by Mark Pitstick MA, DC
Note: If you already know the following information scroll down to the article title in maroon below the seven asterisks. However, I strongly recommend reading this introduction until you really ‘own’ it. In addition, post The Great News where you’ll see it every day.
In 2019 – 2020, a series of studies at the University of Arizona definitively demonstrated scientifically that life continues after physical death. This research was conducted by Gary E. Schwartz PhD and a team of electrical engineers, software specialists, evidential mediums, and postmaterial (so-called ‘deceased’) luminaries at the Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health.
See articles #1 and 60 at SoulProof.com for an overview of the scientific and clinical evidence indicating – with 99.9% certainty – that consciousness survives bodily death. This collective evidence, along with many firsthand experiences, also shows – with very high degrees of certainty – The Great News that you and everyone else:
- continue to live after bodily death.
- do not really lose ‘departed’ people and pets and can interact with them again.
- are integral, infinite, eternal, and beloved parts of Source Energy / Creator.
- receive assistance / guidance from angels, guides, master teachers, evolved energies.
- are sacredly interconnected with all people, animals, and nature.
- have special purposes for being on this planet at this time.
- have everything you need to survive and thrive during this earthly adventure.
- possess a magnificent, self-healing body that can optimize your earthly experience.
- can find meaning and trust the timing behind life’s biggest changes such as death.
- co-create how heavenly / hellish your life feels by your thoughts, words and deeds.
- can find silver linings and opportunities for growth and service amidst challenges.
- can likely use SoulPhone technology in the future for communication with postmaterial loved ones and luminaries who can help us heal our world.
This is, obviously, a new and exciting era for humanity. When understood and internalized – even just a bit – The Great News can help you make the shift:
- FROM thinking, believing, and acting as if your time on earth is unfair, meaningless, cruel, and ends with cessation of consciousness or the possibility of endless suffering.
- TO thinking, believing, and acting as if this earthly experience is a totally meaningful, safe, and magnificent adventure amidst forever.
Upgrading your language can help you adopt a greater reality perspective and live based on the second worldview. That, in turn, can help you create the greatest life YOU have envisioned, fulfill your purposes for being on earth, serve others, and enjoy the journey. In my articles, l:
- Will use the term ‘YOU’ to describe the totality of your energy / being. The real you may manifest in different spacetime ways simultaneously. Only 20% of your consciousness may be needed for an earthly experience. The term ‘YOU’ recognizes both of these possibilities.
- Will not use the terms ‘die, departed, deceased, or dead’ without single quotation marks since those have strongly entrenched and erroneous meanings indicating an end of life.
- Will use the terms ‘bodily death’ and ‘death of the earthly form’ to remind you that only the earth-suit dies. The rest – all the intelligence, love, personality, memories, preferences, sense of humor, and much more – continues living in other parts of the field of all possibilities.
- Will use the terms changed worlds, passed on, transitioned and others that aptly describe a continuation of consciousness after bodily death.
- Will primarily refer to those who have passed on as postmaterial persons. That term recognizes the points in #3. I also will use soul, consciousness, essence, and awareness.
- Will primarily refer to ‘physical humans living on earth’ as material persons. Why? Because those terms within single quotation marks may apply to postmaterial persons: they can have physicality, visit earth, and are still human in meaningful ways.
- The terms lower versus higher energy emotions / ways of being, are not judgmental or subjective. They are based on well-established observations that ‘as you think, so shall you be.’ Those terms are also based on objective measurements by, for example, David Hawkins PhD, MD author of Power Versus Force. He and other researchers found that higher-energy emotions of peace, joy, and love calibrate at 600, 540, and 500 respectively. Lower-energy emotions of anger, fear, and guilt calibrate at 150, 100, and 30.
- I will use single quotations marks with words such as ‘lose and fail’. The Great News and collective afterlife evidence can expand your worldview about what seem to be losses and failures. We can’t accurately judge the big picture of life – what is lost or how we failed – with our limited human senses.
- To recognize and respect different genders and sexual identifications, I will alternate using ‘he’ or ‘she’ and related pronouns. Depending on a person’s orientation, one, both, or neither of those may apply.
The free articles and radio shows mentioned are available at SoulProof.com. To learn more about the collective afterlife evidence and The Great News, read Soul Proof, The Afterlife Evidence, Greater Reality Living (co-authored with Dr. Schwartz) and The Big Picture of Life (with Schwartz and Katta Mapes MA, MEd). To experience expanded states of consciousness to heal and transform your life, use the audio programs under Shop at SoulProof.com.
