Reincarnation: Truth or Fiction
I find that most people either believe in reincarnation or they don’t, based on their religious up bringing. Most people brought up on Christianity and/or the Bible have a hard time with reincarnation because it goes against everything they believe about God, the devil, Heaven and Hell. They see this life as a test to see if we go up or down.
Now before I start to knock any religious beliefs, let me tell you I was born into a Catholic family. I was baptized, went to Catholic school for 10 years and have remained a Catholic for 74 years. However, that doesn’t mean I agree with the concept of one life as a test to see if we go to Heaven, Hell or Purgatory. As a matter of fact during my school years from 3rd grade to about 6th grade, I questioned everything the nuns were teaching us. I had the most trouble with the mortal sin that if you ate meat on Friday and you died, you would go straight to hell! I had a Jewish friend, Freddie Nagel, who would invite me over to his house every Friday after school. As you would have it, his mother would always have a big pot of chicken soup bubbling on the stove and of course insisted that I have some. I told her I couldn’t because it was a sin. She looked at me and asked, “Since when is it a sin to eat chicken soup?” Well being only 10 years old, I had no way to explain it to her; so I ate the soup and prayed I wouldn’t get hit by a car. I really believed God would not send a 10-year-old boy to Hell for being polite. Then lo and behold, the Pope made and announcement that he was doing away with this sin. When I told Mrs. Nagel that I was now allowed to eat chicken soup on Fridays, I can still remember her response. She looked at me and said, “Wow! I thought being a Jew was hard but you guys got it worst.” Now back in parochial school, I was getting the reputation of a troublemaker. I asked the nuns what happens to all the people who were in Hell because they ate meat on Friday and died before the Pope changed the rule. I kept asking, “Did God send some angels down to Hell with pardons for all those people; kind of a “Get out of Hell card?” We played a lot of Monopoly in those days, so it seemed fitting. The poor nun did not know what to say. So she whacked me across the knuckles with a wooden ruler. Well at that point I started to question everything, like if you said this particular prayer you could knock off 300 days in Purgatory. I wanted to know if that was Earthen days or Heavenly days. Well, you guessed it. Whack on the knuckles! Actually my 8 years in elementary school, I must have had at least 20 rulers broken over my knuckles. I must have spent more time in Father Rosica’s office, the parish priest, than his secretary. Actually Father Rosica and I became good friends. He understood my curiosity and thirst for knowledge, but his position wouldn’t allow him to agree with me. However 16 years later, I insisted on getting married in the Church by Father Rosica.
I could not believe that God would be so cruel as to condemn someone to Hell for eternity for violating some man-made rules. I remember one time I got into a big discussion with my 3rd grade teacher about dieing with a mortal sin on your soul. I got so terrified of going to Hell that I dropped down to my knees and held my hands out wide. The nun asked me what was I doing and I said, “I’m not taking any chances!” I’m waiting to die before I commit any mortal sins. Well, I thought that poor nun was going to crack. She dragged my butt all the way to the rectory and told Father Rosica she was not going to teach 3rd grade as long as I was in it. So I got suspended for a week and when I got back to school, third grade had a new teacher. To make a long story short, I didn’t stop asking questions until the 8th grade. By then my knuckles had had it and I wasn’t getting any answers I could live with anyway. But somehow, someway I always knew that we get more that one shot at this thing called life. Between the ages of 16 and 65, I went along with the crowd and stopped asking questions that no one could answer. At the age of 65 I decided to write a book on sales. I had been a salesman most of my adult life. So I sat at my desk and started to write, after several months I had written 50 pages or more. When I read them over, I was disappointed. Everything I had written was said a thousand times in a thousand different books, so I took the 50 pages and threw them in the trash. Five years later, I decided to write another book. Again, nothing worthwhile came out. Then I was listening to a tape by Doctor Wayne Dwyer and he said if you are constantly being awaken at 2 or 3 in the morning, don’t try to go back to sleep. Those are God’s business hours. Sure enough that night at 2am, I was wide-awake with a million ideas in my head. I said, “Oh boy, now I know what to write!” The next morning when I got up I could not remember one thing that I thought of that night! Then I went back to the Wayne Dwyer tape and he said, “Don’t forget to take a pad of paper and a pen with you.” A little statement I missed the first night. So now I’m ready and made sure I had two pads of paper and three pens. Sure enough, I found myself writing furiously; I must have written 30 pages until the ideas stopped and I fell asleep. The next morning when I got up, I grabbed the papers to see what I had written. Guess what? I couldn’t read my own handwriting. So I took the 30 pages to the office and I said to my secretary, “You used to work in a doctor’s office, see if you can make heads or tails out of this.” Thirty minutes later she gave me back a bunch of neatly typed papers. I started to read them and said to her, “Wow; this is some good stuff! Where did you get this?” She looked at me as if I had two heads, and said that’s what I had given her to type. I just said, “Wow!” So that night I got my pads of paper and pens by my bed, along with a little flashlight so I wouldn’t disturb my wife. Sure enough I’m up around 2:20am and I’m writing furiously. One big sentence, no punctuation marks, half the words misspelled. I did this for about 30 days and I wrote over 250,000 words, which my editor edited down to 150,000 words and it became my book: Success and Happiness, One Day at a Time. In writing this book I learned the answer to most of my questions. On page 390 is the lesson on “What is Reincarnation?” I reproduced it here exactly as it is in my book.