Average past lives.

After reading accounts on this site, elsewhere on the web, and those of friends, I constantly hear people going on and on about who they were when they were famous. I never want to discount these people, as if all this is as real as it feels, then famous people would get reincarnated too. Yet, at the same time, my own clearest memories are of being nobody. hehe.

These are memories I even share with other people, like a house that I lived in with one of my best friends, and another living down the road aways. I wrote about this house as a child, we've all dreamed of it, and we all know the basic floor plan and even want to find it again, but all lived relatively mundane lives. Not everyone has been somebody terribly famous. Although in most of the lives I remember something important happened -- but it wasn't something terribly important to the whole world.

do you think that people discount past lives because of how many people declare themselves to have been famous? Is it possible that these memories aren't real, and may even be blocking the real ones?

Welcome Allahandria,

I remember many of my past lives..in detail. My last three life times I was not famous, in fact just the opposite. I was a no-body! LOLOL In the late 1700's I was a white boy who was taken by the Indians..lived my entire life with them and died on the Trail of Tears. In the mid -1800's I was a black slave girl..and my last life 1900-1957 I was an Italian woman that lost her whole family in World War I & II.

I think it is wonderful if people can find information that pertain to their personal memories..photographs, city records, names and places etc. But when your not famous....there is little or nothing to find except maybe the location.

For me, what is MOST important are the feelings, emotions and thoughts that surface in the various forms of recall. Either in a waking state, meditation or dreams. That and the continuation over the years of memories that fit into the pieces of my past life puzzle. Another words..the continuation of a life, complete with dates, a life history and/or story everything fits into a context. To me this is my validation.

My studies into consciousness -merging - and altered states -- does show that it is possible for people to tap into the lives of others. These memories are viewed as a person watching -- outside of themselves. Sometimes beginners don't know the difference. What they are lacking is the emotional and feeling context of the memories in the first person.

If however, they remember being famous and the emotional and feeling quality is there..then that is a good indicator that they were that person.

This is how I explain in my journals my memories of being a black slave girl -just taken from my mother and sold into slavery....

...I began to cry. With the tears came trembling, my whole body began to tremble and shake. I can only describe its source as coming from the inside out. This type of feeling and emotion cannot be staged, it is so deeply felt, so deeply ingrained within both the physical and astral body, it must be a true experience. The body remembers.

------------------
Love,
Deborah

Lifes experiences weave a tapestry of knowledge

Hi there! I remember living four past lives, around 1100, 1400, 1600 and 1900. They weren't the sort of lives you could track down, not at all famous. The only one I *might* have a chance at is the last life, the 1900's one; it was in Russia at the Tsar's court (but I was just an army officer). So many things feel familiar from that era of history and area of the world, but I do NOT think I'm Anastasia. Just an officer killed in a revolution, maybe a witness to some interesting times in history that made an impression on me. I personally think that people who remember being famous historical people are remembering being their friends, their servants, etc., but because their famous friend was "larger than life" and they were so involved in it, they innocently mistake that life for their own. But who knows, it's true the "rich and famous" reincarnate, too!

This is just purely my own speculation, but how a soul deals with fame or power carries many valuable lessons. I think that, throughout our infinite number of lessons we learn on the path of awareness, fame and power is something we each deal with at one point (even if it is just one lifetime out of a thousand.) I think, somewhere at some point, we have all been famous. Maybe we were an influential or powerful Chinese leader of some dynasty centuries ago, a medival prince, an influential person in some forgotten civilization like Atlantis, or even a popular film actor in the twentieth century.

My point is, "fame" comes our way (at least briefly -- and one lifetime is very brief) somewhere along the path of learning. It is something many souls desire, and if desires shape our future lifetimes, then fame will most likely be something we experience.

On a personal note, if I could sit down right now and plan every aspect of my next life, fame would not be a part of it. There have been times in this life where I have felt sorry for some of the "pop' culture icons of our century: like Marilyn Monroe, Madonna, Rudolph Valentino, Princess Diana, etc... They really have led interesting lives, but there is something to be said about anonymity also. ...I got to go to the park this morning and watch the sun rise, ...without nasty photographers hounding my every move. I LOVE THAT!

