Well, holiday season has begun and that leaves most of us thinking about presents. That’s an especially difficult situation if all  of your children happen to be adults. Well, for me, in at least one case I don’t have any trouble at all and never have.

My oldest son collects plushies… That’s right, Erik the Aweful… Master Sergeant. E. J. Choron of the United States Army… age 28… collects plushies and always has. He has over 300 now, and has been working on his litle “family” ever since, literally, the day he was born. Erik was born on Christmas morning, December 25th, 1981, I was there for the delivery, but I went home afteward and took a nap. When I went back to see him in the hospital a few hours later, that very first Christmas, I took him his first Christmas/Birthday present… a Care Bear… It began from there. That Care Bear, and a matching smaller one, are the prizes of his collection… almost… There’s one  more that’s just a little special.

You all know that I live in Russia, and that my kids were raised here. When Erik was about ten years old, the old man who lived in the flat underneath us came up to visit one day and saw all of Erik’s animals, all sitting neatly on his bed, even then, there were about sixty of them. In any case, it was Revolution Day weekend, and that’s what makes me think of this now.

The next day, the old man came back. When I opened the door, I saw that he had a shoe box under his arm. He asked to see Erik if he was there. Of course, he was, and Erik was sort of flattered to have a visitor. In any case, the old man leaned down and smiled at Erik and said “Grandson, I see that you have a lot of little friends…” He pointed to all of the animals on the bed. “I have something for you here, someone who has been with me for a long time. I can see that you will love him, and give him a good home, and it’s been a very long time since this…” He opened the box, and inside was a very old but very well cared for articulated, origina “Teddy”… “It’s been a long time since “Mishka” (Russian diminuative for a little bear) has had a little boy to love him… He once had one who loved him very much. He’s been lonely for a very long time. He was my son’s bear. My son… left me…  in the war… I want you to have his bear… Give him a good home and love him”.

When he lifted the little bear out and handed him, very gently, over to Erik, my son huged the bear, then hugged the old man and told him thank you… in very good Russian… Then…

The old gentleman turned to me, reached down into the bottom of the box and took out an old black and white photo… He looked at me and said, “one of these days, when the child is older and understands, show him this”. He handed me the photo. “Tell him that this little bear once met Lenin”…

The photo, which must have been taken in the early 1920s, showed a little boy, about ten years old, standing in line with what looked like his school class. He was holding the little bear up with his paw extended, and Lenin was shaking hands… with the bear…

The man’s son died in the Second World War.

There was very seldom a day, after that, that Erik would not stop and see the old gentleman on his way home from school, or wave to him, or sit and talk with him in the courtyard in front of our apartment building any time he saw him. He’s gone now, like so many I’ve known over the years. He passed away not too long after he gave Erik this very special gift. He had cancer. I think he knew that he was dying when he did it. Erik and I both cried when he left us.

There are two roads that lead from Mamontovka to Moscow. One of them is the M-8… a modern, four lane highway that is part of the North-South National Highewy System. It is soothe, well maintained and usually crowded. The other… the old, original Moscow-Yaroslavl road, is small, narrow and empty most of the time. Called the “Payanee Doroga” or “Drunken Road”, it twists and curves it’s way through switchback after switchback, as it meanders seemingly through every tiny village and hamlet in the North-eastern end of Moskovski Oblast. In the summer, it is a pleasant drive, if you have the time, and even though it is about ten miles farther, it is usually faster to follow the Dunken Road to Moscow than to contend with traffic on the M-8. In the winter, it is a suicidal fools errand to attempt passage, except when motivated by the most dire of emergencies, or unless you happen to live in one of the villages that it passes through.

One of the redeeming qualities of the old road is the fact that it passes through one of the most historic sites in Russia… in fact… in Europe. The site is marked only by a tiny roadsign giving the name of the village. No historical marker is necessary. Every Russian knows the name by heart… Borodino. It was on the fields of Borodino that Napoleon Bonaparte met disaster over two years before he met Wellington at Waterloo. It was Borodino… the valor of the Russian soldier and the fierceness of the Russian winter… led by a crochety, obnoxious, one-eyed old General named Kutuzov… that broke the might of France, and literally decimated what was then considered to be the finest army that ever marched across the face of Europe. Napoleon never recovered. His army died at Borodino. When he met the Duke of Wellington, it was with a force devoid of the hardened veterans who had swept him and the French Eagles across the face continent.

They say that there is a company of French Guards that still haunt the field of Borodino. They say that in the stillness of the night, you can see them rise from the mist around the little church that they once fought valiently to hold… a rear guard… a forlorn hope… buying time with their lives… allowing their Emperor time to make his escape. If you are quiet and do not disturb them, you may watch as they take up their injured comrades and as the lone officer, on horseback, sits like a statue in the frozen, empty night.

