Dr. Carl Wickland MD

Dr. Carl Wickland MD would not have agreed with the conclusions of Dr. Stevenson http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/psychiatric/stevenson.cfm . He specifically stated that all of the memories observed in such cases were actually originating from the discarnate spirit of the deceased, who was attached to the patient. He did not accept the case of the deceased spirit entering into a new incarnation. Of course Dr. Wickland was dealing with the psychosis of much older patients and did not to my knowledge examine any of the type of patients that Dr. Stevenson did.

Dr. Wickland’s work is of great importance to the understanding of Origenes’ theory of “The Restoration of All Things.” http://www.quodlibet.net/moore-origen.shtml But it only addresses one aspect and that is of the ‘Lost Souls”. Early Christians had prayed regularly for the ‘Lost Souls’, and Dr. Wickland gives us many reasons why we should do so today. When discarnate spirits do not accept the divine order and return to where they belong, they are able to ‘molest’ people with whom they have had some sort of special relationship.

What does this have to early Christian teaching? First of all, it gives us a very good lesson in Free Will. As M. C. Steenberg https://books.google.com/books?id=YfGZAAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover most rightly points out, if all souls were destined to go to heaven, then where does Free Will come in? Dr. Wickland describes in great detail the amount of havoc that these discarnate spirits were allowed to bring to his patients. He also shows how they must choose to stop their activities among humans and accept divine guidance.

Secondly, his work gives a hint of the order that exists in the divine spiritual world and gives us an idea as to how many angels are actually around us, active in the restoration process, guiding us during our life and afterwards.

The discarnate spirits that Dr. Wickland encountered in his work certainly represented only a small subset of the discarnate spirits. When their body dies, the majority submit to the divine order. To find out about these, we must look to different sources.

See the on-line version of his “30 Years Among the Dead” at http://www.spiritwritings.com/ThirtyYearsAmongTheDead.html