Want more specifics on your past lives?
Clues of your past lives…are they science or spiritual signs? Well, if you’re exploring your past lives and want more insight, these hints could answer the questions you have been seeking about who’s, what’s, where’s, and when’s. Those who believe in reincarnation suggest that there might be clues to what our past lives were in the various complex aspects that make up our current physical, emotional, intellectual, and psychological personalities. Here are just a few, thanks to About.com:
1. DÉJÀ VU
We’ve all felt it as some point: that eerie, creeping feeling that something we are going through has happened exactly this way before. Psychologist Arthur Funkhouser has broken down this phenomenon into sub-categories: déjà vécu (an event already experienced or lived through), déjà senti (already felt), perhaps triggered by a voice or music; and déjà visité (a place so familiar we feel we’ve been there before).
While scientists and psychiatrists insist there are neurological explanations for these phenomena, others consider that these strange feelings are vague, fleeting memories of past lives. You enter a house or building, for example, in a town you’ve never visited before, but somehow, every detail of this place is familiar. You know what’s in the next room and up the stairs. You have the overwhelming feeling that you’ve been there before. Have you – in a past life?
2. OUT-OF-PLACE MEMORIES
Sometimes, you may have memories that you know for a fact never happened. They might be childhood fantasy, misunderstanding, or even a dream that you now interprets as reality. Or, you might be remembering something that happened before you was born into this lifetime.
As it is, the untrained human memory is a bit faulty and inconsistent (not to mention selective), and it’s quite commonplace to have memories of things that family and friends can attest never occurred. So the question is: Is it faulty memory or a remembrance of lives past?
3. DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES
Recurring dreams and nightmares also have been suggested as being memories or at least clues of past lives. It might consist of locations with specific details that you’ve never been to. Pay attention to the level of detail you experience; are they memories of something important that happened in a past life?
In a similar vein of thought, nightmares can be reflections of past life traumas that have clung to our spirits and haunt our sleep.
4. FEARS AND PHOBIAS
Where do your fears and phobias come from? Fear of such things as spiders, snakes, and heights seem to be built into the human psyche as part of our evolved survival instinct. Many people suffer from phobias that are completely irrational, however. Fear of water, of birds, of numbers, of mirrors, of plants, of specific colors… the list goes on and on. People suffer from all kinds of bizarre phobias.
Reincarnation believers wonder if they are carried over from a previous lifetime. Does a fear of water indicate a previous death by drowning? Could a fear of the color red suggest, for example, that a person was struck or killed by a red streetcar?
5. AFFINITY FOR FOREIGN CULTURE
You probably know a person who was born and raised in the United States but is an ardent anglophile – a person who is interested to the point of obsession with British culture. You might also know someone who can think of little else but getting dressed up and acting the part for the next Renaissance Fair or Civil War reenactment. There are “philes” for virtually every culture on the planet, both modern and ancient, affecting people who seem to have no rationale for their obsessions. Why? Are they merely trying to find familiarity in a culture in which they lived 100 years ago? 1,000 years ago?
6. PASSIONS
It’s good to have things that we are passionate about, as long as they do not become obsessive and debilitating. But from where do passions arise for books, art, antiques, fashion, gardening, theater, cars, trains, aircraft, the paranormal – or any number of other subjects? Intense interest in a specific subject might be totally natural, of course, but might there be a past life connection in some cases?
7. UNCONTROLLED HABITS
How about those uncontrolled habits and obsessions that take over people’s lives and can even marginalize them in society? Obsessive-compulsives and hoarders fit into this category. A man who is obsessive compulsive about the details; a woman who hoards so much junk that she can’t get out of her house. Each of us has at least one bad habit, from fingernail biting to gossiping to procrastination. The extreme forms include addictions to everything from television to Facebook to drugs. Again, psychological explanations can be found for these uncontrolled habits, yet those who believe in reincarnation say they might have roots in past lives.
8. INEXPLICABLE PAINS
Do you have aches and pains that the doctors cannot quite pinpoint or find a medical explanation for? You might be labeled a hypochondriac – a person who imagines his or her ailments. Or, as past life proponents suggest, those mysterious pains, sores, cramps, and more could be reflections of suffering you endured in a previous existence.
9. BIRTHMARKS
Birthmarks have been touted as evidence for reincarnation. In one fascinating case, an Indian boy claimed to remember the life of a man named Maha Ram, who was killed with a shotgun fired at close range. This boy had an array of birthmarks in the center of his chest that looked like they could possibly correspond to a shotgun blast. So the story was checked out. Indeed, there was a man named Maha Ram who was killed by a shotgun blast to the chest. An autopsy report recorded the man’s chest wounds — which corresponded directly with the boy’s birthmarks. In a similar way, various other physical traits – even deformities – have been suggested as having their precedent in a person’s former life.
About the Author
Contacting the Dead Through Psychomanteum Mirror Gazing
Is it possible to connect with loved ones after they’ve moved on from this lifetime? Many people have reported apparitions or felt the presence of an otherworldly spirit at some point in their lives, but those experiences are often spontaneous or fleeting.
While séances and psychic sessions claim to produce connections with the departed, there is another lesser-known method that dates back to ancient Greece: the psychomanteum experience. This modernized practice of mirror gazing has been developed by Dr. Raymond Moody, a man who has devoted his life to studying near-death experiences and, through this process, has had some profound results.
The Ancient Greek Psychomanteum: A Portal to the Dead
In ancient Greece, people would go to a Necromanteion, a ziggurat-like temple that was devoted to Hades, Persephone, and the dead, in order to contact the spirits of their departed relatives. The word Necromanteion translates to “oracle of the dead,” and it was believed that these locations served as gateways between the worlds of the living and the deceased. The most famous of these temples was the Necromanteion of Ephyra, where visitors attempted to communicate with spirits.
Rituals at the Greek Necromanteion
To prepare for these encounters, visitors underwent elaborate rituals that included:
- A ceremonial meal – consisting of barley bread, broad beans, pork, and oysters.
- A cleansing process – involving purification ceremonies
- Animal sacrifices – offered to the Gods of the Underworld
- A mirrored hallway – created by filling a bronze cauldron with water, which was polished frequently to ensure a highly reflective surface.
Under dim lighting, with flickering lamps casting eerie reflections, participants gazed into the water, awaiting visions of their deceased loved ones. Temple priests guided the ritual, chanting invocations to summon spirits. If contact was made, apparitions appeared in the water, whispers echoed through the chamber, or messages came through the priests. To close the ritual, a banishing ceremony ensured no spirits lingered, allowing the living to return unharmed.
Dr. Raymond Moody’s Mirror Gazing
Dr. Raymond Moody, a philosopher, psychiatrist, physician, and author of Life After Life (1975) and Reunions: Visionary Encounters with Departed Loved Ones (1993) is best known for coining the term near-death experience and for his research on consciousness and the afterlife. Inspired by theater of the mind techniques found in ancient texts, Moody revived the concept of the psychomanteum as a method for making contact with spirits. He has dedicated his life to exploring NDEs and contact with the spirit world.
Dr. Moody’s psychomanteum approach differs from the Greek tradition by eliminating animal sacrifice and ritual meals, instead focusing on a structured and meditative environment designed to induce an altered state of consciousness. This process mirrors traditional scrying, also known as catoptromancy, where individuals use reflective surfaces to receive visions.
