Past Lives


             Have you ever recalled past lives in a dream that you've had? These types of dreams are the ones where you find yourself in an unfamiliar place where you've never been before in this lifetime. It may be a house where you lived in a previous life, or a farm, or other place where you frequented in the past life. I believe that the majority of people have had these types of dreams, and wake up puzzled as to why they had them. Most people don't connect these dreams with previous lives.

We never really forget our past lives, this information is stored in the  sub-conscious mind.  Sometimes it is possible to "retrieve" this stored information, but this takes some effort and involves connecting information from dreams, visions or the deja vous experience.

          A past life may be revisited either in a dream, vision, or a deja vous experience. In either case the memories seem to come from the sub-conscious. First we will examine dreams, then later, the deja vous experience.

Dreams

          The key to getting more details about a previous life is to analyze the dreams, find the dreams that are recurring, and connect dreams that seem to have common elements. Many times a former life may be reconstructed from many different dreams that you've had over the years. Suddenly you recognize the connection, and then you "feel" that you have become a part of what you once were in that previous life. And what is truly amazing is when you actually see yourself in the former life,  you begin to realize that this person was actually you.

          It is also helpful to pinpoint the dreams that seem to take place within the same time frame. Say you had several dreams of being a soldier living in the 1940's in France. You could connect several dreams by what is visualized in the dreams. There may be cars from the 1940's in the related dreams, people dressed according to that period, 1940's era aircraft,  1940's and earlier buildings, mannerisms of people. All of these can help you to isolate the time when you lived the former life.

          All you need to do is make a connection between one or two dreams to begin to recover the details of a past life. Once you have done this, you may be able to recall additional details by concentrating on the particulars of these dreams, like the  other persons in the dream, the location, the events. This may trigger the memory of other events of your past life, like your name, place of birth, local scenery. The key here is to concentrate. You will need to find a nice quiet place and put yourself into a meditative state.  

The Deja Vous Experience

        Patricia from Alberta, Canada writes  " I had an odd experience yesterday related to this. My husband and I were at the drag races, and while sitting in the stands watching, all of a sudden I got a smell of something that  sent me back to an airfield or at an airport somewhere. The racetrack has an "open pit" policy, so later we were standing by a building watching the cars being moved into place before they raced, and then it was the loud sounds of the cars being revved and taking off that sent me back to that airfield again just for another instant. I'm thinking I must have been a worker at an airfield in a previous life - maybe during WW2. "

      Patricia continues: "I did have a strange incident a few years ago when my husbands grandmother was clearing out her husband's garage full of stuff. My father-in-law brought back a box of "antique' tools for us. He pulled one of the tools out of the box and said he didn't know what it was. I immediately piped up and said, "oh, that's a grease gun". It turns out that it was a grease gun but I have no idea how I knew since I had never seen an antique grease gun before (or even a modern grease gun)."

       She concludes: "Maybe it's not so odd that so many people recall past lives of WW2 - a lot of people died during that war - both innocent and not-so-innocent. And "memories" of WW2 would be clearer than other previous lives"

        Patricia is beginning to recall the events of a past life where she was possibly a mechanic at an airfield  during W.W.II. See how she has connected these memories together. These memories are being triggered by something that occurs, like the race track sounds or the grease gun incident.  Sometimes something happens that prompts the recall of a past life. This demonstrates that it is not always a dream where the past life is revisited, it may also be one of those fleeting memories that "flash' into our minds unexpectedly.
                                                       
          This is the deja vous experience. Sometimes the deja vous experience can become the major revealing source, and may be just as revealing as dreams. Often a certain place, scent or conversation may trigger a deja vous flashback to a past life. Take a mental note of these experiences as well, or even better yet, write them down and then you may begin to make connections.

          Roughly French for "again you", deja vous is the experience of thinking that one has been oneself before, perhaps in a past life, or in this same one, but during some other time. Extremely self aware people are often unable to avoid experiencing deja vous throughout every minute of their waking lives.   ( see link: Deja Vous )
 
Visions

Some people experience visions, a brief image that comes usually during the conscious state, when the eyes are closed. Some visions may tell us clues to our past lives. You may see yourself as an entirely different individual in the vision, in an unfamiliar place. This is a glimpse into your past life and you can learn much if you are attentive to these visions ( if you are aware of your visions, mnny people dismiss visions as fantasy )


Why do we remember past lives?

          The  memories of past lives are stored in our sub-conscious when we begin a new life.  Children at a very early age have shared about very specific events from their previous life. see Past Lives as Told by Children

          The issue is confusing, of course. Apparenty most or all of the memories of the past life are forgotten at the conscious level. So it is the sub-consciouss that retains the former life memories. Some children may be more in tune with their sub-conscious than the norm. I find this to be compelling evidence that we do live other lives.

        The past life can intrude into our present via the sub-conscious. The question is, why? Why do these memoiris move to the conscious level? Does something prompt this? Does a certain place, sight or sound prompt it? A crises in our present time? Or is it just a simple random movement of the sub-conscious memories up to the conscious level? It is difficult to say.

       I think that for some persons, to know and understand a former life may be beneficial. For others, it may not. Some individuals may suppress these memories because there is no relevance to this present life or the memories are not functional for them. A few individuals may find this knowledge enlightening and a spring-board from the past towards the future.
      

        Write down your dreams and deja vous experiences and analyze them for common elements that can be connected. A  journal is a good idea when attempting to piece together a former life. Once you have made the connection between several dreams, flashback memories, or deja vous experiences, you can begin to piece together actual events from your previous life.

How to remember a past life

One method of recall of a past life is meditation. Some people have tried hypnotherapy to unlock the memories of past lives. But this is not necessary. The mind can be put into a meditative state, similar to hypnosis, where past life recall can occur. This meditative state is similar to yoga, where the distractions of the world are filtered out and one becomes more in tune with the inner self. I am able to put my mind into a restive state, almost a sleep mode, yet I am still conscious. You must totally relax, and clear the mind of any thought. It is when your mind is completely clear of all the clutter and distractions of the world that you will often be able to see clearly into your past life. This may come as a vision, a clear image. It may be a brief image, and you have no control over what you see. With this method you will probably only see a little at a time, a gradual disclosure. 

     
See Related Readings about Past Lives: Past Lives as Recalled by Children

                                                                    Past Lives in Buddhism, Judaism, and Christianity