Where Shirley MacLaine's Out On a Limb (1986) and The Celestine Prophecy (1993) by James Redfield a first exposed many readers to New Age ideas about different realms of consciousness, disembodied beings, and a coming social transformation, A Course in Miracles (1976) re-introduced ‘New Thought’ to the world.Deriving from Mesmerism, Swedenborg, and Transcendentalism in America the true history of ideas presented in A Course in Miracles and related literature is known to only few today.
In fact Mesmerism was the first harmonial religious movement in North America, and it influenced most of the alternative religious and healing traditions that emerged in the nineteenth century. Mesmerism was wildly popular in the nineteenth century before it was recast into Spiritualism, hypnotism, New Thought, and other new religious and therapeutic forms. Mesmerists believed in a universal occult energy, an invisible magnetic fluid flowing between planets and other heavenly bodies, Earth, animals, plants, and humans. They taught that spirit and matter are not separate; humans, nature, and the divine are all connected. Anton Mesmer (1734-1815), the founder of this movement, was an Austrian physician and astrologer whose ideas were brought to America by several of his adherents and spread by traveling demonstrations that opened people's minds to the possibilities of mental healing. Mesmerist healers went into trance states from which they could diagnose and advise treatments for illness. This view influenced Spiritualists and other Americans who came to believe in the unity of all existence. It was the vehicle by which nineteenth-century men and women were introduced to and carried forward the occult tradition in America, transmuting it into a popular religious tradition that cut across gender and class lines. Interest in mesmerism and other trends of the day was spread by nineteenth-century mass media and speaking circuits.
Two important figures in the nineteenth-century alternative religious tradition encountered mesmerism in the turbulent 1930s and I840’s. Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802-1866) was directly responsible for the lineage of mental healing that led to the formation of Christian Science and several other religious groups that have endured into the twenty-first century, while Andrew Jackson Davis (1826-1910) is the one person most identifiably responsible for formulating and then publicizing the worldview of Spiritualism. In 1838 the famous mesmerist Charles Poyen stopped in Belfast, Maine to give a demonstration at the local lyceum (lecture hall). Quimby, a young clockmaker, was in the audience that day and was inspired to investigate mesmerism. He quit his job and followed Poyen from town to town, becoming adept at mesmerist demonstrations, putting his assistant into trances during which the assistant would read people's minds and prescribe treatments for illness. Newspa ers followed Quimby's successful career and word spread of his abilities, ens11ring that crowds would gather whenever he appeared.
Over time Quimby began to doubt the theory of animal magnetism and to suspect that cures were successful because patients believed they would be. This simple revision of mesmerism would have a significant impact on the metaphysical (meaning "mind-only," beyond the physical) tradition in America, which in turn would shape the New Thought and New Age ideas. Influenced by the ideas of Swedish mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg, Quimby eventually changed his practice to mental healing through visualization (using mental imagery to achieve a desired goal, such as healing). He quit the lyceum circuit, which demanded constant traveling and public demonstrations, and set up a healing practice in Portland, Maine. Like many other alternative healers of his time, he was suspicious of both orthodox medicine and established churches, yet often referred to Christianity in his teachings.
Quimby promoted the idea that humanity's natural state was health and that disease was caused by mental disturbance, an understanding widely shared by mesmerists and Spiritualists, among others. Quimby's healing methods were simple. He sat down with patients and sensed clairvoyantly what was wrong with them, after which he explained his theory on the origins of disease. Patients were sick, he told them, because they were. Then he visualized the patients as healthy and encouraged them to see themselves that way. Quimby's work established psychic healing and visualization as key elements of the alternative religious tradition. Because of his focus on the powers of the mind, Quimby decided that visions at Spiritualist séances, which were common during the time he worked as a healer, came about because of participants' beliefs and not the actual presence of spirits. His theory of illness was founded on hopeful notions about human progress and belief in the possibility of harmony in both personal and social life in the present rather than in some future millennial period. Like other nineteenth century healers, Quimby offered "a tool for healing and restoring sick societies as well as sick bodies." Along with Anton Mesmer, Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) was an important correspondence theorist and exerted the most influence on Quimby and other healers and religious visionaries. Swedenborg was one of the "most widely read authors of the nineteenth century in American popular culture even though he attracted less attention during his lifetime."'s His writings brought together liberal religion with scientific and social trends of the mid-nineteenth century, laying the groundwork for the rapid growth of Spiritualism. In his classic Religious History of the American People, historian Sydney Ahlstrom gives Swedenborg an important place in American religious history:
Of all the unconventional currents streaming through the many levels of American religion during the antebellum half-century, none proved more attractive to more diverse types of dissenters from established denominations than those which stemmed from Emmanuel Swedenborg. His influence was seen everywhere: in Transcendentalism and at Brook Farm [one of many nineteenth century communal experiments], in spiritualism and the free love movement, in the craze for communal experiments, in faith healing, mesmerism, and a half-dozen medical cults; among great intellectuals, crude charlatans, and innumerable frontier quacks.
