manchurian candidates

At the ITP conference this weekend, Michael Murphy talked about the evidence for reincarnation. Esalen has been collecting data on 'survival' for some time, and, according to Murphy, the evidence has now convinced him, pretty much against his will, that reincarnation is a fact.

The data that convinced Murphy were amassed by Ian Stevenson, of the University of Virginia, who has been researching the question of reincarnation for some time. His case studies concern children who were born with birthmarks or deformities, which they claim relate to the way they previously died. Such as a child born with a line of eight round birthmarks, who claimed he had been executed by machine-gun fire. Stevenson identified the man he had been, who had been shot across the chest eight times.

Sri Aurobindo's explanation for this type of phenomenon is that some of us experience a 'deep death' (like a deep sleep), in which we recharge and reconnect with our soul's mission, before being reborn in a new body to continue our evolution. Others, however, experience a 'shallow death', and as a result, carry the stresses of this life into the next, psychosomatising them into the new body as birthmarks or deformities. Woo woo enough for you?

My own reading of studies on near death experience revealed that everyone goes through a 'life review' after death, and that the one criterion on which a life seems to be judged is how well one has loved. This, it seems to me, is not only a useful guide on assessing one's ongoing life, but also constitutes a sort of pith instruction on how we can best, as a species, evolve further, and save ourselves from otherwise certain doom.


Murphy says that if we are willing to accept the possibility of reincarnation, and the implication of a continuing soul, with a mission of evolution, then we must reassess the synchronicities in our lives as glimpses of that mission. Surely they provide guidance from the deep soul. And we must listen to them, or lose that guidance.
We are all, said Murphy, Manchurian candidates, sent here on a mission about which we have no information. We have to work it out as we go, trying to sniff out the track and stay on it.

He quoted the Gita, which says, "It is better to fail in your own dharma than succeed in someone else's". These words ring in my mind like a bell. Like a transmission from the deep soul, saying don't follow any more red herrings, no matter how brightly they shine.