Here's an interesting piece by Glen Kimball arguing against reincarnation.
He makes some interesting points, and his writing is fantastic, though there
are a few arguments I find quite weak. Overall it is a great read.

My own opinion regarding multiple mortalities leans toward the succession
being from one planet-creation-cycle to the next, rather than in rapid
succession as the reincarnation model proposes.

I had not been aware that Glen Kimball has had an NDE until this piece, in
which he talks some about his experience. I must say that after reading
this piece by Glen that my interest in him what he has to say is heightened
quite a bit.

Sterling

-----Original Message-----
From: Ancient Manuscripts Mailing List [mailto:gkimball@...]
Sent: Saturday, May 19, 2001 11:31 AM
To: List Member
Subject: From Glenn Kimball the Letter on Reincarnation


Ancient Manuscripts Mailing List - http://www.ancientmanuscripts.com

You remember I promised you all that I would write something about
reincarnation based on the frenzy raised by my show with Ian Punnett.
Well here it is. I kept my promise. See some of you next week in
Seattle.

REINCARNATION
Glenn Kimball
www.ancientmanuscripts.com
1-888-904-9394
Author of:
Hidden Stories of the Childhood of Jesus
Hidden Politics of the Crucifixion


Nothing I have said in public has raised the tension in the air more than
my open critique of reincarnation. (Serial Mortalities) Millions have
crossed the boundaries between traditions and mixed dogmas from the East
and West in our day and included this belief along side their Christian
faith. There is even a movement that has sifted through every word in the
Bible and Extra-Biblical texts for evidence that Jesus might have taught
this principle. Some have suggested that there were books left out of the
Bible, which openly taught "serial mortality". Jesus never openly taught
this principle in any text I have found in my life. We forget that if one
is looking for evidence of anything it is likely that you will find it if
you look hard and long enough. A good example is the "Biblical Code"
mania, which has swept the country. Mike Hieser (a recent guest on Art
Bell's Coast to Coast) wrote a book debunking the Biblical code frenzy
based on the mere fact that the original Torah was never a fixed document
from which frequency counts could be taken. Certainly the "Hand of God"
wrote many versions. If you change one word from one edition to another
it throws the entire frequency based Bible Codes completely off. Mike is
right. Our problem is that we are looking so hard for the truth that we
will accept it from anywhere, regardless how ridiculous the conjecture.
In trying to pick up a nickel in the minutia of our bibles we are stepping
over the gold coins contained in the biblical and especially ignoring
extra-biblical texts. The extra-biblical in most cases are as authentic as
the sources of for the bible and in some cases far less tampered with.
The rise in Western curiosity over serial mortality stems from a very
widely experience phenomenon of "regressed memories". There are many
human phenomenons, which have gained popularity merely because the "group"
has come out of the closet and confessed their collective personal and
mystical experiences. NDE (near death experience) and OBE (out of body
experience) are examples of this very same thing. NDE and OBE are topics
in our day because groups of people have stood together and written about
their common experiences. We are the open generation predicted in
prophecy, which for the first time allows the voice of the people and the
experiences of the common man to dictate dogma. In this particular case
the common experience of men generated the dogma of NDE and OBE rather
than having "Clergy" dictate the dogma first. As a result most Western
Christian religions still reject the miracle of life after death through
the experience of NDE, though they themselves preach this very process
from the pulpit. The clergy is defensive and protective of their role as
creators of dogma.
As a general rule is a very good thing to seek advise of spiritual
phenomenon. The common man isn't often equipped to understand or explain
in context the more complex phenomenon that is happening to him any more
than feeling sick tells men what illness they may have. The common man
still needs help contextualizing his experiences.
Millions of people can't all be wrong. I am not denying that the
phenomenon of "First Person Memory" of the lives and experiences beyond
your own mortality. It clearly does exist. However reincarnation is a
prime example of a phenomenon driven dogma rather than a comprehensive
textual based dogma. The ancient meditation societies generated this
dogma of serial mortalities based on what they experienced after diligent,
patient, hypnotic thought. It did not come from the foundation of a
broader dogma based understanding. There will be those who disagree
suggesting that Easter Religions are the oldest in the world. Age means
nothing in this discussion. If it did we should all worship the sun.
There are others who suggest that Eastern Religions are comprehensive
dogmas. However, that is conspicuously not true. In many cases Eastern
Religions have such a hard time describing God that they have left Him out
of their dogma entirely. We can extend that critique and suggest that
Eastern Religions do not typically answer the three basic questions
required by a dogma: Where do we come from, why are we here and where are
we going after death.
