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How did everyone start believing in reincarnation?

sensitive soul

sensitive soul

Senior Registered
I was wondering, how did everyone start believeing in reincarnation? By this, I mean, did you have spontaneous memories as a child, did your parents believe it and therefore you believed it, or were you like me and were just curious as to how some people can believe in living once, while others believe in reincarnation and coming back again? Or is there another reason. I am just curious. :)
 
I had memories of the immediate preceding life from childhood on. I also had memories from , what turned out to be the American Civil War.

I had a NDE at age 17 from being clinically dead from septicemia. So I was aware of a lot of things. I read very casually about reincarnation. I had little Time or inclination for the next twenty years to get involved in reincarnation studies. I was enjoyably chasing life at a sort of warp speed.

In 1974, I hired an associate at work. My wife never saw two people take to each other so fast. In the summer of 1975, he walked into my office and told me he had just been watching me sitting at my desk. The problem was that he saw me in Union Officers Uniform with Stars and a beard! My retort is not printable.

In the next year he more or less dragged me around the occult circuit. I found one person that I could trust. Since my NDE, I have been very precognitive using clairvoyance as the medium. The number of episodes of clairvoyant past memories turned into a flood really. My NDE gifts were very much put into the background. I had talked a bit about it as a teen. I got burned and sensibly buried it. I pretty much agreed with my wife about the whole NDE thing being so controversial that it was worthless. If there is one thing I know, it is how to be a Roman in Rome.

Still, It took me a decade to get professionally regressed. This occured because I met a different couple. Since then, this couple has been more or less leading in this venture. It is really their story where i get tied in. Both have been regressed quite a few times and I pop up in their regressions.

I understand myself from revisiting the past lives and that is all that should matter.
I do get smitten with the proof thing every few years. It cannot be done in our lifetime as a generally accepted proposition. When insurance specifically pays for past life regression, as such, we will be close.

We have everything from Shirley MaClaine to Ian Stevenson. When people ask me I tell them to read Brian Weiss. If he does not convince you it cannot be accomplished.
 
I red about reincarnation from some magazine when I was about 9 - 10 years old. First I felt that it is disgusting: to have to die many times! Then, I don't know why or when exactly, I just reasoned that it's quite logical thing to live many times, and immideadly after that I had an idea that I've been a monk in my previous life and I have copied books. (When I was little I used to make "books" from about every paper I got.)

My father red theosophic and UFO books, and I red them also and from since I have been spiritually orientated. In the age of 19 I had my first memory of the past...
 
Hi I was curious about it, also because it started with this feeling of connection I had with a certain person. Then when I was watching a documentary show one day, it showed me these group of children somewhere in the middle east who were interviewed because of their remarkable ability to remember exact and very accurate information about people they've claimed to live as before they died.
Gradually overtime my interests with the subject grew, until I found this site.
 
First came the personal experiences, then the belief. Ever since I was a young child, I've always had intense/realistic dreams where I remembered exact details, but not knowing about or even believing in reincarnation. It's almost like a little trail with clues that you follow yourself...coming to the realization after putting 'pieces of the puzzle' together. Then at some point, almost like a 'lightening bolt' or moment of inspiration, you realize what you've been experiencing all along were pastlives. Sometimes people need validation through hypnotic regression, other times, the pastlife memories are just so clear and vivid that it's self-explanatory. After that everything seems to make sense, and not just from a logical/rational point of view, but also from an personal and *intuitive* point of view also. Alot of people might ask 'Well how do you know?' There's no real way of explaining it...you just know.
 
