The Inside Scoop on Reincarnation

My pursuit of a spiritual path began 15 years ago with books by and about Edgar Cayce, the famous American healer who, during trance, often tapped into the "Akashic Record" to examine a person's past lives and the relationship of his or her current afflictions to those lives.  After reading Dr. Ian Stevenson's Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation and psychiatrist Brian Weiss' Many Lives, Many Masters, I pretty much accepted reincarnation as fact.  

Then I read the works of the great mystic and seer Emanuel Swedenborg and was puzzled that he only alluded to reincarnation and was very vague on the subject. I moved on to A Course in Miracles and read, "In the ultimate sense, reincarnation is impossible.  There is no past or future, and the idea of rebirth into a body has no meaning either once or many times."

Intriguing books by Rosemary Brown (Unfinished Symphonies), Suzy Smith (The Book of James) and Betty Eadie (Embraced By The Light) rejected reincarnation, at least in the way most people think of it. "Reincarnation, as usually understood, does not really happen," the spirit of the great composer Franz Liszt purportedly communicated through Brown. "The truth is subtly different from the teachings of a reincarnationist on earth."

Thus, there seemed to be strong evidence for reincarnation but, at the same time, seemingly credible mystics and spirits communicating through mediums were saying, or so I interpreted them, that it's not so.  I didn't know what to believe.

Then I found the books of Silver Birch, the spirit entity who spoke through the entranced Maurice Barbanell of England for nearly 50 years.  "There is reincarnation, but not in the sense in which it is generally expounded," Silver Birch said, going on to explain that the individual personality on earth is a small part of the individuality to which he or she belongs.  He likened it to a diamond with its many facets, pointing out that the personality on earth is but one facet of the diamond.

 "... there are what you call ‘group souls,' a single unity with facets which have spiritual relationships that incarnate at different times, at different places, for the purpose of equipping the larger soul for its work," Silver Birch further explained.

Frederic W. H. Myers, one of the pioneers of psychical research, purportedly communicated through several credible mediums following his death in 1901 and discussed group souls.  One of those mediums was Geraldine Cummins of Ireland, a trance automatist.  Much of what Myers had to say through the hand of Cummins is set forth in The Road to Immortality, first published in 1932.   "While I was on earth, I belonged to a group-soul, but its branches and the spirit - which might be compared to the roots - were in the invisible," Myers wrote.  "Now, if you would understand psychic evolution, this group-soul must be studied and understood.  For instance, it explains many of the difficulties that people will assure you can be removed only by the doctrine of reincarnation. You may think my statement frivolous, but the fact that we do appear on earth to be paying for the sins of another life is, in a certain sense, true.  It is our life and yet not our life."

Myers went on to explain that a soul belonging to the group of which he was part lived a previous life and built for him a framework for his own earthly life.   The spirit - the bond of the group soul - manifests, he said, many times on earth. "We are all of us distinct," he continued, "though we are influenced by others of our community on the various planes of being." He further explained that a group soul might contain twenty souls, a hundred souls, or a thousand souls. 

"When your Buddhist speaks of the cycle of birth, of man's continual return to earth, he utters but a half-truth," Myers went on.  "And often a half-truth is more inaccurate than an entire misstatement.  I shall not live again on earth, but a new soul, one who will join our group, will shortly enter into the pattern of karma I have woven for him on earth."

Myers likened the soul to a spectator caught within the spell of some drama outside of its actual life, perceiving all the consequences of acts, moods, and thoughts of a kindred soul.   He further pointed out that there are an infinite variety of conditions in the invisible world and that he made no claim to being infallible. He called it a "general rule" based on what he had learned and experienced on the Other Side. 

In 1918, even before the communications by Myers, Liszt, and Silver Birch, a spirit entity identifying himself as Johannes of Glastonbury, a monk who had lived from 1497 to 1533, communicated by means of automatic writing a number of messages to Frederick Bligh Bond, the director of excavations at Glastonbury Abbey, concerning the layout of the abbey grounds in his day.  Johannes alluded to a group soul when it was suggested by another spirit entity that Johannes might be "earthbound" and his recollection colored somewhat by "clinging to vanished dreams."  In fractured English, Johannes responded:  "Why cling I to that which is not?  It is I, and it is not I, butt parte of me which dwelleth in the past is bound to that which my carnal soul loved and called home these many years. Yet, I, Johannes, amm of many partes, and ye better parte doeth other things - Laus, Laus Deo - only that part which remembreth clingeth like memory to what it seeth yet."

Silver Birch also likened the soul to an iceberg in which one small portion is manifesting and the greater portion not manifesting.   He apparently was referring to what others have called the "Higher Self," the "Greater Self," or the "Oversoul."

Trying to explain reincarnation to humans, Silver Birch added, is like trying to explain the color of the sky to someone who has been blind from birth.   "You have no standard of comparison," he said.  However, he stressed that the individuality of the "facets" within the Group Soul is maintained.

In his 1939 book, Reincarnation for Everyman, writer Shaw Desmond states that there are two approaches to reincarnation - the "terrestrial" and the "celestial."  The former view has the individual returning again and again as the same man, while the latter view has man "solely as spirit and his temporary inhabitancy of the physical body as but a tiny projection of the Greater Self, which is the real man."

I came to realize that aforementioned mystics and spirit communicators may have been rejecting reincarnation in the terrestrial sense but not in the celestial.   "Think of an atom," Liszt told Brown.  "It is made up of protons and neutrons which all go to make up the nucleus surrounded by electrons.  That is what a soul is like.  These separate parts are held together in the nucleus, but the parts can be isolated.  And it is the isolated parts of the nucleus of the soul so to speak which can manifest as various personalities in your world.  These are what the reincarnationalist calls different incarnations - but they all belong to one soul which can choose which particular part of the soul it wishes to manifest."

When Bond asked another of the Glastonbury spirits, a more fluent speaking one, about reincarnation, the spirit replied:  "You understand not reincarnation, nor can we explain.  What in you reincarnates, do you think?  How can you find words?  Blind gropers after immutable facts, which are not of your sphere of experience."