Life Stories Life Readings: True Stories of Reincarnation, Karma, and Sexuality from the Files of the Religious Research Foundation of American Inc.

By Numa Pillion

Author Numa Jay Pillion set out to achieve the dream he had nurtured for a lifetime. Years later, with only the clothes on his back, he began to question his purpose in life. He discovered it in a Life Reading--a communication from the spirit plane delivered through a medium. In the process, he learned that the sexual orientation he had been struggling with was a byproduct of reincarnation; that we are, first and foremost, members of one spiritual world with the ability to contact beings in other realms.

Part memoir, part window on seldom-glimpsed planes of existence, Life Stories, Life Readings: True Stories of the Glory of Reincarnation from the Files of the Religious Research Foundation of America, Inc. will take you on a spiritual journey you won't soon forget.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9781636922249

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Life Stories Life Readings

True Stories of Reincarnation, Karma, and Sexuality from the Files of the Religious Research Foundation of American Inc.

Numa Pillion

Copyright © 2021 Numa Pillion

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2021

ISBN 978-1-63692-223-2 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63692-224-9 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Comment

Readings and Life Readings

Codicil

Dream of Death

Introduction

Prologue

The Story Begins

The Awful Truth

Far, Far Away

This Old House

Moment of Truth

Last Confession

Back to the Drawing Board

Blue in Hawaii

My Life Reading

Many Trees

To Sleep or Not to Sleep

Elaine's Life Reading

Life Goes On

Palm Springs with Leo and Elaine

Return to Monterey

Love for David

Escape

Dead End

The Times, They Are A-Changin'

Three Lilies

A New Beginning

The Dark Nights of the Pillions

Leo's Life Reading

Tribute to Honor

The Soul

Sexuality from a Cosmic Level

Transvestitism

The Only One

Summing Up

The Soul in Earth Living

Last of the Mohicans

The Grand Finale

About the Author

Comment

This is not the first book that has been written concerning channeling, and it will not be the last, but it may be the first book some people have read about channeling. In this regard, the concept of channeling may require a mental adjustment.

Channeling is one of the original forms of communication with other worlds, along with telepathy, astral projection, and dreams. The process of channeling may be foreign to some and incomprehensible to others, but it exists, and I have taken time to lay the groundwork for its understanding.

The world's most esoteric teachings have been channeled. With the exception of the personal stories about which I have written, the teachings in this book have been channeled by a cosmic source with the contemporary name of Dr. John Christopher Daniels. A former personification of Dr. John's being was Djwhal Khul, the Tibetan who had inspired and helped Madame Blavatsky produce The Secret Doctrine—which deals with such tremendous issues as the creation, innermost structure, and the nature of everything from cosmos to atom, and whose messages are in the Alice Bailey books. A personification is more than a thought form but less than a physical form and is a manifestation that takes place on inner planes.

The teachings presented in this book will be rejected or accepted according to one's openness to new ideas. Nor is this the first time teachings have been presented that counter established thought. Many great teachings were considered subversive and radical at first and had to break through the comfort zone of their time.

Reincarnation may be fascinating, but it is not a fantasy. People who believe in reincarnation may have had to grow out of their crystallized school of religious teaching to arrive at a point of acceptance. Dr. Franklin Loehr, a Presbyterian minister and teacher of reincarnation, was never taught about reincarnation in all his years as a student in seminary—but because of his experiences, he arrived at his point of acceptance. Regarding reincarnation, Dr. Franklin Loehr wrote:

Reincarnation, which is rapidly coming to the fore as one of the most widespread interests of mankind in the latter half of the 20th century, is an ancient teaching. It was one of the sacred mysteries of many of the mystery religions and secret societies of ancient times and is so preserved in the central rituals of some of the most widespread of the secret fraternities.

Why now can it be taught openly? To understand that, we need to understand first, why it was taught only secretly before and secondly, the way in which science today fulfills the preparatory function of the initiatory studies and rituals of the past.

Jesus, himself, stated most cogently the reason why such a sacred truth as reincarnation was not given publicly in unprepared and hostile cultures: Give not the holy things unto dogs—throw not your pearls before swine—for they will trample the holy things into the mud and turn and attack you.

Many a person finding reincarnation the pattern of spiritual truth, the evidence for man's immortal soul, the outworking of God's plan, and the meaningful framework for all human life and effort, has tried to share this wondrous enrichment of life with some loved one only to find that loved one, or that friend, ridiculing this holy pearl and attacking the one who had held it out to him.

All too often the person who can see even a little beyond what his fellows see is feared, attacked, rejected, and oft-times martyred by his fellows. Also, in religion as elsewhere in life, there are the leaders of the established order of things who feel their prestige, their position, their hold upon the people threatened by those who would bring new light and understanding.

So in past generations it was only after a person had been prepared by his own long study and persevering initiative, and by impressive rites and rituals, that he was judged ready and fit to receive the sacred teaching.

Why now can it be taught openly? It can because science is fulfilling the function of that initiatory preparation. Science gets facts, and people have found their lives so enriched when the facts are established that we want facts, and respect that which is scientifically evidenced as fact. The scientific evidence for reincarnation is what makes it possible for us to teach openly today this ancient, secret knowledge.

It is my hope that this book will be read with an open mind and not established prejudices.

Numbers such as 7072:16 indicate the number

of the reading and the page of the reading

from which the quote is taken.

Readings and Life Readings

Since the earliest of times, the word reading has been used by diviners and prognosticators to explain their method of foretelling the future. Gypsies read visions in a crystal ball, lines on the palm of a hand, symbolism in cards, or the tea leaves left in the bottom of a cup. Astrologers read the position of the stars and planets. Edgar Cayce, the greatest psychic of the twentieth century, could read the condition of a person's physical health and read, or see, a person's past lifetimes. The reading of a person's physical health was termed a Physical Reading ; the reading of past lifetimes was referred to as a Life Reading .

