On Christianity, New Age and Reincarnation: New Perspectives on Old Religious Issues

By Jaime T. Licauco

“Reading this book requires an open and questioning mind, not a mind that has already accepted just one answer. I, for one, have benefited greatly by reading his words and listening to his lectures.”

— From the foreword by Sir Jason Winters, KGSJ

Licauco, in this book, boldly discourses topics that might be unconventional for most people, but very thought-provoking. Such topics might be disturbing, but they will satiate the intellectually curious and those who don’t settle only in a single point of view.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anvil Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9786214200511

Book preview

On Christianity, New Age and Reincarnation

New Perspectives on Old Religious Issues

by Jaime T. Licauco

Copyright to this digital edition © 2004 by JAIME T. LICAUCO

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher.

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ISBN 9786214200511 (e-book)

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Interior layout by AV HABÚLAN & DC FRANCISCO

E-book formatting by ARVYN CEREZO

Version 1.0.1

Dedicated to

Socrates

Contents

Foreword by Sir Jason Winters

Introduction: A Dangerous Thought Pattern

Acknowledgments

Part 1: ON JESUS CHRIST AND HIS TEACHINGS

1. Was Jesus an Essene Member?

2. The Other Meaning of Christ’s Birth

3. Paranormal Powers Displayed by Jesus

4. Cayce Interprets The Lord’s Prayer

5. Christ Came to Teach, Not to Save Mankind

6. Christ’s Seven Last Words and the Seven Psychic Centers of Man

Part 2: QUESTIONS ON THE BIBLE

1. Bible Subject to Various Interpretations

2. 333 Prophecies About Jesus Fulfilled

3. Divine Revelations Still Happen Today

4. The Bible Proves We Can Talk to the Dead

5. Of Harlots and the Bible

6. Ecclesiastes and Man’s Seven Psychic Centers

7. Remote Viewing and Telekinesis in the Old Testament

Part 3: ON RELIGIOUS DOGMATISM AND BIGOTRY

1. Mystics Can’t See Eye-to-Eye With Theologians

2. Jesus’ Advice to Religious Fanatics

3. Religious Prejudice Against a Young Psychic

4. Religious Dialogue Possible Only If...

5. Fanatics Want to Suppress Ideas Not Their Own

6. Jesus Rebukes Religious Hypocrites and Bigots

Part 4: CHRISTIANITY, THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS AND LOST GNOSTIC GOSPELS

1. Did Christian Concepts Originate from Paganism?

2. Can Christianity and Animism Go Together?

3. Has Christianity Become a Negative Religion?

4. The Secret Gospel of Thomas and the Movie Stigmata

5. Church’s Attempts to Conceal Truth about Dead Sea Scrolls Revealed

6. Were Jesus and Mary Magdalene Lovers?

7. Mary Magdalene’s Wisdom and Spirituality

Part 5: NEW AGE BELIEFS AND CHRISTIANITY

1. New Age Ideas Should Not Alarm the Catholic Church

2. Wrong Assumptions of CBCP on New Age

3. New Age is Not Against Any Religion

4. Can One Belong to the New Age and Yet Be a Christian?

5. Reader Gets Confused by Vicious Attack Against New Age

6. Encounter With a New Age Christian Priest

Part 6: REINCARNATION AND CHRISTIANITY

1. Two Priests Ask Questions About Reincarnation

2. Sarcasm Not a Substitute for Solid Arguments

3. Why Reincarnation Was Removed from the Church’s Teachings

4. The Closed-Minded Ignore Evidence of Reincarnation

5. Are Events Seen in Past Life Regression Real or Imaginary?

6. How Karma Shapes our Destiny

7. Reincarnation Does Not Diminish Role of Christ

8. Of Reincarnation, Karma, Spirits

9. Reincarnation Used as Excuse for Crime

10. The Diplomat Who Remembers His Past Lives

11. When Past Life Memory is Confirmed

12. City Official Clearly Saw Her Past Lives

13. Are We Not Being Misled?

Part 7:VARIOUS RELIGIOUS QUESTIONS AND TOPICS

1. Sacred Sex—Or What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden

2. Nine Psychic Gifts of the Holy Spirit

3. If God Exists, Why Is He Hiding?

4. How Religion Differs from Spirituality

5. Growing Search for the Sacred

6. Experiment Proves Power of Prayer to Heal

7. What Really Happens After Death?

8. Catholic Nun Speaks Out in Defense of the Paranormal

9. How Do Angels Differ From Spirit Guides?

10. Dangers of Absolute Reliance on Authority

Bibliography and Suggested Readings

About the Author

Foreword

Jaime T. Licauco came into the world with many gifts, one of which is a brilliant mind. Over the years he has become an enlightened and versatile revelator, an inspired initiate and a very talented teacher.

