Signs of narrow-mindedness and my lack of patience.

Yes, I acknowledge I am guilty of this situation. One of my greatest defects is that I always have hope in people. I tend to think I am the one that is wrong. But sometimes life brings you a surprise.

I really thought it was a good idea to take the course “Signs of Reincarnation” offered by James Matlock in the Facebook group of the same name. I have already talked about him in this blog, though I didn’t give his name back then. Now I do. Well, the reason to take the course was mainly that I always want to know more. I read everything I can about the subject, no matter the source. I thought someone who supposedly has been researching reincarnation for decades could show me something I don’t know. I didn’t see it was a course for newbies anywhere, I thought it was a place to discuss reincarnation in a serious and rational way. How could I imagine I would only find they are making reincarnation a pseudoscience?

And no, it wasn’t planned at all. I am not a troll. I was ready to listen and share my own experience, one I consider quite exceptional. I respect the opinions and experiences of others. But I admit there are a few things I can’t stand: prejudice, preconceptions, rigidity, ignorance, arrogance, and people believing someone is more knowledgeable than you just because he’s older or has published some papers that don’t contribute anything new to the scene. Maybe I am always facing the same issue: I hate sheep-like behavior.  

I know. It is my fault. I should have known better: I have been in that Facebook group for over a year now, and it easy to see where the weaknesses lie. It is a place where only the works of Ian Stevenson matter. The rest is considered little more than rubbish. I thought it was a scientific group. Indeed: they are a bunch of old orthodox “scientists” who will never admit they might be wrong. They won’t look any further than their own navels. It is O.K., you can agree more or less with authors like Michael Newton, but you just can’t ignore him, especially when you are speaking of children’s memories of the time between lives and NDE’s. You can’t throw so much work done with regression techniques to the bin just because, according to Stevenson’s work, those memories are hard to verify (point that, simply, is not true). You just can’t talk as if the only truth is in the statistics obtained through his research. In sum, you just can’t watch the whole world from the high pedestal of your position, degrading the work of many other researches and experiencers who have a different opinion.   

I tried to make a few observations about how biased I felt Matlock’s conclusions were. It is just unbelievable how they talk about the time between incarnations as if it was edged in stone. They give statistics as if they were ultimate facts, not even considering the likely possibility that someone doesn’t remember a life in-between. They never cease to recite over and over again that most children forget when they grow older, without even considering the accounts of adults who claim they already had signs during childhood. Can we know for certain, when most people are not even aware of those signs of reincarnation or discard past life dreams thinking they are just fantasy? It is just funny to see how many statistics are done when you don’t have enough data or the sample is limited to a couple of countries. Yes, it is something, but you just can’t assume you know or even understand how reincarnation works, especially when you don’t have past life memories of your own.

It is so, so funny, to see people judging the quality of past life memories when they don’t even know how they feel, when they don’t even know the difference between flashes in the waking state and visions in the meditative state. Or when they don’t even know what a self-regression is. I explained. I told them about the past lives I remember and how I verified some of them. And were they interested in hearing more? No, the “researcher” seemed only interested in pointing out my misunderstandings, and students only in fighting with poor arguments when I said the belief in karma is inversely proportional to the number of past lives you remember and how "evil" you were in them. They doubt my statements, but they don’t doubt silly statistics done mostly in resolved children’s cases. I asked how can you determine if an adult memory is impoverished or contains distortions in relation to children’s memories, when most of the times those memories are unverifiable. Is it every event of a person’s life recorded in history? According to certain people, yes, and if it doesn’t and you can’t verify it, your memory is wrong. Great. And as you can’t verify it, all your “case” is rubbish and they won’t even bother to ask you about your story. And the worst of it all is they call themselves researchers.

I admit I lack patience these days. Yes, I have come too far in my journey. I have been investigating phenomena related to the survival of consciousness since I was 12. In the last four years I have had intense and personal experience equivalent to several decades of introspection work an average person could have done. The articles in the course were nothing new for me, with a few exceptions about possession cases. The scientific knowledge of the lecturer is conspicuous of its absence, clinging to old terms like unconscious mind or stream of consciousness as if you are saying something with that. Instead of clarifying things, he only brings more confusion talking of juridical karma and dispositional karma. The word karma should be the one to throw into the garbage, not adults’ memories or regression techniques. Quite fed up, I decided to leave.

What a surprise, the next morning I read a new article from the course, and here is what researcher Scott Drogo said in 1991:

“This paper has focused on types of reincarnation experiences usually bypassed by researchers. As already pointed out, traditional reincarnational research within parapsychology has centred on the reports of children who exhibit generally cohesive recollections of their (alleged) previous experiences. To some extent, the successful results of that research have created a bias in some investigators to play down competing research paradigms. A student of contemporary reincarnation research [James Matlock] has stated that ‘arguably, the only evidence for reincarnation worth considering today is that advanced by Ian Stevenson’, which focuses on childhood cases —the reason being the thoroughness of the psychiatrist’s case studies.”

State of Consciousness Factors in Reincarnation Cases.

Dear me! I am not the only one who has noticed... I hardly could believe my eyes. But, here we are, over 25 years later, and the bias is still there. If things haven’t changed, I don’t think they will ever change. What am I doing wasting my time, trying to be heard and bring some sense to current reincarnation research? Adults are mostly ridiculed or aren’t paid enough attention, just because, they say, there are frauds and cryptomnesia is harder to rule out, or because their memories are “impoverished” and can’t be easily verified. I just wonder where we would be if that same reasoning had been applied to NDE research, where their accounts can hardly be verified, unless they had an OBE and could see what was happening in the operation room or the hospital. 

Reincarnation “academic” researchers, as they call themselves, think they are doing a great job, and I only see what they are doing is closer to pseudoscience. Coincidentally, a member of my forum posted an article about it, and many of the symptoms were there. Not that I hadn’t seen them before, but this was a better confirmation. We are in the initial stages of the research. The first step in the scientific method is OBSERVATION, so you just can’t afford to dismiss those accounts you don’t like, for whatever reason. A biased sampling will only take you to a biased result. I tried to explain this too. Of course, I was utterly ignored.

At this point, I thought it was hopeless to keep trying. What was I doing there, involved in the same old silly discussions I have with newbies day after day, like “I’m afraid reincarnation would mean the loss of your individuality”, or the tiring “I can’t imagine a world where bad actions are not compensated in the next lives”? I offer my experience, my knowledge, my techniques. It is all in my book. But did they bother to ask? Not a single question (except someone who showed her own mental blocks to try self-hypnosis).

I can’t get over my amazement.

I think it is time to move on. Something I should have done a while ago. 

Please God save us all and send us new reincarnation researchers. Not academic ones. I want people who know what they are doing and have direct experience. God please.