Anyone who spends time with children has noticed that they have the most active imaginations. Adults can be heard mumbling, “where do they come up with this stuff?” An observant parent can usually identify the inspiration of their child’s story if it resembles a TV show, video game, fairy-
tale or something their child has witnessed or experienced. But every once in a while, the stories that come out children’s mouths are puzzling, sometimes sending shivers down your spine! For example, how would you feel if your 3-year-old child talked about getting hurt in the war and described an accurate civil war uniform and weapon? Or if little Sara talked about “when I was big…” Or if Tommy talked about Grandma Alice this and that, but he didn’t have a Grandma or know anyone named Alice? And what if when probed, the child retorted, “no Mommy, she was my Grandma before I was Tommy”. Again, we can’t help but ask: where are these stories coming from? Several doctors, researchers, and scholars suggest that children are remembering past lives.
Carol Bowman, author of Children’s Past Lives: How Past Life Memories Affect Your Child, found that it is usually between the ages of 2-5 when children will spontaneously remember fragments of their past lives. Since they are closer to their previous lifetime, they haven’t conformed to our society and culture’s ideas yet, and therefore haven’t fully suppressed their past life memories. Just about anything can trigger a past life memory such as a smell, taste, noise, location or experience. For Tommy, the taste of powdered sugar triggered memories of baking with Grandma Alice. In this case, he was merely remembering someone he loved. In other cases, there is unfinished business to be worked out. For example, Blake was a toddler who was terrified of large trucks. When watching traffic from the window, he told his mother that he was run over by a truck. At first, she thought he was pretending with his hot wheels. But Blake said, “No mommy! A real truck. And my body hurts right here.” He became unlike his cheerful self for the next few months continuing to talk about his hurt body from the truck. He also became angry with his mom.
With a few simple questions suggested by Carol Bowman to this mother, Blake made progress and was back to himself. “What do you see and feel when you remember the truck?” Blake responded, “I remember seeing the underside of the truck and wishing you would have stopped me from running into the street.” His mother gently assured him that he was safe now. She explained to him that his memory was from another lifetime, when he was in a different body and had a different mother. She reassured him that he was safe, and that she would always protect him. After that, he resumed his happy self again. He simply needed to distinguish between the two separate lifetimes.
Isolated cases are easily dismissed or forgotten. However, Bowman has researched extensively and found hundreds, if not more examples of this phenomenon from all over the world. It is hard to deny when the cases are compiled and charted neatly together with that of other researchers. Not to mention, these are innocent children spouting off similar spiritual data with no prompting involved. Dr. Ian Stephenson also researched this topic to the extent of traveling to meet the children. He interviewed them comprehensively about their past-life memories, and then checked out the facts from the details provided. He sometimes took the child (and his/her family) to the site of the previous life remembered and found houses or landscapes identical to which they described.
One two-year-old boy, Ravi Shankar from India, insisted that he was really a boy named Munna from a nearby village who was slit in the throat and left in an orchard near Chintimini Temple. He repeated his story to family, friends, and teachers over the next several years. Dr. Stephenson collected all of the specific details from his story and with permission took Ravi’s family to the site of his apparently former home. Together they found previous family members who were still alive and Ravi recognized them by name. They confirmed his story even finding the toys that Ravi remembered and described in his lifetime as Munna. Most importantly, Ravi was able to give the evidence to the unsolved murder case. Coincidentally or not, Ravi was born with a huge birthmark on his neck in the exact location that his throat was slit. According to the literature, this is actually a typical occurrence. Dr. Stephenson has an entire book/article just on birthmarks and their significance to previous life deaths or traumas.
While Dr. Stephenson confirms the previous personalities with his elaborate fact-checking, Carol Bowman takes it one step further. It’s amazing enough to think that these children have lived before. But, she identifies the purpose of these memories, their healing potential, and gives parents helpful tips on how to talk to your children about these memories. If the memories are disturbing the child in any way, parents can facilitate their child’s healing process by validating their stories and helping them to make distinctions between past and present. She assures parents that they can help their child heal. She warns parents to never laugh at, ignore, or accuse children of making them up. If needed, the child can see a past life therapist, but the most helpful thing you can do, Bowman says, is to believe them. By providing a listening ear, we can actually help our children and learn from them at the same time.
In this culture, the belief in reincarnation is not so popular. Parents find a conflict between their religious upbringing and their child’s story. But in some cases, it’s hard for the parents to ignore –forcing them to reevaluate their belief system. “At first when my child started saying these things, it disturbed me. I didn’t want to hear it, because what they said forced me to think and not just float along,” one parent confesses. Another set of researchers on this topic, the Harrisons, collected data from 26 cases of English toddlers who spontaneously remembered past lives. One child told his mother that he went to Aunty Ruth before he came to her. He had no idea that his mother’s sister Ruth had a miscarriage 10 years before. “There’s no doubt in my mind that the kid must have experienced life before, and those memories stayed with him.” Many of the parents tried to “fob them off”, hoping the strange stories would go away. But the children persisted anyway with their memories, regardless of their parent’s resistance. The Harrisons’ research documents how children can change the beliefs of their parents.