His mind development seminars are considered of world-class quality and these have been attended not only by businessmen and other professionals from the Philippines and abroad, but also by Christian nuns and priests.

As a teacher he reveals new truths and discloses the answers to age-old questions.

His aim in life is to disseminate knowledge which have been kept hidden from the public for centuries by vested religious and political interests.

As an initiate he understands the processes of our existence.

As a teacher he knows the needs of all students in search of spiritual fulfillment.

He is therefore able to offer vital instructions to his students worldwide pertaining to the issues of everyday life.

Throughout the years that I have interacted with him, I have observed him to be a serious scientific investigator of mystical and paranormal phenomena in the Philippines. I have never seen him engage in any occult practice, nor does he advocate anybody to do the same.

Reading this book requires an open and questioning mind, not a mind that has already accepted just one answer.

I, for one, have benefited greatly by reading his words and listening to his lectures.

The test of a spiritual teacher is whether he can remain true to his gifts of spiritual and inner guidance while he overcomes the great resistance by an obstinate and resisting few.

Jaime T. Licauco has passed this test of time. He is not about to change what he and thousands of his pupils know to be true.

To those who are used to reading only one single point of view, the commonly accepted view, this book can be disturbing. But for those who are intellectually curious and who have a questioning mind, this book can be a source of great mental stimulation and enjoyment.

It is with reverence and humility that I extend prayerful gratitude to God for allowing me to know this great man.

I have enjoyed and learned much from this book of Jimmy.

I know that you, too will enjoy this book, a book that you will remember forever.

SIR JASON WINTERS, KGSJ

Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

Introduction

A Dangerous Thought Pattern

When I first started writing a regular newspaper column in the late ’70s and later in a weekly magazine about paranormal phenomena, psychic powers and higher awareness, I did not expect everybody to agree with my views. Considering that the subject matter I was writing about was highly controversial, I knew people would take issue with me. True enough, some of them did. That’s but natural and I was not at all surprised, nor bothered by it.

Every now and then, I would receive a letter from a fundamentalist and militant Christian reader condemning my views as satanic or some other such colorful epithets. Sometimes another concerned Christian would warn me that I may be leading others astray with my writings. Still another would tell me, Everything paranormal is against God, and so on and so forth.

Such exchanges of ideas, I believe, are healthy and should be welcomed by any thinking and independent-minded individual. Differences of opinion will give us a chance to evaluate the merit of our views or lack of it.

What I cannot stand and to which I really react strongly is when my views are deliberately distorted or misquoted in order to put me in an embarrassing or an untenable position. For example, there was a born again Christian preacher on radio who called me names and declared that I am a disciple of the devil. How he arrived at that conclusion only he knew. In one broadcast, he said that I had spoken against the gospels, which was a complete lie.

My writings and my radio program, as everybody with an unbiased mind can readily see, have always been non-sectarian, non-political, and non-racial from the very beginning. I have absolutely no intention of promoting my own religious views and changing the beliefs of other people. I strongly believe that is none of my business.

My interest is simply in sharing with others the results of my research and investigation into this fascinating and wonderful world of the spirit, of paranormal phenomena and mind power. Despite the fact that I must have repeated this over a dozen times throughout the years that I have been writing a newspaper column and broadcasting on radio, some people still don’t seem to get it. They insist on putting their words into my mouth, which is very unsanitary.

For example, somebody told me that a group of Christian seminarians have been spreading the rumor that I don’t believe in God, perhaps in an attempt to discourage people from reading my works or being influenced by me.

I am beginning to suspect that I have become a target of a concerted, systematic and relentless effort to discredit me in the eyes of readers and put me in a bad light. I regret to inform them that their efforts may boomerang on them—because readers, by and large, are not naïve or credulous. They are quite intelligent and independent-minded. They will not believe anything just because somebody says so. They demand proof or evidence before believing anything.

The Bible itself, from the Old to the New Testament is filled with paranormal phenomena. Christ and his disciples displayed all kinds of paranormal powers which were described in the Bible in great detail. And Christ himself said, in no uncertain terms, that everything he had done we can also do, and much more than these!

Why then do we credit the devil rather than God for such paranormal powers? I have often said in my writings that I pity the devil, because in this country he is always blamed for things he never did and credited for things he does not deserve. God is never credited for any display of paranormal powers or abilities, only the devil. Why is this so? Isn’t God capable of such things? Or is it because we are so engrossed with the devil that we see him all the time?

When a person sows hatred, disunity, and enmity among people, it is a sure sign that he is following the devil’s work, although he may be doing it in the name of God. As the Bible says, the wolf can wear sheep’s clothing. Isn’t this what some lay preachers are doing? Sowing disunity and hatred rather than love and harmony among us? Who then is actually doing the work of the devil and who is doing the work of God?