Swedenborg was the son of a Swedish theologian who spent the earlier part of his life engaged in scientific research before he turned to religion. His father healed people with prayer, laying on of hands, and casting out spirits.'? Swedenborg's own scientific investigations encompassed chemistry, astronomy, and anatomy before he gradually turned to explorations into his own consciousness. Around the year 1745, at the age of fifty-five, Swedenborg experienced a spiritual crisis during which be had nightmares and visions, culminating in a vision of God. According to poet William Butler Yeats's account, "he was sitting in an inn in London, where he had gone about the publication of a book, when a spirit appeared before him who was, he believed, Christ himself, and told him that henceforth he would commune with spirits and angels. From that moment he was a mysterious man describing distant events as if they were before his eyes, and knowing dead men's secrets." Swedenborg believed that God had chosen him to interpret the Bible and, in order to facilitate his knowledge of Christian scripture, would allow him to travel through spirit worlds, heaven, and hell. Swedenborg then embarked on a spiritual quest and practiced clairvoyance and astral travel (traveling in spirit to other planes of existence). He threatened and angered the church with the argument that God is immanent, not transcendent, and the scientific community with his belief that God exists. Swedenborg argued that the natural world was divine and that divine knowledge could be found within the self. His teachings influenced English poet and reformer William Blake and American Transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson, and laid the theoretical groundwork for alternative healing practices such as homeopathy and osteopathy. Swedenborg was sure that "the Creator in his divine providence, while allowing sickness and the multitude of human ills, yet provided for their cure by concealing remedies within the world of nature." 19 His scientific background and religious experience came together in the belief that God communicated to humans through nature, a view later elaborated in the writings of Emerson and Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862). Swedenborg's writings affirmed the occult tradition's emphasis on correspondence between the human and divine worlds and between the self and God. He introduced many of the ideas that were disseminated through Spiritualism, Theosophy, and New Thought and shaped the New Age and Neopagan movements.
Swedenborg was also one of the first popular writers of the nineteenth century to self-consciously synthesize science and religion. Throughout the mid-nineteenth century, these writers overlapped and borrowed from each other, even while scientists tried to discredit many new religious movements. Alternative religious and healing traditions took root in America in an era when science, medicine, and religion were being loosely combined in some belief systems and rigidly separated in others. The New Age movement today likewise borrows the language of science and works to bring itself into alignment with scientific theories just as it tries to fit scientific discoveries into its own philosophical frameworks. Neopagans, who tend to reinvent ancient religions, are less concerned with scientific validation.
The New England Transcendentalists, and especially Ralph Waldo Emerson, further developed Swedenborg's theory of correspondence and the idea that all individual souls were part of a world soul, the "oversoul." Transcendentalists thought that individuals should look within for their salvation and should strive to understand the harmony existing between self and universe. Like contemporary New Agers and Neopagans, they gave the mind power to change the world. Emerson and other Transcendentalists drew from a wide range of philosophical and religious sources, including Asian religious teachings and Swedenborg's writings, and became involved with the popular psychology and alternative religious practices of their day.
