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IS REINCARNATION HOCUS-POCUS? Explore the many signs of past lives

Last updated: March 4th, 2019

One thing I’m not here to do is to “build a case” for reincarnation. I prefer to share with you what Kabbalah has to say about reincarnation, knowing that this wisdom can help all of us overcome the hurdles we encounter every day. Indeed, from a kabbalistic point of view, there is no complex argument to be put forward on behalf of reincarnation. Reincarnation is simply a fact of life. End of story.

In the Gates of Reincarnation, Rav Isaac Luria (the Ari), describes the many lifetimes of our patriarchs and sages—Adam, Jacob, Esau, Moses, Isaac—and what they came back to learn and correct. We understand from the Ari that he himself
was a spark of Rav Shimon bar Yochai, the author of the Zohar. In this one volume alone, the Ari explains the deepest mysteries of the soul, including how and why we may reincarnate as animals or even as inanimate objects such as stones.

Despite the kabbalistic belief that reincarnation is a certainty, some people see it as hocus-pocus. But without an appreciation of this process, most of us sleepwalk through life. We wake up, we go to work, we go to school, we come home, eat, watch TV, go to sleep…and do it all over again the next day. Limiting ourselves to information from our five senses keeps us from seeing the deeper meaning in this life at this moment. That’s why so many of us feel that life is something that happens to us randomly, bringing joy one day and tragedy the next. Like the student who went to the town square, we don’t see how a particular occurrence in this lifetime is connected to events in an earlier one. Once we understand the workings of reincarnation, seemingly random events suddenly take on new meaning.

Often when we’re driving our car while chatting with our passenger, we’re surprised when we arrive at our destination. When we don’t pay attention, we go on automatic pilot. So it is with other aspects of our life as we follow well-established patterns of thoughts and actions without actually considering what we’re doing.

It’s always a good idea to carve out new pathways, but this is especially true as we grow older. New thoughts create new connections between neurons in the brain allowing the mind to stay alert, agile, and capable of novel thoughts. Without these new pathways, the brain has a tendency to lose precious functions over time, much like any other organ, muscle, ligament, or bone we don’t challenge. The same holds true of the spirit.

Consider the experience of astronauts. How much further from their comfort zones could they get? But by going into the hostile environment of space—by breaking out of their earthly comfort zone—they come back profoundly changed. A kabbalist might say that by going into outer space, astronauts draw from a spiritual source, connecting with the umbilical cord of the Creator’s Light. As Above, so Below. Some say that this spiritual cord, which consists of energy, the life-breath of the Creator, allows Light to flow into our world, infusing every atom, molecule, and cell on Earth.

Space is part of that cord. When we travel in space, we connect to the Light and cannot help but come back altered. Of course, I’m not suggesting you become an astronaut. But I am asking you to reflect on the possibility that reality might be different from what you’ve been thinking it is. In that spirit, I would like you to try something: Assume for the moment that reincarnation is a fact. This may mean setting aside your more rational mind. The idea here is to let go of what you think you know in order to awaken your consciousness. When you do, I am sure you will see signs all around you supporting this shift.

Near-Death Experiences

People who have gone through a near-death experience often say things like, “I saw people I knew who have already passed over, waiting for me at the other end of the tunnel.” They also frequently describe themselves moving towards the light. Most of us don’t get the opportunity to experience what it would be like to die and come back to life. People who do, have been given an opportunity to draw from the umbilical cord of Light. Essentially, they’re being told by the Creator, “I gave your life back to you because you still have a mission to accomplish.”

Most of us have to wait for our next incarnation to continue our spiritual mission, but these rare few who have had a near-death experience have been given a second chance in the same lifetime. A man I know, a healer, once worked as an engineer in a big corporation. He died during a medical procedure, but as he was leaving his body, he heard Heavenly voices saying, “We are going to send you back. But only to help others. You have been given this opportunity in order to use your powers as a healer.” Everybody has the power to heal themselves, and perhaps even others, but this man had been given a miraculous gift of healing. He was told, “Now you’re going back so you can use it.” And he did.

