Cracking Open the Oyster: Reincarnation
The topic of lucid dreaming lead me to decide that I needed to take a closer look at things that previously I would cast aside as incompatible with science.
But where to look? And how? First of all: the possible topics are so wide ranging that one could get lost in all the myriad of details, and expert claims, and denials. And secondly, how could I as a relative newcomer, an outsider, to ANY of the relevant fields of study, compete or substantially disagree with an expert in that field?
I have read about mediums that communicate with the dead, and the foretelling of future events, and the acquisition of impossible knowledge and incredible stories of experiences of people after coming close to death. But in all cases there was always some loophole provided by a scientific expert that I could reference, to explain it away. So there are lots of subject areas to consider, but in all cases scientific experts have already weighed in and and disproved the claim.
So where to begin with this hairball of a problem?
As you might have noticed, I like analogies, so let's try this one...
We occasionally spend time with my in-laws in Wellfleet on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. As many know, Wellfleet is known for more than their pristine beaches. It's the Wellfleet oyster that many regard as the most famous asset associated with the place.
Once a year, in October they hold the "Oyster Fest". And chief among the activities is the oyster shucking contest. These guys and gals are amazing. They can shuck an oyster in seconds, where a less experienced person may work for 20 minutes or more and never end up opening that darn shell.
You can immediately tell a neophyte "shucker" by the fact that they don't know where to stick the point of the oyster knife to open the shell. That one minuscule "sweet spot" where the two shells join is the key the whole operation. Hit the spot and you've got a chance of success. Miss the spot and you can work all you want but will probably end up with no oyster to eat, or perhaps a big mess of broken shell and a hacked up mollusk.
So I thought about the crux of the matter, of this "thing" I was trying to understand, to uncover, to discover. What was the least common denominator of the thing? And what was the best way to get to the soft underbelly of it, the one little joint in the two shells, so that I could leverage it open and take a closer look?
What I came up with as a good point of examination was the following question: where does experiential information get stored? Particularly, where does a person's personal and private memory go when they die? If one were to "prove" that this particular information, which existed in only one place (the brain of a particular, now dead, person) but could still be accessed in some way, we would have found the "sweet spot on the oyster". This could represent a door which could be pried open to expose a whole range of amazing topics otherwise inaccessible to me and those "scientific materialists" like me.
The key to using this approach is: it would allow me to illuminate a major point of either coincidence or departure from scientific thinking. We would either find that science's claim that experiential knowledge (personal memories) are stored in a complex biological mass of electro-chemical processes (the brain) or, that it is stored in some other place entirely. Perhaps outside of the body, or even someplace separate from the physical world all together. So where to apply this methodology?
I was always quite sure that reincarnation was one of the many examples of people convincing themselves of something they wanted to believe. Why for example do so many of the cases of reincarnation involve people in India? Could it be because the predominant religion in India (Hinduism) holds it as fact? I never took reincarnation stories seriously enough to investigate them in any way. I now find it odd that this particular subject could become the one that would be so convincing to me.
Here's what I discovered-
In 1966, a Canadian, Dr Ian Stevenson wrote a book titled “20 Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation”. In this book he told many stories that as the title states, “suggest” reincarnation.
Let's take a look at one of them.
This case is extracted from charts and commentary on pages 67 to 91 in Dr. Ian Stevenson’s classic book, Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation. This is the original long version written for the book by Carol Bowman called "Children's Past Lives", but due to space constraints a shorter, edited version appeared in the book. This is the original extract in its entirety.
Sweet Swarnlata's Story
The story of Swarnlata is characteristic of Stevenson's cases: the young girl's memories began when she was 3, she gave enough information to enable Stevenson to locate the family of the deceased person she remembered (the case was "solved"), and she gave more than 50 specific facts that were verified. But Swarnlata's case was also different from most because her memories did not fade. And this is a sweet case, characterized by love and happy memories rather than by violent death and struggles between castes and families, like in so many other cases.
Swarnlata Mishra was born to an intellectual and prosperous family in Pradesh in India in 1948. When she was just three years old and traveling with her father past the town of Katni more than 100 miles from her home, she suddenly pointed and asked the driver to turn down a road to "my house", and suggested they could get a better cup of tea there than they could on the road.
Soon after, she related more details of her life in Katni, all of which were written down by her father. She said her name was Biya Pathak, and that she had two sons. She gave details of the house: it was white with black doors fitted with iron bars; four rooms were stuccoed, but other parts were less finished; the front floor was of stone slabs. She located the house in Zhurkutia, a district of Katni; behind the house was a girl's school, in front was a railway line, and lime furnaces were visible from the house. She added that the family had a motor car (a very rare item in India in the 1950's, and especially before Swarnlata was born). Swarnlata said Biya died of a "pain in her throat", and was treated by Dr. S. C. Bhabrat in Jabalpur. She also remembered an incident at a wedding when she and a friend had difficulty finding a latrine.
