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In my latest book I say, yes they can.
For a long time I have firmly believed that I have lived before and hope I will
be reunited with a loved one in the future. The only explanation I have for
this is that my dreams have me featured in certain circumstances and I know
they are set in the past. Often I don’t
recognise the other person and yet know deep down who it is. The logical
part of my brain tells me this is probably fanciful thinking, and my overactive
imagination concocting stories I would like to be true. In one of my most vivid
dreams I was most definitely in Ireland (never been there in this life) with a
man I knew well even though he looked different to the one I know in this life.
We had a family of children (I have none in this life) and were a struggling
family which was obvious by the surroundings. It was so convincing I believed I
was reliving a past life.
One of my previous doctors was born in
Pakistan and later lived in India (or it might have been the other way around)
before coming to Australia. We got to talking one day about my beliefs and
certain religions and I was taken aback when he assured me I was a Buddhist, or
so aligned with their faith it was obvious I shared their beliefs.
It seems I am not alone in my belief
in reincarnation, as the concept has existed for a long time in certain
religions. I was surprised, stunned in fact, to learn that there are probably
more people alive today who believe in it than those who do not. This surprised
me because of this technological age we live in I thought it would be something
that wasn’t even considered. The most surprising fact to me was that a large
proportion of people in the USA and
Western Europe do hold a belief in reincarnation.
Read more about it here:
Another
fact that surprised me is there is quite a difference in such beliefs in
certain cultures. I believed it was something more taught by Buddhists but
learnt that it features largely in the Hindu culture also. They believe in
Karma and that rather than meeting up with past loves in the future we are more
likely to simply be reborn, even as an animal or of the opposite sex. I am a
great believer in Karma, or Fate as I like to call it, and know it has played
an enormous part in my life.
Read more:
Something that I found immensely interesting is that in 1961 Ian Stevenson who at the time was
chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia was so
intrigued by the cases of children claiming to remember past lives that he gave
up his position at the University and opted on full-time research of the cases.
He found children who spoke quite fluently of other lives and deceased people.
Their stories were so convincing that some families made contact with members
of this previous person the child mentioned in such detail.
At
these meetings, the child would often be said to identify members of the
previous family as well as items belonging to the deceased individual. Since he
began his research he and others have found many such cases of children claiming
to recall past lives. Seem too fanciful? Not to me, as children often have
invisible friends, and I doubt if a child could go so far as to imagine and
describe someone is such detail that it could be proved later this person lived.
And cases have been found in so many different locations there has to be more
truth in it than wishful thinking. Most common cases are found in countries
such as India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, West Africa, and mostly in cultures with a firm
belief in reincarnation. It’s the fact that these are children and not adults
who could clearly make stories up to satisfy the researcher that makes it so
convincing.
My
mother never had in-depth discussions with us on such things as life after
death but I can still see her wreath lying on our father’s coffin, with her
card that simply said, “Till we meet again.”
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