Some writers capitalize Life Reading, and some do not. While a Life Reading is a psychic discourse or a communication from spirit planes through a medium, it is also the name of the psychic discourse—just as a diploma is a certificate of graduation but becomes Diploma on the certificate. A writer who never had a Life Reading might use lowercase. A writer who did have a Life Reading is more apt to capitalize the words to set the Reading apart and give it the distinction it deserves. I prefer to capitalize.

For many people, Life Readings are an unknown quantity, and the source behind a Life Reading can be questionable. I had a Life Reading from a source in Washington State that was a complete fabrication, and I reported the people to the attorney general's office. There are a lot of individuals who want to play Edgar Cayce, Grace Wittenberger, or Franklin Loehr.

The person receiving a Life Reading is the best judge of its veracity. One woman, evaluating her Life Reading given by Dr. John through Grace Wittenberger, wrote that while having read many different Life Readings, only one reading fit her, and that Reading was hers. It was difficult for her to describe herself to strangers, and the reader could not determine the fit without first knowing the person. This is why I have gone to some length in writing about myself and the circumstances surrounding my life—so the reader can know me, can relate to me, and in determining the fit, can more appropriately judge the veracity of what may be, to many, teachings ahead of their time.

Dr. John is a member of the Spiritual Hierarchy, the Elohim, and exists on inner planes as a being of light. He has access to information beyond our perception but not beyond our ability to receive.

XY

People who don't believe in reincarnation or that guides and teachers exist on inner planes probably think planet Earth is the ground floor of the universe, and everything else in the universe is window dressing for us mortals, who reside only temporarily upon this physical plane—that if we can't see it, it does not exist.

I have come to believe, through studies of various spiritual works, that original life, everlasting life, exists now on inner planes, and that beings on inner planes are trying to awaken us humans to the fact that we are, first and foremost, members of one spiritual world; that this spiritual world is the inner and outer universe with its multiple planes and star systems; that we are responsible for one another, with the duty to return planet Earth and ourselves back to the heavenly estate; and which is of equal importance, that we have the ability to contact beings on other planes and in other realms.

In order to relate to the world of today, this master-teacher has taken the contemporary name of John. It is my hope that Dr. John will be regarded by the reader the way he is seen by the thousands of individuals fortunate enough to have had Dr. John read their soul history for them—as a compassionate being of high intelligence and, above all, a friend.

A Life Reading is a minibiography, a biography that extends beyond the barrier of time and into previous incarnations of the soul. Not just one but three complete Life Readings are presented in the telling of this tale—and in so doing, three minibiographies unfold. The privacy and sacredness of my life, of my family's life, and of past friends are sacrificed for the teachings within this book. Only three names have been changed to protect the privacy of friends in my immediate past.

Every scientific and technological advancement has a corresponding spiritual breakthrough—to keep us in balance—and God, according to the Readings, can use any method He chooses for us to learn. Without balance, we become like an immature star athlete: great in the ballpark but laden with an overblown ego, which ultimately leads to self-destruction.

Technologically, we are in cyberspace, and greater technological advancement is around the corner as we enter the twenty-first century—which also means greater spiritual advancement is around the corner.

More than half of the world's population and approximately thirty million Americans believe in reincarnation, but our understanding of the soul and of sexuality is a carryover from the Dark Ages. We have not kept pace morally or spiritually with our scientific advancement. The evening news is evidence of that.

Reincarnation, according to Dr. John, may not be the proper term. The soul has too much energy for a physical body and does not incarnate in its entirety, using only a portion of itself in a series of incarnations. In so doing, the soul reintroduces itself, or reincarnates, one step at a time into the Earth plane. Just as a mother feeds her newborn infant spoonful by spoonful because the entire meal is too much for the child to accept and digest all at once, the soul accepts its Earth meal incarnation by incarnation to better assimilate and digest the meal. The food (experiences) may not always be to the child's liking, but it is necessary for the growth of the child's mind and body. If the child's mission is to become a future Olympic athlete, the child must chew and chew and chew food that may not always be good-tasting (pleasant to experience) but which will help the child accomplish one of life's most exhilarating achievements.

Codicil

Sexuality and reincarnation have existed since the beginning of time, yet in our modern scientific age, they remain two of the most maligned and misunderstood words in the English language. They rightfully can be considered the first minorities. Nightclub comics made their living for years ridiculing homosexuals as swishy limp-wrists always good for a laugh. So little was known and understood about reincarnation that even comics never joked about it, except to confuse it with transmigration, which only revealed their ignorance.

Over the eons, homosexuality and reincarnation have known honor and dishonor. They have been in favor and out of favor, but like the seeds of wildflowers, they continually ride the wind to take root and beautify an otherwise bleak landscape.

To present both subjects sympathetically is a challenging task, but not an impossible one. It just takes time—like 680 pages. But this book is not just about reincarnation and sexuality. It is also about the channeling of Life Readings, karma, the law of metaphysics (or how our attitudes shape our lives), rape, redemption, death, and transvestitism—something to offend everyone. It is about God's gifts to humankind and the future of life on planet Earth.

Because personal experiences are used, this book reads much like an autobiography. In truth, it is the story of a spiritual search, the inner need that propelled that search, and the learning from it. While my search did not take me to some remote ashram in the highest regions of the Himalayas, the results have been the same. I received insight into the joy of heaven and the pain of hell. So I invite you to come along and share in my learning—as I tell my story.

Writing about my personal experiences was like untangling a ball of knotted twine, a maze of mental and emotional confusion. I couldn't wait to write the word reincarnation. Only then could I breathe. In contrast, I did not want to write about homosexuality and hoped to leave the word out completely. Homosexuality was to remain in the dark corners of my life, to be revealed only under duress or to an understanding few. However, as homosexuality was mentioned in my Life Reading, honesty was the only avenue.