Drive down the Payanee Doroga, and park just off of the bridge on the outskirts of the village, just in sight of the tiny, shell scared church that sits alone in the midst of the silent field. Make the trip in the dead of winter, when the snow is deep and the air still and cold. If you sit there long enough… if you can fight off the chill and stay awake, you might see them. Many have. You might just see them as they form their tattered, forlorne little column and start the torturous march across the three thousand miles of frozen Hell that led the battered survivors back to France…. And in the morning… before the fresh snow falls, you will certainly see the bloody, frozen footprints that they left in the snow as they truged grimly toward the West. They’ve been doing it every night for over one hundred and eighty years, now.

Bacically, “Reincarnation” is the idea, or belief that each of us live many lives on earth and that in any given life we are what we have made ourselves in former lives, or, are in some way continuing some task or goal that we have undertaken previously. Many, especially those who subscribe to the so-called “Eastern Religions”, believe this to be under the law of cause and effect otherwise known as karma. In this view, our blemishes we have indulged and made a part of our personal self, our strengths and talents we have earned and unfolded. Similarly, what happens to us in life, if we believe in an ordered universe, and not in chance, is also of our own making. In other words, we are ourselves, and from day to day and from life to life we are making ourselves into what we will one day become, in this and in future lives, or, we are already molded to a certain type of existence, for good or ill, for some very specific purpose.

There are rather telling arguments against the notion that we inherit ourselves from our parents. Souls are attracted to parents with whom they have a type of psychic connection, previous association, or a deep and intimate relationship.

Seen in this manner, incoming souls select from the gene potentials of their parents-to-be that which is necessary to express what their selves already are, modified by the cumulative experiences of past existences. There is no chance involved. Thus the ten children of a large family will be ten different people, talent-wise, character-wise: ten different souls coming to birth, each with his or her own characteristics. There may even be a wide diversity in appearance. But, all are there, within that particular family, because it is in some way relevant to their further development, or to some goal which they, most often subconsciously, seek to attain.

Likewise, spouses are sometimes drawn together across long distances, sometimes spanning continents and oceans, vast differences in culture, background and language. The same applies to groups of people, otherwise, seemingly unrelated, who come together for apparently no reason and for no discernible purpose, only to discover that there is, in fact, a purpose, and that it is a “common cause”. In many cases, through regression therapy, interpretation of dreams and wakeful visions, these causes, and the relationships of the past can be recognized for what they are, and traced through the combined efforts of all involved, through a long chain of incarnations which can extend for literally thousands of years.

This type of connection to past lives would also tend to explain why some individuals have a propensity to certain traits and characteristics, talents, trades and professions. In some three hundred case studies conducted by myself and my collegues, to date, we have discovered that this type of “patterned” behavior is true in almost eighty (80%) of those examined, with regard to profession, trade and personal behavior. We have found the pattern to be near total when dealing with spouses who are psychically connected through prior incarnations, with the propensities growing stronger in relationship to the length of association.

Two cases in point stand out immediately. In the first, the current husband and wife seem to have shared a minimum of 12 known incarnations, with the possibility of several others that are recallable in fragmentary form. In all cases, the man (unusual in this case, there has been no gender shifting noted between incarnations, as is common to around fifty (50%) percent of known cases) has always followed some form of trade or profession which centers around engineering, usually military engineering or construction, while the woman seems to have made a career of having great numbers of children, and being constantly pregnant (their average family numbers 9 offspring surviving to adulthood, from incarnation to incarnation, and has been considerably larger).

The second case that comes instantly to mind is an individual who has been married, in the current incarnation, six times, and each spouse can be readily identified with a similar spouse in a previous incarnation. The fact that this particular individual is fifty-four (54) years of age, still alive, and that none of the women in question are particularlly angry or irritated with him speaks for itself. This party has undergone regression both jointly with three of his former spouses, and each has undergone separate regression therapy sessions, substantiating this chain of events, which seems to be following exactly the same order in each incarnation. This individual is a Naval Officer by profession, and has, apparently been involved with seafaring in some respect in each of his incarnations.

As an example of the “group incarnation” theory, I and my colleges have performed regression sessions on four individuals, and taken testimony from seven others, which substantiates the existence of at least one group which has incarnated together, repeatedly, for a known and measurable period of approximately 1,800 years, involving some twelve known locations, time periods and cultures. This group is tied together by a series of interlocking relationships, rather like an extended family, and pursuant to two highly visible and definable goals. The verification of this group comes, primarily from the fact that, prior to meeting each other, in this incarnation, quite by “accident” they were literally scattered across four continents, six different countries, and six language groups. Although they have no common history or culture, they are each familiar with historical events, in great detail, in distant lands, which have been historically verified, including names, dates, places and activities with regard to the three most recent incarnations of this group… information that one member might have, in any given situation, but all members could not possibly have, in each given situation. Further, this “group” is dependent upon a proper “pairing” or “mating” system within the group, and in each case in which this order was not achieved, the incarnation self-aborted, with each member being deceased before the age of forty, and the next incarnation beginning within a period of ten years. This group seems to have “found itself” rather late in this incarnation, with several of it’s members being in their mid-forties, however, the “pairing” has, in fact, taken place, or is beginning to, with several rather unusual, but extremely successful matches as a result. It is interesting to note that each individual in this group had had several unsatisfactory liaisons prior to the current “pairing”, and had always felt that “someone was out there”. Collectively, this group still suspects “missing members”, but, as time passed, individuals are “located”, generally finding the group rather than the reverse, and always, seemingly by accident.

