Sitting in the green room of the Donahue show many years ago, I witnessed a stunningly surrealistic scene. There was Jenny, a 41-year-old woman from England, sitting with her son, Sonny, age 75, and her daughter, Phyllis, who was 69 years old at the time.

Ever since her early childhood, Jenny knew that in a recent past life she had died suddenly, leaving her eight children virtual orphans. She knew detailed facts about their early-20th-Century lives in rural Ireland. Her name in that life was Mary.

Jenny’s family humored her, but there were not enough funds or interest to investigate the child’s fantastic stories of a life of crushing poverty and tragedy in Ireland decades ago. Jenny grew up not knowing if her vivid recollections were real or not.

Finally, Jenny had the resources to begin her research. She found five of the eight children of Mary Sutton, an Irish woman who died in 1932 from complications after the birth of her eighth child. Mary Sutton’s children confirmed many of Jenny’s incredibly detailed memories. They seemed convinced that Jenny was indeed Mary, their “dead” mother.

And I was watching their ongoing reunion, there in the green room of the Donahue show.

My mind shifted gears and I saw the beginning sequence of the old Ben Casey television show. This was a medical show in the late fifties or early sixties. My mother, in her subtle way, encouraged me to watch this program, relentlessly influencing me to choose medicine as my career.

The Ben Casey Show always began with universal symbols, and the aged neurosurgeon mentor of the young Dr. Ben Casey intoned, “Man…Woman…Birth…Death…Infinity.” Universal mysteries, unanswerable riddles. Sitting in the green room just prior to going on Donahue as an expert on past-life memories, I was getting the answers that had eluded young Ben Casey and all the others.

Man? Woman? In the course of our lifetimes, we change sexes, religions, and races in order to learn from all sides. We are all in school here. Birth? If we never really die, then we are never really born. We are all immortal, divine, and indestructive. Death is nothing more than walking through a door into another room. We keep returning in order to learn certain lessons, or traits, such as love…forgiveness…understanding…patience…awareness…nonviolence…. We have to unlearn other traits, such as fear…anger…greed…hatred…pride…ego…which result from old conditioning. Then we can graduate and leave this school. We have all the time in the world to learn and unlearn. We are immortal; we are infinite; we have the nature of God.

As I watched Jenny and her aged children, even more came to me.
“Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” The concept of karma is stated virtually word for word in all the great religions. This wisdom is ancient. We are responsible to ourselves, to others, to the community and to the planet.

Propelled by her need to care for and to protect her children, Jenny was pulled back to them once again. We never lose our loved ones. We keep coming back, together and together again. What a powerful reuniting energy love is.