I began to accept reincarnation over a period of 20- plus years. Back then, A relative converted to a Hindu belief (Krishna consciousness). It's light years away from anything he was brought up believing. I think he did it to be different.. anyway, he told me about reincarnation, and as my teenage years went by, I started becoming more open minded.
It certainly made a lot more sense than the idea which various persons attempted to shove down my throat back then: i.e., eternal suffering after life in the Bad Place if one simply chose not to adopt their religious dogmas and doctrines. I rejected that simply because it did not mesh with my faith in a loving and rational God.
About 10 years ago I began reading the works of Ian Stephenson and others, and learned that people were actually applying scientific methodology to investigate cases suggesting reincarnation, in the form of past life recall in young children. It wasn't just something observed among Indian or Japanese children, children in cultures where you would expect to see this. Other children the world over, even in Western countries, spontaneously shared information they couldn't have gotten through relatives or TV, etc.
Now, I am pretty convinced. It is a unifying idea. It is a plausible explanation for why I have been "nostalgic" most of my life for a time period in which I never lived... or did I? It explains recurrent dreams I have had. Some family members have had recurrent dreams too, usually involving a certain trauma that never happened to them in their current life. These same members don't go for reincarnation, asking me things like "Were you anyone important? Were you Abraham Lincoln?" and other belittling comments, when I mention it.
 
I grew up in India and many people believe in reincarnation there and have believed for the past few thousand years. Most of India's ancient writings throughout the ages are filled with references to reincarnation and I doubt anything like that can be found anywhere else. Reincarnation is spoken of in clear, decisive terms and there is no hedging of any kind. I am deeply enriched by the Indian spritual writings and experience and would not give that up for anything in this world.
 
I always knew I'd lived before, but never had a name for it. I grew up in a christian based household, and that belief never felt comfortable.

When I was 19, a Shirley MacClaine book literally hit me on the head in a Drama bookshop in Manhattan, from the top shelf. I took it as a sign, read it quickly, and dappled w/ the idea of actual reincarnation.

It took me about a month to totally disregard my upbringing and embrace reincarnation. My mom and brother helped me too. It just made sense. I don't care if there is or isn't scientific proof of it. I don't need proof, my memories and feelings are enough.
Love and Light
 
I have always been just a little curious because it made sense to me. I was raised with very religious Episcopalian and formerly Baptist (my dad was Baptist, but converted when they married) parents who NEVER believed in anything other than "You die. You go to heaven or hell. That's that." The Heaven/Hell concreteness sounded too neat and tidy to me, even as a child, especially because there aren't any hard and fast rules for judging who would get into Heaven to start with. What, is God up there with a red pen and if you got below 70 on the test, you went to Hell? I never liked that image of God, so I have always considered reincarnation as a possibility for a spirit to learn and grow again and again.

But I really got interested in it a couple of years ago when my husband and two of our young children went to Galveston (Texas) for a short vacation. We had a fun vacation, but the entire time I was there, I kept really noticing graveyards everywhere and feeling this "death" feel about it all. I was pregnant with my youngest child at the time and I remember my husband and I went out into the water together (a nanny was with the other kids) and I could feel my youngest son floating inside me as I floated in the ocean and I felt this wierd "rebirth" kind of image in my mind. Later, we went driving around and my husband half jokingly said, "We should move here!" and while I liked Galveston, the idea of moving there sounded horrible to me! I said "NO! They have hurricanes here!" Those words just kind of came out of nowhere.

The next week when we were sitting at home reading the paper, there was a huge article in the Dallas Morning News about the hurricane that wiped out most of Galveston in 1900. When we were there, it would have been the 100th anniversary of the hurricane. As I read the article, I started crying (and I'm not that emotional, in general. At least not teary-eyed) and I felt this incredible sadness. I had NOT even known about that hurricane, although it was considered the worst in US history. (There is a good book about it that I have read since, called "Isaac's Storm." It's a little slow and dry, but interesting once you get into it).

Anyway, I started reading more about reincarnation since then. I don't have any concrete memories--I can't even say I once lived in Galveston, per se, but it was real enough that I wonder about it. I have other little snippets of strange things as well. I used to have a vivid dream when I was a kid where I was lying on the pavement, face down with my arms up by my face, waiting to be shot in the back of the head. All I remember of that dream is pure terror, a pure feeling of "I am really, really going to die right now". In the dream, I can only see my sleeves on my jacket--they are beige or tan--and I sense there are at least two other people with me. That's it. I would have had this dream at about five years old. My parents were very careful about what I watched on TV (and they didn't show graphic violence on TV back then anyway. This would have been about 1976 or 1977), so I don't know how I dreamed that dream.

