Do we have Past lives?

[Nefer-Ankhe]

I'm curios as to what the general belief is on past lives, whether we have experienced a past life or not.... e.g. have we or will we experience reincarnation?

[Tutankhaten-pasheri]

I know some people who strongly believe they have lived before, and will do so again. I will admit some have very convincing arguments that cause me to wonder about what is really happening with this. However, dealing only with having lived before as a human, then it is not possible that everybody could have had a previous life. The reason is that I believe more people are alive today than have ever lived since the dawn of humanity, so there would not be enough "souls" from the past to fill new bodies. Generally, it seems most of those who claim a previous existance say they were of the nobility of the times they claimed to have lived in. Not so many say they lived as a slave in terrible conditions for a few years before dying a miserable death....

[Nefer-Ankhe]

All of which you have said is true...

Previously I had believed that some of us, have experienced past lives whilst others a "new spirits", for that exact same reason, which you have already mentioned, that there are more humans upon Earth, than there have ever been.

However some stories and conclusions, dealing with past lives are very persuasive and seem to answer questions like

-Irrational fears

-Unexplained memories

-Unexplained talents

-Unexplained obsessions and likings

and etc.

Makes me wonder , all very interesting, in any case.

[Tutankhaten-pasheri]

Yes, is true that there are unexplained things occuring about this, some sort of deja vu, but on a much bigger scale. I do not reject outright the notion of some past life, there is sufficient doubt to cause some thinking about this. Unfortnunately people like Edgar Cayce have muddied the waters here, and most these days simply point and laugh at such concepts.

[Nefer-Ankhe]

I wouldn't be so sure about that, I think people nowadays are more accepting and open-minded about these concepts, than what they would have been say 100 years ago or more, however there are a lot of skeptics, rightfully so.

[Clarakore]

There is once concept which can better be described as parallel lives. That is we will die and be reborn but not necessarily in any linear progression, your next life could very well be in the past, not in the future. In this theory we will be reborn until we experience every life there is to experience so in essence there is only one life, you, and everyone you come into contact to will be you, so be kind to others is being kind to yourself.

Different still yet closely related is how I personally wonder if we are all from one source of life, the same life source, and thus it is no coincidence that we can have past or future life memories, Not that we were once this other person but again we are all persons.

The greatest illusion is to believe I am here and you are there. We are all one.

[Bendy Demon]

I used to think that past lives existed or rather I accepted that nonsense simply because I read some books and made the mistake of associating certain memories with so-called past lives.

However after actually thinking about the subject, I realized it made no sense especially since there is absolutely NO accounts that could ever pass as actual evidence supporting the theory.

I tend to think that most of the time people mistake old memories consisting of vague images and impressions for memories of a past life. Human memory is woefully unreliable and inaccurate; we incorrectly recall past events, forget about movies, music or books we've been exposed to and those fleeting impressions get stuck. We forget what those fleeting memories are associated with and thus we think it is associated with past lives.

Maybe past lives exist but so far nothing has been presented to support the claim and quite frankly I just don't see why it even should exist.

[kystranger]

Perhaps we are all looking at it from the wrong perspective. I do believe in past lives and reincarnation, but I believe that it is a totally voluntary thing. I believe that when we die we go to heaven and hang out there for a while. Then when we are ready (or if we are ready), we reincarnate on earth (or philosophically on a myriad of other planets in the universe). The reason I see it this way is that I sincerely believe that our souls are on a cosmic journey wherein we learn. I don't mean learning as in physics, math or anything like that, but rather esoteric concepts such as love, forgiveness, compassion, etc. I think that we choose what we want to work on in our life, God says, "Here's the things I want you to work on and/or do also", and you choose a life that will best suit our needs to learn our lessons. One analogy that was suggested to me was that our universe is like a school, and our incarnation are kind of like grades. As we move from one incarnation to the next, we are entering different grades and learning different things. I also believe that the reason we don't know about our past lives is that it may inhibit our progress in our current incarnation. With that being said, there are sometimes blips or mistakes and someone recalls vague memories or actions from previous lives.

[Dark_Grey]

The greatest illusion is to believe I am here and you are there. We are all one.

If that way of thinking caught on, you would have effectively ended war, world hunger and every problem we've brought on ourselves

[FlyingAngel]

The greatest illusion is to believe I am here and you are there. We are all one.

I'll love you if you are a girl..

I once think that there's an unique soul. If it (we) dies in a life, it will be reincarnated into another life randomly in the past or future or present. So when you meet a neighbor or a friend or your parents, they are you-reincarnated.