Pragmatic Reincarnationism
"Human beings can live without air for a few minutes, without water for about two weeks, without food for about two months - and without thinking for years on end." Kent Ruth
In a recent book entitled "Celebrity Regressions", Mrs Lee Everett describes how she cures psychological disorders by making her patients go through "therapeutic regression". She brings her patients into a trance which she calls "deep meditation". There they re-visit one of their past lives, discovering the reasons for fears, phobias and other weaknesses they have never understood.
Take, for instance, her patient Elton John who is a quite well known pop singer in Britain. In his first memory, Elton John sees himself as a country squire in seventeenth century England who was interested in music, but died early. His second memory reveals that he was a French nobleman of the nineteenth century, dying while on a holiday in Venice. His third memory uncovers his past as a British soldier who fought during the first World War and who died in a car crash as a bus driver in the early forties. Such memories are then used by Lee Everett to explain Elton's character traits: for instance, his involvement in music as a composer and singer, but also his fear of travelling.
Everett's book discloses the early lives of other well known persons, such as Tony Blackburn, Fenella Fielding, Sharon Davies, Wayne Steep, Jimmy Tarbuck and Lynsey De Paul. In each case the discovery of his or her previous incarnation is claimed to solve immediate psychological problems.5
Now the really interesting thing in these descriptions is that reincarnation is simply taken for granted. There is no need here of explaining its logic in a doctrinal system of thought. In fact, the various personalities involved hail from different backgrounds. Some are Christian, some are secular humanists, some have drifted between a number of new religious movements. The implication is clear: reincarnation is accepted as a fact that, apparently, stands on its own. One's belief system seems irrelevant.
Belief without doctrine?
I have worked out this example a little at length because it illustrates what I would like to call "pragmatic reincarnationism". With this I mean the belief in reincarnation without feeling the need of any supporting doctrinal ideology. Reincarnation is accepted for pragmatic reasons: for instance, because it can bring healing, without any worry or concern regarding the plausibility of the theory itself.
The same doctrine-free approach we find with many mind-body-spirit healers. Denise Linn is well known in Britain because of her healing audio cassettes entitled "Journeys into Past Lives". These tapes are very practice-oriented. They help people, to use the words of Linn herself, "to create an inner vortex from which you can take a quantum leap into your past". They help people evoke experiences of their past lives by travelling through their inner-dimensional doors that connect them to their ancient past. They help people travel back "into the womb and beyond", and to enter the world of spirit exploration.
Linn's audio cassettes promise to bring forth hidden talents, to discover ancient abilities and to rid people of obstacles created through failures and defeats in previous existences. Again, in all this, reincarnation itself is taken for granted.No consistent belief system is offered to support it. In fact, the impression is given that the practice could very well be harmonised with either a totally Christian understanding of the world, or an agnostic one.6
The Appeal of Reincarnation
When dealing with reincarnation as we find it among youth in western culture, one is struck by the lack of doctrinal interest and a more immediate interest in the benefits received by reincarnation. Reincarnation is seized upon by many people as a solution to emotional problems or as a remedy for psychological defects.The idea of reincarnation is perceived as having advantages that make it easier to live and understand life.
In particular I can find the following four practical reasons that seem to give reincarnation its present appeal.
1. Healing.
As explained above, reincarnation is seen by people as an explanation for certain character traits and events in one's life that would require, it is thought, a specific explanation. Rather than blaming oneself, one's family or one's immediate history, one can now blame happenings in a distant past that can then be manipulated as stepping stones for an improvement in one's life.
It seems to me that this potential for healing contained in the idea of reincarnation is actively exploited in some new religious movements, such as in Scientology, and in many therapeutic practices found in the West. Reincarnation sells because it promises healing.
2. Escape from death.
It is a wellknown fact that coping with death is a social and personal problem in western societies. Death is avoided as a taboo.7 The whole of consumerist society aims at presenting life as a happy story in which there really is no place for death. Health, success, romantic relationships and social achievement, are held out as the great ambitions.
Faced with an actual occurrence of death, many people are at a loss how to give a proper intellectual and emotional response. Since people often lack deep Christian convictions and since at the same time the secular world holds out only the prospect of bleak annihilation at death, people are desperately looking for an answer.
It is interesting that Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, who has contributed so much to the counselling and guidance of the dying, came herself to an acceptance of reincarnation because of her exposure to the phenonomen of death.8 In her lecture "Life, Death and Life after death", she explains how her belief in reincarnation arose from near-death experiences, from watching people struggle with the meaning of life, from the desire of relatives wanting to have contact with those who had died and from the need of explaining death to young children. She narrates that she started out as a complete agnostic, but that in the course of her care for the dying, she came to accept the principle of "soul" and the reality of life after death. Reincarnation seemed to her to naturally fit this new pattern.
Reincarnation as a ploy to escape death also fits in well with the psychological observation made by Eric Berne that our inner selves are constructed on the premise that we are immortal. Berne considered this an illusion with psychological advantages. A human being cannot imagine himself or herself to be annihilated.9 As a consequence, when the idea of resurrection and heaven are vague, reincarnation provides a way out.
"Death is the most awesome and terrifying mystery of our existence." Martin Heidegger
In a secular context, death implies the end of everything. We lose our identity, we have to take leave of all who are dear to us, we have to give up our unfulfilled dreams and submit to a blind fate. The idea of reincarnation then comes as a welcome liberation. It offers new hope.
3. The vindication of justice.
To many people life seems unfair. Why should some families enjoy wealth and success, while others die in humiliation and poverty? There do not seem to be adequate reasons for these discrepancies in life itself. If reincarnation exists, justice can be vindicated by its reference to previous and future lives.
This line of reasoning even appeals to Christians. The Christian author Geddes MacGreggor says:10
"Reincarnationism takes care of the problem of moral injustice. To the age old question of Job (why do the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer), the reincarnationists have a ready answer: we are seeing in this life only a fragment of a long story. If you come in at the chapter in which the villain beats the hero to a pulp, of course you will ask the old question.
You may even put down the book at that point and join forces with those who call life absurd, seeing no justice in the Universe. That is because you are too impatient to go on to hear the rest of the story, which will unfold a much richer pattern in which the punishment of the wicked and the vindication of the righteous will be brought to light. Death is but the end of a chapter; it is not, as the nihilist proposes, the end of the story".
Doctor Leslie Weatherhead,a former president of the Methodist Conference of Great Britain, agrees when he says:
"The intelligent Christian asks not only that life should be just, but that it should make sense.Does the idea of reincarnation not help here?....If I fail to pass those examinations in life which can only be taken while I dwell in a physical body, shall I not have to come back and take them again?"11
4. The Dream of a Second Chance
Many people are disappointed with their lives. They see many of their ambitions unfulfilled. They acknowledge that they have failed in important relationships. They feel that, when given the opportunity, they would like to re-live their lives in a better way. This gives rise to the dream of a second chance. Again, reincarnation offers this promise.
The Christian notion of a definitive judgment at the end of just one shot at life, is perceived by many as a rather slender prospect. In western culture, it goes against the accepted pattern in which people get fresh opportunities, for instance when failing to pass a test, when having been convicted of a crime, or when having failed in a marriage relationship. There is always a second chance: a re-sitting of the exam; probation and rehabilitation after a prison sentence; divorce and remarriage in relationship. The uniqueness of a one-life trial goes against the whole ideology that considers the consumer king. Reincarnation, on the other hand, promises a second serving at the banquet of life.
From "Pragmatic Reincarnation. The belief in reincarnation among young people in western culture" by John Wijngaards
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