M.J. Rose

Although it is often difficult to separate the concept of reincarnation from fearful thoughts of death, reincarnation is as much about beginnings as it is about endings. Perhaps if we focus on the lighter half of the equation we may be able to avoid the trap of fearing the unknown?

Tune in to The Best of Our Knowledge online and listen to their show Beginnings:

“Where do we come from? It’s a fair question. Physicist Michio Kaku says we’re the reverb of a Big Bang from another universe. No, says poet Stephen Mitchell – the answer’s in our creation stories. But midwife Ina May Gaskin knows where we really come from – mom. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge we’ll talk about Beginnings.”

Also covered in the show is Dr. Jim B. Tucker’s book Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children’s Memories of Previous Lives (St. Martin’s Press). Dr. Tucker discusses his book and his research in the area of reincarnation.

Read a review of Dr. Tucker’s book from the Journal of Scientific Exploration.

For more on the subject of children’s past lives, visit the website for the University of Virginia’s project on children’s memories of previous lives.

Back when I lived in Manhattan I felt a bit like a walking corpse thanks to long hours worked in publishing and a severe lack of home cooking, so I sometimes bowed out of the rigorous happy hour gatherings of the working stiffs in my circle to rest my bones and tune my brain at an NYU lecture. At one of these lectures I had the pleasure of listening to author Mary Roach speak about her new book – Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. The subject was macabre and yet Roach somehow made it hilariously funny – an intelligent book about dead bodies, funny? This hooked me. I went out and read it, or rather, inhaled it. I kept my eye on Roach and very soon she granted her devotees another book, this time on the subject of life after death. In this book, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, Roach with her winking and skeptical eye, digs into the subject we here at the Reincarnationist can’t get enough of. I recommend you read Stiff first and then sink your teeth into Spook. You’ll have your fill of the mundane and mechanical tickings of bodily death, and will then be delighted to indulge in Roach’s scientific exploration of the inkling that all this roaming about in skin suits may be more than a purely biological experience…

“A sharp-eyed supernatural history.” –O: The Oprah Magazine, October 2005

Now, for some instant gratification, read this little treatise on death and all its workings…

Raymond Moody, an American medical student with a background in philosophy, is the author of the best selling book “Life After Life”, in which he collects the accounts given by 150 survivors of near death encounters.

In Life After Life, Raymond Moody investigates case studies of people who experienced “clinical death” and were subsequently revived. First published in 1975, this classic exploration of life after death started a revolution in popular attitudes about the afterlife and established Dr. Moody as the world’s leading authority in the field of near-death experiences. Life After Life forever changed the way we understand both death — and life — selling millions of copies to a world hungry for a greater understanding of this mysterious phenomenon.

More about Dr. Moody: World-Renowned Scholar and Researcher, Dr. Moody’s research into the phenomenon of near-death experience had its start in the 1960’s. Visit his website for more information about Moody and his research, and to purchase his books.