Birthmarks and birth defects

Dr. Ian Stevenson, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia, is one of the world’s foremost researchers on reincarnation. He travelled extensively from 1966 to 1971 collecting more than 2,600 reported cases of past-life memories, mostly from young children. He published this research in his book Children Who Remember Previous Lives: A Question of Reincarnation. Many of these children came from the Buddhist and Hindu countries of South Asia, from the Shiites of Lebanon and Turkey, from the tribes of West Africa, and from the American northwest.

Dr. Stevenson collected specific information from the children’s memories and matched it with data from the former identity they claimed—their family, the place where they said they had lived, the manner of their death. He focused on children because they were less capable of making up the many details of a former life. (Or as the Rav would say, they had not yet become ADULT-erated; that is, they were still close to their past-life experiences.) Stevenson believed that particularly violent trauma and death in one life left physical evidence in the next one. He identified more than 40 cases of children and some adults who claimed to have suffered violent deaths in past lives and had birthmarks in the areas of their fatal wounds. Stevenson detailed his research into birthmarks and birth defects in his multi-volume work Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects.

Stevenson also wrote about Jeffrey Keene’s riveting experiences. Keene was an assistant fire chief in Westport, Connecticut. On his 30th birthday, he suddenly experienced severe and worsening pain in his jaw. Several tests were run in the emergency room, but the doctors there couldn’t identify the source of the pain. Eventually, it faded. End of story? Not quite.

Some 14 years later, Keene while on vacation, stopped in Sharpsburg, Maryland, the scene of the Civil War battle of Antietam. He felt as if the battlefield called to him. Walking through the “Sunken Road” area, he had a strong emotional and physical reaction, which he describes in his book, Someone Else’s Yesterday: The Confederate General and Connecticut Yankee: A Past Life Revealed.

A wave of grief, sadness and anger washed over me. Without warning, I was suddenly being consumed by sensations. Burning tears ran down my cheeks. It became difficult to breathe. I gasped for air as I stood transfixed in the old roadbed. To this day I could not tell you how much time transpired, but as these feelings, this emotional overload passed, I found myself exhausted, as if I had run a marathon….

Reincarnation - Jeffrey KeeneKeene did not understand why he had experienced these sensations, but before leaving Sharpsburg, he bought a Civil War magazine that covered the Battle of Antietam. Leafing through the publication many months later, he discovered a picture of General John Gordon, to whom he bore an astonishing resemblance. (The photo on the left compares their facial features.) He learned that the Confederate General was severely injured at Sunken Road on September 17, 1862 during the Battle of Antietam—receiving bullet wounds across his right cheek, on his forehead, and under his left eye. He was 30 years old at the time—the same age that Keene had experienced the mysterious pain in his jaw. Also, Keene has three unique birthmarks in the very same spots that General Gordon had been shot. (You can find photos comparing their faces in the collections of the United States Library of Congress and the National Archives.)

Cases such as Jeffrey Keene’s indicate that certain facial features—even when they result from major or even fatal trauma—remain consistent from one lifetime to another. This observation suggests that the soul projects an energy template that shapes the body in general and facial features in particular. I’ll have more to say about this in Part III.

Past-life memories and déjà vu

When we leave this world, the door closes. When we reincarnate, the door reopens. But sometimes when we reincarnate, the door from a past life is left slightly ajar. This explains how some people can remember incidents or specific details from their past lives. When you and I experience such a glimpse, we call this a déjà vu experience. In French, these words mean “already seen.” You may be sitting with a friend drinking tea, for example, when suddenly you have a strong feeling that you’ve done this before. Or you may meet someone new and are certain that you already know the person, perhaps very well (don’t those hands look incredibly familiar?), but when you consider every conceivable connection, it’s clear that no prior meeting could have been possible.

Some déjà vu experiences are quite dramatic. Jeffrey Keene, for instance, possessed detailed knowledge of General Gordon’s life without ever having read anything about him. Once, while touring a visitor centre displaying artifacts of a Confederate surrender ceremony in which General Gordon had participated, Keene noticed a poster depicting the event. Somehow, however, Keene knew that the flag depicted in the print was inaccurate, and he identified the correct one from among a group of flags exhibited at the centre. After researching the matter, the staff of the visitor centre verified that the flag in the poster was indeed from a later period and that Keene had correctly identified the flag that had actually been used in the ceremony.