Maybe sometimes souls need to experience fame to understand that it isn't all it's cracked up to be. There are things that are so much more important, and LOTS of karmic responsibilities for misused fame.

Maybe my intense desire NOT to ever be famous means I've already learned that lesson at some point. Who knows?

I know I chose to be a quiet school teacher in this life for a reason.

Just my thoughts for now.
Love,
Rob.

Hi everyone!

I have never been famous - just an ordinary soul who had more than my share of wars and personal traumas. However, as I had posted many times before, my only "claim to fame" is knowing that I survived both the Sand Creek and Washita massacres back in 1864 and 1868 respectively.

Blessings all!

Jereldeen

Well, my two cents' worth: I strongly believe I was once Prince Charles Edward Stuart of Scotland, also know as Bonnie Prince Charlie, in the 1700's; and this evidence had to just about be "slapped" in my face before I could believe it.
I do also have memories of not so famous lives: a soldier in WWII, a Roman soldier, a poor child starving in the streets of some cold European city...
The only true advantage I found regarding "remembering" a famous past life is that it is much easier to find documentation and information from that life, and be able to evidence them with your own ""remembrances" or intuition.
It is not true, though, that everyone who remembers a past life was either rich or famous or historically important, most remember very plain and "ordinary" lives (though I believe no life is ever "ordinary").
The truth is that all historical events happened just as all other "realities" have already happened, and if we lived through them, then of course past-life memories of all sorts will appear.

Love to all of you,

Charles

i would still really like to hear more details of people's non-famous lives. While I know we love recounting all the proof we've found of the more famous ones, my fascination about the past lies in things that are not easily researched, but still as deeply believed by the teller. Those are the entries that have caught my interest here in the past (rather than oh, they were such and such person, hmmm, read about them in school, and moving on) and I hope to hear more of them in the future, rather than just mentioning that they were here and here and here but can't prove it.

Hi everybody! Well, this has certainly been an interesting topic. I don't know what any of my past lives have been, but I wonder if anyone might feel like I do about fame and fortune. For some very deep reason, I feel in past lives I was probably very famous and very wealthy, because in this lifetime, I have no desire for fame or wealth. I am not against it, but it is not a driving force. My entire life I have had friends who were extremely wealthy. Their wealth never impressed me, nor did I feel badly because I didnt have it. It never affected our relationships. It was simply a fact. Even sitting here writing about it, I have no emotion or feeling about it, it's like I've already done it so I don't need to do it again to meet whatever purpose I am here for.

I am a non-conforming, non-consumer. I am an artist, and have a madness to paint, but fame is not the end goal. It might come, it might not, my paintings will be the same.

So, I only feel that fame and fortune was in one of my unknown pastlives, and that's why I don't miss it.

Thanks
barbara

barbara, I just want to say that that's a really cool outlook on life.

I think the only reason I'd ever want any sort of fame (or you know, type of job that equals a lot of money) is because at least then I'd know that my family, and children, and maybe even THEIR children would be well cared for... fame in itself isn't as appealing as to the sense of being safe in that respect might be ..... at least to me....

Where are the mundane lives?

Does anyone remember a life as a farmer or peasent? A life where you weren't Cleopatra, King Edward, Caesar, or Alexander the Great? Perhaps a life of hardship and toil as opposed to one in the royal court? A life lived during mundane times, not the Crusades, the plague, Roman invasion of Britain, or the American Revolution?

The remembrance of past lives is not statistically relfective of actual lives lived in history. There is seemingly no fluid chronology, just a collections of claims attached the dramatic, the fun and englightening high points of history.

There are many Cleopatras out there, seemingly, but for a civilization such as Egypt, which depended on a high population of farmers tending to the black soil of the Nile, there are surprisingly few, if any, claims of a past life lived as a poor farmer toiling in his fields of Barley and Emmer.

The more I read about the past life experiences of others
the more I'm convinced that the majority remembers a pretty 'normal' life.
But I've also come to the conclusion that people are people,
also the rich and famous.
They also have to finish their 'job' on earth properly,
and reincarnation (learning from life experiences) is part of that job.
Reincarnation is a soul thing, and what happens inside there
can't be seen in the myths and fairy tales about heroes and kings.
If reincarnation exist they also return,
just like the farmers, craftsmen, soldiers and artists.
They all have something in common, they're all human.

