I have two distinct memories of past lives, one of them actually walked through momentarily. In 1938, I was an Army Air Corps cadet pilot who killed himself during training in a stall spin accident. I crashed and burned to death.
Later, as a boy, I returned to Randolph Field with my father whose office was located in the very barracks I had occupied as a cadet. I joined Randolph’s Civil Air Patrol squadron and as a CAP cadet, once again marched around the same parade decks wearing virtually the same uniform I had worn as an Air Corps cadet in 1938. Standing on the barrack's porch in the hot Texas evening, I could feel the sadness welling inside me, the sad longing to return to a past that could never again be in this lifetime. Such is the longing of the soul.
Still later, one of my civilian instructors suffered the exact same accident as I had in my previous life. Only this time it was during takeoff at the same auxiliary airfield with a student pilot on board. Both were killed in the crash that burned them to cinders. I was the only pilot whose ticket that newly minted instructor ever signed off. The other memory is of being a Japanese pilot, possibly a special attack pilot.
"Suicide" is not the word for these pilots as they sacrificed themselves for a cause, as many soldiers have done in every war. They did not commit “suicide,” they sacrificed their lives because of the felt necessity of their situation. Had it not been for wartime desperation, it is doubtful they would have committed their lives to the foolish notion of suicide.
"Suicide" was the term coined by American propagandist to make these pilots sound as if they were insane. These propagandist circulated the nonsensical rumor that "suicide" pilots were “welded into their cockpits.” The Yokosuka MXY-7 “Ohka” or "Cherry Blossom" was assigned the derogatory name "baka" or "fool" by American intelligence. It was the special attack squadrons that had the greatest negative impact on the morale of American sailors.
It happened at an airbase in Texas when I was around nine or ten years old. I was walking to my evening Judo class down a street that led directly to the airfield's hangers. I was quite a distance from the hangers, still out of sight at this point, when suddenly I found myself approaching a hanger. Night was falling and it had begun to rain lightly as I found myself approaching a Japanese airplane parked behind a hanger. The single engine plane seemed almost new. It was painted the classic flat green of that era with a dull, red Hinomaru clearly visible on the fuselage.
I was dressed in a greenish/brown flight suit and could see and feel the bright green harness I was wearing, but there was no weight of an attached parachute. What is indescribable was the intense feeling of sadness and despair overwhelming me. I wanted to cry, but could not. I have never felt such profound, intense emotions before or since that moment. I kept walking, the feeling of hopelessness overwhelming me, when suddenly I was back at my starting point, approaching the building where the Judo classes were held. All the feelings of emptiness and despair disappeared instantly, leaving me befuddled as to what I had experienced. Not too many years ago, I recreated this moment in a game/flight simulator. Once again, emotions overwhelmed me as I took off in the rain and flew around the airbase in the virtual simulacrum of my previous life.
I grew up thinking (perhaps "knowing" would a better word) I would be a WWII pilot. Around the age of sixteen, it finally dawned on me that WWII was receding into a timeline never to be recovered. I would never fly the aircraft to which I as so attached. However, I was consumed with aviation. I lived, ate and breathed airplanes. First I became an aircraft mechanic; then I became a pilot, actually finishing a portion of my flight training in the very aircraft in which I had died prior to WWII. After 2700 hours in the cockpit, I burned out on flying and quit aviation altogether.
Towards the end of my career, I flew corporate jets. While many find jets to be sleek and sexy, I found them soulless machines flown by the book. Jets are just a series of endless procedures, with almost no room for the stick and rudder flying I loved as an Ag-Pilot flying a Grumman Ag-Cat; a not-so-distant cousin to the 1930’s navy fighter planes I grew up with in the last life. Few instruments, no radios and big, round engines were my real love of aviation, aircraft now mostly relegated to museums, but then I am pretty much a museum piece myself these days.
Today I find it difficult coming to grips with the idea that my highest aspiration in life was once to be nothing more than an expendable tool for elite money men and their politicians lusting and profiting from the bloodshed of war. The airplanes that once excited my soul, now sicken me, as do those still proudly regaling the memories of the horrors of war. Anyone viewing life objectively, cannot fail to see that war, misery, suffering and struggle are primary reasons for those returning to this existence.
The conundrum is this, my Army Air Corps death occurred around 1938, prior to WWII. The Japanese experience was undoubtedly just prior to the end of WWII. This means seven years between the two deaths, indicating both men had to be alive at the same time as there is no way these could have been successive lives. This seems to indicate one soul can in inhabit two bodies simultaneously. What I find so bizarre is that they were enemies. Apparently my soul was fighting itself to a miserable death.
This life has shown me the horror of this hellish existence and the insanity of those desires keeping us attached to repeating the mistake of returning to try fulfilling desires that can never truly satiate the soul. This life taught me what Siddhartha learned, i.e., one must move beyond all desire if one is to escape the continual recycling of the soul back to this existence of misery and suffering.
Life is a trap. When one dies, they are tricked into returning. Many are overwhelmed with a feeling of longing for life. Others like myself, are driven to fulfill those desires for matters left unfinished. The soul is often presented with those souls with whom they were seductively intertwined in a previous life. Others are presented with fears of separation from this existence.
The story of Siddhartha’s battle with Mara, the demon of desire, encapsulates those tricks used to lure the soul’s return to this existence where its emotions provide food for the beings whose existence depends on strong emotions. Note that Mara’s last attempt to lure Siddhartha was presenting his beautiful daughters. Notably Siddhartha’s last words were reportedly, “Now I shall never again return to the womb.”
Fear, hatred, lust, greed, horror and terror, misery and suffering are man’s base emotions predominating his existence. These are by far the strongest of all emotions. By contrast, love, compassion, and empathy are the most sublime emotions, countering the base emotional states on which the creatures feed. Love is what delivers one from the misery and horrors of existence. Love is the “oneness” to which one soul returns when finally understanding what is being dealt with and refuses to be tricked into another cycle of life.
Like the old song said, "Won't Get Fooled Again."