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Philosophy/religion

Do you believe in reincarnation?

23 replies

VitoCorleone · 28/04/2014 19:35

I'm just curious as to how many people believe in it, is there some sort of endless loop of life and we keep coming back?

Ive been reading about some 'case studies' of children who have recalled accurate details of past lives and wonder how this is possible if reincarnation does not exist.

My own son has spooked me a few times. When he was 3 he pointed at the canvas in my living room if the New York skyline, he told me "i had a scary dream about new York last night, it went bang and the towers fell down, there was people in the towers and they died, some people got out" there is no possible way my son knew about 9/11.

Lots of other little things but the 9/11 was the main one. Although he has mentioned that he knew his nana (my mum) and me when i was still a baby in a pram. I wrote that off as an over active imagination, but who knows?

He's 5 now and cant remember any of these things.

Also, when i was a child there was a house next to the railway line and every time i walked past it i would say to my mum 'i used to live in that house' and was convinced that my aunty Susan lived in a house just outside of our town (she never did) I still walk past that house every day and have no memory of saying anything about it, but i still remember being convinced that my aunty lived in that other house Confused

Does anybody else believe in this? Does anybody have any interesting stories about it?

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OneEggIsAnOeuf · 29/04/2014 14:49

There was a good discussion a while back here, or at least it started of well before degenerating. Not sure i have the wherewithal to go through it all again.

I'm open to reincarnation as a possibility, but have no faith in the reliability of past life regression as evidence. I do think some of the research into past life recall in children is interesting, but it is not conclusive - there are flaws in how the evidence has been collected which leaves room for other explanations.

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Thumbwitch · 29/04/2014 14:52

I do, really. I also believe that we get a chance to "rest" in between lives sometimes. My personal beliefs are a bit complicated, tbh! But they work for me.

Thing is, everything natural in the world is recyclable - and therefore it makes sense to me that our spirits are also recycled (although obviously reincarnated is a much nicer word!). But I do also believe that we get to "see" family again, so the resting phase is part of that.

Your Ds's memories sound amazing!

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MumsyFoxy · 29/04/2014 14:57

No way. "Souls" do not exist; they are a trick of the brain so we die when the brain dies.
No afterlife, no reincarnation.

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VitoCorleone · 29/04/2014 18:19

Souls do not exist? How do you know this?

I remember visiting my grandfather in the parlour of repose, i was scared because id never seen a dead person and upset that i would just want him to wake up. As soon as i seen him i felt calm, it was as though id had an epiphany, yes his body was there, but his soul wasn't, that part of him had gone, his body was just like a shell that had carried his soul. Weird, but that was exactly what i thought when i saw him.

I believe in souls. I also wonder if his soul has come back, has it stayed in our family? There has been 6 children born into our family since he passed, his energy could be in one of them. I think we tend to stay with the same people during each of our lifetimes, maybe that's why we are attracted to certain people? Because we've always been with them?

Sounds 'woo' but those are my belief's

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MumsyFoxy · 29/04/2014 18:32

VitoCorleone, you can have your opinions, but you cannot have your own facts. There is no empirical evidence, a.k.a "evidence", that suggests part of us survives death.
If you felt that your grandfather's "soul" had "left his body", it's because that's exactly what a dead person looks like (sorry, hope you do not find this hurtful). I have seen my dead grandparents, and aa much as I loved them and still miss them, I do no think (or hope) that they have reincarnated through the birth of a new baby in the family, that would be not treating a new baby like their own person.

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IndigoBarbie · 30/04/2014 15:09

Hi VitoCorleone, I know of this. I know my soul is eternal, and I too have past life recall. Also, my DS speaks of times when I wasn't his mum, and has quite openly said things like 'When you were my son..' I never led him into believing or disbelieving anything - nor do I ever dismiss what he says. I listen openly, and allow him to tell me. At around 3 he was telling me things every other day, he had memories of things happening to him and would say 'when i came to visit you when you were a little girl,' and he could describe people and toys and places, he became insistent as if he was annoyed that I too couldn't remember, since he'd ask me if I did.

When I was younger I would see things/people/shadows etc in my room, and my parents were adamant there was 'nothing there.' Not so IMO, but when you are a child, parents seem to always think that they are right.

Into adult life now, I still see people/flashes of light/past loved ones etc and I have many many dreams where I lived in other times, and coming into my late 20s into my early 30s I began to meet and recognise people in RL who actually appeared in my prior dreams. I went on to experience a few past life regressions and these really allowed me to cement what I already knew as real.

