Tupperwhere mentioned past lives on another thread. I'm pretty skeptical, but am also curious about the idea.

Any others think they lived in the past? If so, what/where was it?

For me, I wonder if I may have lived as a sailor on a merchant ship in the 17th century. I have a huge fascination with tall ships and the ocean, yet I was born in the midwest and have never lived near the ocean. I went on a week-long cruise for my 40th birthday and was happy as a clam - never got seasick even though we had rough seas the first 2 days out.

I've wondered about this myself and an experience in my family's country of origin the first time I went there that left me quite shaken and wondering whether I had indeed lived before. I really don't know.

I'm extremely curious to know if I have lived before, when, where, all the details. I just don't trust anyone proclaiming the power to tell me these things, to actually give them money to do so. I don't know if I believe any of us have lived before, but I am open to the idea.

here is a good website about reincarnation.

http://www.iisis.net/index.php?page=Ryerson-Semkiw-Intro

I believe we have lived past lives too. A lot of the theory makes sense to me, and although Mr. Benson would strongly disagree, it "feels" right for me.

What I don't get is this. From the earliest civilization that we know of in Mesopotamia the population on the earth was very small compared to what it is today. If people are reincarnating over and over again, and we started with a population of say 50000 back, say 10000 years ago, and today we have over 7 billion, the math just doesn't work out. So even though reincarnation makes sense on one level, on another level it just opens up a bunch more questions.

One answer that makes a great deal of sense on a number of levels (including the most contemporary math and physics) is that "we" (in whatever "form" "we" were in "back then") as consciousness, and as the forms we inhabited on this planet developed, so did our consciousness (gaining greater complexity, in accord with the complexity of our bodily forms), and as complexity multiplied, so did our ability to gain greater experience through consciousness.

Everyone reading this--all of us--are the offspring of (going way back to the very beginnings of our species) an extremely limited number of biological ancestors of our species (in the beginning: I've read maybe five or so...certainly not very many more than that). Those VERY few people reproduced, and reproduced again, and now there are more than six billion of us on the planet.

A similar process could well be (and probably IS) true on a consciousness sense: That the "me" that is truly (with or without a body) "me," the "me" that could be traced (if we had documentation, either biological or written) back to the first human ancestor I ever had, could (and probably DOES)--so far as consciousness goes--ALSO have a common ancestor.

So a number of people either presently living (or dead, doesn't matter) could have the SAME "consciousness ancestor" who once was ONE human being, but whose "consciousness" reproduction now is part of two or more people. (The number doesn't matter; if it happens in ANY case, it happens in LOTS of cases.)

Looking at it from another perspective, a real person who lived centuries ago could have "consciousness descendants" (plural), living NOW: 2013), as different human beings--each with different lives and in different places--but (as in a genealogy tree) all could trace their own, individual, "consciousness descent" back to a specific, PARTICULAR, person who did actually live at a particular place and time in the past.

Each of the "consciousness descendants" could well have actual MEMORIES of the previous life they had lived as this common ancestor, and if they went back to that geographical place, or something similar (they see an exhibit in a museum, hear a piece of folk music, etc.), it would seem like "home"--or would be frightening, etc. depending on the life they actually lived back then.

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 05/09/2013 02:59PM by steve benson.

I was BIC. What did I do in my past life to deserve this?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/09/2013 11:58AM by brothergalileo.

While I remain skeptical I've often wondered about it myself. When I was younger I had recurring dreams where buildings all around me were burning and my family was trying to escape. Men with shining silver skin on horse back were killing the villagers around us. My sisters and I were hiding, and we were found because one of us dropped a toy and the oldest ran back to get it. When I started school I was able to identify the men with shining skin as Spanish Conquistadors. The dreams stopped around age 12 and I haven't had them since then. It's the only thing in my life that was remotely "super natural".

This also offers a possible explanation. http://voices.yahoo.com/ancestral-memories-history-stored-dna-2635479.html?cat=70

Here's the New Scientist article. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026845.000-memories-may-be-stored-on-your-dna.html you'll need an account to read the entire article.

Just count up how many women think they were Cleopatra or Marie Antoinette and how many men think they were Napoleon, Frederick the Great or Casanova and see if the mathematics add up. Not many people relive a past life where they died in the mud, aged 12.

LOL! I love it...so true and so hilarious.

Not sure I've had a past life, but I'm damn sure I was very content before I got to this life:)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/09/2013 01:01PM by iflewover.

you're right. Most people weren't famous at all. They just led ordinary lives.

