This is an extract from The Rosicrucian #83 (Feb, 2021).

Reincarnation, Karma and metaphysical healing are theories of great interest to Rosicrucians. The following article is based on “Reincarnation in Karma”, written 40 years ago for the Rosicrucian Digest by Dr Joel L Whitton, fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons and a Research Fellow of Neuro-Physiology and Psychiatry at the Clarke Institutes of Psychiatry, University of Toronto.

Reincarnation has been a current of belief for thousands of years, but gained its widest acceptance when Hinduism was adopted over many centuries in large parts of Asia. In broad terms, reincarnation proposes that a non-material part of the human being, called the soul, enters the physical body of an infant at birth with its first breath (though it does not claim that life enters the child for the first time at this moment). With that first ‘breath of life’, the predominant, life-long controlling influence of the soul assumes full guardianship of that human being.

At death, the soul departs in what may be called a ‘state transition’, analogous to a physical state change such as liquid water becoming sufficiently energised to change its state to that of a gas, or of a gas changing state to a plasma. The soul then remains in its new state until it can re-enter a new human body which is karmically more suited to its compensatory needs than any other soul. This cycle repeats itself over and over, countless times until its earthly expression or ‘soul personality’ attains a certain critical level of competence in the governance of the bodies it ‘inhabits’ whereby it would gain little further experience by incarnating into human forms any longer.

The soul manifests itself through a personality which is a composite of the many experiences it has had while incarnate over numerous incarnations. As a result of the actions of its human wards while incarnate in them, the soul personality acquires various ‘debts’, some pleasant, but others very unpleasant. And these debts accordingly are received or paid off in subsequent experiences or lives, and sometimes only at precise periods of life. These debts or obligations are referred to as ‘karma’ which is postulated as being an impersonal, though entirely natural law of cause and effect, operating at the level of the intellect for a start, but also at the levels of numerous deeper selves associated with that being. Although the mechanisms of the law are as yet only dimly understood, one of its distinguishing features is that it appears to have purpose, intelligence and independent volition, unlike its corollary in the physical universe, namely Newton’s third law of motion: “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

The soul personality then, as a composite of all past experiences, also appears to retain specific memories and personality traits from past lives. Memories acquired by the soul during its earthly experiences and the various planes of consciousness that are thought to exist between incarnations, may not be understandable to our objective mind except perhaps indirectly through symbols. The objective mind, represented primarily by the outer character of the person, assigns meaning to its earthly experiences, but has no direct means of recalling the memories of the soul personality except in a symbolic and intuitive way via the subconscious mind.1

The soul manifests itself through a personality which is a composite of the many experiences it has had while incarnate over numerous incarnations.

Hypnosis and Multiple Personalities

We now proceed with Dr Whitton’s report: The induction of multiple personalities in a deeply-hypnotised subject is a well-recognised phenomenon. Seven percent of volunteer subjects are able to create secondary personalities under hypnosis, and such subjects are psychologically healthier and freer to adapt creatively to hypnotic suggestions than hypnotic subjects less able to dissociate ego functions.2 That in certain subjects these sub-identities may be integrations of unconscious memories of suspected past lives is a matter of conjecture and considerable controversy and can only be tested empirically. In certain case histories, personalities have demonstrated knowledge and skill (of a foreign language for example) which were not known to the hypnotic subject in the objective state of consciousness. Such have been interpreted as evidence for reincarnation.3

The requirement that no one else now alive also possesses the knowledge which emerges from such regressive states, seems to beg the question of ancillary mechanisms such as telepathy and clairvoyance.4 If clairvoyance exists as a valid mechanism of seeing into the future and of knowing what the experimenter will find if he attempts to verify hypnotically produced facts5, why not a parallel mechanism to see the past psychically? In such cases, the condition that no one alive or once living knows or has known a given knowledge is clearly an unreasonable situation. I believe it is merely sufficient for the hypnotic subject not to know, and this in itself is a formidable state to prove. Due to the bias from cultural materialism and religious creeds, it is difficult for some people to be rational about reincarnation theory.6 Immense resistance is mobilised against any theory that threatens to revise a culture’s foundation.

The technique of regressive hypnosis and its precautions as employed in these experiments have been previously described.7 Hypnosis is a research instrument for studying mental disorders, mental processes and memory. Hypnosis is regarded as a phenomenon of unconscious mental functioning involving among other things, the learning of a cognitive skill in which one improves one’s capacity for directing one’s functions of thinking and memory. Regressive hypnosis involves the imparting of active suggestions for age regression to a hypnotisable subject. These suggestions permit the subject to experience and recount early childhood memories and what are often regarded as memories from past lives.

The hypnotist must crucially be a physician fully trained in the intricacies of unconscious mental functioning, if one is to avoid possible deleterious effects resulting from the intrusion of previously forgotten material into conscious awareness. It is the reality of this danger, well-known to medical psychology, that justifies the traditional warnings against stage hypnotism or any other frivolous use of hypnosis.

Case Report

The subject for this report was a man in his late thirties who had previously studied the subjects of karma and reincarnation. During the research study of his ‘memories’ of past lives, of the personality identities studied in-depth, two of these personalities seemed able to speak or write fragments of languages that the subject had neither known nor studied within the present lifetime.

These languages are Old Norse, the language of the Vikings, and Persian Pahlavi (beginning roughly 4th Century BCE). Both languages were clearly identified and the details are published elsewhere.8 The occurrence and verification of these languages obtained during the hypnotic procedure was taken as support for the validity of the remembered past lives.