Curious Girl.

I don't know why people are so anti-famous-past-lives except for one thing: individuals attach a lot of personal symbolic meaning to famous persons and then don't like others to have different takes on the famous person (this is understandable).

I don't know why there wouldn't be many famous past lives in one person's past, then none at all in another's; you'd have to assume random reincarnation for the statistics to come out the same as in physical Earthly states, and I haven't heard anyone here doing that yet. There are many beliefs discussed here but I don't think I've seen any that don't involve some manner of specific system or choice to this other than the systems at work in our apparent physical realm. Also, as Rastislav said, reincarnation discussions are necessarily slanted in terms of who takes part in them. But even if every person did claim a famous past life, why wouldn't that be? No one here yet has seemed to think that the cycle of reincarnation works the same as Earthly hierarchies. And, as Curious Girl said, -- it always bears repeating!-- famous people are _people_. Just because a lot of people know about them (or think they do), that doesn't mean they're any different from everyday average ditchdigger. Look at all the ways in which people become famous; sometimes they were totally unknown until one fluke thing occurred. We attach far too much importance to fame itself, put people on a pedestal or slander them, either way, we place them in a superior position but that might have absolutely nothing to do with how reincarnation works. One soul might be on a path where many famous lives occur, for reasons unrelated to Earthly concepts of fame, or another might be famous only as an incidental trait in soul terms.

I know others disagree but I don't see why a famous person couldn't be reincarnated in more than one new body at a time, and those bodies meet. Why couldn't they have simultaneous lives, after a single life, changing their design for some reason? I think that about anyone though, not just famous people. And even if you don't think a famous person could come back as more than one new incarnation, it may be that the duplicate famous life being remembered is from an alternate reality. Also, one of the claimants could be wrong. I don't think that the other claimants can really judge that, though. Why is one person's truth that they feel they so strongly "just know" to be taken over another's? There may be reasons in individual cases to accept one claim over another but why would you need to know who was who? It would have to be a very individual thing and probably not worth fighting about, especially if one or the other has a very personally important and legitimate alternate-plane experience of that famous life, or some other connection to the person you don't know about (or don't remember if you were the person).

I've never been famous that I'm aware of.

Not everyone...

Hi Peter,
I know very little about the subject but have also wondered that question!
I can tell you that I have a close friend. We have been friends since childhood and she has had difficult life. She was sent to a regression therapists, as a last resort effort to figure things out... a grasping at straws. She is not spiritual at all.
She was regressed and saw herself as a horrible, homeless male. Very dirty with long scraggly hair and beard. He died in an alley where no one was there to find him dead until sometime later. The therapist asked for her to view his funeral and there was nothing. Just blankness. He asked her who met him on the other side and there was no one. So the therapist had her take him to the light. Other odd things happened in the regression at that point.
The man as boy had a mom who dropped him off on a city street and left him in the care of no one. She felt that it was her own mother she was seeing who is not the nicest person in the world. The therapist would question her on what she was feeling when she was him and she had a nothing, dark, sinister feel... a deadness. She cared about no one and nothing in her regression.

BUT my point is not everyone sees something grand!
angelbaby

What we remember

Peter, here are a couple of possible reasons for your observation about mundane lives.

1) Past life memory is itself not the norm but statisticaly an exception. Very tiny fraction of population remembers any past lives at all. Hence persons with past life memories are in some sense not "typical" persons.

2) If we analyze our own memories of our current lives, we find that we don't remember all that we have lived through. Rather we only remember memorable events in our lives. Why should it be different for past life memory? Ask today's farmer who has lived all his life on his solitary farm, waking at daybreak, toiling through most of the day and then retiring at the end of the day to tell something about his life. His answer will likely be that yesterday was same as today and so was every other day in his life. Will such a person bother to keep a diary. Diary or not, he still has a life, but perhaps not much to remember about.

3) Crusades and plague are remembered for the same reason that they have historical significance. That is true for us, as aficionados of history and for those who lived through those times.

