affect their employees' value systems at the deepest of levels, in order to make profound changes in the employees' ways of thinking, so that "increased work motivation" will no longer be a superficial and temporary phenomena.

I was inspired to try to relate the special information that I gained through a personal paranormal experience. When I did so, those people who learned of the information listened with great intensity, widening their eyes in astonishment, and sometimes breaking into tears.

One manager nodded in agreement, saying, "That is exactly what I have been
seeking. I was mistaken. I have remembered what is really at issue here: the issue is not what I can make my employees do for me, but what I can do for my employees." Another administrator said with great enthusiasm, "I want my families and friends to learn about this, not just my employees." One student was full of joy, "Now I am no longer afraid of anything. From now on when I go home to my single room, I will not be lonely at all."

This special information mentioned above, the topic of this book, is a discussion of the results of recent scientific research on "reincarnation" and "the afterlife." I was astonished at the tremendous results that occurred when I conveyed this information to others. Eliminating the listener's preconceptions and imparting this information accurately created an impact that went far beyond producing greater motivation in the workplace – it made people start asking fundamental questions about the "meaning of life" and about what comprises "happiness."

I could not help but feel the immense power working whenever I saw the same people who had adamantly resisted change no matter what the inducement, start casting off and discarding the hard shells of their ego. This made me realize that the world is full of people who are searching in their hearts for this information. I finally understood that people who are undergoing an ordeal, those who have been visited by a sudden tragedy, and those who have had a major setback find a great spiritual comfort in the ideas of "reincarnation" and "the afterlife."

As a university professor I frequently counsel people. However, as an individual I can only suggest a very limited number of alternatives to help, for example, the

8.

woman whose boyfriend has thrown her over, the student who has failed to get into the college of his choice and the senior who was not offered a job by his dream company. How then can my very limited strength possibly encourage and hearten a handicapped individual or his parents, a young person maimed by an accident, a grieving young widow or a patient suffering from an incurable disease?

Of course, it is easy to say encouragingly, "Cheer up and do your best!" However, so many people who have lost meaning in their lives have lost the very "source of strength to live." They are in the same situation as a piece of equipment with dead batteries. Nothing will move even if you press the on switch. You can shout all you want, "Don't leave the switch off; turn it on," but you cannot hope for any results.

So many people surround us who have lost "the source of strength to live."We can find them in our companies, among students, among our families and relatives. And the friend who is full of hopes today could very well lose everything and sink under misfortune tomorrow.

If misfortune occurs, how can we possibly recreate "the source of meaning" for the victims of misfortune?

If we assume temporarily that "reincarnation" and "the afterlife" are true, then all of our small daily discontents will cease to matter, and our misfortunes and setbacks which had seemed so meaningless, could instead take on a very significant meaning.

Such knowledge might work better as a powerful "source of life's meaning" than all the words of encouragement in the world.

That is precisely the reason why I developed an interest in research on "reincarnation" and "the afterlife" while I was still a young management researcher, just starting out. It is because both "reincarnation" and "the afterlife" are components of "theories of the meaning of life" essential to basic humanity.

By so doing, I broke out of the traditional boundary of "management science" and recklessly ran into the broad research jungle of "human studies.

Chapter 1
MEMORIES OF PAST LIVES

The evidence for reincarnation, although mostly circumstantial, is now so compelling that intellectual assent is natural... The reader....I hope, will arrive at the same conclusion as I have: that we've lived before in past lives and will likely live again in future. Our current life is but a small link in a long unbroken chain.[3]

The above quotation is from Dr. Joel L. Whitton, who is Chair of the Psychology Department of the Medical School of the University of Toronto.

Dr. Robert Almeder, a professor at Georgia University, analyzed various recent stories and examples of life after death, and objectively researched the claims of both supporters and deniers and came to the following conclusion in 1992:[4-A]

For the first time in human history we have a body of factual evidence strongly
supporting belief in some form of life after death... The results of this examination are philosophically striking and constitute, I believe, strong evidence for belief in some form of personal survival after death...So, not only is belief in personal survival verifiable by appeal to public evidence, it has been verified by evidence that is public and repeatable. [4-B]

We can broadly divide scientific research into human life after death into two types.
The first type conducts research under the following premise: "Even after we lose our physical bodies, we continue to exist as a consciousness (or, in other words, as a spirit)."

The second type starts with the premise, "We exist as a consciousness (a spirit) after death, and take on physical form again when we are reborn." The first type is research on "life after death," and the second type is research on "rebirth," or borrowing Buddhist ideas, research on what is called "the transmigration of souls."

Research of this nature was carried out prior to the nineteenth century under the form of the study of "Apparitions" or "communications with the deceased." While some writings are persuasive, in general they are inspired by religious impulses or popular interests.[5]

From what I have seen, pure academic theorizing and research using the scientific method of collecting and analyzing data began in the field of clinical medicine. We can trace its beginnings to the end of the nineteenth century; however, it has only been

9.

Page 10. CHAPTER 1. MEMORIES OF PAST LIVES

in the last ten or twenty years that interest in the topic has spread to many researchers, and that corroboration of results has increased.

The majority of the people interested in this theme are serious researchers who are highly regarded in various other disciplines. Generally, they report that initially they disbelieved in an "afterlife" and in "reincarnation," and, in fact, had never felt any interest in these topics. Furthermore, many of these researchers refuse to believe in "reincarnation" even now. Since they are believers in Christianity, a religion that does not deal with "reincarnation" they have to be very courageous to publish the results of their research because those results do not square with the beliefs that they have learned since childhood. The issue is not whether Christ Himself was correct or mistaken. There were ancient Christian sects that recognized "reincarnation."6 At one time, many Christian sects, in the process of explaining "the world of the afterlife" in plain language, stressed the difference between the glory of Heaven and the horrors of Hell, and decided, as religious bodies, not to recognize "reincarnation."

Currently researchers of these themes are no longer interested in proving the existence of an "afterlife" and of "reincarnation." Instead their interest has shifted to studying the actual way these concepts operate and in methods of communicating with disembodied spirits.

Most of these researchers are actual physicians or clinical doctors. Consequently, they do not consider that their mission is to convince old-type physicists or materialists who are hopelessly locked into their old value systems. Instead, these researchers put their emphasis on unlocking practical knowledge that they can use in counseling the suffering, and in comforting those who are trembling with fear at imminent death.

This book aims at organizing and synthesizing "practical knowledge for living" discovered by these researchers, and in exploring it from the perspective of "meaningful life theories." Well then, let us begin by looking at various research results about memories of previous lives.

1.1 HYPNOTIC REGRESSION

The reason that we know that we humans have lived "past lives" on this earth, and that we have the potential to be reborn any number of times is because of the introduction of the psychological therapy known as hypnotic regression about twenty years ago. (In this book, I will use the term "past lives" to refer to all the lives we have lived until now; I will use the term "previous life" to refer to our immediately prior life.)

People frequently fail to understand that "hypnotism" is not a spell or magic, but is merely the focusing of consciousness on one specific point. Induced by a trained physician, the body of the test subject (the person agreeing to be experimented upon) or of the subject being hypnotized relaxes completely, and forgotten memories surface with prompting or suggestion. The act of remembering enables floating anxieties to be alleviated and phobias to be eliminated.[7]

For example, a subject who is terrified of "water" may remember under hypnotic regression that he nearly drowned as a child while playing in the water. Another subject

1.1. HYPNOTIC REGRESSION page 11

who has an abnormal phobia about the dark may recover a childhood memory of being attacked in the dark.

In this connection, Dr. David Chamberlain, Vice Chairman of the Pre-Birth and Neonatal Psychology Association, has regressed many of his subjects back to memories of their birth or to their time in the uterus. He has discovered that a fetus can distinguish his mother's voice, and a newborn baby can understand the emotions of his parents.[8]

He relates that infants read their parents' emotions very perceptively. For example, he says that if a new parent says, "Oh, what a disappointment. I wanted a boy," the infant can be deeply wounded, and this pain can take form later as a mental or physical ailment, as, for example, a male complex. (Readers, please be careful what you say around your pregnant wives and infants!)

Someone under hypnosis is not sleeping, and is fully conscious of all his experiences. In response to the doctor's words, he may express his views, make criticisms or investigate his own memories. Hypnotism does not force someone to speak of his hidden secrets, nor does it create memories against one's will.[9]

I have learned that when one remembers past lives, sometimes one observes them as if watching a movie, and sometimes one responds emotionally as if thrust once again into the past. There are times when one can actually hear sounds and smell odors.

