Interesting topic. I do have both of those book, just haven't gotten around to reading them yet.

I remember something someone told me a while back. She said her guides told her that reincarnation was just "spirit possession" on a grand scale. But the way she took it to mean, was that the souls of dead people attach themselves to the living, as some way of being able to get more life in a physical body, cause they're too afraid of going into the Light. And that's why she doesn't believe anyone who claims they've had past lives, cause it's really just some terrified lost soul that just wants to keep living on Earth. And living people are only recalling that other soul's memories because of the attachment.

This woman was always trying to convince me that I'm just under the influence of a bunch of lost souls clinging to a living person for dear life. Oh, and of course, I'm also just suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, and needed drugs and psychological help, just like her. Don't you just love it when other people try make themselves look normal by claiming everyone else is exactly just like them?

Anyway, for obvious reasons, that perspective just doesn't seem to resonate with me, because it makes it all sound like something so sinister and desperately pathetic. If the whole process actually is nothing but "spirit possession", then I'm much more inclined to believe what Greenslade said about it. That the body is just a vehicle a soul uses to live on the physical plane once again, and for whatever reason they may have for wanting/needed to come back to the physical world.

So, if the body is just a vehicle, doesn't it need something like a self aware conscience being, such as a soul, to actually drive it, in order for the vehicle to operate?