When researching Near Death Experiences (NDE) and Past Life Theories, one discovers two vastly different views regarding death, reincarnation, and the spiritual realm. Materialists assert that everything is or can be explained in relation to matter. Consciousness is limited to and generated by the brain. This is opposed by those scientists and theorists who purport that human consciousness is a non-biological component associated with the brain and that it survives after physical death.
My proposed TV series explores this controversial dichotomy.
Each episode examines the evidence for the following phenomena.
Mediums/Materializations, Automatic Writings
Near Death Experiences
Instrumental Trans Communication (ITC)
Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP)
Reincarnation and Past Life Regression
Each episode ends with a past life regression via hypnosis.
Background
My interest derives not from a desire to try and explain certain phenomena, but rather to give a subjective account of my experiences interacting with clients requesting past life regression.
If you go to my webpage https://www.barryjones.com/new-blog/past-life-regression-my-experiences you will see those accounts.
My father, who I consider a straightforward type of person, very matter of fact! is my first example. During World War II, he survived 20 plus missions as a Lancaster bomber pilot. He never talked much about the war, but he did talk about his crew. They were family and it was his duty to bring them home safely. The statistics of returning from a mission were horrible. On one particular date, another crew, having lost several members in an unsuccessful mission during a raid, Dad’s rear gunner Tich was ordered to fly with the other crew. This was standard practice. My father and crew were not flying that evening, so Tich was sent over. Tich's plane was shot down and he died. After the war, my father went to a seance and he experienced an effigy/materialization of Tich in full uniform. My dad said he was as real as if he had still been alive.
Proposed Episode Subjects
The first phenomena explored:
Mediums/Materializations, Automatic Writings. In its simplest form, script which the writer produces involuntarily, and in some instances, without being aware that he is doing it. Scientists and sceptics consider automatic writing to be the result of the ideomotor effect. One of the most studied automatic writings are those of Chico Xavier’s An Empirical Investigation of Alleged Mediumistic Writing: A Case Study of Chico Xavier's Letters https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31158111/
Near Death Experiences, or NDEs, are triggered during singular life-threatening episodes, when the body is injured by blunt trauma, a heart attack, asphyxia, shock, and so on. About one in 10 patients with cardiac arrest in a hospital setting undergoes such an episode. Thousands of survivors of these harrowing touch-and-go situations tell of leaving their damaged bodies behind and encountering a realm beyond everyday existence, unconstrained by the usual boundaries of space and time.
“The Day I Died“ is one of the best documentaries made about Near Death Experiences, produced by the BBC, Discovery Channel and National Geographic.
“When the brain is not functioning, then consciousness can separate from the brain and is able to gain information, which becomes accessible when you regain consciousness.” ~ Dr. Peter Fenwick, Emeritus and Neuropsychiatrist. Kings College Institute of Psychiatry, London UK
Explanations for NDEs vary from scientific to religious. Neuroscience research hypothesizes that an NDE is a subjective phenomenon resulting from "disturbed bodily multisensory integration" that occurs during life-threatening events, while some transcendental and religious beliefs about an afterlife include descriptions similar to NDEs.
Instrumental Trans Communication (ITC) includes two-way communication between the physical plane and the spiritual plane of the afterlife. This communication may be by telephone, radio, computer, fax, or any other special device. The interaction may be stored by use of technical means and can include images and text as well as voices.
Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) is capturing spirit voices—however faint—on tape or hearing them on the telephone or radio, in contrast to ITC, which is a two-way communication. A leading researcher in this field is Anabela Cardoso. http://www.itcjournal.org/
The first recorded case of voice, identified as coming from the afterlife, happened in Milan, in the laboratory of experimental physics at the Catholic University. There, two priests were carrying out experiments: Father Agostino Gemelli, renowned physicist, founder of that university, and then president of the Pontifical Academy, and Father Pellegrino Emetti, Benedictine, also a physicist and specialist in pre-polyphonic music. With evidence in hand, they requested an interview with Pope Pius X11 who surprisingly agreed that this could mark the beginning of a new scientific study that would confirm faith in the beyond. The Catholic Church discreetly accepted trying to contact the dead, if done for scientific purposes or to help the bereaved.
