Reincarnation and Psychic Issues

It can be very difficult for an academically-trained scientist to accept ideas on psychic issues, such as reincarnation and extra-sensory perception.

In my case, I became able to accept such ideas because of an event that happened to me when I was about 22. Then I was just a few weeks away from sitting my final exams for a degree in physics. This event was my brief intellectual illumination, within the field of mathematics. Because of this, I understood the limitations of science. I describe this occurrence in the article "Satori " on my website "Patterns of Spirituality". [¹]

Once I knew that science was a limited view of reality, I began to seek a more comprehensive view. After I left college in 1967  I become a member of the hippie generation. I studied alchemy and new age ideas at first, and then yoga. I had done "A" level chemistry, but the thing that stopped me becoming an alchemist was that I was useless at languages. You have to read alchemical texts in the original language if you want to discover the hidden meanings. My languages limitation made me switch from alchemy to yoga and Eastern ways of thinking. I am uncertain whether I gained or lost from this switch.

It was 8 years after my satori before I came across the idea of reincarnation. It was in a talk by a person who subsequently became my yoga teacher. When he talked about reincarnation it was as if a flash of lightning went through me - it was a flash of intuitive understanding, but seemed like lightning. From that second onwards I accepted reincarnation without any qualms. All that subsequently changed in my view of it is that I eventually realised that all past teachers had not understood how it actually worked. After my psycho-analysis in my 40s and 50s  I used my understanding of the subconscious mind to formulate a fresh version of reincarnation, a version which explains the mechanics of it.

My advice is not to worry about whether you can accept ideas such as reincarnation and extra-sensory perception or not. Just be aware of them and that they are not cranky ideas. Leave it to the future as to what lasting influence they will have on you. What made the early period of scientific exploration so exhilarating for the explorers was that there was no official body to say what was respectable research and what was not. The explorers followed their own inclinations, without worrying over who was going to judge them.

Science is a wonderful adventure, but it takes years of training to understand any branch of it. Similarly, the pursuit of psychic and occult wisdom is a wonderful adventure, but also takes years of training. People who have not undertaken the required training can make valid ethical judgements about science or about occultism, but cannot make authoritative comments about the truth, authenticity or limitations of them.

[1]. The web address of my article on Satori  is
http://www.dawndreamer.modern-thinker.co.uk/6%20-%20Satori.htm

Copyright @2003  Ian Heath
All Rights Reserved

The copyright is mine and the articles are free to use. They can be reproduced anywhere, so long as the source is acknowledged.