4) Another factor may be called "reincarnating fan" syndrome. I know many persons who live thoroughly ordinary lives, but try to spice up their mundane existence by vicariously experiencing the thrills of their sports heroes or rock star heroes. I am sure many women of Cleopatra's time were so engrossed in her life that they knew it better than their own lives. Perhaps some come back with memories of their icons.

kris, I think your answer is good and I don't want to nitpick, but I do just want to say that sometimes the details and little daily things are remembered and are important personally. What seems to be daily, mundane toil to an outside observer has many changes, subtle or obvious, to the person experiencing the farming or whatever (and I'll admit that it's a peeve of mine to slot farming into some sort of boring drudgery). But sometimes we do compare our own lives to others' and say nothing ever happens to us, relatively speaking, so I'm not saying you're wrong in that sense. I just wanted to put different words to it. My important memories from my non-famous lost life where I don't have any way to know I existed are the memories of the repeated events such as who came in when in the morning, what we always did, who I always saw. I miss them.

You want Mundane?!
How about?
WW2-Austria- I can't even FIND ME because I was so mundane. Constance, minor player in Nazi land. Work for a newspaper, a sanitarium, hid a few kids, probably responsible for several deaths. I do recall a handgun, a luger, in a church. So I think when I had to..
1904 Midwest - Little kid, died in a storm, possibly tornado. (Still fear tornados)
1821-1904- gettysburg farmer, officer in Civil War, no major battles. Wasn't even in Gettysburg battle and they were in my family farm.
1800s - daughter of a retired sea captain turned lighthouse keeper, I commited suicide after losing my daughter.
late 1700s - daughter of a mine owner in Wales, inherited business only to watch it fall apart and become nearly penniless, died in a lover's spat.
1600s tutor to royal children in Louis 14th family. Died when trying to learn how to use a fencing foil.
early 1600s - serving wench in a tavern....boring then boring now.
1500s - playwright in England, no not famous one. Arrogant, died alone and unappreciated.
1500s - some Italian guy who owned land and liked to manipulate musicians.
1400s - Mother superior in Abbey in Italy, probably in the Order of the Poor Claires.
1000 or so - Another Mother Superior, only this time in Scotland or Ireland. Quite dominant, with Virgo tendencies.
300 or so - Druid, tossed out of clan for helping a wounded Roman armorer.
BC - Atlantis _ No one listened to me then either..
Where's my famous life....I didn't even know Cleopatra.
catseye

"Does anyone remember a life as a farmer or peasent?.... there are surprisingly few, if any, claims of a past life lived as a poor farmer toiling in his fields of Barley and Emmer."

I'm sorry but this is just 180 degrees incorrect. This is a sure sign of someone who hasn't done much research on the issue.

Sure, if your only knowledge of the subject is superficial and based solely on what you saw on tv, or in a web forum, or heard from a neighbor, you might think that everyone claims to have been someone famous.

This is analogous to saying that there must be no scientific basis to astronomy because everytime I hear someone talk about the stars, they're only talking about their horoscope.

Do the research. The more you read of the scientific studies of reincarnation, the more you'll learn that the relative percentage of famous lives claimed in those studies is close to zero. Whereas documented cases of mundane past lives are at least in the tens of thousands (Surprisingly few!?).

This, even though one would logically expect the number of remembered famous past lives to be higher than "reflective of actual lives lived in history" because, of course, a life that is not mundane would naturally be more memorable.

Signed,

Blunt & Cranky As Usual

Yes

Peter V - I know of a few mundane lives of mine. I know of only one that occurred as an aristocrat. I know of a life as:

- a cook and baker for a wealthy family in France (1500-1700's?). My peach pies were the best.

-a woman who lived with her sister in Victorian London

- the son of Irish farmers (time period unknown)

- grew up on a farm in California, early part of 20th century

One of my friends went back to a life as:

-an Eygptian slave (she did NOT want to stay there...)

- a wife and mother in Holland (time period unknown)

Hope that helps!

I think it's an excellent question and I've wondered about it myself.. I have heard lots of people who claim to be Cleopatra, Elvis, Pres. Lincoln etc...

I have no idea what time period this PL of mine took place but I was a (male) cobbler...had my own shop and a wife too...I really don't know much more than that...I think it was a pretty boring life..