Including the subject of sexuality in the text of this book was the most drastic idea to which I gave thought, but I have come to the conclusion that sexuality is the subject I am meant to emphasize. I had hoped my life could be lived on a level plane, an open field on which to ride and conquer. To accept myself as a homosexual was a mountain I had to climb—the highest mountain within myself.

It could be said I came out of the closet the moment I was born—no pun intended—as I looked like a girl from the very beginning. Because my name had no gender, my mother had to be asked, Boy or girl, Mrs. Pillion? From the sound of my name, people couldn't tell if I was a girl, a boy, or a Native American. Numa is also a common Japanese surname.

When I was four years old, we lived in the country, and I once went with my older brother, Buddy, and his friend to fish in a river. The friend didn't believe I was a boy, so Buddy told me to show him. To prove that I was a boy, I took my pants aside and did the deed of derring-do. Buddy smiled at his friend's reaction—which bordered on disbelief.

To others, I was a boy who looked like a girl. To me, I was me! It became important to express the inner me so that I would not be judged by the outer image. My long curls were almost as long as my sister Dorothy's, but I knew I was different from Dorothy and proceeded to prove it in the same way I had proven it to Buddy's friend.

One summer afternoon, the family gathered on the steps of the front porch. I looked at Dorothy, who was my competition for long curls, took my pants aside, and again did the deed of derring-do, saying, Dorothy, look!

Dorothy looked and gasped! Mother! Numa stuck out his thing! (My little pinky.) Mother chastised me and warned me never to do it again. Father took me by the hand to sit in the dark cellar with the rats. Due to the persistent encouragement of sisters Dorothy, Elaine, and brother James, I told my father I wouldn't do it again and gained my release from the cellar. Their extreme reaction was perplexing—I always wanted to be a good boy. But at least I knew how to prove I was not a girl.

When my long curls were cut off, I thought I would, at last, look like a boy. I asked my first-grade teacher if I could go to the boys' room, which was down in the basement. A boy was walking out of the boys' room when I was walking in, and he stopped me, telling me I couldn't go in there because that was for boys. "I am a boy," I replied with indignation.

You are not, he snapped. You're a girl, and girls go across the hall.

I was angry that he thought I was a girl. He was angry that I thought I was a boy. Cutting my hair hadn't made much difference in people's perception of me. I just looked like a girl with a boy's haircut. There was a look on my face, or in my eyes, that made people wonder if I was a boy or a girl. Even with curls, I couldn't see gender in the mirror. I just saw myself. What could people see that I couldn't see?

As I grew older, I ran like a girl and cradled my schoolbooks in my arms, always wondering why I felt more comfortable carrying books in my arms and not by my side—and I eventually copied the way other boys walked in order to grow out of my girlish ways, for I hated being called a sissy.

A coworker, who wondered if her sensitive son had homosexual tendencies, asked me when it was that I knew I was homosexual. The question isn't when I knew I was homosexual but when I feared I was homosexual. We were in the seventh grade waiting for the school bell to ring. Some classmates were talking about a particular student, and one of them exclaimed, Oh, that fairy!

Never having heard the term used to describe someone, I asked, What's a fairy?

His answer astounded me: A fairy is a boy who likes another boy.

I never knew it was humanly possible for a boy to like another boy. Although I had been a sissy, I still thought all boys liked girls and was stunned into silence as I wondered, Is that what I am? Fear enveloped me. I now understood the true meaning of the word sissy. Two years later, I was told how babies were born. Just when I thought I was not supposed to do bad things with girls, I learned I was supposed to do bad things with girls.

Entering high school after puberty had a paralyzing effect upon my psyche and personality. If I didn't act like a boy, I wouldn't just be called a sissy—I'd be a fairy. I tried to enlist into the Marines to help me become a man, but as I weighed only 113 pounds, the sergeant smiled and told me I wasn't big enough. Four pounds later, I joined the navy to escape from my torment, only to become more tormented. I withdrew into myself to an extreme degree. No one could understand me, and others were as uncomfortable with me as I was with them.

After being in the navy, I had the experience of working in New York City with the first gay person I'd ever met. Because I did not have to be on guard, I discovered a personality within myself that I had never been aware of and learned of the existence of a gay subculture where I no longer had to be self-conscious. However, when I returned home, I became guarded and lost that recently found personality. As a working adult, I was never asked if I was homosexual. The question was asked in another way: Are you married? Do you have any children? Have you ever been married? There was no escape. People didn't want to know me; they wanted to know my sexual orientation. Sexual discrimination may be against the law, but single and no dependents on an application was reason enough to be denied employment or advancement. To understand homosexuality was one of my deepest yearnings. Reincarnation provided the first glimpse into its cause, but it was the teachings of Dr. John in the Life Readings of the Religious Research Foundation, channeled by Grace Wittenberger and, in later years, by Dr. Franklin Loehr, that blessed me with the ultimate insight into this maligned and misunderstood human condition.

In order to accept reincarnation, one must have an understanding of the death experience and know that life does not end at death nor begin at birth. One must know that a lifetime on Earth is but one chapter in a book of many lifetimes on Earth. A desire to understand death lay in my subconscious and was revealed to me in a dream.

I did not always believe in reincarnation. I, like many boys and girls, was conditioned to accept the teachings of a political-religious establishment that left me unfulfilled. Nuns taught us that God was the creator of heaven and Earth, and of all things. But they never explained in practical terms the inequities of life, why some people were born blind or crippled, why babies died, why some people died young and other people lived to old age, why some people were rich and others were poor, except to say it was God's will or one of the Divine mysteries. Eternal life was taught, but it seemed to exist in some far-off time and in some far-off place. Reincarnation was a pariah never mentioned. In due time, reincarnation became a snowball made in the winter of my philosophical discontent—and it grew, and it grew, and it grew.