There is also a case to be made for the fact that certain physical characteristics, or at least the residual hints of them carry over from one incarnation to the next. It is in this manner that individuals who have known each other in the past, especially those who have known each other intimately, are able to recognize each other in the present, and to somehow “find” each other. This could be something as simple as a mannerism of habit that is readily discernible, or the tone of the voice. In some cases, it appears to be a literal physical resemblance, in a general sense. This tends to produce the effect that is commonly expressed as de ja vu when referring to physical things, but in people produces the impression that one has met the other person before, or recognizes them somehow, but has a definite knowledge that this is an impossibility, or… the incident which most have encountered… meeting a stranger on the street, and wondering, literally all day, where they have seen the person before… when… it was, in fact, in a previous incarnation.

All this presupposes that there is an enduring part that lives in each person, something that survives and gradually unfolds through repeated reimbodiments, something within… a higher self or reincarnating ego… in which is stored the wisdom of experience. Evolution, thus, is the process by which the potentials of this divine essence may unfold. We humans have unfolded that which makes us human; we are at the human stage of our evolution. The animals have unfolded that which makes them animals, and so forth.

Human races are like streams. The individuals of the race are coming and moving constantly… at a constant velocity… being born and dying. The substance of the race is coming in and going out without pause. Yet the race retains its stamp, its marked characteristics. While the race may change slowly, rise to power and sink into obscurity, it retains a certain individuality. There is no such thing as a pure race. All the world’s races are mixtures to some extent or the other. The difference lies solely in the degree of the mixture. In the last two centuries this mix has been even further augmented; in recent decades, many cultures have been altered even further. In the long ran such mixtures will constitute either our real strength or our weakness.

It is obvious that in the most distant past lives we were what we now call the ancients. When we look back these older peoples it may seem strange to us, with different customs and life-styles, yet they must have been very much as we are, and as pointed out, many very basic patterns have, in fact, carried over from one incarnation to the next. Ancient peoples had their loves and hates, their trials, responsibilities, and problems; and they did the best they could with what they had.

If, as science maintains, our evolution is genetic, from parent to son to grandson, one would think there would be a continual rise in civilization. But instead we find all cultures are born, rise to a zenith, then gradually decline, die, or are overrun by another people that may be far less civilized. Why these ups and downs of civilizations? When a civilization is born or a nation emerges, it attracts to itself those souls that have the karma and those particular abilities to express. When it is time for pioneering, those types come in: hardy souls like those in the United States who worked their way across the wilderness. The administrators come in at the appropriate time by karma — the law-givers, artisans, artists, the military — and creative efforts begin to flower. In time the nation reaches its zenith of power and influence. The citizens no longer have to struggle for their ideals and freedoms. They may suffer from a surfeit of worldly things. A new type of soul comes to birth, softer, more effete. Gradually the seeds of decline set in, and in due course the nation will ebb away and sink into obscurity.

Every stage in the unfoldment of a civilization offers opportunities for the development or expression of the souls coming into incarnation. Souls with great creativity will naturally be drawn to eras when they may express that creativity, unless karma prevents it for one reason or another. In each era people express what they are, and thus each age assumes the tone and characteristics of the people in it who are expressing what they are. If the preponderance of souls is primitive, it will be a primitive age, and so forth. An age is the people living in it, and the destinies or karma they are working out. The great souls of the Periclean Age in Greece are what made the Periclean Age.

Mankind consists of a wide variety of souls. We have those who are perhaps below the norm, even depraved…  some of these may in the past have been involved in violent or otherwise traumatic experiences. There is the great run of average people, which includes most of us. Then the forerunners, who are geniuses in a variety of fields, science, literature, the arts. And above these are those developed in an all-round fashion: the Goethes, Schweitzers, von Humboldts, Einsteins and Tellers and a host more who may be said to have had a world view of human and terrestrial life. There are spiritual philosophers such as Plato, Pythagoras, and Plotinus, to name a few from our Western tradition; and others in all parts of the world whose ideas have affected their own and succeeding ages in a profound manner. Above these are the world teachers, those superb examples of human evolution: Buddhas and Christs, who represent what each of us may one day achieve in the far, far future, in the course of many incarnations of evolution… in the spirit of the words of Jesus that, “These things that I do, ye shall do also, and even greater things.” It is difficult to imagine what the fate of mankind would have been if these compassionate ones had not given of their essence for the sake of us all. There are many types of souls connected with the human race.