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Reincarnation / Cyclical Life Experiences
Four prominent men believed in the concept of reincarnation. It just made sense, they said, and explained many mysteries of life. It seemed to be part of a universal plan that conserves energy and knowledge from one lifetime into another. They believed that never-ending, but periodically changing, lifetimes would assist soul growth. These men found that model to be a guiding light in their lifetimes. They are highly respected in American history, but you may not have known about their beliefs. Who were they? Benjamin Franklin, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and General George Patton.
Reincarnation is the theory that we experience not just one, but many lives in the course of eternity. Although this concept may seem strange or foreign to some people, it answers questions that people of all ages have wondered about.
When I was ten years old, I sat in church and looked through its stained-glass windows while the minister talked about heaven. “One day,” he said, “we will all walk on golden streets and play golden harps forever.” Even at that young age, I thought: “Wouldn’t that get old after a while?”
Think about it with an open mind for just a moment. How long could you play a harp — even a golden one — before you would be ready for a piano, guitar, or even an accordion? Novelty and challenges make life more interesting and rewarding. A concept of never-ending, but sometimes changing, life experiences successfully addresses many questions.
Once a word has become well established in a culture, it is difficult or impossible to change its intrinsic meaning. I use various synonyms for ‘God’ and ‘soul’ because those words have such firmly entrenched and limiting meanings. The same challenge exists for the word ‘reincarnation’; it isn’t ideal for several reasons:
- Some people associate the word reincarnation with the occult or cults. That term can negatively trigger those with conservative religious beliefs and those who haven’t researched the topic for themselves.
- It implies a linear series of interrupted lives, deaths, and rebirths. But some evidence suggests life is a seamless series of experiences amidst eternity.
- The model of reincarnation suggests that we experience being different people in chronological order and separate places. However, some evidence suggests otherwise. For example, evidence for parallel or simultaneous realities indicates that your energy does not have to manifest in just one place at a time.Part of it energizes your current physical body, but another part might be experiencing other formed or formless possibilities. In addition, part of your consciousness might never have left Home / Source. From this vantage point – as the old children’s song suggests – life is but a dream. Reality may be more accurately understood as a series of virtual reality experiences as your energy visits other times and places.
As such, I will alternately use the following word combinations as synonyms for reincarnation: cyclical lifetimes, multiple lives, varying life experiences, and never-ending but periodically changing lifetimes.
Before examining the evidence for this view of reality, let’s discuss three common models about the nature of life.
Model A: If you are like many people in western cultures, you were taught that your life started with an earthly birth date. Your time on this planet can last from a few minutes to many years, and then you die. Then a long sleep in the ground until some judgment day, or an instant visit to the pearly gates. Finally, a judgmental God consigns you to heavenly delight or burning torment forever.
This model is full of problems. For example, how fair is it that your brief earthly experience determines your fate forever if you were: molested, raised by alcoholics, born a crack baby, influenced by atheists, struggled with mental illness, or had organic brain damage?
This model is a fairly bizarre one for even deranged humans to design. Are we really to believe that’s the best the Creator and Sustainer of All Life can do? This model didn’t make sense to me when I was a child, and it seems even stranger now. I consider this model to be a kindergarten understanding of reality.
Model B: The concept of varying life experiences throughout eternity makes more sense and is supported by contemporary evidence. A model of cyclical life experiences allows for the eventual evolution of all beings. We each have more than just this one earthly visit to learn and grow.
Reincarnation is a vast improvement over the conventional teachings of model A. To extend the analogy, model B is like a high school understanding of reality.
However, this model appears to be only relatively true because it implies dualism and all that goes with that. Richard Bach’s character in Running from Safety perhaps said it best:
“Do you believe in reincarnation?”
“No. Reincarnation is a series of lifetimes, isn’t it, one after the other, in order, on this planet? That feels a little limiting, it fits a little tight across the shoulders.”
“What fits you better?”
“An infinite number of beliefs of life experiences, please, some in bodies, some not; some on planets, some not; all of them simultaneous because there is no such thing as time, none of them real because there’s only one Life.”
Model C: This most accurate description of reality indicates that life is an uninterrupted series of experiences throughout infinity. All life is seen as sacredly interconnected with outward differences being trivial and transient. Ultimately, life is an eternal dance of energy as Creative Mind alternately manifests Itself. Each seemingly separate aspect of consciousness is like a single cell within One Mind. New scenarios and adventures are endlessly created as Life discovers its fullness.
