The American Engineer Joseph Richard Myers (1922-2012), whom I had the honor of meeting and participating in the dissemination of his work, was one of the great world researchers of Reincarnation. Over the course of more than 40 years, he has conducted a thorough research and demonstrated that, in addition to personal tendencies and personality traits, physical appearance is also a factor that can allow identification of a previous life lived by the same spirit.

 

Myers began his research after he discovered Edward Bellamy (1850-1898), author of the novel "Looking Backward", a novel that was one of the bestselling books of the late nineteenth century. This book told the story of a man who travels into the future until the year 2000, where he finds himself in a utopian socialist society and makes predictions about the financial future of the United States.

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This was a subject on which Myers had a deep interest and one day, after giving a talk about it, a person told him that he seemed to have read the book "Looking Backward". In fact, he had never read this book but, intrigued, he got a copy of it, as well as the biography of its author, Edward Bellamy. In Myers's words, "Before I had finished reading the second chapter, I realized that I had written that book". Several details of Edward Bellamy's biography also caused him some "flashbacks" and dreams that had afflicted him for many years. Besides, the physical resemblance between them was so great that once one of his friends confused his picture thinking it was Bellamy's photo.

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This experience gave Myers the determination to research for reincarnation more deeply, which he did with the support of his wife Mary, until her death in November 2004. Throughout the years in which he gave lectures on the subject, he wrote the book "Bellamy writes again" and has accumulated an impressive collection of cases on reincarnation, emphasizing facial recognition.

It was then that the life of Joseph Myers was going to undergo an enormous transformation, after finding the one who had been his wife in his previous life, that is, the one who was Edward Bellamy’s wife, Emma Bellamy, who in the present life had reincarnated In Brazil, and was called Doralice Santana.

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It all started in September 2005, with a hypnosis session to which Doralice underwent in order to solve some of the emotional problems she was going through. She had seen herself, during the hypnotic trance, in the presence of a gentleman with a thick dark mustache, dressed in late-nineteenth-century clothing. He spoke to Doralice in English, and told her that she would write a book and that the return of the publication should be donated to an orphanage. He told her that to better understand what was happening, she should look for an author who wrote like him.

 

When she returned from the hypnotic trance, she felt deeply in love with the gentleman she had met. Doralice was very confused and all she knew of that man was his first name, Edward, and how he looked like. She then began a search on the internet, for writers whose first name was "Edward", and whose mother tongue was English. She finally found Edward Bellamy's photograph on a website, as well as a lot of material about him and his books. Then came the challenge of finding an author who "wrote like Bellamy". How could she do that?

 

Through the name "Edward Bellamy", she eventually found the site of Joseph Myers, because the book he wrote, "Edward Bellamy Writes Again", was there exposed. Doralice knew then that she had found what she was looking for: the man who wrote as Edward Bellamy! On the site she got the email from Myers, thus initiating the first contact between both in January 2006.

 

Then there was an incredible harmony between them, as well as an intense exchange of information on matters of Spirituality. Doralice was an adherent of the Spiritist Doctrine, codified by Allan Kardec, about which Myers did not possess much information. One night, Myers had a dream with Allan Kardec, who told him he would be helping him and Doralice to do something together. Myers had never seen a picture of Kardec and, a few days later, when Doralice sent him three Spiritist books, he immediately recognized him from the cover photo as the man who appeared in his dream.

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Then the e-mails exchanged by Myers and Doralice became love letters, and two months after the first email, he asked her to marry him. Myers left everything in America to live with Doralice in Brazil, where he came to publicize his work until his death in 2012.

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Myers wrote about the reasons that led him to come to Brazil:

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        "What could make me able to leave everything I took years to acquire? When Doralice found me, I was a successful structural engineering consultant with a reputation that I had taken years to establish. I lived in circumstances that I would not trade for anything the money could provide. I did not think of any kind of retirement. Furthermore, I had decided that after being widowed for over a year, I would not consider a relationship with another woman.

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      But there was another aspect in my life that has always been more important than my work as an engineer. In fact, I considered that the main purpose of my profession was to fund my research on reincarnation, whose practical application can improve society.

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        Then I began to accept the idea that I would have to abandon everything. I decided to leave America for a country where I do not have professional or personal connections, nor am I able to speak the language. My decision was completely irrational and stunning to all who knew me.

      

      Although, no matter how incomprehensible the decision sounds, there was a powerful motive that easily balanced the scales. For more than forty years, I have dedicated my life to the ideal of making a constructive contribution to the improvement of living conditions for the common man. I felt that my discoveries through the research on life after death, reincarnation and the world's great religions, provided the necessary encouragement for our most intelligent and sincere youth to devote their lives to the service of humanity.

 

        The establishment of life after death, reincarnation, and continuity of life for the individual, coupled with the principles behind the "Golden Rule" (Matthew 7:12 - So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets"), being a matter of natural law, is easily fulfilled through a genuinely scientific approach.

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         But at the time of my life when Doralice contacted me, I realized that America had made the choice to reject the importance of doing the study of these discoveries. The recognition that America is no longer a nation that embraces the ideals upon which it was founded, while Brazil is a developing nation that is open to the concept of government of the people, by the people and for the people that combined with Spiritual ideals, now seems to be the main factor and the true crucial point of the story.

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       The complex conditions perfectly adjusted and the circumstances that had to be coordinated to enable Doralice to contact me, surprises the imagination. The appalling events that compelled each of us to fall deeply in love with each other are understandable when one realizes that we have been husband and wife in a past life such as Edward and Emma Bellamy.

 

         It was necessary for Bellamy's wife, Emma, to reincarnate in Brazil as soon as possible, to learn English, and to be brought to live all the experiences required to bring me to Brazil.

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       We hope that our experience will present to the scientific world and the theological world a basis for a new approach in order to investigate the issues of afterlife and reincarnation. We believe that peace in all parts of the Earth will be the result when the "Golden Rule" is universally recognized as the Natural Law in operation. "

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     In 2006 I had the honor to know, through the internet, Joseph Myers and his wife Doralice Santana, with whom I still maintain contact through Facebook. Myers, for his untiring determination and dedication to the research and dissemination of Reincarnation, has always been and will be a great inspiration to me, for I share this same ideal: To show the world that the doctrine of successive lives is a reality, and that we all shall return many times in search of the perfecting of our spirits, because one life is but a chapter which we write in the eternal book of time.