The belief in reincarnation, the concept that a soul from a deceased person enters the body of a newly born person, is a central belief of many religious and spiritual belief systems. Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism are best-known for basing their religious practices on the belief in reincarnation but reincarnation in different forms is accepted by other religions including in Judaism and some sects of Christianity and Islam.
Deciding whether or not you believe in reincarnation it’s not an Intertops Casino Red gamble. There are compelling reasons both for and against the belief in reincarnation. Those who oppose the idea say that it’s incompatible with their religion’s view of death, that the concept is based on ancient mythologies, that death causes the ceasing of functioning of the brain where all the person’s knowledge, thoughts, emotions and memories are stored and that faith in reincarnation is a simple way to help people deal with the concept principles surrounding the reality of death.
Many people, however, have come to accept the idea that reincarnation is a reality. Religious beliefs are responsible for some of that acceptance but increasingly, stories are surfacing that point to reincarnation as a reality. These stories are impossible to explain otherwise, proponents, and point to the reality that our soul can move on to another body after our physical body ‘dies.’
Dr. Brian Weiss
Dr. Brian Weiss is an American psychiatrist who thought little about reincarnation until a patient, under hypnosis, began to tell him about her past life experiences. Not only was she able to tell him that in the “other world” she was with his father and son who had died (this was in 1981, before the age of the Internet and before she could have possibly had any knowledge of how or when his father and infant son had died), she correctly identified the cause of their deaths and the fact that his daughter was named after his father.
Even more astounding to Dr. Weiss was the fact that, in regressing to traumas and experiences that she had undergone in her previous lives, the patient’s phobias and symptoms started to disappear. He confirmed some of the stories that Catherine told through searches of public records. Today Dr. Weiss uses hypnotic regression therapy to help people suffering from a wide range of problems.
Dr. Weiss and others collect stories about people who have past life memories. These stories don’t provide “proof” for people who believe that evidence simply doesn’t exist to show that a soul exists that can move on after what we know as “death” occurs. But there are too many accounts, which have been verified by outside examinations, to completely dismiss the phenomena of past live memories.
Some of the more compelling stories include:
Shanti Devi
Shanti Devi was born in Delhi, India in 1926. At age 4 she told her parents that her home was really in Mathura, 90 miles away, and that she had a husband and children. She said that she had died 10 days after a cesarean section and described her husband, who she named as Pandit Kedarnath Chaube, as someone who was light-skinned, had a wart on his face and wore reading glasses. She gave her husband’s name as Pandit Kedarnath Chaube.
A man by that name was located in Mathura. He was a widower whose wife, Lugdi Devi, had died 9 years earlier after birthing a son by caesarean section. His physical appearance matched the description that Shanti provided and when they met, Pandit Kedarnath Chaube affirmed that Shanti had known many details of their married life. Shanti Devi was also able to pick out Kedar’s elder brother and father in a crowd and identify the location of her husband’s shop (near the Dwarkadhish Temple).
Shanti Devi never married. She continued to tell her story, the last time in 1987 before her death.
William Barnes
At age 4, William Barnes drew a ship and told his parents, “This is my ship, but she died.” He spoke of two brothers and a sister that were not part of his family and insisted that his mother call him ‘Tommy.’
Barnes was plagued by nightmares that included a huge ship, screams and frigid water closing over his head. When he was 25 he underwent hypnotherapy and at the end of the session woke up and said “my name is Tommy Andrews.”
Barnes continued to have nightmares to the point that he started to contemplate suicide. A psychologist used hypnosis to try to draw out the reasons for Barnes’ distress. Under hypnosis, Barnes started to speak in a Heavy Irish accent and described being onboard the Titanic as it sunk. As his memories emerged Barnes showed a detailed knowledge of shipbuilding design used in the era of Titanic, which he had never learned in her current life. Thomas Andrews was the naval architect that was in charge of the plans for the Titanic.
Investigators said, and historians have followed this line of thought, that the Titanic was sunk when an iceberg put a gash in the ship’s bow. But Barnes always insisted that the ship sank because the iceberg caused small holes that caused water to pour in because, he said, he saw which compartments had flooded. In the 1990s, after the wreckage of the Titanic was found, shipwreck investigator confirmed what Barnes had been saying since the 1950s.
Patrick Christenson
Patrick Christenson was born by cesarean section in March 1991. Patrick was the second child in the family — his elder brother, Kevin, had died at the age of two twelve years earlier. Kevin had suffered from cancer which was diagnosed when he was a toddler and started to walk, doing so with a limp. After he fell and broke his leg, doctors performed a biopsy just above his right ear on a small nodule in his scalp. This biopsy showed that Kevin had metastatic cancer which caused tumors to grow throughout his body.
Chemotherapy treatments resulted in scars on the right side of Kevin’s neck and a growth in one of his eyes caused him to go blind in that eye. Kevin died three weeks when he was two.
When Patrick was born he had a slanting birthmark on his neck that looked like a small cut – exactly where Kevin’s chemotherapy scar had been located. He had a corneal leukoma which clouded his left eye and a nodule on his scalp just above his right ear. When he started walking it was with a limp.
When Patrick was four years old he asked his mother if they could go back to the old brown and orange house – the colors of the house in which the family had lived when Kevin was alive. Patrick asked his mother if she remembered his surgery and pointed to a place just above his right ear.
Pollack Twins
In 1957, 7-year-old Jacqueline and 11-year-old Joanna Pollack were walking with their friend Anthony in the small town of Hexham, England when they were struck by a car and killed. The following year their mother, Florence, became pregnant with twins, two identical girls that were named Gillian and Jennifer.
Jennifer had birthmarks on her hip and on her forehead, similar to a birthmark and a scar that Jacqueline had. The family moved to Whitley Bay, east of Hexham, when the girls were 3 months old but as the girls got older, it became evident that they had memories of Hexham, naming landmarks and chatting about different sites.
Even more unusual was the fact that, despite the fact that Florence had stored her deceased daughters’ toys, Gillian and Jennifer asked for those toys, despite having never seen them. Gillian and Jennifer liked the same foods and games as Joanna and Jacqueline and had the same kind of relationship, with Gillian taking a protective role and Jennifer a more submissive one.
John believed that the girls had been reincarnated from their deceased sisters but Florence rejected the idea until she overheard Gillian and Jennifer talking about the car accident that caused their sister’s deaths. Gillian told Jennifer, “The blood’s coming out of your eyes. That’s where the car hit you.” They were also fearful of cars and had nightmares about being hit by a car.After their fifth birthday, Gillian and Jennifer slowly seemed to lose memories of their past lives.