In this model, physical death is not viewed as the beginning of a long sleep. Life is seen as an uninterrupted process as death opens new doors into the next phase of forever. Time and space are understood as being only relatively, not absolutely, real.
For those who are awakened to the big picture of life, death can be especially seamless – like walking from one room into another. Birth and death are realized to be no big deal, just commas amidst a never-ending sentence. We can best reveal our inner light and special talents when we realize our real selves are birthless and deathless. This is like a graduate school level of understanding reality.
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How can you rise above your kindergarten and high school levels of understanding? What will help you remember the grad school level insights and live accordingly? Everyone is unique but the following are a great start . . .
- Learn the evidence that life continues after bodily death (articles #1 and 60)
- Develop a big picture view of of life (article #68)
- Expand your evolved relationships and spiritual support (article #66)
- Optimally care for the temple of your soul (articles #12, 51, 87, 87, 88, etc.)
Past Life Regressions
Hypnotically induced past life regressions (PLRs) explore the possibility of you being in other times and places. Deep relaxation facilitates a calm but clear state of mind and less mental chatter. Quieting the brain’s frenetic analysis can enhance awareness of information not usually accessible in the waking state.
To skeptics who charge that PLR subjects are deliberately lying about their experiences, Edith Fiore PhD, author of You Have Been Here Before, responded: “If so, most should be nominated for Academy awards. I have listened to and watched people in past-life regressions under hypnosis for thousands of hours. I am convinced there is no deliberate, nor conscious attempt to deceive. The tears, shaking, flinching, smiling, gasping for breath, groaning, sweating and other physical manifestations are all too real.”
Brian Weiss MD, author of Messages from the Masters and other books, has received thousands of phone calls and letters from psychiatrists, psychologists, and other therapists who have done past life regressions for up to twenty years. Dr. Weiss states, “The letters describe detailed accounts of past-life recall, of patients recalling names, dates, and details of lifetimes in other cities, countries or continents. Some patients have found their ‘old’ names in the official records of places they have never even heard of, let alone visited, in this lifetime. Some have found their own tombstones.”
As described in Reliving Past Lives, Helen Wambach PhD evaluated over a thousand cases of detailed past lives and stated: “I reasoned that if past-life recall were fantasy, my subjects would include material in their regressions that I could prove could not have been true. They might have seen anachronisms of one kind or another — clothing and architecture that were completely wrong for the time period and place they had chosen — or a climate and landscape that would not match the map they flashed on. To my surprise, I found only eleven data sheets out of the 1,088 I had collected that showed clear evidence of discrepancies.”
Wambach analyzed these accumulated past life recollections and compared them for historical accuracy in the areas of social class, race, gender, clothing, diet, population ratios, and causes of death in particular time periods. For example, she found that 49 percent of past lives were lived as women, while 51 percent were those of men — what one would expect in a random distribution, not a hoax. She concluded, “All the data described in this chapter tended to support the hypothesis that past-life recall accurately reflects the real past rather than that it represents common fantasies.”
She also found that the number of lives reported around 1600 A.D. was twice that reported around 400 A.D. This number doubled once more around 1850, mirroring the actual increase in the world’s population. It is difficult, if not impossible, to believe that a group of randomly selected participants in past-life regressions could have co-coordinated their efforts to pull off such a colossal statistical hoax.
Joel Whitton MD, PhD was a professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto Medical School and co-author with Joe Fisher of Life Between Life. They related Whitton’s clinical work with a client named Harold who, when hypnotized, described a former life as a Viking raider. Although he had never studied a foreign language in his life, the man spoke comfortably and confidently in a strange tongue that experts identified as ancient Norse.
Working independently, linguists who spoke Icelandic and Norwegian identified and translated some of these words. Several other words seemed to have a Russian, Serbian or Slavic derivation and these were also identified. One language expert stated, “It would be appropriate for a Viking to speak a language which contained words and phrases of other tongues in that period. I would say this could fit the language pattern of the roving Viking.”
During another past life recollection, Harold wrote what looked like a bunch of scribbles. The alphabet he used was identified by researchers as a long-extinct script used in Mesopotamia. That language bears no relation to modern Persian and hasn’t been spoken for more than 1300 years. Of Harold’s past-life regression experiences, Dr. Whitton stated, “To me, the case remains one of the most convincing arguments I’ve seen for evidence of reincarnation.”