Unless the doctor indicates that the memories induced under hypnosis must be forgotten, the subject will remember all that he experienced under hypnosis after awakening. If the subject wishes to stop, he can emerge from the hypnotic state at any time through his own volition.

Consequently, the subject is able to respond to the doctor's question, to speak in his usual fashion and to know where and when the events happened that he is remembering, even while he is remembering past events under a deep hypnotic trance. As a result, a subject who discovers that he was a farmer fighting a war during the Middle Ages in Europe may sometimes recognize a contemporary friend appearing also in his past life (they were acquaintances in a past life), may compare the primitive weapons he was using in his past life to modern weapons, or may tell what the date was in the part of his past life he is remembering. In other words, the subject in a hypnotic regression, "is the movie's observer and its critic and usually its star at the same time."[10]

Hypnotic regression began in the 1890s with the work of Albert de Rochas, whose research involved using hypnosis to make his subjects remember past lives. The subjects gave what seemed to be convincing evidence of past lives, such as telling where they had lived and what their family name had been; however, there was no way to prove whether such a person had actually existed. De Rochas was groping blindly in the dark, as one always is when confronted with a the birth of a new science. The psychologists and psychiatrists of de Rochas' day dismissed the results of his startling experimental research, saying that his subjects' memories of past lives were due to mental derangement.[11]

However, Dr. Alexander Cannon began scientific experiments on reincarnation once again around the middle of the twentieth century. Dr. Cannon was successful in

page 12. CHAPTER 1. MEMORIES OF PAST LIVES

regressing his over 1,300 subjects back to memories of events that had occurred even thousands of years before the birth of Christ.

For years the theory of reincarnation was a nightmare to me and I did my best to disprove it and even argued with my trance subjects to the effect that they were talking nonsense. Yet as the years went by one subject after another told me the same story in spite of different and various beliefs. Now well over a thousand cases have been so investigated and I have to admit that there is such a thing as reincarnation.[12] Dr. Cannon treated thousands of subjects with phobias in the 1970s and 1980s. His methods became known as "regression therapy." Dr. Edith Fiore, a clinical psychologist, supported the reincarnation hypothesis, stating:

If someone's phobia is eliminated instantly and permanently by the remembrance of an event from the past, it seems to make logical sense that that event must have happened.[13]

Other researchers also gradually began to recognize the authenticity of reincarnation.

All human minds have a subconscious area, which is beyond conscious access. When a person endures some mental trauma, this trauma can be suppressed and stored in their subconscious, with the trauma appearing on the surface disguised as a neurotic symptom. Psychological analysis, using free association and dream analysis, has been a useful treatment in unlocking long-repressed childhood memories in the unconscious mind; however, regression therapy carries this one step further, using hypnosis to find reasons going back to past lives.

A very high level of skill at hypnosis is necessary to regress subjects to their past lives. Not all subjects are able to enter a trance deep enough to recall memories of their past lives. Therefore, regression therapy is not yet for general use since it cannot be used easily on everyone everywhere.

There are popular practitioners using hypnotism therapy in the United States; however, some are charlatans who are out to make money and cannot be trusted. Just using the words "past lives" in Japan can frequently lead to misunderstandings. Japan is still at the stage where only a very small numbers of practicing doctors are researching this topic, and there are only a few therapists who are experimenting with it.

1.2 THE PAST REBORN
In what form exactly do the subjects of regression hypnosis remember the past? I will discuss several simple examples.

(1) SWALLOWED BY THE FLOOD
In 1982, Dr. Brian L. Weiss, Chairman of Psychiatry at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami, used regression therapy on a subject named Catherine. Dr. Weiss was a serious researcher who had published copious research in the traditional scientific areas. At the time, he totally disbelieved in reincarnation and in the afterlife, and

1.2. THE PAST REBORN page 13.

he had absolutely no interest in those topics. Catherine, who was a Christian, also appeared not to believe in the principles of reincarnation.

Dr. Weiss had not been able to discover the reason for Catherine's terror of water, even after he regressed her to her childhood memories, so he gave her a deliberately vague suggestion, "Go back to the time from which your symptoms came." Dr. Weiss describes what happened then as follows.

"Go back to the time from which your symptoms arise." I was totally unprepared for what came next.

"I see white steps leading up to a building, a big white building with pillars, open in front. There are no doorways. I'm wearing a long dress...a sack made of rough material. My hair is braided, long blond hair."

I was confused. I wasn't sure what was happening. I asked her what the year was, what her name was. "Aronda...I am eighteen. I see a marketplace in front of the building. There are baskets... You carry the baskets on your shoulders. We live in a valley....There is no water. The year is 1863 B.C. The area is barren, hot and sandy. There is a well, no rivers. Water comes into the valley from the mountains...

...I'm wearing...sandals. I am twenty-five. I have a girl child whose name is Cleastra... She's Rachel. (Rachel is presently her niece; they have always had an extremely close relationship.)

I was startled. My stomach knotted, and the room felt cold. Her visualization and recall seemed so definite. She was not at all tentative. Names, dates, clothes, trees – all seen vividly! What was going on here? How could the child she had then be her niece now? I was even more confused. I had examined thousands of psychiatric patients, many under hypnosis, and I had never come across fantasies like this before – not even in dreams. I instructed her to go forward to the time of her death. I wasn't sure how to interview someone in the middle of such an explicit fantasy (or memory?), but I was on the lookout for traumatic events that might underlie current fears or symptoms...

..."There are big waves knocking down trees. There's no place to run. It's cold; the water is cold. I have to save my baby, but I cannot...just have to hold her tight. I drown; the water chokes me. I can't breathe, can't swallow...salty water. My baby is torn out of my arms." Catherine was gasping and having difficulty breathing. Suddenly her body relaxed completely, and her breathing became deep and even.

"I see clouds...My baby is with me. And others from my village. I see my brother."
She was resting; this lifetime had ended. She was still in a deep trance. I was stunned! Previous lifetimes? Reincarnation? My clinical mind told me that she was not fantasizing this material, that she was not making this up... The whole gamut of possible psychiatric diagnoses flashed through my mind., but her psychiatric state and her character structure did not explain these revelations...

...These were memories of some sort, but from where? My gut reaction was that I had stumbled upon something I knew very little about – reincarnation and past-life memories. It couldn't be, I told myself; my scientifically trained mind resisted it. Yet here it was, happening right before my eyes. I couldn't explain it, but I couldn't deny the reality of it either.

"Go on," I said, a little unnerved but fascinated by what was happening. "Do you

page 14. CHAPTER 1. MEMORIES OF PAST LIVES

remember anything else?" She remembered fragments of two other lifetimes.[14]

Dr. Weiss had experienced for the first time the moment when hypnotic regression makes a subject recall "memories of past lives. As a scientist, Dr. Weiss did not want to believe in reincarnation and life after death; however, as the hypnotism therapy sessions continued, Catherine demonstrated repeatedly when in a trance she was aware of many of Dr. Weiss' personal secrets, secrets which no outsider could have known. What is more, as you will see below, Catherine indicated that those secrets had been related to her by her "master," as she termed the guiding spirit from beyond.

My arms were gooseflesh. Catherine could not possibly know this information. There was no place even to look it up. My father's Hebrew name, that I had a son who died in infancy from a one-in-ten million heart defect, my brooding about medicine, my father's death, and my daughter's naming – it was too much, too specific, too true. This unsophisticated laboratory technician was a conduit for transcendental knowledge. And if she could reveal these truths, what else was there? I needed to know more.

"Who," I sputtered, "who is there? Who tells you these things?"

"The Masters," she whispered, "the Master Spirits tell me. They tell me I have lived eighty-six times in physical state.[15]

Thereafter, the "guiding spirits" from the world beyond would directly answer Dr. Weiss' questions, using Catherine's voice. Some of the interesting things that were relayed by the spirits will be introduced in other parts of this book, together with the findings of other researchers.

Dr. Weiss took every possible approach to debunking this strange phenomena, but, at last, he had no choice but to accept the truth of what he had seen with his very own eyes. He experimented with many other subjects using hypnotic regression, to have them remember past lives.

