August 31 - Never Having to Say You're Dead? The New Interest in Reincarnation

Dr. Paul DeBell believes that he was once a caveman. Not only that, he is fairly certain that his life as a caveman ended violently. "I was going along, going along, going along, and I got eaten," said the psychiatrist.

To his life as a caveman, Dr. DeBell adds his knowledge of previous lives as a Tibetan monk and "a conscientious German who refused to betray his Jewish neighbors in the Holocaust." Dr. DeBell's account is found in "Remembrances of Lives Past" by Lisa Miller of Newsweek magazine, published in the August 29, 2010 edition of The New York Times. Miller writes of the growing acceptance of the idea of reincarnation among Americans.

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life reported last year that a quarter of all Americans now believe in reincarnation. As Lisa Miller notes, the report found that women are more likely to believe in reincarnation than men, and registered Democrats are more likely than Republicans. In any event, the popularity of reincarnation is rising, and Dr. DeBell is but one example.

The most influential figure in Miller's report is Dr. Brian Weiss, who has pioneered what is now called "regression therapy," based in the remembrance of past lives. A graduate of Columbia University and the Yale Medical School, Weiss became a lightning rod for controversy within psychiatric circles after he published an account of his treatment of a woman by hypnotizing her and assisting her to remember several past lives. Dr. Weiss now holds weekend seminars that attract hundreds of participants. He also claims that such therapeutic approaches are gaining credibility within the psychiatric profession.

Miller, who recently wrote a book on the afterlife, recognizes that the growing acceptance of reincarnation points to a retreat of Christian beliefs.  Reincarnation offers an escape from that linear view of history and human destiny. As Lisa Miller summarizes the worldview: "You are born. You live. You die. And because nobody's perfect, your soul is born again - not in another location or sphere, and not in any metaphorical sense, but right here on earth." There is more to it, of course. Hinduism teaches that eventually, after however many lives, the soul reaches perfection and release. Until then, the soul takes on life after life.

The Bible states clearly that "it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment" [Hebrews 9:27]. There is no "do-over," and no great cycle of life.