Channeling & reincarnation

Coming out of a blanketing Catholic upbringing and intellectual life, I habitually try to reconcile new information about spiritual reality with my Catholic background. It’s what I do now, but I haven’t always been so open.
Catholicism harbors biases against channeling and against reincarnation, although neither conflicts with Christian doctrine and reincarnation was accepted by the early Church. I still quake a little at openly admitting them into my belief system. But the common sense in what I’m reading now! The psychological insights! They speak to my soul.

Many, many years ago I read about Edgar Cayce and, while having no reason to doubt the message, I set it aside because it was too different from my cultural surroundings—secular writings, church language, and so on.
Now I’m reading Many Mansions: The Edgar Cayce Story on Reincarnation. Christians think of channeling as flaky, bogus, even dangerous to faith. It belongs to the world of the occult, which smells bad to people. I admit I had the same feelings, but a friend of mine gave me the book, evidently thinking I was ready to open up, and she was right.

For years, Cayce induced in himself a “sleep” state during which he gave medical advice to hundreds of persons. What he said in that state shocked himself and the medical community, but it all proved right, that is, the details that could be verified. The voice of this uneducated man correctly analyzed all manner of physical ailments and prescribed sophisticated treatments including supplements, drugs, surgery, various kinds of therapy, and auto suggestion. Records of the “readings” (taken in shorthand), letters, affidavits from physicians, and so on are kept on file.
When the readings also began to mention past lives, no one resisted more vigorously than Cayce himself. An uneducated American Christian in the first part of the twentieth century, he had never asked philosophical questions or speculated about religions foreign to his own. Was his clairvoyance a work of the devil? Wasn’t it sacrilegious or superstitious?
His own voice explained that reincarnation does not mean coming back as an animal or any of the other distasteful ideas associated with the term. Reincarnation means evolution. It means that our spiritual selves evolve or expand in consciousness through successive lifetimes.

It’s significant that the Cayce and Seth books (scroll down to previous posts) came to me almost simultaneously—a bit of synchronicity I take as approval by Spirit. In both books a channeled voice delivers the information. Channeling is a kind of revelation. I now consider the various revelatory voices in the Bible—attributed to God or an angel—as kinds of channeling.

Reincarnation assumes that we continue learning how to live well after death, because it’s not over when we pass out of this life—spiritual growth continues. I no longer doubt that we live successive lives. For me, reincarnation accords with science and answers Christianity's unsolvable questions. The Christian heaven, hell, and purgatory try to provide a framework for moral justice but they’re interpreted literally and thus vulnerable to ridicule in the light of modern science.

Years ago, when I was telling my priest brother about the possibility of reincarnation, he brought up the Christian doctrine of the resurrection, assuming that reincarnation and resurrection are mutually exclusive ideas. One part of the conversation went like this. I said,

Reincarnation could be the resurrection.
What did you say?
Maybe reincarnation is the resurrection.
What?
Reincarnation IS the resurrection.

We were quiet after I said it the third time. He’d understood my words the first two times and had thought he couldn’t have. I assumed now he was considering how that could be. Of course, aware that all doctrinal language is symbolic, I meant that we could all rise again to another life—not in heaven, hell, or purgatory—but to another life here.

Who among us does not need to expand in wisdom, knowledge and compassion? Edgar Cayce’s voice responding to specific requests for counsel—and the files reveal their circumstances—has a powerful effect; it motivates me on my personal journey. Samples:

The entity has the inclination to become, when aggravated, rather severe in its criticisms of others. This should be tempered; for what one says of another will usually become one’s own state also, in one form or another.
The better application of spiritual ideals in relationship to others will bring a great difference in the life experience of this entity.

We find that the body will be materially improved as adjustments are made in the inner self.
Each soul who sees the present hardships of this entity should realize that indeed each soul meets itself.