John Barrowman: Have I Been Here Before?...

[fajrdrako]

Yesterday I watched another one of those TV programs I wouldn't normally have been watching, except that John Barrowman was the guest star on it. The show was Have I Been Here Before?; it was an episode from last year.

In this show, they put a celebrity under hypnosis and use regression therapy to get them to remember and talk about a past life. They tape them talking about it under hypnosis, and then show them the clip onscreen, and discuss it with them before getting a historian to check into the plausibility of the apparent past-life memory.

Barrowman remembered being a clown named Oliver, who worked as a young man in 1817 in a circus in Bucharest. His parents and brother were trapeze artists; the circus was in a tent, and they lived in a brightly-painted wood caravan. They were travellers - "you might call us gypsies," he said. Oliver was happy at the circus until one day his brother fell from the trapeze. The family lost their circus job and scrounged for money until Oliver eventually supported the family by thievery. That part was particularly cute: he lowered his voice and confided with a mischievous grin, "I like being a thief." He ended up in prison for stealing a woman's purse in the 1860s, if I understood correctly. He described one of the bills he had stolen.

Historically speaking, some of the things Barrowman said checked out - clowns of that time dressed as he had described, circus tents were just starting to be used, there were Russian influences such as he described in Bucharest at that time. On the other hand, the trapeze was unlikely, and caravans would ave been made of canvas siding, not wood. The money he described could have been a 5 rouble note.

All in all, the show was more entertaining than one would think, and Barrowman said he could believe it, though he didn't know anything about 19th century Bucharest.

So I ask myself: what do I think about this, or any other story of reincarnation? I have no religious reasons to believe in it as a general thing. Logically, I think it possible. Intellectually, I think there's no reason to believe that any one single thing happens after death - different things may happen to different people, and be simultaneously possible. Or nothing at all. Or reincarnation may not be what it appears to be - perhaps it's a bit of psychic interaction not bounded by space or time. Emotionally speaking, I don't like the idea of reincarnation at all: I don't want it to be true. But whether I want something to be true or not has nothing to do with the external reality.

Which is just to say: I don't know.

I'd be totally skeptical, except I think I have two memories of past lives - and yes, it could be simple imagination, or some sort of dream, or imagination, but it feels more like memories. One memory - which surfaced in regression therapy rather like that in the TV show, conducted by my friend Beulah - is particularly vivid, strong, and terrifying. It's difficult to believe those could be anything but memories. The other is inconsequential. Both are enough to remove my certainty of disbelief.

Twice, I have had past-life readings from professional psychics, and both were totally unimpressive. One said I had been a Celtic priestess living on an island in the south of England in prehistoric times - I can't say I wasn't, it sounds in character well enough, but I have no sense of memory or identification with the idea. The other seemed even less like me: a story of a Philadelphia merchant with a ship in colonial America. I can't imagine any life I am less likely to identify with, and wondered if the time whether the psychic was picking up walkingowl's past life instead, which she agreed was possible.

So: I believe more in reincarnation than I do in psychics, it seems.

The thing is: how do we define the self, or the soul, or identity, or whatever it would be that would make me that person with those memories? I believe we are as much bodies as mind and spirit: which is to say that it's our chemical composition and genetic heritage that makes us what we are, gives us our personalities, determines the way we think. That, and our experiences and choices. If I were another person in another place and time, what links that person with me now? What kind of carry-over is possible? And why?

Perhaps we are just seeing bits of the universal consciousness, randomly accessible by the subconscious in a confused and fragmentary state. And that is amazing enough.

Comments

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

Have seen some of these programmes, as has my father. They are presented very disingenuously. The emphasis is always "there might be something in it", but they never take things far enough in historical evidence. (I find it rather unlikely that the first name Oliver would have been used in 19C Romania.)

These cases tend to involve cryptomnesia and subconscious fantasy. Buried memories of novels, magazine articles, old movies – all reworked in the unconscious. A friend of mine had 'hypnotic regression' once, and told me about it. I realised – as she did not – that she was recycling bits of a 1950s historical movie.

