Question

With God’s help,
hello Rabbi,
I asked you in the last column you wrote about metaphysical considerations, and you wrote that it wasn’t related there, so I’m moving it here.
I raised there a question about the book Journey of Souls by Dr. Michael Newton, who claims, through hypnotic treatments, to prove the memories of twenty-nine people who were brought into a state of super-consciousness while immersed in deep hypnosis and described what happened to them between their different reincarnations on earth. Each of them was taken back to the period between incarnations, that is, to the experience he underwent before being born in his current life. As happens in a regular hypnosis process, directly from within the experience, the patient reports to Dr. Newton about the events, the encounters that take place, the places he passes through, and the other souls with whom he shares his experiences. The doctor investigates gently and with curiosity, and afterward compares the testimonies, pieces them together, and presents his insight regarding the path that, apparently, each of us goes through between death and rebirth.

The patients reveal details about the sensations of birth and death; what one sees and feels immediately after death, who meets us, how life is conducted in the world between two soul-incarnations, where we go and what we do as souls, why we choose to return here in a particular body, different levels of souls, and modes of expression of the Creator. In addition, mention is made of a body that souls generally call the “Council of Elders/Sages,” to which all souls arrive at a relatively early stage after the end of each latest incarnation for analysis and drawing lessons, and usually also in preparation for the journey before renewed birth. A review of this kind is also done with a spiritual guide and with the members of the soul-group to which the soul belongs.

To this you answered that

1. I have no idea. But it is not related to our discussion. If they bring me evidence that there is a World to Come, I will accept it. The question is whether this insight is supposed to influence my considerations. In general, I am skeptical about such books even on the factual level, and also about the conclusions drawn from them (for example, these memories may reflect a psychological structure embedded within us, and not events that these dead people actually went through).
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   And there the Rabbi Shatz brought proofs from Scripture and from reasoning regarding the World to Come.
   In any case,
   A. I wanted to continue and ask whether all the many phenomena of clinical death and the like do not show that there is “something” to these people’s claims. After all, they all somehow describe basically the same process. How do you explain that away with the skeptical claim that there is some psychological structure within us? Our eyes also exist within us, and we still assume that they reflect something out there.
   B. Also, how can it be that many times in clinical death Christians meet Jesus and Muslims meet Muhammad? Doesn’t that show that secular postmodernism is right in its view of what exists up there—that there is not just one truth?
   Moreover, Dr. Michael claims, based on the patients, that the main meaning of life is the ‘development of the soul’ through learning, self-fulfillment, or overcoming various obstacles in life (which of course also includes making correct choices and the like), but there is no reference there to commandment observance, or to one specific religion.