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brain is disrupted you do not get clear vision or coherency. For a discussion of the evidence for NDEs, see chapter 7 of the Religious Experience book in the Access series. v) 'Remembered' lives Key question Is there evidence for reincarnation?
Key word Cryptomnesia: the memory of the subconscious.
This can be a spontaneous remembering, though the most dramatic evidence has come from hypnotic regression. Arnall Bloxham has produced some well-authenticated examples of subjects recalling details of past lives. Under hypnosis, subjects have taken on a different personality, speaking with different voices and sometimes even in a different language. Also some of the historical details, when checked, have been found to be accurate and not the sorts of details that the subject would be expected to know. Ian Stevenson has investigated numerous cases suggestive of reincarnation and for a good critical account of his studies see chapter 3 in The After Death Experience by Ian Wilson (1987). Again, various explanations have been proposed: • Cryptomnesia — this is the memory of the sub-conscious. Details
of a historical period could have been absorbed from films and books. The mind can weave a fantasy around them. • Genetic inheritance of the information. Telepathic sensitivity to the 'psychic husks' of some deceased person and identification with them. However, as stated earlier, many would regard a mere persistence of some isolated cluster of memories as a denial of what is meant by survival after death.
b) Jesus' resurrection Christianity expresses belief in an afterlife and claims that evidence can be found in the New Testament in the account of the resurrection of Jesus. Alternative explanations for the resurrection accounts include: • New Testament accounts are symbolic and mythological rather than literal. • The reports are late and one-sided and events were inaccurately remembered or passed down. • The Disciples had hallucinations. • It was not Jesus who was crucified. • Jesus did not die on the Cross but was in a coma and later recovered. Counter-arguments of orthodox Christian scholarship are that: • Writings of the New Testament can be dated within the lifetime of witnesses. For example, 1 Corinthians was written within 25 years of the death of Jesus.