Emerson was active on the lyceum circuit, where he encountered mesmerists, Spiritualists, abolitionists, and health reformers. Emerson's second wife was interested in alternative medicine; diet fads were part of life at Transcendentalist communities such as Brook Farm; Thoreau studied yoga and Native Americans; Margaret Fuller, editor of the Transcendentalist magazine The Dial, used a phrenological publisher; and Emerson and Fuller read the Bhagavad Gita and other Asian texts.O Transcendentalists spoke and wrote about inner experience and inner journeys, describing the inner` world in topographical terms, thus anticipating twentieth-century narratives of self-exploration. Emerson said that the inner self is an "unfathomed sea of thought and virtue," a depth to be plumbed, if never entirely known." He wrote of the importance of self-knowledge and the futility of organized religion to help individuals to acquire it: "what good are religious dogma and the priestly caste if divinity truly lies within?" Emerson and the Transcendentalists clearly expressed popular ideas in literary form. Among other views, they shared a suspicion of institutions and orthodox religion with Spiritualists, mesmerists, and alternative healers. After the Civil War, Transcendentalism declined as a movement in its own right, but its ideas became part of an alternative culture characterized by religious eclecticism and interest in correspondences between nature and the divine.
And if Transcendentalists furthered Swedenborg's understanding of harmony between humans and the natural world in their writings, next Spiritualism re-popularized by TV shows like “Speaking to the Death” put these ideas into a form of practice that is an important antecedent to New Age and Neopagan spirit possession a. Started on a farm in Vermont by the too cracking Fox sisters, who were catapulted to fame after word spread that they communicated with spirits. Within a few years, tens of thousands of Americans were flocking to seances. An international movement developed. Yet forty years after those first knocks, the sisters shocked the country by denying that they had ever been in contact with the dead.
Since A Course in Miracles, its teachings rooted in Christian Science, is one of the most famous writings inspired by channeling today let us proceed by next taking a closer look at it.
Of course before A course in Miracles there were the Seth books (first published in 1972), that together sold more than a million copies and created large following that included discussion groups and workbooks.
More in line with Shirley MacLaine's Out On a Limb (1986), the The Celestine Prophecy in contrast opens with the disappearance of a Peruvian manuscript that contains nine important insights that humans must grasp as they enter "an era of true spiritual awareness.”
The first insight is that "in each of our lives occur mysterious coincidences-sudden, synchronistic events that once interpreted, lead us into our true destiny." Videos, audiotapes, compact discs, and Web sites offer further information to supplement the books. The Celestine Prophecy Homepage includes opportunities to network with people nearby, the journal of the page owner's journey to Peru, links to "The New Civilization Network," and links,' to people who are experimenting with sending healing energy on the Internet.
The Course in Miracles Web site also, lists study groups throughout the world; links to a retreat center in Temecula, California; offers a daily lesson that can be played on the computer; and includes an online catalogue where the "Course" is available in nine languages.
But like still might have been the case when the first Seth book came out in 1972, no longer to be found in the dusty corners of occult bookstores, New Age and even Neopagan titles are readily available for browsing in megastores like Barnes and Noble and Borders that include New Age sections with hundreds of titles.
And it therefore is not surprising that now as is demonstrated by bestselling books like “A History of The Disappearance of the Universe” and other books listed on the image leading to this link, reincarnation first popularized by the Spiritism of Allan Kardec in France and later Madame Blavatsky in the USA, has now also gone mainstream.
A Short History Reincarnation in the West
Where several recent polls carried out in North America and Europe show that the professed belief in reincarnation is widespread. If one goes back to the turn of the nineteenth century, belief in reincarnation was almost unknown in the West.
That reincarnation in “A History of The Disappearance of the Universe” is designated by the same label as reincarnation doctrines of Oriental or other provenance should not obscure the fact that the reincarnation theory in popular books today display considerable differences.
In fact the first popularization of reincarnation entered Western discourse via a Flemish (Belgian-Dutch) philosopher/scientist named Johannes Mercurius van Helmond (1614-1699) interested in the Lurian Kabbala brought the idea to England.(1)
The transmigration of souls or Gilgul became a major doctrinal element with the sixteenth century school of Isaac Luria (1534-1572). Luria's own doctrines were basically an esoteric teaching reserved for the initiated, and were set down in writing by his disciples. Lurianic texts were translated from Hebrew into Latin by Christian Knorr von Rosenroth as part of his Kabbala denudata, published in three volumes, the first two in 1677-78 and the last in 1684. In Frnch named, Francois Mercure van Helmont (1614-1699), believed that the doctrine of transmigration of souls could be made the cornerstone of a universal Christianity: by this means, the souls of individuals who had lived in the wrong time and place to have heard of the Gospel would have a chance of salvation. Van Helmont in turn influenced Anne Conway who openly defended transmigration.
