Previous life experiences.

I'm just asking this after reading the replies about the neuroscientist that experienced heaven. And I was wondering if anybody else has had previous llife experiences or fill that they're drawn into a particular era of history. When I was in middle school, well before that, sometimes I would have dreams which were the same.
I was always staring at a pocket watch in a trench watching it tick away and then a whistle would blow and and I would watch people go "over the top" and then a massacre would happen and things would get fuzzy. It wasn't until I was in middle school and felt a compelling desire to research WW1 history that I realized what these dreams could have been about. I spent the next 3 years researching everything WW1 by some kind of drive I couldn't explain. I still am extremely curious about all aspects of WW1 and can answer pretty much any history questions about WW1 or WW2. Even though my college degrees are science, I am constantly told I should be a history teacher because I seem to naturally grasp turn of the century information. It also led me in my teens to live like Hemingway and drink and constantly push girls I liked and the one gurl I loved away from me like I was a hopeless romantic of sorts. But like I said those early pictures in my head led me down that quest.

Has anybody ever had these same experiences before? How did they come about? And did you it lead you to a hobby or research quest that interested you intently for some reason you couldn't explain,

I'lve always told people that I wasn't born for this century but for the last one.

reply to post by Swing80s


I don't have much time to respond.
All I've gotta say though, is look into books by Brian Weiss M.D. "Only Love Is Real" and "Many Lives, Many Masters," are great!

For me...I've always had flashbacks or feelings of being buried alive...I don't know if this could be from a past life, or if this is just my overactive imagination.

Cheers!

For a long time, I've had dim flashbacks of being in a walled-off, flower-filled garden... from the 1800s, perhaps. It's always triggered by a particularly gentle and quaint sound of piano music.

I'm aware that the origin may in fact be the book The Secret Garden (because the garden is similar to how I pictured the one from the book while reading it), or some other thing years ago that I don't consciously remember.

But the piano music connected to it... of that, I'm not certain. Maybe a subconscious memory.

I'm thinking about starting a company, something like a Bank/Storage facility where people can store all their stuff, valuables, money, everything before they die, so, if they want, in the next life, they can come back and get their old, now suddenly 'antique', valuables back.

I suspect I'll make more money than the people selling Rapture Insurance; another fun scam to rip people off where policy holders pay for the peace of mind that their pets, and valuables will be looked after, attended to, and passed on to deserving souls that don't get raptured away.

Easy money.

Store all your stuff for a future incarnation of yourself! All one needs do is verify their previous incarnation through describing a few key items cataloged in storage, as well as an associated password with the account.



Projections on anyone actually producing tangible proof of a past life ... zero.

reply to post by Druscilla


Are you intentionally trying to derail this thread with your comment? Or just trying to be witty?

Depending on the definition of "past life" you use, your claim is false. Technically, our material composition has been derived from matter from the past. The atoms that comprise our bodies have not sprung into existence upon our birth, but have been re-organized from a past life, as it were to built each one of us.

You being a practical person, as you always tend to be on these types of threads, should agree.

So the concept of a past life is not as far fetched as you are making it seem. Can you try and contribute a little more next time

I have been drawing the Egyptian Eye of Ra since I was about 9 years old. I have always had a strange connection to it.

Also, the Ankh has always meant something to me as well.

I have an inkling that I was Egyptian in one of my past lives.

Originally posted by MDDoxs
reply to post by Druscilla

 

Are you intentionally trying to derail this thread with your comment? Or just trying to be witty?

Depending on the definition of "past life" you use, your claim is false. Technically, our material composition has been derived from matter from the past. The atoms that comprise our bodies have not sprung into existence upon our birth, but have been re-organized from a past life, as it were to built each one of us.

You being a practical person, as you always tend to be on these types of threads, should agree.

So the concept of a past life is not as far fetched as you are making it seem. Can you try and contribute a little more next time

edit on 13-10-2012 by MDDoxs because: (no reason given)

I'm intentionally expressing my opinion regarding the delusional concept of past and future lives sprung from a concept derived out of wish fulfillment magical thinking out of a desire for something more out of life than just life itself as well as from the desire for confirmation of life continuance in the foreboding face of mortality itself.

I'm intentionally expressing said opinions on-topic, in a free and open forum without violating T&C.

