The more the skeptical the more a believer

[Native Son]

Hypothetically speaking: How does one go from a skeptic to a believer in reincarnation without the personal experience of recalling any past lives? Making sense of it all from a devil's advocate case and point.

There are many historical cases of where an opponent/skeptic of a novel idea begins by intending to show that the novel idea if faulty, and then after long involvement and research ends up on the opposite side of the coin, by becoming a champion of what it was trying to, initially, defeat. These then become, in the process, the strongest believers, which usually become the stalwarts and pillars of it. One case that quickly comes to mind is the controversial medical practice of Homeopathy. A certain German Doctor, Constantine Hering, was one of those which started out to prove that homeopathy was just quackery, but eventually became the bedrock and champion of this medical system. And immigrating from Germany to the USA, and settling in Pennsylvania, became the main source responsible for making homeopathy very popular in the 1800s USA, authoring a medical reportorial homeopathic encyclopedia.

I was wondering, just how many here on this forum were initial skeptics, and eventually became believers in reincarnation, but without the personal benefit of ever recalling a previous life? And if so, how were you converted over; based on what sources, and why?

 

[glia21]

Interesting question. Speaking for myself, I hardly believe in things I don´t see, hear, feel, experience in any way. Not without having doubts. Concerning the reincarnation idea with me it was a kind of an "awakening" by dreams - lessons while I was sleeping and very obviously different from the usual dreams and also not fading like the usual dream does. Afterwards I had memories too, triggered by a photograph in a kids book in my case.
I still wasn´t absolutely convinced though. There might be a bias I just don´t see right now ;-)
In all these years that I´m doing research on that subject I found two facts most outstanding:

- birth marks/defects from children that correspond to prior lifes (Dr Ian Stevensons cases)
- and the healing effect of talking about prior lifes described by many authors (which I experienced myself)

best regards!

 

[DorothyGail]

The work of Dr. Ian Stevenson of University of Virginia with children remembering past lives has been very compelling to me. I am not a 'true believer' in reincarnation and I'm actually very skeptical of it (especially of Past Life Regression, which I feel is very often subconscious symbolical imagery, the same as dreams). But Dr. Stevensons work is absolutely fascinating, and has made quite a few cynical skeptics open their minds to the possibility of reincarnation.

Most interesting for me are the implications of his work: that some children's spontaneous and insistent recall of a most recent past life may have been the very catalyst for the belief in reincarnation in the first place, among some cultures in ancient times.
And most interesting of all is that, of the children he met and whose cases he investigated and passed muster, something like 85-90% of them had died violently or prematurely in their remembered and verified previous life. These children speak nothing of karma or an astral interval - rather they speak of sitting in a tree or sitting at the well observing people, before jumping into a new embryonic body. The implication of this is that it might only be SOME people who reincarnate: those whose death was jarring, disorienting, or who felt cheated by their death and thus wanted another body ASAP so they could live more.

 

[tanguerra]

We have had quite a few people come into the forum skeptical. Some have even been downright rude, saying we're all making it up, living in a fantasy world, etc. If they're just here to be rude and annoying, they don't usually stick around very long. I personally don't waste too much time on them. They are free to think whatever they want. That's their business.

However, there have been a few who have tried doing a regression with a CD or similar and had such vivid experiences, often possible to verify later and so on, that they then turned their views around completely.

The most compelling thing is always to have an experience of your own. Then you get it. Without that it is hard to just 'accept' something on the basis of what others say, especially when it goes against western cultural norms. It is worth noting that there are many, many cultural traditions that accept reincarnation is just a normal part of life.

Many people who come into the forum a bit skeptical, have actually had past life memories and dreams and have been doing so for years, but didn't know that's what it was. They assumed it was 'just' their imagination, until they started checking the facts and looking into it a bit more deeply. They knew that, for example, bagpipes always make them cry, but had not connected that to childhood dreams about Scottish castles ... One woman had a really serious phobia of trains, and a disturbing, recurring nightmare about being hit by one, but could not work out why or what to do about it until we started working through it here. This kind of thing happens all the time. The simplest explanation is that reincarnation is real and 'western science' is wrong about it (as they are about a great many things).

You may be interested in reading about Dr Helen Wambach. She was a psychiatrist from New York in the 1960s, whose patients kept bouncing into these past life memories when she was hypnotising them, trying to get childhood memories. It happened so much she decided to investigate it, thinking there must be a scientific explanation for it. She set out to disprove reincarnation once and for all, but wound up doing the opposite, with a series of blind experiments with thousands of subjects. Interesting stuff.

http://www.historydisclosure.com/dr-helen-ambach-exciting-research-reincarnation/

A lot of nonsense is written about reincarnation by people who don't know what they're talking about, mixing it up with seances and tarot cards, ghosts, goblins and the like which can give many people the wrong idea about it. It is easy to scoff. Harder to really find out about the subject, unless you know good sources to look for.

 

[tanguerra]

The implication of this is that it might only be SOME people who reincarnate: those whose death was jarring, disorienting, or who felt cheated by their death and thus wanted another body ASAP so they could live more.

