(NOTE: This page contains excerpts pertaining specifically to Anthroposophy, which were taken from a longer article and published in German translation in Info3, an Anthopsophist periodical, in July 1998. You can also read The entire original paper in English, which contains many more examples from other cultures as well.)

When Rabbi Isaac Luria, the great sixteenth century Jewish mystic, was asked to write down his teachings for future generations, he replied, "How can I know where to begin? Everything is connected to everything else." And so, he wrote almost nothing at all about his personal spiritual experiences -- not because such experiences did not exist, but because he was at a loss as to how to put them on paper without limiting them to a narrow, linear format.

I have often thought that Rabbi Luria would have been right at home on the World Wide Web, which would have allowed him to structure his writings more closely to his actual inner experiences. The Web resembles the common format of Jewish theological discussions, in that it does not have a defined starting place, nor does it have any specified end. You simply jump in wherever you are at in the moment, and every page is the "right" page for beginning the discussion.

In the Talmud, for example, everything is indeed connected to everything else. The usual lines between religion, science, history, culture, folklore, philosophy and spirituality are not so clearly drawn in Judaism as in Euro-American thought. To interact with traditional Jewish thought is to enter a spiritual ecosystem which does not have clear boundaries between "science and religion" or "secular and sacred." To an observing Jew, eating kosher food (a seemingly mundane physical act) is just as "spiritual" as sitting in contemplative prayer all day. Why? Because, from the standpoint of Jewish theology, everything in the universe is related to Jewish practice. Judaism is about the totality of life itself, not "religion" as a separate category. This is why the Bible itself begins with the story of the Creation of the entire Cosmos, not the story of Moses and the Jewish people alone.

I came to reincarnation studies from the standpoint of two very traditional schools of Jewish thought -- Chassidism and kabbalah -- which have believed in reincarnation for many centuries. I, too, believe in reincarnation. Therefore, the existence of reincarnation was never in question, and the idea of people reincarnating from the Holocaust was not shocking or surprising. I was not concerned with whether or not these experiences are "real" in the objective sense. Rather, I was interested in healing the deep emotional pain which these people carried in their souls. The people who come to me do not come for purposes of scientific research, but to find some type of religious and/or spiritual context on their own personal journeys.

When I was growing up in America, I heard a nursery rhyme about "four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie" and "when the pie was opened, the birds began to sing -- wasn't that a dandy dish to set before the king!" This ditty never made any sense to me, because American blackbirds -- be they grackles, crows, cowbirds or whatever -- do not sing. They make a raucous squawking sound that would hardly be a suitable gift for a king! So the imagery in this poem always puzzled me -- until I went to Europe on a speaking tour, and heard the European blackbird, which does indeed sing! Although it looks black like our blackbirds, it is, in fact, from a totally different genus -- the thrushes -- and is more closely related to the American Robin. Suddenly, I understood the nursery rhyme.

For the rest of that European tour, this story was my a paradigm for me to explain the pitfalls of inter-cultural dialogue in relation to reincarnation and afterlife studies. It is perfectly possible for two people from two different cultures to be using the exact same words and/or imagery to describe and experience, but hear them in very different ways. That insight became my theme for the rest of that speaking tour, and becomes the connecting thread for the rest of the seemingly unrelated -- but closely interwoven -- narratives I will share here.

In my second book, From Ashes to Healing, there is a detailed description of the afterlife by a woman named Abbye Silverstein. Silverstein is Jewish in this life, and grew up in a home where the Sabbath and holiday observances were a part of family life. She also believes that she was Jewish in her previous life, again from a traditionally-observant family. So naturally, she understands her past-life memories within a totally Jewish context.

Under hypnosis, Silverstein described how she had died in a car accident around the time that Hitler came to power. She does not, therefore, have memories of the Holocaust itself, but she does claim to remember working in the spirit world as a healer for Jewish souls who died in the camps. She described their astral bodies as being "crippled" and "mangled" because of the pain and torture they had experienced. In order for them to be able to heal spiritually, the angels created an area in heaven which was a duplication of the villages that the Nazis had destroyed. There they were re-united with their families and friends. After spending some healing time in this nurturing Jewish environment, the souls were ready to reincarnate on earth again -- as Jews born in the post-war "baby boom" generation.

The public reaction to Silverstein's story has been very informative from the standpoint of multi-cultural awareness. By and large, Jews relate to it very well. So do people who have been abused in this life. Both groups understand the need to have a safe place where abuse victims can heal without fear of further abuse. Just as a rape survivor might need to spend time in an all-woman therapy group in order to be able to open up about her feelings from this experience, so, too, might Jewish souls feel more comfortable healing among other Jews who can understand the deep levels of their pain and suffering.