Let me know when someone pops up claiming they were Alexander the Great in a past life as there's this issue that Archaeologists have regarding the location of his tomb.

Similarly, other historical questions important to archaeology could certainly be answered by someone remembering a certain past life, but, no, it doesn't happen.

Further, what about having past lives as different dinosaurs?
Dinosaurs were around for hundreds of millions of years such that you'd think if there were such things as spirits and souls and such there'd be plenty dinosaur memories to go around since, as you say, we're all made up of recycled stuff.
Oh, wait, only human past lives are important because there's something extra special significant about being human, because only humans have souls or spirits or something?

How'd that happen if so? At what point in evolution did people suddenly develop a soul? Was it some time during Homo Erectus, Cro-Magnon, or only recently in the last 30k years of contemporary Homo Sapiens?

Yay first post for me! Lol. But when I was just beginning to talk, I freaked my family out by discussing WWII in great detail. I told them technical aspects about German tanks and weaponry. It stopped when I was about 6-7.

reply to post by Druscilla


Seems like you have gotten a little emotional at my comment. I wanted to point out that your claim, in a certain context is wrong. You must not let being told that, but it has motivated you to post something constructive.

I value and cherish your opinion and your contribution . Try not to bash other opinions to much. If you want to portray yourself as an intellectual seeking wisdom and truth, try not to be closed minded.

In my experience, scientific laws and facts are just waiting to be proven inaccurate or incomplete. That's the fun of it.

Your friend MDDoxs

reply to post by Swing80s
Although I haven't read anything that *convinces* me about past life experiences, it's a subject I find interesting. It's a tough concept to accept if we look at it coldly and rationally however the anecdotal evidence raises questions that few choose to answer.

Dr Ian Stevenson became well-known for his research into past-lives and you might find them interesting. Along with others, he found it tended to be very young children who claimed recollection of events and people they shouldn't have known:

Children who speak about previous lives usually begin to do so between the ages of 2 and 4. In a group of 458 such children the mean age for first speaking about a previous life was 37 months. Most of the children continue to make references to the previous life until the ages of 6 to 8. In a group of 135 cases the mean age of ceasing to speak about the previous life was 7 % years. The number and content of the children's statements vary widely. Most of the children, however, refer to the mode of death in the previous life. In a group of 419 cases,
74% referred to the mode of death. Violent death figured in these cases much more than in the general populations where they occur. In a group of 536 cases the concerned deceased person died violently in 274 (51%) of the cases. (The data given in this paragraph were first published in Cook et al., 1983;
information could not be obtained about some features.)

Some Bodily Malformations Attributed to Past Lives - Stevenson et al

The guy was Head of Perceptual Studies at Virginia School of Medicine and pursued an active interest in the field. Given the claims of past-lives and the fact that they remain mostly anecdotal and difficulty to prove, he never succeeded in proving the existence of reincarnation.

If it ever turns out to be founded in scientific fact, I think NDE research will also be intertwined with it. As it stands, I've no problem suspending my judgement and entertaining the possibility that there is more to our consciousness and experience than we can be certain of at this time. Past life recollections could be sincere and genuine, but that doesn't automatically mean that souls exist or that the person recollecting another life was once the person living it.

So I'm not drifting your thread too far from your OP...from the age of 5, I had a fascination with 1940s/'50s Britain. Something about that era calls to me. If I was less of a sceptical person, I'd enjoy pretending to myself that I once lived in that period.

reply to post by Kandinsky


Very interesting stuff! I have read many a tail of children having substantial knowledge about past events, that they should in no one have any recollection.

I just want to add that their are theories of cell memory that can be transferred.

I apologize I do not have time to get into it, but just thought I would make this quick post to add.

reply to post by MDDoxs

The atoms that comprise our bodies have not sprung into existence upon our birth, but have been re-organized from a past life, as it were to built each one of us.

Please explain.

If there were such a thing as reincarnation, the atoms from any past life would be alive and well in our dead bodies in a grave somewhere - bodies die, atoms don't. If the dead bodies have rotted, then those atoms are in the ground or eaten by bugs.
-----------------------------------------

Though I seriously doubt there's such a thing as a past life, I can't explain why I keep getting the image of an arid landscape where I'm sitting on a boulder jutting from the ground. I can't see myself, but it FEELS like I"m a primitive human that has been cast out of a tribe. Or maybe the tribe was killed and I have lived alone without shelter ever since.