It's important to be careful jumping to conclusions with limited data. Certainly there are some stories of those who reincarnated straight away after a traumatic death. I read one where the child said they wanted to come straight back to avenge themselves. There are also lots of stories of those who experience a 'between life' state and may take many years 'off' between lives. I think it is safe to assume that everyone reincarnates, just not always in exactly the same time frame.

 

[DorothyGail]

I do tend to believe in reincarnation, but I personally feel that it's best to be open to other interpretations as well.

I've read Michael Newton, Helen Wambach, Dr. Stevenson, Carol Bowman, physicists Max Tegmark, Michio Kaku, channelled material from Seth, Michael, and lots of other interesting stuff. The "In-Between" lives info from Newton & Wambach is certainly very interesting but I remain skeptical about this popular model of an afterlife. I remember reading a case study in "Journey of Souls" where a woman was speaking under hypnosis and discussing her life as a woman from a much earlier time. She said her name had been Ashley. But Ashley had always been a male name and only became a female name in the 70s/80s (when the hypnosis regression had taken place). From that discrepancy alone, I stopped taking it too seriously.

Also, the model of the afterlife envisioned my most NDE/LBL/reincarnation enthusiasts is based on a European/Western model of education, which is very culturally specific: in our society, we go to school with peers, learn in a classroom with increasing sophistication as we get older with the goal of increasing in knowledge and wisdom. We also have guides, teachers, and advisors along the way, and with them we review our progress and figure out how we could've done it better. It is not surprising that people's conception of the afterlife that they "experience" in NDEs and under hypnosis is just like this. It is familiar, it's what they know, it's comforting, and it makes sense.
However, the NDEs reported by people from vastly different cultures, like the native peoples of Alaska and the Amazon, are totally different than that reported by most people from a Euro/Western society. Their NDEs do not have this model of the afterlife with an emphasis on learning, guides, life-reviews, etc. One of Patrick Harpur's books discusses this and it's an important point. So much of these experiences are deeply subjective, it is hard to extract "objective reality" out of these types of case histories.

You say "Western Science" is wrong about a great many things (Hmmm...It got us to the moon, it gave us Hubble Deep Field, and it's saved millions of lives with medical breakthroughs. It's pretty amazing, truth be told...), but the work being done right now in quantum physics is truly fascinating. The mathematics is pointing to countless multiple unverses existing side by side. Many are starting to accept that the wave form never collapses, it merely splits off into a parallel universes (decoherence).

My point in all this is merely that a vision someone experiences while under hypnosis (or in a different state of consciousness: alpha, theta, etc.) does not necessarily mean that it actually happened - even when there's strong emotion attached to the vision. And even if it DID happen historically, it doesn't mean your "soul" (whatever that is...) lived that life. It could merely be that you are tapping into an experience that is up in the ethers, in the collective unconscious....a historical experience that resonates with you at this time for whatever reason. But I believe that some rare individuals are able to pull through objective and verifiable information about previous lives - whether their "soul" actually lived that life though, no one can know.

 

[Eowyn]

It is not surprising that people's conception of the afterlife that they "experience" in NDEs and under hypnosis is just like this. It is familiar, it's what they know, it's comforting, and it makes sense.
However, the NDEs reported by people from vastly different cultures, like the native peoples of Alaska and the Amazon, are totally different than that reported by most people from a Euro/Western society. Their NDEs do not have this model of the afterlife with an emphasis on learning, guides, life-reviews, etc.

I think it's quite hard to find a NDE that matches the descriptions given by people in regressions, for a simple reason: people who have had NDE's had just a glimpse of the afterlife and they never were in the spiritual realm (probably just in the astral realm, of course they are not the same), they never were really "dead". It's quite hard to find NDE's accounts mentioning reincarnation at all. So, I feel you're lacking some data here. The first stage of a NDE is indeed more similar to visions and experiences people have in OBE's: they find what their belief systems have taught them there is after death, and probably that's why natives from Alaska or the Amazon see different things in their NDE's, compared to Western accounts. This does not happen in regressions though. Here, regardless or the people's previous beliefs, they give similar descriptions of the life between lives.

And even if it DID happen historically, it doesn't mean your "soul" (whatever that is...) lived that life. It could merely be that you are tapping into an experience that is up in the ethers, in the collective unconscious....a historical experience that resonates with you at this time for whatever reason. But I believe that some rare individuals are able to pull through objective and verifiable information about previous lives - whether their "soul" actually lived that life though, no one can know.

Yes, could be, but I know people with retrocognition abilities who says there is indeed a difference between things you have lived yourself, your own memories, and things that happened to other people. I think "tapping" into experiences that are in the ether (though that doesn't sound quite scientific to me) is possible, but not too frequent, and undoubtedly it doesn't feel the same as when you're remembering a past life. You obviously talk from your "outsider" point of view. Maybe the day you have your own experiences, you'll start changing your opinion. That's why I always tell people: "Experiment yourself. That's the only thing that will convince you". And by the way, people who are able to pull objective and verifiable information about previous lives is not as rare as you think. I have been able to verify two of my past lives, for a start, but I have plenty of similar examples of common people in my own forum... some cases are quite fascinating.

 

[Native Son]

So far all good responses, as far as I'm concerned. I'll wait a little longer to see if there will be others who will voice their opinions and experiences. Thanks to all!