He discovered that about 60

The best therapist working within the classically accepted limits of the single lifetime will not be able to effect a complete cure for the patient whose symptoms were caused by a trauma that occurred in a previous lifetime...[16]

Dr. Weiss performed regressive therapy individually on hundreds of persons, from all walks of life – medical doctors, company directors, lawyers, therapists, housewives, factory workers, salesmen – with every type of socioeconomic, religious and educational background. He also hypnotized many times that number of subjects in group hypnotic regressive sessions, and almost all of the subjects remembered past lives. Dr. Weiss reported that these subjects were cured of myriad and sundry unexplained ailments, including fear complexes, panic attacks, bad dreams, obesity, anthropophobia, physical pains and so on.[17]

(2) ENVELOPED BY SMOKE

Doctors other than Dr. Weiss have also reported several examples of subjects who were freed from serious disease by reliving memories of past lives. For example, a physician from New Jersey, Dr. Robert Jarmon related an example of hypnotic regression.

1.2. THE PAST REBORN page 15.

The patient, Elizabeth, was a fifty-one year old executive who suffered from respiratory disease. She came to Dr. Jarmon for hypnotic regression, thinking that the real cause of her ailment lay in her past lives.

"Now I want you to go to an old scene," Dr. Jarmon instructed Elizabeth. "I want you to go back to the first time you had that problem where you couldn't breathe, the feeling you couldn't catch your breath. As you see that scene, describe what you see." Elizabeth began to tremble. She grimaced.

"There it is," Dr. Jarmon said. "I want you to look down at your feet. What are you wearing on your feet?"
"Dark shoes," she reported, in a child's voice. "Old lady's shoes."
The doctor probed further. "Where are you? What are you doing?"
"Where are you? What are you doing?"
"Sewing. But I know what's going to happen. There's going to be a fire." Elizabeth stammered and began coughing. Her breathing became rapid and shallow. "Smoldering... the rags over there in the corner."

Elizabeth described herself as a sixteen-year-old girl named Nora who lived in Sterling, Massachusetts, in 1879. Nora worked in a shirt factory. She was deaf, could not speak, and wore braces on her legs. She had been working in this factory since age twelve.

"Smoke...Flames!" she coughed. "They are trying to put it out...they are hitting it. They're beating it. Someone threw water on it, but there's not enough water," she
cried. Her breathing became very labored.
"Everyone's trying to get out," she sputtered.
"How about you? Are you trying to get out?" Dr. Jarmon asked.
"I can't. They won't help me."
"Why do you need help?"
"I can't walk...I have braces on my legs," Elizabeth cried, gasping for air.
"They don't even see me. I'm there. I can't breathe. I can't stand it any more," she gulped.
Suddenly, she went limp. After several silent and tense minutes, Dr. Jarmon asked her to describe the scene.
"Is the fire still raging?"
"Yes..but I am resting.... I'm dead...still sick...have to rest. Some need more rest than others. But it's okay. Now it's peaceful."

Elizabeth's respiratory problems disappeared after she re-experienced her death in the fire. She lost her lifelong fear of suffocating. Her values and her life Changed dramatically.[18]

In the course of conducting hypnotic regression on literally thousands of subjects, Dr. Weiss discovered a phenomena that spans many lifetimes.

Many of my patients have recalled different traumatic patterns under hypnosis that repeat in various forms in lifetime after lifetime. These patterns include abuse between father and daughter that has been recurring over centuries only to surface once again in the current life. They also include an abusive husband in a past life who has resurfaced in the present as a violent father. Alcoholism is a condition that has ruined several

page 16. CHAPTER 1. MEMORIES OF PAST LIVES

lifetimes, and one warring couple discovered they had been homicidally connected in four previous lives together. [19]

Later on in this book, I will explain in detail this karma or fate that stretches across several lifetimes as I discuss other researchers' discoveries of the same phenomena.

(3) A JAPANESE WHO LIVED AS A GERMAN

Now I will discuss the case of a Japanese male who underwent hypnotic regression with a Japanese doctor who has kindly granted his permission for me to discuss it. The doctor is a neurosurgeon who was trained at New York University and is a member of the U.S. Hypnotherapists' Association (check name). I have interviewed him, and can guarantee that he is a sincere, cool-headed, trustworthy source.

This doctor uses hypnotherapy as just one treatment method, and does not want his real name used for fear that he would be inundated with people curious about their past lives, so we shall call him Dr. S. Since hypnotic regression takes a long time for each patient, Dr. S. says he prefers to use other therapies except when the patient can only be cured by the use of hypnotic regression.

At a later point, I shall discuss several other cases, but let us start for now with the case of a twenty-eight year old Japanese woman. Doctors and their patients make progress by asking and answering single questions, but in the interests of clarity, I have chosen here to combine and condense their dialogue in a narrative fashion. [20]

After Dr. S. induced a hypnotic state, the Japanese woman remembered several childhood scenes from her present life before she started remembering her past lives.
The next instant, she saw before her eyes a broad plain.
Doctor: What is your name?
Woman: Father is calling me from far away. I hear him calling "Cathy."
Doctor: What do you see.
Woman: I am so happy. I am standing barefoot in a beautiful natural setting. I can feel nature with my whole body.
There a chain of mountains in the distance. I am surrounded by a field of flowers. My father is a farmer and we have one cow and one horse. We are a family of three, my mother, my father and me. We used to have a dog, but it died when I was five. My father and I are talking and laughing while my mother is cooking.

The woman remembered several other previous lives. One time she mentioned a place name.
Woman: I am eleven years old and I am at Bodensee Lake with my family.

1.2. THE PAST REBORN page 17.

According to Dr. S., when he brought this woman out of her hypnotic trance and asked her about "Bodensee Lake," she replied that she had never heard of the lake and had no idea where it is. Bodensee Lake is close to the border between Germany and Switzerland, and is a tributary of the Rhine.

This Japanese women recalled places that had impressed her in the past life that she was recalling
Woman: My mother is calling my father, "Franz." We are on a train.
I am sitting next to the window on the left side, and looking outside. I see a large train station come in view. It is Vienna.

Finally the woman related how her past life had become embroiled in war.

Woman: My father was killed fighting in the war when I was thirteen years old. We never recovered his body. My father never wanted to go to war. He went reluctantly with the German army to fight the Russians and he was killed. Our days passed in grief and despair, and my mother gradually talked less and less. When I was fourteen years old, some German troops broke into our home. The German soldiers beat up my mother. My mother hated the Germans. After that happened, my mother never again spoke of the war.

Finally the war ended. Her life became happy again, once she had overcome the death of her father.

Woman: I am twenty years old now. My mother and I work in a bakery in Vienna. We love our work. I do not know what the date is.

Thereafter, she was married and became a mother.

Woman: I can't remember my husband's name exactly. It was Roy or Rodieu — something like that. We were married in the church. Eventually we had a daughter, and I became a mother.

Unfortunately, her hard-won happiness was not to last. While still young, she developed lung disease.

Woman: Now I am thirty years old. My chest hurts terribly sometimes.
There are many days when I can't even get out of bed. I think I am going to die. What will become of my daughter after I am gone? It's getting so hard to breathe.

Her memories of this past life stop here. She died, survived by her husband and her only child. Hers was not an extraordinary life. Yes, her life had its ups and downs, its tragedies and its triumphs, but millions of people have lived similar lives.

page 18. CHAPTER 1. MEMORIES OF PAST LIVES

In addition to Dr. S., there are a number of other Japanese therapists who have used hypnotic regression and meditation in past life therapy.

The "Live for Now Society," (Ima o Ikiru Kai), headed by Mr. M., includes many Japanese who experienced "healing" by reliving their past lives. One housewife, who had past life therapy from Mr. N and also had hypnotic regression with Dr. S., related her experiences as follows.

The past life that I remember most clearly was when I was a Tibetan. In that lifetime, I was male, and lived with my parents and many brothers and sisters. We were very poor, so when I was just a small boy, my parents sent me to the Temple to be trained as a monk so that there would be one less mouth to feed. I relived my lifetime memories from when I was a one year old infant until I died at fifty. I spent my whole life as a monk.

In my other lifetimes, I was a European knight clad in armor who was beheaded in battle. I also lived as a Japanese in the Meiji Period (1868 - 1912); I was born into a poor family. No one cared for me as I spent my last moments of life alone, shivering with cold in a thin, old blanket.

Some mercenary individuals may abuse this book and take unscrupulous advantage of human curiosity by claiming they can reveal the secrets of their customers' past lives. In return for an exorbitant sum, they may manufacture some fictitious tales of alleged past lives. I want to stress that, as the author, I am fearful that publishing this book may have such as undesirable effect.

