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The Reincarnation
of General John B. Gordon and Fire Chief Jeffrey Keene
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Perhaps the
greatest circumstantial evidence supporting
the reality of
reincarnation
without using hypnotic regression, is
the account of
Jeffrey Keene
(www.confederateyankee.net)
, an Assistant Fire Chief in Westport,
Connecticut. After a series of synchronistic
events and subsequent research, Keene
discovered many uncanny parallels between
his life and the life of a Civil War
general named
John B. Gordon.
The photo on the left shows a comparison
between the facial appearance of Jeffrey
Keene and General John Gordon. The similarities
between the two go far beyond mere coincidence. What
makes Keene's story unique from most
accounts of reincarnation is that Keene's
story contains evidence that did not
involve hypnotic regression. Instead,
Keene's evidence of a past-life came
from his own life experience involving
a series of unusual synchronistic events.
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The account of Jeffrey
Keene is documented in his book,
Someone Else's Yesterday.
This book details Keene's amazing journey of
accepting the fact that he was being guided
to discover his past life as General Gordon.
Long before Keene became convinced of his past
life, unusual events kept reinforcing its reality.
Through subsequent years of research and travel,
Keene has amassed compelling evidence of his
former life. Keene and his past-life evidence
were profiled in the A&E documentary entitled,
Beyond Death.
An independent file documentary entitled,
In Another Life,
also profiles Keene's story. His story and photos
can also be found on
Keene's website
and the
website of Dr. Walter
Semkiw.
Dr. Semkiw is the author of the book,
Return of the Revolutionaries
which contains observations of Keene's case.
Keene had never given reincarnation much thought
until the extraordinary became ordinary and
strange occurrences throughout his life started
to make sense. Read an interesting interview
of Jeffrey Keene on the
SpiritKeep website.
Keene's story began
on May, 1991, while on vacation with his wife
looking for antiques. They stopped in Sharpsburg,
Maryland, where the
Civil War battle of
Antietam
was fought. Though Keene had never read a book
on the Civil War before or had any affinity
for that era, he felt compelled to visit the
battlefield. While walking through a field called "Sunken
Road,"
Keene had the following strange reaction:
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"A wave of grief, sadness and anger
washed over me. Without warning, I was
suddenly being consumed by sensations.
Burning tears ran down my cheeks. It
became difficult to breathe. I gasped
for air, as I stood transfixed in the
old roadbed. To this day I could not
tell you how much time transpired, but
as these feelings, this emotional overload
passed, I found myself exhausted as
if I had run a marathon. Crawling up
the steep embankment to get out of the
road, I turned and looked back. I was
a bit shaken to say the least and wondered
at what had just taken place. It was
difficult getting back to the car because
I felt so weak. I did not have any answers,
just questions. I would one day receive
my answers, but not until more than
a year later and then from a most unusual
source...."
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Before
leaving Sharpsburg, Keene and his wife visited
a gift shop where a Civil War magazine on the
Battle of Antietam caught his eye and which
he purchased. When they returned home, Keene
filed the magazine away and did not look at
it until a year and a half later. At that time,
when he finally decided to look at the magazine,
he once again experienced a strong wave of emotions.
When he turned to a page that featured a picture
of General John Gordon, Keene was shocked to
see himself in General Gordon's visage. Keene
learned that General Gordon nearly died after
incurring multiple gunshot wounds at Sunken
Road during the battle of Antietam. Keene recalled
that it was at Sunken Road that he had the profound
experience of grief, anger and sadness over
a year before.
After his Sunken
Road experience, Keene had no idea of the series
of events that was about to be put into motion.
In a few short steps on an old Civil War road,
the line between past and present began to become
blurred. As information on General Gordon's
life was uncovered, Keene discovered many parallels
to himself and General Gordon. Besides the past-life
memories, Keene and General Gordon shared a
similar physical appearance (looks, height,
eye color, birthmarks, and more), personality
traits, common lifetime events, writing styles,
habits and traits. Both men preferred to stand
with their arms crossed. Both had similar tastes
in clothing.