A more influential attempt to formulate a melioristic view of reincarnation was undertaken by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) toward the end of his theological and philosophical essay Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechtes, published in 1780.", Lessing sees the history of mankind as a story of ever greater insight and perfection. Earlier religions had merely been didactic instruments, preludes to a truly humanitarian faith. Historically, Judaism and Christianity have been the two great educating influences on mankind. However, the next step in the spiritual evolution of humanity would soon take place. This tripartite scheme of history resembles that of Joachim of Fiore and the Joachimites, and Lessing implicitly credits them with the theory of three ages. Soon to have an influence also on Blavatsky.
Belief in reincarnation soon took the leap from the pages of Enlightenment philosophers to the seance rooms. Thus by 1790, a small proto-spiritualist circle in Copenhagen led by the brother-in-law of the Danish king Christian VII, prince Karl of Hessen-Kassel, had been instructed in a reincarnationist doctrine resembling that of Kant and Lessing by a voice speaking from a white cloud. The wife of the Danish minister of foreign affairs, Auguste von Bernstorff, who was one of the five members, was proclaimed to be an incarnation of Mary Magdalene. It would take another six decades before the belief in reincarnation spread from such small groups of occultists and freethinkers to a somewhat larger audience of religious seekers. The basic mechanism of belief-the intervention of spiritual entities-would remain remarkably unchanged for another century.
Jean-Baptiste Willermoz conducted sessions with a talented somnambule, asking her questions to which, with the aid of the spirit world, she was able to give authoritative answers which were recorded in detail. The first documented afterlife beliefs of the mesmerist milieu are notes dating from 1785, which are infused with Christian mythology: the dead go to heaven, hell or purgatory; or alternatively, their destiny will be decided on the day of judgement. (N. Edelman Voyantes, guerisseuses et visionnaires en France 1765-1914, 1995, p. 23. ff)
Kardec adopted the method introduced by Willermoz, Le livre des esprit’s was reprinted in numerous editions, other spiritists adopted his beliefs, and reincarnation became part of the canonical doctrines of the French spiritist movement.
Two discursive strategies are central to Kardec's work. The first is the reliance on revealed truth. Kardec's book of more than 470 pages does not refer to a single contemporary printed source or spokesperson. At most, the reader that belief in reincarnation has existed since times immemonal among the Pythagoreans, Hindus and Egyptians.
The rhetorical strength behind this strategy is hardly in doubt: every last detail recorded in Le livre des esprits is directly taken from the dictation of the spirits. The form of the book reflects this method: it is basically a pastiche of Christian catechisms, with Kardec's questions followed by the spirits' answers in quotation marks.
His position is an innovation compared with earlier speculations: deceased spirits can never regress-, at worst, their progress towards God is merely halted temporarily. In short, Kardec lets the spirits elevate a morally justified hope to the status of revealed truth.
To strengthen his case, Kardec resorts to a second strategy, scientism. Already, the first mesmerist or somnambulist sessions were conceived of as methods of empirically exploring invisible dimensions of the cosmos. Spiritism uses the same rhetorical move to gain legitimacy. Thus, Kardec repeatedly and explicitly refers to his method as a new science.
Several elements of what would become theosophical reincarnation doctrine were already in place. The human soul reincarnates in order to progress spiritually. Incarnations take place not only on earth, but also on other planets. However the English channel was a formidable barrier to the spread of Kardecist theories of reincarnation, which did not gain much influence in the Anglo-American world until around 1880. (Godwin "Theosophical Enlightenment")
The first link to Theosophy was lady Caithness, she became the recipient of a series of mediumistic revelations from sources as diverse as Mary Stuart and the archangel Gabriel. These messages were set down in writing and, over a period of twenty years, grew into a series of books. The second link, Anna Kingsford, made the acquaintance of lady Caithness while studying medicine in Paris.
Kingsford, which in other English, was the creator of a religious worldview clearly based on Kardec's and the other French spiritists' melioristic beliefs. In her main work, The Perfect Way or the Finding of Christ, published in 1882, she explains in typically evolutionist language how the soul aspires to progress from plant to animal to human, and finally to leave the physical body behind. Anna Kingsford herself claimed to have once lived as Mary Magdalene. In Kingsford's view, physical existence is an evil to be overcome.