Ed Dames and his work with "remote viewing" is a classic example of what
is possible with some meditative training and practice. However, what is
conspicuously absent from the work of Ed Dames is the claim that his
experiences with "extra-sight" imply that he has lived before.
There is another mitigating variable in this equation. This "First
Person" vision process is not limited to seeing "past lives". There are
many who have tapped into the "First Person" vision of lives concurrent
with our own. Elaina Profit, the former psychic detective of the LA
Police Force, is a classic example of someone with that gift to see
through the eyes of lost children. These children were born and died
during her lifetime. Her experiences are real, but are clearly not
evidence that she is the reincarnation of lost children.
Lastly, in this initial reasoning the human tendency is to claim
ownership of everything, including our own perceptions. We would be
amazed at how many of our own thoughts do not belong to or originate with
us. We have seen how people jump on the "bandwagon" of public figures.
Our politics, religions, cultures and even our favorite athletic team
allegiances are examples of "bandwagon" mentality. We like to own our
local basketball team. We like to own our own religious beliefs and the
object of our patriotism. However, technically speaking this is rarely
the case. In the specific example of regressed memories many of the
things we think we see in these visions clearly don't belong to us. These
visions belong to some other origin than us. Many of the things we dream
about or see under hypnosis are clearly suspect when it comes to
ownership. We act like little children who are constantly whining "Mine,
Mine". Just because we see something through our eyes doesn't mean that
we own it, did it, created it or that it belongs to one of our past lives.
Memory is a flawed system it we take everything about it literally.
Dreaming is the classic example. Dreams do have meaning in the same way
these regressed memories have meaning. However, to take them all
literally is absurd.
Just within the last decade eye witness testimony has been down graded in
our courts from rock solid evidence to suspected secondary evidence.
We are the first generation to understand that there are more ways of
recording personal experience than with paper and ink. Certainly the
Heavens have greater ability to record the lives of men in the "Lamb's
Book of Life" than with pen and ink. We are just entering the day when
"Virtual Reality" is not only in the conception stage, but is just now
becoming a commercially viable possibility. We can put on a headset wired
shoes and gloves and a computer can take us in the "First Person" wherever
we want to go without leaving our home and the experience will be fully
interactive. Nobody is claiming that these interactive experiences
recorded in the computer belong to us.
Let us take an example from the Bible to illustrate what really was
taught at the time of Christ.. In 1 Peter 3: 18-21 Peter tells us where
Jesus went between the time that He died on the cross and three days later
when He was resurrected. At the tomb site Jesus told Mary Magdalene not
to touch Him because he had not yet ascended to His Father. Where had He
been and what had He been doing if He hadn't already been to heaven and
back? Clearly this event took place after Jesus had retrieved His body
from the tomb. Later Jesus tells Thomas, His little brother, (the Judas
Didymus Thomas mentioned as the brother of Jesus in Mathew 13: 55-56) to
thrust his hands into Jesus' side and feel the wounds. Thomas was allowed
to touch Him when Mary was not. Where had Jesus gone after His death if
not directly to meet His Father? In Peter we see that Jesus went to
preach to the spirits in "spirit prison". These particular people were
the ones who had been wicked at the time of Noah. Jesus didn't go there
as a rhetorical exercise to further condemns these people. He went there
to preach to them to save their souls and clarify eternal matters for them
so that they could escape their spiritual bonds. These people had not
been reincarnated in the more than three thousand years they had been
dead. They had been "locked up". If reincarnation were a reality
certainly these people would have needed to be the first on the list to
wander back to mortality to learn to do it right.
There is a major conflict between what the people of Christ believed in
terms of resurrection and reincarnation (serial mortality) The body was
important to the followers of Christ. Reincarnation suggests a distain
for the body, which is discarded in favor of another with each
incarnation. In Mathew 8: 31 Jesus cast the evil spirits by the legion
into the bodies of a herd of swine. The spirits were all too anxious to
occupy a body of any sort. This is what Jesus taught about the importance
of a single body.
In Mathew 27: 52-53 Jesus is resurrected and the graves were opened and
many of the dead walked again on the earth. This phenomenon occurred not
only in Jerusalem, but also in Rome, Western Europe and indeed the legends
are recorded from around the world during the first century. These
resurrections were part of the "First Resurrection" mentioned in
Revelations 20: 5. These prepared spirits returned for their body, which
had become an integral part of their eternity. They took this single body
with them back into the heavens, as did Jesus. Certainly this is not a
description of serial mortality, which involved many different discarded
bodies.