The subject was dying from a liver and kidney disease against which medical treatments had been ineffective. He had volunteered for the study because, as he expressed it, he wanted to know if his terminal illness was a karmic condition brought about in another life. He hoped this knowledge would help him to become well.

Regressive hypnosis involves the imparting of active suggestions for age regression to a hypnotisable subject.

Memories Reported

As the investigation unfolded, the subject reported memories of several previous lives on Earth. Going back in sequence, his lives were: (1) a young boy named Bradley who lived in the Northeast of the United States and died in childhood from chickenpox around the turn of the 20th Century; (2) a young gentleman named Henry, who died in battle in the early days of the American Civil War; (3) a minor nobleman in France called Philippe, who was executed during the French Revolution; (4) a dock worker Harry, who lived in the early days of Elizabethan England; (5) a Viking warrior called Thor, who spoke Old Norse around 1000 CE; (6) a young Persian priest called Xando who lived around 625 CE and wrote in Sassanid Pahlavi, the language of his time and place; (7) a young boy called Simeon, who lived in a Hebrew village in the eastern Mediterranean area, around 800 BCE. There were other earlier lives as well but they are not immediately relevant.

The subject’s sister in his present life was Henry’s sister in the southern United States prior to the Civil War. She was also an acquaintance of Harry (Elizabethan England) and Thor (10th Century Viking times), the mother of Xando (7th Century Persia), and the wife of Simeon (9th Century Middle East). 19th Century Henry was born into a land-owning family in the state of Virginia, attended a military academy, and during the American Civil War was an officer in the Confederate Army. His sister was several years older than him. When Henry was about 12 years old, his sister committed an indiscretion which Henry knew about. He promised his sister never to reveal it to anyone, but later, when his sister became engaged to marry a man whom Henry did not like, in order destroy any chances of the marriage going ahead, Henry told the man his sister’s secret, and soon the secret was community gossip. In disgrace, his sister was forced to leave home and later committed suicide. Henry was remorseful, but it was too late, and the events of war soon ended his life too.

A hundred years later, again as brother and sister during the subject’s present lifetime, an interesting sequence of events occurred. When his sister was 40 years of age she developed a tumour that was found from laboratory tests to be malignant and advanced. At the time, her surgeons were not hopeful about her survival even with removal of the tumour. On the evening prior to the planned surgery, the subject was attending a symphony concert to escape the grief and mental torment of losing his sister whom he loved dearly. At a certain moment, while deep in prayer, he offered his life in exchange for hers. In an instant, he became surrounded by a brilliant light and became aware of a higher presence communicating with him. He looked around, but no one else appeared to notice anything different. He knew then that his sister would make a full recovery. In the morning, the surgery was performed, but the tumour mass had completely shrunk and nothing malignant could be found. This he attributed to a healing which he believed had occurred during his prayer the previous evening.

In an instant, he became surrounded by a brilliant light and became aware of a higher presence communicating with him.

A year later, just prior to the regression experiment, the subject was stricken with a liver and kidney disease and believed that it presaged the exchange of his life for his sister’s as he had requested that evening at the concert. Medical treatments failed, and he was declared terminally ill. Knowing that he was close to death, he volunteered for hypnotic regression in order to more clearly understand the reasons for his imminent demise.

Following the regression study, the investigator and subject paused to reflect upon and interpret what had happened. The subject had a deep sense that his treacherous disloyalty and ultimate responsibility for his former sister’s suicide had become a karmic debt and he had now compensated for his selfish actions by successfully petitioning to his God to intervene in his present sister’s fatal illness. The man knew with certainty that he had accepted his own death as a trade for his sister’s life, and to fulfil this belief he had unconsciously created a condition in his body which now enabled his death to occur. With this realisation however, he realised a karmic debt had been paid and with no understanding of the process involved, his illness remitted and he survived, grateful and very much wiser.

While this case does not prove reincarnation, it does illustrate the theories of karma and reincarnation. The case also serves to illustrate the profound effect that our own beliefs may have on our life and health.

Footnotes

1. Lewis, H. S. (1978) The Divine Law of Compensation. Rosicrucian Digest, 1978-03:31-34.
2. Kamman, R. (1976) Hypnotically Induced Multiple Personalities. International Journal of Clinical Experimental Hypnosis, 24 (3):215-227.
3. Ducasse, C. J. (1962) What Would Constitute Conclusive Evidence Of Survival After Death? J. Soo. Psychic. Ref., 41:401-406.
4. Watson, W. (1974) The Romeo Error, Hodder and Stoughton, Toronto, p. 198
5. Lodge, O. J. (1894) On the Difficulty of Making Crucial Experiments. P.S.P.R., 26(10):14-24.
6. Lewis, H. S. (1930) Mansions of the Soul. SGL of AMORC
7. Lewis, R. M. (1977) The Rationalism of Reincarnation, Rosicrucian Digest, 1977-09:26-28;
8. Stevenson, I. (1977) Research Into The Evidence Of Man’s Survival After Death. J. Narv. Ment. Dis., 165 (3):152-170; Whitton, J. L. (1976) Hypnotic Time Regression and Reincarnation Memories. NewHorizons 2(2):34-39. Whitton, J. L. (1976) Ibid. Whitton, J. L. (1978) Xenoglossia: A subject with two possible instances. New Horizons, 2(4).