(4) MEMOIRS OF A WOMAN SUBJECT

I want to acquaint readers with the memoirs of a thirty-year old Japanese woman who experienced hypnotic regression under the care of Dr. S. This first-hand experience of a subject, written in her own words, will bring the experience of hypnotic regression very close to the reader.[21]

I am following the directions of the therapist and returning to my past.
I am going back and back to my previous life. I see a yellow vision before my eyes.
"What do you see? How old are you"
My consciousness was responding to the doctor's questions and showing these things to me.
I see a weapon like a hatchet or a pick, and I know that it is a tool used in field work.
I am a fifteen-year old boy, an only child, and my parents are out working in the fields in this scene I remember. I am not really seeing it, but speaking about what comes out of the world of sensation, and so it takes me time to express it. I get confused about the vision I see and it takes me time to reply.
"Where are you?"

1.2. THE PAST REBORN page 19.

"Some foreign country."
"What's the name of the country?"
"Argentina."
My answers seem to arise spontaneously in response to the questions.
What a strange feeling!
"What's your name?"
..In my heart I wondered what he was talking about, and whether it was all right to talk about such strange things, but I heard myself saying, "Pedro," or some such difficult to pronounce name. In a few moments I realized that my name in that life was "Peter."

The scenery around me was like one of Millet's paintings in atmosphere and coloration.
I was lonely. I felt that my parents didn't love me very much. I remembered that I had fallen from a cliff when I was fifteen, and that no one had found me (for a long time). I remembered being caught on a tree, hovering between life and death. I also saw myself at thirty-two when my eldest daughter was born.

When the doctor suggested I go to the moment of death, I saw myself at eighty-five, breathing my last surrounded by grand-children.
When the doctor asked me to move forward in time, I saw myself after my death floating slowly towards a 'big, white light,' that was bright as the sun, but not hot at all. I knew I would become one with the light. After overcoming a few obstacles, I merged into the light in the next instant.
I felt a great sense of security and peace. Inside the light was a presence like a mother, a friend who would always be on my side. I wanted to stay there forever, but my fate was to be born unto the earth once more.
The doctor asked why I had to be reborn again.
I replied that there were things I had left undone.
What was it that I had left undone? That is the theme of my present life. What is my destiny? What will happen to me when I finish doing this thing left undone?
The doctor asked what I had left undone.
With that, I saw my ideal self unfold before my eyes.
Since I had not yet accomplished my mission, it was somewhat fuzzy, but I saw myself shining with love and making other people shine with me, my neighbors, their neighbors, everyone reflected that brightness and made it brighter and bigger. That was the image I saw.
Once it had been decided that I would be reborn, I saw the earth coming closer.

In my previous life, I had been from Argentina. I am embarrassed to say that I don't know where Argentina is. I don't know why the name Argentina came so readily to my lips, and I find it very mysterious. In the vision I saw while hypnotized, the poor farmers were harvesting an abundant fields of ripe grain.

page 20. CHAPTER 1. MEMORIES OF PAST LIVES

I felt the dreams of a young man wanting to go to the big city and do work which would draw people's attention. According to Dr. O, who knows about my present work as well as about the dreams I had in my past life, it is all very convincing.

As you see, hypnotic regression allows us to relive our memories of past lives.
In the previous example, why did the subject answer, "Because there are things left that I have to do," when she was asked "Why do you get reborn again?" Her words contain a vital key to deciphering the grand meaning of reincarnation.

1.3 PROOF OF PAST LIFE MEMORIES

Are these past life memories genuine memories of a lifetime that occurred in the past? Or are they merely hallucinations or dreams concocted by the brain of the subject?

To tell the truth, those who research hypnotic regression initially did not give credence to "reincarnation" and used various methods to accumulate evidence proving the validity of these memories.

(1) CONFORMITY TO HISTORICAL FACTS

Dr. Joel L. Whitton had a male patient named Harold who claimed to have been a Viking in a past life. Dr. Whitton jotted down the 22 foreign words that Harold remembered from his past life, although Harold claimed that he did not understand their meaning in this life.

Seeking an expert opinion, Dr. Whitton consulted linguistics authorities well versed in Icelandic and Norwegian. According to them, ten of Harold's foreign words were of Old Norse, the language of the Vikings and the precursor of modern Icelandic, and these words were actually used by the Vikings. The other twelve words were all related to seafaring, and of Russian, Serbian and Slav derivation, and it was confirmed that these words had also been used by the Vikings.

These words were no longer spoken by anyone in the world, there was no way that Harold, an average person, could have learned them in this lifetime. This is exceedingly strong proof of the authenticity of remembered past lives.

In addition, there are numerous subjects who begin speaking languages that they could not know in this lifetime while reliving their past lives during hypnotic regression. These languages originate from the far corners of the globe, and apparently include ancient Chinese and dialects spoken in the jungle. [22] Dr. Helen Wambach, a clinical psychologist, published an epoch-making statistical proof of reincarnation. [23-A] Ignoring their gender in their current lives, Dr. Wambach recorded the sexual gender reported in many of their past lives by hundreds of subjects who had been regressed back as far as 2000 B.C. Her results showed that 50.6

Moreover, Dr. Wambach's subjects were almost all middle class white Americans. Nevertheless, their past life memories accurately reflect the true historical distribution of races, social classes and population in the world. In addition, the clothing, footwear

1.3. PROOF OF PAST LIFE MEMORIES page 21.

and utensils that the subjects reported using in their past lives were all true to historical fact, no matter what the period was.

Dr. Wambach used the following analogy to show how her statistical research objectively proved the theory of reincarnation.

If you are sitting in a tent on the side of the road and 1,000 people walk past telling you they have crossed a bridge in Pennsylvania, you are convinced of the existence of that bridge in Pennsylvania.[23-B]

(2) CONSISTENCY IN DIFFERENT SUBJECTS'
MEMORIES OF PAST LIVES

Dr. Brian L.Weiss reported an unexpected incident that he believes proves the validity of past life memories.[24]

Once Dr. Weiss had a forty year old female subject named Diana from Philadelphia who told Dr. Weiss that she was deeply troubled by the hostile relationship that she had with her own daughter. Diana said that from the very instant that the new-born infant was put in her arms, she had felt such violent hatred for her daughter that she had not known what to do. Diana's daughter Tamar was then eighteen years old, and the two were constantly at each other's throats, like a pair of sworn enemies.

Through hypnotic regression, Diana was able to remember a past life where she was in a bitter struggle with Tamar over a man. Furthermore, Diana realized that the man, so coveted in her past life, was now her husband, who had been reborn as Tamar's father. The violent feelings of rivalry and struggle in her past life had carried over into her present life, poisoning the relationship between mother and daughter.

Once Diana remembered this past life, and resolved to abandon her meaningless fight, her feelings towards her daughter improved dramatically. Diana kept the whole story a secret from Tamar, perhaps embarrassed to speak to her daughter of her experience with hypnotic regression.

However, Tamar herself decided to be hypnotized and she was regressed by a hypnotherapist other than Dr. Weiss. Amazingly, Tamar remembered a past life with events identical to those of her mother's; in her past life, Tamar was caught in a love triangle, bitterly vying with the spirit, now reborn as her mother, over a man who is now her father. When Diana heard this story from Tamar, she was stunned, and confessed, "I went to a different doctor and remembered the exact same past!" After that, their relationship chanced completely, and they are now very close, more like friends than mother and daughter.

An example like this, where two people, each unaware of the other's actions, go to different doctors for hypnotic regression and remember identical past lives from different viewpoints, proves that past lives remembered through hypnotic regression are not just delusions or fabrications.

page 22. CHAPTER 1. MEMORIES OF PAST LIVES

(3) TERROR AT AUSCHWITZ

Rabbi Yonassan Gershom, one of the leaders of the New Age Movement in the U.S., reported that, as of 1990, he had met with almost three hundred people who remembered living as Jews in past lives and being tortured to death by the Nazis.

He reports that people with such memories are plagued with nameless terrors whenever they hear tales of the Holocaust. Some widen their eyes and collapse in tears the first time they hear the Jewish hymn "Ani Maamin ("I Believe")" a song that many thousands of Jews hummed when they were taken to the gas chambers.

Almost all those who remember being killed in the Nazi Holocaust were born during the early "Baby Boom," between 1946 and 1953.