I also have some things stick out, like the date 1968. If I hear or see 1968, I am instantly interested, no matter what. Why?

Or my now 4.5 year old son who, at 3.5, ran and jumped on a stranger's motorcycle and then as I told him to get down (now! :-)), he calmly said, "I need the key." How does he know that? No one we know has motorcycles. Possibly TV, but we are pretty careful about what he watches, too.

It just is often the one explanation that works for many different things, when I can't think of anything better. I can't say I KNOW we reincarnate, but I wouldn't be one to say we didn't, either.

Kim
 
I came to believe about reincarnation by observing my son trying to come to grips with the abrupt change in his life and when he was going to see his "real grandmother".

My parents and his mother's parents were "nice", but where was his "real grandmother" and why was he no longer in "X" (another state). The topper was when he described his grandmother's murder in the language of a two year old (without knowing that was what he was describing) and probably his own.

He heard the name of his former home on TV and cried excitedly, "That's where I'm from," and was confused as to why we were not taking him there to be with his "real grandmother."

What I have described are just a couple of incidents out of many over a period of about 2 years. We did not prompt or induce this in any way and it started long before the age when children acquire "imaginary friends."

If you have not been there, you just can't understand.

BTW, I am a rational, sceptical, scientifically educated man. I just know what I have seen.
 
Interesting topic!

When I was very small, still in a crib, I remember very clearly looking up at my little hands and thinking "How strange it is to be small again."

I didn't "start believeing" in reincarnation. I've just always taken it for granted for as long as I can remember, which was odd because nobody else in my family believed in it.
 
I was raised Catholic, I had problems with the church's philosophies, and by the time I was in my mid teens I was pretty disillusioned. I questioned everything the church teaches, which included the one life theory, purgatory, heaven, hell. Much as I disliked (when I was 15) the thought of ever having to come back to earth again, reincarnation just rang true to me.

When my niece was born 11 years ago and started talking about her past life and in particular her baby from that life, my belief was confirmed. I will never forget when a neighbour brought her 2 week old baby to my sister's house (my niece had just turned 2 at the time). She held the baby in her arms and tears fell down her cheeks and she said "mum can you wipe my eyes". We have a photo of her holding the baby with red rimmed eyes. The things she said and did (and this is just one incident) even convinced my mother that reincarnation exists.

My niece also commented at about three on how tiny her feet were and at around the same time she came to visit me, my nephew's bike was in garage (he is 7 years older than her, so the bike was almost adult sized) and she said "have you got a little bike for the little girl I now am?"
 
Hi Sensitive Soul et al:

As soon as I was old enough to hold a pencil, I began incessantly drawing pictures of battles, with spears and swords. My mother was an atheist and a skeptic, and taught me that these pictures were bad, so that later I remembered only the sense of shame for having drawn them. I never connected them with reincarnation. But when I was old enough to think about death, and what happened after, I thought that what made most sense was that we'd come back for life after life. I didn't know why it made sense to me, and I knew I wasn't supposed to believe in it, so kept it to myself.

Fast forward some decades... I had a vague, passing belief in it, and played around a bit with muscle-testing for past lives and overarching soul themes, but didn't take the results seriously. I was getting into more esoteric things, and doing deep healing using homeopathy and other modalities, when -- on August 17, 2000, at age 39 -- I had a spontaneous sense of being a man, older, English, from a long time ago, who'd had my head chopped off by a king, for sticking to my principles in some way. It wasn't a memory of the sensory type, but what I call an impression: I felt I was him, knew I had been him in a past life, and knew all this to be true.

