Do you believe in past lives?
- Thread starter Johnnny
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Given the many billions that have died we should have wall to wall ghosts and every child would have died of fright.
That kind of explanation reminds me of religionists. Oh well, too each their own.
Yeah, but I think only the ones who die with unfinished business end up being ghosts, they are the tormented ones who can not R.I.P.
I think there may be a period of time (maybe years) between death and reincarnation. There was a case in England a few years ago of a little girl who died and got reincarnated into her younger sister several years later. What clinched it was the parents had put an old doll away and forgot about it until the second daughter found it and addressed it by it's name.
Probably the stuff important enough to torment you. Not talking about a $50 light bill! :lol:
It depends on one's view of "good evidence". There is a pediatrician (Dr. Moodie) who has catalogued the experiences of very young children who survived death and in some cases, recovering from anaethetic. There many documented rememberances by care givers, of those who report the conversations and actions of people nowhere near the operating room, and in some cases, not even in the hospital, by surgical patients. But hey, why should we consider these as valid even when proven accurate??
There are many more tales, kept as personal than reach the light. Nearly everyone has had one or two very unexplainable experiences. How often do parents consider it imagination when children complain, they, were the sister, brother or parent the last time? These stories abound and are rarely taken seriously. The child, is told it is their imagination or in worse cases, to "stop lying". The memory is lost in time. But what if their early memories have some validity. How is it possible to obtain any valid proof for any beyond death existence, if stories of those who are the most recent members of this non-existence state are ignored. Doesn't take much to convince children, their perceptions are wrong or to divert their attention from what is deemed by the "rational" as illogical, just as ridule or patent disbelief insures the silence of adults
Off subject a little but for something just as uncanny see the article on P. 74 of the latest Readers' Digest and that is something that can be confirmed.
Over the years I've dreams of living in the past and speaking in now dead languages. Because of that, I'm sure I've lived in the past.
Your first sentence is correct, but not for the reasons you think, that isn't really the argument science offers. One of the first lessons of science and skepticism is that first hand experience is one of the least reliable ways to figure things out. Human perception and reasoning are subject to many kinds of errors, science is about the ways we've learned not to fool ourselves into believing things that aren't true, and it is in fact the only reliable way we've ever found for testing the truth content of claims. The easiest person to fool is yourself.
Thousands, possibly millions, of people have had similar experiences, whether near death, past lives, or manifestations of other worldly beings. Some have been experienced by multiple parties simultaneously, many in different locations, unknown to each other, at the same time. To dismiss such phenomenon is silly to me just because science cannot measure it. Who are scientists that their opinion or observations are better than everyone else's? I know what I know because of my experiences. What other people experiences is just an opinion to me, but I do not dismiss them out of hand because I have not had similar experiences.
Unless one is born into a primitive tribe and remains isolated from the rest of the world, everyone has lived before, according to those who investigate reincarnation. There is only one who has supposedly managed to achieve the ultimate goal with one incarnation, and that was the being known as Jesus. He alone, so far as I am aware of, remembered his origin and his life's purpose for the time and place. Better than most of us have managed. He set the standards for his time and place.
Young children are the closest to their origin and tend to remember things that seem impossible to their parents.
The supposition, is that we set our goals for our lifetimes, and attempt to reach them. However, there are miscalculations, accidental happenings and unforeseen events that repeatedly derail our lives. The ultimate goal, of course is reintegration with (not sure how to put this, as I am not particularly religious) into the aware force, entity that constitutes all of existence. The force/energy from which we originated. Since we are merely a speck of all existence, I see me as first a portion of a sentient universe, but also the means by which, that original sentient Force or Entity evolves.
That may be so, but how many times have you used your intuition in a situation where it was impossible to consult science and it's skepticism?? In my experience, this is how we mostly live our lives, not by consulting those pundits who are scientifically and skeptically inclined. How many times has your intuition (or your unconscious knowledge & experience) failed you?? Bet not as often as those financial,or political experts have. Science is all about having all the available information and for reincarnation it (science) has refused to acknowledge it. Pretty hard to investigate something they refuse to acknowledge may exist,wouldn't you agree?
Of course, human perception is faulty, for goodness sake, our sight, hearing and even time itself is not as it seems. But, I will trust my gut, intuition or that sudden "knowing" inspite of all those scientifics evaluations to the contrary. It is exceedingly easy to dismiss what is not seen, or experienced or possible to detect by our modern machines. That does not mean they do not exist, just that we have not found the means of revealing them.
I want better evidence than just someone's anecdotal report, that's not worth anything as evidence in support of such extraordinary claims. Every report of such things I've ever heard of that's been properly investigated--UFOs, hauntings, past lives, miraculous healings, near death and out of body experiences, and all the rest of it--points to people fooling themselves and others into believing things they want to be true that in fact aren't. That therefore is my default assumption given any such claims: they are not true, the explanation lies in misperception, misunderstanding, faulty logic, wishful thinking, ignorance, modified memory, and all the other ways people are known to fool themselves. The burden of evidence is on the people making the claims, and anecdote doesn't cut it as evidence.
there was a 3 hour documentary that aired on cblt sometime ago. I was only able to find 1 hour of the 3 hours. if you can find the other 2 hours of the 3 hours, feel free to post it.
CBC - Past Life Investigation - YouTube
CBC - Past Life Investigation - YouTube
About 3 minutes in I hear the hypnotherapist say, "Tell me what you perceive, in a different place and a different time." She's leading him, helping to create and implant false memories, which is actually a very easy thing to do, especially under hypnosis, but it works reliably on fully aware subjects too. I shut it off at that point. That was enough to convince me that's an investigation by the credulous who don't know much about how easy it is to fool people, looking for support for an existing belief. Try this: past life regression - The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com
I agree, regression through hypnosis is faulty. That is why, I prefer those involving stories children reported by parents, teachers or doctors. These are generally off the cuff announcements and usually are matter of fact and accepted as just how things are. There are millions of stories. Some quite amazing. Many children, insist as soon as they can talk, they are someone else!! Some are so insistent, the family finally, tries to prove to the child how silly their stories are.
I particularly liked the where one young girl, was taken to the town where she insisted her "real" family lived. She identified all the members of the family, including her "former" husband. She also pointed out where she hid the family's meager fortune.
Unfortunately,some of these children are never happy and never really integrate into the most recent family they reincarnated into. Apparently, the memories of previous lives are generally forgotten over time, making it possible to live the new life without regret. Imagine a young child of 10 being told by one of 8, she is his mother!!
Names, dates, places, references, links...? You can't keep making such extraordinary claims and expect people to just take your word for it.