This, of course, is the "baby boom" generation, which later became active in civil rights and gave birth to the peace movement of the Sixties. Did those millions of souls come back as quickly as possible, to work for peace on earth so that the horrors they had been through could never happen again? Surprisingly, most of the people I have met with Holocaust past-life memories are not Jewish.[25-A]

Most have not returned as Jews, neither ethnically nor by belief, in this life, and none displayed any greater interest in Judaism than the average person.

This research shows that those who had been persecuted because they were Jews in previous lives avoided Jewish parents when they were reborn into this life, possibly because being a Jew in a past life had been such a very bitter experience. One might expect those killed in the Holocaust in previous lives to berate the Nazis in this life, without knowing the exact reason, or to become active in efforts to preserve historical records of the Holocaust.

Some unusual statistical facts are reported by Rabbi Gershom. Two-thirds of those who hold memories of being slaughtered as Jews in previous lives have been reborn as people with blond hair and blue or hazel, and furthermore state that they are the only ones in their families with this coloration.

Rabbi Gershom notes that the Nazis' ideal type was blond, blue-eyed Aryans, while most Jews have darkish hair and eyes. Having been so brutally tormented in their previous lives, one can assume that these spirits chose blond, blue-eyed embryos to house their spirits to escape persecution again in this life.

Most of those who remember being murdered in Nazi gas chambers have an irrational terror of barbed wire, of police and of uniforms, and some suffer from respiratory diseases such as asthma.

A typical case is that of Beverly, an employee at a social welfare organization, who told Rabbi Gershom that she had repeatedly had the same bad dream during her childhood. In the dream she was a boy of about eight years old. She stood with her mother in a line of people.

They got to a table where a man told some people to go to the left, and others to the right. He pointed and they went through a door. The scene shifted, and they were in a horrible place which had a terrible smell. Some men were throwing people into a fire alive, and then the little boy was thrown in, too. He kept patting himself trying to put out the flames, then died. Her dream continued with the little boy and his mother

1.3. PROOF OF PAST LIFE MEMORIES page 23.

again standing in a long line of people. Up ahead were beautiful gates, and he knew it was Heaven... The boy grew tired of waiting and wandered off, down to a lower level where he met a 'male angel' who said, 'Now that you have come down this far, you will have to go back to earth again.' He didn't want to go, and kept asking for his mother, but the angel said they would find him another mother. The boy was then shown a beam of light that he followed into the womb of a woman. And then 'he' became Beverly.[25-B]

Some who remember being Holocaust victims in a previous life have visited their death places in this life.

According to Rabbi Gershom, Judy, an American exchange student in Germany, went on a sightseeing trip to a concentration camp while living in Germany. To a startling degree, Judy remembered everything at the camp and was able to say where the buildings stood and what they were used for, before her guide could get a word out of his mouth. Although the building where she was murdered had long ago been demolished, she could accurately pinpoint its location.

(4) CHILDREN TELL OF PAST LIVES

Dr. Ian Stevenson, Director of the Division of Parapsychology, Department of Behavioral Medicine and Psychiatry, at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, is doing research on people who remember past lives, as a powerful means to prove the existence of past lives without using hypnotic regression. Dr. Stevenson turned his attention to remarkable children who speak foreign languages that they could not possibly know in their present lives (responsive xenoglossy), and collected detailed data from all over the world. He confirmed that there is ample scientific proof to confirm at least three cases, and reported his results in 1984 as follows:

...authentic instances of speaking a language that has not been learned normally (responsive xenoglossy) suggest that another personality (perhaps one of a previous life) had learned the language. Cases of responsive xenoglossy thus add to the evidence concerning the survival of human personality after death.[26]

Dr. Stevenson also collected worldwide data on cases of small children such as Hiro, described in our prologue, who spontaneously speak of past life memories.
He claims that over two hundred children with birthmarks somewhere on their bodies have memories of an immediately previous past life when they were killed by a bullet, sword or other weapon which struck them where their birthmarks are now.
When he visited the places where the children said they had spent their past life, he discovered in seventeen of the cases, real individuals corresponding to the persons they claimed to be in their past lives, real individuals who had died just as the children had said they died, and he was able to get the medical charts.[27]

After long years of research, Dr. Stevenson made the following definitive statement:

The evidence for reincarnation that we have suggests that living human beings...have minds, or souls if you like, that animate them when they are living and that survive after they die...I do not think scientists in other disciplines need lose anything except

page 24. CHAPTER 1. MEMORIES OF PAST LIVES

some of their assumptions – such as that a person is nothing but a physical body – if they examine open-mindedly the evidence we have of life after death. Reincarnation, at least as I conceive it, does not nullify what we know about evolution and genetics.[28]

Based upon this conclusion, Dr. Stevenson makes the following hypothesis about how the process of reincarnation works.

...the universe has at least two realms: a physical one and a mental (or psychical) one. These interact. During our familiar lives, association with our physical bodies restricts the actions of our minds, although perhaps also enabling us to have experiences that we cannot have without physical bodies. After death, unencumbered by our physical bodies, we would at first exist exclusively in the mental realm.

Later, some persons or perhaps everyone in that realm may become associated with new physical bodies, and we would say that those who did this had reincarnated.[29]

In addition, Dr. Satwant Pasricha, an Assistant Professor at India's National Psychological Health Neurology Research Institute, has collected data and subjected it to rigorous scientific analysis on 45 cases of subjects with past life memories who specifically "remember their previous parents."

Most of the subjects gave sufficient details regarding the previous lives they claimed to remember. In 38 cases (84)

Dr. Pasricha reports that almost all those remembering their previous lives had unusual behavioral characteristics, such as "unusual likes or dislikes toward food, clothes, persons, and themes of play; phobias of bladed weapons, wells, and guns."[31]

Their unusual behavior was incomprehensible in terms of their present lives, but conformed perfectly to what they declared about their previous lives and, in the majority of cases, was related to the circumstances of their deaths in their previous lives. For example, it was discovered that a person with an abnormal fear of swords in this life had been killed with a sword in his previous life.

Thus, Dr. Pasricha proved that reincarnation really occurs, by confirming these authentic cases of rebirth, cases which can not be explained by the many negative hypothesis which argue that reincarnation is imagination, trickery, genetic memory, dormant memories, tricks of memory or fraud.

(5) ENCOUNTER WITH ONE'S OWN CORPSE

Dr. Stanislav Grof, the first chairperson of the International Trans-Personal Academic Association (CHECK) succeeded in inducing a trance in his subjects and having them remember their past lives through medication rather than hypnotic regression. Referring to the content of those memories, Dr. Grof pointed out the following:

There are observable facts about reincarnation. We know, for example, that vivid past life experiences occur spontaneously in non-ordinary states of consciousness. In many instances, these experiences contain accurate information about periods before our own that can be objectively verified. Therapeutic work has shown that many emotional disorders have their roots in past life experiences rather than in the present life, and the symptoms resulting from those disorders disappear or are alleviated after the person is allowed to relive the past life experience that underlies it.[32]

1.3. PROOF OF PAST LIFE MEMORIES page 25.

Dr. Grof also maintained that he had confirmed the existence of his own past lives.33

It happened when Dr. Grof was participating in a group tour visiting Moscow and Kiev.

Although it was not on the itinerary, Dr. Grof felt strangely compelled to visit the Monastery of Pechorskaya Lavra. Although he knew that it was dangerous to go anywhere outside the itinerary, he initiated the action by himself.

Although Dr. Grof did not know it then, one of his previous incarnations had lived and died in that monastery several hundred years ago. Dr. Grof was suddenly and inexplicably seized by the feeling that he knew the place well. Just then he came upon a mummy with its arms placed in an odd way, unlike the other mummies with their hands folded in prayer, and he felt waves of feeling welling up in him from deep inside.

Several years later, when Dr. Grof was working at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center in Baltimore, he had the opportunity to view his past lives through hypnotic regression, with a hypnotherapist named Joan Grant. Under hypnotic regression, Dr. Grof remembered living a previous life as a young Russian boy, and described what happened in that life as follows.

Then I saw myself in the dark, primitive workshop of a blacksmith. A giant, muscular man, half-naked and covered with hair, stood in front of a glowing furnace. He was pounding the anvil. all of a sudden I felt a sharp pain in my eye. My entire face contorted in a painful spasm and tears poured down my cheeks. With horror, I realized that I had been hit in the face by a piece of red-hot iron and that I was badly burned...