Since then, I have not looked back; memory retrieval is a constant process. It came clear to me that my childhood drawings were depictions of past life events, so that I obviously started remembering very young, but repressed it due to a skeptical upbringing. This has settled the doubts about my sanity, and worth as a human being, that dogged me from age three, and has been incredibly healing.

Love & peace,
Karen
 
My belief in reincarnation started with my study of world scriptures and the teachings of saints and spiritual masters, a couple years out of high school. But I had had past-life memories as a child, along with intense longing to try to recapture them, without being able to articulate what I was experiencing or put a label on it. It's only been in the last five years or so that I educated myself on what's been happening in the West with reincarnation studies.
Steve S.
 
It was 1972. I was working as a book keeper. My boss was sure something was missing from me. She wanted me to meet a friend of hers. I met. I recieved a three hour life reading. I had no idea what to expect before I got there.

I don't know if she thought I was a new soul or Jack the Ripper. I think she was disappointed. She had misbehaved badly in one of her past lives and had a life on Saturn to learn her lesson. Since that time I have not found anything on Saturn being a place for those who used Black Magic.

He also told me that my husband and I had met briefly in one life but that his attraction to me was between lives.

I think this might have been a little much for someone who had no understanding to build upon. I had never been able to understand life here anyway. This confusion connected well enough with the rest that it did not make me feel uncomfortable. I began to read on the subject.

I've since discovered more possibilities and am more confused. Reading here has at least shown me I have to believe or not believe no one can do it for me.
 
Rational belief

My "rational belief" came about when I read Twenty Cases suggestive of Reincarnation by Dr. Ian Stevenson. It was in 1983, when I was 19.

Titus
 
In my case, I first read about reincarnation when I bought a book called "The Spirits' Book" written by Allan Kardec in 1845.

At about that same time, I had a fascinating experience with the Ouija in which, when I asked whether reincarnation was true and who I might have been, the reply was "Prince Charles Edward Stewart" (same name as I have now but with "Stewart" written "Stuart").

Fifteen years later, when I was 30, I was given the same information during a psychic reading. An impossible coincidence that hit me like a slap in the face.

Some years later I learned that the surname was originally written "Stewart", but was changed to "Stuart" by Queen Mary Stuart because of the inexistent "w" in the French alphabet.
 
My first encounter was the movie The Reincarnation of Peter Proud. At the time I found the idea interesting but kinda "voodoo" scary, if you know what I mean. At the time I remember believing without any problem but put it away as one of those untouchable areas of life.I never really put all of the dreams, dejavus, odd-coincidental events together. I became a believer after returning to my home town after forty years of being "out in the world". Here the pieces of the huge puzzle seemed to come together in some kind of choreographed plan. The signs of some previous existence were clear, my research brought me to reincarnation and the conclusion it is very real.
 
I don't remember a time when i didn't believe in reincarnation... :rolleyes:
My family has always been very spiritualized since all my aunts (5 sisters) had the ability to communicate with the spiritual world. They could hear spirits and they could speak through them.
We used to get together on sundays evenings to read a chapter from one of Allan Kardec's books. Almost every sunday we had a visitor usually someone from our family who have passed away, to leave us a message and assure us that life was not over after death. :)

As i was getting older it became more and more evident to me that i was following the right path.
I started having spiritual confirmations and never doubted that we are all here for the same reason, to learn and to grown.... :)
After i moved to America i was a bit surprise to realize that reincarnation was still some kind of taboo around here... In South America we are more open to spirits, reincarnation, etc...

Now, more than ever, i feel very blessed to believe that i will see my loved ones once again and the separation is just for a short amount of time. There is no death... :)
 
"How did everyone start believing in reincarnation?"

This is a long story actually as my reawaking was the result of a very traumatic experience which almost cost me my life and I am not sure I feel comfortable enough getting into too many details on why I started down the path as it might disturb some of you and make you view me as a "broken person"; at least back then :( .....

But as far as reincarnation is concerned, I relearned about it in this life as I was doing a ton of research on metaphysics in general. After reading a lot about it I started trying to have some past life visions (for lack of a better term) using some techniques in some books I had and low and behold, some started coming to the surface much to my pleasure....