My most practical and inspiring learning came from the Life Readings of individuals whose names have been changed to protect their identity. Who they were was unimportant. It is what I learned that was important, for the Readings are books of knowledge and wisdom worthy of a great university—and so I share my favorite jewels from this treasure chest of Life Readings.

I learned that we do not escape from ourselves—ever! And to live the Law of Love, we must first love ourselves, including the situations in which we work and live. I learned from the past lives, the good and the bad karma of individuals, and hopefully have tried to apply those learnings to myself. I didn't know the people who received Life Readings, but they were not strangers. The more I learned from their Life Readings, the closer in friendship we became. Who am I is as unimportant as who are the people in the Life Readings. How you relate to my experiences and learning is what's important—it's that which will make us friends.

Jess Stern became depressed when he wrote The Sixth Man, his book indicating every sixth man was homosexual or had engaged in homosexual activity. He might not have become depressed if he had understood the spiritual cause for every sixth man engaging in homosexual activity—for homosexuality need not be considered a depressing condition but a step in the right direction for the soul. To understand homosexuality from a spiritual level, there must be an understanding of the soul and how it operates.

Many books have been written about reincarnation, and many books have been written about homosexuality, but never have I seen it stated that the separation of the soul into masculine and feminine soul-halves (the creation of Eve from the rib of Adam) and the human lives of the soul-halves are contributing factors in homosexuality—except in books written from the Dr. John Life Reading material.

As explained in the Life Readings, reincarnation is the pattern for the soul to learn on this Earth plane. The soul learns through the agency of the human personality its masculine and feminine components having been separated from each other into two soul-halves—individuals with free will of their own. Soul-halves then cross over and experience one another's gender in the physical plane through reincarnation. This is the first cause, the spiritual reason for the development of homosexuality. The masculine soul always retains its inner masculine beingness while projecting a portion of its energy into an outer feminine gender, and the feminine soul always retains its inner feminine beingness while projecting a portion of its energy into an outer masculine gender, each soul-half developing a balance, becoming as one in their experiences.

Just as it takes time to adjust to a new surrounding, it takes time to adjust to a new personality and a new sexual beingness. In light of the change of gender, homosexuality can be considered a period of adjustment for the soul-half. It may last a lifetime for a person, but it is a temporary condition to the eternal soul—and life is lived for the soul.

There is a reason why we grow from babies into adults. This growing up can also be considered a period of adjustment. A new personality needs time to adjust to the difference in its changed beingness. Thus, there are sensitive boys who are called sissies, and tough girls who are called tomboys. It isn't easy to go to sleep as a male then wake up as a female, or vice versa.

Shakespeare was right when he said that all the world's a stage, and people are merely actors playing a part. He could just as well have said that all the world's a repertory theater for the soul. In a professional repertory theater, where actors play different roles in a series of different plays, a period of adjustment (rehearsals) is provided to learn lines and build a new characterization. Sometimes the period of adjustment isn't long enough, and an actor may incorporate some of the mannerisms of a past favorite role into a new characterization until his new role can be more fully developed. Human beings make similar carryovers in the repertory theater of Earth, reliving particular features from a previous lifetime in which they experienced great success and happiness, especially in a sexual way, and homosexuality can result from this carryover.

Walter Russell said that if he had to define life in one word, it would be balance (another word is moderation). Common sense tells us that if we keep our worldly appetites in balance and do not overindulge, we will have less carryover. But if we allow ourselves to be lustful, greedy, envious, gluttonous, or selfish in the extreme, we will more than likely build a carryover that will delay our progress until the overindulgence has been corrected. There is a practical reason to avoid the seven deadly sins.

What is good for the soul is not always a pleasant experience for the personality in the body, but we are on Earth primarily for the development of the soul, the eternal, the everlasting part of us, and allowances must be made for the incompleteness of our human characterizations. As Dr. John has said, The good of the soul, the progression of the soul, must and does come first.

The soul's magnificent journey on Earth is called reincarnation. Reincarnation is not a process of going from one body to another body just for the fun of it. The soul travels with a purpose. If we are proud, we may incarnate into a life that humbles us. If we are selfish, we may incarnate into a life of need in which we will appreciate the kindness of strangers, as playwright Tennessee Williams has written. We will incarnate where it is necessary for our development. We may have a lifetime in the Alps of Switzerland for one purpose and a lifetime as a nomad in the deserts of Arabia for another purpose. If we live a lifetime as an impractical, head-in-the-clouds poet, such as Shelley—a contemporary of Keats and Lord Byron—we may have to incarnate into a lifetime as a carpenter, plumber, or mechanic to keep our feet on the ground, to teach us to be practical and less idealistic. We may suffer deprivation in one lifetime so that we will understand the necessity of helping to eradicate deprivation in future lifetimes. We, as souls, encompass the globe, playing one role after another in various situations, from being male to being female, from one nationality to another nationality, one religious teaching to another religious teaching. We will be rich, and we will be poor. We will be stars, and we will be stargazers. We will have healthy bodies, and we will have sickly bodies. We will serve, and we will be served. We will know how it feels to die in the fullness of youth, and we will know how it feels to die in the waning years of old age. We will have Earth lives with brothers and sisters, and we will experience at least one Earth life as an only child.

We, as souls, are not what only one Earth life makes us out to be. We will play leading roles, and we will be supporting actors in this repertory theater of Earth until, as Dr. John has said, we experience all the soul growth this Earth has for us.

An actor in a supporting (Earth) role may have more talent than the actor in the leading (Earth) role, but the supporting actor must learn to give support if he wants to receive support when his time comes to play a leading role on Earth.

