A Contribution to the Coming Generations ¹

Abstract

“As you sow, so shall you reap”

This is a call to all regression therapist tcolleagues to contribute to a deeper and better understanding of our relationship with the environment in terms of reincarnation. According to all the incoming scientific data, it is more than evident that human activities have a deep impact on Mother Earth. Homo Sapiens is pushing the planet to its limits. What we do today has a direct and probably irreversible effect on the fate of the planet. We are poisoning the habitat of the coming generations. However, what most of us have never thought about, is that it is we who will harvest the problems that we plant today. It will be us in different bodies, our future incarnations, who will reap the subsequent disasters in the future. Our descendants will be none other than us…

Introduction

Humankind has not woven the web of life.
We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
All things are bound together.
All things connect.

Chief Seattle 1854

If the Chief did not say everything then who did? We live in a remote tiny little part of a remote galaxy somewhere at the edges of space and time in our Cosmos. Our galaxy is but a tiny grain of sand in a huge beach of 100 billion galaxies. And our solar system is a minute system among other 100 billion solar systems within that galaxy. Our home planet is but a tiny dot within that solar system. Furthermore, if the biosphere, that is the habitat within which life of all known creatures can manifest itself here on Earth had the thickness of a page of a book, then that book must have been a massive one consisting of fifteen hundred pages.

In terms of time if our Cosmos came into being at the first day of January of a hypothetical year at exactly 00.00 hours then, we as human species showed up at 23.56 of December 31^st. Colombus discovered America the very last second of this year. I hope that it is clear by now that it should not be that difficult to imagine that an average human lifetime is all the more tiny.  Finally, we are coming to a point where we pretend that we know where we are, how we came about and how things around us operate. Within this context a fallacy (among many others) that many of us have, is that we think that we come here on Earth only once. So some of us think that it is “so unfortunate that things are going so awfully for the planet”. “How unworthy for the poor coming generations!” “We are not going to be there to see the disaster”. And there our guilty feelings for our actions are over. We turn back to business as usual pretending that nothing is happening. We act as if this is taking place elsewhere, as if it has no effect whatsoever to our environment. What a shortsighted and narrow-minded approach to view life. Here is a brief myth from ancient Greece:

Erysihthon was a young and arrogant ruler of Thessaly. He wanted to build an extension to his big palace for his feasts and banquets but he violated a rule set by the gods. He set off with his slaves to the sacred forest of Dotion dedicated to goddess Demeter. No one was allowed to cut those trees because they were sacred. So when he gave the order to his slaves to proceed, the goddess transformed herself into an old lady and warned him of the hazards involved in violating the rules, advising him to go elsewhere for his wood. He neglected her advice and had his slaves cut down trees from the forest. Then the protector of seeds, land and cultivation, the goddess of agriculture revealed her true nature. The workers fled in terror. She then exclaimed “go on with building your chambers you will be spending a long time in there”. She then cursed him to devour everything around him as he devoured her forest. Nothing on Earth would be able to satisfy his hunger or thirst. So that is exactly what happened. He first ate up all his goods, all the flocks of his pasture. Sheep, goats, cows, horses even dogs and cats and then when his hunger was not satiated he started devouring even his own flesh…

It is not difficult for any of us to guess what happened next. Is this just a myth or is it a horrible reality we live in? Are we not, as a human race, following the same track today? Are we not eating our own flesh?

Let us take just a glimpse at the facts…

Ecology versus Economy.

Chief Tuiavii 1910

Take a look around you. Things are not what they used to be. Industrial revolution along with the population explosion and the rise of capitalism brought a profound and deep change on our environment by altering the conditions and the rules of the processes of economic life. Our increasing emphasis on materialistic values transposed life away from meaning. The constant and ever increasing pursuit for profit, for expanding private property and uncontrolled development brought this planet to its limits. People neurotically accumulate layers of wealth as if they will live forever, forgetting that their wealth is somebody else’s poverty. We have one pie to eat from and this is not shared equally. The top ten percent of the population, control 85 percent of the global wealth. The principles of “free” economy brought multinational conglomerates in power and oligopolic control of the resources of the planet. The rise of the “affluent” societies came at the expense of the underdeveloped. “Golden boys” at the top and exasperated workers gasping for a dollar per day at the bottom. Whole nations were forced to dependent labor and the world economy has created a constantly starving monster called Homo Consumens Universalis,[3] a willing and passive consumer. Capital has no nationality and knows of no boundaries. Cultures with thousands of years of history have been subjugated to the globalization process at the expense of their original cultural identities in favor of homogeneity.  Meanwhile, the developed nations behave hypocritically against the poorest developing countries. They export dirty technology behaving like naughty children hiding the dirt under the carpet, pretending that nothing is happening. Economy is acting at the expense of ecology. For every calorie that reaches our mouth thirteen calories have been wasted on the way. Is this not a deficit? What economists celebrate, ecologists mourn. The rise on the standards of living is becoming rather irrelevant as they keep on rising.