Upon her return to London, Kingsford joined the British section of the Theosophical Society. A few British spiritualists had already adopted the doctrine of reincarnation. However, it appears that the publication of The Perfect Way, which attracted a great deal of attention, was crucial in achieving a critical mass for the controversial doctrine. Coincidentally or not, theosophical writings began to mention reincarnation as a spiritual truth for the first time around this same year 1882.
Blavatsky had claimed that the transmigration of souls was "an exception, a phenomenon as abnormal as a fetus with two heads." As noted above, around 1882, Blavatsky had changed her mind. Since both the earlier and the later teachings were allegedly received from the same group of ascended Masters, the discrepancy became quite embarrassing. As recent as late 1876 Blavatsky had written in her scrapbook: "Mind is the quintessence of the Soul-and having joined its divine Spirit Nous-can return no more to earth. IMPOSSIBLE."
Also Olcott's letter of May 20, 1876, to M.A. Oxon gave testimony of this. On the Barones von Vay's wanting to join the Theosophical Society: "If she wants to come in with us she can-but she must scrape off her Reincarnation shoes at the door; there's no room for that in our Philosophy."
Exegetical treatises followed Blavatsky's lead in adopting reincarnation. In chapter 5 of Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism, the author explains the destiny of man after death. Of the seven components that make up our persons, the three lower pass away at the moment of physical death.
If earlier theories on life after death were largely based on privileged knowledge, in the Mahatma Letters, and even more in Sinnett's book, the discursive strategies of science and tradition were mobilized. The description of life after death increasingly rested on a number of Sanskrit terms, which, just like the title of his book, define the positive Others. In a style that will later be typical of other major theosophical movement texts, these Orientalist references are interspersed with appeals to contemporary science, including nineteenth century pseudo-sciences such as mesmerism. Thus, from their existence in Devachan, souls can appear to spiritualist mediums and magnetic somnambules because the spirit of the sensitive getting odylized, so to say, by the aura of the spirit in the Devachan, becomes for a few minutes that departed personality, and writes in the handwriting of the latter, in his language and in his thoughts as they were during his lifetime. Thus what is called rapport, is, in plain fact, an identity of molecular vibration between the astral part of the incarnate medium and the astral part of the discarnate personality. (Sinnett "Esoteric Buddhism", pp. 146 f.)
The belief in reincarnation advanced from being a minority view to becoming one of the core elements of the arguably most influential esoteric movement of the late nineteenth century.
A fundamental discursive strategy, legitimizing not only the belief in reincarnation but also the theosophical myth as a whole, is the construction of tradition. The Secret Doctrine is allegedly based on an ancient manuscript, the Book of Dzyan.
Blavatsky claimed that this palm leaf manuscript from Atlantis contained the true core of all the great religions. Implicitly, reincarnation had passed in six years from being a controversial innovation to becoming a central tenet of all the religious traditions of the world-or at least of the esoteric aspect of each of these traditions….
Blavatsky's reincarnation doctrine builds on elements deriving from several different sources. Due to the inherent difficulties in harmonizing historically distinct traditions, her reincarnation doctrine is not free from contradictions. At times, she seems to draw on the purported roots of the "ancient wisdom religion" in a generalized Buddhism. Thus, Blavatsky can refer to "the great truth that reincarnation is to be dreaded, as existence in this world only entails upon man suffering, misery and pain." (SD I:39)
Nevertheless, following a view that could be either Hindu or Platonic, but certainly not Buddhist in any orthodox sense, she claims that there is a unique individuality that incarnates again and again. In a reminiscence of an earlier Western esoteric tradition, the individual is said to reincarnate after a stay in the astral plane." Another echo of the frequent esoteric preoccupation with the number seven, the individual is said to be composed of an aggregate of seven entities that part ways at physical death. A quote such as the following is closer to a Lurianic kabbalistic view than to the "Esoteric Buddhism" that Sinnett wrote of:
The Monad emerges from its state of spiritual and intellectual unconsciousness; and gets directly into the plane of Mentality. But there is no place in the whole universe with a wider margin, or a wider field of action in its almost endless gradations of perceptive and apperceptive qualities, than this plane, which has in its turn an appropriate smaller plane for every "form", from the "mineral" monad up to the time when that monad blossoms forth by evolution into the DIVINE MONAD. But all the time it is still one and the same Monad, differing only in its incarnations, throughout its ever succeeding cycles of partial or total obscuration of spirit, or the partial or total obscuration of matter-two polar antitheses-as it ascends into the realms of mental spirituality, or descends into the depths of materiality." (Secret Doctrine I:175)
The construction of tradition, the bricolage from bits and pieces of such originally distinct historical sources, masks the novelty of Blavatsky's overall conception. Essentially, the theosophical view of the transmigration of souls is not so much Oriental or Platonic, as a typically nineteenth century construction.