All thinking individuals should be concerned over this patently irrational and insidious thought pattern that is becoming increasingly evident among a growing segment of the local Christian population, that is, the tendency to consider everything that is extraordinary or unexplained to be the work of the devil. If the perverse nature of this thought pattern is not pointed out, it may become the norm someday, the way it did during the cruel Inquisition witch hunts of the medieval era.

When the witch hunt struck a community, according to the Time-Life Book on Witches and Witchcraft, its horrors came to pervade almost every aspect of existence. No one was safe: not the rich, certainly not the poor, neither the young nor the old. Even the magistrates themselves were sometimes accused and convicted of the very crimes they ascribed to those who appeared before them. Torture and fear twisted truth into grotesque, unrecognizable travesties and shattered traditional loyalties like a sledgehammer smashing a clay pot. Neighbors accused one another. God-fearing Christians pointed at their fellow worshippers, children testified against their parents.

Every accusation almost certainly brought conviction and every conviction brought death by burning. And what were the usual charges against suspected witches? They were a mixture of serious and silly charges, from blighting cattle to flying through the air, from murdering babies to kissing the devil’s back side.

During those infamous days, a woman carrying a broomstick at night could be accused of being a witch because witches were believed to fly using broomsticks. And there was a city in Europe where thousands of black cats were ruthlessly slaughtered by the church authorities because black cats were the usual companions of witches.

By the same perverse reasoning, I’ve heard some modern militant and fanatical Christian groups say that if one carries a quartz crystal in her pocket, she must be a disciple of the devil because crystals are the works of the devil. The same accusation is made against an assortment of harmless and religiously neutral activities, such as holistic healing, therapeutic touch, acupressure and even mind development programs.

During the medieval witch hunts, anyone who spoke out against the witch hunt was soon among the prisoners, says the Time-Life Book. Inquisitors declared that only witches would oppose the burnings and that therefore any objectors should be burned also. Any doubt that witches existed or that they consorted with the devil was itself heresy. And heresy was punishable by death.

Among the era’s most cruel witch hunters was a grim zealot named Nicholas Remy who became Lorraine, France’s attorney general. He accused as a witch and prosecuted a woman beggar because his son died right after Remy turned her away. From that time on, he tracked down every strange coincidence or event on the theory that since God must be rational, whatever is not normal is due to the devil.

In a book he wrote on the subject, he declared that everything which is unknown lies, as far as I am concerned, in the cursed domain of demonology; for there are no unexplained facts. In that book, he boasted of having condemned some nine hundred witches in fifteen years.

Another insane witch hunter was Pierre de Lancre, of southwestern France. He was convinced that everybody in the district, all thirty thousand of them including all the clergy, had been converted to witchcraft. Moving quickly, he burned six hundred people. When the community rose in protest, he said it was the devil that urged them to do so. Therefore, he also burned three priests.

Given the perspective of history, we can now probably smile at the sheer perversity of the Inquisitor’s reasoning. However, the same perverse logic pervades right in our midst today. I’ve heard some militant Christians say, for example, that if one so much as predicts what’s going to happen and it turns out to be true, it is a proof that he is a devil because only the devil can have such supernatural knowledge. Or if one engages in a New Age activity (whatever that means) he is surely a follower of the occult. What perverse logic! And yet no one seems to see this dangerous way of thinking for what it really is—sheer nonsense! Given this type of thinking no one is safe anymore.

We must not fall prey to this type of erroneous thinking. Let us not go back to the medieval era of cruel witch hunts. The greatest sin for me is ignorance. Let’s all wake up and put an end to this dangerous thought pattern before history repeats itself.

JAIME T. LICAUCO

Acknowledgments

There are many people I should thank for contributing to the birth of this book.

First of all, I want to thank the countless readers of my newspaper column Inner Awareness in the Philippine Daily Inquirer (PDI) and the listeners of my weekly radio program over DZMM who asked questions and gave their comments on the various topics discussed.

I thank Chelo Banal-Formoso, lifestyle section editor of PDI and her staff, for their constant support for and confidence in this writer. The same expression of gratitude goes to PDI editor in chief Letty Jimenez-Magsanoc.

I must also thank my critics, led by Rev. Fr. Romeo Intengan, S.J., head of the Jesuits in the Philippines, and the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines whose false accusation that I am engaged in so-called occult practices and whose unfair and malicious inclusion of my name in its Primer on New Age made me decide to come out with this book to explain my side of the controversy and define for them and the general public what it is I really do and what I believe in.

