Theos-Talk Archives (March 2002 Message tt00522)

Jerry :"Reincarnation assumes a self to reincarnate, or at least 
skandhas so that tendencies can reimbody. There is no self, and so 
reincarnation is flakey. I am not the same person I was 10 years ago 
or even last week. But because of memory I appear to be the same 
entity going through a series of changes over time. This appearance 
is mayavic and is what conditional reality is all about. There is no 
reincarnating self because the Reincarnating Ego is just another 
maya, a reification of conditional processes and conditions. But 
reincarnation and karma are ok as shorelne or exoteric teachings that 
address our conditional reality.

Past life recollection is a part of modern transpersonal psychology, 
but their aim is not to recall past lives or to prove reincarnation 
but simply to help mentally unstable clients".

Bri.: Yes you are right, and in spite of attempting to post 
counterarguments regarding population growth, neither Daniel 
Caldwell or Dallas (Dalval) have been able to proof an 
independent "Astral", "Mental"or/and "any" of the other five bodys , 
plus the "undestructable Monad" (that makes eight total) are any 
reality at alle. Yet they will unabaded continue to claim that all of 
these eight (plus the severral past incarnations of this universe and 
future globes and rounds) as "FACTS" of "NATURE."

And although Dalval and Caldwell avoid presenting any current (no I 
don't mean only what people tought they saw in th 19th century,
but something that has been investigated now, in the 21th century, 
where the people who did or saw things are alive and can be double 
checked), so instead I will present some below.

Regarding the recent ganzfeld research (and that certainly is not the 
end) that I referred to that allow for certain psychic visions 
without the need for dualism, I am referring to the recent research 
at the ganzfeld laboratory in Gothenburg, Sweden, and at Edinburgh, 
where the security measures are very tight indeed,
both of these are listed on the internet.

For example George Ritchie's (a known "astral traveller", more recent 
then Blavtsky and Olcott) astral body is supposed to have made the 
grand tour while his "physical" body was out of action.

However memory traces of the experiences during this trip were 
produced in the astral brain and not in George's regular brain. They 
could not have been produced in the regular brain since the regular 
body was not in the various places visited during the trip. However, 
it is the George Ritchie with the regular body who, e%rr since he 
awoke from unconsciousness on December 24, 1943, has claimed to 
remmber the events that took place during the visit to the next 
world. How could the appropriate memory traces have been produced in 
George's regular brain? Do astral brains by some kind of sympathetic 
magic produce duplicate traces in regular brains upon "reentry"? If 
they do not, the astral theorist is condemned to the view that here, 
bw not in the case of any other genuine memories, the person can 
remember without appropriate memory traces in the brain. Even if 
there is an astral brain with memory traces, clearly nobody has or 
can have the slightest evidence that they produce duplicate traces in 
the regular brain at the moment of reentry. The altername that here 
and only here a person can remember without memory traces in the 
brain goes against everything we know about the physiologically 
necessary conditions for memories. The difficulty seems fatal either 
way. This objection may not faze astral(plus the other 6 Theosophical 
body's) theorists who, along with other occultists and also more 
respectable believers is survival, seriously believe in what they 
call "extra-cerebral" memory. 

Another example Dr. Crookall, who is verry popular with astral 
theorists and some Theosophists (probably Caldwell), was interviewed 
a few years before his death by Martin Ebon, one of the leading 
psychic explorers in tne the York City area. 

>From all the thousands of cases with which Dr. Crookall was familiar, 
he picked an OBE by William Gerhardi as "perhaps the most complete 
and zonvincing on record." It should be explained parenthetically 
that very many of Dr. Crookall's correspondents were persons with 
little education, but Gerhardi 1896-1977) was a well-educated and 
talented novelist whose works received high praise from outstanding 
literary figures like H. G. Wells and Bernard Shaw, among others. In 
1934 he published a thinly disguised autobiography with the title 
Resurrection, in which he described his astral adventures. In the 
interview with Martin Ebon, Dr. Crookall produced extensive 
quotations from this book for which there is no space here. In the 
article cited earlier he offers the following summary:

Gerhardi used his released "double" as an instrument of the Soul-he 
used it to see, to will, to reason, etc. He set himself to accumulate 
proof that he was really freed from his physical body, in a 
nonphysical body, and that it was no dream. He said ,what evidence, 
what more evidence?" He went about noting which windows were shut, 
etc., matters that he could check when he re-entered his body. This 
he did and then thought, "We have a duplicate body, all there and 
ready to use, the almost-indistinguishable double of the physical 
body. It seems that, for the first stage of survival at least, we 
already have a body neatly folded away in our physical bodies, always 
at hand in case of death, or for special use."

Dr. Crookall agrees with Gerhardi's reasoning. "If a man can leave 
his physical body temporarily and continue to exist as a self
conscious being," he told Martin Ebon, the fact would prove a strong 
presumption that eventually when he comes to leave his physical body, 
i. e., to die, he will then also continue to exist as a self-
conscious being in that second body."(M. Ebon , "The Evidence for 
Life After Death ",New York, p.116)

Bri.