Is reincarnation such a crazy idea

[Simon Marshland]

Have we lived before


Have we lived before, do we all have other life experiences we no longer remember. It is certainly a compelling possibility and one that I have chosen as the theme in my new book Private Lives.

The concept of reincarnation, that of an individual dying and then being reborn into another body, has existed in various religions for at least 3,000 years. It has now spread to the point that there are probably more people alive who believe in reincarnation than do not. Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism are all believers, as was Christianity until Emperor Constantine converted to that religion with far reaching results. Culminating in 2nd Council of Constantinople of 553 A. D. which declared reincarnation a heresy and the doctrine of reincarnation was officially banished by the Christian Church.

But despite their heavenly aspirations religions are apt to restrict themselves to dogma and an earthly view, while the real enigma confronting us has to be the mysteries of the Cosmos and the prospect of possible universes beyond. Mankind as an early specie has been around for a maximum of five million years, less than a second in universal terms. But then does time exist? It is said we can’t see time, only experience it. We can’t measure time, only define it. According to Einstein if an object travelling at the speed of light leaves and returns to Earth five years later, fifteen thousand years would have passed in the interim period. Similarly though we live in a three dimensional world why should that preclude the possibility of four, ten or a hundred further dimensions, all existing in the same space but vibrating at different speeds and levels to be invisible to one another. When confronted by such tantalizing possibilities together with an ocean of the unknown stretching to an horizon too distant to be seen is the prospect of previous lives so hard to accept.

Caesar, Napoleon and General Patton believed in reincarnation. As did Goethe, Mark Twain, Wordsworth and Tolstoy. Not forgetting Benjamin Franklin, Albert Schweitzer, Carl Jung, Voltaire, Henry Ford, Gandhi and many more. I am certainly tempted in that direction hence the book. I hope you enjoy it.

[D. J. Stephens]

Simon,

I for one believe in reincarnation. My fiction novel BEARKILLER is based on that belief.

BEARKILLER is a fast paced adventure novel that takes a man from the present to over two hundred years in the past, to possibly a past life!

Jeff Barkil has a passion for hunting. It seems to have been an integral part of his being since he was a boy. But he has never known why he is so drawn to it.

Maybe after this he will.

On a solo elk hunt in the Rocky Mountains, Jeff discovers something very peculiar. Although he's never even seen this place before, he seems to know all the landmarks. Somehow he's able to guess exactly what is in the next valley or over the next hill. Dismissing these amazing perceptionsas a fluke, he carries on with his hunt until he is attacked by a vicious grizzly.

Using a great deal of natural skill and determination, Barkil manages to kill the bear and survive. But he is badly injured; he feels close to death. With no one to help him, he struggles to get himself out of the mountains. On the second morning of his ordeal, he awakens with his mind in a blur. All he knows for sure is that he is young…in his late teens…and that he has just killed an attacking grizzly.

While he is trying to clear his head, he discovers that he has traveled two hundred years back in time and a hunting party of Blackfoot Indians has taken him to their village to honor him for his bravery.

Soon he is regarded as a splendid warrior and is given the name "Bearkiller." In the boy's subsequent adventures stealing horses and waging war against the Shoshone and the Sioux; he encounters and learns the landmarks he will recognize over two hundred years later as Jeff Barkil.

In due course, Bearkiller rescues the beautiful daughter of a chief, falls in love with her, and takes her as his bride. But the life of an Indian in the 1780's was often brief. One day in a fierce battle, the old grizzly wounds are reopened and he is defeated. With blood pouring out of his body, Bearkiller lies down to die…and wakes up in a Forest Service rescue helicopter, as Jeff Barkil.

The woman attending him, a doctor from the Blackfoot reservation, is fascinated that he has come out of unconsciousness speaking fluent Blackfoot. He's even calling her by her Blackfoot name. It's also the name of Bearkiller's wife.

As the events of his life as an Indian slip rapidly from his mind, Jeff Barkil wonders if what he experienced was real. Was he dreaming? Or was he reliving a past life? What will always remain clear is the image of a great grizzly standing over him, looking down at him as if from the top of a mountain, seeming to know his soul, somehow communicating to him without saying the words:

“Until we meet again, Bearkiller.”

I got the idea for the book while spending time in the Wasatch Mountains and believing I was recognizing landmarks, though I had never been in the area before.

