Past lives
Past lives are, according to traditions that accept reincarnation, the previous incarnations of the soul in other bodies, eras and cultures. Their traces — talents, phobias, attractions, repetitive patterns — are considered to persist in the present life and explain aspects not derivable from current genetics or environment.
Origin of the concept
The idea of past lives is central in spiritual traditions affirming reincarnation: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Celtic druidism, Greek Pythagoreanism, certain early Christian mystics, Hebrew Kabbalah (with the concept of gilgul). In Hinduism, each soul lives thousands of incarnations; in Buddhism, a karmic stream is transmitted life after life until its extinction in nirvana.
In the 20th century, the hypnotic regressions popularised by Brian Weiss (Yale psychiatrist) and Michael Newton introduced past lives into Western therapeutic culture. Their books (Many Lives, Many Masters, Journey of Souls) describe sessions where patients in hypnotic trance reported detailed scenes from other eras, supposedly previous lives. The verifiability of these regressions is controversial, but their therapeutic effect is notable.
How they manifest
According to reincarnationists, past lives leave traces in the present: spontaneous talents (a child with astonishing piano skill without having studied), unexplainable phobias (fear of water without recent trauma, no contact with accident), intense cultural attractions (feeling deeply identified with a distant culture without explanation), déjà vu in places never visited, recurring dreams with specific historical settings.
Professor Ian Stevenson, of the University of Virginia, compiled over decades more than 3,000 cases of children with verifiable memories of past lives: names of people, addresses, specific events that the child could not normally know and that in many cases could be contrasted with real families. His work is academically serious but has not produced scientific consensus. Reincarnation remains personal belief, not proven fact.
Working with past lives
Methods to access past lives (with variable effectiveness and verifiability): hypnotic regression with a trained therapist, deep meditation in silence, psycho-spiritual tests that identify karmic archetypes, karmic numerology, analysis of phobias and attractions in light of the concept. Although the verifiability of these methods is limited, many people report that working with past lives (whether literal or symbolic) helps them recognise repetitive patterns in their present life.
Also known as
- Previous incarnations
- Earlier existences
- Karmic past