Past life memories also give evidence for a conscious self that can exist apart from the body. Dr. Ian Stevenson, a psychiatrist at the University of Virginia medical school, has conducted extensive research into past life memories. Stevenson, and his associates, have focused on past life memories spontaneously reported by very young children. Stevenson prefers working with children because older persons might have the motives and means to construct elaborate past life accounts. His technique is to thoroughly interview the child subjects and thus obtain as many details as possible about the reported past life. Using this information, Stevenson and his associates then attempt to identify the person the child claims to have been in the past life. In hundreds of cases, they have been successful in making such identifications.
Having established that the human organism is composed of the elements matter, mind, and consciousness (or spirit), it is natural to suppose that the cosmos is divided into regions, or levels, of matter, mind, and consciousness, each inhabited by beings adapted to life there. First, there is a region of pure consciousness. Consciousness, as we experience it, is individual and personal. This suggests that the original source of conscious selves is also individual and personal. So in addition to the individual units of consciousness existing in the realm of pure consciousness, there is also an original conscious being who is their source. When the fractional conscious selves give up their connection with their source, they are placed in lower regions of the cosmos predominated by either the subtle material energy (mind) or the gross material energy (matter). There is thus a cosmic hierarchy of conscious beings. Chapter 7 of Human Devolution establishes the existence of this cosmic hierarchy of beings in a cross-cultural study of cosmologies, using the Vedic cosmology of the Shrimad Bhagavatam as a model for comparison. The cosmologies share many features. They generally include an original God inhabiting a realm of pure consciousness, a subordinate creator god inhabiting a subtle material region of the cosmos along with many kinds of demigods and demigoddesses, an earthly realm inhabited by humans like us, and an underworld inhabited by ghosts and demons.
Chapter 8 of Human Devolution documents categories of observational evidence for the existence of conscious beings at various levels of the cosmic hierarchy. The first category is evidence for survival of conscious selves formerly inhabiting bodies of terrestrial humans. This evidence takes the form of communications from surviving conscious human selves, apparitions of departed humans, and possessions of living humans by spirits of departed humans. Cases where humans are possessed by beings with extraordinary powers provide evidence for superhuman creatures existing in extraterrestrial levels of the cosmic hierarchy. Marian apparitions and apparitions of angels also provide such evidence. Historical accounts of appearances of avatars provide evidence for the existence of a supreme conscious being. A final category of evidence comes from modern reports of unidentified flying objects and the “aliens” associated with them. Although the topic is very controversial, and involves a high degree of strangeness, there is a substantial quantity of credible reporting from government and military sources from several countries. The theory of purely mechanical UFOs breaks down under careful investigation, and the UFOs and aliens come to resemble beings inhabiting extraterrestrial levels of the world’s traditional cosmologies.
The human devolution concept posits the action of superior intelligences in the origin of the human form and the forms of other living things. This depends on the ability of consciousness to more or less directly influence the organization of matter in living things. Chapter 9 provides evidence that such paranormal modification and production of biological forms actually occurs.
The first category of evidence comes from laboratory experiments in which human subjects are able to mentally influence the growth of micro-organisms. For example, Beverly Rubik conducted laboratory research on “volitional effects of healers on a bacterial system” while director of the Institute for Frontier Sciences at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She reported the results in a paper included in her book life at the edge of Science (1996, pp. 99–117). The experiments were performed using the bacterium Salmonella typhimurium, a very well studied organism. The chief subject in the study was Olga Worrall, who had demonstrated positive abilities in other experiments. In one set of experiments, culture dishes of bacteria were treated with antibiotics that inhibit the growth of the bacteria. Worrall attempted to influence the bacteria in one set of culture dishes to grow. Another set of culture dishes was kept aside as a control. Compared to the control group, the group of culture dishes mentally acted upon by Worrall all showed an increase in growth. In another set of experiments, bacteria were placed on slides in a solution of phenol sufficient to immobilize but not kill them. The slides of bacteria were then o served under a microscope. In her book, Rubik (p. 108) stated, “Application of . . . phenol completely paralyzes the bacteria within 1 to 2 minutes. Worrall’s treatment inhibited this effect . . . such that on the average up to 7% of the bacteria continued to swim after 12 minutes exposure to phenol compared to the control groups which were completely paralyzed in all cases.”
Distance healing by prayer and other miraculous cures provide another category of evidence for paranormal modification of biological form. In a study published in the annals of Internal medicine (2000 v. 132, no. 11, pp. 903–911), John A. Astin and his coauthors found that “a growing body of evidence suggests an association between religious involvement and spirituality and positive health outcomes.” In support of their conclusion, the Astin group cited over fifty credible positive reports from a variety of scientific and medical journals. Even more striking examples of paranormal modification of biological form come from the reports of the Medical Bureau at Lourdes. Since the nineteenth century, the physicians of the Medical Bureau have carefully documented a series of miraculous cures, some involving the inexplicable regeneration of damaged tissues and organs.
Psychiatrist Ian Stevenson has conducted extensive investigations into birthmarks that appear to have some relationship with wounds a person experienced in a past life. Persons who died of gunshot wounds in previous lives sometimes display on their present bodies birthmarks of appropriate size at the positions of the entry and exit wounds. This suggests that when such a person’s soul and mind enter the present body, they carry with them impressions that appropriately modify the body’s biological form. Some medical investigators have documented cases of “maternal impressions.” These occur when a pregnant woman is exposed to a striking event that causes a strong emotional impression. Somehow the psychological impression leaves its mark on the embryo within her womb. For example, if a woman sees someone with an injured foot and then constantly remembers this, her child might be born with a malformed foot. In 1890, W. C. Dabney reviewed in Cyclopaedia of the Diseases of Children (1890 v. 1, pp. 191–216) sixty-nine reports published between 1853 and 1886 documenting a close correspondence between the mother’s mental impression and the physical deformation in her child.
Yet another category of evidence consists of reports by prominent scientists who have witnessed mediums produce human limbs or complete human bodies. A particularly striking case was reported by Sir Alfred Russel Wallace, who, accompanied by others, saw a clergyman medium named Monk produce a complete human form. In his autobiography (1905 v. 2, p. 330), Wallace described the event, which took place in an apartment in the Bloomsbury district of London: “It was a bright summer afternoon, and everything happened in the full light of day. After a little conversation, Monk, who was dressed in the usual clerical black, appeared to go into a trance; then stood up a few feet in front of us, and after a little while pointed to his side, saying, ‘Look.’ We saw there a faint white patch on his coat on the left side. This grew brighter, then seemed to flicker, and extend both upwards and downwards, till very gradually it formed a cloudy pillar extending from his shoulder to his feet and close to his body. Then he shifted himself a little sideways, the cloudy figure standing still, but appearing joined to him by a cloudy band at the height at which it had first begun to form. Then, after a few minutes more, Monk again said ‘Look,’ and passed his hand through the connecting band, severing it. He and the figure then moved away from each other till they were about five or six feet apart. The figure had now assumed the appearance of a thickly draped female form, with arms and hands just visible. Monk looked towards it and again said to us ‘Look,’ and then clapped his hands. On which the figure put out her hands, clapped them as he had done, and we all distinctly heard her clap following his, but fainter. The figure then moved slowly back to him, grew fainter and shorter, and was apparently absorbed into his body as it had grown out of it.”