During this past week, I managed to catch a late-night documentary programme on Channel 4 about a young British woman’s interest in reincarnation and her search for her past lives. Unfortunately, it was late, I was tired and feel asleep before the end of the show so I never discovered whether or not she was successful in her quest.
However, I was conscious to witness much of her journey during which she encountered like spirits who were searching for their past incarnations and, in many cases, claimed to have found them. Well, ‘found’ may not be exactly the right word; ‘adopted’ may be more accurate because a startlingly high number of these perfectly ordinary every-day folk were convinced that they were once Cleopatra or King Louis XIV or Horatio Nelson. One middle-aged chap from Leeds claimed to be a reincarnation of the Egyptian God Horus. Not for any of them was the grey, ignominious life of a peasant labourer from the Russian Steppes who died boringly of old-age or an anonymous factory-worker from Manchester who gave up his ghost in the First War. Far too prosaic.
I realise that reincarnation is a central doctrine for both Hindus and Buddhists and may well be true for all I know, but I can’t help getting the feeling that, in the hands of vulnerable Westerners, it is a matter not so much of faith but therapy. Watching these people gave me the impression that they were victims of an inverted ‘Cult of Celebrity’. Those unlikely to be touched by fame and fortune in this life can comfort themselves by arrogating some from a ‘previous life’. If you can’t ask the question ‘Don’t you know who I am?’, you can at least ask ‘Don’t you know who I was?’.
The impression I got from most of the participants was of mildly unhappy or unfulfilled people and whilst I’m all for the pursuit of happiness I am not sure that seeking past lives is the way to do it. There is something very negative about the whole exercise of seeking yesterday’s glory rather than tomorrow’s promise and I am sure that finding out I was Hernan Cortez in a past incarnation would only throw the relative mundanity of this life into sharp relief. Better, in my view, to devote one’s efforts to finding fulfillment among the living rather then searching for dubious glamour among the ranks of the dead.