[domenic Pappalardo]

I like the question of this project. I am not a follower of the subject, but I love to dabble in it. In one of my books, the ghost believe the people of the town they live in, are the one who are in the sprit world.
I should like to read a few pages of your story.

Domenic

[Simon Marshland]

Domenic,

Thank you for your interest.

My views on reincarnation are complicated and would probably bore people if put into novel form. So in Private Lives I have restriced the idea to the story of a man who though living in the 21st century is troubled throughout his life by flashbacks to earlier lives as a rifleman in the Napoleonic Wars and a young pilot in the Battle of Britain.

I have chosen Chapter One for your reading request in which the main character has his first glimpse of eternity at the age of six.





1

CHARLIE PARKER

London 1948


‘Charlie, Charlie, hurry up cheri or we won’t have time to feed the ducks and be back in time for lunch and don’t forget your coat, it’s still cold outside.” Annette took him to the park most days and if the weather was fine they often stopped off at the pond for a while to feed the ducks. Annette said going for a walk every morning was healthy and good for the lungs. But on that particular morning something happened that had a marked effect on the rest of his life, though looking back it had taken until now before he understood what it was. He remembered standing at the water’s edge and opening the bag of old bread crusts Annette always brought along for the occasion and throwing the first handful to a pair of haughty looking swans, then like a puff of wind it happened.

All the leaves on the trees appeared to come doubly alive, sparkling and dancing like liquid jade rippling in the sun and it seemed he had became as one with them and all other living things around him. Sharing an affinity with the birds, the flowers, the bushes and trees, right down to each blade of grass. He remembered laughing out loud with pure joy at the wonder and beauty of it all. Then the park had disappeared and he was standing on the highest peak of a great range of mountains, looking out over a strange yet familiar landscape that stretched far into the distance. At first glance it appeared to be a sequence of mapped countries, like the ones on the globe that Dad kept in his den. But instinctively he knew these were not countries in a physical sense at all, but a wealth of countless experiences reaching back through time that he recognised at once and welcomed as old friends. But the moment he tried to look into one of them more deeply, everything vanished as though someone had thrown a switch and abruptly he was back with the swans at the water’s edge. The moment had stayed with him, locked away in some half-forgotten corner of his mind. A crystal drop of awareness far beyond the understanding of a six-year-old child, but then in that brief moment he had experienced eternity where age was irrelevant. Of course, when he thought about it later none of it made any sense. Apart from occasional weekends at Aunt Lucinda’s he had never even been out of the city, had never even seen a mountain and was none too sure what the word experience meant. But in that timeless moment he had recognised and welcomed each life experience and felt both happy and at home to be there.

No one else seemed to have noticed he had gone anywhere and when he tried to tell Annette what had happened she had smiled the superior smile of grown-ups. ‘Alors, Charlie, what an imagination! Some day when you grow up perhaps you will be a writer,’ she had bent down, kissed his cheek and ruffled his hair in the way he hated. ‘Now, come on, my little dreamer, we must hurry back or be late for lunch.’ So they had gone home as if nothing had happened.

Annette was the au pair who had come to take care of him while Mum and Dad were at work. She came from abroad, which is a pretty mysterious place when you are six. But he was very fond of her and being a curious child made a point of looking for Oh Pear trees whenever they went to the park, in the hope of seeing what her home looked like. But no matter how hard he looked, he never found one. He even asked Ben if they had one in the orchard at Aunt Lucinda’s. They went down to visit her every month or so and Ben, who looked after Aunt Lucinda’s garden, knew pretty much everything there was to know about trees and things. But when he had asked him to show him an Oh Pear tree the old man had tilted his hat against the sun, scratched his neck for a moment then shook his head. ‘Afraid we only has apple trees here, Charlie, and no Oh Apple trees at that.’

