Reincarnation. Viewing yourself in a vision of sorts or maybe its just a dream looking totally "different" than you do now, yet somehow -- you just know its you that you are now, yet in another body and another time? Ever have it happen to you or someone you know and they told you about it? How did this occur (i.e. vision, deep meditation, eyes wide open like in the movie Mummy II, The Return, do you know when it was, how did it feel to you??? Details, people, I'd really appreciate details...........Thanks, Wench

visions like that only happen at the Disco.

I had a vision that
I was in a past life where
I drove on a road with
stupid people.

Oh wait. That was this life.

i must have been a dog

Hi DKW, interesting topic. I've had some pretty amazing experiences along these lines.

The first experience was when I was very young, I'll try to explain. First I need to tell you I have memories that go back further than my own speech. For example I remember being in a hospital and being very tiney and all the nurses laughing and giggling at me. I overheard a story my mom was telling a neighbor when I was about 7, I guess, of how I was walking at 7 months, but I had a blood disease so I was very small, only weighed about 12lbs. When I had to hospitalized the nurses would take me from floor to floor because I was so amazingly small but walking and interested in everything. That's when I knew why I had such a strange memory.

Now for the "experience"

I did not have a dream or a vision, I had, what I believe to this day to be, a memory. To me, it was just a memory. Like the one above I never thought about it or questioned it, it just was. It first surfaced when I was about 5, just before I started kindergarten. I was always pestering to go 'back' to school. I was always told the same thing, soon. I said this, once in front of my brother. He laughed and said you've never been to school. He was the only one who caught my reference of 'back'. I said I had, and we began to argue the matter. My mother stopped us. About a year later, the adults sitting around talking, I liked to hang out and listen. They talked of us kids and school. I piped in, said "school is not like it used to be. I liked it better the first time". The adults looked and me, my dad shook his head and I was dismissed. Another year, I was 7. I was telling a friend from school about my 'first' school. They wanted to know were I went to school. I couldn't remember. I went home and asked my Mom. Of course I had not been to any school prior to kindergarten, according to my Mom. I figured she forgot, so I began ' "yea, remember that place?" and I described a room and then the teacher, and I could see the other kids, but at 7 years old I had trouble describing much about them. I did, however, remember quite vividly some of the toys at playtime, specifically a doll. My Mom was patient about such things and let me talk. After I was done she smiled and said that I had a great imagination and that could be such a wonderful thing and she hoped I would never loose it, but honey, you have never been to such a place.

At 7 we don't ponder too long. I believed my Mom was right. But the older I got and the more I really understood what memories are, how they feel, how see them, know that they are memories, I realized this WAS a memory.

I can't tell you if it was mine or how I came by it. As my understanding of memory grew, so did my ability to describe. The clothes of the children, they were not any style I was familiar with, until we studied the early Western movement in the U.S., and the doll was not one from my current childhood.

I recall it today, just like my other memories, faded only because I was so young at the time of it's placement in my mind.

That's one, but not the strangest.

Red Thank you soooo much!

My first one was a vision - 1996, I was meditating and got this picture of an Indian (Native American) woman standing in front of a T.P. with a Native guy (felt like husband) snuggled up to her from behind. They were on the plains, but with woods behind them. The odd thing was there were no other T.P.'s or Natives around. The way this felt seeing this was as if a third person were facing the couple and watching them, I was seeing the scene through those eyes. I knew I was looking at myself at the time and my husband at the time. I came out of the "meditation" rather startled and quick and my ex-husband now asked what I had seen because that's apparently how I came back to "reality" from prior clairvoyant style moments. I told him I had seen us (as I assumed the guy was him again) from a past life. The minute I said it out loud, I knew the guy wasn't him because my stomach did a weird drop/flip type thing that it does when I say something that my mind thinks is true, but my gut knows better.

After I moved to MN in 1998, I saw the older brother of a friend of mine, but didn't actually meet him then, except to wave. I shook the entire time and kept thinking, please don't look at me, please don't look at me - but couldn't figure out why. After I got to know him and in conversations that I didn't start, my friends and I finally determined he was the past life TP man I had seen myself with. I've only had two, but I have met the other person included in each in this life. It's almost like a need to know basis type thing with me, as the life or scene I see has something to do with this life.

Whoops, I lied, there were three more besides those two, but they were three different styles of "recall".

Dkw, Sorry I didn't get back. I plagued yet again. This time, a computer crash, the first day of school. School is four classes all on-line arghhhh. Borrowed a PC from someone but still cant get the printer working. Oh well!

Anyway, I found your story very interesting. We both have our own views on faith. How do you view this phenomenon with reference to your faith?

Personally, I faltered over this for years. From the time I was a teenager I wondered if there was not some connection between time and the ability of our brain and just our overall make up, that somehow allowed us to be open to grasping pieces of some other time, including an incident from another persons life.
Over all the years, I've kept an eye on scientific theory and developments. What is of particular interest to me are those theories involving time as a dimension. It fits so well into my own ideas of how this 'previous life' or 'de ja vu' experience affects us.

What do you think about these expereinces? You've had more than, what I might consider average, and I think I have too. Makes me wonder again if allowing the experience to happen 'with' our senses in tact, without fear or rejection if that's why some are more prone to having/remembering and defining such moments. ???