The only other life I know of I just saw a snippet of it and it was how I died...

The only one I am aware of was that of my great grandmother. She was not famous, but did survive the great flood here. I do not have memories of that life, but when going into areas where she was from I am overwhelmed. At a very young age I looked at her marriage license, which hung on my mother's wall and said, "That is mine. I want it."

Although I never posted in reply to anyone's non-famous past lives, I am fascinated by them. So ... what is that recipe for peach pie?

I love the marriage license story!

That's wonderful, Mama!--Thanks for sharing. I am not a baker in this life. In fact, I think that maybe because it was my job then I resist pastries now. Of course I still love to eat them. --And I do have a special place in my heart for peaches.

I didn't actually see that lifetime. My best friend, who is a psychic told me about it fairly recently. She said she saw me picking peaches in an orchard for the pastries I was making for my employer. She described my cottage and saw many people from my present life there . For instance, my son now was the wealthy employer and my brother now was his son. I was married to my present husband, but he died rather young. Still, I was able to support myself from the baking and raise my granddaughter (my sister now), until I died of a heart attack in my 60's.

Hi Peter,

I think you have to look at the whole picture. How many thousands of cases of children's past life memories have been documented by Carol, Ian and others?? Few - if any are rich or famous. How many new members have posted ordinary lives and they get few responses and soon leave? Let's not over look the sincere and all too soon forgotten members who come and go after a short time.

Those that truly lived famous past lives -need not proclaim their importance - over and over - they need neither proof to know- nor confirmation from others. The rest - well - who knows.

One of the things that tipped me off that I was having past-life dreams was the fact that they were of lives and events (in the past) that were so incredibly mundane that I realised it is not something that my imagination would create. If I were making up stories of being other people, they would be royal, or would be great scientists, political figures, etc. But one was a very average middle-class married man in the late 19th century, and the other was an upper-middle class chap who spent a lot time at the office, drove a Packard, and lived in a nice apartment in a large city in the early to mid 20th century. Neither was notable.

While it seems disproportionate numbers of people remembering past lives claim to be famous, even this has at least two logical explanations:

1. Some of these folks are either publicity-seeking or of questionable mental stability. This is the stereotype, but sometimes it happens. They start with knowlege of the celebrity and then put themselve into the role. Because their stories don't stand up to examination, they rarely show up on serious forums, such as this one -- they prefer taking their stories to tabloids and trash-TV.

2. Of the serious, honest people in this field, it still makes sense that famous people would be overrepresented. This seems logical, since many past-life memories are brought to the surface by triggers. People who were once famous in prior lives would be much more likely to hear about the people they were. Imagine if you had been Winston Chruchill, and compare that to having been a blacksmith in New Jersey. In the former case reminders of your past life would be all around. In the later, very little in modern daily life would ever cause thoughts of the past live to occur.

...just a theory

...Rod

not so strange

Hi Peter,
Long time no talk.

I have two or three observations to make. The first is that (as Kris says) natural past life recall is not so common but, famous lives mean big-time effects namely huge karmic obligations are involved. This means that errors and omissions in such lives are likely to have instigated very large disturbances. Intense disturbances create commanding influences in current lives so this means (IMHO) an increased likelihood of actually recalling the lives in question in which the trauma was instigated. Of course I do not discount pretenders screaming for public attention, but – anyway….

I do not myself identify any public personalities that I recall because the lesson I try to present would otherwise be lost in the buzz. I do recall two lives where nothing seemed to happen except I got wounded (one mortally and one not but leaving a limp – a minor foot problem that persists as a shadow in this life also). But then these are both military or at least skirmishing situations played by a decidedly minor actor.

I can also report that 2 of my daughters recalled non-famous lives but at an early stage so they took remedial action in this life against the errors of those lives. Now one can argue that they would have been forced into the changes they instigated by karmic pressure, but in this case they clearly and consciously selected their current careers as a result. So they are awake to what they are doing and thinking about the implications on a regular basis.