But what is economy after all. Is it not the whole process of the production and consumption cycle? Is it not the concept of supply and demand? And is the market working by a magic force or is it the aggregate result of our own actions? Is it not the Gross International Product, and are we not responsible for this? We are shareholders of this Global Disaster Corporation Unlimited whether we like it or not. Each and every one of us has at least one share in this nasty corporation. We are part of the process of raping mother Earth. Not only do we deplete the resources of the Earth but we also contaminate everything there is with our waste products. We use chemicals to process goods but care less where these chemicals end up. We turn on our electrical devices but ignore that the nuclear industries dump their waste in the oceans. We are indifferent to the effects our air conditioners have on the ozone layer. We have no regard of what damage our cars’ emissions are doing to the atmosphere. We really do not care about the Greenhouse Effect and global warming. Every year millions of acres become deserts. Year by year drinkable water becomes less and less because we pollute it. Virgin forests are being devastated by our insatiable need for wood and paper. Our daily activities suppress biological diversity by exterminating thousands of species per year. We act as if we own this planet and dump the waste in our backyard. The time is not far that our backyard will crash upon us.  Let us pause for a moment and put some things into perspective.

Every morning we wake up we go at the rest room. What do we do there? We dispose off all our waste material. All this organic material that is not useful and needed by our organism. Just imagine for a moment how important this process is. Life could not exist without this process. However, almost all of us pretend that this is not happening. We function as if “our shit does not stink”. Who amongst us knows exactly what happens after we flush the toilet? Where does all this waste go day after day? Is it processed and if so in what way? Is the processing partial or full? Are we aware of how other cultures solved the particular problem? It seems that economy deals with what we produce and how we consume, while ecology deals with what we process and how we dispose of the waste products.

As these lines are written there is a deep economic recession underway that some call it a crisis. This “crisis” is really a result of exchanging a future income for a blissful today’s living. Millions of people took a mortgage of their future labor power for a prosperous today. They saw the cheese but did not see the trap. What they actually did to themselves was to enslave their future income and labor power to the greedy bankers…

It is not the scope, nor the intention of this article to extensively present this complex problem. You can find all the relative information and scientific publications of how we persistently destroy our planet by surfing on the internet. But no matter how long you search you will not find anything on how we will all be accounted for all this. Google will not find this for you… That is called responsibility. Things do not just happen. We make them happen. Consciously or not, we constantly make choices. Whether there is an intention or not, we are responsible for the outcome, even for the unforeseen byproducts of our activities. Our existence here on this planet has been   our choice and that leads to the next part of our paper.

Reincarnation.[4]

Cebes: I am confident in the belief that there truly is such a thing as living again, and that the living spring from the dead, and that the souls of the dead are in existence, and that the good souls have a better portion than the evil.

in Plato’ s Phaedo

If there is a unique understanding in our profession which has a political impact upon humanity, then it is certainly the fact that we incarnate constantly. The “soil” upon which we will grow is the same soil we have been cultivating for millenniums. It took humanity only a few decades to bring the planet to a state far from equilibrium. After a review of reincarnation literature and related studies I think we could possibly say that consciousness is not a by-product of biological and electrochemical processes but on the contrary, mind utilizes the structure offered by the brain to express itself on the restrained, condensed world of matter. It is probably the attempt of a Higher Consciousness to accumulate experience at the level of this particular space-time. Through countless embodiments the psyche accumulates experiences and develops an understanding by being constantly exposed to the limits set by space and time.[5] During the bardo state there usually comes a time of assessment and greater understanding of our deeds. It is evident (even though there is lack of unanimity for this) that thousands of people who have been regressed have offered us a lot of material on which to work upon.  It seems to me that a just representation of the findings of regression therapists in conjunction with other fields of borderline research (and there is plenty of strong evidence to support them) could be summed up in the following manner:

Ø Consciousness is not a product of biological processes.