Three key ideas run through Blavatsky's description of the chain of rebirth. The first is the fact of Orientalism itself. The frequent references to India and the East rather than to e.g. Plotinus or Paracelsus are in themselves a phenomenon of the post-Enlightenment era.
The second is the placement of reincarnation within the arguably most overarching meta-narrative of the nineteenth century: evolutionism.
The third element is the synthesis of these ideas with another meta-narrative of the nineteenth century: the view that humanity is divided into races and peoples with clearly definable properties. A closer look at the purported ancient wisdom religion shows it to be a mythologization of ideas characteristic of late nineteenth century Europe still going strong when mid July 2003 a book titled “Genesis Unveiled” was published in the UK, and one year later in the US.
The best known present day rationalist apologist for reincarnation is Ian Stevenson who is referred to as “evidence” in the mid July 2003 release of Genesis Unveiled. Stevenson has recorded hundreds of narratives in which small children are said to remember past lives. In some cases, children as young as two to four years old tell their parents that they live somewhere else, that they have a different set of relatives. His latest publications record even more striking cases.
A child born with deformed fingers is claimed to be the new incarnation of a man who had his fingers damaged in an accident. A boy with a rare genetic defect that has atrophied his outer ears is claimed to be the incarnation of a man who died after being shot in the side of the head.
Stevenson's work is a distinct product of the modern age. What is normally seen as a religious question as clearly shown in Part two of this SESN article series.
One could of course interject that: Firstly, the transfer of distinctive bodily features from one person to another presupposes a mechanism that has no counterparts in any other known area. Neither science nor common sense offers any clue as to how characteristics that are similar seen from the perspective of a human subject, but have entirely distinct underlying causes, could possibly be transmitted from one individual to another.
Secondly, the material is statistically odd. Subjects from India usually remember past lives in near-by villages. Westerners seem to be considerably more prone to change location drastically in time and space.
Thirdly, ethnic groups unknown to the average Westerner are seldom mentioned in reincarnation narratives. Few if any subjects claim to have been Illyrians, Sogdians, Tocharians or Urarteans.
Fourthly, interviewing small children is a problematic undertaking. The boundaries between reporting, inventing or following the cues (given by adults - parents. relatives, interviewers, interpreters, etc.) are fluid. Finally, critics have also noted that Stevenson has conducted some interviews through interpreters with documented reincarnationist belief, has been incorporated into the rationalist framework of modern society.
The progress of secularization has made it possible to combine questions of faith with the rhetoric of science. Within this rhetorical framework, there are certain given elements.
Stevenson's work reminds the reader-and is probably intended to remind the reader-of the style of normal science. It is the subject rather than the methodology that may strike one as unusual.
Whereas previous generations could construct entities such as "science" and "faith" as opposites, the rhetoric of scientism gradually effaces such contrasts, at least in the eyes of the believers. "Spirituality" is said to point at the same truths that can be discerned with a higher and better form of science. Any conflicts are due to the negative attitude of conventional, mechanistic scientists unwilling to open their minds enough to accept the truth.
The hypnotically induced memories of Virginia Tighe or other subjects who have figured prominently in New Age texts tell dramatic stories of their previous lives-stories that in the eyes of skeptics have seemed remarkably close to the plot structure of historical fiction.
Believers, however. Always appear to be one step ahead. Once one narrative has been debunked, interest in the cultic milieu gravitates towards new narratives.
Some of the most successful reincarnation stories in recent years have been written in a generalizing style. No names or dates are given, purportedly in the interest of protecting the privacy of the protagonists, but also effectively precluding confirmation or disconfirmation. ( example E.g. Weiss "Only Love is Real") One suspects that belief is more important than evidence.