So in the end he had lost interest and given up looking, but he hadn’t forgotten the happening in the park and decided to ask Mum about it. Being an angel he was sure she would understand, it was the sort of thing angels would. Charlie knew his mum was an angel because he had heard Aunt Lucinda say so to Cook one weekend while they were unpacking the ham they had brought down from the city. Not that it had come as any surprise, sometimes when she came to kiss him goodnight before going out with Dad, she was dressed in some beautiful shiny angel stuff that shimmered in the landing light as she stood in the bedroom doorway. He had never actually seen her wings, but then Ben had explained about moulting wing feathers while they were collecting the eggs in the hen house, so he wasn’t surprised if she wanted to keep them hidden from time to time. But when he asked her about the place at the top of the mountain she had only laughed. ‘Really, Charlie, there you go, daydreaming again... do try to concentrate a little more on what’s going on in the real world, my poppet.’ She had bent down, given him a big hug, ruffled his hair and told him to go out and play. So that had been that.

But no matter what the grown ups said Charlie knew something important had happened and each time Annette took him to feed the ducks he would stand by the water, close his eyes and hold his breath until he was nearly bursting wishing himself back on top of the mountain. But no matter how hard he wished nothing ever happened and he never went anywhere at all, so as time passed he began to think perhaps Mum had been right and he had imagined it all, though deep down a small part of him still stubbornly believed it had. Then just after his tenth birthday when the family moved to a new home in the country, strange things had started to happen again.

It had been summer, so daylight still filtered through the thin curtain material leaving the bedroom nearly as bright as day when Mum came to kiss him goodnight. She had smoothed and patted the coverlet in the way she had, then blowing a final kiss had left leaving the door ajar. He could hear all the grown ups talking on the terrace below his room and was straining to hear what they were saying, when his head seemed to swell up like a balloon inside. It hadn’t been painful or anything, simply different and a little frightening and though everything still looked the same, somehow he knew it wasn’t. He had the strangest feeling he could reach out and touch anything in the room, or anywhere else for that matter no matter however far away it was. Looking back it seemed silly not to have tried to reach out and touch something there and then, but he remembered being so scared by the sensation he had shut his eyes instead and hoped the feeling would go away.

Sleep when came it had been filled with strange exciting dreams which though remaining tantalizingly out of reach next morning, left him with the expectation that something important was about to happen. But though the same stretchy swelling feeling continued to strike without warning in the following months nothing ever came of it. At the time he had tried his best not to think about it let alone question the purpose behind the attacks. But now looking back, Charlie wondered if they could have been a necessary process for what was to follow, like the hatching of a mental egg giving birth to some fledgling form of psychic ability.

He had never told anyone, not even Matty and he told most everything to him. Some people might think it strange for a child to share secrets with his grandfather, but a special bond is often forged between young and old, particularly if they live together. Matty had come to live with them soon after his grandmother died. Mum said although he wouldn’t show it he was feeling very lonely inside, so it was up to all of them to make a special effort to make him feel at home. Of course he had to be really old and one day Charlie had summoned up courage to ask him straight out just how old he really was. For a moment he looked quite taken aback, then giving one of those deep rumbly laughs Charlie got to know so well had grunted, ‘About as old as Methuselah.’

Luckily for Charlie, the Reverend Catshalk had been round the week before or he wouldn’t have had an idea what his grandfather was talking about. Reverend Catshalk came round twice each holiday to give Charlie and his sister Chrissy religious instruction and on this occasion had devoted the lesson to the great prophets in the Bible. So thanks to Reverend Catshalk he knew all about Methuselah and how he had been up there in the top ten along with Moses, Abraham and Zacca someone or other and a few more whose names he had forgotten. But the one thing that had really stuck in his mind was their age, because according to Reverend Catshalk all of them had lived to be nine hundred years old or more. At the time twenty had seemed pretty ancient and he remembered looking at his grandfather with an awe that bordered on disbelief. Even so Methuselah can still be quite a mouthful when you’re ten, so he had been relieved when Grandfather had added that if he liked he could call him Matty for short. Matty had a habit of preferring things that made other people’s lives easier, though he hadn’t realized that at the time.

Most people find someone special who stands out from the rest in their formative years. Long or short the relationship is usually stamped deep in their minds, often rising from the subconscious when they have need of it. Charlie was luckier than most for in Matty he found not only a friend and companion, but a rock and guru combined. Matty taught him most of the important basics of life from consideration for others and respect for all living things, to how to fish and sail, appreciate nature and the countryside and try his best to listen to other people’s views even when he disagreed with them. None of this had been delivered in the form of a lecture, but along with a lot more sage advice had been casually dropped in conversation to be unconsciously absorbed up to his eighteenth birthday. Much of it had taken years to filter through from his subconscious, but looking back Charlie was pretty sure he had Matty to thank for many of the tenets he had lived his life by. That’s not to say he hadn’t loved his parents, he had and deeply. But Dad had often been away on business and Mum’s life had been equally hectic, running charities and practicing local law on the side. So when he had a problem he had naturally turned to Matty, because he was always there.