BREAK (This break is designed to distinguish between those who are
publishing a short version and the more extended analysis)

Paul mentions the profound doctrine of the resurrection in 1 Cor:
15-12-23. Indeed all the references in the bible regarding the
"resurrection" involve the potential involvement of all men and not just
Jesus. Somewhere in the Western Christian distain for their own bodies
they have forgotten this essential piece of their dogma, or at least
pushed it aside in favor of the experiential phenomenon like reincarnation
and afterlife consciousness. Being alive in the spirit was not the same
as being alive with one's immortal resurrected body. The "end all" of
descriptions is in 1 Cor. 15:42-55. "So also is the resurrection of the
dead. It is sown in corruption: it is raised in incorruption..and as we
have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the
heavenly.Now this I say brethren that flesh and blood cannot inherit the
kingdom of God: neither doth corruption inherit incorruption, Behold, I
shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,
in a moment in the twinkling of a eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet
shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible and we shall be
changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption and this mortal
must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on
incorruption and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be
brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in
victory. O death, where is they sting? O grave, where is thy victory?"
In other words we will all be raised from the dead and our bodies will be
changed from corruptible to incorruptible. Jesus was the first to have
gone through this process. His status as the "only begotten of the
Father" (Virgin Birth) granted Him the exclusive ability to breaks the
bonds of death and the be "First Fruits of Them That Slept". There were
none to precede Him. Nobody was reincarnated before him and therefore
there was no need after Him. That is what they believed during the time
of Jesus and that is exactly what He taught.
We get confused over passages that suggest that we will "return" to
mortality for various reasons. We assume that when they say that we will
"return" that this means in the flesh, through the birthing process, into
mortality. That is not what it means at all. Our involvement with this
earth and our families on this earth began before we were born and will
extend long after we die. It is an intimate relationship with this
planet, a varied relationship. It is a relationship that has more than
one responsibility and more than one role to play.
Let us illustrate this point from the literature of NDE. The great books
concerning NDE in our day touch me. As I have read them the patterns
become clearer and match with my own experience with an NDE. One of those
most striking characteristics cross NDE experiences is the very nature of
the people from the other side who meet us when we die. One would presume
from Western Christian oral traditions that angels would meet us.
However, in every single case where someone from the "other side" attends
our death these people are more than familiar. They are loved ones who
shared mortality with us, or friends from before we came to mortality.
None of them are "generic" "garden variety" angels and of course none of
them are reincarnated beings. Even in the case where Jesus attends death
in an NDE He appears as someone totally familiar. There is a conspicuous
absence of aberrational generic "Angels". There are often descriptions of
other "great beings", but they too are mentioned in familiar terms. We
know these people. They return for us as we die as we will return for
others when they die. Apparently we are so busy taking care of each other
after we are dead there isn't time to reincarnate. The dead are otherwise
occupied.
Danion Brinkley in his last interview with Art Bell suggested that this
"Being" he thought was Christ from his most recent NDE was so familiar to
him that he thought it might very well have been the projection of
himself. Danion is wrong about that, but his senses and feelings are
right. These angelic people are familiar because they too are family and
the sons and daughters of the same God.
Lastly, it is important to say something about the "law of ignorance".
We came into this world deliberately as ignorant. If that were not
intentional we would have been born with memories and knowledge. It is
that simple. We knew more before we came here. The veil of forgetfulness
that comes down gradually over the eyes of a baby is both complete by
around the age of three and intentional. One of the original reasons
behind the doctrine of reincarnation is that we came here to learn. If
that were true we would not have to die between visits and return here in
ignorance over and over again. Certainly a God who knew what He was doing
would not keep wiping out our memories in order to teach us. That doesn't
make sense on any level. God would have either allowed us to remember the
lessons from life to life or simply extended life long enough so that we
would finally get the point.
The reality of the matter is that ignorance plays a key role in our
eternal spiritual progression and makeup. We didn't come here to learn
because we could know more in five seconds at the feet of God than all the
lifetimes we could ever experience on earth. This is simply a tough place
to learn about God. It is easier to learn about God with God standing