I'm sure I have contributed to many other threads on here on the whole past life subject, and during spiritual awakenings I have had a change of beliefs/thoughts etc through my own experiences. Although past life recall/ debate about them being valid or real is interesting, it's what we do in this current life that is the most important.

Off to dig out more from my journals...check other threads etc

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expatinscotland · 30/04/2014 15:15

No. I don't believe there is any sort of afterlife.

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VitoCorleone · 30/04/2014 19:55

Wow Indigo that's fascinating, id love to be regressed, there's a woman who does it local to me but ive always been dubious, do they allow you to record the session so you can hear it for yourself?

expat do you not believe in heaven or anything?

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Lookingforfocus · 30/04/2014 22:04

I don't believe in reincarnation but I do believe we all have an eternal soul.

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ohmymimi · 30/04/2014 23:08

No. Dead and gone is really that. I'm sure it comforts some to believe there is more than this life, though.

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expatinscotland · 30/04/2014 23:36

No, I don't believe in heaven or anything like that. Dead is dead.

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RabbitPies · 01/05/2014 10:22

Definitely not. There is no afterlife.

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PedroYoniLikesCrisps · 01/05/2014 19:26

My 3 year old says all kinds of stuff. Some of it true, some of it not. If I really wanted to believe, I could probably read a lot into that, but it's just toddler talk.

Back to the OP you say there's no way he could know about 9/11. Really? Do you know for sure it's never cropped up on telly, in a magazine, on the Web, when you weren't there to see? No one could have possibly mentioned it in conversation when he was within earshot? You have the skyline on your wall, even without the direct link a dream could easily be caused by a combination of that picture, which is surely a familiar sight, and some other reference to an explosion or accident of some kind.

Automatically assuming that because a child had this kind of dream means that there's an afterlife demonstrates a complete lack of desire to actually understand what's really going on.

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VitoCorleone · 02/05/2014 14:38

I can assure you that he never had ANY exposure to 9/11 before saying that. I don't watch tv until he's gone to bed and he doesn't go on the internet, he's with me all day and (at the time) was at preschool one morning a week, pretty sure they don't teach 3/4 year olds about terrorism.

Of course it could have been 'just a dream' and a coincidence that it was in New York. Who knows?

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IndigoBarbie · 12/05/2014 23:07

Vito, Yes my sessions were recorded. Give it a go if you feel like it. It's something different and explained a lot to me about my relationships in this current life.
My practitioner had learned the whole life between lives practise that was founded by Dr MIchael Newton. I gained a lot from my regressions.

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puddymuddles · 26/05/2014 22:41

I do believe in reincarnation and fit it in with my Christian beliefs as it was part of the beliefs in early Christianity. There are even hints about it in the Bible. However we go to church and I don't talk about my belief in reincarnation as don't think some others there would understand.

When I was 19 I went on a trip to Italy with a group of friends. We all stayed in what used to be a monastery and there was a piano in a room there. One day I went off on my own and sat there to play the piano. I suddenly had a very strong feeling of homesickness for Scotland. It was as if I remembered being away from a place with rolling hills and knew it was a small village in the Highlands. I knew I was in Italy but it felt as if I had been in Italy before or at least somewhere similar and had missed Scotland. I am from London and have no Scottish roots. In fact I have Irish roots but have never had a particular interest in Ireland. When I was a child I used to nag my parents to take me to Scotland and they took me to Edinburgh and I said I wanted to go to the highlands and got upset that they hadn't taken me to the right place.

I also recently had a dream that I had been my DD1s mother in a past life and something had happened to her as I had been distracted by something and had not kept a proper eye on her. I think something very bad happened to her but the dream did not show me the details. I have 2 DDs and have always felt more worried and protective over DD1 wheras there is no reason for this she is happy and healthy. My dream explained to me why I worry about her more - I don't want to make the same mistake as in the previous life.

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Joey8 · 05/06/2014 17:48

There are fabulous books which have case studies on this, on lives between lives and what happens when we die. I think they were called Destiny of Souls and Journey of Souls. Definitely worth a read!

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Joey8 · 05/06/2014 17:50

Ooh yes IndigoBarbie - Michael Newton - thats the one! Hes the author of those books :-)

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OneEggIsAnOeuf · 06/06/2014 12:35

I am very dubious about Michael Newton's work. He is keen to be seen as an academic and professional, yet chooses to present his work through his books (which have coincidentally made him millions), rather than through channels that would allow his work to be scrutinised by his peers. It would be entirely possible for him to do this, but instead it is impossible to evaluate the truth behind his case studies since he has admitted the transcripts are edited and adapted for ease of reading. This means you only have his word for it.

