The Windy Song

Introduction

Sometimes I like to begin reading a book from the back, to see how it ends and if the book is worth reading! This time I read the back cover first: with a familiar photo of Ingo reclining while smoking his ubiquitous cigar! The cover art is Ingo’s too: Reflection by Ingo Swann (© Swann-Ryder). Above Ingo’s relaxed photo is a quote from him:

“There are truths for which today scientific proof is not yet possible or even feasible. Yet hints of them lie practically on all sides and these can be, and often are, perceived by many, even examined deeply and with conviction, truths which reveal themselves by other that the exact methods required by science.”

So how did The Windy Song come about? The Publishers, Swann-Ryder Productions, LLC, explain that The Windy Song is a work of fiction written by Ingo Swann in 1976.

Elly Flippen, Ingo’s niece, writes:

“For a long time, this work was a rather dusty collection of typewritten pages and handwritten notes sitting in a box high upon a shelf in Swann’s office. As the years went by, he would at times glance in the box’s direction, wistfully, all the while leaning back in his chair, puffing away at a cigar contemplating.

The Windy Song (WS), it was one of four unfinished manuscripts I was aware of when Ingo was alive, and one of two that was actually ready for publication —Psychic Literacy (PL) being the other. Unlike Psychic Literacy, however, The Windy Song was something we held back from the archives. Of the other two—The Psychic Child (PC) and The Astrology of Serial Killers—we published the first and give the second to UWG.

We wanted to publish PL, WS, PC for Ingo as he was never able to do so with a publisher during his life time. I guess he could have self-published them but by then he had moved on to his bio-mind superpowers website and was concentrating on material related to that.”

Elly continues:

“In listening to Ingo’s interview regarding Purple Fables on 21st Century Radio with Dr. Bob Hieronymus, Ingo says that he wanted to write simple stories and for a brief second mentions that he wrote a story about reincarnation—he was talking about The Windy Song.”

Eventually, after his passing, Ingo’s archives were donated to the Ingram Library Collections at the University of West Georgia. Ingram Library | UWG (westga.edu).

The book, The Windy Song, follows Ingo’s known interests in anomalies in time and space and his Publishers write:

“Serving as a transcendental channel to portraying timelessness and the psychological analogy of the heart, these pages are Swann’s heartfelt narration about the meaning of memory and reincarnation.”

An Allegory?

As I was reading The Windy Song, I had the feeling that Ingo might have meant the whole book as an allegory, much in the manner of his Purple Fables. According to Webster’s College Dictionary (1991, Random House), an allegory is:

“The representation of spiritual, moral, or other abstract meanings through the actions of fictional characters that serve as symbols.”

The main characters in The Windy Song are Alina, a young 12yr old Nebraskan girl; Richard, her stern, authoritarian Father; and Julia, his nurturing and long-suffering Wife; Oakley—Alina’s skeptical, inquisitive friend; and Margaret, Alina’s intuitive and supportive aunt. Introduced into the story are: Old Doc Thompson—who tries to explain spiritual dilemmas in terms of established medical knowledge; the young Reverend Matthews—representing a more modern approach to religion, and knowledgeable about psi research; and the rigid and controlling psychiatrist Doctor Wollen, who has been brought in to “explain” Alina’s behavior.

Lastly, there is Baby Richard, Alina’s younger brother who comes along, almost as an afterthought, and who is often ignored and neglected by the family as he cries and frets. The only person who can calm him is Alina, who sings a wordless song, the Windy Song, that calms him and opens up the dialog about Native American wisdom and reincarnation.

Reincarnation and Science

Much of The Windy Song is focused on the research into this topic of reincarnation. I remember meeting Dr. Ian Stephenson at the conferences held by the Society for Scientific Exploration (SSE): a tall distinguished-looking Canadian, he often lectured about his research in reincarnation in children. Dr. Stevenson was the Head of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia, and then Director of the Division of Personality Studies at the University of Virginia. He presented “scientific data that appeared to provide scientific proof that reincarnation is real.—Instead of relying on hypnosis to verify that an individual has had a previous life, he instead chose to collect thousands of cases of children who spontaneously remember a past life.”

Dr. Stevenson “used this approach because spontaneous past life memories in a child can be investigated using strict scientific protocols.” These protocols included identifying the deceased person the child remembers being, and the verified facts of the deceased person’s life that match the child’s memory. “His strict methods systematically rule out all possible “normal” explanations for the child’s memories.” He had over 3000 cases in his files before he retired and passed over (possibly to his own reincarnation?) Current researchers at the University of Virginia are continuing this line of research.

Scientific Proof of Reincarnation: Dr. Ian Stevenson (reluctant-messenger.com)

Conclusion

In The Windy Song, Alina persuades her family to explore her remembered past as a wife and mother in a nearby town and continues to calm Baby Richard with the Windy Song – with a surprising twist at the end!

At the conclusion of his book Ingo writes:

“In this way then, in a prairie place where the winds come and go, and in different directions, did the young girl babe whose birth was at first fretful become a young girl and know herself also as a woman before her natural time to do so, and she knew this womanhood from her soul’s time before. None of this was talked of very much, and so these events came and went like the various winds, which come and go from and to no one knows where.
But, among these various winds are the currents of love which blow, too, in the realm of souls. And these currents, like a song to those who can hear them, link together those souls, who truly love each other, even though no one knows why or how.
Many in themselves know and understand this, of course, and know as much whether they speak or tell of it or not.”

Angela Thompson Smith, Ph.D.
2/22/2022
Written on a very windy day!

Ingo on Panel: IRVA Conference 2002
(With Dale Graff, Hal Puthoff, Russel Targ & Skip Atwater.)