Incredible Evidence For Remembering Past Lives
Could your love of sushi be proof that you were Japanese in a past life? Maybe not, but for a group of 24 Burmese children, it might just be the case. After WWII, a large group of children in Burma claimed to have been Japanese soldiers in a past life. They could not tolerate the spicy Burmese cuisine; instead, they craved raw fish.
This is just one of the thousands of documented cases in which memories seem to carry over from past life experiences. The concept of reincarnation is held in many parts of the world, especially those areas where Hinduism and Buddhism are practiced, but not until recently has it come to be a widely accepted idea in the Western world. A number of researchers are seriously exploring the evidence for reincarnation, especially in the context of past life regressions.
It’s been estimated that about a million people have accessed past life memories in one way or another. The most common method is through a guided therapy session with a psychotherapist. During these sessions, the subject is put under hypnosis while a therapist guides them with directions and questions. Regressions are often cathartic, accessing memories that are somehow tied to physical afflictions or anxiety experienced in the current lifetime.
One of the most prominent names in past life regression is Dr. Brian Weiss. His daughter, Amy Weiss, had never had a successful regression, despite her father’s profession. Amy had recently been diagnosed with cataracts at the age of 25, an unusual condition for someone her age, and she decided to participate in one more session.
Surprisingly, Amy experienced a successful past-life regression; connecting with an old man in the middle ages who was accused of being a wizard. His house was set on fire by villagers, subsequently burning his eyes. She said she felt a connection with the man’s heart and realized it could be tied to her cataracts. The session proved to have a profound therapeutic benefit, and her cataracts cleared up shortly after.
Past life regressions can be a contentious topic among practitioners of psychology. The evidence and accounts are overwhelming, but there is debate as to what they really are.
Dr. Ian Stevenson was a well-respected psychologist and was the chair of the department of psychology at the University of Virginia. He was given a million-dollar grant to fund research into paranormal psychology, or parapsychology, with the intention of disproving the concept of reincarnation. Stevenson researched thousands of cases on the uncanny memories of young children from their past lives. While his intention was to disprove this phenomenon, in the end, he became one of its staunchest defenders and most dedicated researchers.
One child in India, who was born with boneless stubs for fingers on his right hand, remembered the life of a farm boy who had lost the fingers on his right hand in a grass-chopping accident. What really makes this case remarkable is that Stevenson was unable to find a single medical record of another birth with this unique deformity.
Today, Dr. Jim Tucker continues to conduct the work started by Stevenson. Unlike past life regressionists, Dr. Stevenson and Dr. Tucker do not study those put under hypnosis. Instead, they look at cases of kids who start to spontaneously remember things and who start speaking about their previous lives while fully cognizant. In one of Tucker’s papers, he recounts a story of a boy from Thailand who, at the age of three, started complaining that he had been shot and killed in his past life while riding a bicycle to school. He even remembered that he was a local teacher named Bua Kai. His grandmother took him to the village where he said he lived, and he lead her to a house. He recognized the people living there and they confirmed that five years earlier, their son Bua Kai had been shot and killed while riding a bicycle to work.
He was shot in the back of the head marked by a small entry wound with a larger exit wound in the front of his head. The little boy had been born with a small birthmark on the back of his head and a larger, oddly-shaped mark on his forehead.
Closer to home, Dr. Tucker investigated a truly uncanny case in Oklahoma that made national headlines. When Ryan Hammons was 5 years old, he began telling his mother “I used to be someone else” and “take me home to Hollywood.” The boy had a surprising array of specific facts on hand about his former life, including dancing on Broadway, starring in films with Mae West, and eventually becoming a Hollywood agent. Ryan’s mother began looking through books of old Hollywood, and when she reached a still image from the 1932 movie “Night After Night,” Ryan pointed to a man on the edge of a frame and said, “that’s me!” With the help of Dr. Tucker, they were able to identify this man after weeks of investigation as Marty Martyn, an extra who had danced on Broadway and eventually became a powerful agent.
All in all, Ryan was able to provide 55 specific details of Martyn’s life which would not have been available without an investigation: including the name of the street he lived on, his work history, details of his wives and children, and more.
Is it possible that we have led past lives in which memories could have transcended into this lifetime, continuing to remain in the depths of our subconscious? There is widespread evidence that is hard to refute or explain. Past life regression therapists and traditional psychiatrists are still at odds as to what is really being accessed when someone undertakes one of these sessions. But even some of the most astute academics and doctors have been convinced that there is some sort of phenomenon happening that can’t be easily explained.
Can This Brainwave Study Explain What Happens to Consciousness When We Die?
A new study records the brain waves of a dying person in detail for the very first time. Could the findings explain what happens in our transition into death?
While there is plenty of anecdotal evidence from people who have had Near-death Experiences or NDEs, there is little to no hard scientific data on what happens in the brain as people are dying.
Now, researchers who recorded 15 minutes of brain wave activity in a dying man, are speculating that the findings may explain the phenomenon of life recall or review that many near-death experiencers report.
Dr. Eben Alexander is a neurosurgeon who, in 2008, experienced an NDE as he lay in a coma caused by a serious case of viral meningitis. After a miraculous recovery, he went on to write about the experience in several best-selling books.
“There’s a tremendous amount of evidence that, at the end of life, our consciousness does not just disappear as one might assume if the brain created consciousness,” Alexander said. “But in fact, our consciousness seems to expand in dramatic ways, and I think this is where a deeper understanding of NDEs is crucial for us to understand the mind-brain relationship and the nature of consciousness itself.”
To Alexander, while the study is a step in the right direction towards understanding what happens when we die, it is fraught with some misunderstandings.
“Now, there are many problems with this study and the main thing I’ll point out here is, first of all, do not confuse correlation with causality,” Alexander said.
“This is a common mistake in neuroscience and it results from the unproven assumption, and in fact, I would say a disproven assumption, that the brain is creating consciousness, and therefore, to find any change in phenomenal consciousness we must look for a neural correlate; some physiologic change in the brain. And modern studies just show that that reasoning is false, there’s more to it than just what’s going on in the brain.”