There are many reported cases of people who experience past-life memories. Eleven-year-old James Leininger’s story was aired on ABC’s newsmagazine TV show Primetime 4. The boy knew an extraordinary amount about World War II fighter planes without ever having read about them. He told his parents that he had died in a plane crash, giving them the name of the aircraft carrier he’d been assigned to, as well as the name of his best friend aboard ship. How could he possibly know the names of people he had worked with long before he was born in this lifetime?

His parents, however, were able to validate the historical details he had given them. They discovered that the man their son described had also been named James—James Huston. Eventually, young James’s parents reunited their son with James Huston’s surviving sister. She came to believe that little James Leininger was indeed the reincarnation of her deceased brother, James Huston, and she gave little James a number of her brother’s cherished belongings.

Another fascinating case involved another young girl. Barbro Karlén was born into a devout Catholic family in Sweden. As a small child she was plagued by nightmares of persecution. At the age of 10, she travelled with her family to Amsterdam and felt a powerful impulse to visit the home of Anne Frank. Barbro had not read Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, but when her parents called for a taxi to take them to Anne Frank’s home, she told them it wouldn’t be necessary because the house was nearby. Much to her parents’ surprise, Barbro exhibited a remarkable familiarity with the house and described how things had been moved around. As the family moved on into the hidden rooms, Barbro became terrified, just as she had been in her dreams. She broke out in a cold sweat and had trouble breathing.

She describes the experience in her novel, And the Wolves Howled: Fragments of Two Lifetimes, in which she appears as the character Sara.

When they went into one of the smaller rooms, she suddenly stood still and brightened up a little. She looked at the wall in front of her. “Look, the pictures of the film stars are still there!”

Her mother stared at the blank wall and couldn’t understand this at all. “What pictures? The wall is bare.” When Sara looked again, she saw that this was true. The wall was bare!

Her mother was so confounded that she felt driven to ask one of the guides whether she knew if there had been pictures on the wall at one time. “Oh yes, they had only been taken down temporarily to be mounted under glass so that they wouldn’t be destroyed or stolen.” Sara’s mother didn’t know what to say.

There are many such instances when the door to a past life doesn’t quite close completely and we experience déjà vu. Why is it that you immediately take a liking to someone you’ve just met, and within a few minutes, you both feel and act like sisters? The truth is that we have lived before with the people around us, with our friends and family. By the same token, people we instinctively dislike might have hurt us in a prior lifetime, so even though we can’t put a finger on exactly why, we feel ill at ease when we’re around them and our gut feeling is mistrust.

Where does this come from? Remember that the human body functions through exchanges of electrical energy, positive and negative, and that energy cannot be destroyed or lost; it can only take a new form. What we see and feel in this life can be triggered by experiences from past lifetimes—by people who were around us, who may have cared for or harmed us. This can become quite confusing as we move from one lifetime to another because roles can change. A brother in a past life could have been a father in an even earlier life; a friend could have been a mother, and so on.

Our fears and our past lives

Another way we can learn about our past lives is through our seemingly irrational fears and phobias. We may be afraid of heights; we may be fearful of water; we may be terrified by snakes or spiders or dogs. Indeed, we may be frightened by all kinds of things that don’t seem to make sense in our current life. That’s because these fears are the result of what we went through in another lifetime. Perhaps we were mauled by a dog, or we drowned, or we fell to our death while climbing a mountain. By identifying our seemingly inexplicable fears, we can put together more puzzle pieces about our last incarnation.

Our traumatic experiences from past lives correlate with the fears we suffer in this life. People whose previous life ended on 9/11 could be afraid of heights or fire or flying in a plane. Or if we felt love in a past lifetime but each time we gave our heart away we were hurt or perhaps even abused by our spouse, we might be so afraid of love-relationships in this lifetime that we simply refuse to engage in one.