Not everyone believes that the voices EVP researchers hear are otherworldly spirits. Some sceptics say that EVP is nothing more than radio interference. Others say that people who claim to have heard these voices are either imagining them or else their minds are creating meaning out of insignificant sound, projecting what the person wants or expects to hear on the recording.
Reincarnation and Past Life Regression (PLR)
Reincarnation is a central belief of many religions. Approximately 2 billion out of a world population of 7.9 billion. Additionally, estimates from various countries (Americans and Europeans) range from 12% to 44%. Therefore, understandably, there is much interest in phenomena related to the topic.
Two individuals have caused heightened awareness of these phenomena.
The most influential scientific research in this area has been done by Dr. Ian Stevenson, a psychiatrist who gave up scientific medicine to collect past-life experience stories (PLEs), that he thought provided evidence for reincarnation. In 1957, he became head of the department of psychiatry at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. In 1961, he began investigating past-life experiences (PLEs). He began collecting the first of some 2,500 stories, mostly coming from children, that he thought indicated memories of past lives. He left mainstream psychiatry in 1967 and established the Division of Personality Studies (now the Division of Perceptual Studies) at the University of Virginia. “My aim has never been to prove reincarnation, but only to find and report whatever evidence there is to make it seem possible.” Dr. Ian Stevenson.
The Journal of the American Medical Association referred to Stevenson's Cases of the Reincarnation Type (1975) as a "painstaking and unemotional" collection of cases that were "difficult to explain on any assumption other than reincarnation.”
Jim Tucker worked for several years on this research with Dr Ian Stevenson before taking over upon Stevenson's retirement in 2002.
https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/dops-media/video-reincarnation-research/
The most publicized modern case of this phenomena is the story of James Leinger.
https://www.techeblog.com/fascinating-story-of-james-leininger-the-reincarnated-world-war-ii-pilot/
Past Life Regression (PLR)
Dr. Brian Weiss, a graduate of Columbia University and Yale Medical School, Brian L. Weiss M.D. is Chairman Emeritus of Psychiatry at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami.
In a series of bestselling books, Dr. Weiss has recommended hypnosis for patients, in order to overcome phobias. These phobias, Dr. Weiss believes, go back to experiences from previous lives. By going back to those experiences through hypnosis, the patient confronts his/her fears, and ultimately, becomes desensitized to his/her original fears.
This area of study exemplified in his first book, Many Lives Many Masters, was an overwhelming success. Eight more books have followed. Workshops, speaking engagements and other commercial endeavours have Catapulted PLR into the mainstream.
Professor Chris French does not believe that people are lying about their past life regression experiences, “Just that they may be deluded into the belief that snippets of information floating through her mind are from a past life.” What compounds the delusion, French said, is their desire to believe.
"There's a phenomenon called confirmation bias, ———We find it much easier to believe in things -- we don't need the evidence to be that great -- if we really, really want to believe in them in the first place."
And why would anyone want to believe?
"Like any other form of belief in life after death, it actually helps us to cope with the idea of dying," French offered as a possible explanation.
Dying isn't so scary if we know we're going to come back if we know we're going to see our loved ones again in another life. French is currently Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and is head of their Anomalistic psychology Research Unit.
Another explanation of past lives could be genetic encoding. The idea that our memories are stored in our genes is a very recent and controversial one. It has been accepted since the experiments of Wilder Penfield MD, a neurosurgeon back in the fifties, that hidden away in each of us is a permanent record of our past.
https://www.mcgill.ca/neuro/about/wilder-graves-penfield
Neurobiologist Sandra Pena de Ortiz Pena believes that permanent memories are stored in altered genes. She and her colleagues believe that our DNA creates ‘memory molecules,’ new novel proteins, from a unique blueprint that could be formed by neurons rearranging their DNA in response to each new experience.
