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

[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]

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.

That's no reason to cling to irrationalities and fantasies. So many wonderful people have gone before: animated meat, yes, but with what animation. They have left us great things, and (those we knew personally) great memories. It's what we do with our lives that matters. The notion of 'afterlife' in any sense other than that legacy is a terrible indictment of human egotism.

[dargie.livejournal.com]

I don't mean to be rude, but I have every reason. Please don't presume to tell me what I should or shouldn't feel.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Rest assured, on my LJ you are free to believe whatever you wish and I am interested. I find these perceptions fascinating.

[dargie.livejournal.com]

Thank you, darlin'. I've always found you to be wonderfully tolerant. It's one of the things I love best about you.

I'd love to sit down and talk to you face-to-face about how we view these things. Exchange ideas. Perhaps next time you come to visit Chicago? You know there'll be a place for you to stay once I have my guest suite put together at the new house.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I've always found you to be wonderfully tolerant. It's one of the things I love best about you.

You say the nicest things. *hugs* I'm tolerant about ideas, on the whole - not so tolerant about things I don't like. (War. TV commercials. Bad politicians. People who use highlighters in library books. I have my priorities!)

Perhaps next time you come to visit Chicago? You know there'll be a place for you to stay once I have my guest suite put together at the new house.

Oh, bless you, I'd love to visit! Right now I'm broke and don't know when/if/how I'll ever be able to travel ever again, though in defiance of my poverty, I'm planning a trip to Stratford ON in the summer - thanks to a Christmas present from maaseru.

And I tell myself: Chicago isn't that far away, right? I've got there before, I can get there again....

Eagerly listening for further news about your lovely new place.

[dargie.livejournal.com]

You have ample time to save. I haven't even closed on the place yet, and won't be moved in until April. I suspect it'll be autumn before the basement is finished enough to invite people to stay. Yeah, the basement, sorry. But the bedroom will be carpeted and I'm hoping to have a heated floor in the bath. Not the Ritz, but comfy.

People who do anything but read their library books deserve to be punished severely. (My tolerance has limits, too. *g*)

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

It sounds lovely! I don't have a basement. Or a house. So it all sounds like the Ritz to me.

People who do anything but read their library books deserve to be punished severely. (My tolerance has limits, too. *g*)

Well, yes. Writing in library books is incredibly uncivilized.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

I'm intolerant of a popular culture that tolerates (and financially rewards) the promotion of unreasonand anti-reason: the anti-Enlightenment that seems to be in progress both from traditional religions and 'New Age' drivel, pseudo-history, & c.

A few favourite recent books:
Francis Wheen, How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions;
Damian Thompson, Counterknowledge (though he has one or two blind spots on this himself, being a Catholic);
Frank Furedi, Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability in an Uncertain Age, Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone?: Confronting 21st Century Philistinism, and Culture of Fear: Risk-taking and the Morality of Low Expectation.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

Because "pie in the sky when you die", in whatever form, is ultimately the opposite of life-affirming. It devalues this life, the only one we know for certain that we have. Taken to its logical conclusion, it is the logic of the suicide terrorist who destroys him/herself and others in this life because s/he believes there will be a reward in the next.

[sparklebutch.livejournal.com]

*very quiet thumb up*

[dargie.livejournal.com]

*nods*

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Love you guys.

[dargie.livejournal.com]

Though I won't presume to speak for anyone else, I suspect I do when I say that you are loved, too.

[sparklebutch.livejournal.com]

That's good.
*hugs*
You feeling any better now with your thoughts?

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

You feeling any better now with your thoughts?

Yes... I think so.

[sparklebutch.livejournal.com]

That is good.

If you want, I'm always available for you in chat/email.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

To some extent we fall back on words to deal with these sorts of experiences and words aren't a very good medium for it - but they're all we have to discuss it with. And words like 'soul' and 'afterlife' tend to be coloured by cultural assumptions of many types, from one direction or another, and pinning down meaning becomes difficult or impossible.

As I said, I feel conflicted on the matter - and find it fascinating whether there really are past/future lives or, in terms of how the brain works, if there are psychological reasons for experiencing existence as a series of lives.

I'd like to know a lot more about it, but information tends to be either influenced by the viewpoint of the person - whatever their stance - or by the cultural assumptions (usually religious) of the person's environment.

[dargie.livejournal.com]

Well yeah, it's always going to be colored by someone's viewpoint until such time as it can be proved or disproved. And we try to define the spiritual by looking to the mind because our conscious selves are what we cling to. The idea of that being extinguished is what terrifies so many people, the idea of ceasing to be who they are right now.

But if spirituality isn't so much a product of the mind as we think it is, then I'm not sure we necessarily can define any of it by looking to the brain. However as you quite rightly say, we're bound by our words, and it's hard to express these ideas when there aren't words that encompass the concepts. Perhaps if we learned a language used in a part of the world where reincarnation is an accepted concept? *g*

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

The idea of that being extinguished is what terrifies so many people

As we've discussed before, I'm not afraid of being extinguished, I'm afaid of pain. And somewhat afraid of loss - which I suppose is the same thing.

the idea of ceasing to be who they are right now.

Maybe that's why the idea of reincarnation seems mildly undesirable to me - I have such a sense of self now, I can't imagine being someone else, with another identity - I don't want to wear another body or mind. I don't want to be me and yet make choices I wouldn't make, do things I wouldn't do, think things I wouldn't think....

But that's putting the cart before the horse, isn't it? If it were me, it would be me, so the problem is erased.

Makes my head spin, a little.

the idea of ceasing to be who they are right now.

Certainly, some of the more intelligent writing I've heard on the subject (and the most interesting) has been in Hindu books and yoga-related writings. But again - they take it as a given, a premise to work from, rather than something to be discussed for its own sake.

[dargie.livejournal.com]

Well it's so much a part of the culture that it's taken for granted, in much the same way a good part of the Western world takes Christianity for granted. The advantage, of course, is that they would have developed a vocabulary for it.

One day I want to do more research on the subject. I've always loved reading about various belief systems.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

The advantage, of course, is that they would have developed a vocabulary for it.

Yes - and since anything I would have, or could have, read is in translation, it puts me back where I started. But... every little bit helps.

[dargie.livejournal.com]

Have you read anything from Tibetan sources?

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Tibetan sources

Nothing particularly detailed or reliable. Most of what I've read about Tibet is pseudo-fictional, historical, or biographical - and some things along the lines of travel stories and National Geographic. Not so much about the philosophy.

[dargie.livejournal.com]

Ah. I really had no idea of what was available.