I experienced the emotional pain of a ghastly disfigured adolescent, with the agony of sexual longings that could not be satisfied and the sting of repeated rejection as a result of my repugnant scars. In despair, I made the decision to become a monk, ending up at Pechorskaya Lavra. Over the years my hands became severely disfigured... My crippled hands could not be clasped together in prayer...The last scene I remembered from this session was my own death and somehow being aware that I was placed in a coffin by the wall of the catacombs.[33]

In other words, the mummy with the remarkable outstretched hands that Dr. Grof had felt compelled to approach was the body of his previous incarnation. While thousands and thousands of subjects have remembered past lives, no one has ever had the startling experience of seeing their own corpse with their own eyes.

Dr. Grof asserts the following.
Over the years my observation of people who have had past life experiences while in non-ordinary states of consciousness has convinced me of the validity of this fascinating area of research. I would like to share with you some examples that both convince us that past life phenomena are extremely relevant and that our knowledge of them can help us resolve conflicts and live better lives in the present.[34]

As shown above, the authenticity of past life memories is supported not only by research on hypnotic regression, but also by the results of investigations of children with past life memories, as well as by the results of experiments performed using special medications.

Of course it is the right of every reader either to declare, "These cases are worth

page 26. CHAPTER 1. MEMORIES OF PAST LIVES

nothing as evidence," or to decide, "That wealth of evidence is more than enough for me." However, every one must acknowledge that we have left the age of no evidence, when the issue was whether or not to believe. We are now in an age when there is sufficient objective proof for everyone to make an informed decision.

Throughout this book, what I stress is "the great importance of deciding by yourself what constitutes a meaningful value system for you." The age has come when we have objective proof to use when selecting our essential attitude towards life and death.

Chapter 2
HOW THE PROCESS OF
REINCARNATION WORKS
page 27.

How do we greet our deaths, and how do we come to be reborn? In this book, we will compile and integrate the startling and heartening results of various types of scientific research on the process of reincarnation.

2.1 GOING HOME TO "THE OTHER WORLD"

(1) CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF AS "SPIRIT"

Dr. Joel L. Whitton unexpectedly happened upon the bardo, the intermediate realm wherein dwell the spirit of entities between incarnations, when he conducted a hypnotic regression on a forty-two year old woman named Paula Considine. Paula, a woman of a stable disposition, was able to enter a deep or somnambulistic trance. Her life style, interests and behavior was extremely typical of a housewife in the northern part of the United States. In total, she had many hundreds of hours of regressive hypnotism sessions with Dr. Whitton, and gave a systematic account of her long reincarnation history.

Paula was able to retrace her many past lives back to ancient Egypt where she had lived as a slave girl. Paula had spent almost all her many lifetimes as a woman.

For example, one of her lives was spent as Telma, the daughter of a Mongol chief during the time of Genghis Khan, and she was killed in a battle at age sixteen. In another life, she was Augusta Cecelia, a nun – age thirty-four in 1241 – who spent most of her life working in an orphanage in Portugal, close to the Spanish border. As Margaret Campbell – 17 years old in 1707– she lived near Quebec City, Canada, and later married a fur trapper.

Paula also remembered spending a life as Martha Paine, born on a farm area in Maryland in 1822, who died young from a fall down the farmhouse stairs. Intending to direct her to "Go to the incarnation before you were Martha," Dr. Whitton unintentionally directed her instead to "Go to the life before you were Martha." Given by mistake the direction to return to where she was before rebirth, Paula suddenly began

HOW THE PROCESS OF REINCARNATION WORKS
page 28. CHAPTER 2.

speaking as follows:
"I'm in the sky...I can see a farmhouse and a barn...It's early...early morning. The sun...is low and making, making...making long shadows across the burnt fields..stubby fields."
How could Paula be up in the sky? Dr. Whitton was overwhelmed with confusion, and questioned her further.
"What are you doing up in the air?" asked the puzzled hypnotist.
"I'm...waiting...to...be...born. I'm watching...watching what my mother does.
"Where is your mother?
"She's...out at the pump and she's having great difficulty...difficulty filling the bucket..."
"Why is she having great difficulty?"
"Because my body is weighing her down...I want...I want to tell her to take care. For her sake and for mine..."
"What is your name?"
"I...have...no...name."[35]

Nowadays it is very common to encounter subjects holding similar memories of floating above their bodies, as has been reported by many researchers.

For example, Dr. Melvin Morse, associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington confirmed the following near-death experience of a woman who had lost consciousness due to side effects of her medication.

I was able to look down at myself in my hospital bed. There were doctors and nurses moving busily around me. I could see them roll a machine into the room and put it near the foot of my bed. It had two handles sticking out of a kind of box......A priest came in and began to give me last rites. I moved down to the bottom of the bed and watched everything that was going on. It was like being in the audience at a play.
Behind me in the bed was a clock. It was up on the wall. I could see both myself in the bed and the clock, which read 11:11 A.M.
Then I went back into my body. I remember waking up and looking for myself at the foot of the bed.[36]

In addition, Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, the holder of eighteen different academic degrees, has confirmed the case of a subject, blind for over ten years, who, during a near-death experience, "saw" and could describe accurately the color of clothes and of jewelry, and the style and color of sweaters and neckties worn by those who had visited while the patient was close to death.[37]

These cases are strong proof of the existence of a consciousness, separate from the body (what this book calls "spirits.")

(2) A VIEW OF THE WORLD AFTER DEATH

Visions of Tunnels, Rivers and Gateways

Dr. Whitton has reported that many of his subjects have memories of a "life between life," the state that separates one incarnation from another. When his subjects

2.1. GOING HOME TO "THE OTHER WORLD" page 29.

are induced into a hypnotic trance, he brings them back to one of their previous incarnations, has them remember the final moments of that life, and then asks them, "Where are you now?" and "What do you see?"

His subjects, grimacing or scowling, faces twisted by pain as they remember their deaths, suddenly shift their memories to "the life after death," and their expressions undergo startling changes. First they lose all expression, then their faces become calm and tranquil, before filling with wondrous surprise. The subjects do not know how to verbalize what they are experiencing to Dr. Whitton because there is no sense of time's passage nor of three dimensionality in the world that they are encountering. One subject said, "In the interlife there's no part of me that I can see. I'm an observer surrounded by images."[38-A]

Under hypnotic regression, a university professor described his death after a life spent as an Indian in the American Southwest several hundred years ago.

After being tortured, killed and mutilated by three other Indians I floated out of my body feeling very angry. I thought that had I been better trained and in better physical condition I might have been able to save my life."[38-B]

The shock of a bitter death is often a reason for the disembodied spirit to remain on this earth perhaps out of confusion, fury or self-pity. Specifically, these are the ghosts who linger in this world, unable to resign themselves to death. While their numbers are small, researchers have confirmed that these ghosts actually exist. Oddly enough, we can now say that there is a scientific explanation for the existence of what are commonly called "earthbound spirits."

People who have had near-death experiences have repeatedly described the experience in similar terms.

After they leave their bodies, they "see" their bodies lying beneath them, then have the sensation of being pulled quickly through a cylindrical passageway that seems "just like a tunnel." They then join a large group of strangers (spirits who have already left their bodies), and are greeted by the spirits of deceased relatives and friends or by the guides who have been watching over them during the last life (commonly called guardian angels).[39]

Subjects describe the sight that meets their eyes differently; some describe entering into a dome of light; others report seeing gorgeous colors, hearing beautiful music or being greeted by a spirit carrying a torch to light the way. Some say that Christ greets them with outstretched arms while others see a garden or a palace. Of course, the interlife cannot be a place or a material entity. This is merely a "vision" created by the symbols that the person has of the world after death. [40]

The authority on near-death experiences, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, who had her own near-death experience, describes the process as follows.

After we are met by those we have loved, after we are met by our own guides and guardian angels, we are passing through a symbolic transition often described as a tunnel. Some people experience it as a river, some as a gate; each one will choose what is most symbolically appropriate. In my won personal experience it was a mountain pass with wild flowers simply because my concept of heaven includes mountains and wild flowers, the source of much happiness in my childhood in Switzerland. This is

HOW THE PROCESS OF REINCARNATION WORKS
page 30. CHAPTER 2.

culturally determined.[41]

In other words, what comes unbidden into the mind right after death is the most appropriate vision to tell a person that he is dead and has returned to the life after death. One sees the vision one wants to see in the intangible and immaterial life right after death.

Immediately after their deaths many people haven't had time to remember the nature of the next world. That is why the guiding spirits seem to consciously design the visions necessary for the newly dead to become aware of their deaths and to die peacefully. The newly dead are still immeshed in the culture and religious beliefs of their most recent lives, and so the visions necessary for them to die peacefully and to become aware of their deaths naturally differ, so their visions of the next world (shown them by the guiding spirits) are also different.