Lastly, I would like to thank my family, beginning with my wife, Yolanda, for her support, and my children, Yvonne Sophia, Jolan Alexander and Jaime Raphael, for putting up with their constantly busy father.

Part 1

On Jesus Christ and His Teachings

The works that I have done you can do, and much more than these.

–JOHN 14:12

Was Jesus an Essene Member?

Christ is so familiar a figure in the world that hardly anyone can say he has never heard of him. As the story has come down to us, Jesus was the Son of God who was born in a manger. He was also the son of the young maiden Mary who was married to carpenter Joseph of Nazareth. He preached in parables, discussed with theologians and doctors of his day, got the ire of the priests, and was crucified. In between he healed the sick and performed extraordinary things called miracles. After his death, he rose again and showed himself to his apostles. Then he went up to his father in heaven.

That is essentially the story of Jesus as taught by the Christian churches. Yet many questions remain unanswered, especially with regard to the period in his life between the ages of twelve and thirty. What did he do during those lost years? Where did he go? Surely, a man with so great a mission as Jesus had could not just temporarily vanish from history without a trace. After all, he was believed to be the Savior of Mankind! Buddha, who came to earth about six hundred years before Christ, had a more complete life history than he.

Mystery still surrounds those lost years of Christ and no one, it seems, can give any satisfactory explanation. I do not claim to have the answer either, but let us consider this. The Bible, as every educated Christian should know, was edited and expurgated by the clergy and the church officials sometime in A.D.325. We do not know whether the portion on Christ’s life before age thirty was also deleted by them. There are scholars who point out that the early church fathers deleted those portions in the Bible which threatened their authority and political power. They justified the deletions by claiming that such passages were not in conformity with the belief at the time, as for instance, the doctrine of reincarnation, and references to Christ’s relationship with a mystical group called the Essenes.

The strange thing, however, is the fact that in 1947, in portions of the Dead Sea Scrolls (which were accidentally discovered by a group of Bedouin boys in a cave in Qumran in Palestine), there was mention of a Teacher of Righteousness who performed miracles and who was a member of the Essene Brotherhood which, among other things, believed in the doctrine of reincarnation. There is yet no agreement, however, that the Teacher of Righteousness referred to Jesus.

There are many stories about the so-called lost years of Jesus. There is belief that he went to India, Tibet, and Egypt and was under the tutelage of three great masters or gurus of the esoteric sciences. Jesus, however, was so far advanced a soul, so highly evolved that he even bypassed his masters. In no time at all, he had mastered all the esoteric wisdom and developed his spiritual or psychic powers to a degree unparalleled in history. Thus, when he began his public life, he was so highly developed that his every action was accompanied by magical or miraculous events. Orthodox Christians reject such stories completely.

According to American psychic prophet Edgar Cayce, Jesus Christ was truly the Son of God. But he was also truly a man like everyone of us. And as man, according to Cayce, the entity that became Jesus Christ had to undergo a series of reincarnations like us in order to perfect himself. Jesus, according to Cayce, was the same entity who fell in Eden as Adam. And for this reason, he had to redeem himself and the whole of humanity as Christ.

Think of this: If even Christ had to undergo a series of earthly rebirths to perfect himself, how much more we ordinary mortals?

Indeed, the orthodox and the standard explanations to the deeper questions concerning the Bible and the nature and destiny of man no longer satisfy man’s craving for the truth. Man’s consciousness is expanding; he is growing more spiritual and less religious. He is trying to reach out and open up his cosmic mind. The Bible has the answers, but it must be read in an enlightened manner. Really understanding the Bible as it should be understood is not a question of intelligence or level of education, but a question of soul evolution.

Perhaps mankind will never know the real Jesus, whether he really lived as a true human being in history or was merely a mythical character fashioned out of the religious legends handed down from generation to generation. But there is no denying his power and his influence on people of many cultures.

What seems to be important is to keep an open mind about these things and not readily accept any story about him without some shred of evidence or proof. In this way we can approach the Christ figure with intelligence and not with blind faith.

The Other Meaning of Christ’s Birth

The birth of Christ, which the whole of Christendom celebrates at Christmastime, traditionally represents God’s descent into matter, that is, the divinity becoming man. In the Bible, this is described as the Word (Logos) becoming flesh and dwelling among us. (St. John 1:1-14)

I think that this interpretation, i.e., that Christ’s birth represents God’s becoming man, is only half of the story. What man seems to have lost sight of is the fact that the same story also represents the possibility of man’s becoming God. And this, to me, is the more meaningful message of Christ’s birth and the only one that ultimately makes sense. For why should God descend to the level of man except to lift him up, and to show that he, too, can become God?

Didn’t Jesus say so in so powerful and unmistakable a manner that, Everything I have done, you can do, and much more than these? In addition to that, another passage