Greg Paxson

What happens to me after I die? Am I silent -- save what deeds and progeny I've left behind -- to live on only in the memory of others? Or does something of me live on, in some way conscious, a self-aware presence? And if I do have a self-aware presence, where do I go, what becomes of me? Do I go to heaven and hang out singing church music, or get sent to that horrible hot place and sing rock'n'roll?

Worthy questions, if somewhat obscured by the effort of getting through the day, the latest ball scores, the state of the market or of your family. For millennia, philosophers have asked "How shall I best live?" and the question of what happens after it's all over remains obscure. According to various Gallup polls over the years, about 28-40% of the American population believes in reincarnation, with the remainder holding to what they've been told in church or relying on the genteel work of the worms. Personally, I think most Americans regard death as something that happens to other people, probably spoilers or smokers deserving of their bad luck.

But that would not be you. You are reading a publication that features spiritual strategies for life-enhancement through, let's see, astrology, Reiki and other forms of energy healing, Tarot, Oriental varieties, Celtic variations, trips to Peru, and transforming your primary relationship amongst the pillars of Stonehenge and whatever other consciousness-raising options the editors choose to offer in any given issue. I'm all for it! We truly need to have experiences that break open the subconscious expectations of life we acquired growing up. Thinking about reincarnation starts to make some real sense, because it energizes the notion that one's life can really mean something beyond its apparent end. You have a purpose, and thus a personal mystery to unravel. You have a journey, and its end is beyond the horizon of your own imagination.

Reincarnation! In ancient times called "the transmigration of the soul,' the theory says that after death one returns to a new body and begins again, in a new life. Among the Inuit, for example, it's expected that one might return as a replacement for a recently departed grandmother. Inuits hadn't met any Hindus, so they kind of kept the idea in the family. The Hindus hadn't met any Inuits either, so they kept the idea within the caste system. The Buddha, having grown up as a Hindu, observed that "life is suffering," and in his compassion, taught the way, through the effort of many lifetimes, to leave "the wheel of reincarnation" and enter the state of Enlightenment.

So the idea of reincarnation comes to us through indigenous cultures and "Eastern Religions," which you might have studied in Comparative Religion class. What you were probably not taught is that reincarnation has an equally active, if subversive, history in our Western traditions. We would probably accept that Judaism, Christianity and Islam pretty much together control the thinking of the Western modern world. What we are not told is that these three religions are virtually the only religions in world history that officially exclude the concept of reincarnation. We are the exception, not the rule.

In 1248AD began the Inquisition, whose first mission, quite successfully accomplished, was to wipe out the hundreds of thousands of Albigenses and Cathari, the reincarnationist Christians of southern France and northern Italy. At that time the Church of Rome had a profit center in selling "indulgences"-- paid-for forgiveness of sins. Persons believing in reincarnation, taking responsibility for their own sins, were not customers, and their numbers were growing rapidly. Only after these good people were eliminated was the Inquisition free to turn its attention to lesser heretics.

The songs of the Troubadours, and the concept of romantic love you may have been taught arose in late-13th century southern France, were in fact the encoded message of the survivors. The rest of their knowledge became "the occult." Occult simply means "hidden," a sensible response to the Inquisition.

Admit it or not, though, we inescapably define ourselves from a much deeper past. Early Christianity, though we know it dimly through the many manipulations of scripture, seems to have held as many believers in reincarnation as not. In one of the few remaining passages of the New Testament in which this idea survives, Jesus is asked by his followers about his cousin, John the Baptist. He replies, "Among those of Heaven, he is the least; among those of earth, he is the greatest. For this was Elijah, who was for to come." And in the early Christian world, the idea of reincarnation, the constant improvement of one's offering to God, was commonly held.

In 385AD, at the Council of Nicea, the "Anathemas of Origen" were passed into Christian law by over 130 Byzantine bishops and seven Roman bishops. The Anathemas specifically forbid the teaching of reincarnation. We can only presume it was worth their trouble. This event secured the ability of the Church to control the afterlife, and thus the behavior of all believers through the threat of excommunication, for over 1700 years.

Meanwhile, back at the spiritual ranch, the secret orders of the Jews, Christians and Muslims -- the Kabbalists, the Mystical Christians, the Sufis -- worked all along with the concept of reincarnation, and made good use of it for experiences of spiritual illumination and for practical learning. For those who were capable of stepping into the inner spiritual circle, reincarnation was a workable reality all along. For example, during a past-life regression in 1988, I observed the account of one Michel de Notre Dame visiting the Kabbalists of Krakow. During this visit he was regressed into a past life in ancient Egypt to recall his training in the manipulation of ectoplasmic fields. The year was 1538.

So what "good use" might we make of the idea of reincarnation? While some draw comfort from the notion of living on past death, it's just as true that what reincarnation is telling you is that even dying won't get you out of living.