This common misconception that "everyone" was "someone famous" in a past life is an urban legend. Among those who have real knowledge of people who have been regressed (those who conduct or facilitate regressions...authors who have SERIOUSLY studied this subject...those academics who have gotten involved in regressions for various reasons) the truth is: virtually all of the lifetimes people "remember" or "relive" during regressions are incredibly pedestrian, everyday, lives.

Kathleen Jenks, a PhD from the University of California Santa Barbara, who has regressed literally THOUSANDS of people over a number of decades (this is how she worked her way through university and graduate school), says that--of everyone she has regressed--only a couple were "historical" (important) people. One of these she is convinced that the person she was regressing was actually the historical person being recounted (due to many virtually unknown facts which turned out to historically verified when investigated), and one other she was, in her own mind, fairly convinced because of other reasons. But most of the time, those being regressed lived lives that (until very recent historical times: nineteenth or twentieth century, when "ordinary people" in Europe, North America, etc. had documented facts on file) were dull, pedestrian, and absolutely of no import to anyone except those in their villages or towns or tribes and, maybe, to their descendants. (Some cultures have long genealogies that are chanted as part of the continuing culture.)

Much of the time, in many areas of the earth and in many times, it's very difficult, or impossible, to even know what [present day] country or CONTINENT is involved, because the people being regressed, as they recount their lives, are "back then" and have ONLY the knowledge and information they possessed in THAT lifetime. When my sister was regressed, she went back to a time when she was up on a hillside gathering food and her village was wiped out in a flash flood. She literally thought she was the LAST PERSON THAT EXISTED ON EARTH...and she died a few years later of loneliness (she said she had enough to eat, but she just couldn't live without people anymore).

People being regressed in the last few decades now do have access to government birth, death, and marriage records, religious institution records (baptisms, deaths, marriages, etc.), and so on so much of what they say about fairly recent lives can be verified.

But in reality, and from the knowledge of those who do regressions for many people, virtually NO ONE ever recounts being "Cleopatra" or "Marie Antoinette"--let alone someone like Napoleon, etc.

This is urban legend, folks. People who don't really know anything about reincarnation or regressions would LIKE to believe this, but it is not true.

I believe in "past lives", and have had a "past life regression" and "life between life regression".

I was a field sugeon in the Union Army, a young guy, who died from a bullet to the back of the head about two months before the civil war ended.

There is much, much, much, more to this story, but I'll be damned if I can ever feel comfortable sharing it here.

There's even "proof". Yes, there is. Really.

I understand...muggles are so limited and narrow-minded.

Its curtains right away, you're toast, there would be no memory to look back on.

I put this stuff down to active imagination.

I disagree but if that is what you believe then that's fine.

Good point. If you're seeing all this from a third-party perspective, maybe you were really the third party?

Wow, this is fun stuff.

How could you possibly know you were shot in the back of the head? (facepalm)

The Ghost in your Genes - BBC Horizon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toRIkRa1fYU

I haven't actually watched this documentary yet or read any of the research but it seems interesting.

I did a past life regression once and it made a ton of sense. It explained a lot about my fears, my love of Spanish and my relationship with my son. I found it very helpful. I have heard some people say that it's just your mind trying to make sense of your reality but even if that is true, it did help. I personally believe in past lives but even if it just helps you make sense of your current life, it's worth doing a regression.

So I assume that people who believe in past lives believe in some sort of magical goo that allows the essence of a person to pass from one life to the next? Is anyone able to describe that magical goo? Is anyone able to explain the difference between a false memory and a memory of a past life? Can anyone explain how magical goo interacts with the brain to plant the memory from the past life?

It hadn't occurred to me that what I've been calling our "fluffy cloud selves" could be made of goo.

Either way, I hope you have better luck getting an answer than I did with a similar question:

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,618417,618710

Not just goo, magical goo. To explain the evidence it must interact with matter at the same time as avoiding detection. That requires magic.

If anyone seriously thought that past lives were real they would postulate a theory about the matter that passes from one life to the next. Maybe there were such theories before atoms replaced fire, earth, air and water as the elementary particles?

Yeah well "muggle is as muggle does" right?

Your soul retains all knowledge of your lives, but in your earthly state you can generally only access knowledge of the here and now.
Some traits and tendencies come through, albeit without our understanding of why they do, unless we seek to understand it better through hypnosis or other means.

it just made me depressed. At first, the idea of past lives--well, could be??? Then the idea that I was not me--or with those I love. Do we all just continue on with all the people we've known all along?