There was a famous set of cases in the 1970s, much-feted on TV, which on closer inspection turned out to be cryptomnesia. What was especially interesting was that one woman, who claimed to have lived in Roman times, had taken what had been a minor character in an obscure historical novel (which she could not consciously recall having read) and made her into the main character. It's like subconscious fic, really.

The human imagination is an amazing thing: there is no need to subscribe to fictitious notions such as 'souls'.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I find it rather unlikely that the first name Oliver would have been used in 19C Romania.

I thought so, too. The evidence - if that is the word - is always obscure. But then, if I was remembering from another lifetime and long ago, would I not confuse details?

Nothing makes me particularly believe any of it on the evidence - though it does seem to prove that we all have rather colourful imaginations, at least when we work through our subconscious.

Perhaps when he was young, Barrowman read a book about a circus clown? And another about Bucharest?

[msp-hacker.livejournal.com]

When I watched it, the thing that struck me was "Well, now we have a reason why John loves stripes!"

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Colourful ones, too - good point. Having the same taste and style over the centuries!

[wijsgeer.livejournal.com]

I believe that you have far more potential memories stored in your mind than you can ever consciously put words to. With only a little manipulation many people can be made to swear they saw things that are impossible (like seeing footage of the El Al plane crashing into the block of flats in Amsterdam in 1994 - no such footage exists, but just asking people to remember the night they saw it many people come up with details, how they watched the news and what they had eaten that evening etc).
Also, there is quite a lot of evidence that people can retrieve things they've only seen once, heard fleetingly and make that into a memory.
I believe peoples minds like stories, given prompting, however small, one makes up a tale around it.

I share you emotional resistance against the idea of reincarnation. I don't know why. Or maybe I do, all types of afterlife rub me the wrong way.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

Yup. Some people are very suggestible.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

I believe peoples minds like stories, given prompting, however small, one makes up a tale around it.


Yes. The process is called confabulation. I recall, when younger, being quite attracted to the idea of reincarnation, but then I recognised that the 'past memories' I had were vague recollections of scenes from films I had seen. Fortunately, I'm not suggestible in the slightest, because (given my range of reading and interests since childhood) I could probably spin some wild tales.

There are a number of basic objections that can be made to reincarnation: one is, there is no such thing as inherited memory, and if there were, it would be genetically influenced, not random. There is also no such thing as an independently existing 'soul': personality = brain-activity and contents. Nor is there such a thing as "universal consciousness".

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

This is a good article on the phenomenon, re: the cases I recall on TV: The Bloxham Tapes (http://skepdic.com/bloxham.html). 'Ms Evans' is the case I mentioned re: the influence of historical fiction.
Here is an article on Cryptomnesia (http://skepdic.com/cryptomn.html).

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the links!

[attolia.livejournal.com]

I think the real question about shows like that is how they are edited. They showed 'memories' that mostly checked out. But how much did he say that they didn't show, either us or him? He might have remembered supposed past lives that were clearly impossible and which were never shown on screen.

So I, personally, didn't believe any of it. But it was fun to watch.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Well... anything is fun to watch with John Barrowman!

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

I think the real question about shows like that is how they are edited.

Yes: they never probe further into the bits that don't sound plausible. And the bits that appear to fit are never precise enough to confirm identity, & c.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

Here's a good commentary on another case: Jenny Cockell (http://csicop.org/sb/9803/reincarnation.html).

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[dargie.livejournal.com]

Try to think of it as going through different classes in school. In each one, you have virtually a fresh start because you're essentially going to learn new things. And yet, you're building on what you already know, you bring that to bear on what you're learning in order to help you learn the lesson more easily or perhaps more completely.

Say, for examply, you're taking Chemistry 201. What you learned in Chem 101 would be important. Spanish 101, not so much,but it's possible that something from Spanish 101 casts some new light on what you're
learning in Chemistry. The fact that you experienced Spanish helps you obliquely while the previous Chem class helps you directly.