Reason would dictate that civilizations simply cannot continue to rise and rise, for very good reasons. Relatively large numbers of the human race may have been willingly involved in violent and cruel acts; they may have sowed seeds of violence. Now these human souls (who may have followed their cruel leaders) will reincarnate, and when they do, they bring with them the traits of their pre-existence. If civilizations continued to rise and rise, where would be the place for these types of souls with different, and sometimes violent characteristics? That, it would appear, is one of the primary reasons that the world is fragmented at times: here a high civilization, there more violent types expending themselves.

The Western classical world, for example, had its flowering first in Greece, then in Alexandria, and finally in the Roman Empire. As Rome declined the light of civilization gradually died, culminating in the onset of the so-called Dark Ages, a period which, by comparison with what had gone before, was dark indeed insofar as human achievement, education, artistry, and creativity were concerned. From civilization into abject ignorance, where is the evolution in that?

Reincarnation sheds a wonderful light on this subject, because at every stage in the development of a nation the souls come in whose destiny is such as to fulfill the destiny of the nation at that point. This applies also to its decline. In the decline of Rome some of the Caesars were actually depraved. Of course Rome was so well built that it took a long time on the way down, centuries.

Evolution from the theosophic point of view extends through repeated reimbodiments, not only for human beings, but for animals, plants, even atoms and worlds. It is not scientific heresy to describe the sun as eventually dying. The only heresy might be asserting, as we do, that the sun will in time be reborn, with its worlds visible and invisible, just as a human being has his visible and invisible parts. For this is a living universe, and we humans are living parts of it.    Although there is a finite number of human souls belonging to the family of man, only a relatively small number is in incarnation at any one time. The vast majority are undergoing their after death states, which may last many, many times longer than the years spent in incarnation. From age to age the population of earth varies considerably though within certain limits. At present, souls appear to be crowding in, which may continue for a while. At other times large portions of the earth may lie fallow and mankind be reduced in numbers. Along with this, there is the regular incarnation of “new” souls… those who have not previously been incarnated, but are only now being formed into the essence which makes the “soul” a human entity.

Because of these different factors, one must be very careful not to stand in judgment upon peoples whose life-style may seem to us to be lacking in many of those comforts and other niceties which we consider necessary today. They may indeed be living in what to us might seem to be a primitive condition; but we must not fall prey to the erroneous presumption that they are somehow genetically inferior to ourselves. This is simply not true. One has only to read some of the books written by Laurens van der Post about the Bushmen of the Kalahari desert in southern Africa to realize that in spite of their primitive life-style, in all the qualities that make human life sane and beautiful — such as honesty, generosity, kindness, and a sense of humor — these people, in most cases, are wonderfully civilized, in their own way. It is not necessary to own a large home and drive frenetically to work every day in an expensive automobile to be civilized!

Mankind is very, very old indeed, many millions of years. Human civilizations stretch back into legendary times. If we would study comparatively the myths and epics of mankind and give some credence to them we would find these old accounts describing civilizations on continents now sunken. They contain many types of suggestive material that should be taken seriously; not always literally, but the spirit of them, the essence. These legends are the only memory we have of these older periods obscured by intervening catastrophes, natural and human. They have survived with all the races by oral tradition. Any written records would have been destroyed in the often violent periods that have intervened. H. P. Blavatsky held that the old myths were designed by spiritual teachers, adepts, who wove into them the teachings of the ancient wisdom. They may therefore be interpreted on many levels.

If our universe is a living being, and our sun and earth also, we then see ourselves as children of the living cosmos, blood of its blood, life of its life. If man enshrines a divine spark, we can truly believe we were present when the earth was born and the morning stars sang together, as it says in the Book of Job. We would realize that hierarchies of beings superior to us… form the inner fabric of the cosmos. Without their guiding and sustaining influence, nature would become a meaningless chaos.

Each human being is a deathless entity which, over the course of many thousands of years, has been building for itself more stately mansions — to use the imagery of the American poet, Oliver Wendell Holmes. And to quote from the English poet laureate, John Masefield, “These eyes of mine have blinked and shone / In Thebes, in Troy and Babylon.” The substance of history is the souls of mankind that appear again and again, reaping and sowing from life to life, from age to age.

Do You Really Think We Will Live Again?

Reincarnation intrigues people. It is as if their souls know something their minds don’t quite understand. But proof is a matter of individual conviction. When I first heard about reincarnation I knew it was true. It answered questions that were deeply troubling: Why are some children born to poverty or abuse while others have every advantage? Why do good and decent people have such a hard time? How can a loving God be so cruel, so unjust? I worried about death: Is it the absolute end? Are heaven and hell everlasting? Are unbelievers eternally damned?