Ø Consciousness cannot be reduced to the brain but retains its coherence and integrity without its biological substrate.

Ø Some part of human consciousness seems to survive biological death.

Ø It also seems to retain specific memories from former incarnations.

Ø It also seems to retain traumatic material that was not assimilated or released during the bardo stage.

Ø The brain acts as an instrument of the mind, allowing it to unfold. In effect the brain limits consciousness.

Ø “There must be a domain other than space-time in which we exist in an organized fashion between death and birth. Hence the cosmos is multidimensional and populated by more types of beings than we previously imagined”.[6]

The list is probably not full and it will probably become larger as new findings will be revealed. It sticks to the very basics and does not take into account religious ideas and/or occult dogmas that have prevailed through history. I am doing this to stick with a scientific approach as far as this may be feasible in any  field, which deals with consciousness, a non-measurable value. Sticking to facts and experiences without formulating a dogma is probably a better approach and is open to re-evaluation and revision.

But what are the repercussions of these basic premises?

First, they show us that the basic assumptions of our current scientific paradigm, is deeply challenged. The dominant materialistic and monistic worldview must be revised if it is to take into account our findings. We cannot go on in our understanding of life processes if we do not radically revise our paradigm.

Second, traditional and fundamentalist Hebrew, Christian and Moslem (with some exceptions) dogma must be radically revised to incorporate our findings instead of seeing Satan behind all that we have discovered. On the other hand religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism that accept the reality of reincarnation have some ideas about it that do not coincide with our findings. They also need to revise their dogmas.

A reader of this article would by now start wondering at and questioning my assertions. Are billions of believers and millions of scientists so fundamentally wrong and deluded? And are the findings of a few dozens of regression therapists enough to overthrow an established worldview? Is it not arrogance to challenge the prevailing view? It may be so indeed. Historians of the future will be in the position to know the answer. What I now know is that the majority of humans for thousands of years believed that the sun was revolving around the earth and it was only a handful of people that challenged this dominant belief with the known dangers for their integrity.

Third, if science, most religions and most spiritual disciplines have failed to depict an accurate picture of what life is, are we as human individuals not affected? What are our values, our beliefs our expectations? Have we been looking in the wrong direction for so long? If we were to accept that we incarnate again and again, how are we supposed to behave from here on? Are we to be held accountable for what we do? Is there a sort of committee that judges us? Do our actions have an impact on our future incarnations? Is that called karma?

Karma.

That which within us is solely valuable, we carry in our current life from previous spiritual existences.

Empress Elisabeth of Austria

Let us put karma into the discussion. When I use this concept I approach it very cautiously and with great hesitation. It is a word heavily misused by a variety of individuals from astrologers to priests and full of misconceived notions of heavy connotations and disparaging interpretations. In order for karma to exist, there probably has to be a stage of 'life between lives'. Then, in some way, there has to be a higher mind or intelligence that collects all this information and processes it. For the law of karma to be valid there probably must be another sphere or state of existence, other than the one we know and live in.

We are like archaeologists. We examine human footprints on this planet. That is what we have in common but from a different perspective. These imprints, while they manifest themselves many times  on the physical plane (birthmarks or birth defects), they also brand the psyche. That is where karma seems to enter the picture. We do not have tabula rasa; we have tabula scripta. And as a book has pages over pages we accumulate experiences over experiences and some of us know where this book is kept.

In this domain I prefer to put things in the form of questions instead of statements. I feel more comfortable that way. Since this paper is not presenting findings but is a plea to colleagues to write down their findings.

So is reincarnation voluntary, or imposed on us? Is it my choice to come onto Earth or not? What is decisive for that to happen? Our intentions? What we actually did? Is there room for morality? What happens to a member of the Ku Klux Klan, or to a torturer from Auschwitz? What happens to their victims? What of the caste system in India? Is it a representation of a spiritual distribution,or is it a distorted model that 'validates' social exploitation? What about capital punishment? Should states impose the death penalty on citizens?

What happens to aborted fetuses? Are we held responsible for this, and if so, in what way? Are we to be held responsible for our deeds? Is Karma a bill of liabilities? Are there any interest rates on it?

Do we have a say on the race, nationality, religion, or the country in which we will be born? Do we retain some of the qualities acquired through successive incarnations, or do we start from scratch? Do we announce our coming through dreams?