I always felt that I was not learning something new, but instead was relearning something timeless which I have always known. Since my "awakening" I have had many past life visions not only of myself but also on others who I have "connected" with in a way. Many things, authors, and events contributed to my relearning of reincarnation, not the least of which was my almost death and the miracle of my not dieing......

Everything is connected and at times it's hard for me to put an exact "date" on things, as time really don't exist in my view. In either case I am overjoyed events led me down the path of wisdom again & the light and I for one am thankful to all those who had a part in it....

Peace........
 
well, I started beleiving in what I thought of as 'multiple lifetimes' for as long as I can remember (I always found catholic church and preschool quite silly and fantasy like...), but specifically I remember me and a friend about 5 years ago discussed a theory that we were born more than once and eventually went to heaven... and when i read about buddhism when i was about 11... I knew that it related to what I believed in... ever since... i was a closet-case buddhist (around adults) until two years ago...
 
I always beleived in reincarnation but never gave it alot of serious thought, then a few years back something happened in my life that was a major trigger. It was then that I started having very strong memories of a pastlife, and since then I have also discovered many other lives.
 
As a child I was absolutely terrified of fire, but never really associated this fear with a previous life until I was 13, when I had a dream about a little girl with blond hair holding a teddy bear, she had on an old fashioned nightgown and was outside watching her house burning down. My fear of fire faded around the time I had the dream.

Since that experience, I believed in the possibility of reincarnation, but I never was entirely sure. Even though i've had several dreams that I realize now were PL related, it wasn't until I had a reading last fall with a psychic that made me truly believe. She is now a good friend of mine :)
 
It was just another possible route to answers for me. I'd been introduced to the idea when I was little, but never thought much of it until I was in my late teens/early 20s. I don't know why I started believing. Maybe because nothing else made sense.

Lib
 
I worked with a young man, a nurse named Doug, many years ago who was adamant in his belief of reincarnation. I hadn't really believed or disbelieved, it just wasn't a subject that came about at our house. However the end of time was widely and thoroughly discussed. But to get back to where I was, Doug became my best friend. He believed that we had been brother and sister somewhere in time. He also believed that he had been a black slave that had cleaned horse stables. He also insisted that I was one of the horses. I enjoyed his tales immensely, and didn't put too much stock in them. When I was pregnant with my first child, I began to have flashes of memory of soldiers knocking on the door in the night and tearing my baby and my husband away from me. The screams of my child echoed in my mind constantly. I nearly lost my mind and was afraid to tell anyone because I thought that I was having premonitions of the end of time. I was so terrified that I went for years and wouldn't look at a newspaper, never watched the news, avoided stores like the plague that had religious books. These flashes continued on through the pregnancy and birth of my second child 2 years later, and contributed to the breakup of my marriage. I was so busy with life that I was able to put these thoughts in the back of my mind for the most part, and with the help of medication. I remarried and lost my mom, and took care of my dad until he passed and had another child so my mind was busy. I nearly lost my mind again after daddy died and I created a situation of debt that was staggering so that my mind was occupied with something other than the screams of my child. When my oldest child, my daughter was in her early 20's, she told me of memories that she had of past lives. She was so matter of fact that I never doubted her at all. The nest time we went to the mall, I went to the bookstore to see what I could find. I found Carol's books. I began to read and I began to see what had happened to me. It was such a blessing and a relief. For the first time in over 20 years, my mind was at peace, and my healing began. Carol Bowman has been the greatest miracle in my life, and so are all of you here.
 
I suppose it was when I was 13 and really started getting into Astrology, Numerology, the paranormal, and unexplained phenomena. Then our first unit in my ninth grade Global Studies class was the Indian subcontinent, and we learnt a lot about the different religions there, all of which believe in reincarnation. Late that December my past life dreams returned, complete with xenoglossy, and I just instinctively knew I was having past life dreams, that all of those nightmares years ago had been past live dreams too, from the same past life.
 