Relating this to life experience, and in a very broad and generalized way because -- and I think you'll agree -- comprehension of how life works is pretty nebulous at best, but suppose you had a life in Nazi Germany. Assume you were male, and upper middle class, which means that unless you wanted trouble, you became a party member. You were in the army, perhaps. Perhaps you had something to do with the party's program to eliminate so-called undesirables. Not just Jews but political enemies, gay and lesbian people, different nationalities, people with mental problems, any or all of the above. Now for a moment, think of this life as a class. But what is it you're learning?

Now, I know you well enough to know that you identify as bisexual. Has your soul/spirit/whatever chosen this part of your identity to experience some of what you not only rejected but actively persecuted in a previous life? And if so, was that activity in the previous life informed by some event in an even earlier life?

Let's make a very simplistic timeline just about sexuality:

Life 1: You experience some sort of sexual trauma at the hands of a member of the same sex.

Life 2: Because of that abuse, you are both repelled and attracted by same-sex sexuality, though on the surface it seems that there is no more reason for this than social pressures to conform to what is the norm in spite of an orientation that is something other than that norm. You act out in ways which are both confused and hurtful to others because you cannot seem to resolve the issue. You're still too close to it.

Life 3: Because you work for a government with a policy of persecution and eventual elimination of homosexuality, you can express the more negative poles of your past life experiences without fear of repercussion. But because you have have had other lives which have prepared you in some way to experience empathy, somewhere in the process you begin to perceive your victims as human beings. That doesn't stop you but it does trouble you.

Life 4: You choose to experience some form of this orientation in order to experience the social pressures involved in accepting it. It is not necessarily a happy life, but by the end you're more at peace with a perfectly normal aspect of human sexuality.

Life 5: You have learned to accept sexuality -- your own and everyone else's -- without prejudice or baggage of any sort. You are content.

Now as I said,this is all very simplistic, and deals only with one small facet of life, but it shows that the process of finding tolerance of others, and peace within yourself may be bigger than than the scope of a single life. The experiences necessary to truly comprehend ourselves and others can't be learned in 80 years. Haven't you noticed that some people just seem to have a leg up on all sorts of wisdom? They seem to have been born understanding things that you feel you have to work to get? Perhaps it's just that they've had a lot of different classes than you have. We'll all get there in the end, but it's just a matter of what classes you can take and when.

Does that make any sense?

Someday I'll tell you about my past life regressions. *g*

[dargie.livejournal.com]

And then again, there may be nothing to it at all.

The thing is that we don't know if there even is a soul, much less how it works. Trying to overlay a lot of rules about how the mind works on the process of reincarnation -- if it exists at all -- is a little like saying it's not possible for cars to move because they don't have legs.

In the end, it's like any other belief. The best thing you can do is to keep an open mind, and try to validate whatever information you get. But validate it honestly, and understand that we may not have the tools yet to accurately prove or disprove anything.

Robert Anton Wilson once said "What the thinker thinks, the prover proves." What you choose to believe will always color your "proof." In my case, reincarnation is the most palatable option for an afterlife. And I accept that there is, perhaps, no afterlife at all. But in all honesty, if I knew for certain that there wasn't, I would not want to bother going on. I would probably just end my life. Because the idea that those we love are nothing more than animated meat, and that one day they will be gone from us, that's unbearable to me. I don't mind so much for myself. But I want better for those I love.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

Haven't you noticed that some people just seem to have a leg up on all sorts of wisdom? They seem to have been born understanding things that you feel you have to work to get? Perhaps it's just that they've had a lot of different classes than you have.

Bollocks. Sorry, but this is bollocks. Some people are more intelligent than others; some people are more sensitive than others; some people have experiences that others do not which shape their personalities. Why read pseudo-mystical significance into things that can easily be explained by basic human psychology and life experience?

We'll all get there in the end, but it's just a matter of what classes you can take and when.

Were that the case, then there would be some kind of linear progress of improvement in humankind. This is demonstrably not the case.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Yes, that reasoning makes sense, but it still makes me wonder what it is that I am carrying with me from one life to another - just the possiblities of memories? What makes the person in life #1 the same as the person in life #5 when none of the thoughts, memories, or personality are consistent? Or - is there a consistency, that just happens to be invisible or difficult to see?