The idea that we have lived before and will live many times ended my nightmares. The explanation that we are what we are and where we are because of our thoughts and actions in the past made sense, and convinced me that there is justice in life, and purpose. I began to realize that the situations people find themselves in are opportunities for growth, for developing understanding and improving their lives.

Henry Ford believed in reincarnation:

When I discovered Reincarnation it was as if I had found a universal plan. I realized that there was a chance to work out my ideas. Time was no longer limited. I was no longer a slave to the hands of the clock. There was time enough to plan and create.

We all retain, however faintly, memories of past lives. We frequently feel that we have witnessed a scene or lived through a moment in some previous existence. But that is not essential; it is the essence, the gist, the results of experience, that are valuable and remain with us.

These “results” become part of our spirit of which Krishna speaks in the Bhagavad-Gita (2.11-13):

Those who are wise in spiritual things grieve neither for the dead nor for the living. I myself never was not, nor thou, nor all the princes of the earth; nor shall we ever hereafter cease to be. As the lord of this mortal frame experienceth therein infancy, youth, and old age, so in future incarnations will it meet the same.   Krishna here speaks as the self or spirit within each individual that uses a number of souls and bodies to express itself. Interestingly, each of these bodies, souls, and spirits is pursuing its own evolution through a process of repeated embodiments. When we examine the processes involved we become aware of various aspects of reincarnation.

Consider our bodies: these marvelously complex organisms are composed of innumerable living and evolving beings, held together, guided, and used both by a dominant soul and a spiritual overshadowing intelligence. At death, when soul and spirit withdraw, these various elements disperse and reembody in whatever organisms attract them.

As humans, our consciousness is centered in our reincarnating ego and this ego is the vehicle of expression of our divine and spiritual selves. Now the three parts of our constitution — our body, built of astral-vital-physical components; our human soul, consisting of mental and emotional elements; and our immortal spirit — work and evolve together during our sojourn on earth. This evolution consists, at this time, of unfolding and refining our thoughts and feelings so that we can better express our spiritual qualities of compassion, intelligence, imagination, and willpower. Considering this, we begin to understand how important each life is, and how the lessons we learn, the good that we do, enrich and contribute to the advancement of every part of ourselves.

I wonder if those who do not want to return have any idea what that would involve? But why don’t they want to come back? Do they dread being born again into this cold, cruel, violent world? Or is it because they feel snowed under with problems? Even a casual study of karma and reincarnation helps us understand that our problems and those of the world were created by ourselves, and can be solved only by ourselves. Immersed in our troubles, we are immersed also in their solutions, could we but see it. When an individual endeavors to take responsibility for his life, he becomes increasingly aware of the consequences of his motives and actions and feels impelled to change what is selfish and unkindly to what is for the general good.

Change is one thing we can count on: nothing stands still. Think how we change, in appearance, personality, outlook, size, and shape. After death changes continue: when we return our soul will be enlarged, transformed through the integration of our life’s experiences and our spiritual aspirations.

Of course, many of our present problems and temptations are karmic consequences of encounters left unresolved at the end of our previous life. But now, thanks to the blessing of forgetfulness, we are free from emotional involvements and better able to resolve such disturbances. Oliver Wendell Holmes caught this idea of the soul’s progression in his poem “The Chambered Nautilus”:

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul!

As the swift seasons roll!

Leave thy low-vaulted past!

Let each new temple, nobler than the last,

Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,

Till thou at length art free,

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!

How about the people who fear coming back as somebody else? That is not possible. We are ourselves — forever. When an incarnating soul returns earthward, it is attracted to parents and family with similar traits and abilities. The embryo then draws from its parents’ gene-pool the qualities that are inherently its, whether or not they seem to be similar to those of a family member. Because of this, in our next life we will be much like what we are now, but enriched and refined by the lessons we are now learning. Refreshed by our after death experiences, we will come back ready and able to carry on where we left off, and to face challenges that will help us unfold our spiritual potential. Benjamin Franklin put this clearly in his epitaph:

The Body of B. Franklin,

Printer

Like the Cover of an Old Book,

Its Contents Torn Out

And

Stripped of its Lettering and Gilding,

Lies Here

Food for Worms,

But the Work shall not be Lost,

For it Will as He Believed

Appear Once More

In a New and more Elegant Edition

Revised and Corrected

By the Author.

This “return” into earth life occurs sooner for those who have made little psychological karma, or later for the more developed and spiritual who need time to assimilate their spiritual aspirations.

