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Past Lives Reincarnation And A New Understanding
Past lives reincarnation theorizes that the soul goes through other lives and other births; Hinduism is one such philosophy focuses on past lives reincarnation, dictated by athma, the soul, and karma, or deeds. Hindu religious scriptures state that the soul cannot be destroyed, and therefore lives on, changing form from one body to the next just as we might shed old clothes for new once the old ones have worn out.
This is a very different philosophy from that of Christian theory of reincarnation, which focuses on the resurrection of Christ. It is believed that the soul can take any form, whether man, woman, or animal. The deeds or karma of the human being in the present life are what determines the kind of life that person will have in the next life.
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.
Dr. Ian Stevenson has the most compelling modern day account of rebirth, as represented in the data he collected. Modern science still pooh-poohs rebirth as a legitimate claim, so it can't be stated that this is the most noted source of scientific information on past lives reincarnation as a theory. However, it's the most famous and is extremely well documented because Dr. Stevenson was a psychiatrist and had 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.
Most noted and perplexing among these cases was that of a small child, a boy, six years old, from a small village in Punjab. This child claimed that he had been a man named Satnam Singh; further, he could vividly describe the man's village of Chakkchela, even though the boy had never actually been there.
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's files contain literally dozens of these cases. He also states that it can often happen that a trauma in the last birth can take form in the next life as a birthmark. One subject certainly had this happen to him. He recalled that he was his deceased maternal uncle, and a scar on his head proved to be a match to the knife wound his uncle had died from, also on his uncle's head in the same location.
Another child Stevenson talked to said that he had been a man named MahaRam. This man had been killed by close range gun fire in his chest area. And indeed, the child had birthmarks on his chest that very much looked like bullet wound scars.
Many psychiatrists and other eminent authorities in psychology and psychiatry believe in rebirth as a legitimate concept, including Dr. Brian Weiss, who is considered to be the father of past life regression. However, science continues to be very skeptical about it. Nonetheless, it's also worth noting that when many people undergo a few sessions of past life regression therapy, they experience the sudden disappearance of phobias and fears they've had their entire lives.
Memories Of The Past Can Heal Your Present
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