Hypno-Regression

Many people participate in hypno-regression in an attempt to make contact with earlier incarnations. I’m not talking here about a regression in which you are told who you were in a past life, like Queen Elizabeth I or Mata Hari. That’s certainly interesting, although I tend to be suspicious that so many of us turned out to have been famous people in past lives. Then again, of course, who would want to pay money to learn they were once a galley slave or a medieval serf or a thief or assassin?

But no, I’m talking here about the soul’s journey. We all started out this cycle of reincarnation as sparks of Light, and over the millennia, our soul continues to evolve until we will have entirely restored the rock that we took out of that mountain called the Creator. I’m talking about the process that will eventually allow our completed puzzle to go back into the box from which it came. This process takes untold years—in fact, Light years of incarnations.

The Rav has told me that he and I were together during the Spanish Inquisition. He stayed in Spain and died there, but I converted to Catholicism and left the country. This may well be true, but how do I know for sure? Sometimes I visit psychics and when they corroborate what I know of a past life, I tell myself, Oh well, that must be right. It may not work for you, but for me, a psychic’s reading, or hypno-regression, can serve as confirmation. In my opinion, hypno-regression can be a good way to discover things we need to fix in our current lifetime: We can use this information as a tool for change, to find out how we can make a karmic correction, to discover what our mission in life really is.

The signs are everywhere

When you really wish to know if a déjà vu moment or a synchronistic event is really a spiritual communication, you can ask the universe to guide you with a sign. I do it all the time. You might pose your question to a random person you don’t know; her response will be your answer. Or you can specifically ask to witness an out-of-the ordinary occurrence as confirmation that what you’ve seen or heard is true: “In four days, let me see two white dogs walking in the street or let two mail trucks in a row pass me by if I’m really meant to take this new job.” These kinds of things do happen; they call to you all the time. And if you are aware, if you are fully conscious when they do occur, you’ll know you’re in the right place.

I have a friend who was in a challenging relationship with a man who lived in Turkey. Dana was in a great deal of pain over it and was trying to decide whether she should go to see him. One day, she went to a local coffee shop and asked for a sign. Moments later as she was about to order her food, her attention was drawn to the sound of people speaking Turkish. She thought, OMG, This is crazy! This isn’t just a sign, its a billboard! Just when I’m deciding whether to go to Turkey, I hear people speaking Turkish in a Belgian boulangerie in NYC!. Then one of the women said very forcefully in heavily accented English, “She can’t fly to Istanbul.” That was the only thing they said in English. They then proceeded to continue their conversation in Turkish. My friend was shocked. She went over to the table of people, excused herself for intruding, and asked the woman, “Did you say, ‘She can fly to Istanbul’ or ‘She cannot fly to Istanbul?’” The woman replied firmly, “She cannot.”

Dana had her answer.

[su_panel background=”#f2f2f2″ color=”#000000″ border=”0px none #ffffff” shadow=”0px 0px 0px #ffffff”]Karen Berg is the spiritual director of Kabbalah Centre International and a globally respected teacher of Kabbalah who has touched millions of lives around the world. She is also the founder of Spirituality for Kids, a free online program that provides spiritual lessons for children.This article was excerpted from Karen Berg’s book To Be Continued: Reincarnation and the Purpose of our Lives. © 2012 Kabbalah Centre International, Inc. If you enjoyed this excerpt, buy the book!


image: Suradej Chuephanich (Creative Commons BY-ND)

  1. Another author on this subject is psychiatrist Dr. Brian Weiss who wrote Many Lives, Many Masters when one of his patients, under hypno-therapy regressed into a past life. He has since written many books, Messages from the Masters, One Soul Many Bodies, to name a few – all of them fascinating.

  2. Thank you for carrying my story all these years. A few updates; my book, Someone Else’s Yesterday is no longer in print. I have a new book and a new website; https://jeffreykeene.com. You may want to take a look at the new website and book, Fire in the Soul: Reincarnation from Antietam to Ground Zero. It is my story (again) plus 100 pages of new material, things that have happened since the first book came out in 2003. The last story in the book is about a little boy being the reincarnation of a New York City firefighter who died in one of the Twin Towers during 9/11, the full story as told by the boy’s mother on (and to me off) a popular reincarnation forum.

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