As to the concern that we will come back as an animal: that is not possible either. (For detailed information see “Like Attracts Like,” Sunrise, June/July 1985.) Once we have developed self-consciousness we cannot go backward. This idea came from taking figures of speech literally. As was the case of the American Indian: when he spoke of becoming a wolf or an eagle or a mole, he did not mean he would become that animal. He meant he would become as clever and family-oriented as a wolf, as farseeing as an eagle, or as close to the earth as a mole so as to fathom her secrets. Humans cannot revert to animals; animals cannot become humans overnight or for a long, long time.

There are, however, psychological and physical exchanges going on all the time. Our atoms, for instance, are constantly transmigrating: whenever we smell a rose, listen to music, think of a friend or caress our pets we exchange life particles and forces. Then too, our souls continually “migrate” from one state or condition of consciousness to another, from sleep dreams to waking awareness, from surface thinking to deep concentration. And this continues after death. These exchanges can be mutually beneficial or harmful, depending on the quality of the energy generated. Knowing this, the wise consider it a duty to think and live harmlessly and in the most kindly manner possible.

Another question often asked: What happens to what I loved and worked for? Will that be lost when I die? Nothing is lost. The knowledge we gain, the skills we develop will endure through our postmortem interlude and in future lives blossom in increased proficiency and power. Plato referred to this, explaining that all knowledge and wisdom are memories of former existences. And as these develop and unfold in the present, new personalities are shaped to express the characteristics and needs of our inner and outer conditions. Shakespeare said the same thing, reminding us that an actor in his time plays many parts, identifying himself with and becoming for a few nights’ performance Hamlet perhaps, and then Macbeth, King Richard, or Prospero. As the actor knows he is playing these parts, so our permanent self knows, even though it may be unable to convey this knowledge to the temporary “mask” or personality.

And the big question: If we lived before why don’t we remember? Henry Ford was sure we do retain memories of past lives, but being unfamiliar with the processes of reincarnation, we are not able to recognize them. Buddhists think character is the sum of our past. Theosophical teachings explain these ideas — telling us that memory is stored in the higher part of our nature, glimpsed on occasion, and seen clearly at the moment of death. When free of earthly entanglements we see in retrospect the causes, interrelations, the purpose and justice of all that occurred in the last life.

But how about the people who are sure they remember? Whether they are picking up scenes and events from the earth’s astral atmosphere and identifying with them, as imaginative writers often do, or whether particular incidents of a past incarnation were so indelibly impressed on their souls that they do remember, it is difficult to tell. Theosophical writings explain that when a person’s life ends in violence, or is cut off “before its time,” the soul may return soon after to reestablish its balance, retaining some memories from that too brief life.

Another type of “remembrance” is what the Tibetans call tulku when, under certain conditions, a high lama may, a few years after his death, incarnate in the body of another. The Associated Press carried the story of 5-year-old Simon Heh, of Tibetan-Chinese parents living in Victorville, California, who recognized a Tibetan monk traveling through the area as a friend from his last life. Startled, the monk, Geshe Tsepel, thinking the child could have been Lobsang Phakpa, an elderly lama he had studied under as a boy and who had died in China in the 1950s, wrote the holy leaders of his home monastery in India. Not wanting to influence their decision Geshe named five former monks who could have reincarnated as Simon. Upon examination the leaders determined that the child was indeed the reincarnation of Lobsang Phakpa. On January 3, 1993, the youngster was honored in an ancient ceremony that marked “the beginning of his spiritual journey toward becoming a lama.”

Assuredly, all living beings existed before their present appearance on earth. Origin, an early Church Father, explained that human souls pre-existed in the spiritual world within the ambiance of the divine before they incarnated on earth. Plato went further, explaining that souls not only existed in the universe of being before entering this realm of experience, but that when freed from the bonds of its limitations, they return to that former abode to rest and assimilate their earthly experiences. After a time, they sail forth again invigorated and ready to face the ordeals by which they gain knowledge of life and behold visions of heights they will one day attain.

How many lives will we live? In Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull, the wise gull expresses a view that may hold a seed of truth:

Do you have any idea how many lives we must have gone through before we even got the first idea that there is more to life than eating, or fighting, or power in the Flock? A thousand lives, Jon, ten thousand! And then another hundred lives until we began to learn that there is such a thing as perfection, and another hundred again to get the idea that our purpose for living is to find that perfection and show it forth. The same rule holds for us now, of course; we choose our next world through what we learn in this one. Learn nothing, and the next world is the same as this one, all the same limitations and lead weights to overcome.

©2009 by Dr. J. Lee Choron: All rights reserved unless specifically granted by the author in writing.

Regardless of what you’ve heard, Western Siberia is a wonderous place nothing like we were led to believe in the West. It is not a frozen wasteland. There are no starving bears chasing emaciated wolves up and down the frozen, dreary streets vying for the skeletal forms that huddle wretchedly in long lines waiting for their daily crust of bread and cup of thin turnip soup.