In the spring of 1959, when Swarnlata was 10 years old, news of the case reached Professor Sri H. N. Banerjee, an Indian researcher of paranormal phenomenon and colleague of Stevenson. Banerjee took the notes her father made and traveled to Katni to determine if Swarnlata's memories could be verified.
Using nothing more than the description that Swarnlata had given, he found the house--despite the house having been enlarged and improved since 1939 when Biya died. It belonged to the Pathak's (a common name in India), a wealthy, prominent family, with extensive business interests. The lime furnaces were on land adjoining the property; the girls school was 100 yards behind the Pathak's property, but not visible from the front.
He interviewed the family and verified everything Swarnlata had said. Biya Pathak had died in 1939 leaving behind a grieving husband, two young sons, and many younger brothers. These Pathaks had never heard of the Mishra family, who lived a hundred miles away; the Mishra's had no knowledge of the Pathak family.
The next scene in this story sounds like a plot from Agatha Christie, but is all true, extracted from the Stevenson's tabulations in Swarnlata's published case. In the summer of 1959, Biya's husband, son, and eldest brother journeyed to the town of Chhatarpur, the town where Swarnlata now lived, to test Swarnlata's memory. They did not reveal their identities or purpose to others in the town, but enlisted nine townsmen to accompany them to the Mishar home, where they arrived unannounced.
Swarnlata immediately recognized her brother and called him "Babu", Biya's pet name for him. Stevenson gives only the barest facts, but I can imagine the emotions ran high at this point. Imagine how Babu felt to be recognized immediately by his dead sister reborn.
Ten-year-old Swarnlata went around the room looking at each man in turn; some she identified as men she knew from her town, some were strangers to her. Then she came to Sri Chintamini Pandey, Biya's husband. Swarnlata lowered her eyes, looked bashful--as Hindu wives do in the presence of their husbands--and spoke his name. Stevenson says nothing of Sri Pandey's reaction at finding his wife after twenty years
Swarnlata also correctly identified her son from her past life, Murli, who was 13 years old when Biya died. But Murli schemed to mislead her, and "for almost twenty-four hours insisted against her objections that he was not Murli, but someone else." Murli had also brought along a friend and tried to mislead Swarnlata once again by insisting he was Naresh, Biya's other son, who was about the same age as this friend. Swarnlata insisted just as strongly that he was a stranger.
Finally, Swarnlata reminded Sri Pandey that he had purloined 1200 rupees Biya kept in a box. Sri Pandey admitted to the truth of this private fact that only he and his wife had known.
Gold Fillings
A few weeks later, Swarnlata's father took her to Katni to visit the home and town where Biya lived and died.
Upon arriving she immediately noticed and remarked about the changes to the house. She asked about the parapet at the back of the house, a verandah, and the neem tree that used to grow in the compound; all had been removed since Biya's death. She identified Biya's room and the room in which she had died. She recognized one of Biya's brothers and correctly identified him as her second brother. She did the same for her third and fourth brother, the wife of the younger brother, the son of the second brother (calling him by his pet name "Baboo"), a close friend of the family's (correctly commenting that he was now wearing spectacles, which he in fact had acquired since Biya had died) and his wife (calling her by her pet name "Bhoujai"), Biya's sister-in-law--all with appropriate emotions of weeping and nervous laughter. She also correctly identified a former servant, an old betelnut seller, and the family cowherd (despite her youngest brother's attempt to test Swarnlata by insisting that the cowherd had died).
Later, Swarnlata was presented to a room full of strangers and asked whom she recognized. She correctly picked out her husband's cousin, the wife of Biya's brother-in-law, and a midwife--whom she identified not by her current name, but by a name she had used when Biya was alive. Biya's son Murli, in another test, introduced Swarnlata to a man he called a new friend, Bhola. Swarnlata insisted correctly that this man was actually Biya's second son, Naresh. In another test, Biya's youngest brother tried to trap Swarnlata by saying that Biya had lost her teeth; Swarnlata did not fall for this, and went on to say that Biya had gold fillings in her front teeth--a fact that the brothers had forgotten and were forced to confirm by consulting with their wives, who reminded them that what Swarnlata said was true.
This must have been a spectacle. Here was a ten-year-old stranger from far away--so far, in terms of Indian culture, that her dialect was distinctly different than that of the Pathaks--who acted confidently like an older sister of the household, was familiar with intimate names and family secrets, and remembered even marriage relationships, old servants, and friends. Just as amazing, her memory was frozen at the time of Biya's death; Swarnlata knew nothing about the Pathak family that had happened since 1939.