Incarnations of a soul are so unique and so different that a human personality can vary 100 percent from its soul's previous human personality. The soul that incarnated as the short Napoleon is the same soul that incarnated as the tall Charles De Gaulle, according to Dr. John. The beautiful soul that incarnated as the disfigured elephant man, John Merrick—who never lost the beauty of his spirit regardless of his adversity and who so appreciated the touch from a lovely princess that he cried—can be the same soul that radiates years later in the body of a fairy-tale princess in order to demonstrate the importance of the human touch on the unfortunate and unlovely.

Many byproducts (differences) develop within our human family as a result of separation and reincarnation. Through the Life Readings of Dr. John, I hope to show that homosexuality is but one of many byproducts brought about by separation and reincarnation. This book begins with the story of one person and ends with the stories of many people, dramatic tales written upon the skein of time and space over centuries. If you learn from the journeys of these souls, their karma will not have been in vain—for they will then receive a blessing.

Dream of Death

When I was a year old, we lived on the top floor of a three-story tenement, across the street from a cemetery that was also three stories high. I could see from the base of the cemetery to the gravestones on top.

Because of the celebration of Armistice Day, honoring soldiers who had died in the first World War, the purpose of the cemetery was explained to me; although, never having had a personal experience with death, I never fully comprehended the explanation.

I don't know when I had my dream of death, but awareness of it came to my mind during the writing of this book.

Two guides, one on each side of me, escorted my adult self over the housetops back to the cemetery of my early years. We wore light-colored robes, similar to nightgowns, which draped from our necks to our feet, and we appeared at the cemetery in the middle of the three-story embankment where an entrance had been carved into the dirt to reveal a large waiting room.

The inside of the cemetery was hollow, and I marveled to finally see what had always intrigued me. Gurneys with bodies on them were slowly being wheeled through dimly lit passageways cut into the bowels of the cemetery, exposing the graves of the dead.

Five men waited in line before me. As an empty gurney was brought into the waiting room, a man obediently took his place on the gurney and was slowly wheeled to a ledge in the wall of the catacombs, where he lay to await his death. Most of the bodies on the ledges lay motionless. Some of the bodies moved an arm or their head, indicating their life force hadn't completely run down. Some ledges were empty.

I was the last in line. An empty gurney was brought into the waiting room from out of a darkened passageway. It was time for me to die, a guide said. Following the pattern of the men who had gone before me, I obeyed without question. I walked with my two guides and lay down upon the gurney, feetfirst.

As an observer, I had reacted to the proceedings with interest and detachment; but when I took my place on the gurney, I became a participant, and my attitude began to change. I didn't feel any differently than before and wondered why I had to lie on a dirt ledge, close my eyes, and let my life force fade away—all when I felt so alive.

Why do I have to die? I asked the guide at my head.

Instead of providing a practical or noble purpose for death, the guide nonchalantly replied, Everyone dies.

His answer was a disappointment. Just because everyone dies did not seem enough justification for me to die, especially when I wasn't ready. I then said, But I don't feel like I'm dying.

There was no response to my comment, and the gurney began its journey. If I stayed on the gurney, I would die—my life would come to an end, and I would no longer exist. I wasn't ready for that and cried out, But I don't want to die! I don't want to die! I quickly sat up, left the gurney, and the dream ended.

My interpretation of this dream is that we have been conditioned to blindly accept—and follow like sheep—a view of death that can be questioned—and rejected.

Life's Battle

Gliding through this world of sorrows

Is like boating on a sea,

You will meet with many locked doors that never had a key.

You will see great rocks before you which will cause a new disaster,

Then steer your boat from out that peril

And rely on yourself as master.

When you see a storm arising

Fight your way, though rough the sea;

Do not shrink away from duty

Or you'll never reach the quay.

In the fiercest of the battle

God is with thee, never fear!

Then step boldly, calmly forward,

And do not linger in the rear.

—William Pillion (1872–1889)

Introduction

It is possible, but not very probable, to write about Life Readings without mentioning the great Edgar Cayce.

Cayce achieved local fame in the 1920s and '30s due to his miraculous medical cures. His name attained national recognition in the 1940s after publication of his biography, There Is a River, by Thomas Sugrue.

It was inevitable that Cayce's fame would increase, and in the 1960s, his name entered the international hall of fame with Jess Stearn's popular book, Edgar Cayce: The Sleeping Prophet.

Edgar Cayce is justifiably regarded as America's greatest psychic and the father of modern holistic medicine.

Edgar Cayce's ability was of biblical proportions. He is now a legend in the New Age community, and his fame will continue into the centuries. But the universal dynamism of the '60s has tapered off. Knowledge of Edgar Cayce has not kept pace with today's rapidly changing scene. Some try to discredit him through distortion. Recently, a young fundamentalist preacher was, in his way, preaching to me. When I asked him if he had ever heard of Edgar Cayce, he replied, Oh…yeah…that spiritualist.

The young preacher had never read Edgar Cayce's life story, merely more sensational journalism written about Cayce and his work.

Cayce entered the trance state, but he was not a spiritualist. He did not use trumpets or other paraphernalia associated with spiritualist mediums. His was a case of pure, unadulterated, self-induced trance wherein he would enter an altered state of consciousness for anyone to witness. There were no gimmicks. His gift was capable of changing the world—it still might. Although his name is occasionally mentioned on television and books are still published on his spectacular work, he is presently unknown to a large portion of more recent generations.

So who was Edgar Cayce? He was a deeply religious gentleman from Kentucky who was raised as a Southern Presbyterian, a self-taught biblical scholar who read the Bible once a year for every year of his life, a man gifted with extraordinary clairvoyant ability who became the originator of modern-day Life Readings. While in a hypnotic trance, Cayce's consciousness could see into the human body and accurately diagnose the causes and cures of physical ailments. He was responsible for healing the hopelessly sick many, many times. His clairvoyance gave new meaning to the term the power of the mind.