One final example of a PLR with validation features was provided by Dr. Weiss. Diane, an RN, had been looking without success for a soul mate relationship. During a past-life regression with Weiss, she recalled an earlier lifetime as a pioneer woman who hid with her baby from Indians. To keep the baby quiet, she covered his mouth with her hand. Her baby, who had a crescent shaped birthmark beneath his right shoulder, died as she accidentally asphyxiated him. Several months after this regression, she treated a man with asthma at her hospital job. Diane nearly fainted when, while listening to his lungs, she saw a crescent shaped birthmark below his right shoulder. Both experienced an instant familiarity and connection that led to dating and a happy marriage.
Dr. Ian Stevenson’s Research
The massive amount of objective research by Ian Stevenson MD is the most impressive reincarnation evidence to date. His books include Children Who Remember Previous Lives, Cases of the Reincarnation Type, Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation, Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect, and Reincarnation and Biology. The world’s leading authority on the subject, Dr. Stevenson is the author of more than a dozen scholarly books and 250 articles.
Stevenson, who headed the department of psychiatry at the University of Virginia, spent most of his sixty-year career perfecting methods for verifying past life memories of children. His work is not better known because he writes for other academicians, a fact to which anyone who has read his books can attest.
He and his staff compiled over 3,000 cases from Asia, Europe, Africa and North America. Nearly 900 of these were stringently verified; 35 percent of them had birthmarks or birth defects that matched injuries from previous lives. Eighteen of these cases involved two or more matching birthmarks. Stevenson calculated the chances that two matching sets of birthmarks — from a purported past life and the present one — would randomly occur to be only 1 in 25,600 times. The odds against this happening by chance eighteen times are astronomical.
Stevenson’s stringent standards of research rely heavily on private and repeated interviews over time. He wrote a clinical textbook for psychiatrists based on methods used by attorneys to reconstruct past events as accurately as possible. Dr. Stevenson and his team investigated children who remembered possible past lives and their families, as well as the family and circumstances of the alleged past life. Given the exacting methods of these professional researchers, it was virtually impossible for anyone — especially third-world villagers — to conceal a hoax.
Here are three summaries of Stevenson’s cases:
- Parmod, a 3 ½ year-old boy from India, remembered owning a soda and bakery store in another town. Upon arriving in that town, he led his family directly to the shop. Parmod knew how to repair a complex soda machine that had been intentionally disconnected to test his memory.
- Michael, a 3 year-old from Texas, remembered exact details of a fatal auto accident in his previous life. His recollection, although no one in the family had ever told him about the incident, was that of his mother’s high school boyfriend who had died just as Michael described.
- At just 1 ½ years of age, Sukla of India cradled a toy and said it was her daughter Minu. During the next several years, she remembered more details of her past life and her family took her to that village. Sukla directed them to her former home and enjoyed a reunion with Minu, whose mother had died when she was a baby.
Jenny Wade PhD, author of Changes of Mind, noted parallels between perinatal memories and accounts by children about past lives. (‘Perinatal’ refers to time periods just before, during, and after human birth.) She viewed these as supporting an argument for consciousness independent of a physical body. Wade stated that Stevenson’s research withstood every serious challenge to date because of the impressive documentation and rigorous scientific methods used. Especially convincing, said Wade, was the high incidence of birthmarks and deformities in this life that corresponded to injuries in a former life.
Of these correlating birthmarks, John Algeo – author of Reincarnation Explored – commented: “For example, a child may remember having lived another life including enough details about it (names, places, events) to permit investigators to identify the earlier personality. That personality died from a gunshot wound, and medical or coroner’s records establish the location of the entering and exiting wound marks made by the fatal bullet. The child who remembers the earlier life has birthmarks on places that correspond to the wounds of the prior personality. Moreover, the birthmark corresponding to the exit wound is larger than the birthmark corresponding to the entry wound, just as the wounds themselves were, that being the normal pattern for bullet wounds. That is one type of case out of many involving birthmarks and defects.”
In Stevenson’s book Reincarnation and Biology — an eight pound, two volume work with 2,268 pages — photos showed rare birth marks or defects that correlate with previous lives. One Burmese girl, born with her right leg missing just below the knee, remembered the life of a poor teenage girl who sold roses to passengers at the railroad station. A train ran over her and severed her right leg. The girl made detailed statements and recognitions that convinced the family she was the reincarnation of the teenager who was killed by the train. She also had a marked phobia of trains.
Other examples of correlating birthmarks offering physical evidence of past lives include an Indian boy who recalled being killed by a shotgun blast to his chest. On this little boy’s chest was an array of birthmarks that matched the pattern and location of the fatal wounds as verified by the autopsy report. Another shotgun victim was hit at point-blank range on the right side of the head as confirmed from the hospital report. The Turkish boy who remembered this life was born with a malformed ear and an underdevelopment of the right side of his face.
