Past life memories

If you have children, think of them when they were infants.  Is your impression that they came with their own little characters and personalities?  Up to around 5-7 years many children will remember a past life.

The case of James Leininger.

At the age of two he would bash his toy plane into furniture saying it was in flames and he couldn’t get out.  He also had nightmares about a plane crash. He said he was a pilot called James, of a Corsair aircraft on an aircraft carrier called Natoma, and had a friend called Jack Larsen.  He said his plane was hit on the engine, and burst into flames. He also described how Corsairs would frequently have flat tyres and would always tend to turn to the left.

His father did some research and found that a James Houston had been shot down in the battle for Iowa Jima, having been stationed on the aircraft carrier Natoma Bay, and the person that used to fly with him was a man named Jack Larsen.  Eye witnesses confirmed his aircraft was hit on the engine and didn’t see him eject.

James had three G.I. Joe dolls and named them Leon, Walter and Billie.  When asked why he named the dolls that way he said, "Because they greeted me when I went to heaven".  They were the names of three pilots who coincidentally served with Houston. While his father was looking at a map of the Pacific, his son even recognised and pointed to the place on the map where he was shot down.

Helen Wambach

Helen Wambach set out to prove past life memories were just nonsense.

Beginning in the mid-1960s, she conducted a 10-year survey of past-life recalls under hypnosis among just over 1000 subjects.  She asked very specific questions looking for basic information that could be verified about the time periods in which people lived and the clothing, footwear, utensils, money, housing, etc. which they used or came in contact with. Wambach found people's recollections to be amazingly accurate and wrote that ''fantasy and genetic memory could not account for the patterns that emerged in the results.  With the exception of 11 subjects, all descriptions of clothing, footwear, and utensils were consistent with historical records.''

Her conclusion was:  'I don't believe in reincarnation — I know it!' (Wambach 1978).

Ian Stevenson

Dr Ian Stevenson was perhaps the greatest gift to those looking for Scientific evidence.  He was a real empiricist. A stickler for detail. He limited his research to cases of spontaneous memories avoiding anything that could later be argued was prompted by a hypnotherapist.  He and his colleagues collected more than 2,600 cases, and detailed 65 of these in a four volume publication.

A case would be “solved” by Stephenson when he was able to find the person whose life the child was describing, and that after rigorous investigation that there was no possible opportunity by normal means, no matter how improbable, that the child could have discovered this information.  Carol Bowman reports that he has over 800 such cases which represent a past life memory verified beyond reasonable doubt.

Typically the child knows it’s way around the deceased’s area, leading the way and would spontaneously recognise and identify family and friends of the previous personality, will call them by their pet names, comment on changes to the house, inquire about possessions and reminisce about past events. Often revealing family secrets that only they could have known.

Swarnlata Mishra described her previous personality as Biya Pathak, and that she had two sons. She described her house inside and out, it’s location, the existence of lime furnaces, a railway line and a girls’ school behind the house.

She correctly identified her son Murli, who deliberately attempted to mislead her denying he was Murli.  She lowered her eyes and acted bashfully with her former husband as Hindu wives do. She reminded him he had acquired 1200 rupees  from her before she died and put the money in a box. She commented on the changes to the house in detail and identified two dozen people that she had known.  Here was a 10 year old stranger from far away who acted like the matron of the household. Unsurprisingly she also knew nothing of the family’s events after her previous personality had died.

There are thousands of reports like this.

Birthmarks and defects

When a little Indian boy called Ravi Shankar (not the musician)  was 2 years old he told his parents his real name was Munna but he had been enticed away from his toys by a washerman and a barber and had his throat cut. He even told his parents correctly where his body had been buried.   He wanted his toys back - a wooden slate, a toy pistol, a wooden elephant, a watch and a school bag.

They eventually took him to meet his former family.  He recognised his father, told him the watch he was wearing was the one he bought for Munna in Bombay.  Everything matched including the toys, the details of the murder on the alleged murderer’s confession and Ravi even mentioned a fact that only the family knew: that he had eaten guavas before he left the house prior to his murder.

Ravi was born with a birthmark that matched the long knife wound on his former neck, and from the time he began telling his story he told his parents that the mark was where they had slit his throat.

Stevenson found that in 35% of his verified cases (309 out of 895) the children had birthmarks matching the wounds that killed them and has published a 2300 page book detailing 210 of these.

These are important, because they offer physical evidence of the link between past and present lives.

They can be verified against the medical records and are undeniable tangible evidence.

Some critics might attribute these birthmarks to chance, but a significant number of Stevenson's cases involve two or more matching birthmarks. If you look at the the statistical probability, it is astronomically in favour of them not being attributed to chance.

Birthmarks are not altogether surprising as the mind is known to be in control of the body and a traumatic death is a major psychological event. The word  Psychosomatic itself is made of of the words Psyche: mind , soma:body. Striking examples of the mind controlling the body can be seen in people with multiple personality disorders showing different physiological states.  Each personality can have different eyesight, heart rate, brain activity, even different allergic reactions. So it’s not hard to see how the trauma of a previous traumatic death might be carried through to the next life with a physical imprint.

Children remembering past lives provide so much evidence.  The facts they describe can be corroborated. If their past lives  weren’t genuine, how could they have obtained the information?

To quote  Stephenson “What evidence, if you had it, would convince you of reincarnation?”

Stevenson found that out of the children that did remember past life memories, 36% of them had some phobia relating to their previous death and past life therapists have found the same high proportion in adults who they regress.

These findings give objective credibility to what the past life therapists have presumed all along:  that past life deaths cause present life phobias. And this argument is circular as hypnotherapists know that past life regression works.  So if releasing the memory of the traumatic death that caused the phobia then releases the phobia, with the findings of the research into past life memories, it’s pretty apparent that the past life memories are real.

Brian Weiss

Using regression, Brian Weiss, an American psychologist, transformed his own life as well as that of a patient “Catherine”.   Conventional therapy had been tried with her for years but had failed. So he tried hypnotherapy and regressed her to the point in her life that caused a problem.  He then realised she was describing a past life. In continued sessions Catherine not only described several past lives but also messages came through from spirit masters to assist Weiss himself.   Catherine was quickly cured of the succession of phobias she had based on traumas experiences in past lives and Weiss changed his belief system.

When someone is regressed and talks about a past life, they take on the knowledge of the minutiae that only comes from experiencing that era.  The Bloxham tapes say similar things. Hypnotherapist Arnold Bloxham regressed various people and a book was produced by the BBC producer Jeffrey Iverson who interviewed Bloxham for the BBC.

Regression can also uncover things that historians just didn’t know.

Brian Weiss was one of the brave ones and risked his career by publishing his book.  Past life regression was taboo in terms of contemporary psychiatric treatment, but instead of being ostracised he received letters and calls from psychiatric colleagues who shared his opinions and experiences.  His colleagues had therefore found the same but had not dared say so!

The fact that past life regression therapy works tells us that the mind can cause illness, something that Anita Moorjani described in her NDE.  If the mind can cause it, the mind can also fix it.