there and from whom we may ask questions. This world is obviously not
designed to be the place of learning alone. We are isolated within the
universe by enormous distances and time. Our lives are very finite. If
we conclude that everything we see is designed by God and has a marvelous
purpose then things like ignorant, the fragile nature of mortality don't
make sense. What possible reason is there to come here in ignorance over
and over again? The dogma itself lacks explanation. This is clearly the
evidence if a phenomenon driven belief and not a comprehensive dogma.
I thought about why we came here to mortality for years until it dawned on
me. In my confusion I had to make some assumptions. I began with the
presumption that everything in life is significant (God created life by
design intentionally), though it appears random and chaotic. I concluded
that the answer to chaos would be something simple and staring me in the
face. It would begin at the beginning and perhaps be one of the
explanations given to Adam in the Garden of Eden. Kaboom, there it was.
The one thing we could not have as children of God sitting at His feet was
a clear experiential understanding of "good and evil" because there was no
evil allowed in heaven.
It would not be possible for any single one of us to experience all evil
within one lifetime. However, rather than returning over and over again
to experience all evil, as opposed to returning over and over to learn all
good, there were records made of all the evil in the world. These records
are not paper and ink. They exist in the library of the "eternal stream
of consciousness" and are accessible under the right circumstances. These
are the records of the "Lamb's Book of Life". There have been millions of
people who have tapped into that stream of consciousness either granted by
God or achieved through prayer or meditation. Lives have been saved and
miracles performed by those who have been to the "Library in Heaven". It
is my belief that we cannot experience all the evil in the world to get
this "Adam and Eve" perspective except by sharing each other's burdens and
sorrows as Jesus commanded. Certainly we wouldn't want to do it by
committing all the evil in the world ourselves.
I remembered my own life's review when I had my NDE. It contained every
second of everyday of my life and more. It contained the feelings of
those who surrounded me. However, I was able to review this life in a
"flash" before my eyes. In the same way we will experience the lives of
others. We just never conceived of the idea that maybe we could literally
see it through their eyes. The ancient texts are clear that there will be
no place to hide sin in the heavens because everyone knows everything
about everyone. That includes their mortal lives, which will be shouted
from "The Highest Mountains" after we all die. Perhaps it was always
envisioned in the plan of God that we would live each other's lives
vicariously after death. Perhaps this is one of the reasons for the
thousand years of Millennial Era. Perhaps that is why the prophecy says
that the devil will be bound during that time. Perhaps it is best that
the devil not be around when we are reliving the evil in each other's
lives in order to gain this eternal perspective intended by mortality by
God in the first place. We may all need the visit of Jesus mentioned in 1
Peter 3: 18-21. Maybe we will do some visiting ourselves to help others.
Maybe we couldn't help them if we couldn't see it through their eyes.
I remember an experiment we did in college. We lined up twenty people in
a line and told the first one in line a tale and in turn they were to
whisper it to the one behind them until it reached the end. The last
person invariably told a different tale, which was often very humorous.
However, our class was asked to do something beyond that experiment. We
were asked to get twenty people in twenty lines, for a total of four
hundred people. We did a double blind study with these twenty lines of
people. We took a story that none of us had ever heard and had someone
tell the first twenty the story in a closed room. They in turn went back
to their lines and whispered the story to the person behind them until the
final twenty people at the end of each line were taken into a room
separately and questioned. Each of them told a different tale. However,
when we began to compare the common points of all the tales in a simple
frequency count mode we were able to reconstruct the vast majority of the
original tale. The same is true for religion. There are some who suggest
that because religions vary that this is evidence that they are all false.
I beg to disagree. It is precisely in that variance that can help us
reconstruct the original tale. Religions are strangely similar. There
are those who suggest that Egypt or Greece or Rome was the harbor of the
original tale. That is not true. Egypt, Rome and Greece borrowed equally
from the original tale along with the rest of the world. It is my
suggestion that the most original tale is the tale of the creation and the
messiah. No other tale even suggests a "beginning" or what might have
happened before the earth was created. Christianity alone speaks of this,
not only in the book of Revelation, but in many other places as well.
Likewise the tales of the conclusion of mortality are missing from other
dogmas outside Christianity. Strangely, it appears that Christianity has
even forgotten much about itself.
For example there are many who suggest that Jesus was the anthropomorphic
