Reincarnation Furor in Iowa

State university professor espouses psychic phenomena

In one previous incarnation, David Weltha says, he may have been an 11th century monk. In another, he may have been an Indian boy who died in 1825 at age nine. Weltha also claims that he can occasionally discern auras around people, and he wholeheartedly believes in astrology, E.S.P. and other psychic manifestations. Such beliefs might seem suitable for a guru holding forth in the Himalayas. But should they be taught in a class by a tenured faculty member at a major state university? That is the question that is stirring the campus of Iowa

State University in Ames, spilling into newspapers and arousing members of the state legislature.

Weltha, an associate professor in the family environment department at Iowa State, is teaching a seminar listed as University Studies 313G, otherwise known as "Your Former Lives." Its purpose, says a university brochure, is "to explore the meaning of life through the reincarnation theory." In addition, Weltha in other courses tosses in discussions of astrology, astral projections, E.S.P., auras, psychokinesis and other psychic phenomena that he espouses.

Weltha's troubles began when the campus newspaper, the Iowa State Daily, wrote about his ability to see auras, which he described as the "visible field of color around people." That caught the eye of another faculty member, Professor John Patterson, who teaches materials science and engineering. Incensed at what he considered to be blatant nonsense, Patterson wrote a letter to the Daily challenging Weltha to put his aura-detecting ability to a scientifically rigorous test. Weltha responded with a letter that avoided the challenge, and the debate has gathered velocity ever since: in private faculty discussions, in the columns of the Daily and the Des Moines Register and between state legislators. One lawmaker, State Senator Bass Van Gilst, noted indignantly that Weltha, in his reincarnation course, "seems to be teaching a pagan religion. To me, it's not the duty of land-grant colleges to pursue these things."

Weltha, 49, is a bearded former music teacher who joined the Iowa State faculty twelve years ago, likes to bicycle to class, and eats health food at his desk for lunch. In 1970 he began dabbling in parapsychology and attended lectures and seminars on the subject. Soon he was bringing local psychics to his classes and trading ghostly tales with them. By 1975 he had become so immersed in the otherworldly that he was elected president of the newly formed Iowa Federation of Astrologers. Finally, he got permission from a faculty committee to teach his bizarre course. As Weltha explained to TIME Correspondent Anne Constable: "My academic appetite is restless. I don't like to do anything that's been done before."

Weltha's chief adversary, Patterson, is a fitness buff who plays handball and jogs five miles at a time. He is contemptuous of Weltha's claims that, for example, a person's temperament can be read from the color of his aura. (A red halo, Weltha says, indicates energy, vigor and passion.) "I thought it was wrong to have this kind of thing go unchallenged," Patterson explains. "He was saying things that should embarrass any responsible scholar. They were not being challenged by the faculty, the student body or the administration. People might assume that what he is saying is true."

Weltha has an easy explanation for Patterson's opposition. He notes that Patterson is 42. That age, he says, is the start of "the seven-year Saturn cycle, and to me, that's when male menopause hits." What's more, he says, Patterson is a Pisces, "and they tend to polarize one way or another."

So far, the university administration has stayed out of the brouhaha. Says Edwin Lewis, assistant vice president for academic affairs: "It's this sort of thing that keeps a university lively." Some members of Weltha's own department appear to be embarrassed by the debate, but two of them declared in a letter to the Daily: "In the name of academic freedom and freedom of inquiry, we feel that Weltha probably should be permitted to continue his work."

Others are not so sure. Nathan Dean, a physics professor at Iowa State, has attacked Weltha for not responding directly to Patterson's challenge. Says he: "The willingness to let one's ideas be tested is not a property of science alone; it is an attitude that should be basic to any part of a university." Patterson himself has started a counterseminar entitled "Critical Judgment in the Age of Aquarius." He has the support of a formidable outside ally: James Randi, a professional magician and charter member of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal--a group dedicated to flushing out phonies on the fringes of science. By notarized letter, Randi has offered Weltha $10,000 if he can demonstrate any paranormal ability before a panel of competent observers. It is his standing offer to all would-be psychics, and, as Randi likes to point out, no one yet has been able to earn the reward.

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