5. By the very nature of things, a true knowledge of the aerial realm of spirits and its manifestations cannot be acquired by experience alone. The boast of all branches of occultism that their knowledge is sure because it is based on “experience” is precisely the fatal flaw of all occult “knowledge.” Rather, the experiences of this realm, because they occur in the aerial realm and are often produced by demons with the ultimate intent of deceiving and destroying men’s souls, are by their very nature bound up with deception, quite apart from the fact that man, not being at home in this realm, can never fully orient himself in it and be sure of its reality as he can of the material realm. Buddhist doctrine (as expressed in the Tibetan Book of the Dead) is certainly correct when it speaks of the illusionary nature of the appearances of the “Bardo plane”; but it is wrong when it concludes from this, on the basis of experience alone, that there is no objective reality whatever behind these appearances. The reality of this invisible realm cannot be known for what it actually is unless this be revealed by a source outside and above it.
The contemporary approach to this realm by means of personal and/or “scientific” experimentation is, for the same reason, bound to result in misleading and deceptive conclusions. Almost all contemporary researchers accept or at least are highly sympathetic to the occult teaching regarding this realm, for the single reason that it is based on experience, which is also the basis of science. But “experience” in the material world is something quite different from “experience” in the aerial realm. The raw material being experienced and studied in the one case is morally “neutral,” and it can be studied objectively and verified by others; but in the other case the “raw material” is hidden, extremely difficult to grasp, and, in many cases, has a will of its own — a will to deceive the observer. For this reason, serious investigations such as those of Dr. Moody, Dr. Crookall, Drs. Osis and Haraldsson, and Dr. Kubler-Ross almost inevitably end by being used for the spread of occult ideas, which are the “natural” ideas to be drawn from a study of the occult aerial realm. Only with the idea (which has become rare today) that there is a revealed truth that is above all experience, can this occult realm be enlightened, its true nature recognized and a discernment made between this lower realm and the higher realm of heaven.
It has been necessary to devote this long chapter to “out-of-body” experiences in order to define as precisely as possible the nature of the experiences now being undergone by a large number of ordinary people, not merely mediums and occultists. (In the conclusion of this book we shall try to explain why such experiences have become so common today.) It is quite clear that these experiences are real, and cannot be dismissed as “hallucinations.” But it is equally clear that these experiences are not spiritual, and the attempts of those who have undergone them to interpret them as “spiritual experiences” which reveal the true nature of life after death and the ultimate state of the soul — only serve to increase the spiritual confusion of contemporary mankind and reveal how far its awareness is from true spiritual knowledge and experience.
In order to see this the better, we shall now turn to an examination of several cases of true experiences of the other world — the eternal world of heaven which is opened to man only by the will of God, and which is quite distinct from the aerial realm we have been examining here, which is still part of this world which will have an end.
A NOTE ON “REINCARNATION”
Among the occult ideas which are now being widely discussed and sometimes accepted by those who have “out-of-body” and “after-death” experiences, and even by some scientists, is the idea of reincarnation: that the soul after death does not undergo the Particular Judgment and then dwell in heaven or hell awaiting the resurrection of the body and the Last Judgment, but (evidently after a longer or shorter stay on the “astral plane”) comes back to earth and occupies a new body, whether of a beast or of another man.
This idea was widespread in pagan antiquity in the West, before it was replaced by Christian ideas; but its spread today is largely owing to the influence of Hinduism and Buddhism, where it is commonly accepted. Today the idea is usually “humanized,” in that people assume their “previous lives” were as men, whereas the more common idea both among Hindus and Buddhists and among ancient Greeks and Romans is that it is rather rare to achieve “incarnation” as a man, and that most of today’s “incarnations” are as beasts, insects, and even plants.
Those who believe in this idea say that it accounts for all of the many “injustices” of earthly life, as well as for seemingly unexplainable phobias: if one is born blind, or in conditions of poverty, it is as a just reward for one’s actions in a “previous life” (or, as Hindus and Buddhists say, because of one’s “bad karma”); if one is afraid of water, it is because one drowned in a “previous existence.”
Believers in reincarnation do not have any very thorough philosophy of the origin and destination of the soul, nor any convincing proofs to support their theory; its main attractions are the superficial ones of seeming to provide “justice” on earth, of explaining some psychic mysteries, and of providing some semblance of “immortality” for those who do not accept this on Christian grounds.
On deeper reflection, however, the theory of reincarnation offers no real explanation of injustices at alclass="underline" if one suffers in this life for sins and mistakes in another lifetime which one cannot remember, and for which (if one was “previously” a beast) one cannot even be held responsible, and if (according to Buddhist teaching) there is even no “self” that survives from one “incarnation” to the next, and one’s past mistakes were literally someone else’s — then there is no recognizable justice at all, but only a blind suffering of evils whose origin is not to be traced out. The Christian teaching of the fall of Adam, which is the origin of all the world’s evils, offers a much better explanation of injustices in the world; and the Christian revelation of God’s perfect justice in His judgment of men for eternal life in heaven or hell renders unnecessary and trivial the idea of attaining “justice” through successive “incarnations” in this world.
In recent decades the idea of reincarnation has achieved a remarkable popularity in the Western world, and there have been numerous cases suggesting the “remembrance” of “past lives”; many people also return from “out-of-body” experiences believing that these experiences suggest or instill the idea of reincarnation. What are we to think of these cases?
Very few of these cases, it should be noted, offer “proof” that is any more than vaguely circumstantial, and could easily be the product of simple imagination: a child is born with a mark on his neck, and subsequently “remembers” that he was hanged as a horse thief in a “previous life”; a person fears heights, and then “remembers” that he died by falling in his “past life”; and the like. The natural human tendency of fantasy renders such cases useless as “proof” of reincarnation.
In many cases, however, such “previous lives” have been discovered by a hypnotic technique known as “regressive hypnosis,” which has in many cases given striking results in the recall of events long forgotten by the conscious mind, even as far back as infancy. The hypnotist brings a person “back” to infancy, and then asks: “What about before that?” Often, in such cases, a person will “remember” his “death” or even a whole different lifetime; what are we to think of such memories?