Karmic Credit Due Dan R. Green
Dan talked me down from the precipice of despair
Over the past month, I’ve posted several interrelated pieces on what to me are abhorrent spiritual concepts — specifically, karma and reincarnation. I’ve been tormented these past 50 years by the prospect — and implications — of their truth.
Given my entrenched trauma, I experienced great distress throughout my grueling, three-week course of study — during which I reviewed transcripts of sundry “revelations from the afterlife,” as recounted by those who’ve had near-death experiences (NDEs).
My goal in this effort was to collectively debunk their purported veracity on account of the numerous variations amongst accounts.
My plan backfired because I was unable to disregard the startling similarities amongst the dozens of NDE narratives I explored.
I could explain away the tunnel and the light, which can be accounted for by the physiology of the brain in extremis. I could chalk up the sundry religious interpretations to cultural expectations.
What I couldn’t dismiss were the numerous revelations about the purpose of reincarnation — complete with holographic past-life reviews — granted to those who’d had no prior belief in reincarnation.
Consequentially — as those who’ve read my escalating rambles can attest — I’ve been verging on a breakdown for three weeks.
Mercifully, several of you have valiantly engaged in appealing to my rapidly disintegrating rational side.
I am especially indebted to Dan R. Green, whose meticulous follow-through on my preliminary explorations spurred me to critical analysis of my premature conclusions.
Dan put the three NDE accounts that I’d cited in perspective.
He pointed out that the podcast interviews that so disturbed me had been recorded many years after the NDEs, and consequentially were unreliable — especially so, given that they’d have been vulnerable to continual embellishment.
Moreover, in the interim, the interviewees had published their gripping accounts, all of which went on to accrue great acclaim.
Subsequently, the authors have enjoyed lucrative careers on the spiritual circuit (circus?)— as evidenced by their promotional websites, to which Dan helpfully referred me.
I went on to peruse book summaries and critical Amazon reviews, from which I hoped to home in on mutually exclusive claims of the authors’ revealed “truths” as to reincarnation.
Such a finding would suffice to overcome concordances amongst accounts, and thus cast doubt on the veridicality of the afterlife scenario as a whole. (I fervently “pray” that there is no God, who — if real — is monstrous, on the grounds of the suffering S/He/IT permits.)
Bingo!
In contradiction to the ponderous and paradoxical karmic principles (and panoramic past-life perusals) revealed to authors Vincent Tolman and Nancy Danison (amongst many), author Betty Eadie was told by her afterlife host that one normally experiences a single earthly incarnation.
Exceptions are made for advanced souls who reincarnate for the purpose of providing moral support — so to speak — to less-evolved mortals.
As I say, I hope none of this is real. “One-and-done, dead-and-gone” works for me.
Meantime, these indisputably contradictory (not)reincarnation accounts serve to ameliorate my dread.
Sad to say, I cannot claim that my fears have been irrevocably dispelled. I’ve trolled through the supernatural realm for half-a-century, always struggling to find cause to debunk it — and by extension, God — once and for all. I am derailed in my purpose by the tantalizing (not in a good way!) tidbits of veridical afterlife (and general paranormal) revelations. Meaning, information unknown to the claimant at the time was subsequently verified. There are countless such anecdotes, eerily specific, such that in sum I cannot dismiss them out of hand, notwithstanding the law of very large numbers. How I wish I could simply disregard these anomalies! They haunt my wannabe logical brain.
Bonus discovery!
One of Eadie’s reviewers — who, ironically, is a fervid believer in the afterlife and other fringe topics — repudiates Edie’s entire account on scientific grounds:
God took Eadie time-tripping back six thousand years (give or take) to treat her to a reenactment of the glorious instant of Creation.