I, uh, hedge my bets. (My 2 cents)

[vervassal.livejournal.com]

I personally refuse to settle on any one belief system or set of rules re the existence or nonexistence of a deity/afterlife. I do think/believe there's something bigger out there- it might be a someone, or it might be "mother nature." I'm not gonna put a name to it, because I'm convinced that as soon as I settle on, say, Shiva, Judgement Day will come and it'll turn out the Mormons were right all along.

I like the idea of reincarnation, but I don't firmly believe one way or another. I figure if there's an afterlife, cool, if not- well, it won't matter much, eh?

Re: I, uh, hedge my bets. (My 2 cents)

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

as soon as I settle on, say, Shiva, Judgement Day will come and it'll turn out the Mormons were right all along.

LOL. I've always been rather fond of Shiva, myself - for various reasons.

I figure if there's an afterlife, cool, if not- well, it won't matter much, eh?

Either way, we'll eventually find out, unless there's nothing to find out. Or at least, we'll find out what happens to ourselves, though not necessarily anyone else.

But I enjoy discussing the issue, and looking at the possibilities, and the ramifications - even if it's something we can't know.

Re: I, uh, hedge my bets. (My 2 cents)

[dargie.livejournal.com]

Precisely. My own feelings about a non-existence of an afterlife are just that, my own feelings, and based on a lot of very personal issues. Objectively, I believe that if there's nothing after we die, then I won't know it anyway. And if there is, I hope I'll make the best of it.

[mzlizzy.livejournal.com]

I believe in reincarnation, but not in a lot of the mystic sodapop crap that seems to accumulate around it.

I don't believe that hypnotic regression will help you dig into your past lives, and besides, *this life* is the important one. It doesn't matter if you were Cleopatra (any of them) or a gin-soaked charwoman in Victorian London or both.

I believe in a loving God, and I can not believe in a God that would only give each soul one chance to get it right. Life is energy, and conservation of energy is one of the basic principles of the universe (as I understand it).

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Beautiful icon!

I believe in reincarnation, but not in a lot of the mystic sodapop crap that seems to accumulate around it.

I can relate to that.

I believe in reincarnation, but not in a lot of the mystic sodapop crap that seems to accumulate around it.

Funny how Napoleon and Cleopatra seem to be prime choices. I remember reading about a woman who said she was one Mary Shelley. I was envious - since I like Mary Shelley - but didn't believe it for a moment.

Life is energy, and conservation of energy is one of the basic principles of the universe (as I understand it).

Interesting comment. Let me think about that.

[sparklebutch.livejournal.com]

I try not to do belief and disbelief. I don't know, and that's the only fact I can give.

Unlike you, I'd like it to exist; I'd like to think there is more depth, and width, to all experiences. You said something about "a sense of self" - I don't have a cohesive one, exactly. I have my "self", and then a whole bunch of other stuff around it. I would love to be able to "read", understand, all those other stuff, in a clearer way than I have now.

Re what some say, that it is the subconscious, imagination, or hidden memories from the media: there is a lovely theory that says that all or most of the characters written, in books etc, are "reflections" or echoes of people who live, in the past or parallel. Thus it could be that you were X in a past life, and echoes of X's life made it to an author 50 years ago who took it for muse or inspiration, and made a story out of it.

Whatever images and memories one is getting, they could be past, but also parallel or future; the brain is a folded mushy place of mystery, and one simply can't know what it's generating, and what it's just picking up from waves around it.



You said, "I was hoping to find people who do believe in it, to get their perspective." You can count me as one, if you like. Like I said, I don't *believe*, but I also refuse to state flat out that "things don't exist". I don't like people who "know everything", because we are, as someone stated here before me, human - and as such, possibly don't know everything just yet.

The current "rational"(socially acceptable) explanation is far from being the simplest one, at this point.

[dargie.livejournal.com]

Word.