Whatever you may believe about reincarnation, near death experiences, or NDEs, are incredibly well documented. Clint Eastwood’s film The Hereafter covers some of this territory –

The hereafter, Casino Jack and vengeance
via Roger Ebert’s Journal by Roger Ebert

Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter considers the possibility of an afterlife with tenderness, beauty and a gentle tact. I was surprised how enthralling I found it. I don’t believe in woo-woo, but there’s no woo-woo anywhere to be seen.

It doesn’t even properly suppose an afterlife, but only the possibility of consciousness after apparent death. This is plausible. Many near-death survivors report the same memories, of the white light, the waiting figures and a feeling of peace.

The subject lends itself to sensationalizing and psychic baloney. Eastwood has made a film for sensitive, intelligent people who are naturally curious about what happens when the shutters close. He tells three primary stories. Their three central characters meet at the end, but please don’t leap to conclusions. This is not one of those package endings where all the threads come together in a Coincidence that makes everything clear. They meet in a perfectly explicable and possible way, they behave as we feel they might, and everything isn’t tied up neatly. Instead, possibilities are left open in this world, which is as it should be, because we must live the lives we know and not count on there being anything beyond the horizon…

For the complete article, click here to go to The Chicago Sun-Times.

Beyond the obvious legal and moral and cultural controversies regarding a certain lab created synthetic microbe called Synthia, the success of such a man-made life form evokes fascinating spiritual questions. The DNA in this tiny creature was hand stitched in its entirety from scientist-created bits. What will happen when our human DNA is eventually re-created molecule by molecule in the lab, resulting in a complete living and breathing person?  This would not be a clone per say, but a completely synthetic human being. Beyond cyborg, as cyborgs contain mechanical or robotic parts along with the biological, and even far beyond babies created from eggs or sperm grown from stem cells. The DNA of these beings would have never, at any point, been human.

Synthetic human blood is already a reality.

Will scientists be able to resist such a Frankensteinian act of creation? Will cultural morality and global law bind them? Will we as humans be able to reach a level of moral maturity that can manage the ethical, spiritual, and cultural subtleties of such a “being” walking in our midst?

Without direct proof, it has proven difficult for many of us to accept even the possibility that we humans have souls: would be able to conceive of these synthetic humans as entities that contain souls of their own?

…And, if they are bearing souls, would these people enter into the cycle of death and rebirth with us, and if so, will they then actually become us?

Reincarnationist, author, and prominent psychiatrist Dr. Weiss was censured by the medical establishment in 1988 after he published “Many Lives, Many Masters” which details his work with a patient he calls Catherine, who remembered multiple past lives.

Now, according to this very interesting piece, below, from The New York Times, Dr. Weiss says: “Doctors are e-mailing me. They’re not so concerned with their reputations and careers. We can talk about this openly. And it’s not just psychiatrists, but surgeons and architects.”

Is reincarnation finally being accepted within the scientific community? An exciting thought indeed…

Remembrances of Lives Past

 

Dustin Leader for The New York Times

Peter Bostock and his wife, Jo-Anne, of Winnipeg, Manitoba. He believes they loved each other in past lives working on an estate in 1880s Derbyshire, England. (By LISA MILLER)

In one of his past lives, Dr. Paul DeBell believes, he was a caveman. The gray-haired Cornell-trained psychiatrist has a gentle, serious manner, and his appearance, together with the generic shrink décor of his office — leather couch, granite-topped coffee table — makes this pronouncement seem particularly jarring.

In that earlier incarnation, “I was going along, going along, going along, and I got eaten,” said Dr. DeBell, who has a private practice on the Upper East Side where he specializes in hypnotizing those hoping to retrieve memories of past lives. Dr. DeBell likes to reflect on how previous lives can alter one’s sense of self…

 

For the complete article please click here.