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I mentioned, recently, when I went over my website stats for last month, that someone with a fairly large site must be linking to an article about the afterlife which I have been mirroring on my site for some years, now. Judging by the large number of hits, relative to the hits on my home page, whoever it is links directly to this internal page--which is presumably to their liking--without providing a courtesy link to my home page, or crediting me. (If they don't approve of my site, they can mirror the page, themselves, off their own.) This morning, I fixed 'em. I reposted that page with my book's banner ad at the top, and expanded the introduction to read as follows:

NOTE: This excellent resource has gone offline, so I am presenting a slightly less functional version without the table of contents and active links, until such time as the original goes back online. This presentation is largely based on the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg, who was a strong influence in my 19th-century lifetime as Mathew Franklin Whittier. However, at best, reincarnation is here treated as a belief that some psychics accept, and some don't, as though it were optional. It isn't, reincarnation has definitely been proven, and many specifics about it can be determined and are open to further investigation. Please see my own research for more clarification on this question.

Now let's see how long it takes them to figure it out ;-).

I am fed-up with people cherry-picking my work, and not giving me proper credit for it. This happened to me in the 19th century, as Mathew Franklin Whittier, all the time. For example, Mathew wrote a scathing critique on the American jury system, in-character as "Ethan Spike." But where newspapers across the country--and as far away as England--reprinted this piece, they only used the slapstick portion where the ignorant "Spike" expresses his prejudice and is not selected. They omitted the radical portion--probably reflecting an actual case of injustice, which had outraged him--where two foreign sailors were railroaded to the gallows for no apparent reason other than that they were foreign.

Only the readers of the original piece, in the Portland (Maine) "Transcript," would have seen it as it was intended. That piece was not excerpted, by these editors, for length, as was implied, nor for interest--it was edited for content, which is to say it was censored. It would be sort of like creating a heavily-edited YouTube video of George Carlin, minus anything that could be construed as critical towards the U.S. government. Here's an 1861 reprint from an undetermined 1861 New York paper, as a sample.

I took the time to read this mirrored article about the afterlife more carefully, as I was preparing my little introduction. When you get to the question about reincarnation, the author states:

What about reincarnation?

Traditional Judeo-Christian teachings describe a single incarnation with eternal, personal existence after death. On the other hand, many contemporary writings and some established Eastern teachings embrace reincarnation as true. Phenomena described by spiritually gifted persons may be logically justified by either concept; therefore, ideas common to both theories are important:

1. Unique, personal existence continues after the physical body dies.
2. Continued spiritual growth through love and service is a central aspect of eternal existence.
3. After passing into the spiritual world, we do not lose interest in the welfare of our loved ones or the human race. We achieve merit and benefit from helping those on earth toward higher truth and greater love.
4. It is extremely important on passing into the spiritual world to look toward the light and accept orientation from spiritual guides. If a person dies ignorant of the spiritual world, an earth-bound state or spirit possession may result, severely hindering the growth of all involved. A prayer or call for help may be enough to move us through the tunnel and into the light described in NDEs.

Most psychics who espouse reincarnation do not believe that one must immediately inhabit another body upon physical death. Long periods (centuries in physical time) are used for continued growth by entities who earn merit by temporarily visiting earth as spiritual guides and teachers. Psychics believing in a single incarnation describe a similar return of spirit helpers who work so closely with us that thoughts and feelings blend, causing the distinct impression of past lives.

Proponents of both schools share the belief that it is best to exist in eternity without reincarnating. Reincarnationists see this as the liberation of the soul from illusion, when the lessons of physical life have been learned. Others believe it is God's ideal for an individual to evolve through love and service beginning in this life and continuing in the next, without the necessity for reincarnation.

But reincarnation has long been proven, just as mediumship has been proven. How would the Spiritualists feel, if, when I answered a question about mediumship, I said, "Some reincarnationists accept it, and some don't, and either way is just okay?" I think they wouldn't like it very much, because their primary purpose, as stated in their manifesto, is to provide definitive evidence for the reality of spirit contact. So anyone getting wishy-washy on them, for the purpose of not ruffling feathers, will go against their stated purpose, their very reason for organizing and doing all that work, in the first place.

