Is there an Afterlife and Reincarnation?

I was looking out of my lounge room window into the front garden.  My eyes caught first the magnolia tree.  Only a short few weeks ago it had been laden with beautiful large magnolia on a leafless tree and now these had all died and the tree was laden with new leaves.  The Irises had also died and the rose trees were in full bloom, some white, some red and another pink, the size of saucers.  They had been lovely last year and didn’t disappoint us again this year either.  Across the road, we have bush land area with trees that were also changing with the season, and I noticed that the yellow crested cockatoo had come back as well.

This got me thinking about life and death and how some of my clients came for past life regression and some others came for different reasons and how some of these also experienced a previous life even though they were not asked to do so.  I pondered on the possibility that perhaps we were like those plants and trees.  That my life was an extension of the main original plant or tree, and like the new buds and leaves, I was nothing more than a new shoot from the original and occasionally if the climate was right, I would remember my previous death and rebirth just as was happening to everything that I was looking at in front of me now.  Did they too have the ability to perceive the life and death that went before them?

Is there such a thing as reincarnation, and if so what is it?  Or is it nothing more than a false memory syndrome?

One of the most compelling verifications of past life is the website that talks about Scientific Evidence for Survival of consciousness after death. There are many stories with citations seen on this site.   These are from people of prominence that have studied this phenomenon for many years, looking for validation to understand further the mystery of life and death.

One of the citations is on xenoglossy, which is the ability to speak or write a foreign language a person never learned.   After thorough investigation and exoneration of fraud, genetic memory, telepathy and cryptomnesia (the remembering of a foreign language learned earlier), psychic investigators, such as the highly credible Dr. Ian Stevenson, who used scientific method to illustrate xenoglossy claim that there are only two possible explanations — either spirit contact or past life memory both of which are evidence for the afterlife.

Others which involved not only the person that died on the operating table, but the person they visited before returning into their own body.  Hitherto skeptics that experienced a near death experience, now are totally transformed.  There are so many stories told that it can keep the reader mesmerised for quite a considerable time. ¹

Another website by Victor Zammit is also in line with afterlife evidence.  It refers to the television show Sensing Murder that I remember seeing with Deb Webber and Kelvin Qruickshank who each independently were able to give some 43 correct variables, accurately describing a murder, where the killing took place, why and who murdered the victim – naming the murderers.  Many years after the event of the unsolved murder, we would need to ask ourselves, where did this information come from?²

Edgar Cayce (1877 – 1945) is a much written about psychic that would put himself into a self hypnotic trance state and help people through diagnosing health problems, prescribing dietary regimens, deal with psychic disorders, and predict future events.  He spoke of reincarnations.  Enough of his diagnoses and predictions proved true to silence many skeptics and to develop a wide following.

In 1900, Cayce was struck by severed laryngitis that resulted in complete loss of his speech.  Unable to work any longer as an insurance salesman, he took up the trade of photography.  A travelling stage hypnotist and entertainer called “Hart – The Laugh Man” offered to attempt a cure.  Cayce accepted, and the attempted cure took place on stage in front of an audience.  It was said that remarkably, Cayce’s voice returned while in hypnosis but allegedly disappeared on awakening.  Even although Hart put in a posthypnotic suggestion that his voice would continue to function after the trance, this proved unsuccessful.  As Hart needed to leave for commitments elsewhere, a local hypnotist, Al Layne took over.  In hypnosis Layne suggested that Cayce describe what caused the problem he had, and Cayce described his own ailment.  According to the reading, his voice loss was due to psychological paralysis and described his cure.  On awakening, his voice was alleged to have remained normal.  There were relapses that eventually using the same methods, worked permanently.

Cayce said that his trance statements should be taken into account only to the extent that they led to a better life for the recipient. Moreover, he invited his audience to test his suggestions rather than accept them on faith.  He never charged for his readings.

There have been many followers and stories about Cayce’s work as well as skeptics, which is able to be found on the citation below.⁴

I remember reading a book from my local library many years ago.    One of the stories that stayed in my mind was one of a daughter whose father had been a gentle man, but some six months earlier he became violent and aggressive and was put into a mental institution.  The daughter had told her boss who wrote to Cayce giving his name, date of birth and where he was.  In his hypnosis state Cayce came up with the reading that the father had fallen on his coccyx on the ice.  He gave a particular course of action to put the man right again and within a few months he recovered.