I started meditating as a toddler, which would have been the late 1940s. But I began to get really serious about it while I was in highschool, because I had a drinking problem, and a horrible relationship with my mother, who had been abusive when I was younger. She died in 1969, when I was 22 going on 17.

In 1973 or 74, I ended up in the Intensive Care Unit of the local hospital. The pneumonia I had had the year before had laid dormant inside me and mutated into something deadly. As I arrived at the ER, I had an OBE, and watched as doctors put some sort of tube down my throat to save my life.

I was in a comma for two or three days, and wasn't expected to live. While in the comma, I was visited by my mother, who told me I wouldn't die, because I was still needed on earth. The fact we had parted on poor terms made me believe that seeing her was real. I have been a believer in both reincarnation and meditation ever since. But the story continues.

When my mother died in 1969, my dad wanted to keep the family house, rather than selling it, and asked if I'd keep living there with him, which I did. In the fall of 1987, my father suffered a series of massive strokes, and though he survived, he couldn't live alone. My brother had a family and career of his own, and would have found it difficult to care for my father. Luckily I still lived with my father, and willingly became his caretaker. Six months later I became disabled in an auto accident, and was able to better understand and accept my father's illness.

I cared for my father from the fall of 1987 until he died peacefully in May of 1995. The responsibility of being his only caretaker gave me the maturity I had lacked all my life, and has helped me cope with the problems that living on my own present

John
 
I was introduced to the concept because as I researched different religions and philosophies, I stumbled upon the idea of reincarnation and it caught my interest immediately. I began reading about it, and it made more sense than anything else ever had - in fact, there was nothing about it that DIDN'T make sense to me. It filled in all the gaps that organized religion left. But what sealed the deal is when I began to realize that all the strong connections I'd had with boyfriends, friends, family members, etc., weren't just coincidence. I realized that the feeling that you've known someone forever is not just a feeling, it really is a truth.
 
How did everyone start believing in reincarnation?

Reading through various posts on this topic , I realise that I was quite lucky in a sense because my father believed in reincarnation. Neither religion nor reincarnation were "forced" onto us .He did however share his "struggle" in finding answers to his many questions with us. Today I realise that he fought most of the "battles" regarding his viewpoint on reincarnation and the compatability of it with the christian religion for us as children so that we could form our own opinion regarding reincarnation.

We, as children, were therefore "free" to attend any church if we chose and also free to make our own choice in the end whether we wanted to become a member of a specific religion group or not. I think the fact that I had freedom regarding religion and reincarnation beliefs ,forced me at a early age to establish for myself why I believed in reincarnation. In my second year of varsity I did my practical training at a Rudolph Steiner school for the handicapped-which strenghtened my belief in reincarnation even more. So like some of you --I just could not ever bring myself to believe, that this "one life" is all there is to life - despite what the "church" preached.

Personally I still cant figure out why the church changed it stance regarding reincarnation way back, because I find the two "quite" compatable!! I hope that we will reach a point in the christian world where it will again be incorporated like in India.

Something that really put my mind to rest , for this life time, anyway,is in the book of Michael Newton, Life between lives:Hypnotherapy for spiritual regression on page 213 : "No earthly religious deities are seen in the spirit world by returning souls". I therefore would like to believe that all the "religious struggles" here on planet earth is part of the soul development that every soul have to work through some time or another during their individual incarnations. If clarity is not found during this lifetime --perhaps - a next.

Personally I am glad that my mind and soul is at rest regarding this matter!

Hendrina Grove
 
Hendrina wrote: Personally I still cant figure out why the church changed it stance regarding reincarnation way back, because I find the two "quite" compatible!! I hope that we will reach a point in the Christian world where it will again be incorporated like in India.
Click to expand...

Hendrina there are several theories on why they did it (see the history section). But I agree with you, they are very compatable...almost makes too much sense!

Tinkerman
 
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