That's where this gets really interesting. If dying won't get you out of this, what is this all about? "Doing it over and over 'til I get it right?' Blather. "Right" according to whom? That's just a chance to beat yourself up with preconceived notions. Perhaps something more, though: 'All these things I have done, ye shall do, and more." Now there's an invitation!

It's an invitation to become more than we are, more that we even imagine we might be. Spiritual evolution is not about moral perfection; it is about becoming beings of a higher order of functioning. And in the two millennia since Jesus challenged us with His invitation, we have become a humanity that would have been unrecognizable to the people of His time: literate, humane, individuated, constructive, responsible and compassionate in ways, and to an extent, that people of his time could not have imagined. It is as though humanity has become another order of being from the humans of zero AD. And as though we have built not only on collective experience, so painfully wrought through the last two thousand years, but built as well on something within ourselves, on foundations of ongoing personal experience, one lifetime after another.

That's where reincarnation reveals its loveliness: we become more than we were; you keep becoming more than you have been. Rather than a model of balancing accounts, this is a model of growth, of evolving into a new state of being. For all of our present individual and collective failings, I imagine our Creator must look upon us with great optimism.

Given that one has an openness to reincarnation, does that do something more than comfort or challenge? In itself, probably not. A belief is merely a concept charged with feeling, just as when, some lifetimes ago, you assured me that the village was flooded because the river god upstream was displeased with our sacrifices. When I agreed with you, we both felt better.

A major aspect of our evolution has been developing a skeptical view of beliefs, and the formation of the scientific method which we've applied to every aspect of life with the gaping exception of religion. We know how to observe phenomena, evaluate it according to its consistency, probe its inner workings and test it in new venues to make sure it holds up. This effort goes on in the hard and soft sciences, in business and in our personal efforts to live and love with greater effect.

The gaping hole in this skeptical revolution has been in the realm of spirituality. How do we observe, evaluate and test our spiritual ideas, independently of what we already believe to be true? For the most part, we do none of those things. We rely instead on tradition, and if we're alternative sorts, we drop the tradition of our upbringing and adopt some other millennia-old teaching: AmerIndian, Incan, Celtic, Tibetan. Something with a label, an imprimatur, like a spiritual polo shirt with the label on the outside.

But if you're serious about applying both mind and heart to your spiritual investigation and using your skeptical capacity, the one way I can see that's safest from subjectivity is through statistics. For example, in Life After Life, Raymond Moody, MD. wrote up his interviews with people who had been legally dead and found their experiences of entering into another realm and being sent back to be statistically consistent, regardless of their religious beliefs (or the lack of them).

Two major statistical studies of past-life memories deserve close attention. The first is Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation, by Ian Stevenson, MD. At the time Chairman of Psychiatry at University of Virginia, Stevenson sidestepped the potential variables posed by using hypnosis to elicit past-life memories by studying the spontaneous past-life recall of children. He and his staff tracked down sixty reports of children between the ages of three and six who had past-life recall, and intensively investigated twenty of them. Here were children finding their way to villages they had never heard of or been to, recognizing people there, knowing their names, remembering street names, houses and events. After going to great lengths to determine any other possible explanation for these events, Stevenson concludes that only reincarnation plausibly accounts for the knowledge of these children.

The first statistical study of reincarnation memories of adults, using hypnosis, was described by clinical psychologist Helen Wambach, PhD., in Reliving Past Lives: The Evidence Under Hypnosis. Her methodology is too complex to describe here, but through repeated regressions with over 1200 people, she found past-life memories that were consistently accurate in the smallest details of daily life from 1900AD to 500BC. On a larger scale, even variations in gender distribution, which fluctuate over time, were consistent with her subjects' responses.

A few years later Dr. Wambach took her method, and our knowledge, to a new level. In Life Before Life, she produced a statistical study of people recalling a before-birth state, a state in spirit at the time they were preparing to incarnate. Her subjects, some 750 of them, discovered the plans they were making for the incarnation to come, and the choices available to them, and the choices made for them. Included were choices of parents, gender, location and purpose. Most interestingly, when asked whether returning to life on earth was a free choice, 65% responded no, and 35% responded yes. Remember the Buddha's teaching about leaving the wheel of reincarnation? This study confirms that the majority of us have not yet left that wheel, yet there are many who willingly return.

In our last conversation, over lunch in San Francisco, Helen remarked that seeing the brilliant light that one enters into upon dying is the greatest occupational hazard of the regressionist. They want it for themselves. She died a few months later in 1986.

But what did she mean by "seeing the brilliant light?" Helen was entering into the experience of her regression subjects, and in taking their past-life experiences through the time of death, and on through the transition into the next dimension, had seen that light hundreds of times. After twenty-four years and about 14,000 regressions, I've gotten over that occupational hazard, though it has changed me. For my clients, a few ventures into that brilliant light are enough to show them that death can thereafter be the least of their worries.

