Reincarnation And The After Life

There is and always seems to have been plenty of interest in the afterlife and reincarnation. I have talked about reincarnation and my feeling about it a few times and while I may not believe in it, there is no doubt plenty of other people do. Some very strange cases have come up which have to do with reincarnation, one which comes to mind is the case of a boy who confessed to murder. It wasn’t an ordinary murder as we know it, but one he said he committed in a past life. He says when he was in a past life he killed his fiancΓ©e. Before he died he told his brother he would come back as his son. The brother’s son now claims he was his father’s brother and committed the murder. The boy went on to say that is why he was born crippled, it was his punishment for the murder. The boy lives in Sri Lanka and has the memories of his deceased uncle who murdered his fiancΓ©e. His father said the family guarded this secret and there was no way he could have known about it. When the boy was two years old his mother heard him talking to himself saying he was crippled as a punishment for killing his fiancΓ©e.

The mother was shocked upon hearing this and asked the boy to repeat what he had said. The boy said he had killed the woman with a knife and his father was really his brother. She then went to her husband and told him what the boy had said and it was at this time the husband revealed this secret about the fiancΓ©e for the first time. An expert in these types of cases examined the boy. The boy recalled the uncle’s execution in detail. Another strange thing was the boy showed no remorse and said he would do the same thing again. His fiancΓ©e had fallen in love with another man and wanted to back out of the engagement. When a man visited the house one day the boy recognized the man’s belt and said it had been his. It turned out the belt had belonged to the uncle and would have been his if he was reincarnated. Marks on the boy’s body match marks on the uncle’s body. This is a strange case indeed and just shows there is much we don’t understand.

There is a doctor named Ian Stevenson who has spent over 40 years documenting the past life experiences of children. It does seem children are much more open to having memories of past lives than adults. Some say this is because they don’t have as much on their minds as adults do. The good doctor went around and collected memories of past lives from children who were not under any type of hypnosis. This eventually gave him a huge treasure trove of data on the subject. Once the doctor got the data from an individual child he would then verify if the person remembered actually lived and then check the details which were remembered. I would be interested in knowing how many children had memories of someone who never lived, but this data was not available. The last thing the doctor did was match marks from the body of the person who died to marks on the body of the child. He claimed this ruled out any other explanation except for reincarnation. It seems that the age children most remember previous lives is between 3 to 5 years old. The former chairman of the psychiatry department at the University of Washington in Seattle, noted “We are lucky to have someone of his ability and high integrity investigating this controversial area.”

Out of body experiences are related to near-death experiences and there are quite a few people who have had them. One woman died on the operating table in a hospital. She found herself floating over her own body and could hear and see everything going on in the operating room. She said she knew she was dead and knew there had been gross errors committed during her operation. Somewhere along the line the medical staff noticed she was not breathing and put an oxygen mask over her and her breathing began again. This was not the first time she had an out of body experience. She was in the hospital on a prior occasion and dying. At that time she saw her body from above as her spirit left her body. She said her spirit was beautiful and dressed in a white gown. Her spirit started to head toward the light. The light was circular and warm. Her spirit returned to her body, she hadn’t wanted to leave even though she felt a strong urge to go toward the light.

We didn’t even have a word for a near death experience until it was coined in 1975 in the book “Life After Life” by Raymond Moody, MD. It is said a near death experience can occur when a person is clinically dead, near death or in a situation where death is likely or expected.

A doctor says she had a near death experience and went to heaven and it bothered her for years. She was in a kayaking accident years ago and went without oxygen for an estimated 24 minutes. The doctor describes herself as not being fanciful and a rational thinker. She said she felt her spirit actually go to heaven and she interacted with spirits there and she was told about her son’s death ten years before it occurred. When she recovered she spent years wondering if she imagined what she had seen. She said she had been greeted by beings who clearly loved her and were happy to see her. She said she didn’t want to leave but was told it was not her time. She was then reunited with her body. She said the spirits told her to share her story with others and about her son dying. Ten years later her son died in an automobile accident. If we only take one thing from her story it would be we are loved by God and there is really no reason to fear death.

A Harvard Neurosurgeon states there is life after death. The doctor did not believe in people having a spirit before his own experience. The doctor was in a coma for seven days. He had severe bacterial meningitis. He says while he was in the coma he experienced a journey into the afterlife. Against all the odds his body healed after he returned to it. He went on to say our life on earth is just a way of letting our souls evolve and grow. He said the afterlife was composed of almost pure love. He said all communication was telepathic and that any question you had in your mind was immediately answered. He says we are loved more than we can imagine and are never alone, even though we might feel that way. It is said his brain was non-functional while he was in his coma so his experience cannot be explained medically. Skeptics have come forward with reasons this could be imaginary and that was to be expected, but the doctor believes what he has seen as do many others who have had similar experiences.

Some things just seem to defy explanation, which is part of life. We may never know everything about life and maybe that is good, because there may be some things which would not be good to know.