were lives in poverty, boring, and without color. There was not a single case of a famous historical person (Wambach 1979). 3.2.5 Tibetan practices relevant to the problem of reincarnation Tibetan spiritual literature describes some interesting phenomena, suggesting that certain highly developed human beings are able to gain far-reaching knowledge related to the process of reincarnation. This includes the possibility of exerting influence on the time of one’s death, predicting or even directing the time and place of one’s next incarnation, and maintaining consciousness through the intermediate states (bardos) between death and next incarnation. Conversely, accomplished Tibetan monks can through various clues received in dreams, meditation, and through other channels locate and identify the child who is the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama or a tulku. The child is then exposed to a test during which it has to identify correctly from several sets of similar objects those that belonged to the deceased. Some aspects of this practice could, at least theoretically, be subjected to a rather rigorous testing following Western standards. 3.3 Apparitions of the dead and communication with them Direct experiences of encounter and communication with deceased persons do not occur only around the time when these people died or as part of the NDEs, but also at a later date, spontaneously or in the context of NOSC induced by psychedelics, experiential psychotherapies, or meditation. Naturally, the data from this area have to be evaluated particularly carefully and critically. The simple fact of a private experience of this kind does not really amount to very much and can easily be dismissed as a wishful fantasy or hallucination. Some additional factors must be present before the experiences constitute interesting research material. And it is, of course, important to make a distinction between those apparitions that seem to satisfy some strong need of the percipient and others, where any motivation of this kind cannot be found. It is important to mention that some of the apparitions have certain characteristics that make them very interesting or even challenging for researchers. There exist a number of cases reported in the literature that describe apparitions of persons unknown to the percipient, who are later identified through photographs and verbal descriptions. It also is not uncommon that such apparitions are witnessed collectively or by many different individuals over long periods of time, such as it is the case in “haunted” houses and castles. In some instances, the apparitions can have distinct distinguishing bodily marks accrued around the time of death unbeknownst to the percipient. Of particular interest are those cases where the deceased convey some specific and accurate new information that can be verified or is linked with an extraordinary synchronicity. I have myself observed in LSD therapy and in Holotropic Breathwork several amazing instances of the second kind. Here are three examples to illustrate the nature of such observations. The first of these examples is an event that 24 (22) Stanislav Grof
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