People who are ending a life as Christians see Christian images while those who spent their most recent lives as Buddhists see Buddhist images in their visions.

The World of Light and Undulations

Doctor S, a Japanese doctor, had a female Japanese subject remember her death in a previous life during a regressive hypnotism session, and she described the "scene after death" in "that world"

I am looking down at my dead body from above. I feel no more pain. But I soon lost sight of myself and of my family and entered a dark place. The light suddenly began approaching me. It was my father who had died before me. The light was incredibly dazzling, and I followed the light (my father.)
I came to a place where there was a bigger and more dazzling light. I felt as if I was being pulled into that light, but I was not afraid; I felt warm. I entered into the light. I could see many other radiances there already.[42]

According to Dr. S. when subjects are asked, "What is your name?" when they are remembering what happened right after their deaths, the subjects give the name they had before death. Interestingly, if they are asked their names after they have entered the world of light the subjects reply, "I don't know."

If requested to "Try looking at your body," subjects who are remembering the world of light will reply, "I am transparent and do not have a body," or "All I can see is light."

There are some people who never had a near-death experience nor hypnotic regression but who experienced seeing a strange sight when their spirits left their bodies during meditation. Let me tell you the story of a Japanese male who came to me.

I had my eyes closed in meditation when I saw a cylindrical structure that looked like three drum cans strung together. There were misty shapes floating around it. Several of the misty shapes passed right through my body while the cylindrical structure began turning towards me, and then seemed to pass through my body as well. I gradually saw bright pink mountains and a gorgeous valley, then a green mountain and a brook rippling through the woods. How smoothly

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the brook flowed! I will always remember how beautiful the sight was. I watched the flowing brook for a while. I had never seen a place like it in my life. I was looking down at an angle from the sky. I was puzzled about where I was located. Then I saw a fuzzy vision, in black and white. I had never seen anything like it. It was a park or garden with a pond, and it was not in Japan. I sensed that the time was not the present. I could see several dark shapes moving around the edges of the pond, and they seemed to be human, but I could not tell for sure. I was looking down from a place about fifty meters up in the sky. I even wondered if I had turned into a bird."

So many similar out-of-body experiences have been reported that there is a specialized institute researching the phenomena. In cutting-edge psychology this is called "the trans-personal effect," referring to the consciousness departing from the small husk of the body to expand infinitely.

Among my friends is a man who describes a miserable experience that he had, "I had too much to drink, passed out and collapsed. Immediately afterwards I was looking down from the sky at my drunken body sprawled on the ground." He was so thunderstruck that he spent quite a while gazing at his body and its surroundings, but then he says he realized, "I can't die yet," and scrambled to get back into his body. Far from convincing him to cut down on his drinking, the experience made him drink even more under the excuse that he wanted to have the experience a second time. The experience had the exact opposite of the desired effect on him!

At any rate, the spiritual world that we term "that world" is not physical like this world; there is no direct sense of time. In "that world" all things appear as images and visions, and it is the visions that are real. From the perspective of that world of eternity and freedom, our time in "this world," shackled to "material things" is but an instant's illusion.

To put it another way, those living in "this world" of material things tend to make light of "that world" as a "hallucination" created by the mind. But those who have briefly returned to our real home in "that world" say that they forget about their lives in the narrow and cramped box of this world and were filled with pity for living people who are slaves to their desires and who deny the infinite existence of "that world," which encompasses "this world."

The "material things" which so grab our attention are the real empty "illusions," and the "spirit" which we disparage is our "true self." Our spirit is what we call "soul;" it is what lives on eternally and can be called our true form.

That spirit is often described as "like light." Our true form is "light." To phrase it in a rather inexact but understandable way, it seems that the degree of brightness depends upon the undulation or the height (or strength) of the wave length. According to survivors of near-death experiences, the higher the level of the spirit the brighter the light shines, and the lower the level the darker the light seems to be. Nonetheless,

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we are all "light" and the only difference is that the brightness level varies with the undulation.

(3) MEETINGS WITH THOSE WHO HAVE DIED

One Happy Moment

According to Dr. Karl Baker of Kyoto University, it is quite common during a near-death experience to meet a deceased close relative. Let us read about a typical experience.

The doctor in charge gave up on me and told my parents that I was dead. My body did not react, but I heard the entire conversation. When the doctor declared me dead, I was very sharply conscious.

I next sensed myself surrounded by the dead. Among my many dead relatives and friends, the ones that particularly stood out was my grandmother who was standing directly in front of me and a girl who had been my classmate during college. I couldn't see their entire bodies, but I did see their faces very clearly. I felt very strongly that I was one with them. They were all happy for me, and I spent a brief period of great joy with them.[43]

According to Dr. Baker, patients who recover from a near-death experience sometimes report seeing in the next world friends and relatives whom they assumed to be alive. Other people do not believe them, but they say they were shocked to learn afterwards that those people, whom they saw while dying, had themselves died. In other words, during a near-death experience, people can learn before anyone else of the death of a person far away, which could not be known in any other way.

Dr. Baker considers phenomenon such as this one to be proof that a near-death
experience is far more than a dream.

Messages From the Dead

Dr. Melvin Morse (an associate professor at University of Washington - CHECK) has investigated and reported on many cases where the spirit has left the dying body and communicated with the living. This is one of the interesting cases he has reported.

In 1989 Olga Gearhardt, a grandmother from San Diego, California had a heart transplant at the University of California Medical Center. All her relatives crowded into her room, except for her son-in-law who stayed at home. He had a phobia about hospitals and preferred to await the results of the operation at home.

Late that evening her chest was opened and the transplant was performed successfully. At two-fifteen A.M. she developed unexpected complications, and the new heart would not beat properly. As the medical personnel became alarmed, the heart suddenly stopped beating altogether. It took several hours of resuscitation before the heart finally began functioning properly. Meanwhile the family in the waiting room was told nothing about these complications, and most of them were asleep. About six in the morning the family was told that the operation was a success but that she had almost died when the new heart failed.

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Olga's daughter immediately called her husband to tell him the good news. "I know she's okay," he said. "She already told me herself.

He had awakened at two-fifteen to see his mother-in-law standing at the foot of his bed. It was as though she was standing right there, he said. Thinking she had not had surgery and had somehow come to his house instead, he sat up and asked her how she was.

"I am fine, I'm going to be all right," she said. "There is nothing for you to worry about." Then she disappeared.[44-A]

He got right out of bed and wrote down the time she appeared to him and exactly what was said. Later he explained that was why he could explain that Olga appeared at exactly two-fifteen, which was exactly the time that her heart had stopped in the hospital.

An astonishing event took place at the hospital as well after Olga had regained consciousness. When the family went in to see her, Olga told them a strange story.

She said she had left her body and watched the doctors work on her for a few minutes. Then she went into the waiting room, where she saw her family. Frustrated by her inability to communicate with them, she decided to travel to her daughter's home, about thirty miles away, and connect with her son-in-law.[44-B]

The instant that she decided this she found herself thirty miles away in her daughter's house looking at her son-in-law. She sat down at the foot of her son's bed and told him "I am fine. I'm going to be all right," when he asked her how she was.

Dr. Morse investigated this story carefully, interviewing those concerned repeatedly, and could find no discrepancy in the stories of Olga and her family. Neither could he find any motives for the parties concerned to have invented this story.

Dr. Morse reports another interesting case.

A man in Washington State was killed when his car skidded off the road and hit a tree. His brother-in-law was fishing at the time of the accident in a remote area and was unaware of the accident.

Late in the afternoon the man who was fishing suddenly encountered his dead brother-in-law walking down the path toward his fishing hole. The man was glad to have company. They spoke for several minutes until the visitor said that he had to leave and walked quickly into the woods and disappeared.

The man who was fishing said the experience was so vivid that it took him several minutes to realize that his brother-in-law could not have been there. He returned home, where his sister told him of her husband's death.[45]

No One Dies Alone

The previous cases illustrate what Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross has discovered from her research into the near-death experiences of almost 20,000 cases. As the following experience shows, no one dies all alone.
...nobody will die alone. When you leave the physical body, you are in an existence where there is no time...In the same way, one can no longer speak of space and distance in the usual sense because those are earthly phenomena. If, for example, a young

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American dies in Asia and thinks of his mother in Washington, he will bridge the thousands of miles through the power of thought in a split second and will be with her.[46-A]

Dr. Kubler-Ross says that very many people have this experience. All of a sudden someone who lives thousands of miles away appears before their very eyes. The next day there is a telephone call or telegraph giving the sad news of the death of the person who appeared.