An important component in the rise of modernity is the ambivalence vis-a-vis rationality. Rationality was a central part of the Enlightenment project. However, the Enlightenment ended with a flood of non-rational alternatives: mesmerism, rosicrucianism and spiritism, among others.
Since then, non-rationalist projects have coexisted alongside the main, rationalist current. By choosing some examples of criteria of rationality as a roster through which Esoteric doctrines can be observed, one can see how Esoteric positions, especially later ones such as anthroposophy as well as various versions of New Age thought, lean on both rationalist and non-rationalist persuasive strategies.
Rational argumentation is occasionally invoked to support reincarnationist doctrines. One can choose to refer to Ian Stevenson's studies and base one's claims on a syncretism between faith and science that is characteristic of the modern era. Within the Esoteric literature on reincarnation, one also finds the opposite: a trust in revealed information, in the wisdom of authorities. Believers can rely on the veracity of claims found in dozens of texts received through psychic means, i.e. channelled texts in which reincarnation is taken for granted. Regardless of which entities are said to be the source of revealed wisdom-archangels, Egyptian priests, ascended Masters, dolphins or extraterrestrial beings from the Pleiades-they all seem to have adopted turn-of-the century theosophical doctrines of the steady progress of the soul through successive lives.
Nineteenth century belief in reincarnation generally rested on classical religious motifs: the belief in messages revealed from suprahuman sources. Knowledge of the afterlife state was imparted to prophetic figures, to mesmerist and spiritist mediums, or to religious virtuosi such as H.P. Blavatsky. The details of reincarnation were presented in abstract myths or through the imaginary lives of significant individuals. With time, both the doctrines and their legitimizing strategies have changed. Tradition has gained considerable weight in texts that discuss reincarnation. The theosophical legend that the earliest Christian communities believed in the transmigration of souls would hardly have been so resilient in the face of contrary evidence if it did not serve an important purpose. Part of the process of secularization consists in the realization that there are many religious faiths. As long as one is only aware of a single tradition, its doctrines and rituals may seem self-evident.
Once one gets to know several conflicting stories, one's own set of beliefs risks being demoted to the status of one option among many. If one becomes aware of the fact that modern reincarnation belief is largely the product of a nineteenth century French author of schoolbooks, this knowledge might contribute to fostering a hermeneutic of suspicion.
Universalism becomes an effective remedy against doubt. If in the ultimate analysis, all religious are merely variations of a philosophiaperemis, the differences between Hindu, Christian or Spiritist beliefs are simply details. The question whether present-day reincarnation beliefs, as set out in the latest texts, were actually created or discovered) by Allan Kardec, Helena Blavatsky or some nameless Oriental sage becomes a matter of no great concern.
An the believer does not need to rely on blind faith alone. There are supposedly rational reasons for accepting reincarnation. For those who wish to take the next step in their interest in the afterlife, past life experiences are a "proof" freely available to anybody. The therapeutic practices that have sprung from past life beliefs are widespread today; those interested in investigating purported past life memories can do so with little practical difficulty. Rationalists may find it obvious that experiences are ambiguous and can sometimes even be directly misleading.
For large segments of the pseudo-scientific cultic milieu. it seems equally obvious that personal experiences are faithful maps of underlying reality. Herein lies a deep contradiction within post-New Age religiosity. Overtly, its texts commonly invoke a democratic ideal. according to which nothing needs to be taken on faith, and which insists that the readers' spiritual experiences are by far more important than any opinions that the author might entertain.
These experiences, however, are molded by the expectations of the most influential spokespersons of the movement. It might even be argued that earlier forms of authority, depending on claims to clairvoyance or contact with spiritual masters from Tibet, were easier to see through than the subtler strategies of the last few decades.
The doctrine of reincarnation has, at least overtly, also become democratized. The believer does not need to rely on blind faith alone.
There are supposedly rational reasons for accepting reincarnation. For those who wish to take the next step in their interest in the afterlife, past life experiences are a "proof" freely available to anybody. The therapeutic practices that have sprung from past life beliefs are widespread today; those interested in investigating purported past life memories can do so with little practical difficulty. Rationalists may find it obvious that experiences are ambiguous and can sometimes even be directly misleading. For large segments of the cultic pseudo-science milieu. it seems equally obvious that personal experiences are faithful maps of underlying reality.
