There's also some solid scientific research about souls and reincarnation. It’s hard to imagine anything better at proving souls exist and continue after death than a person who remembers a previous life. The research I find most useful comes from Ian Stevenson and Jim Tucker. They work exclusively with children, almost always younger than five. The time between lives is usually only a few years.
They currently have over 2,500 case reports that show links with past lives. In one report, marks on the child’s body reflected wounds that had killed a previously living person. In another, people report memories of having lived someplace that are linked to a person who once resided in the location described. It's fascinating that souls return to the living right away. They want to take care of something that happened in the previous life. The ones that were murdered want revenge. The ones that died in accidents are often worried about their families. The reasons seem so human, which helps make the stories credible.
Then we move into other areas that are not so easy to prove. People know when something has happened to a loved one who is far away. They know who is calling before they pick up the phone. They know when something good, or something bad, is about to happen to them. People see ghosts – I’ve seen one. People are visited by angels and other spirits. They experience the world and each thing in it as having a soul. Saint Teresa of Avila floats in the air during the ecstasy of her religious experience and the dozens of people witnessing it can’t hold her down.
The beauty of all these experiments and experiences is that they all are tied together by the concept of a soul. As single occurrences they can be argued against and explained away. But together, they support one another and present proof.
The soul I am talking about has a structure. On the outside is a container for the self that I call the I Am. This is the most basic part. It is probably the part that provides the model for connecting our body with our soul. From a soul point of view, it divides what is outside us from what is inside us by defining self and other. I think learning about this separation is one of the main reasons we take on bodies.
Five regions of the soul are almost completely inside the I Am. The first is the Desire region. It deals with what we want to have, what we want to make, and what we want to do. The second region is the Will, which is responsible for powering our actions and keeping us moving forward to achieve our plans. It deals mostly with energy. The third region is the Heart. This is the part that connects us with one another in positive and negative ways. We use this region to choose to whom we will be close. The fourth region is Voice. That is how we transmit ideas and feelings and how we give thanks for what we have received. The fifth region is Mind, which we use for processing information. It works with all the other regions inside the I Am to make our plans.
When I think about these regions, I usually stack them up from the belly to the head.
Outside the I Am I believe there are two more regions. One, which I call the Energy region, connects to the energy in the world. This is like the roots of a tree that extend into the energy around us. It is not contained inside us and is definitely not completely under our control.
The last region connects to the structure of reality. I call it the Form region. It is also outside of the I Am and connects to information outside us. Some of that comes from connecting with powerful souls far away, reaching above into the mysteries beyond the stars. It is not entirely under our control.
The last two regions spread into soul reality. How far they go depends on where we want them to go and how much power we have to send them out. People who journey through what shamanic practices call the lower and upper parts of soul reality are using these two regions of their soul.
The life force we talked about earlier powers the soul. Life force moves energy and information from one place to another. Some regions use information more than energy. These are the Mind region and the Voice region. The Desire region and the Will region are more effective with energy. The Heart region seems to use an even balance of information and energy.
Another reason that souls matter is because they provide many ways for us to heal ourselves. Life is difficult and we all get banged and bruised. Western medicine is usually pretty effective at healing the body. It is not nearly as effective at healing the Mind or the Heart or the Will. Techniques that rely on soul reality can be used to heal these other parts of us. There are some practices recognized by Western medicine that seem to be best explained by soul reality. These include eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), Emotional Freedom Techniques (tapping), Rolfing, and other deep tissue massage. Other techniques that seem to use both body- and soul-related ideas include acupuncture, acupressure, Reiki, and qi gong.
Other techniques take us deep into soul reality. Shamanic healing techniques come from a variety of traditions, both modern and ancient. These focus on healing the soul. Earth magic, including witchcraft and herb lore, can be used for healing, too. When people who work in healing look at these traditions, we find that they work for all souls. It isn’t only humans who can be healed by these techniques. They can be used to heal the soul of the world and the souls of everything the world contains.