On this level you realize as well that nobody can die alone because the deceased one is able to visit anyone he likes. Here are people awaiting you who died before you, who loved and treasured you a lot. And since time doesn't exist on this level, someone who lost a child when he was twenty years of age could, after his passing at the age of ninety-nine, still meet his child as a child.[46-B]

Of course when Dr. Kubler-Ross describes "a child of the same age as the one who died," we know that this is just a vision that the "spirit who was the child in his previous life" creates for his just-deceased parent, so that he will know that this spirit had been his child. The spirit is not a physical entity, so it is perfectly free to appear in whatever form will make the other person most happy.

According to Dr. Kubler-Ross, 99

The deniers claim that near-death experiences are merely the projections of the
desires of the dying. If this is true, then 99

But not one of these children, in all these years that we have collected cases, saw their mommies and daddies because their mommies and daddies were still alive. The factors determining who you see are that the person must have passed on before you, even if only by one minute, and you must have genuinely loved them.[47]

(4) The Existence of "Guardian Angels"

Dr. Kubler-Ross has the following comments about the spirits who perform the role of "guardian angels."

There is proof that every human being, from his birth until his death, is guided by a spirit entity. Everyone has such a spirit guide, whether you believe it or not. Whether you are Jewish, Catholic, or a member of any other religion doesn't matter.[48]

Dr. Whitton, Dr. Weiss and many other researchers agree that these guardian
spirits exist.

Let me tell you about the strange experience of one Japanese woman.

It happened in winter of the year Father died. I had been thinking about my father and feeling sad. With tears in my eyes, I looked out the window at the snow in the garden, when suddenly a snowball flew at my face. In the midst of my shock, I suddenly saw my father's laughing face and I heard him say, "Cheer up and be strong."
I knew with absolute certainty that my father had been playing a prank on me. There is no way on earth that the snow could suddenly come flying at me all by itself."

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There are any number of actual examples of guardian spirits communicating with those on earth through a variety of methods. However, people who know nothing of research on life after death will often fail to hear or understand these communications since they fail to take them seriously and dismiss them as figments of their imagination or as delusions. I will describe these communications with the dead in detail in a later chapter.

Interestingly, it has been discovered that subjects who have been regressed through hypnotism remember how frustrated their spirit selves had felt when they tried to speak to living beings and could not make themselves understood. Let me relate a case reported by Dr. Whitton.[49]

This case occurred when a man named Gary Pennington recalled under hypnosis his life as Peter Hargreaves, an officer in the Allied forces during World War II. Peter Hargreaves dies an agonizing death during the War under Nazi torture, leaving behind his beloved Elena. Elena, filled with despair when she learns of her beloved's death, resolves to commit suicide.

The disembodied Hargreaves watches Elena proceed to a cliff near Salerno, determined to follow him in death. When she reaches the edge, Hargreaves' discarnate self tries desperately to communicate with her and to materialize in order to prevent her from killing herself.

Hargreaves tries desperately to tell Elena not to commit suicide, but she cannot understand him. Hargreaves is totally frustrated with his disembodied state which allows him no physical ability to prevent the suicide. He exclaims, "If only I had a body...this need never happen." All he can do is watch as Elena jumps from the cliffs to her death.

However, there is a sequel to the story.

The spirit who had lived as Elena was now reborn as Caroline McVittie, who was now involved in an adulterous relationship with Gary Pennington, the reincarnation of Peter Hargreaves.

When Caroline was hypnotized and had the opportunity to recall her past lives, she remembered a lifetime in which she had died in exactly the same way as Elena. Caroline had a final memory from her life as Elena. She remembers standing on the cliff side, filled with despair over her beloved's death, and "struggling with an invisible force" that was trying to prevent her suicide. (This was the message from Hargreaves).

Studies of both hypnotic regression and near death experiences make it clear that there are guardian spirits (or guardian angels) in the next life protecting us in this life; this understanding brings great comfort and strength to us here.

2.2 MEMORIES AND RECOLLECTIONS OF LIFE

(1) PANORAMIC VISION OF LIFE

The statements of Dr. Whitton's subjects support the existence of a "tribunal" (of guiding spirits) in the next world. Virtually all of his subjects report that they stood before a group of elderly wise men (spirits who appeared in this guise), whose number

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was reported as either three, five, or seven; and that there they received some kind of judgment.[50]

The guiding spirits sometimes took shape as the gods of legend, sometimes as the Lord God, as he is imagined in formal religions, and sometimes in a shape that was nebulous and unclear. There were also many cases where the Spirit did not take on physical shape but, instead, appeared in the form of "light."

The subjects often described this entity as "a being of light," just as do survivors of near-death experiences.

The guiding spirits know in a very direct and immediate way everything that there is to know about the recently-returned spirit who stands before them., and they assist that spirit in evaluating the life just completed. Subjects say they feel painfully aware of their own lack of wisdom when confronted by these spirits, and sometimes report that they are taught what to accomplish in their next incarnation.

"Hell" itself does not exist, but were there to be a "hell" for each person in the next world, it would take shape in those moments when a person critically reflects upon his just-concluded life. The guiding spirits induce us to reflect on the life just concluded while a panoramic vision of that life unfolds before our own eyes. As we watch the vision, our regrets, guilt and self-reproaches come bubbling up from deep in our hearts. [51-A]

While under hypnosis, subjects reportedly break into bitter tears of intense grief and suffering as they remember this time of spirit-mediated reflection upon their past lives. This is because during past-life reflection, the pain they inflicted upon others during their past life, rebounds to smite them with the same intensity and force. One subject describes those moments as follows.

"It's like climbing right inside a movie of your life. Every moment from every year of your life is played back in complete sensory detail. Total, total recall."[51-B]

The spirits guide us to understand all the resonances of the vision, passing before our eyes like a video tape of our lives, and they push us to analyze ourselves rigorously. Our spirits finally understand where they choose unwisely and cast away happiness, where they wounded others and where they were saved from potentially fatal danger.

For example, when the IBM researcher, Michael Gallander, Ph.D., relived his past lives as a subject of Dr. Whitton's, he remembered Hildebrandt, a medieval knight who fought in the Crusade.[52-A] Hildebrandt had initially burned with idealism and had been born to fulfill high ideals,

I will attempt to build...a land without a boundary. I will be a fine king.[52-B]

However, Hildebrandt had degenerated into a driven and tortured person who had caused untold misery to many people through his cruel actions.

As Michael Gallander recalled his time between lives when the guiding spirits had called upon him to remember his life as Hildebrandt, he was overcome by emotion and sobbed heavily while in his hypnotic trance. "Tell me what you see," said Dr. Whitton, and Gallander told him of the many atrocities committed by Hildebrandt, such as spearing a mother and child on his lance.

As he spoke, Dr. Gallander was torn by powerful, heart-rending emotions, and he raised his voice more and more harshly. Dr. Whitton reports that his self-reproach was

2.2. MEMORIES AND RECOLLECTIONS OF LIFE page 37.

beyond the reach of consolation.

"What do you see?" Dr. Whitton asked in perplexity. Slowly and painfully, Michael replied. "It is black and I will not look. There was much I could have done, but I did not. I could have done so much good, but...I did not."[53-A]

Based upon the research results of this and many similar cases, Dr. Whitton concludes.
To experience remorse in the life between lives is to experience a form of hell. For there is a time – quite early on, according to most subjects – when guilt comes home to roost in all its raw ugliness, stripped of the rationalization and excuses we all employ to explain away our failings.[53-B]

(2) SELF-ASSESSMENT OF ONE'S LIFE

How Much Did We Love Others?

According to those who have undergone hypnotic regression and to survivors of near-death experiences, we must explain all of our words and actions right after death, as we behold a vision of our just-ended lives.

The primary focus, it is reported, is upon our honesty and our morality.

A man who had slit his lover's throat felt as if his own throat had been cut, while a woman who had betrayed others while alive remembered, "I cannot look up at the Three for sheer shame." [54]

It is vital to note that the money and social position that we earned in life is completely ignored; all that matters at the tribunal is, "How much did you love others?" and "Did you always try to follow your conscience?" The answers to these questions are the fundamental determinants of our en