Well, I feel the same way when they are wishy-washy about reincarnation. The evidence is there, and the time has come to face it and take a definite stand on this. I don't know why Swedenborg didn't teach reincarnation; but the mischief goes back to Paul, the con-artist. He appears to have taught the Pharisee belief in the Resurrection of the Dead, which is a materialistic horror story attempting to replace reincarnation. Jesus never taught that nonsense, nor did any of the direct disciples. But it is "Paulianity" that we have inherited. The pre-existence of the soul was made anathema (and reincarnation along with it), leaving the second absurdity, eternal heaven with its monstrous corollary, eternal hell. And Spiritualism proceeded from mainstream Christianity. So what they did was to create an eternal heaven, and downplay the hell part. Those Spiritualists (like Mathew, by the mid-to-late 1850's) who accepted reincarnation, had better keep quiet about it.

When I began attending the local Spiritualist church here in Portland, I found them ambivalent toward me, because they had already gotten in trouble (as I overheard them mention) with the head office for being too open about reincarnation. I didn't belong there--it was sort of a rehash of why Mathew probably left the movement by the 1860's.

The time has come to be definite about this, and to insist on it, the way that medium John Edward insists on the messages he is perceiving. For 20 years I have been insisting on it, in everything I have presented to the public. It's a very hard sell. The Materialists don't want it, and the Spiritualists don't want it. The mainstream Christians certainly don't want it. You are shut out all-around. There are ways to get a foot in the door, but you have to compromise. You can write a novel, which permits people to suspend disbelief; you can equivocate, like this presenter did, so that it's "just okay" if you believe it, or you don't believe it. You can repeat the meme which says that "reincarnation can never be proven," or the one that past-life therapists use, "it doesn't matter whether the memories are real or not." You can even say, along with Dr. Ian Stevenson, that your research is "suggestive of reincarnation."

Stevenson said that in a strictly scientific sense. People have reinterpreted it conveniently, in a popular sense. He didn't mean it that way. He meant that by a purely scientific standard, his results suggest reincarnation as the most plausible explanation. But he put it that way so as not to be entirely shut out, I would guess. If he had asserted, as a scientist, that his results convincingly reveal reincarnation as an actual phenomenon (which they do), he would have been laughed out of the hall. Had it been possible to "defrock" him as a psychiatrist in good standing, they would have done it.

Nobody can defrock me, because I am affiliated with no institution or group. I am entirely free and independent, and therefore, I assert the obvious truth, that reincarnation has been proven many times over. There are several methods, and I have pioneered one of them, myself. But the price of telling the truth this bluntly, rather than sparing people's tender beliefs, is being aggressively shunned. That means I am here telling the truth--but I don't dare make this blog public, lest an employer or prospective employer see it, and refuse to hire me. That is because I don't sell any books, and hence am forced to work, at age 65, to supplement my meagre Social Security income. (Nor do I have a patron, which is probably what I really need.*) You can't find this website on Google, anymore, searching on keyword "reincarnation," even though this is one of the oldest and largest on the subject, with the most accurate information. It will have to be strictly word-of-mouth. And so-far, the few hundred people who visit this website every day, leave without purchasing my e-books. Many of them are simply sent from other, larger websites to cherry-pick pages the webmaster agrees with. These webmasters will send people to read Rick Brown's article about "James the Submarine Man," but not to read about my own case, which is proven just as strongly. Or, they will send them to this "Insights Into the Afterlife" page, which soft-pedals reincarnation, but not to my information, which asserts it as definitely true.

This business of the "Mutual Admiration Society," which Mathew also referred to--I see it even in my spiritual group. Everybody is trying to be loving, and to eschew judgment. But what ends up happening is that it is all "nice." It becomes a religion of "niceness," as everybody glowingly affirms everybody else. But why do they do that? Not out of love--it's out of fear. Fear of being kicked out of the group. Because if you say anything true, that isn't entirely positive--no matter how tactfully--you are kicked out. Meaning, more specifically, if you disagree with anybody, substantially--and more to the point, if you do it effectively--you are kicked out as a troublemaker.

Being a truth-teller, and a troublemaker, has its own pitfalls. But so does the opposite. One must know the appropriate time, that there is a time for eveything. And so much of it hinges on motivation. Are you using the truth as a bludgeon, because you get a personal power rush out of it? Then you had better take a hard look at yourself. But are you being nice, agreeing with everything anybody in the group says, gushing with praise over everything they present like a mother praising a child's awful art project, out of fear of being kicked out of the group? Then you had best take a hard look at that.