He remembered waiting to go fishing after lunch one Sunday. Both his parents had gone to visit friends in town and Chrissie was spending the weekend at a girlfriend’s house, so for once he had Matty to himself. Although Chrissie was his sister she was ten years his senior and they had little in common; she had largely ignored him in childhood and been long gone by the time he reached his teens. Though they had never been antagonistic they never really got to know each other, so lacked the usual affection between siblings. Once grown up he doubted if they had met more than half a dozen times in their lives.

Matty had been snoozing in the rocking chair on the porch and though longing to go down to the lake Charlie hadn’t dared wake him. Disturbing Matty while he was digesting, as he called it, was apt to make him irritable and grouchy for the rest of the day. Especially after he had downed a few glasses of wine with his lunch like today, so there had been nothing for it but to sit it out and try to wheedle him back in a fishing mood when he finally snorted himself awake. Fishing with Matty was great; he had an almost mystical eye for the best lies along the lakeshore, which almost guaranteed a good catch when other anglers couldn’t raise a bite. Though like most things he had strong views on the subject, particularly on the type of bait, insisting they never used anything alive like maggots or worms.

‘How would you like to be speared on a hook then dangled in the water for someone’s dinner while drowning at the same time? ‘He replied almost fiercely when Charlie had queried his reasons. Which like most things he said made a lot of sense when you thought about it and from then on Charlie had felt much happier using the bread and sardine paste Matty mixed up in one of Mum’s sugar bowls. He had asked him once if he was so worried about hurting the worms and such, how come he didn’t mind killing the fish.

‘Everything has to eat to live, boy,’ he had said, ‘ and usually that means killing something, be it root or fish. The trick is to be as humane as possible in the way you go about it, and never to destroy anything for fun.’
An hour later he was still snoring, head nodding in approval at some far-away dream. For a moment Charlie toyed with the idea of tickling his nose with a shoot of grass, then deciding the outcome was too risky, lay on his back and watched a soaring skylark climb to a singing speck in the cloudless sky. Whether it was lunch or the song of the skylark he wasn’t sure, but he must have dozed off because the next thing he remembered was being roughly shaken awake.

‘You should have more sense than falling asleep in the sun at this time of year, boy; you could do yourself a serious damage. There’s a lot more heat in it than you think.’ Matty had shaken his head and pulled him to his feet. ‘Mind you, serves you right for stuffing yourself at lunch like that,’ he had added reprovingly, ‘never a good idea to overeat at midday.’

Charlie had started to protest. After all he wasn’t the one who, filled with wine, had been snoring his head off all afternoon, but had thought better of it.

‘Here, put some of this on your face, with any luck it should stop those handsome features from peeling tomorrow.’ Matty handed him a tube of sun cream, then relented. ‘Shall we try for a couple of fat trout for supper? If we start for the lake right away we should be in time for the evening rise.’ He smiled, knowing there was no need to wait for an answer. ‘Right then, you get the tackle and I’ll mix us some bait.’
They had caught half a dozen before Matty called a halt. ‘That’s more than enough supper for the four of us, no point in filling the fridge with stale fish. Perhaps we should try fly fishing next time, this sardine paste is making things too easy.’ They had gone home tired but happy, with Charlie leading the way eager to show off the gleaming catch.

Looking back it had been a glorious summer that year. There must have been days when it rained and times when he had landed in trouble. But he remembered it as perfect, each day bright and new, early morning sunlight calling him down to the garden, running bare foot through the grass, to watch young rabbits playing in the paddock beyond the fence. Magic days between childhood and adolescence when reality and imagination merge to create an enchanted world, leaving the worries and responsibilities to come hidden below a horizon yet unborn.