And if that is so--my parents died 4 years ago--and if they still exist (which I believe they do), do they remember me? Did they lose their memory of this life when they passed on into the next? Like we can't remember our past lives?

I hope they remember. I think they do. So past lives? And I've forgotten them all. So when I die, I'll forget my kids?

That just makes me think even more so "who thought this up?" To me, it just sounds like torture. If there is a God, I just see this as torture.

Now--if that made any sense. I just threw things out as they hit me after reading what others wrote.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/09/2013 01:59PM by cl2.

Ever hear of REAL "love at first sight"?

How about an older relative and a younger relative (grandparent/grandchild, etc.) who have a special kind of bond with each other that is instantaneous and incredibly deep...and doesn't exist on that level with other relatives in the say way or in the same degree?

How about the best friend you met casually due to circumstance and would lay down your life for (or mortgage your house for, if the person needed the money to survive?).

How about the co-worker you're introduced to on your first day on the job and both of you absolutely LOATHE each other at first sight?

The relationships in our life that we are the MOST deeply involved with (whether they be positive or negative) are almost certainly people we have been involved with in the past. There are REASONS why we feel the ways we do about people.

And what we do NOW--with those particular people--whether those relationships be good feeling or distinctly the opposite, will determine our we begin our relationships with those "same" people in all of our lives to come. We keep meeting up with the "same" people, over and over again.

And if we don't do it as well as we could...we're very likely to get a bunch of new chances to make it up down the line.

cl2 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> it just made me depressed. At first, the idea of
> past lives--well, could be??? Then the idea that I
> was not me--or with those I love. Do we all just
> continue on with all the people we've known all
> along?
>
> And if that is so--my parents died 4 years
> ago--and if they still exist (which I believe they
> do), do they remember me? Did they lose their
> memory of this life when they passed on into the
> next? Like we can't remember our past lives?
>
> I hope they remember. I think they do. So past
> lives? And I've forgotten them all. So when I die,
> I'll forget my kids?
>
> That just makes me think even more so "who thought
> this up?" To me, it just sounds like torture. If
> there is a God, I just see this as torture.
>
> Now--if that made any sense. I just threw things
> out as they hit me after reading what others
> wrote.

We may well lose the memory/memories of the FACTS (who was whose parent...where we lived...often the circumstances under which we lived), but we NEVER "forget" the EMOTIONS.

Strong emotions regarding other people (whether good or bad) are almost always indicators of past life experiences with these "same" people.

Your mother or father may be something else entirely in a future lifetime (a friend, a neighbor, someone you love, etc.), but the EMOTIONS will "begin" at the point where you and that person "left off" in the previous lifetime(s).

You just continuing with another chapter in the "same" book you are "writing"/creating about YOUR "long history"/"long existence," and they are doing the same thing as they are "writing"/creating what becomes that new chapter in THEIR "long history."

No, generally the important relationships you have here are continued in future lives with many of the same people who are part of your "soul group". Our home and where we will spend the bulk of our "time" is not here. No one is kept from relationships that they want to continue.

I've always been interested in past lives. I read somewhere that JS called them "eternal liveS". It might have been what comforted the Saints as they buried their loved ones on the treck west, they could believe they'd see their family member again as another relative or friend in the future.

I did a life regression and found a curious rigid Puritan Preacher who died of hypothermia before he could die of starvation. He was so mean and self rightous he made the worst a**hat Moron look like a sweetie. The take away for me was that my "karma" for being the religious fanatic in that lifetime had been paid in full from being a deceived member of the TSCC for many years in this life time.

I learned that religion is not of God, no matter what pretty promises and face you put on it. Religion is Man-Made.

And Made for the purpose of power and control over others.

The fermions and bosons that are "me" have experienced countless relationships since the big bang. Statistically, of course I've lived past lives.

Now, the assertion that there is some kind of woo woo soul-being who occupies different meat bodies and interacts with brain matter yet somehow retains memories is just silly nonsense leftover from mormonism and other superstitious belief systems..

BTW, I'm neither offended nor impressed if you believe me or not. The actual beliefs we hold will generally be something that we were supposed to hold in this life. If you were born a Muslim, there is a reason. If you were born a Mormon and "discovered the truth" about Mormonism, it is for a reason that helps you grow and experience something you needed to experience.

Don't worry so much. There is time, there are other mountains to climb, and we rest in between in a glorious place of peace. Each life is precious, and we are unique and remain unique, nothing of our lives is ever lost or pointless. Remember, this will appear to you as just my opinion. Accept it as my opinion. You can certainly disagree.

Peace.