As I said, belief is a concept charged with an emotion. By exploring the concept of reincarnation through past-life regression, we can step through the looking-glass of belief and see what's on the other side. Over the last 40 years, a body of knowledge has been developed by researchers and practitioners, skeptically testing the accuracy of information and the often-amazing speed of healing that past-life regression brings about. All those hundreds of thousands of clients and subjects have described what's on the other side of the looking-glass with such a high degree of consistency we can only conclude: Now we know!

Given that reincarnation is probable, it should be possible for anyone to recall having lived before. Hypnosis, because it shifts primary brain activity from one area of the brain to another, is the ideal vehicle for accessing this unaccustomed memory. From ancient times, and in America from the time of the Bridey Murphy case in the mid-1950s, altered states of consciousness have opened a doorway through the looking-glass.

What was found? People have a consistent ability to recall past lives, and do so in a way that can be investigated and confirmed -- and more importantly by far, in a way that brings about significant changes in their day-to-day lives. Dramatically significant changes, and with speed that much of psychiatry can only envy.

Not all psychiatrists are asleep, however, and in 1980, a small group of psychiatrists and psychologists got together and formed the Association for Past-Life Research and Therapies (APRT), reformed in 2000 as the International Association for Regression Research and Therapies (IARRT). During that 20 years, the Association has expanded to over 1000 member-practitioners in over 20 countries, and includes ministers and spiritual and shamanic practitioners, as well as licensed psychotherapists.

A body of research has emerged from this Association for which we might all be grateful. The statistical substance on which we must depend for knowledge independent of belief has emerged through regression practitioners from Los Angeles to Sao Paulo, from Tokyo to Amsterdam. All of us are finding the same evidence, and exchange information through semiannual conferences, our newsletter, and professional journal. We all find that when people enter into their past lives through regression, they are able to describe past life experiences in great detail. These descriptions leave them relieved of symptoms. Further, the experiences of after-life environments, including the physical sensations of those energies, are both dramatic and consistently described, and alter the client's views of life in optimistic directions.

Well, there you go. That's the standard case for past-life regression. Regression holds up to tests of intelligent skeptical scrutiny and proves clinically and humanly useful.

But for me, that's not enough. Past lives contain a great deal more than symptom relief. Past lives also contain our gifts, and talents beyond what we think possible for ourselves. The ability to recall those abilities, download them into the present personality, and use them now, is the most impressive evidence of reincarnation. Skills such as healing, which are subtle and take quite some time to learn, have been recalled and put to use with immediate effectiveness. I've seen this happen in my own practice many, many times.

By the way, why is it some people want to be healers? Is it the pay, the benefits, the esteem of family and friends? Well, maybe in California. As for the rest of us, it must be some voice inside, something saying there's only one way to be who we are, what we are, and we just have to do that journey, wherever it may lead.

But please, don't blame your past lives for your improbable career choice. Blame your soul. Imagine the soul in your body like a matrix of energies, within a particular dimension, holding complex fields of information, like expanded microchips emanating in planes angular to each other, moving and interacting, and, at their points of intersection, demanding your attention. Your soul will demand, at some point in your life, that you do something you've spent lifetimes learning deeply. If you don't do it, you'll probably go through life feeling as though you're just glancing off the obstacles on your way to the edge of the earth.

Using what you've spent lifetimes learning is where the promise of reincarnation becomes your personal reality, and where the real gift of past-life regression comes forth. For me, it was the experience of remembering how to ski, just in my first moment of having skis on my feet, and skiing down that hill holding the awareness of that past incarnation with me, and making it through the only narrow passage at the bottom of the hill. Me? The sorriest athlete on the planet? Right then I knew that recovering past skills was possible. I had heard my soul say howdy, and three days later began looking for the clearest way to evoke abilities from past lives.

In the twenty-odd years since, I've guided thousands of clients through the memories of their greatest strengths, and most outstanding have been the lives of healers. The story of healing through human history, and its commonality through humanity's various cultures is for another time. More important for the moment is that you consider that you have more within you than you have imagined, and you owe it to the life you love to find it, define it, get good at it, and offer it.

"How shall I best live?" Paradoxically, perhaps the deepest answer begins to come only when one asks, "What happens to me after I die?"

Greg Paxson began his practice in Past-Life Regression in 1977. In the years since, he’s blended training in psychotherapy, metaphysics, hypnosis, energy healing, astrology, rebirthing and Akashic Record reading into his work with past lives. His work has been profiled in various publications and has been featured on Oprah. The Eye of The Centaur, by Barbara Hand Clow, describes his approach to past-life regression from the client’s point of view, so far the only book of its kind.

For further information, contact Greg at gkpaxson@rcnchicago.com, by phone at 773/262-1168 or fax at 773/381-1023; see also International Assn. for Regression Research and Therapy: IARRT.org.

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