Cayce's psychic diagnoses were called Physical Readings, but his clairvoyance went beyond physical diagnoses. He was able to raise his consciousness above the realm of time and space and see into the timelessness of the past to former lifetimes on Earth; he could assess karmic causes and vocational abilities for present Earth life. These readings were termed Life Readings to differ from readings of physical diagnoses. There Is a River and Gina Cerminara's Many Mansions provide in-depth testimony to the inspirational results of Cayce's work. Edgar Cayce died on January 3, 1945, at the age of sixty-seven, but Life Readings did not die with him.

Dr. Franklin Loehr, a congregational minister and the son of a Presbyterian minister, served as chaplain in a heavy bomber group in the Air Corps of the US Army in World War II. His prejudices were inherited and strictly orthodox: mediums were all fakes and weirdos. True, at every funeral service he conducted, he assured everybody present that our loved ones live after death and that we are all immortal souls, but he never did get specific, nor did he offer proof. During burial services for young men, he relied upon the same biblical phrases that had been used since the dawn of Christianity. The Bible was his authority for revealing to the world that human beings were, in truth, spiritual beings, heirs to a kingdom of everlasting life:

And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. (John 10:28)

For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 6:23)

Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me hath everlasting life. (John 6:47)

For a man whose mind was as scientific as it was spiritual, rote promises of life in a hereafter eventually wore thin when faced, time after time, with the end of a young man's life in the here and now. Anguish deepened within him every time he looked down upon the many flag-draped coffins of young men killed in action—men whom he eulogized, repeating the oft-used phrase Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Serious questions about those young lives and their early deaths began to form in his mind. What happens at death? Does consciousness die? If there is life after death, as promised in the Bible, can it be proven? If a human being is immortal, can his mind remember his immortality? If life exists after death, then life must surely exist before birth? Can immortality be proven in a laboratory?

As a student of divinity, young Franklin received his education from books and in classrooms. The war provided a different type of education in the brutal classroom of reality. Death stared him in the face almost daily. Death was a fact, the understanding of which he was required to accept on faith. But Franklin Loehr had a dual nature in that he was inspired by both religion and science. He chose religion as his vocation, but his scientific need for facts awakened within him a definite mission: to seek proof of the biblical promise of old, the existence of life after death.

When the war was over, Reverend Loehr became a minister in a parish in Northampton, Massachusetts. Memories of the war remained in the forefront of his mind, and in 1948, he and a small group of like-minded ministers formed the Hadley Workshop, an independent study group under no constraint of organized religion to research as scientifically as possible the teachings in the Bible they had preached all during the war: life after death and the effectiveness of prayer. A soldier could pray for his safe return and yet be killed in action. Catholics prayed over water, and the water became holy. Christ cursed the fig tree, and it died. What was the dichotomy behind prayer? How, he wondered, does prayer work?

The Hadley Workshop freely investigated such interesting subjects as group dynamics, Dianetics, even spiritualism. To do this, they had to start with a new state of mind, an open mind. Prejudices had to be abandoned.

One Sunday afternoon, a member of the Hadley Workshop heard a fine Boston medium, the late Mrs. Ruth Mathias, and invited her to the next group meeting. Two of the Hadley members had been chaplains (a fact unknown to Mrs. Mathias), and in trance, she brought through men from their commands who had been lost in combat. His boys from the Air Corps, as well as other dead people, came back to Dr. Loehr. They spoke to him and, in dozens of ways, proved to him not only that we live after death but that there are ways of sending messages back to Earth. It had been a startling research session and had produced facts: Dr. Loehr learned what had happened to a plane that had been lost off Montauk Point on Good Friday 1944. A midair explosion had taken place, throwing the plane into a wild spin from which no one could escape.

He had found the evidence he had been seeking, proof of the Bible's most profound promise: life after death does exist.

Dr. Loehr worked with Mrs. Mathias personally and extensively. In addition, Ralph Harlow, a professor for fifty years at famed Smith College in Northampton—and a longtime psychic researcher with the American Society for Psychical Research—became his mentor.

While writing his sermons, Dr. Loehr developed inspiration writing. In September of 1948, he started a series of twenty-six sermons, which came through on the Tuesday morning before the Sunday service. His pen raced across the paper. The church attendance, which had climbed steadily for the three years of his preaching, now went off the charts. He used many of those sermons again in the great cathedral in Los Angeles.

The next step on his investigative agenda was ready to be taken.

In 1949, Dr. Loehr moved to Los Angeles and formed the Religious Research Foundation of America Inc. Their major project was to investigate the power of prayer. Tangible objects had to be used to receive prayer, objects in which results could immediately be measured. Jesus used a grain of mustard seed in a parable; seeds and plants were a logical choice.

A laboratory was set up. For three years, 156 church members prayed to plants: first to the seeds prior to planting, then to the soil, then to the water. An equal amount of plants were planted with no prayer given to them.

Dr. Glenn Clark of Camps Farthest Out and Dr. J. B. Rhine of Duke University directed their own prayer research with plants in the early 1950s, but Religious Research did the most definitive work in the field with some 900 experiments; 27,000 seeds and seedlings; and more than 80,000 measurements. A double planting of seeds had been made, with one planting getting prayer and the other seed being denied prayer.