I've probably watched too many documentaries on evolution.

reply to post by jiggerj


I think he is referring to the fact that our universe is a closed system. Therefore all atoms present at the time of creation are just recycled.

Meaning you, I and everyone else are a recombination of those initial particles, ergo past life of our bodies at the least.

I do not know about consciousness or memories though...

Originally posted by BaneOfQuo
reply to post by jiggerj

 

I think he is referring to the fact that our universe is a closed system. Therefore all atoms present at the time of creation are just recycled.

He clearly stated:

The atoms that comprise our bodies have not sprung into existence upon our birth, but have been re-organized from a past life,

reply to post by jiggerj


Your missing the text after that comma. I read that sentence as, the atoms existed before a persons birth and could be metaphorically seen as having a "life".

Atoms are one of the basic foundations of matter and I would hesitate to suggest they are capable of life.

I actually think we might all be reincarnations of every single other being in the Universe. Maybe the only people who recall lives are the ones who happened to also be a human in their last life.

I posted this in a thread I had on Reincarnation back in the spring. I'll share it here...


When I was very young, around 3 or 4, I used to go hide under the dining room table, or whatever I could get under, when I heard a plane flying overhead. Back then planes made a sonic boom, and made a sound like a bomb being dropped as they flew over, unlike today. I would be shaking in fear while waiting for the bomb to hit. My face showed pure terror, and I even cried most times in fear.

As I grew older I had "memories" of the Korean war. I was astonished when I was old enough to realize that war happened before I was born! I wondered, 'how could this be?' My mind was discombobulated over this fact! Ha!

Also, I remember being on a passenger plane that went down. This seemed to be from a different lifetime than the one where I served in the military. I had bits and pieces of the event come to me in dreams, each time adding more of the "memory". The last dream I had about it lasted until right before impact. I haven't dreamed it since.

To this day, I will NOT fly. I would have to be totally unconscious to get me on a plane! This "memory", or dream, was so terrifying, and left a deep, deep, negative impression on me about flying. No, thanks! I'll keep my feet on the ground this lifetime!

I think my fear of planes flying overhead as a child was due to being involved in a war. Was I an innocent civilian who's town was bombed, or was I serving in the military, hearing all the bombs going off? Who knows?

I have no explanation of why I was so terrified of the sound of planes at such a young age. We didn't watch war movies when I was growing up. My dad watched westerns, and my mom watched the usual g-rated programs of that era. So, I wasn't exposed to the scene of war from watching it on t.v.

I had two traumatic memories involving planes from past lives; therein lies my fear of them in this lifetime. No other explanation I can come up with.

Originally posted by MDDoxs
reply to post by Kandinsky

 

Very interesting stuff! I have read many a tail of children having substantial knowledge about past events, that they should in no one have any recollection.

I just want to add that their are theories of cell memory that can be transferred.

I apologize I do not have time to get into it, but just thought I would make this quick post to add.

I've read so many different books on reincarnation I don't remember which one I read this in, but some scientists argue it is "cell memory" that was passed to us by our ancestors that gives us memories of past lives.

In one case study I read about this person who remembered a past life as a woman that didn't have any children, and she remembered more lives prior to, and after that one.
If it was cell memory, she wouldn't have been able to remember the life of the woman with no children because there was nobody to pass the cell memory to concerning that lifetime. So, this rules out the theory of cell memory, IMO.

A decade or so ago I kept having a reocurring dream. First, I am a male.

In my dream, I saw a woman getting battered by a drunk man. The poor woman was brutalized by this pig. It was obvious the couple were married and very poor. They were both in their mid fifties during the 1950's. The dream came at me over and over again. One day I realized I was the woman! Never had the dream again.

It's no wonder I came back as a male in the late 1960's!?

Speaking of coming back, seems like most people came back from these great lives that were so romantic and adventerous. Didn't happen to me. LOL

Of course, if you believe in this kind of thing.

I have past life memories but if I share I will be in deep #. soon though I will compile them in real time readable fashion.

On my mind it is