Amber Wells was a student at the University of Connecticut and wrote a research paper based on her study of the near-death experience for her senior honors thesis under the direction of Dr. Kenneth Ring. Her paper was published in the Journal of Near-Death Studies in the fall of 1993.  In her study, 70 percent of the same of near-death experiencers demonstrated belief in reincarnation. In contrast, a Gallup Poll found that only 23 percent of the general population endorse this belief. Previous research has indicated that following a near-death experience, experiencers tend to exhibit a significant shift in their beliefs on a wide range of subjects including a general tendency toward an increased openness to the idea of reincarnation. Ms. Wells' study was designed to examine the factors underlying this belief shift. The following are some of the results of her study.  Also included are some excerpts from Tom Sawyer's book What Tom Sawyer Learned From Dying which reveals his lessons learned concerning reincarnation which resulted from his own near-death experience.

 

The following are excerpts reprinted by permission from Dr. Ring's IANDS research paper.

 

Claims have been documented by other researchers of direct knowledge of reincarnation which became available during the near-death experience itself. An example of this type of knowledge can be seen in a letter written to Dr. Kenneth Ring by John Robinson:

 

"It is a matter of personal knowledge from what the Being with whom I spoke during my near-death experience told me about my older son, that he had had 14 incarnations in female physical bodies previous to the life he has just had."

 

Ring has also heard testimony of this kind of direct knowledge in some of his interviews. One experiencer, whose account is recorded in Ring's audiotape archives, commented:

 

"My whole life went before me of things I have done and haven't done, but not just of this one lifetime, but of all the lifetimes. I know for a fact there is reincarnation. This is an absolute. I was shown all those lives and how I had overcome some of the things I had done in other lives. There was still some things to be corrected."

 

Another experiencer whose testimony is included in Ring's audiotape archives gave this account:

 

"I had a lot of questions, and I wanted to know what they [the light beings she encountered in her nde] were doing – why are you just kind of milling around here? And someone stepped forward ... it wasn't just one ... I got information from a number of them ... that they were all waiting for reincarnation."

 

Additionally, in a case documented by Dr. Melvin Morse, a girl who had her near-death experience when she nearly drowned at the age of 7 reported seeing during her experience two adults waiting to be reborn (Morse,1983).

 

One very interesting case involves a near-death experience that resulted from a suicide attempt.  On April 30, 1976, Sandra Rogers put a gun to her heart and shot herself.  Instead of the nothingness she sought from suicide, she had endured a near-death experience.  A brilliant and loving Light, she identified as Christ, presented a review of her entire life and all the events that brought her to the point of her suicide attempt.  This Light gave her access to unlimited knowledge.  She was told that she could remain in the Light, provided she later reincarnate to reexperience and overcome all that brought her to the point of suicide.  Or, she could be revived to live out rest of her life and overcome her problems here and now.  Obviously, she chose not to stay in the Light so that she could resume her life and not have to face the same problems in a future life.  She was allowed to take only as much knowledge as she needed to sustain her, and was told she would be given insights along the way as she finished out the rest of her life.

 

Some experiencers analyzed during Ms. Wells' study described the general process of reincarnation as one consciousness separating into individual souls to be embodied in matter. One experiencer took this idea even further, stating that reincarnation takes place more on a collective level rather than an individual level. In other words, this experiencer felt that a collective energy recycles itself through matter and that our sense of individuality is a product of our present incarnation only. One experiencer believed that a higher power created a finite number of individual souls, some of which then are placed in human embodiments in order to learn lessons.

 

A strong minority of experiencers saw individual choice as the initiating force behind the reincarnation process. Some others mentioned karmic patterns or ties to other souls as influencing the reincarnation process.

 

The majority of experiencers mentioned learning or enlightenment as the main purpose underlying reincarnation. One experiencer said, "The spirit needs to embody itself in matter to experience it and learn. There are karmic patterns to learn lessons and to work spirit in matter." Another commented, "Life itself is a series of learnings. The lessons are universal, the two most important being truth and forgiveness." One experiencer said, "We progress at our own rate to reach the light. If you do things that take you away from the light, then you are perpetuating your time here." Another said, "The inner quality is there, the inner self remains, but the external aspect that may have seemed very strong is dissolved. Individuality wasn't the same there. I was the same as everybody and everybody was me. Your spirit is always you. You are not the personality that you are on earth. In the other realm you are everything, light is everything."

 

Most of the experiencers said that they felt the cycle of reincarnation would eventually come to an end. They indicated that at this point there would be existence as pure spiritual being and/or a merging with God. One experiencer said, "Then you exist as pure spiritual form, as a pure spiritual being." Another responded, "You become an integral part of God. When everyone reaches that point it is nirvana." Some experiencers indicated that the cycle of reincarnation would probably come to an end for earthly embodiments, but that one would continue to incarnate into other realms or dimensions.