In the following years, Swarnlata visited the Pathak family at regular intervals. Stevenson investigated the case in 1961, witnessing one of these visits. He observed the loving relationship between Swarnlata and the other members of the family. They all accepted her as Biya reborn.
Swarnlata behaved appropriately reserved towards Biya's elders, but when alone with Biya's sons, she was relaxed and playful as a mother would be--behavior that would otherwise be totally inappropriate in India for a 10-year-old girl in the company of unrelated men in their mid-thirties.
The Pathak brothers and Swarnlata observed the Hindu custom of Rakhi, in which brothers and sisters annually renew their devotion to each other by exchanging gifts. In fact the Pathak brothers were distressed and angry one year when Swarnlata missed the ceremony; they felt that because she had lived with them for 40 years and with the Mishras for only 10 years that they had a greater claim on her. As evidence of how strongly the Pathaks believed that Swarnlata was their Biya, they admitted that they had changed their views of reincarnation upon meeting Swarnlata and accepting her as Biya reborn (the Pathaks, because of their status and wealth, emulated Western ideas and had not believed in reincarnation before this happened). Swarnlata's father, Sri Mishra, also accepted the truth of Swarnlata's past identity: years later, when it came time for Swarnlata to marry he consulted with the Pathaks about the choice of a husband for her.
How did Swarnlata feel about all of this? Was it confusing for her to remember so completely the life of a grown woman? Stevenson visited her in later years and corresponded with her for ten years after this case was investigated. He reports that she grew up normally, received an advanced degree in botany, and got married. She said that sometimes, when she reminisced about her happy life in Katni, her eyes brimmed with tears and, for a moment, she wished she could return to the wealth and life of Biya. But her loyalty to the Mishra family was undivided and, except for the regular visits to Katni, she went about the business of growing into a beautiful young woman, accepting fully her station in this life.
The story above describes a little girl named Swarnlata who demonstrated to her family that she had a previous life. She recounted dozens of details about her other life including the names and ages of her children and intimate details of her life that only she and her former husband knew. The facts are irrefutable . After reading the account and studying the details, Dr Almeder, PhD, Dept of Philosophy at GSU even went so far as to state: “it would be irrational to disbelieve it”.
Dr Almeder also eloquently illustrates the reason to take this sort of evidence seriously. He used the following analogy to illustrate his point of view:
Let's look at a fictitious group of 100 people who one by one jump off the Empire State building. As he describes it, the data shows that “95 of them hit the ground as one might expect they would: painfully and disastrously, but five land gently and walk away. What do you think needs to be explained? Answer: The five that landed gently and walked away.” Focusing on the 95 that crash-landed as one would expect, and chalking the remaining 5 surprising survivors as spurious data points would be utterly ridiculous. Strangely though this “scrubbing of the data” might make sense in some scientific test protocols and is what many of us have been doing all of our lives with stories that don't fit neatly into our reality frame.
I would highly recommend watching the entire video of Dr Almeder speaking on the subject. It is full of cogent and logical insights that for me, were impossible to dismiss and went to the crucial heart of the matter.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hZhMDU9GcVg#!
What we have in the story of Swarnlata is a crystal clear demonstration of data that simply can not be explained with today's model of reality and more particularly with a traditional scientific understanding of human existence.
This story, and Dr Almeder's summary of its implications was the tectonic event that caused my dam to break, and which forced me to consider a more expanded view of what life really is. After-all, not to reach this conclusion would for me, be illogical and irrational. It would be ignoring too many data points.
My tipping point had been reached. Your tipping point may be different, but I contend that the examples in our world that can't be explained are so numerous that any person who is open and curious will find the example that compels them to act: to accept the fact that there are aspects of this world that just won't make sense without considering what previously may have been impossible to consider.
So why did it take me over 50 years to reach this point? Perhaps, although I was open and curious for most of my life, I wasn't actively looking. Of the dozen or so amazing unexplainable “paranormal” things I describe in these pages, I never took the time to become fully focused on them until I decided that I needed to discover what all the hullabaloo was about regarding the true nature of existence. And perhaps one doesn't actively look at these things until one is ready. I have a feeling that generally, a person isn't “ready” until they have experienced a certain amount of life.
In my journey, exposure to the Swarnlata story and it's attendant analysis was a major milestone. The oyster had been opened. For me, it was the first evidence that there really IS something going on under surface of reality. It was at this point that my journey changed from ascertaining whether there was a hidden truth to our reality, to accepting that fact and moving on to learn about the details.
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