Siberia is big and bold and beautiful a land of extremes, and contrast with frigid winters and sweltering summers high, snow capped mountains and pine forests that stretch out as far as the eye can seee. It is a land of great modern cities like Novosibersk with it’s population of three million, and tiny villages like Dubovka with is population of thirty.

At one time, Siberia was synonymous with “suffering” and “pain”. At one time, it was the heart and soul of the most infamous and notorious prison system the world has eve seen Stalin’a GuLag (That, by the way, is the proper way to write the word… it is an acronym, meaning Gu(sodarstnoi)La(ger)… Government Camps…) stretching from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, from Vorkuta, above the Arctic Circle to Magadan on the Sea of Alaska it was a place of torture, torment and grief. It was a place to which many came, but few returned.

The train lumbered through the tiny village in the dead of night. It was mid winter, and great sheets of ice shrouded the twelve wooden cars that crept along behind the big, black 6-8-6 steam locomotive. A thick cloud of smoke belched from the engine as it struggled to push aside the dense piles of snow that all but obliterated the tracks. Thinner streams of smoke trailed from each of the cars. It was the only sign that inside each car, packed like sprats in a tin, were eighty human beings lost souls most of which were making their final trip to a place with no name. For five days they had been crowded into the cars five days with one cup of thin soup and one slice of coarse black bread to keep them alive barely five long days with no room to lie down and room to sit only in shifts five long days of a single bucket for a toilet, shared by all, and a tiny coal fed, iron stove to fight off the frigid temperatures which plumeted, at night to over forty below zero. These were the damned. The victims of a dying dictator’s paranoia. They were doctors, lawyers, engineers, soldiers, wives, mothers and children. All of them had managed to run afoul of Stalin, or his infamous henchman Lavrenti Baria. Now, those who had survived the trip, were near their destination a place with no name. They were only the latest arrivals… not the first… not the last. It seems only fitting that these nameless “Enemies of the State” were bound for an equally nameless “last stop” a place in which most, if not all of them, would eventually end up in an eqally nameless mass grave, in the place that they called “Site 36″. The place without a name.

Things are different now. Site 36 has long been closed. The land that that once made up the most infamous camp in Stalin’s GuLag has long ago been turned to farmland. One or two scattered villages dot the landscape, several of these are populated by those who once labored here for the state and their descendants, either as guards or as prisoners. They get along, now. It is as though they share a special kind of sadness, a common nightmare. Their children and grandchildren do not know who was who. It is a peaceful place now, and only the old railway platform marks the exact location of the old camp. No train serves it now. The villagers travel by car, or by bus, the fifty kilometers into Novosibersk when they do their weekly, or monthly shopping for the things that their tiny local shops do not carry. But the legacy of Site 36 hasn’t ended. The local farmers still find “unwanted” obstacles in their fields not the least of which are the numerous uncharted, unmarked mass graves. Then, too, there are the sounds in the night.

Every night the train still comes. The clack-clack-clack of it’s drivers echoing across the wheat and potato fields and through the windows of every house in every nearby village. Every night, the lonely wail of it’s whistle echoes through the stillness of the Siberian night, and every night, the hiss of it’s air brakes slashes the stillness as the train and it’s load of misery ease into the platform at the place without a name. Each night, the shouts of the guards, the barking of their dogs, and the cries and moans of the newly damned are heard echoing through the stillness, just as they have for over half a century. Once in a while the other sounds are drowned out by the sharp crack of a pistol shot, the bark of a rifle or the gutteral growl of a submachine gun. Sometimes you can hear the sirens.

The people who live in the area are used to all this. When asked about it, they shrug and say simply that things like this happen. And, happen they do every night at the place without a name.

© 2007/2009 by Dr. J. Lee Choron. All rights reserved unless otherwise specified by the author in writing.

The UFO wave of 1972-73 was the last “classical” UFO wave to sweep North America… at least the United States. It began in the fall of 1972, as a group of isolated, but seemingly consistent sightings in the Southwestern and Southeastern parts of the country, and eventually turned into a nationwide phenomenon. Now, many people will attribute these sightings to “natural” occurrences, and the U.S. Government certainly has ample “explanations” for each and every sighting, from “atmospherics” to “weather balloons” to “planetary alignments”… still… I know what I saw, and it wasn’t a weather balloon.