Further on have we incarnated as plants or animals? If so, is this done in an evolving way or not? How about other, non-human entities; Do angels exist? Demons? Extra Terrestrials? Is it possible to have more than one resident in a body and if so, how is that feasible?

Socrates (469-399 BC) based his beliefs on the pre-existence of the soul on the inherent feeling of justice (or injustice) evident in young children. He wondered why a child would feel cheated upon if he had not had a previous existence and a prior knowledge of what is right or wrong. And why was a young slave of no education able to solve complex mathematical problems and come up with solutions so naturally?

The ancient inhabitants of the land on which I now live believed that before an individual incarnated three goddesses were responsible for his fate. They were the three Fates. Clotho (weaver), who weaved life’s destiny, the longer the thread the longer the possibility for that individual to grow old; Lachesis (fortune), who brought in luck, surprise, coincidence, or impediments and hardships; and Atropos (the inevitable), who ultimately decided when to cut life’s thread, many times abruptly and without notice. Does this in some way suggest predestination? No, not only. Personal choice was just as important; people had responsibility for their actions and it was they who differentiated the outcome of the choices of gods. During life and if people deviated from the original plan they would have to face Themis (Justice), who would enforce order and allocate justice by particularly protecting the weak. If this did not work, then Nemesis (Revenge) would enter the picture and harshly punish anyone  for disturbing the order (especially nature’s order) and harmony; she would only be tamed if order was reestablished. After bodily death they would encounter a judging committee who would evaluate their deeds and decide their future destiny in the afterlife…

So, how do we put all these together? Mythology is good enough but how do we move on from here? I think the answer is simple: we must form a committee with members from all the associations related to our work : IARRT; IBRT; EARTh and other national associations. Then, we should study the material, which is already in print, either in the form of books, or articles published in the Journal of Regression Therapy, or other journals. Then we should classify the material in general categories under basic questions/topics. For instance, does consciousness survive bodily death? Then we should list underneath and quote all the relevant findings and publications. After putting down all the basic questions/topics on the line we should conduct a questionnaire, which we should then send to all members of the aforementioned associations and ask the members, not only to fill in 'yes' or 'no' questions, but to submit case studies under each question/topic as well. When all this material is gathered and collected, we should then edit it to produce a volume (or more) for publication.

It is important for us to substantiate the material presented, to select the strongest cases and to have good documentation. This is imperative in order for others to take us seriously. We are ridiculed enough already. We either decide to become serious and get out there in the open and fight for our case, or, we stick with our stagnant introversion and self-centeredness. We have such a work in print already: the wonderful two-volume book of Winafred Lucas Regression Therapy (1993). Let us surpass it…

Conclusion.

Natural scientists came up with a definite warning: we either change the way we produce, distribute and consume energy in the next ten years or we will be held responsible for the irreversible destruction of life as we know it on this planet. Lay people seem not to realize that they cannot get away with it. In addition we as regression therapists are participants in a process that most people of this planet are not even aware of. We are practicing a profession that changes peoples' lives. These profound changes come about simply because our clients (and ourselves at the same time) come to a deep realization, the fact that we have been here before. Not only have we incarnated before, but some of the persisting behavioral problems that enfeeble us originate from former incarnations as well. Therapists practice daily and we see miracles happening in our offices from time to time. Day by day we realize that life’s processes are more than what we have been taught in school. Modern science and traditional religions have been offering us a limited and distorted view of the cosmos. Let us offer them our findings and let us be the ones to break the dam. Let us offer our fellow humans our gift. That is, the fact that none else but we will be the future generations and we are to harvest the seeds that we have planted today.[7] Let us add our findings to the predictions of natural scientists and spread the word that we are responsible for what is happening. So, let us not make the same mistake as some of our fellow humans have, by mortgaging our future incarnations for a purportedly 'better' today. As Michael Grosso (2004) has so elegantly demonstrated there is enough evidence to suggest that we are actually shaping and forming the conditions of our afterlife reality[8]. So, let us assume responsibility now…Let us change course before it is too late for the planet. Let us become active at the physical, cognitive and spiritual levels. Let us discover our psyches…

Acknowledgements.

The thoughts of colleagues Hans Ten Dam, Urlich Kramer and Jan Erik Sigdell, were quite illuminating and fertile for the development of this article. I am grateful for their contribution. Thanks to Louis Siron and Jannet Cunningham for their corrections. Also I am indebted  to Belinda Tanner for the final editing.

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