Well-trained hypnotists themselves will admit the pitfalls of “regressive hypnosis.” Dr. Arthur C. Hastings, a California specialist in the psychology of communication, notes that “the most obvious thing that happens under hypnosis is that the person is extremely open to any subtle, unconscious, nonverbal, as well as verbal suggestions of the hypnotist and they are extremely compliant. If you ask them to go to a past life, and they don’t have a past life, they will invent one for you! If you suggest that they saw a UFO, they would have seen a UFO.”34 A Chicago-based hypnotist, Dr. Larry Garrett, who has done some 500 hypnotic regressions himself, notes that these regressions are often inaccurate even when it is only a matter of remembering a past event in this life: “A lot of times people fabricate things, from either wishful thinking, fantasies, dreams, things such as this.... Anyone who is into hypnosis and does any type of regression would find out that many times people have such a vivid imagination that they will sit there and make up all kinds of things just to please the hypnotist” (The Edge of Reality, pp. 91-92).
Another researcher on this question writes: “This method is fraught with hazards, chief of which is the unconscious mind’s tendency toward dramatic fantasy. What comes out in hypnosis may be, in effect, a dream of the kind of previous existence the subject would like to have lived or believes, correctly or incorrectly, that he did live.... One psychologist instructed a number of hypnotized subjects to remember a previous existence, and they did, without exception. Some of these accounts were replete with colorful details and seemed convincing.... However, when the psychologist rehypnotized them they were able, in trance, to trace every element in the accounts of previous existence to some normal source — a person they had known in childhood, scenes from novels they had read or movies they had seen years before, and so on.”35
But what of those cases, publicized widely of late, when there is “objective proof” of one’s “previous life” — when a person “remembers” details of time and places he could not possibly have known by himself, and which can be checked by historical documents?
Such cases seem very convincing to those already inclined to believe in reincarnation; but this kind of “proof” is not different from the standard information provided by the “spirits” at seances (which can also be of a very striking kind), and there is no reason to suppose that the source is different. If the “spirits” at seances are quite clearly demons, then the information on one’s “previous lives” can also be supplied by demons. The aim in both cases is the same: to confuse men with a dazzling display of seemingly “supernatural” knowledge, and thus to deceive them concerning the true nature of life after death and leave them spiritually unprepared for it.
Even occultists who are favorable in general to the idea of reincarnation admit that the “proof” for reincarnation can be interpreted in various ways. One American popularizer of occult ideas believes that “most reported instances giving evidence of reincarnation could possibly be cases of possession.”36 “Possession,” according to such occultists, occurs when a “dead” person takes possession of a living body and the latter’s personality and very identity seem to change, thus causing the impression that one is being dominated by the characteristics of one’s “previous life.” Those beings that “possess” men, of course, are demons, no matter how much they may masquerade as the souls of the dead. The recent famous Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation by Dr. Ian Stevenson seems, indeed, to be a collection of cases of such “possession.”
The early Christian Church fought the idea of reincarnation, which entered the Christian world through Eastern teachings such as those of the Manicheans. Origen’s false teaching of the “pre-existence of souls” was closely related to these teachings, and at the Fifth Ecumenical council in Constantinople in 553 it was strongly condemned and its followers anathematized. Many individual Fathers of the Church wrote against it, notably St. Ambrose of Milan in the West (On Belief in the Resurrection, Book II), St. Gregory of Nyssa in the East (On the Soul and the Resurrection ), and others.
For the present-day Orthodox Christian who is tempted by this idea, or who wonders about the supposed “proof” of it, it is perhaps sufficient to reflect on three basic Christian dogmas which conclusively refute the very possibility of reincarnation:
1. The resurrection of the body. Christ rose from the dead in the very body which had died the death of all men, and became the first-fruits of all men, whose bodies will also be resurrected on the last day and rejoined to their souls in order to live eternally in heaven or hell, according to God’s just judgment of their life on earth. This resurrected body, like that of Christ Himself, will be different from our earthly bodies in that it will be more refined and more like the angelic nature, without which it could not dwell in the Heavenly Kingdom, where there is no death or corruption; but it will still be the same body, miraculously restored and made fit by God for eternal life, as Ezekiel saw in his vision of the “dry bones” (Ezek. 37:1-14). In heaven the redeemed will recognize each other. The body is thus an inalienable part of the whole person who will live forever, and the idea of many bodies belonging to the same person denies the very nature of the Heavenly Kingdom which God has prepared for those who love Him.
2. Our redemption by Jesus Christ. God took flesh and through His life, suffering, and death on the Cross redeemed us from the dominion of sin and death. Through His Church, we are saved and made fit for the Heavenly Kingdom, with no “penalty” to pay for our past transgressions. But according to the idea of reincarnation, if one is “saved” at all it is only after many lifetimes of working out the consequences of one’s sins. This is the cold and dreary legalism of the pagan religions which was totally abolished by Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross; the thief on His right hand received salvation in an instant through his faith in the Son of God, the “bad karma” of his evil deeds being obliterated by the grace of God.
3. The Judgment. It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment (Heb. 9:27). Human life is a single, definite period of trial, after which there is no “second chance,” but only God’s judgment (which is both just and merciful) of a man according to the state of his soul when his life is finished.
In these three doctrines the Christian revelation is quite precise and definite, in contrast to the pagan religions which do not believe either in the resurrection or in redemption, and are vague about judgment and the future life. The one answer to all supposed experiences or remembrances of “previous lives” is precisely the clear-cut teaching of Christianity about the nature of human life and God’s dealings with men.
CHAPTER EIGHT
True Christian Experiences of Heaven
1. The “Location” of Heaven and Hell
34
J. Allen Hynek and Jacques Vallee,
35
Allen Spraggett,