..续本文上一页 this book has been favorably received by many readers, including celebrities—movie stars, talk show hosts, politicians, academics, etc.—and I have also read its Chinese translation.

　　Dr. Zhong Maosen, while teaching at the University of Texas in the U.S., once spoke to Dr. Weiss on the phone in 2002. Dr. Weiss told him that he had so far treated more than 20,000 hypnosis regression cases, which had helped the patients to recall their past lives.

　　III. To Explore the Unknown Terrain with a Right Attitude

　　However, the attitude of some inpiduals is inflexible; even hearing these accounts, they will insist that they are fables or hearsay. In this way, these inpiduals may as well discount totally everything that happens in our society today, much less that of past lives.

　　Historically, humans have been reluctant to embrace new ideas that are in conflict with their earlier convictions. Even if sufficient evidence is accumulated to support a new idea, they can”t care enough to even just take a look. Logistically, a flat denial must be supported by sound reasoning. If one”s argument is nothing more than “I do not believe in past and future life, because I cannot see it,” it runs the risk of being too shallow. After all, there are just too many things in the world that we can neither see nor hear with our sense faculties.

　　Some people these days may have been endowed with exceptional intelligence but which, if not guided by the right view, may turn into what we called the perverted view. As it is said in the sutra:

　　Without right view, faith turns into delusion;

　　Without faith, views become perverted.

　　It means that if a faith is not sustained by wisdom, the faith will easily become blind superstition. And if wisdom is not backed up by faith, the wisdom will turn into wrong views.

　　In modern society, science is put on a pedestal as the standard to gauge everything by. And people argue that as science says nay, then past and future life could not have existed either. However, we should remind ourselves that science deals only with the material entity, its answer on the aspect of consciousness is still largely a blank sheet. Occasionally science may venture into the terrain of the mind, but it only scratches the surface. Many scientists know only hazily about this particular topic, how can they be qualified to make pronouncements about something they have yet to comprehend

　　Once I heard this interesting little story: At the end of World War I a certain country in Europe, trying to promote atheism through scientific reasoning, summoned three learned scholars to give lectures in a public square. The first speaker was a doctor of astronomy who expounded many theories to support atheism and concluded emphatically: “I have been using the most powerful telescope to search the universe for more than 20 years. Yet I have never seen God—hence, God does not exist.” The crowd cheered with applause.

　　The next to step behind the podium was a medical doctor. He made the argument that the soul could never exist and concluded: “I have done autopsies on more than 100 corpses and observed closely each and every organ, but I was never able to identify where the soul resides. Is it in the heart, the brain, or the blood

　　 After decades of dissecting and probing the human body, the soul still eludes me. Therefore, there can”t be a thing called the soul.” Again the audience applauded thunderously.

　　The third expert held a doctor”s degrees in ethics. She proclaimed: “When people die, it”s like a flame goes out. A death is a death, the absolute end. There is neither heaven nor hell whatsoever. I”ve read copiously and broadly books from all periods and all countries, yet I found no record to corroborate the continuation of a soul.” Once more, everybody roared with …

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