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Past Lives Reincarnation: Is It Real?
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 differs greatly from Christianity, which has as its focus Christ's resurrection. The Hindus state that the soul can take any form, whether man, woman or animal. The deeds one does in one's present life, or karma, will dictate what happens to someone 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.
Today, most therapists who use past life regression induce trances in subjects or use hypnosis to get them to recall past lives. Dr. Stevenson did not do that, however. He simply talked to children who could spontaneously recall events from their own 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 stop the boy from discussing this, but the boy was not dissuaded and continued. He was even able to reveal the name of the man's father. He claimed that as Satnam, he had died as a result of a motorcycle accident he'd been in as he rode home from school. Closer investigation found thatSatnam had indeed died in this manner. The boy was also able to reveal personal information about the family, but the 'clincher' was that when the child's and the man's handwriting samples were compared, they were identical.
Another startling case from Stevenson's files involved that of a young girl, three years old, named Swarnalata. This child remembered that she had been a young woman named Biya Pathak, and could vividly described the house that she lived in. In fact, when she and her father were traveling one day, she led her father directly to the property and even said that she had lived in the area; further, she said that they could get a better cup of tea in that house than they could on the road. Her recollections were completely validated, however, when the little girl recognized the young woman's brother, and addressed him by a pet name the young woman had had for him, from 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 well-known case of Stevenson's was that of a boy who claimed to be a man called MahaRam in a past life. This man had been killed by close gunshots to the chest, and the boy carried similar scar-like birthmarks on his chest that looked like gunshot wounds.
Dr. Brian Weiss is considered to be the father of modern past life regression, and he and several other eminent authorities in the field of psychiatry and psychology consider that the concept of rebirth is in fact a plausible one. Nonetheless, science itself remains very skeptical about it. It's also worth noting here, however, that when people do undergo past life regression therapy, they often suddenly dispense with lifelong fears and phobias.
Plan The Future By Understanding Past Lives Reincarnation
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