|
|
Past Lives Reincarnation - A New Understanding
One of the philosophies that believes in past lives reincarnation and other births for the soul is the Hindu philosophy. The Hindu philosophy also believes in athma (soul) and karma (deeds). Hindu religious scriptures say that the soul never dies but merely changes body or form, much as one might shed old clothes for new.
Christianity has a very different viewpoint of reincarnation, focusing on Christ's resurrection instead. In Hinduism, the soul can inhabit any form, woman, man, even animal. The karma, or deeds of the human being, dictate what the next life will hold for that person.
There are several Hindu scriptures that talk about past life reincarnations. Most notably is the Bhrigu Sanhita, a scripture that supposedly held an accounting of all future and past births for current souls living. Unfortunately, this scripture no longer exists, and has been lost to time.
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.
Today, most past life regression therapists use hypnosis or induce trance in subjects to get them to recall past lives. However, Dr. Stevenson didn't do any of these things. Instead, he simply talked to children who spontaneously recalled things that happened to them in their past lives.
Among the most confusing and well known of these involved a young boy who was just six years old at the time. From a tiny village in Punjab, the boy said that he had been a man named Satnam Singh, from the village of Chakkchela, in a past life. He had never been to the man's village, but said the man had lived there and could also recall details from there with amazing clarity.
The family tried to dissuade the boy from making these claims, but he nonetheless continue to do so. He even revealed the name of Satnam's father. The boy claimed that he, Satnam, had been killed in a motorcycle accident when he was on his way home from school. This claim was investigated, and it was indeed found that the man had been killed in just the way the young boy described. He also revealed other intimate details about the family, but the most startling aspect of his reincarnation claims was that when the young boy's and Satnam Singh's handwriting was compared, it was found to be identical.
Another popular account from Stevenson's collection about past lives reincarnation came from a young girl named Swarnalata. This little girl was just three years old, but nonetheless, she could recall her life as a young woman named Biya Pathak very vividly. She described the house she had lived in, and in fact took her father there one day when they were traveling. The child even said that she'd lived there, and that they could get a better cup of tea in that house than they could have if they'd got it on the road. What sealed this case was that the little girl recognized Biya Pathak's brother, and called him by a pet name from among nine people.
Stevenson's files listed dozens of these types of cases. Further, Stevenson states that when injury happens in one life, it can manifest in the next as a birthmark in the same location as the injury. This was indeed borne out in one of his cases on a man from Thailand, who recalled that he was in fact his own deceased maternal uncle, reincarnated. This man had a scar on his head that matched the location where his maternal uncle had been wounded with a knife and had died as a result.
Another astonishing case was when a little boy claimed to remember a past life in which he had been a man named MahaRam, who had been shot and killed at close range in the chest. And indeed, this young boy had birthmarks on his chest that looked like scars from gunshot wounds.
The 'father' of modern past life regression, Dr. Brian Weiss, supports the concept of rebirth as a plausible one, and so do many other prominent authorities in the field of psychology and psychiatry. Even so, science itself remains very skeptical about the concept of past life rebirth. It's also true, however, that people who have past life regression therapy often suddenly are rid of phobias and fears they've had their entire lives.
Benefits of Past Lives Reincarnation
|