The results were startling. Statistics showed that prayer can make a difference, but they also learned some fundamental facts about prayer. They discovered at least four kinds of power exist in prayer: mental, emotional, psychical, and spiritual. They also learned something about how to use each power. Mental power (clear visualization) and emotional power (strong feeling) in prayer comes from within the person doing the praying, while psychical power (help from saints or departed loved ones) and spiritual power (God) comes from outside of the person doing the praying but comes through that person. It was learned that the greatest prayer was not to supplicate, not to ask for a specific request, but to allow God to express His will through you, as in the Lord's prayer! Thy will be done. God's will is the supreme prayer. We do not use the spiritual power in prayer; the spiritual power uses us.

Prayer, it was determined, is not the best tool for every purpose. To oversell, prayer is to lead to later disillusionment with prayer. God gave us intelligence and talent, and He expects us to use them. It might be said that intelligence and talent are God's will to us and for us, and to use them is another form of prayer. We also pray by doing. Prayer should not be used for purposes contrary to God's plan. "The profitable use of prayer is to supplement the forces of nature, not to supplant them," wrote Dr. Loehr.

After three years of researching the power of prayer on plants, Dr. Loehr concluded:

Prayer is a powerful tool given by God to man, but it is not the only tool he gives us. We need to learn more about prayer and develop ever greater skill and power in using it all the days of our lives. And also we need to discover and develop the other tools he gives us: knowledge, faith, skill, humility, discrimination, determination, courage, indwelling and outgoing love, etc. Man is to know not only how to use prayer, but also what to use instead of prayer, and when, and how.

The late Aldous Huxley, social researcher and author of Brave New World, one of the most popular science-fiction books of all time, and Maria, his wife, were early supporters of Dr. Loehr's prayer/plant research. They brought the project to the attention of Doubleday, who published the research and its results in 1959 as The Power of Prayer on Plants. Reviews of the book appeared in Time and other major magazines.

Twenty-five years later, the British Broadcasting Company sent a team to film Dr. Loehr in a special sealed prayer/plant experiment they set up to duplicate his research. The project was the closing segment of the NOVA program The Green Machine, which has aired on American PBS stations at least four times.

Dr. Loehr had come a long way since his days as a young chaplain in the Army Air Corps, when he hoped to one day prove that his Christian faith could be supported by facts. He had proven to his satisfaction that human life did continue after death, that positive prayer had a positive effect, that negative prayer had a negative effect, and that these effects could be measured. A prayer researcher lost her patience toward a plant that wasn't doing well and cursed it, calling it a communist. The plant died.

Unbeknownst to Dr. Loehr, the next step in his search for facts to support his faith was about to appear.

In 1951, a member of the Hadley Workshop, Reverend Paul McClurkin, PhD, visited Los Angeles and informed Dr. Loehr about his independent discovery of past life recall and regression therapy. He was truly one of the earliest pioneers in the field. As a result of this visit, Dr. Loehr underwent six months of intensive recall sessions in which he recalled several dozen of his past lives and found the answers—the missing links—to his present life. He had tapped into his immortal self. But the best was yet to come.

Dr. Loehr's college degree was in science, earned at the justly famous Chemistry Department of Monmouth College, Illinois. While there, he worked briefly on some chemical research for Dow Chemical Company before going on to McCormick Seminary (Presbyterian) in Chicago.

During his four years of college and three years at seminary, the subject of reincarnation never once came up. He didn't know the difference between reincarnation and transmigration. Reincarnation is the simple discovery that we, as souls, take more than one Earth life to learn what this Earth has to teach us as human beings. Transmigration is the much lower theory that the soul migrates across the various life streams—that you may be a human this time, a cow the next time, a tree the time after that, etc.

While working as an administrative assistant to Dr. James Fifield of the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles in 1951, Dr. Loehr counseled Grace Wittenberger about her inability to conceive due to the closure of her fallopian tubes. Dr. Loehr had taken all the psychological and pastoral psychiatry training available while in seminary at the Army Chaplain School at Harvard and later at the special Army Air Force Chaplain School in San Antonio. His ministry in several pastorates, as well as his chaplaincy, developed his confidence to handle problems like Grace Wittenberger's.

She and her husband had been married for more than two years. Both wanted children, but none came. Various medical treatments had proved useless. Knowing that her condition could be psychosomatic—tensions in the mind sealing the tubes—her gynecologist sent her to a psychologist. Nothing was found in the present life and personality of this healthy, normal American girl that would produce this effect. Dr. Loehr called in a psychiatrist for assurance, who only corroborated the findings of the psychologist.

By September of 1951, Dr. Loehr knew something he had not known before: that in our subconscious minds, we carry memories of our past lives, and these past lives often have tremendous effect upon our present lives. Realizing he could do for Grace Wittenberger what Dr. McClurkin had done for him—but not realizing Grace Wittenberger didn't know anything about reincarnation—Dr. Loehr blurted out, It still could be psychosomatic, but with the cause in a previous life.

He knew his recall of a dozen or more of his own past lives had allowed him to become more enlightened. He didn't suppose there was one chance in a hundred, one in a thousand, that she would accept his proposal.

That's all right, replied Grace, whose maternal instinct was strong, if there is any chance at all.

Late in the month of September, she recalled a former life that held the key to her sterility. Four or five months of intensive, hard psychotherapy continued, but the diagnosis proved true: the work was accomplished, and her healing came. In December 1952, her first child was born. And the second summer after that, as if to underscore the reality of her healing, a second child was born.

Dr. Loehr was far too engrossed in the tasks of his great church to give any thought to finding and developing a medium, but something about the deep, relaxed reverie into which Grace entered reminded him, during her fifth session, of how Mrs. Mathias had looked while in a trance. After the session ended, curiosity prodded Dr. Loehr to ask what turned out to be a fateful question: Are you a medium?

A medium? What is that? Grace asked.