I could find many sites on the Internet and write a book on everyone’s thoughts about people’s experiences and thoughts, but that is not my intention here which is merely to point out a number of thoughts.

Predominantly there are three main trains of thought about death –

1. We live our life, die and that’s it.  Nothing, zilch, zero, nought – like a light switch turned off.
2. We live our life, die and then our soul leaves our body and goes to heaven.
3. We live our life, die and then in due course, we reincarnate to experience another life.

In any scenario above there is really nothing to worry about dying – how you die, now that could be another matter.  In accidents, our own release of chemicals help us through the process in a state of shock that does not feel pain.  Perhaps not so easily if we don’t take good care of ourselves and illness lingers on, or we have chosen to experience pain (as a client once told me was her purpose in this life).

Here are a few things that have happened in my hypnosis sessions:

Example 1.

I said to a client; When I count, back from 5 to 0 you will go to a time when you were a non-smoker… (The idea being that the client had come to give up smoking and I wanted them to experience how well they managed before taking on the habit.)

Client:  Goes back into a past life, sees herself dead on the ground.  Two people walk over to her and one was her uncle.  He picked her up and carried her to the car then drove to the hospital.  They walk down some stairs and he lays her on a stone slab.  As she looks up at her uncle, she says; “That’s my son in this life.”

Example 2.

Client says that she woke up in her bedroom feeling a presence.  She sees her father standing at the end of her bed who tells her not to worry as he is all right.

Example 3.

Client who has an alcohol problem feels it has something to do with a past life and asks me to do a past life regression.  The past life she experiences is nothing notable and client is instructed to continue viewing and go forward past her life.  The client feels a wonderful feeling of love, warmth and comfort.  She didn’t wish to reincarnate.  I asked the reason for her return.  She responds; “Because he told me to.”  As we counselled this, a decision was made to stop drinking.

Example 4.

A Client is being choked to death and feels herself leaving her body.  It is a most wonderful feeling to float out of this nightmare, but three people await the ascent, and give instructions to go back… that it is not time yet.

Example 5.

The clock stops each day at precisely 12.00 noon.  On occasions, the doorbell rings.  When client goes to answer it, no one is there.  Client feels there is a presence – in one room it is icy cold.  A woman was murdered in the house prior to the client purchasing the house.  A conversation takes place between the client and the murdered woman, who describing how she died… told her to move an item from the house… have the icy cold room cleansed from the evil in it.  She was also told some things that would occur in the future.

And there have been many other occasions…  Understand that I have been in practice for over 20 years, and whilst these are not frequent occurrences, the clients who do a spontaneous regression vividly see. Feel and recall these incidences without prompting.  Those clients who wished to see if they are able to access a past life are only led in so far that they are guided further back in this life until they step through a light into a previous time which they describe as they experience this.

I do not advertise that I do past life regression as it may deter clients from coming to see me who would be concerned about such events and who really need my help.   But when a client specifically requests this service, I am quite fascinated by it all.

I go through the possibilities with the client that we do not know if what they will experience is real, whether it could be something they may have read in a book, heard someone talk about, and watched in a movie or even simply imagination… I explain research that has proven people to have a false memory syndrome and I describe to them an actual case where a participant interviewed after a mock hold up described in the first interview that the robber had been wearing a balaclava.  In the second interview, the participant said that the robber wore a beanie.  The counsellor pointed out to him the discrepancy, but the participant insisted that the first counsellor had written it down wrong.  The second counsellor was able to show him that he was the one who got it wrong as she showed him the first interview that had been videoed confirmed that the error was his.  I also warn clients that some people are not able to access a past life (one of these being myself) and to have something in mind to deal with if this is the case for them.

So is there an afterlife and reincarnation?  I will let you the reader decide that as you investigate the resources mentioned below.

Sources:

¹ cited at: http://www.near-death.com/evidence.html#a3 Scientific Evidence for Survival of Consciousness after Death.

² cited at: http://www.victorzammit.com/  After Life Evidence

³ cited at:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Cayce Edgar Cayce 1877–1945

⁴ cited at: http://www.intuitive-connections.net/2004/caycenotpsychic.htm