Reincarnation???

My friend, Walter Semkiw,M.D., is a fellow board member of the Intuition Network. He is also author of a book called Return of the Revolutionaries, in which he makes his case that, in a former lifetime, I was the pioneer American psychologist and philosopher, William James. (The book includes many dozens of other potential past-life matches.) In his book, Walter is kind enough to point out that I, myself, am skeptical of this interpretation. Then he suggests that, since William James probably also would have been skeptical of such a match, this is possibly another confirmation of his hypothesis. (This goes to show how frustrating it can be for skeptics.  :-))

As I recall, I first interviewed Walter about these ideas about seven years ago. Walter noted then that I had the URL, http://www.williamjames.com, as one of my web domains. And, he asked me if I thought I might have been William James in a past lifetime. There are obvious similarities with regard to our intellectual interests in psychology, philosophy, consciousness, the paranormal and religion. But, I told Walter that I very much doubted that I had been William James -- since I have had no memories from such a past life. Furthermore, I regarded William James as one of my own intellectual heros. It would be very presumptuous of me to think of myself in the same light. In addition, I am not yet entirely persuaded by the evidence for reincarnation in general.

Walter's response was that I could test his hypothesis by seeing if the people with whom I am very close in this lifetime might possibly match up with people who were known to have been close friends and colleagues of William James. It was his belief that soul groups tend to incarnate together from lifetime to lifetime. So, as an exercise, I endeavored to see if I could find such matches -- and, to my surprise, there were really quite a few. I shared them with Walter -- who then took them to our mutual friend, trance channel Kevin Ryerson, for additional confirmation. Later, Walter reported to me that Kevin's "spirit guide," Atun Re, confirmed that each of the ostensible matches I had found was indeed a true incarnation. Of course, much more could be said about all of the particular ways in which these individuals seem to have parallel character traits, interests, talents, physical features, etc. And, I have to admit, I found myself very impressed with the similarities.

I might add that, to further explore this connection, I engaged in a series of past-life regressions with hypnotherapist Chuck Tramont, M.D., in Las Vegas. On a number of occasions, I did regress back to the William James lifetime. In virtually every one of these, the sessions ended abruptly due to the physical discomfort I experienced as William James -- who was a man with many physical ailments (as well as emotional depression). This experience made me think that, perhaps, if he had a choice William James might have chosen to incarnate as someone, less talented intellectually, such as myself -- who did not suffer as much physically and emotionally.

However, I should make one thing very clear: I still am not prepared to interpret all of this data as evidence for reincarnation. Instead, I prefer to think of it as "archetypal synchronistic resonance." By I mean that my life resonates with that of William James to such an extent that these various coincidences and matches occur. William James, himself, resonates in my mind as the "wise man" and "hero" archetype. And, archetypes, being autonomous psychic energy complexes have the power to reach out beyond our individual minds to influence the serendipitous occurrence of events in the physical world.

This idea of "archetypal synchronistic resonance" is becoming a recurring theme for me to which I shall return in future blogs.