On the other end of the spectrum, many New Agers do not relate to Silverstein's story at all. New Age teaches that we must experience a smorgasbord of cultures in different lifetimes in order to grow spiritually. So the idea of a soul coming back repeatedly into the same culture is rejected outright -- well, almost. Because although New Age Thought resists the idea of Jews coming back as Jews, it apparently has no problem with Tibetans coming back as Tibetans. In numerous instances where somebody in the audience has told me that coming back as a Jew over and over again would be spiritually limiting, I have asked if they felt the same way about the Dalai Lama coming back for fourteen incarnations as the Dalai Lama. Not once has anybody told me that the Dalai Lama was spiritually limited because of this!

When the same experience -- being reborn into the same culture for many lifetimes -- is interpreted as "spiritual" for Tibetans but "limited" for Jews, we have to ask ourselves: are we seeing a subtle form of antisemitism at work? If so, is it possible that similar prejudices color our perceptions of other reincarnation stories? And does this prejudice, in turn, affect the sample of people who are willing to be included in these studies?

As I travel from place to place, speaking in front of numerous audiences, I cannot help but notice that the vast majority of New Agers in America are middle-class, dominant culture people of European background. Which raises yet another question: Are New Age perceptions of the afterlife really universal, or are they, too, culturally limited?

I was in Berlin, speaking at a conference on "Reincarnation and Karma," sponsored by the Anthroposophical Society. Anthroposophy is a European esoteric philosophy that was founded at the turn of the twentieth century by the German philosopher and psychic, Rudolf Steiner. (Best known to the American public as the founder of the Waldorf method of education.) Anthroposophists believe in reincarnation.

So far, so good. However, when we began to dialogue in more depth, it became apparent that there are some very big differences in theory between what Anthroposophists believe about the levels of the soul, and what I as a Chassid believe. These differences, in turn, tended to affect how we interpreted the value of reincarnation anecdotes. I was told [by several Anthroposophists] that descriptions of the afterlife which include detailed physical imagery -- such as Abbye Silverstein's past-life memories referred to above -- could not be very deep spiritual experiences, precisely because they are so detailed!

Among American researchers of esoteric subjects, the more detailed the descriptions, the more credible they seem to us. But from the standpoint of Rudolf Steiner's philosophy, such clearly-formed visions would belong to the lower astral planes, while the higher planes are like unformed swirls of undifferentiated energy.

My mind raced back to my first impression of the children's art work at the Waldorf school in Minneapolis. Nobody was drawing houses, horses cars and trucks -- the usual things children make in primary school art class. Instead, the walls were covered with artwork that was literally fuzzy around the edges, without clearly-defined forms and boundaries. To me, all the childrens' painting looked alike. I saw no individuality in them at all -- even though Anthroposophy places a strong emphasis on the development of individuality. So what was going on here?

I later spoke at the Goetheanum -- the Anthroposophist headquarters in Dornach, Switzerland -- where I saw that the artwork on the walls was also done in the same abstract swirls of pastel colors. This, I was told, is because the paintings represented the creative energy of higher spiritual worlds. Clearly, the Anthroposophists have been conditioned from childhood to "see" these swirling colors as representing something spiritual. But are they "higher levels" than the more concrete details that others experience in visions? Or are they just one more way that a specific culture expresses a generic experience?

I thought about the concrete, detailed vision-drawings of Black Elk, the Lakota Indian medicine man whose well-known story is told in the book, Black Elk Speaks. In his view of the afterlife, Black Elk saw horses and buffalo, trees and prairies. He saw the Tree of Life in full flower, and his tribe living on the prairie as free people more. I see a closer parallel with Silverstein's heavenly villages rather than the Anthroposophist swirls of energy. In fact, if Black Elk had seen the vague swirling forms painted by the Anthroposophists, he might have thought that he failed to have any vision at all!

I investigate further and find that many Native Americans, like the Jews, believe that one normally reincarnates in one's own tribal culture. I also learn that the Druse, a middle-eastern tribal culture, believe that a Druse always reincarnates as a Druse again. And many Druse children do describe memories of a past life which are quite accurate, to the point of recognizing family members from the previous life. Yet tribal peoples (and I include Jews here as tribal) are vastly under-represented in reincarnation studies. Are we missing something here?

These are just a few of the issues which I try to keep in mind as I travel and speak in multi-cultural situations. Is it possible to completely set aside one's own cultural background when evaluating the reincarnation stories? Probably not. But if we can remain consciously aware that these differences exist, then perhaps we can begin to broaden our understanding of reincarnation through contact with cultures which, up to this point, have been inadvertently excluded from this area of study in Western circles. It is my hope that as we enter the 21st century, we will begin to see how, as Rabbi Luria saw five centuries ago, everything is, indeed, interconnected with everything else.

© Copyright 1997 by Yonassan Gershom. Used with permission.

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