Fifteen
years before Keene became aware of his connection
with General Gordon, an interesting event happened.
Keene began having a severe pain in his jaw
which grew steadily worse; so much so that he
had to be driven to the emergency room where
they ran some tests but could not find a cause.
Eventually, the pain slowly subsided and then
vanished altogether. This painful event occurred
on September 9, 1977, his 30th birthday. Fifteen
years later, Keene discovered that General Gordon
was wounded in the face at the Sunken Road on
September 17, 1862 during the Battle of Antietam.
General Gordon was 30 years old at the time.
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Jeffrey
Keene's "star" birthmark |
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General
Gordon's "star" wound |
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Jeffrey Keene
has three markings on his face in the
same locations where General Gordon
was wounded: under the left eye, on
the forehead, and across the right cheek.
As you can see in the photos on the
left, both men also have a star-shaped
mark on their foreheads above the left
eye. This can be borne out by photographs
in the collections of the United States
Library of Congress and the National
Archives.
Keene was not
only receiving confirmation of a past
life; he was being beaten over the head
with it. Keene's facial birthmarks support
Dr. Ian Stevenson's research on the
apparent correspondence between birth
marks and past-life physical traumas.
Another synchronistic event involves
a written order by General Robert E.
Lee on September 9, 1862, which led
to the Battle of Antietam where General
Gordon was severely wounded. This event
occurred on the same day as Jeff Keene's
birthday, September 9, 1947. Such synchronistic
events have been reported in other cases
of reincarnation where a major event
in a person's life corresponds to a
major event in a past-life.
There also exist similarities between
Keene's writing style and General Gordon's.
In his later years, General Gordon wrote
a book entitled
Reminiscences of the Civil War which
provided material for such analysis.
Comparing a passage of Keene's writing
with a passage from Gordon's book reveals
very similar linguistic styles. For
example, Keene once wrote a letter to
the Fire Chief regarding his fire department's
response to an emergency incident:
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"With my radio restored, man power and
apparatus were brought in and put under
the guidance of Acting Lieutenant Christopher
Ackley. While setting up a plan of action,
Lieutenant Ackley displayed good common
sense, knowledge, training and a deep
concern for the safety of firefighters
under his command. A large amount of
gas entered the structure by way of
a open window. Though we tried to remove
all possible sources of ignition, we
were able to remove all but two. The
owner informed us that the house contained
an oil-fired furnace and a hot water
heater. There was no way to shut them
off from the inside or outside. Using
metering devices, a positive pressure
fan and opening and closing windows,
the hazard was removed."
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In General Gordon's
book, he describes the efforts of his men to
put out a fire in Wrightsville, Pennsylvania:
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"With great energy my men labored to
save the bridge. I called on the citizens
of Wrightsville for buckets and pails,
but none were to be found. There was
no lack of buckets and pails a little
while later, when the town was on fire...My
men labored as earnestly and bravely
to save the town as they did to save
the bridge. In the absence of fire-engines
or other appliances, the only chance
to arrest the progress of the flames
was to form my men around the burning
district, with the flank resting on
the river's edge, and pass rapidly from
hand to hand the pails of water. Thus,
and thus only, was the advancing, raging
fire met, and at a late hour of the
night checked and conquered."
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The comparison between
Keene's and Gordon's writing style suggests
they come from the same "voice".
Keene has demonstrated
spontaneous awareness of details of General
Gordon's life without having learned them. As
an example, Keene toured a visitor center where
artifacts of a Confederate surrender ceremony
were housed which General Gordon had participated
in. A print in the visitor center depicted the
event complete with the flag used to surrender.
Keene knew innately that this was not the flag
actually used. He recognized the correct flag
from an assortment displayed at the visitor's
center. Upon questioning the center staff, it
was verified that the flag in the print was
indeed from a later era and that Keene had identified
the authentic flag used in the ceremony.