One woman had three linear scar-like birthmarks on her back. As a child, she remembered being killed by three blows to her back with an ax. Another boy in India was born with stubs for fingers on only his right hand — an extremely rare condition. He remembered a past life when his fingers were cut off in a fodder chopping machine.
Regarding the evidence about birth marks and defects correlating with alleged past life injuries, Stevenson stated: “I accept reincarnation as the best explanation for a case only after I have excluded all others — normal and paranormal . . . I regard my contribution as that of presenting the evidence as clearly as I can. Each reader should study the evidence carefully — preferably in the monograph (Reincarnation and Biology) — and then reach his or her own conclusion.”
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I hope this article helps you consider the possibility that your earthly visit is just a fraction of experiences you can have over time. Read my book Soul Proof to learn more evidence that we have not just one but many cyclical life experiences.
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Your life, and that of others around you, will be more enriched when you:
- read this article again within a few days so you really own it.
- discuss it with trusted family members and friends.
- take recommended action steps that seem right for you.
- share it with others who can use it.
Let it shine,
Mark
Mark Pitstick MA, DC is an author, master’s level clinical psychologist, holistic chiropractic physician, frequent media guest, and webinar / workshop facilitator. He has also helped others in pastoral counseling and suicide prevention / education settings. Mark directs The Soul Phone Foundation, founded Greater Reality Living Groups, and assists research on the SoulPhone Project. To learn more about how Dr. Pitstick might help you, visit SoulProof.com/About.
Dr. Pitstick’s goal is to help you know and show– no matter what is happening to or around you – that this earthly experience is a totally safe, meaningful, and magnificent adventure amidst eternity. Visit SoulProof.com for free articles, newsletters, and radio interviews with top consciousness experts. Other resources include his very reasonably priced books, audio-products, and documentary film.
Note: Because of his many outreaches, Dr. Pitstick can no longer answer complex and/or multiple questions. However, he has created many resources to answer your biggest questions and provide holistic solutions for your toughest challenges . . .
FREE ARTICLES, RADIO SHOW, AND E-NEWSLETTERS
– Articles for Transformation and Healing (top tab Articles at SoulProof.com) address the most common questions, concerns, and challenges about life, death, and afterlife.
– Radio Shows (top tab Radio Shows at SoulProof.com) share his and top experts’ answers to life’s biggest questions: “Who am I? Why am I here? What happens after I die? Is there a God? Why is there so much suffering? Why do children die?” and others.
– E-Newsletters (sign up on any page at SoulProof.com)
AUDIO-PRODUCTS, BOOKS, AND DOCUMENTARY FILM
– Transformational Audio Products (see Shop at SoulProof.com) provide quality sessions at home for a fraction of the cost of an office visit. These CDs and digital audios use deep relaxation, visualization, breathwork, and/or other techniques to: access your inner wisdom, visit with “departed” loved ones, release old wounds and lower energy emotions, evaluate your pre-birth planning, have past life regressions, and other goals.
– Books and Documentary (Shop at SoulProof.com) provide information and strategies to help you more deeply realize and demonstrate:
- you are a forever being of energy / consciousness
- the many wonderful benefits of realizing this
- how to reflect this great news in every aspect of your life — even when confronted with big challenges and changes
Webinars and Workshops: to learn about these, subscribe to newsletters at SoulProof.com and SoulPhone.org (Classes & Interviews at SoulProof.com)
Greater Reality Living Groups: these local and online groups share information from Dr. Pitstick, Dr. Gary Schwartz, and other experts on consciousness and holistic wellness topics. (Visit Greater Reality Living at SoulProof.com)
Coaching / Counseling Session: meet with Dr. Pitstick by Zoom to gain answers to your toughest questions and holistic solutions to your biggest challenges. (Shop at SoulProof.com)
Disclaimer: This information is not designed to replace medical or psychological care. Dr. Pitstick’s remarks are based on his personal and professional training and experience during forty-eight years of helping many thousands of people. Collective clinical, scientific, and experiential evidence supports some, but not all, of what he shares. Mark’s views may change over time, and he does not claim to have all the answers or the only answers.
Dr. Pitstick encourages you to consider this information and decide for yourself what makes the most sense. Note: the articles and other resources at his SoulProof.com site are NOT purely based on scientific research as is the SoulPhone Project.
