Past Lives and Reincarnation

Posted on September 12, 2003 in Folly Watch Myths & Mysticism

Eighteen years ago when I was out of work and searching for answers, I invested in a “past life regression”. I was an excellent subject for this for pretty much the same reasons that I have little trouble sitting down at my computer most days and coming up with things to say. I imagined myself as a prostitute in Mesopotamia many centuries ago being given over to a Egyptian slave driver. I can even now see the room and the man. The “therapist” assured me that I had found the reasons for my unhappy present life.

It didn’t take long for me to reject the idea that this vision represented something that truly happened to me. My memory resembled a Hollywood set, down to the lighting. The man was dressed as if he’d walked out of Cecille B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments. I don’t remember a door or a bed or a window in the room. Never once did I see the floor, the ceiling, or the source of light.

People who believe in such things tell you that you can redirect your attention to see the missing elements. They’re right, I’ve discovered. I can see, for example, the door: it is made of wood and swings on metal hinges. The floor is carpeted. And with little effort, I can see a yellow telephone hanging on the wall, just behind the Egyptian.

Past life regressions, I dare say, amount to little more than false memories How similar my experience was to that described by a California psychiatrist with expertise in the evaluation and treatment of victims of cults:

A woman consults a psychotherapist for relief of various emotional complaints. The therapist informs her that she may have been molested as a child and does not know it, and this could explain her symptoms. Some patients think this idea is absurd and go to another therapist; others accept the therapist’s suggestions and stay on. More than a few women have heard about repressed memories from talk shows or tabloids even prior to coming to the therapists office, and may even make the appointment believing they too could be “victims.”


Though the patient has no memories of abuse, she becomes motivated for “memory recovery” since she is told this will cure her symptoms. The therapist will offer encouragement that “memories” will return. Suggestive dreams or new pains are interpreted by the therapist as proof that repressed memories are lurking.

The therapist may refer the patient to a “survivor recovery group.” There she will meet women who further encourage her to keep trying to remember. Attendance at these support groups, as well as assigned reading in self-help books, surrounds the patient with validation for the therapist’s theories.

This sounds very much like the New Age culture which I found myself in eighteen years ago. Never was I directed to works (including key Buddhist texts as I will show in a moment) which might undermine the belief that they wanted me to have, which was that the “memory” that I had was real and an important explanatory tool in my personal quest for serenity.

Unfortunately for the white, middle class managers and salespeople who bought into this culture, I had a mind of my own. I questioned what I saw from the beginning; viewed it not as a statement of fact but as a set of symbols which might very well have said a great deal about my sense of self at the time. (Can you say “screwed”?) I fell out and went on my own.

I do believe, nonetheless, in reincarnation. All matter consists of energy and energy, as any physicist or chemist can tell you, cannot be destroyed. What appears to be destruction is conversion from one form to another. When we die, every piece of what we were remains in the universe. Bits of us end up in the air, in the water table, in the grass that grows above our graves. What happens to our consciousness is anyone’s guess, but I have yet to be shown overwhelming evidence that it stays intact and able to remember as the New Agers claim.

The Buddha believed in reincarnation, but he condemned the idea of “transmigration of souls”. If you’re a real reincarnation insider, you will know that “transmigration” refers to the idea that we move from flesh can to flesh can. When a follower named Sãti preached the idea, the Buddha had him brought to him:

Haven’t I said, with many similes, that consciousness is not independent, but comes about through the Chain of Causation, and can never arise without a cause? You misunderstand and misrepresent me, and so you undermine your own position and produce much demerit. You bring upon yourself lasting harm and sorrow!….

Whatever form of consciousness arises from a condition is known by the name of that condition; thus if it arises from the eye and from forms, it is known as visual consciousness it is known as visual consciousness…and so with the senses of hearing, sense, taste, touch, and mind, and their objects. It’s just like a fire which you call by the name of the fuel — a wood fire, a fire of sticks, a grass fire, a cowdung fire, a fire of husks, a rubbish fire, and so on.

The image of the fire appears elsewhere in Buddhist texts as the principal metaphor for what the soul is like. This exchange from the Questions of King Menander (Milindapañha) illustrates the Buddhist doctrine of rebirth:

“Reverend Nãgasena,” said the King, “is it true that nothing transmigrates, and yet there is rebirth?….How can this be?….Give me an illustration.”

“Suppose, your Majesty, a man lights one lamp from another — does the one lamp transmigrate to the other?”

“No, your Reverence.”

“So there is rebirth without anything transmigrating!”

The beliefs of the early Buddhists appeared to be founded on practical observation and metaphor. Later commentators — influenced perhaps by Brahminism — invented fabulous stories of remembered past lives for the Buddha, the famous jataka stories which told of Buddha’s incarnation as various virtuous animals which unselfishly gave of themselves for the survival of other living things. This does not appear, however, in the earliest Buddhist writings. Just as modern Christianity has abandoned the early pacifist, communtarian principles of its founder, so later Buddhists forgot the teachings of their founder.

What the Buddha preached was the inconstant continuity of phenomena. One person is born as another passes away. There’s a traceable sequence of life and of consciousness — a flame that is carried from lamp to lamp — without memory and without the inherent knowing that in some other form the neurons that snap out our thoughts and store our memories existed before. We are, the sage Nãgasena taught, “neither the same nor yet another”. Nothing new is created in our universe except for new forms.

We exist without consciousness of the Before. Our energy is not new, but part of a greater substance that has been since the Big Bang. It has taken many forms and after we pass on, it will take a new form. What has been before us is not us and yet it was us, too. What will be will not be us and yet it will be us. The Buddhist, like the subatomic physicist, speaks in paradoxes and contradictions because our language and our consciousness limits our ability to describe what is. We must calm ourselves in the face of the truth of our existence and our reincarnation and be vigilant that our minds do not embark on fanciful journies, claiming them as fact.

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A brief thought about karma: This seems like an idea which when Buddhists rejected the idea of transmigration of souls they could not shake off. The doctrine of karma proposes that each of us is born into whatever situation because some of us are by analogy to plants “astringent, some salty, some pungent, some sour, and some sweet”. It’s a crude doctrine and later manifests into a kind of hell on earth where we are reborn into a life appropriate to the sins and good deeds of our past lives. This later doctrine is not Buddhist — at least not as it was taught in the first three to five centuries. Nãgasena simply draws parallels to the elements of the world. What kind of plant your seed will sprout depends on its DNA is a modern translation of the teaching here.

I counter suggest that this idea — promulgated by Nãgasena when he spoke to King Menander two centuries after the Buddha’s death — was calculated to sell Buddhism to a king. Buddha often spoke of impermanence and randomness. The idea of karma is out of keeping with those ideas. I believe that he would have preached a different idea*, that of luck. We come to be who we are at birth for no clear cause. Our births are accidental. So we should not think ourselves particularly great because of our birth. Early Buddhists rejected class distinctions: there was no movement up the caste system. Dung handlers as well as princes could become enlightened. The light glows in many places, catches on to many fuels.

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* There are no texts that transcribe exactly what the Buddha said. We have pieced together his teachings from sources written down in the centuries following his death. Here I am applying logic and a little sociology to attempt to reclaim the original doctrine as it must have been taught. The idea that the Buddha rejected the special privileges of class is affirmed by his own life story where he, a prince, abandoned his position and went to live as a beggar. This act suggests that he felt that he was no better than anyone else.

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Check False Memory Syndrome Foundation for information about the effect that implanted memories have on patients and their families.