Herein lies a deep contradiction within post-New Age religiosity. Overtly, its texts commonly invoke a democratic ideal. according to which nothing needs to be taken on faith, and which insists that the readers' spiritual experiences are by far more important than any opinions that the author might entertain. These experiences, however, are molded by the expectations of the most influential spokespersons of the movement. It might even be argued that earlier forms of authority, depending on claims to clairvoyance or contact with spiritual masters from Tibet, were easier to see through than the subtler strategies of the last few decades.
But is any of this possible?
If the expression, “force” as often quoted in reincarnation theories really referred to energy of some kind, it would have to be quantifiable. It would then be entirely possible to select a unit of this energy, and it would not be absurd to ask such questions as “Into how much heat or electricity can the force now present in this person being converted?” It would be possible to convert spiritual “force” into kinetic or chemical energy and it would in principle be possible to establish appropriate transformation formulas.
Let us ignore this objection and grant for the sake of discussion that “force” her refers to something that is real but not physical.
This would not be of any help to the supporters of the argument. The conservation principle has been shown by physicists to hold only for physical energy. If there is a nonphysical energy, we have no right whatever to say that the conservation principle applies to it. Incidentally, if we allow the concept of this “force,” there would be no reason to disallow a concept of “spiritual entropy”; and just as usable physical energy is constantly lost, so the same might well be true of spiritual energy.
Even if we waive all these objections, the argument would still prove nothing to the point. The conservation of physical energy does not guarantee the continued, much less the eternal, existence of particular entities. It is quite consistent with the destruction of houses, mountains, stars, and of course plants and animal bodies. What evidence is there that if our minds were indeed composed of spiritual energy, and if this energy were indestructible, that our individual minds exist for ever? It appears that versions of the argument had already some currency in the eighteenth century, quite a long time before the first formulation of conservation principles by physicists.
Astral projection means the same as OBE (out of body experience), often, however, the term has been used to refer to the separation of the astral from the physical body, and in this sense one has to deny the reality of astral projections or/and reincarnation.
Except when it is released for a journey, the astral body resides inside the regular body.
However, the exact state of the regular body at any given time is very largely the result of its movements and of influences upon it coming from its environment.
One would think that while it is safely “tucked” away inside the regular body, the astral body cannot do anything at all. But this is not all. One of the key propositions of astral theory which we have met on several occasions makes most of the external influences on the astral or “energy” body quite impossible. I am referring to all events in the person‘s life involving physical contact.
Allowing all the highly questionable factual reports and interpretations on the part of astral/energytheorists, it may be questioned whether the astral/energy body can be identical with the person whose life it is supposed to continue after death. Suppose for the sake of argument that somebody had a rabbit living inside of him and that the rabbit escaped after the person‘s death. This would surely not amount to the person‘s survival.
For sincere readers of Ian Stevenson‘s books and articles (quoted extensively in Ian Lawton’s 2003/04 book “Genesis Unveiled” as “evidence”, the question arises why the kind of cases that seems to occur with such frequency in India other countries in which reincarnation is part of the accepted religion does not occur in Western environments where there is no “belief” in reincarnation?
Stevenson first flatly denied that cases of the type captured in his books do not occur as much in the West. He asserts in his upcoming book “European Cases of the Reincarnation Type” he “also” has cases of children in the continental United States.
He admits, however, that such cases are reported much less frequently in cultures where the population does not believe in reincarnation, but he strongly emphasizes that this admission applies only to reported cases.
We have no valid information, he writes, “about the actual incidence” of cases and he once again expresses his suspicion that many parents refrain from reporting signs of reincarnation behavior on the part of their children for fear of ostracism and ridicule.
Our ordinary view of ourselves, as conscious, active agents experiencing a real external world, is wrong. In other words we live in the illusion that we are a separate self. In mystical experiences this separate self dissolves and the world is experienced as one - actions happen but there is no separate actor who acts. Long practice at meditation or mindfulness can also dispel the illusion. Now science seems to be coming to the same conclusion - that the idea of a separate conscious self is false.
Some old fashioned Parapsychologists however are still going the other way, and still are trying to prove that consciousness really does have power that our minds can reach out and “do” things. In this sense it is deeply dualist, and as I called, materialistic, even while making reference to interconnectedness.
1) See also: A True History of the Occult