personification of the Egyptian pagan myths of Isis and Osirus. Of
course these people often have a vested interest in the origins of life
told by Egyptians. Everyone wants to think that what they do is
important. These scholars suggest and imply that because Egypt was
enormously wealthy that their tales would be truer than the tales of the
indigent. Now that is bigotry at the least and "fighting words" for sure
from a boy who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. The truth is that
Egypt changed its rulers and conquerors as often as any country in
history, maybe more. There is not a consistent ancient doctrine called
the Egyptian Religion. Even the mysticism of "Amune" was interrupted by
the respected Joseph who was sold into Egypt by his brothers. Joseph most
likely knew Amenhotep III who later taught Akhenaten the "One God" dogma
of the Judaic Christian world. Egypt borrowed and bought their religion
as they borrowed and bought their culture and the pyramids themselves.
Raymond E. Brown suggests that Joseph was given an Egyptian princess to
marry by pharaoh. She also happened to be Joseph's cousin, inferring that
the relationship between the royal family of Egypt and the royal family of
Judeo/Christianity was mixed together from the beginning. Therefore,
those who use Egypt to dismiss Jesus are dead wrong. The strategy is even
sinister and corrupt. No scholar with integrity would suggest such a
thing with these veiled inferences.
The same kind of thing is true for the principle of reincarnation. Jesus
had an intimate relationship with India, Tibet, Nepal and surrounding
territory during His lifetime. That was the object of my recent lecture
coast to coast in an interview with Ian Punnett. Jesus left his teachings
in Tibet. I have to laugh when there are those who suggest that Jesus
went to Tibet to learn. First of all, that wasn't His style. This Jesus
was teaching the learned at the temple walls at the age of twelve and
amazing everyone.
Jesus went to many places in the world to teach the words of His Father.
Some of those very teachings are contained in the Notovitch document
mentioned in the interview. (you can still get a copy by calling the
number on the front page at www.ancientmanuscripts.com) This was not a
Jesus sitting in a class learning from the Lamas. This was a Jesus
teaching the Lamas and earning His title as the "Buddha Issa". This is
the same Jesus who taught the exclusive doctrine of resurrection long
before His final ministry in Jerusalem. He taught it to the East. He
taught it to the West. He taught it wherever he went. There are those
who presume that a man of tender years needed seasoning to teach such
great things. They forget the boy who taught the masters at the walls of
the temple and the Lamas in Tibet and the Druid Masters in England and who
knows where else.
When Joseph of Arimathea returned in 36 AD with his precious refugees from
the crucifixion, the king of Britainia gave him 12 Hides of ground. (Each
Hide consisted of 160 Acres) A king does not give a stranger two thousand
acres of ground especially if he lives on an island. Jesus must have been
impressive in his visits to England on the arm of his great uncle Joseph
of Arimathea.
Lastly, it simply doesn't do to suggest that hard evidence doesn't exist
for the existence of Jesus, Moses or any of the Biblical characters. That
is simply arrogance, laziness, ignorance and prejudice speaking. We have
more evidence that Jesus existed than for any man of His era. That
influence extends into our day and He remains the number one most
influential man in history. We would not be asking this question if we
were speaking of Plato who didn't write anything and lived hundreds of
years before Jesus. Nobody suggests that he was a myth. However, there
is a not so conspicuous movement to bury the words of Jesus and discard
His legacy and His teachings on both sides of the believing isle. The
Christians condemn everything outside their bible as if the Nicene council
had known what they were doing or Jesus or the apostles themselves. The
truth is that these men were renegades, compromising politicians and book
burners. They were not holy-men nor did they have anything to do with the
spirit of God or passing the truth to us today. No one believes that
anymore, not even the Vatican. The Nicene Council was an embarrassment
for everyone or we would hear tales of their holiness and honor in our
chapels along with the Bible they left behind among the ashes of burning
manuscripts.
We need to be slow to jump to conclusions and quick to remember the
teachings of our fathers. Reincarnation is like a leave on the ground.
Some have tried to suggest what the whole tree must look like from the
leaf. Others have the tree and can tell you the purpose of the leave.
Which of them would you follow? The phenomenon of regressed memories is
real. The religion that sprang up from around this phenomenon is not.
Our world is filled with religions that still worship the sun and earth.
They worship snakes and the wind, healers and those with "Familiar
Spirits" who tell fortunes. These appendages are not the tree. Nothing
will satisfy you until you can answer the questions; where did I come
from, why and I hear and where am I going. The bible can tell you,
especially if you tolerate the extra-biblical in the process. It often
takes a long time to sort out the entire tale. However, the evidence is
there waiting for you. It has been waiting a long time. It is likely that
your forefathers told the tale long ago.