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Past Lives Reincarnation - A Blast From The Past!
What is past lives reincarnation? It's a theory that says that the soul lives many lives, again and again and again. One of the philosophies that believes in past lives reincarnation is Hinduism, as dictated by common, or deeds, and athma, the soul. The religious scriptures from Hinduism say that the soul can't be destroyed, only that it changes. It lives on, changing form from one body to the next, just as a snake might shed its skin.
This is a very different philosophy than that of Christianity, which centers around Christ's resurrection. The Hindus state that the soul can take any form, man, woman or animal. The deeds or karma of a human being in the present, say the Hindus, will determine the life he or she will lead in the next life.
Several scriptures and the Hindu religion talk about past lives reincarnation extensively. Notably, a major one of these is the Bhrigu Sanhit, which apparently had an accounting of the future and past lives for all living souls. This scripture has been lost over the centuries, however.
A proponent of modern rebirth has been Dr. Ian Stevenson, who has collected much information on this subject. Science in general still frowns on the concept of rebirth as valid, so it can't be said that modern science supports this collection of 'scientific information' on reincarnation theory. Nonetheless, Stevenson's work is the most famous and well documented, not least because Dr. Stevenson was a psychiatrist with a degree in medicine.
Dr. Stevenson didn't put his patients under trance or induce hypnosis, as many past life regression therapists now do. Instead, he simply talked to children who had spontaneous recollections of incidents that had happened in their past lives.
One of the most puzzling and famous of these involves a young boy just six years old. He was from a tiny village in Punjab, and he said that he had been a man named Satnam Singh. This young boy had never been to what he said was the man's home village of Chakkchela and had never lived there, even though he could describe the place with amazing.
The family tried to dissuade the boy from telling people about this, but he continued to claim that he was Satnam; he also gave the name of this man's father. He also said that he had been killed in his past life as he was coming home from school in a motorcycle accident. The boy's claims were investigated and were indeed found to be true, insofar that a man by that name had indeed been killed in a motorcycle accident on the way home from school. The boy was also able to give intimate family details, and these, too, proved to be accurate. What was most notable, though, was that when the man's and the boy's handwriting samples were compared, they were found to be identical.
Stevenson also interviewed a young girl named Swarnalata, another of his famous cases. This young girl was just three years old, but she remembered her past life as a young woman named Biya Pathak. The little girl could describe the house that she lived in, and even took her father there one day when they were coming back from the railway station in their town. She further said that she and her father could get a better cup of tea in Biya Pathak's house than they could on the road. Again, the final proof turned out to be when the child recognized the young woman's brother, and addressed him by a pet name the young woman had had for him, among a group of nine people.
Stevenson lists dozens of these cases in his data, and also states that in some cases, when there has been a physical trauma in the last life, it can manifest in the form of a birthmark in the next life. A man from Thailand seemed to illustrate this; he recollected that he was his own deceased maternal uncle, reincarnated. And indeed, this man had a scar on his head that was located in the exact same place as a knife wound his uncle had died from.
Another child claimed that he had been a man named MahaRam, who had been killed by close range shots to the chest area. And in fact, the child had birthmarks on his chest that looked like they could have been bullet wound scars.
Many psychiatrists and psychologists, as well as of eminent authorities, believe that past life regression is indeed plausible. Among them, Dr. Brian Weiss is considered to be the father of past life regression. Even though science remains skeptical about it, it's also worth noting that many people experience a complete disappearance of fears and phobias they've carried their entire lives after they've undergone several sessions of past life regression therapy.
Are My Problems Really Caused By My Previous Life?
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