This is not quite the same but it is in this vein and it was a bit odd,,,, last Friday I had some friends over- and one of my friends brought her 4 year old daughter. Their entire family are strict catholics.

At one point she (the child) mentioned how she wished she had green eyes like her mom. Which was sweet but then she kept saying she DID have green eyes like her moms. When we told her gently that she did not she said, "well I used to have them and next time I get borned I'm gonna have them again." She kept insisting she would have her "green eyes like I had last time I was young and I will have them again next time."

Her mother joked that I had influenced her child and made her choose my religion over her own... but it was just a joke, i had never spoken to this child about reincarnation in any way and as she's too young for school the only other people she's been around are her family- all cuban, all catholic. So we're just not sure where she got this idea....

Hey Red,

I had to take a while to answer this one because my initial reaction to the question was: "Why would this not coincide with my "hodge podge" faith?" So, I went back in my memory of how it felt to me. For me, the clairvoyant type viewing tripped me out more faith wise than these past life scenes. There used to be a commercial for VHS video tapes and the slogan was something along the lines of, "Is it real or Memorex?". The clairvoyance scared me along the lines of "is it real or hallucinations, WHAT am I tapping into, AM I losing my mind?" I knew I wasn't tripping out on drugs because I wasn't taking anything, not even birth control because I'd already been fixed. I hadn't been drinking alcohol. I hadn't been to a bar where someone may have slipped me something. Lord, what would people think of me if they knew about this aspect of my life. All this started because of a audio tape series I bought called, "Thinking Body, Dancing Mind". I was trying to learn to visualize a pencil for heavens sake. I was pretty frustrated with that too because I could feel the flippin' pencil, I could smell it; I just couldn't get a literal picture of it in my mind. All of a sudden, I got a picture all right. A whole scene as if I were living it of my eyes viewing from my body sitting across a campfire from a TP in the woods. A very old American Indian man wrapped in blankets stood in front of the TP and stared at me, waiting as if I was supposed to do or say something. I'm not a patient person. I waited and tried hard to be polite. This did not last long when he did not respond to any politely phrased question of what he was waiting for me to do. I remember clearly the frustration based anger I felt building through my entire being at being ignored and not "worthy" of him even speaking to me. I finally yelled, "What the F--- do you want", as if he were deaf. He got a borderline disgusted/disappointed look on his face and the scene vanished. I remember feeling very ashamed at my lack of patience and behavior to him. Damn, I was just trying to get a mental picture of a pencil!!!!

I think Bl8nt hit the nail on the head in the paranormal thread about these types of things being natural abilities that most humans squash down and ignore out of fear for some reason or other. She phrased it much more eloquently than my paraphrasing.

For me, there is a definite link with the psychological and spiritual aspects in the "past-life" scenes and this life "intimate or possible intimate relationships". I had to include possible in there because the one guy, the opportunity was there, but it was only a physical yes without the mental or heart yes; making it a nope can't do it - just because it was a was doesn't mean it has to be an is - if that makes any sense.

I'm wondering if memories are passed on from generation to generation.You have people who are 'naturals" at things they have never been taught,have feelings of deja vu etc.What do you think?

I'm great at chopping wood, and wood working actually...and I never found out until I went camping last year and had to get fire wood.

Just give me an axe and I'll have that forest down in no time Anyway, it could be "inherited" abilities, or maybe I used to be a lumberjack in a past life

I don't know, Cute. There are obviously families that have a generation link. Mine never talked about this stuff when I was a kid. I was probably 25-ish before I even found out my oldest sister used to have controlled (i.e., intentional) out of body experiences when we were kids. I'm glad none of this surfaced for me when I was a kid because I wouldn't have kept my mouth shut about it and I'm thinkin' my dad would not have been happy with me. The way you phrased your question/wondering reminds me of Clan of the Cave Bear, as that's what the clan had and that is what it was referred to as the "memories".

Hey Oasis, how ya doin? Supposedly kids are more in tune and open, as long as their parents/teachers/society don't teach them to suppress and disbelieve the knowledge as imagined.

I completely believe in reincarnation.. Oh well I guess that makes me Not A Christian.. better change my profile.. ??? I think that if he gives us so many chances on earth then why wouldn't he after death?? Need to think of the name of the new religion I am forming.. actually I would rather not even call it a religion, it seems when that word is included then there's the motive for all the horrendous things that happen in this world. I know that when I get chills, someone has walked upon my grave from my past life.. I had to have been an animal of some sort because I love the outdoors wayyyyy to much.. Maybe an ant, cricket, wasp?? Who knows!!!

Previous lives, I believe. Long story, but itexplained a lot of why I was the way I am. All came in a repeat dream.

I also...would agree to the notion of one's spirit continuing on... although I am not quite sure about the previous or next shell or suit being anything else other than human form...

Story?... perhaps later... this spirit no longer believes that it walks alone...

ya wench i read that book and found it intriguing.

Hey Wench!

Yes, the story of when you were little and rememebered your "first" school was a little spooky to me because it reminded me so much of my friends daughter...

I do think that small childrens minds are more flexible- they haven't learned to make assumptions all the time yet and so maybe they "see" and remember more. I think that the rest of us ignore things that don't make sense to us based on what we expect to have happen next.

Maybe you are more open to these possibilities than most of us? Maybe you have been able to take off your mental blinders and see something the rest of us close our minds to without even making a conscious effort...

Meditate a bit more and you will know when the trees grow..