All I know is that it is time that someone started sticking up for the truth of reincarnation, because the lack of it, in both individual minds and in the collective, social mind, is more toxic than anybody dreams it is. Christianity is made a laughing stock by materialistic science, partly because reincarnation was removed from it. The fear of hell no longer restrains people--but the real teaching of reincarnation is not there to make them pause, either. Do you realize how much darker, and more blatantly materialistic, mainstream television has gotten in the last 20-30 years? Materialism is a cancer, and it is metastacizing, now. There is no belief in accountability. Everybody believes you make of this one life what you will, and since everybody is terminated forever at the end of it, you get two camps. The first camp says, "Let's try to express love and help other people, in the spirit of Existentialism, while we are here." The second camp--which I have reason to believe is about 50% of the population--logically, says, "I'm going to look out for Number One and have the best ride I can, and to hell with everybody else, because they are all going to be wiped out of existence soon, anyway."

But the Spiritualists say, "There is no hell, only eternal heaven for everybody." So there is no accountability there, either.

All of these people are lacking the Philosopher's Stone. And in my opinion, that Stone is very simple. My spiritual master, Meher Baba, explained it, as have some of the others I've studied. There is only Truth, the supra-rational, self-existent Truth. Any formulation of beliefs or ideas is a part of that Truth, a reflection of some aspect of it, as one sees in the parable of the blind men and the elephant. So no matter what anyone says--or more specifically, what anyone sincerely believes--that is part of the truth. They are partly right. Everybody is partly right.** Only, they are also partly wrong, which means, when that belief becomes a movement, it goes astray. That part of it which was ignorant, becomes magnified, and that attracts more ignorant people, and the process of decay accelerates. Soon, the truth has to pop up somewhere else.

Truth is alive, not dead, not static, and not boxed within any system. The point is to keep a sharp eye out for the truth embedded in every teaching. I agree with the liberals that women should be able to control their own bodies. I agree with the conservatives that late-term abortions are tantamount to the murder of a child, and nobody in a civilized society permits infanticide. That's because I know (overheard directly from yogi Baba Hari Dass) that in the reincarnation process, the astral body enters the fetus at around the 21st week, which coincides with the time of "quickening." Neither the mainstream Christians, nor the Materialists, will listen to me. They are both right, and they are both wrong.

Just so, there is indeed hell, only it is not eternal. There is indeed accountability, but not the kind that traditional Christianity imagines. There is no afterlife, per se--but there is one continuous life, which includes higher vibrational dimensions. There is indeed a state of heaven, but it is not permanent, nor is it the real goal of spirituality. The scientific method, based on rigorous, skeptical inquiry, if honestly practiced, can lead to truth--but not with the mistaken a priori assumption of philosophical Materialism, which fatally cripples it. And so-on.

In all this, the time has come to assert that reincarnation is real, and that it can be proven. Indeed, this is not the whole truth--but at this point in mankind's development, it is a necessary truth--one that is desperately needed, whether we realize it, or not.

Best regards,

Stephen Sakellarios, M.S.

*I looked briefly at "Patreon," but that is set up so that the more someone pays, the more they get proprietory information--they buy their way into the inner circle, in other words. It's unethical, and I won't do it. Anyone who can figure out that I've continued this blog, sans external link, may read it. Besides, with my level of popularity, the best I could hope for is $3.00/month. With a real patron, there are things I could do that I can't possibly afford to do, now. One, obviously, would be (tasteful) advertising. But looking out the window at the skyline of Portland just now, it occurred to me, if I could afford a hypnotist; or if one volunteered their services; I might be able to get permission to be hypnotized at some of the locations which figured prominently in my past life as MFW--like the First Parish Church (now a Unitarian church); or the Boston Custom House. Probably, I would be unable to obtain permission for some of them, like Mathew's childhood home. Right now, I have my real-time impressions recorded of being in these places, in normal waking consciousness, which of course is valuable as data. But wouldn't it be interesting to be able to compare that with my experiences of the same places under hypnosis? Other researchers, like Peter Ramster, Rick Brown and Marge Rieder, have obtained good results with this method.

**That is not exactly what the author of the passages quoted above on reincarnation is doing. She is reporting on two sets of beliefs, like an anthropologist, without attempting to determine the truth of the matter; and as gesture of reconciliation, she is pointing out commonalities. The problem with this is that reincarnation is a done deal; and denying it is irrational. One may say that she didn't know any better, given that the mediums, her primary sources, were divided on the subject. But psychic mediums are not the best authorities regarding reincarnation--they are simply messengers, and as such their information is only as good as their sources. When they get outside their expertise, they can be wide of the mark. After all, if mediumship was a reliable method for determining the truth of reincarnation, they would all be of one accord! If this author was researching the afterlife, it was up to her to seek out the best sources. For some reason she seems to have pursued every other aspect of the afterlife diligently; but she neglected this crucial area.


Music opening this page, "A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You," by Neil Diamond,
performed by Eric Johnson, from the "Anaheim Live" DVD