Group cases have
emerged that demonstrates a common pattern in
how reincarnation occurs. These cases show that
facial architecture, personality traits, aptitudes,
interests and writing style, stay consistent
from lifetime to lifetime. Synchronistic events
related to past-lives have been observed. Reincarnation
research suggests that people reincarnate in
groups based on shared karma, emotional attachments
and joint missions. Keene's case is one which
demonstrates all of these principles of reincarnation.
Though Keene has
not found pictures of General Gordon's troops,
one can only imagine that the same men who served
under Gordon as troops now serve under Keene
as firefighters. These firefighters have confirmed
that Keene certainly displays the personality
of a general.
Besides being an
Assistant Fire Chief, Jeffrey Keene is now an
accomplished Civil War researcher and speaker
(having visited most of the major battle sites
in the North and South). He is also now a lecturer
on Civil War topics.
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Recommended
Book
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Someone Else's Yesterday:
The Confederate General
and Connecticut Yankee:
A Past Life Revealed
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by Jeffrey Keene
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Someone Else's Yesterday
is an amazing journey through
the eyes of two people:
one a Georgian, the other
a Connecticut Yankee. Similarities
between the two go far beyond
coincidence. They think
alike, look alike, and even
share facial scars. Their
lives are so intertwined
that they appear to be one.
Half of this equation, Jeffrey
J. Keene, is a present-day
Assistant Fire Chief in
affluent Westport, Connecticut.
The other half, John B.
Gordon, Confederate General,
Army of Northern Virginia,
died January 9, 1904. These
elements came together at
a Halloween party in 1992,
leading to a 10-year odyssey
including the battlefields
of Pennsylvania, Maryland,
Virginia, and Georgia as
well as the library of the
University of Georgia and
the Library of Congress.
Gathering information from
official records, wartime
reports and even love letters,
Jeff Keene uncovered many
parallels between his own
life and that of General
Gordon. Even the trip to
the emergency room on his
thirtieth birthday with
facial pain had mimicked
the wound General Gordon
received at the battle of
Antietam when he was thirty
years of age. Jeff Keene
shares his insights into
the workings of reincarnation
along with his personal
encounter with the nightmare
of September 11th. Experience
a city in mourning during
the aftermath of the attack
on the World Trade Center,
from a touching eulogy delivered
by Mayor Giuliani to the
smoldering ruins at Ground
Zero. Share the struggles
of the past and the hopes
for tomorrow as Keene weaves
a tapestry of mystery and
history, of love and the
horrors of war. Jeffrey
Keene has no choice but
to believe in reincarnation
- he lived this remarkable
story and every word is
true. Endorsements: "I regard
Jeff Keene's reincarnation
case as having extreme significance
for the field of parapsychology.
The various features--waking
adult memories, birthmarks
correlating with old battle
wounds, and soul-group connections--all
suggest to me new possibilities
for validating the reincarnation
hypothesis and for conducting
further research. This book
is a milestone." Jeffrey
Mishlove, Ph.D., host of
"Thinking Allowed," national
public television series,
President of Intuition Network,
author of The PK Man. "Read
Jeff Keene's compelling
reincarnation case history
and learn how one of America's
greatest battlefield heroes,
Confederate General John
B. Gordon, has returned
to life as a warrior for
peace." Walter Semkiw, M.D.
M.P.H., author of Return
of the Revolutionaries:
The Case for Reincarnation
and Soul Groups Reunited
"Jeff Keene's story is a
must for buffs of the supernatural
and Civil War historians
alike." William P. Gabbard,
President of Hamilton Civil
War Round Table, Hamilton,
Ohio "As someone who has
had a great deal of experience
in past lives, I recognized
the truth when I saw it
in this book." Jenny Smedley,
author of Ripples, www.jennysmedley.com
As seen on the Sci Fi Channel,
Biography, PBS, A&E
and The History Channel.
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