Much more might be said, including the fact that, quite in addition to a psychological/psychiatric aversion to evidence of past lives, a good part of Christian dogma stood opposed to the notion. The thinking is complex and quite deeply rooted in a Christian orthodoxy wherein the central appeal was a hope of physical resurrection. In brief, however, the argument is this: If, as suggested in various Gnostic scriptures, the human soul was destined to rebirth, then obviously the threat of eternal damnation tended to lose its sting. Which was not to say the sinner did not suffer under Gnostic doctrine. On the contrary, earth itself became the unending hell for those who lived, lifetime after lifetime, beyond the grace of God. Yet from a strictly ecumenical standpoint, a doctrine of reincarnation tended to undermine Church authority as the sole means of salvation and everlasting life through the grace of Christ. Moreover, it tended to undermine key sources of Church revenue, very much including the sale of indulgences. Consequently, came the formal expunging of all such doctrine with the Second Synod of Constantinople in 553 AD.
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None of this, of course, figured into Ron’s thinking. Rather, his concerns remained purely practical and solely determined by workability. Did those receiving auditing benefit from addressing what was perceived as traumatic experience from a former life or did they not? No other factor, whether political or philosophical, was deemed relevant. Besides which—and this in unqualified terms to members of the Foundation board—"You can’t pass resolutions to say what is or isn’t in the human mind.” Reprinted in the following pages is Ron’s introductory note to what may be viewed as the culmination of such research, the 1960, Have You Lived Before This Life? The text is comprised of forty-two cases wherein advanced Scientology auditing procedures were employed to alleviate difficulties stemming from former lives. What those forty-two cases tell us in a larger philosophic context is, of course, monumental and bears upon the whole of our existence... including the startling proposition, as LRH so bluntly puts it, “what we create in our societies during this lifetime affects us during our next lifetime.” Equally startling were the results of those Scientology auditing procedures; there are more than a few documented cases, for example, wherein hopelessly crippled polio victims were restored to full mobility after, and only after, addressing former lives. Finally, for those intrigued by such details, there was the subsequent case of a young Scientologist who recalled, not only the circumstances of her former life, but the actual place of her burial. Whereupon she made her way to a southern English churchyard and there, just as recalled through the course of her auditing, stood the otherwise forgotten gravestone bearing her former name.