Dr. Loehr explained that as a telephone is a medium for carrying vocal communication, so a psychic (or sensitive or medium) is simply a person through whom persons in the discarnate realm (dead, no physical body) can make contact with persons in the incarnate realm (in the body). During man's long centuries of ignorance, he has been inclined either to worship these mediums as prophets, saints, and seeresses or to condemn them as warlocks and witches. In reality, their special quality is that they have developed the faculty of seeing, hearing, or perceiving in some other way a dimension of life that is beyond our physical senses.

Grace Wittenberger didn't even know what a trance was.

Dr. Loehr patiently explained that whereas our usual state of consciousness keeps our ego-mind always in the forefront, there are those who can put aside their own personality-consciousness and let other consciousnesses, other intelligences, make contact through them. Dr. Loehr then asked Grace if he could try dropping her into a trance. She had sufficient confidence in Dr. Loehr and agreed. Grace dropped not only into the reverie state but further into the subconscious as well and was asked if there was another entity present who wished to speak. The guardian of Grace, who chose to be known as Dr. John Christopher Daniels, spoke through her. This first contact with Dr. John was the beginning of her mediumship.

Grace's psychic ability had been developed in previous lifetimes under other teachers. Dr. Loehr was her discoverer much more than her developer. Grace Wittenberger came with singular qualifications: she had God's plan working for her, her ministerial-home upbringing, ten years with Glenn Clark in this life, and the benefit of her previous psychic lives in Egypt, India, Greece, and as an American Indian (all of which were later dredged up from her subconscious mind). Despite all this, she was still far from being a Life Reading medium.

Dr. Loehr worked with Grace Wittenberger for four years and four months before any public announcement was made of the Life Readings. Their early work was of a general exploratory nature. Her own reverie program took precedence over the psychic exploration. It was in the exploring, cleansing, and aligning of the subconscious areas that her personality became integrated, and the channel cleared for psychical and mystical superconscious work. In between Grace's own past-life recall sessions and the long hours of integrating them into her present life, teaching sessions were sandwiched with Dr. John, who had come to be known as a fellow member of their team—and a personal companion and friend.

While a staff member of the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, Dr. Loehr was often called for funerals at Forest Lawn, Utter McKinley, Pierce Brothers, or any of the city's other mortuaries. He had been accustomed to parishes of his own where he knew the people he buried. But all too often, the only contact he could make with the family was Phone the widow after eleven tonight, or Come ten minutes before the funeral and meet the family.

When such requests came in, Dr. Loehr took to calling Grace. He would stop at her home, she would get into the car, and he would say, Get quiet and tell me what you feel about so and so. Then he would give her the deceased's name and date of birth, along with any other information which had been given about the person whom he was to bury. Grace would quiet herself into a state of consciousness where Dr. John could reach her and then tell Dr. Loehr, I feel this…I feel that…

Often she told things about surviving family members as well as the deceased, and the material always fit. Of course, the information she gave could not be shared with the family within the framework of reincarnation. There are more orthodox ways of saying things, and by using acceptable modes of expression, Dr. Loehr was able to incorporate into the services the material that had come through Grace. The prayer now included a personal emphasis and a spiritual effectiveness, thanks to insights gleaned from seeing the background of past lives and the place of the present life in the ongoing pattern.

After a funeral for someone whom he had never heard of, until perhaps the afternoon before, members of the family would say, I don't know how you did it, but you said exactly the right thing. Friends would say, You must have known him for years. You described so accurately what he felt and did and was.

Dr. Loehr once made the mistake of saying to such a friend, No, I never met the man. After seeing the friend's startled reaction, he learned never to say that again!

UV

The giving of Life Readings began in October 1951. In August of 1952, the book Many Mansions by Gina Cerminara introduced Dr. Loehr to the Life Readings of Edgar Cayce.

After four years and four months of researching and testing the validity of Dr. John's Life Readings, a modest announcement was made in the monthly report of The Religious Research Journal in January of 1956.

In general, those asking for a Life Reading were divided into two classes: those seeking self-understanding and those with definite, difficult problems. The second group was the larger: a difficult or handicapped child, marital frictions beyond the usual, a long (perhaps lifetime) run of seemingly bad luck, emotional relationships that baffled and perplexed.

Oh, the human dramas that came to them! Every imaginable sort of human situation—and a lot they had never imagined—came up in the Readings. Dr. Loehr used to read whodunits, murder-mystery stories, for general relaxation, but he began to find them dull. The real-life stories of those who came for Readings were so much stronger, more suspenseful, and real!

One middle-aged couple had a particular problem with their high-strung, slightly deaf teenage son. They were told in their Life Reading that he had been a passenger on the ill-fated Hindenburg zeppelin and had lost his life when it caught fire and crashed. Normally, such a person would have been kept on the other side long enough for the keenest edges of the traumatic experience to be dulled, but their son insisted on coming back very quickly because he wanted to be in on the early age of flying. After the Reading, the parents phoned to say they had just remembered how the boy, as a youngster, had loved the little planes his father would bring him but had gone into a crying spell of great fright when he had been brought a toy zeppelin.

Many marriages were held together by the Life Readings. Those marriages were not simply patched up, but the underlying causes of the friction were ultimately revealed and reasons for maintaining the marriage given, as well as suggestions on how to handle difficulties. Occasionally, it was suggested that a marriage on the rocks be terminated. This occurred when there was no hope of the two personalities reestablishing a good relationship, the constructive state of that marriage was past, and there was no productive reason for continuing or because that particular marriage should never have been entered into.

Although Physical Readings were not given, physical health questions were often asked. If there was a cause in a past life for the present physical condition, it was traced back and suggestions made for resolving it. Psychological situations which society calls abnormal—transvestitism, hermitism, unusual interest in some particular place or problem, homosexuality, and so on—were often found to have a perfectly normal cause in a past life or in the purposeful experience scheduled for a soul in this particular lifetime.

The Readings showed that each of us must incarnate many times, in both