Memories are stored in our DNA —-and we pass on our DNA to our children, who do the same thing with their children— is it possible to access other ancestral memories located in our DNA? Could this be an explanation for past-life regression? When clients regress to memories from a previous life, is it actually them accessing something present in their genome blueprint, an ancestral experience?
Robert F. Almeder, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Georgia State University, examines the logic of believing, or not believing, evidence for reincarnation, like that provided by Dr. Stevenson. His discussion suggests contemplation, without automatically accepting or dismissing the evidence.
Almeder states that “there is a force to the case studies that is enticing, enthralling!” He says “it must be wrong” but that, the more he read, the more he realized the importance.
He states this is good empirical research——-that it rendered a scientific question--- and he could not think of any other alternative or plausible explanation for the data that some people reincarnate. If the data is acceptable, it shows our way of explaining human behaviour needs to break out of the existing paradigm.
How do we understand and explain these phenomena?
We only need to look at the ongoing existentialism between consciousness vs materialism to understand we probably never will.
Dr. Dave Chalmers, Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science and co-director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness. New York University, states, “The conclusion that I have come to is that if scientists, philosophers have to spend so much time and effort trying to explain consciousness then are they not missing the point. The reality consciousness is subjective and personal, and the more science spends studying the brain as a way of explaining it the further they will move from consciousness. All it will do is give us a better understanding of the anatomy and biochemistry of the brain, and that is good. I also think it’s important to study consciousness to aspire to a greater understanding, but if we need our intellectual mind to do this then we are missing the point. In some ways, you could say I was missing the point trying to explain this, but that is part of my journey”.
References
Documentary BBC ❖ What Is The Consciousness- Does Reality Exist
The Neuroscience of Consciousness
This Life, Next Life (A Documentary by Dr. Keith Parsons~ Life After Death This Life, Next Life (A Documentary by Dr. Keith Parsons~ Life After Death
Interviews, conducted and recorded from academia, who have specialised knowledge in each of the presented phenomena.
Subjects for Past life regression should be initially screened through a casting call. Another source for subjects that would be willing to participate can be found through Facebook (and other social media) Past Life Regression groups. Online Zoom sessions can be recorded and reviewed to narrow down potential “captivating” candidates.
University Based Research Units
University of Edinburgh-Koestler Parapsychology Unit -
https://koestlerunit.wordpress.com/
https://koestlerunit.wordpress.com/research-overview/
University of Hertfordshire -
University of Arizona Center for Consciousness Studies -
https://consciousness.arizona.edu/
University of Virginia -
https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/
Lund University, Sweden -
https://www.psy.lu.se/en/research-0/research-networks/cercap
Sources for Episode Concepts to Illustrate
Academic Papers
Characterizations of near death experiences using text mining analyses: A preliminary study.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0227402
The Healing Power of the Unconscious: How Can We Understand Past Life Experiences in Psychotherapy?
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/008124639502500204
Is Past Life Regression Therapy Ethical?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5797677/
Reincarnation research. An old idea re-examined with new methods in the 21st century.
https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/informit.619509047019086
The Physiology of Incarnation Process; Lessons from Pre-birth Experiences and Reincarnation-type Cases
A Comprehensive Academic Review of Reincarnation Research
Abstracts from 43rd International SPR Annual Conference
Page 13. Interpreting Electronic Voice Phenomena: The Role of Auditory Perception, Paranormal Belief and Individual Differences. School of Psychology, University of Central Lancashire
Page 15. ’More Voices and Faces from the Greetings Project’: A five-year investigation into Instrumental Trans-Communication
P 31. Deciphering the Messy Data of Contemporary Materialisation and Apport Phenomena: Is a Theory to Distinguish Mediumship from PK and Fraud Possible? Harvard Divinity School
Terms and definitions for subjective information reception from discarnate beings: A systematic review
Talking to the dead, listening to yourself: an empirical study on the psychological aspects of interpreting electronic voice phenomena
Musings on Materializations: Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 33, No. 1, pp. 73–113, 2019
https://www.scientificexploration.org/docs/33/jse_33_1_Alvarado.pdf
An Experimental Investigation of Past-Life Experiences