A true academic would would make available the unedited versions, especially since there are well known issues with using hypnosis as evidence. He also freely states that many of his subjects have come to him through recommendations from friends who had been regressed, so they would already have a good idea of what to expect. There is also, importantly, no attempt to verify anything that anyone has said while regressed - obviously it would be impossible to verify life between life info, but the past life info is often very detailed - why no fact checking?

He is also extremely vague as to where his phd came from, leaving him open to the accusation that it is of the mail order and/or unaccredited variety as sported by the likes of Gillian McKeith and Doreen Virtue. If he can't be truthful about this, why trust him on anything else, especially on something as important as claiming proof for life after death?

I'm not having a go at anyone's beliefs here. I just think people need to be a bit more circumspect when reading this stuff. I have infinitely more respect for the work of Ian Stevenson as he at least was a proper academic with checkable credentials who attempted to find a methodology to look critically at claims of past life recall. While his methods may have been flawed, at least you can see what they were.

My other problem with Michael Newton's version of the afterlife is that it is just so dull! Ok - the second book is less dull, but then we have alien horse creatures and what have you, which is way beyond where i draw the line.

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OneEggIsAnOeuf · 09/06/2014 14:27

Just realised that his wiki page has been deleted. Curious.

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IndigoBarbie · 09/06/2014 20:42

Why would anyone have to hold an academic qualification to prove their worth with their research?

Newton's research and books attracted criticism due to this questioning technique for his clients.

As I understand it: he had no 'peers' to speak of, since - he was now into something different that others had not yet fully experienced. I can understand why he has put his books out the way he has.

What about your perspective of others in this field - Many Lives, Many Masters author Brian Weiss?

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OneEggIsAnOeuf · 09/06/2014 23:21

Credentials would not matter if they are not then used to give yourself an air of authority.

Michael Newton claims to have a phd but does not state where and when it came from. He is a master hypnotherapist - something you can obtain from completing distance learning modules, and is a member of ACA that does not actually stipulate any standard of attainment to achieve accreditation, unlike the BACP in the UK (i have read he is not actually a member either but don't know that as a fact). He also states in his biography that he teaches at higher educational institutions, but does not say where or what yet again.

Given the way he has presented his work you have no choice but to take him at his word, or not. It makes him look shady as nothing that he says is verifiable. If he truly was an academic in any of the fields he claims to be qualified in then he would have peers to endorse his work.

Brian Weiss at least does have bona fide credentials as an academic and scientist. Unfortunately he does not apply these skills to his work. He could have presented his work as proper research but has not done so. Again, none of the details recalled by Catherine in MLMM are checked.

The one that sticks in my mind is when she is in Wales but does not know the year as she can only recall the year if it is written down and she can see it. Yet, on another occasion she comes up with a perfectly precise date for a year several centuries bc, when, apart from the fact the date is highly unlikely to be written down, it isn't going to be in an ad/bc format is it? Also in the Wales episode she talks of Hampstead, a sea port in South Wales. You don't need me to tell you that there is no such place, and also the name Hampstead is of Saxon derivation and not likely to be the name of some long gone port in prehistoric Wales. There are many other inconsistencies.

I know Weiss has an explanation for all the errors, but his explanation, only confirms the unreliability of information given under hypnosis. It is telling that he was censured by the medical profession after the book came out.

As i said before, i have great respect for Ian Stevenson and his successor Jim Tucker. It is not the subject itself that i have a problem with, simply what is purported to be proof is anything but.

Out of wine and going to bed!

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OneEggIsAnOeuf · 10/06/2014 15:55

Sorry - made a mistake in the last post. Catherine didn't claim she was in prehistoric Wales. I got mixed up with the other story with the BC date (i did say wine was involved).

I think i got confused because in the Welsh story she claims she was speaking 'British' - you would expect her to say Welsh or even English. It is possible she meant British as in Brittonic/Brythonic, which was the forerunner to Welsh, Cornish etc, which would have put this episode at an early date (pre C6th). This would make the rest of her story, not least the use of gunpowder and the printing press, rather unlikely.

The trouble with all this is that Brian Weiss as a 'scientist' fails to use the most basic of methods, ie to check any facts. He simply takes what his patient tells him as fact, and we are then supposed to do the same with him.

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