 

The beliefs expressed by the experiencers are not unique and they tended to follow the standard view of reincarnation as expressed in much of the new age literature. By way of example, the following excerpts taken from Irving S. Cooper's book, "Reincarnation: A Hope of the World" (1979), are representative of this view and are quite similar to many of the statements in the study:

 

"The chief purpose of reincarnation is education. To this end we are born again and again on earth, not because of any external pressure, but because we, as souls, desire to grow. It is a universal process, and prevails not only in the human kingdom but also throughout the whole of nature. Whenever we find a living form, the consciousness of that form is also evolving, using temporarily for that purpose the physical form in order that it may gain physical experience. In each incarnation we have a different physical body, a different name, and may have different souls acting as parents, but these changes do not in the slightest imperil our individuality.  Reincarnation is not an endless process, and when we have learned the lessons taught in the World-School we return no more to physical incarnation unless we come back of our own accord to act as Teachers of humanity or as Helpers in the glorious plan of evolution."

 

Let's now turn from Ms. Wells research to the near-death experience of a man named Tom Sawyer (his real name) and what he learned from it concerning reincarnation:

 

Reincarnation is not a linear thing. One of the problems in defining it is that there is no analogy to it. It is outside of time, yet we can't help but think of it in terms of the past and the future, and this incarnation. The whole story is so big and so involved.  Reincarnation is an opportunity to reach a goal. The goal is true self-realization. Self-realization is to know that you are a soul, a part of God, yet also the Whole. Perhaps no one has a very good image at all of his or her soul - the whole self. And they have no idea of what proportion their personality is in relationship to their soul.

 

Sawyer claims to have an idea. According to Sawyer, if for example a characteristic of your personality is one percent of all of your personality characteristics put together, and all of your personality characteristics make up your personality, and your personality is only about five percent of your soul, then we are blinding ourselves to 95 percent of the rest of our soul in order to reincarnate.

 

Reincarnation is an opportunity to evolve through many personalities. Sawyer's definition of reincarnation is that your personality is who you are in your current lifetime, and that it can be reincarnated as an entirely different personality with the characteristics of the previous personality and previous personalities including even characteristics of another soul altogether. That is, characteristics of your present personality may be the reincarnation of other characteristics of personalities from your previous lifetimes as well as characteristics from personalities from other souls.

 

If a person dies and goes totally homogenous back into the Light it is reasonably improbable that there will be another reincarnation. It is improbable. However, it is more usual for people to die and go partially back into the Light while remaining partially in the realm of the earth plane. That means remaining partially within the earthly confines of the human condition with an attachment of sorts to the human condition.

 

Once you go into the spirit realm, you may realize that you haven't learned everything you should, so you find another personality, another body and your soul is maintained throughout. As you transform into another personality, your soul does not get bigger or smaller. You carry with you characteristics of your former personalities. The simplest example is to say that the phrase "burning off bad karma" means that you have characteristics that you have to deal with.

 

It is true that future scenarios are not absolute, and that free will changes, and subtle manipulation on different spiritual realms can change your future characteristics and personality. According to Sawyer, we are preparing for future incarnations here in the current incarnation we find ourselves in.

 

Once you enter into the Light and blend with God, you become God. God is Light and Light is love. You can't take a knife and cut out a part of love and take it away. If you theoretically cut love in half and take it, there's not half love here and half love there. Each part is wholly God.

 

We may have perceptions that we are separate from God, that we are less than God. But the divinity is within us, the Light is in every cell in our body and that, collectively, makes the soul. We can think of that in terms of being subordinate or less than and separate from God. But since you are a part of the Whole, God is not minus that part of you. God is still 100 percent even when God appears, in this physical existence, to be separated.

 

The incomprehensible part is at that point at which you no longer exist and you become only Light when you fully merge with the Light. This is because the character and the characteristics that you are, the uniqueness that is you and nobody else, still exists when you cease to exist as a personality. But every bit of your personality is available for reincarnation. That's the paradox part.

 

A single soul has the same power as God! You have exactly the same intensive power as God. You have the same potential as God within the human condition. The Oneness of the whole, or the wholeness of the One, being God, is ultimately powerful and unconditional love.

 

You cannot conquer, or divide, or diminish unconditional love. It exists omnipresent, that's true, it exists like that. For example, If you take one "cupful" of God, you have God in the cup, and that can't be diminished at all. Now if God, by God's own infinite wisdom and love, decides to allow a cup of Light to be used in such a way as a soul, and for the purpose of incarnating into the human condition to our level, the Light involved in that is our soul. Our soul is that Light, that one cup, that small amount, which was purely, divinely God. It has the full power of God; that is, one cup of Light has the same luminous unconditional love, the same power of God.

 

All souls are equal at the soul level. Yet some say, "He's a highly evolved soul." The soul doesn't evolve, the personality does. To state that the soul evolves at all is not correct. Your personality can be evolved - highly evolved, lesser evolved, or no evolvement at all to where you're just stagnant. You have the ability to create negative karma. To go backwards, to be born with certain characteristics and personality that can be culturally conditioned, or decommissioned, if you will, and go pretty much backwards. You can actually lose a little bit in your actual evolvement to a spiritual recognition, a spiritual reality.

 

In summary, there is much evidence that the near-death experience affirms reincarnation to be fact. According to what has just been discussed, only a fraction of our true soul is expressed during any given physical incarnation. At death, your personality (your outward physical consciousness) ceases to exist but characteristics of your personality is absorbed into your soul and into the Wholeness of the Light. Once you are fully absorbed into the Light, it is unlikely you will reincarnate again in the physical. Most people partially absorb themselves into the Light and to recycle for themselves a new personality for a new incarnation into the physical. The sole purpose for reincarnation is for self-God-realization."