Reincarnation & Bride/ Murphy
by J. Vernon McGee
D uring the past century such fads as mahjong, the yo yo, tech nocracy, dianetics and even “ Six teen Tons” have flickered across our society. And today another fad is shuffling around. But because it has come in the guise of science, it has veered from the campus crowd and made strides toward the drawing room of the intelligentsia. The fad is reincarnation—the belief that the souls of the dead successively re turn to earth in new forms or bodies. Though the idea is nothing new (apparently starting with the early Egyptians, accepted by both Plato and Pythagoras and today part of the Hindu and Brahman belief), Morey Bernstein has succeeded in making his hook, The Search for BricLey Murphy, one of the nation’s bestsellers. Acting as an amateur student of hypnosis, this well-to-do Pueblo, Colo, businessman, wrote that he sent a 33-year-old house wife, Ruth Simmons, back several centuries to her former life as Ro berta Murphy of Ireland. And a giddy public taking it from there, busily scheduled hyp notism classes, Bridey Murphy songs and “ Come as you were” parties, while one 19-year-old Ok lahoma paper boy committed sui cide so he could investigate the theory of reincarnation in person. This pathetic act as well as the attempts at comedy and creative ness were offshoots of the Colorado experiment. And those who be lieved in reincarnation scrambled around chalking a point in their favor. Here at last was a woman giving facts under hypnosis to prove she once lived centuries ago.
But for most people the Bridey Murphy experiment had other ex planations. Some wrote it off as a complete hoax. The whole af fair had been cooked up for a laugh, and a gullible segment of our nation simply swallowed the bait and begged for more. Then again it might have been a legitimate experiment conducted on a scientific basis. Age regression can occur in hypnotism. It’s been demonstrated that a person in a state of hypnosis can be made to go back to an early age in his life and relate events that took place which he had forgotten.* This type of demonstration is no new thing. A book by Dr. Nevius, Demon Pos session and Allied Themes, states, “An English officer was hypnotized . . . and suddenly began to speak a strange language. This turned out to be Welsh, which he had learned as a child, but had for gotten.” This was written in 1893. And recently in Los Angeles, the heads of psychology departments of *In a two weeks? series of articles recently, the Los Angeles Examiner related the findings of a reporter for the Chicago American who went to Ruth Simmons’ home city of Madison, Wise. His search through public records, interviews with relatives and retracing the woman’s earli est childhood, revealed a vivid parallel between Bridey Murphy’s experiences in Ireland and Ruth Simmons’ childhood days in Madison, i.e., the “ awful spank ing” she got for scratching the paint off her steel bed, her frame house, the long walk to church, her Uncle Plazz as w ell as similar literary tastes ( weird, dreamy stories), similar tastes in food ( potato pan cakes), favorite song (Londonderry A ir). And in a further check, the experts on hypnotism claimed there was nothing in her story that couldn’t be explained as a subconscious memory or coincidence.
several universities demonstrated cases of age regression by hypnosis before a panel of experts. But it was the unanimous judgment of this panel that all they had seen was just a case of age regression by hypnosis. No evidence of rein carnation existed. The Denver Post first printed the Bridey Murphy story and after it became a nation-wide sensation, Publisher Palmer Hoyt sent Re porter William Barker to Ireland for a check on details. Some ex pressions and customs were authen ticated but experts in the field of hypnosis noted these could have been lodged in the housewife’s sub conscious mind in tales told by her parents, both of whom were partly Irish in extraction. But by and large, Barker’s search flopped. Item: She described her metal bed in 1804, but Irish authorities said that metal beds did not arrive in Ireland until 1850. Item: She had spoken of Cork as a “ town” and “ village,” but it was a big city in the 1800’s. After this exhaustive search Time magazine reported, “ . . . nobody could find a scrap of evidence that she ever lived .. . .” There’s a third explanation for the results of this experiment. And that’s spiritualism or a form of de monism. It was after World War I that a wave of spiritualism swept over England and America. Men and women frantically tried to get in touch with sons who had died in battle. Well-known men such as Sir A. Conan Doyle and Sir Oli ver Lodge gave credence and pres tige to the movement by their be lief and support of it. Seances in creased. And although an estimated CONTINUED 21
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