December Book Review - "Life Between Life"


Life Between Life: Scientific Explorations into the Void Separating One Incarnation from the Next, by Dr. Joel L. Whitton and Joe Fisher, 1986

I was lucky to find a copy of Life Between Life in my local library, another book based on research that was being done in the 1970’s that I was unaware of until recently. This book, which was published in 1986, would make it one of the first of its kind to address the topic of life between lives, years before Michael Newton wrote his more well known Journey of Souls in 1994*. I assume they called it by that very clumsy title to reference Raymond Moody's "Life After Life", originally published in 1975.

Dr. Whitton was a Canadian psychiatrist who was already doing past life regressions when he “stumbled upon the bardo”, the Tibetan term for the intermediate stage between death and rebirth. Whitton came to refer to this stage as the “interlife”, what I call the NPE (Non Physical Experience).  It is an interesting read, with the exception of the final chapter, which is gruesome and not to be read while eating lunch.
Here are a few quotes -
"On Earth, we are the personification of choices that have been made in the (between lives state).
The subjects themselves, when carried to the between–life state, speak of karma as that which they have created for themselves as a means of progressively refining their natures. Time and time again they have asserted that they must undergo certain experiences in order to purge imperfection and to further personal growth. How these experiences are handled determines how much progress is made and, if learning is not accomplished, the situation must be replayed. Practice makes perfect in the cosmic classroom.

Incarnate existence maybe cut short specifically to fulfill a requirement of interlife planning. From the perspective of meta-consciousness, physical death – no matter when it occurs – always promotes learning and growth.
Those who are keen to proceed vigorously with their spiritual development tend to be most consciously active between incarnations. Those who show little interest in the evolutionary process are inclined to “sleep“ for the equivalent of huge tracts of earthbound time.
For those of us in Asheville, the Buncombe county library has a copy, I highly recommend it. 

 

 

*This is in the field of reincarnation research. Raymond Moody published his groundbreaking Life After Life in 1975, but that was based on Near Death Experience (NDE) research. 

PS - I was floored to realize that Dr. Whitton was involved as an observer in the Philip Experiment while he was working with the Toronto Society for Psychical Research. If you’ve never heard of the Philip experiment, check out this video, or search YouTube for the Philip Experiment. Its mind-blowing stuff, even more amazing considering it was done in the 1970's. A young Dr. Whitton is interviewed as one of the observers of the experiment. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2lGPT2J1cc