I was extremely careful in the production and editing of "In Another Life" to eschew manipulative techniques, and to present the material honestly and fairly. (That doesn't mean I was above driving points home forcefully, as any documentary with a point must do--it just means it was all above-board and I didn't artifically concoct or skew evidence in favor of my convictions.) "In Another Life" documents the various ways that Americans are encountering and reacting to the phenomenon of reincarnation. Three initially skeptical people, and one who remains skeptical, are included amongst the interviewees. The paradox is that it is difficult to find people who examine all the evidence for reincarnation with an open mind and yet are not convinced, because the evidence for reincarnation is extremely strong. This leaves people who have not looked into it thoroughly, and people who have studied it but who have gone into denial. I did not feel compelled to muddy the waters by including people from either category in my documentary in the name of political correctness.

If assuming the reality of reincarnation is unreasonable, then the documentary is propaganda. A number of reviewers have reacted this way to it, and I understand why--their basic assumptions about life preclude entertaining even the faintest possibility that it could be real. That leaves, for them, the only possible conclusion--that my film is propaganda, since I am assuming it is real. If assuming the reality of reincarnation is reasonable,* on the other hand, then the film is not biased and it is not propaganda, any more than a documentary which assumes, say, the reality of atoms is propaganda. You have to assume something. There has to be a level underneath your intellectual activity composed of assumptions, on which it has its foundation. It's not possible to assume nothing, although it is possible to fool yourself into thinking you are assuming nothing. People who assume reincarnation is possible, and who look into it thoroughly, become convinced of it and hence move out of the skeptical category.

As said, I have at least three people of this type in the documentary from various walks of life (including an editor for the Washington Post and a former vice president of research for Standard Oil). People who assume it is not possible cannnot be convinced of it, because their assumptions preclude it. Such people, when presented in programs and documentaries about reincarnation or life after death in general, will assert that there is no credible evidence. What they really mean is there is no evidence which has convinced them. And the reason is not, as they infer, that they have examined it with an open mind. The reason is rather that they went into denial and could not bring themselves to face it, because it challenged their assumptions about life too strongly. This has nothing to do with the person's native intelligence, just as going into denial in general has nothing to do with a person's native intelligence. I have one person (who is very intelligent and articulate) representing this category in the documentary, and saw no reason to have more than one, nor to allow people of this mind-set equal time throughout the program in the name of objectivity. In short, it is only appropriate to provide opposing viewpoints in a topic area that is legitimately undecided.** After studying reincarnation carefully, I have concluded that whether or not reincarnation exists does not fall into this category--it has in fact been decided. It has been blocked from acceptance into the social mainstream (including the scientific, academic, religious and media mainstream) by personal and collective denial, which means this is not a question of fact, it's primarily a question of society's reactions. That is why I chose to focus my documentary on the question of how individual members of society (including highly credentialed representatives from science, academia, religion and the media) are encountering reincarnation, and why I chose to assume that we are dealing with a real phenomenon.

In my counseling training, I learned to distinguish the "presenting issue" from the underlying issues. The "presenting issue" in this case is whether reincarnation is real--the underlying issues have to do with its challenge to the status-quo, and with denial. Few, if any, programs about reincarnation that make it through the distribution gauntlet into television broadcast, ever get beyond the presenting issue to any of the underlying issues. When I interview Dr. Robert Almeder, Prof. of Philosophy at GSU, addressing this issue of denial, and he states, "Not only is it rational to believe in reincarnation, but all the counter-arguments seem to fail--there's no good reason to disbelieve it"--I am not, as most viewers probably think, presenting this as propaganda or for theatrical effect, so much as I am enlisting Dr. Almeder to address the fundamental theme of the documentary.

Recently I happened to be watching an "infomercial" channel. I caught parts of three infomercials: one about an herbal medicine to increase breast size, one about another herbal medicine to relieve aching joints, and a third about an exercise machine. They were extremely convincing, especially if the testimonials were genuine. The medicine for aching joints even presented a professional golfer who swore that he had tried everything else, but only the medicine in question had relieved him of his pain so he could continue to play at a professional level in tournaments. Except, the marketing technique was manipulative and the price was extremely high. If the sellers were comfortable using manipulative selling techniques and price gouging, then logically they would be comfortable fictionalizing the testimonials as well. Plus, if there was an herb to increase breast size, they wouldn't need to advertise it on television. Perhaps it temporarily prolongs the physiological state of post-pregnancy in women who have already given birth, as the testimony hinted. Most scams have some shred of truth in them.

Then, I began reading a book by well-known parapsychologist Hans Holzer entitled "Life Beyond," which is written in a sane, scientific style and gives excellent information and strong cases which he encountered in his research personally. However, I get to the section with spirit photographs, and I see a spirit photograph of the author's aunt, compared with a photograph taken while she was living. The spirit photograph clearly has been cut out of newsprint, rather poorly "spotted" to correct a mark across the face, and pasted onto a milky or cloudy background of some kind (I'm a photographer and have printed and spotted many black-and-white photographs). It's conceivable that the original photograph was genuine, but that only a printed, damaged version had survived to be used in the book. That doesn't excuse cutting it out and pasting it onto a cloudy background. At the very least, if the approach was to be scientific, all these things should have been mentioned in the caption. Instead, all we are told is "no camera was used to produce this, and Myers [the photographer] never physically touched the photographic paper." This confusion throws doubt on the entire book, for me at least. Perhaps it was done by the publisher...?

I guess what I'm saying is, how do you, the reader, know that I have not "fudged" any of the information I've presented, in the documentary or on this website? Why shouldn't you just treat it like an infomercial, or a magic trick--you don't know how I did it, but you know I must have tricked you somehow? Well, the answer is, you don't know. I can tell you that I've been practicing strict honesty as a spiritual discipline for over 30 years now, and while there are layers upon layers of honesty, including self-honesty, I can count on one hand, or at most two, the number of times I've been deliberately dishonest during this period (usually, when a form is asking something it has no business asking, or if someone's feelings would be terribly hurt). I can tell you that if there are any errors in the information I've presented, they were well-intentioned, and I've tried to present the whole picture so you can decide for yourself. But the bottom line is, you don't know, because you will find people with presentations which look just as sincere, who are not, in fact, being honest. So it is for me to present it, and for you to discern.

*"The doctrine of metempsychosis is, above all, neither absurd nor useless. It is not more surprising to be born twice than once; everything in nature is resurrection."--Francois Voltaire
**As an analogy, it would be something like hitting the winning point in a tennis match fairly and cleanly, but having the opponent and the judges lie because they so badly didn't want you to win. The correct response to that is not to go through the sham of the judging process, but to bypass that process and claim victory, exposing the fraud. Either that, or capitulate. In the same way, I refused to bring skeptics into my documentary in the name of opposing viewpoints and equal time, because they use sophistry, and because the issue of whether or not reincarnation has been proven to exist is no longer a legitimate question.