It was the second Friday in November, 1972, and the Center (Texas) Roughriders had just taken a 48 to 0 drubbing at the hands of the Carthage Bulldogs… at their homecoming… Now this kind of humiliation at one’s homecoming might sound just ghastly to any football fan, but it was not, in point of fact, the worst defeat suffered by the Roughriders that season… they had a perfect season, that year… didn’t win a single game. But, they did manage to get into the record books, two weeks later, when the (Longview, Texas) Pine Tree Pirates defeated them 72 to 0…with Pine Tree set up to score again when time ran out. It was the worst single defeat ever suffered by a Texas High School Football Team… a record that stands to this day…

It’s fairly easy for me to remember the date, because, even if the football game, that night, was less than memorable… what followed it was not. LaMoine, Charlie Harmon, Pedro and I, and another friend of ours named Rick Bauer, were all loaded into my old ’56 Pontiac (Old Matilda) and were headed home after the game. I usually got the driving detail in those days… with the rest of the guys buying the (35 cent a gallon) gas, since Old Matilda was one of the biggest cars in Center, she could accommodate something like ten of us if we packed her right. This was an especially useful characteristic on Wednesday nights, when you could get into the Apache Drive-in, and see a fairly good “B” movie for “One Dollar A Car”… no matter how many people were in it… and we could easily get ten or twelve in the car and another four (five, if one of them was short) in the trunk.

In any case, we were on our way home after the latest insult to our school pride on the football field, and were, in spite of this, in a generally good mood. I had a route I followed, which sort of went in a big circle, starting at the football field, and dropping people off until I eventually wound up home, myself. We had just gotten to Rick’s house and were all standing out in his front yard talking, when Pedro looked up at the sky and said “What’s that?”

Naturally, we all looked up…

Above us, in a perfectly clear Autumn sky, against a backdrop of stars, were three fairly large silver lights. They seemed to be moving, in a triangular, or diamond shaped formation, from roughly West to East… They looked to be, from where we were standing, about the size of a dime, and were circular. Each one, had a smaller, blinking greenish-blue light in the center, and a red light, that didn’t blink, in “front”… that is to say the part that was facing the direction that they were going… and they were going fast.

Now, anyone who has watched an airplane, especially at night, realizes that speed is not always reflected in what you can see. The sky is big, and even if a plane is moving relatively fast, it appears to move fairly slowly, because it is high up, and is seen against such a vast background. As I said, these objects appeared to be about the size of a dime, but they also appeared to be fairly high up… which means that they were huge… They were also moving fast enough that we had to physically turn to track them with our eyes… pretty fast.

Abruptly, they just stopped… They didn’t slow down. They stopped. They were completely dead in the air for a period of several seconds… still in their triangular formation, and still “pointing” the same direction… but absolutely motionless.

As we watched, a thin line of reddish light began to dart between the three shapes. It would go from one to the other, almost as if they were “shooting” it at each other… but… it didn’t seem to be a hostile act… Then, they began to move again, just as suddenly as they had stopped… in exactly the opposite direction. They headed back in the direction from which they had originally come.

Once again, they stopped suddenly, then seemed to shoot straight up, until they were almost out of sight. They then stopped again, seemed to change position slightly within their “formation” and started off, at what was literally a blinding speed, this time to the North, zig-zagging as they sped away…

A few seconds later, we heard a rumble from the East, and sonic booms, as what were obviously three very fast moving Air Force jets came into view from toward the Louisanna border. We were, in fact, so busy watching the show, that we hadn’t noticed several other cars that had stopped along the street, and their occupants were also watching the objects as they danced across the sky. One of these cars contained Ed Roberts and “Uncle” Charlie Johnson, two of our local police officers. Ed, a former Military Policeman, was observing the objects through a pair of binoculars, while Uncle Charlie was on the car radio, describing the scene to Mr. Buck Carriker, who was, at that time, Chief of Police. About every third word he uttered the phrase “Hell no, Buck, we ain’t drunk”.

Pedro (Charles Emanis) and I both worked for the “Champion”, a local newspaper. I had my camera in the car, as usual, but, this was years before the invention of “passive night optics”, and taking photos of the event was hopeless, event though we both tried. It didn’t matter. The story was all over the news the following day. Someone at Barksdale Air Force Base “leaked” the story to the press about how they had scrambled fighters to intercept three Unidentified Flying Objects, after reports of them had absolutely flooded all of the base’s incoming telephone lines. Barksdale was, and is to this day, headquarters for the 8th Air Force, one of a handful of bases in the U.S. which had, and still has, nuclear armed B-52 bombers airborne at all times as part of what was once called the “failsafe” system. They were naturally a bit concerned at the thought of “foreign”, unidentified aircraft invading their air space.

We “learned” two days later, from an “official” U.S. Air Force spokesman… who was intervied on every television and radio station in a three state area… that the incident had all been a “big misunderstanding”… that no fighters had been dispatched, since the Air Force “knew all along” that the “UFOs” in question were actually a “weather observation balloon, launched from a facility near Longview, Texas, which exploded due to unfavorable atmospherics, producing the “abnormal” lighting effects that had been wittinesed”.

Maybe they were right… On the other hand, it was 1972… maybe some long-haired hippie freak put LSD into the Center Water Supply, and we were all hallucinating… maybe… but I don’t think so…