To me it is inconceivable that there is anybody that does not have a famous past life squirreled away but actually, we only recall lives that offer pertinent lessons to this one. Why? Because these lives contain the karmic burden that we have used (been obliged to use?) to manifest ourselves on Earth in this instance. Thus famous lives that have no bearing on this life will only surface after all the lives active in promoting this life have been identified. And anyway – what possible use could they serve? There will be nothing in this life to resonate with them – or so I believe.

I've had a number of "famous" lives, and a number of completely normal, mundane ones. I don't tend to talk about the mundane ones as much because, well, they tend to be more boring. That's just their nature. Often I did nothing notable in them but die at a young age. Take the French girl who was one of five million burned at the stake during the Middle Ages, or the English peasant who died in childbirth like so many women did. There's the little girl who fled Fredericksburg during the War Between the States, or the teenager who was so unimportant that even her family didn't know or care when she died in a gutter. They're all important to me as making up pieces of who I am now, but I don't think most people would find them remarkable or interesting. When the lives aren't as exciting, there's less to talk about, but that doesn't mean the mundane lives aren't there, just that people probably talk less about them for obvious reasons.

And here's another thing -- just because the life is considered famous now doesn't mean it always was. I've got a couple lives I know ended without anyone taking much notice at the time, but later on they became big deals. Or the alternative could happen -- you could've been a Princess then, but no one now remembers your name. ::shrug:: Fame is in public perception, not necessarily the reality of the situation.

Exceptionally Mundane

I've had 4 past life regressions and I must say that they were all very mundane! In one I was a healer/midwife and utterly ostrasized by my community (that is until they needed my services). In the others I was a servant in a castle in Germany, a deformed live in maid, and lastly, a victim of rape. I may not have been famous, but each of those lifetimes was just as important as the other and this one, as well.

It's amazing how all these experiences are still playing out!

Shea

An issue close to my heart...



What they can do is engender self-doubt... but self-doubt, if we use it rather than let it paralyze us, spurs us to greater rigor in self-examination.

I was lucky... in the first two years after my past lives emerged, I ran into no one else who claimed the really famous one. Subsequently I've heard of about ten or fifteen, ranging from a cult leader in Sedona who plans to rule the world after Armageddon, to a guy who somehow convinced a university department that he was the real thing, to a basement-dweller-type who based it all on one glimpse of a vision of himself standing in front of an army of the time, apparently not realizing that he could have been someone else standing in front of an army of the time. And then there's the person who wants to sue major TV and movie studios, because she believes that they steal all their ideas telepathically from her thoughts.

There's too many of them to let them bother me, any more... except when they verbally attack me, which two of them have on no provocation other than my claim... but that proves nothing except that they are frightened by my claim and overcome by the urge to lash out. My feeling is that if I ever run into another who has more evidence than I do, or even an equally convincing amount, I'll accept that their claim seems to be strong, and question myself as to what might actually be going on in my own head, which I do anyway. That has yet to happen.

I think evidence is the bottom line, really. Maybe it's not fair that no one's going to believe us off the bat, but, with so many spurious claims around, it's a reality we have to live with. As I mentioned in another forum, when I give the name, now, I also give the best piece of evidence -- right up front. It doesn't convince everybody, because those people who in their past lives refused to look down Galileo's telescope, so as to avoid seeing what was there, are still with us today... but I find many people are open-minded, and it gets better results, in my experience, than not offering said evidence.

Fact is that spurious claims discredit us all. Real past life memories, of whatever degree of renown, are dismissed; the whole field is made to look like the refuge of lunatics; people struggling along their own path of self-discovery get thrown into confusion. My position now is that people shouldn't make famous past life claims unless they have amassed enough evidence to defy other explanations, and are willing to share it all, or at least the highlights.

Having said that, I'd like to offer what I consider to be some clues as to whether a famous past life is genuine. A genuine one:

- is remembered in a similar way, with a similar tone, to other past life memories... details, confusion, images, emotions, that interesting mix of vague and vivid you get, etc. If it sounds like it's out of a history book, it probably is.

- has connections and relevance to the person's present life, which prove useful in spiritual growth and/or healing.

- contains little or no sense of grandstanding, boastfulness, self-importance or one-upmanship. If someone clearly wants to be treated specially due to having had a certain past life, it's almost certainly not real.