Providing the weather was fine, the French windows stayed open all day, for Mum insisted everyone’s health would be improved by eating outside on the terrace. She called it eating Al Fresco and for a while Charlie had wondered who the unfortunate man was until Matty had taken pity on him and explained it was another word for picnicking. Not that that had made much sense either. Picnicking for him meant going somewhere different to eat chicken drumsticks, sardine or tomato sandwiches and hardboiled eggs, sitting cross-legged by a tablecloth spread out on the grass watching greedy ants struggling in the mayonnaise. Sitting at table on the terrace eating bowls of salad was no fun at all, at least he didn’t think so and he had an idea Matty didn’t either, because he always avoided his eye while pretending to enjoy his celery, lettuce and tomatoes with the rest of them.

Barring the day Mum’s cat Blackadder got himself marooned on top of the cedar tree and Charlie downed his first bottle of beer, nothing out of the ordinary had happened that summer. After all their attempts to coax Blackadder out of the tree had failed, Mum finally called the fire brigade. They could hear them coming for miles, sirens wailing and bells clanging then the huge gleaming red machine tore round the corner and came to a swirling dust-filled halt outside the front door. The firemen had been a bit miffed to start with as someone in the office had jumbled up the messages and told them the house was on fire. But once they got used to the idea it was simply another cat rescue they had laughed good naturedly enough and taking off their helmets pointed the automatic ladder to the top of the tree.

If Bowser, their fox terrier, hadn’t gone barking mad and threatened to send everyone else the same way, Blackadder would probably be up there still. He was a self-sufficient cat and lived a totally independent life throughout the summer. Weeks could go by in the warmer months without so much as a glimpse of him, as spurning all offers of friendship he would slink away to do his own thing until the cold weather returned. Then around the beginning of October, Blackadder would return to his favourite chair by the fire to curl up and snooze the winter away while waiting for the return of spring. He must have been relieved to be rescued, but gave no display of gratitude. True to form the moment he was back on the ground he rewarded his rescuer with a vicious scratch across the hand before disappearing into the bushes with a growl of rage. Maybe that was why Charlie had never been too keen on cats, but even as cats go Blackadder had to be the meanest and most unpleasant he had ever known.

After treating the fire crew to bottles of beer to make amends for the unburnt house Mum had gone inside to write a cheque to the Firemen’s Association. One of them had winked and handed him a bottle. Charlie hadn’t liked the taste much but would have died rather than admit it, so he swigged it down it in one then feeling distinctly queasy had wandered off to the orchard in case he was going to be sick. He sat down leaning against a gnarled old trunk of an apple tree and tried to think of something else to take his mind off the beer. Staring at the overripe fallen apples rotting in the grass he watched a host of thirsty wasps eagerly sucking up the fermenting juices, their black and yellow striped bodies twisting and curling with pleasure as they drank the summer bounty. The display had made him violently sick, for the first time paying the price of too much alcohol, but at the same time feeling strangely proud and grown up as well.

[domenic Pappalardo]

Simon, you said: My views on reincarnation are complicated and would probably bore people if put into novel form. So in Private Lives I have restriced the idea to the story of a man who though living in the 21st century is troubled throughout his life by flashbacks to earlier lives as a rifleman in the Napoleonic Wars and a young pilot in the Battle of Britain.

I do understand this. One of my books is made from four books of the bible. When I completed it...I had to ask myself, "What is the book about?" It took me many years to figure it out.
If you are like the rest of us, I'm sure you have a jillion books on writing. I found one that re-places 90% of my how to write books..."Stein on Writing," by Sol Stein.
You are a good story teller, which all good writers are. The parts I found that an agent, or publisher would want you to correct, concern the "Show don't tell."
I could never really fully understand this until I read Steins book...You have a good story. Ask yourself, "What is the story about?"

Domenic

[Simon Marshland]

Domenic

Many thanks for your comment, which like all comments is gratefully received. However in answer I must say that I do know what the story is about as will anyone who reads the book. There is a prologue and an epilogue with the life stories of three families in between, so I could hardly expect anyone to know what the story was about after reading the first chapter.

Simon

[D.A. Chadwick]

Simon,
I don't think the idea crazy at all. It was a part of early Judaism and Christianity before being written out. Human beings don't get everything out of movie the first time they watch it, much less one life time. At the very least I would think we need to live twice as both sexes to live the complete experience.

[Simon Marshland]

I agree entirely, though I think life stretches far beyond our accepted limits, through different dimensions and unshackled by time. The English poet laureate, John Masefield put it well., "These eyes of mine have blinked and shone / In Thebes, in Troy and Babylon