Occasionally, memories can surface later in childhood. According to Susan Wisehart, Past-life regression therapist and author of Soul Visioning, a particular age or stage of development can trigger the onset of memories which correlate to a significant past life experience occurring at the correlating age/stage. For example, one of her clients found her nine-year-old daughter suddenly experiencing intense separation anxiety, when she had never exhibited these fears or attachments before. Through the mother’s past life regression, she learned that she had killed herself, leaving her child behind. Her child’s abandonment had carried over. When the mother talked to the daughter, the child remembered it. They assured each other that they were here for each other this time, and that those things were in the past.
A similar case was reported about a 16-year old, who also didn’t want to leave her mother. This teenager was regressed by Wisehart and remembered a lifetime in which she died at 16 giving birth. Her last words in that lifetime were, “mother, mother!” Unconsciously, turning 16 triggered her fear and separation anxiety. In these cases, the children needed assistance from a trained professional to recall the root of their symptoms. However, both returned to their normal happy lives as a result.
Children aren’t the only ones who can benefit from past-life memories. Dr. Brian Weiss, a medically trained psychiatrist and scholar, discovered the healing power of past lives accidentally when he was working with a woman, Catherine. During a regression, Catherine was instructed to go back to the time when her fear began. Surprisingly, she began describing an ancient past life. A lifetime involving a deadly flood explained her fear of water. Similarly, other past lifetime experiences corresponded to other current phobias. At first, his Western trained mind could not make sense of what transpired. However, the details of tools and trades she talked of were not a part of her current knowledge. Weiss did some of his own research of times and places to verify her descriptions and they all checked out.
Another piece of evidence he came across was xenoglossy, which is when patients speak a language they are not currently familiar with during a regression. Dr. Weiss continued to explore past lifetimes with Catherine in subsequent sessions and her symptoms disappeared. He has regressed thousands of adults since then and now conducts training seminars and workshops. Past-life regression therapy has helped people heal by finding a root to their phobias, unexplained physical ailments, and relationship patterns. Of course, it’s not necessary psychologically to explore past lives. But if there is a symptom that is unexplainable and unrelieved by other treatments, it might be the missing puzzle piece to a lifelong phobia or pattern. The patients of Dr. Weiss have had a variety of religious backgrounds and beliefs, but yet their experiences of going to past lives paralleled the cycle of reincarnation.
It is a myth to think that reincarnation goes against Christianity. This notion that reincarnation is a sin originates in the fixing of the doctrine and creed thousands of years ago. Originally however, it was present in the Bible. Both Carol Bowman and Dr. Brian Weiss go into a detailed history of how in the 500s AD, Constantinople took out parts of the Bible supporting reincarnation for power reasons and claimed it a heresy. Due to the major repercussions of believing, many feared to even think or talk about the topic ever since, evolving into a taboo.
“Despite the decree of 553, belief in reincarnation persisted and took another thousand years and much bloodshed to completely stamp out the idea. The persecution by the institutional Church has scarred our collective psyche, and it has surrounded us with an invisible fence dividing what is safe from what is dangerous to believe… Maybe by understanding where this fear comes from, we can negate its hold on us and turn off the invisible fence. So, when our children speak of past lives, we can follow our hearts and not our fears, and believe them.”
A couple of references to reincarnation remain in the Bible today. For example, in Matthew 17:10-13 Elias came back as John the Baptist. “Jesus replied, ‘to be sure, Elias comes and will restore all things. But I tell you, Elias has already come, and they did not recognize him…’ Then the disciples understood that he was talking to them about John the Baptist.” Jesus is saying that it is okay to come back and learn. Many already believe that there is life after death. Reincarnation only expands that belief that we existed before birth and that we will live again and again.
Reincarnation is also a part of Jewish tradition, despite some belief to the contrary. Jewish scholar Simcha Paull Raphael assures us that “kabbalists do believe in reincarnation!” There is no one single book that defines the Jewish faith. Instead, they refer to many sacred texts. The Book of Splendor is an ancient Jewish text, which traces the cycle of death and rebirth called, gilgul, which means wheel and transformations. It teaches that each lifetime is an opportunity to learn lessons. This concept is in direct alignment with Dr. Brian Weiss’ findings as his clients report the lessons learned from each lifetime as well as the lessons they have yet to master. Reincarnation is not a belief tied to one area of the world. This has been an enduring belief found all over and throughout history. So why are we in the Western world in the minority about this belief? As more people are turning to secular beliefs, they are becoming more open to think independently about such things, guiding them spiritually as they explore these topics open-mindedly.
All this talk of past lives sometimes can give people the creeps! While at first it might seem morbid or haunting, the concept of past lives is actually about life—ever-lasting life. And, not all of children’s stories are coming from past lives, but there is good evidence that there might be more to our children’s babbling and mysterious behavior. Carol Bowman’s book adequately lays out the reasons why it is important to listen more closely to our children. Put simply, she summarizes, “Any child anywhere in the world can have a past life memory, regardless of the cultural or religious beliefs of the parents. More people need to know this and that parents can help.” These memories come to us with a mission. If we listen and respond effectively, these memories can heal symptoms and forever change our fundamental beliefs of life and death.
Amy Goldbeck is a mom, a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor, Certified Heart-Centered Hypnotherapist, and owner of We Meet Again Counseling, PLLC. She has trained with Dr. Brian Weiss, one of the founders of this work, in Past- Life Regression Therapy and has received additional training with Susan Wisehart. She is certified in Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy to support her work and fascination with the subconscious mind/soul. She continues to learn all that she can about past-lives and enjoys sharing it with others.
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