- is accompanied by no signs of mental illness, e.g. confused thinking, other grandiose or bizarre claims, verbal aggressiveness, social or career non-functionality, excessive negativity, etc.

- contains memories of scenes that were not recorded by history, but fit well with it, and may provide logical answers to questions whose answers are not historically known.

- has the firmness of certainty in memory, while at the same time the person expresses doubts... ordinary people remembering extraordinary lives doubt their memories as a matter of course, because it's natural to think, 'How can I have been that?' In other cases, their memories were suppressed in childhood, sometimes brutally, by closed-minded parents, and thus doubts are deeply ingrained. Their desire to confirm their memories comes less from a desire to impress than the drive to know the truth about themselves.

My .02 anyway.

This thread finally inspired me to write an article for the FAQ section that I promised Deborah oh, months ago, on exactly this question. I sent it to her privately for her perusal/approval, so it won't be up until after this one is...

Love & peace,
Karen

I don't really have past lives as famous people at all. I've heard the cleopatra stuff and there was one that claims to be Edward Bellamy and another to be Czar Nicholas. The thing is that a lot of times they seem to be recalling things that modern history doesn't know. The Czar Nicholas guy said that he died in a different season than conventional history said at the time. conventional history later proved him right.

But I'd bet that some of these famous PLs are fantasies plain and simple. I guess you should be sceptical until they show you something that they shouldn't know. There are flakes anywhere. I don't think that means throw out the rest of the evidence.

The word "famous"

Honor, I think you must be referring to Donald Norsic, author of To Save Russia. He's given an excellent example of what I'm talking about -- an amassing of evidence that defies any other explanation. He did an amazing job... pointed out resemblance in looks, in mannerisms, in handwriting (he had that done by graphology pros) and in personality and interests, as well as having many memories which were confirmed by obscure sources. And more, too much to summarize. I believe totally that he was Nicholas because he presents as close to an airtight case as you're going to get.

To whomever wrote that perhaps people who remember famous lives clam up about them due to fear of ridicule: you are right. I know of four.

I don't feel either that my past lives, or I myself, are trivialized by the word "famous." To me the word, in regard to past lives, means past lives with names that are still known by many people. That's all. I use it because it's the concept that people take issue with. They feel that those who are claiming to have been someone we've all heard of are trying to cash in on the social status of the name to enhance their own social status. And insofar as this is discernably true, their objection is absolutely justified.

I've sweated over it myself. I don't deny that there is a part of me that would love my name to be known (in a good way) by all. (In one life I went after fairly-won fame like a bat out of hell, so maybe it's a soul trait.) So I've walked the whole gauntlet of wondering whether my own past lives are all fantasies intended to impress people. I am a tad famous in this life actually, from having published fantasy novels and it does feel very nice to have readers tell me, "I loved your books!" You feel you have connected with many people, affected their lives positively, and you can't help but be happy about it -- or at least I can't, anyway. Nor does it feel like something trivial, at least to me.

My feeling is that those who want to be known in this life for having made a major contribution must make a major contribution in this life.

Now if you are writing a book about a past life, as I am and I know at least one other person in this discussion is, it gets a little confusing... you wonder, am I writing this to make that contribution, or am I just trying to bask in my old glory? Fact is, writers often don't understand their own motivations and aren't consciously aware of the nature of the contribution they are making. Mostly they just trust in their muse to lead them right, and many quite purposely avoid trying to analyze it, or their motivation, in case that stops their writing cold. While I could do that with my novels (which grew out of digested past-life memories, as it turned out), I've been unable to with the famous past-life autobio, because I've been far more suspicious of my own motivation... and guess what, it stopped the writing cold. I was raised to utterly distrust and reject and despise myself for my memories and other forms of inner knowing, so, as it turns out, I have to finish getting over that before I can effectively write the book, let alone approach publishers, agents, etc. So, yes, a little more confusing.



Love & peace,
Karen

I remember mundane lives as well as more well-known ones. I remember being a young woman refugee from the Irish Potato Famine who died in childbirth in a Philadelphia slum. I remember being a Mayan sacrificial victim. I remember a crippled beggar woman in Constantinople who was killed when the Turks sacked the city. Interestingly, in my next lifetime I came back as Elizabeth of York and was known for my compassion to the poor.