Reincarnation

I thought I’d write today on the topic of reincarnation. Between, my paranormal novel coming out in December, touches lightly on this subject and it’s one I find fascinating. Whether or not you believe; you have to admit, it’s an interesting idea.

I consider myself pretty open-minded. My parents were agnostic and atheist but the door was always open to discuss religious ideology and how it pertained to other cultures. It was something I was grateful for because it allowed me to discover and follow my own path. Religion was fascinating to me, but religion as it applied to different cultures, even more so.

By the time I finished college and university, I had taken so many classes in cultural anthropology that my curiosity had led me into receiving an unintentional minor in that field. As a student, I'd been lucky enough to participate in a ceremonial Native American sweat-lodge, observe a voodoo ritual connecting with ancestral spirits, experience a Wiccan banishing of negative entities and participate in a Pagan fire-walk. (And no, I didn’t get burned. There were others, however, who did)

At that point, I knew what I had experienced but was unsure of what I believed. Nothing fell into one religious category.

One day, a friend of mine was telling me about a physics professor who was conducting a class on reincarnation. The local university offered a series of extension classes that were always off-beat and educational. It sounded interesting so I thought I’d give it a try.

The class met at the professor's house and the first meeting was basically him outlining the concept of reincarnation and how it applied to different religions. I was familiar with the concept from the anthropology courses I had taken, but I politely listened. He went onto say that he would be offering a past-life regression hypnosis session to those that were interested. Now, that was something I hadn’t counted on! He made no promises, nor did he say what we could experience was fact, but the offer was there. Always open to new experiences, I was the first to sign up.

Here’s a definition for those who are unfamiliar with past-life regression. 

Past life regression a technique that uses hypnosis to recover what practitioners believe are memories of past lives or incarnations, though others regard them as fantasies or delusions.

So, there you have it—both sides of the spiritual coin, so to speak.

The evening of the meeting, I showed up expecting everything and nothing. Would hypnosis be like falling asleep? Would I know what was happening around me? Would it be like the movies where you were pulled into an alternate lifetime you couldn’t escape from? Well, it turned out that being hypnotized was much like being talked through a relaxation exercise. You are aware of everything around you. You aren’t asleep. You do, however, get pictures in your head that come without thought. They come fast and extremely detailed. Did I have any past lives to speak of? I'll let you be the judge because here's what I experienced.

I experienced a lifetime in 7th century Japan. I was looking at myself in a polished bronze mirror of some kind. The image wasn’t very clear but I could see that my teeth were blacked out. Not gone, just dyed black. I fact-checked afterwards and found that this was called Ohaguro. It was something I was unfamiliar with and apparently, it died out by the Meiji Era. In this particular lifetime, I had fallen in love with a village artist who was hired by my husband to paint my portrait. Our affair was discovered and my husband sent a group of his men to behead me. Oddly enough, when I saw this happening, I rose above the scene and watched them toss my body in a river before the scene went blank. The experience was not only disturbing, but completely unexpected.

Another life I experienced (in the same session) was one in 18^th century America. Not quite as violent as the one in Japan, but extremely detailed. I was a woman living in a very nice manor house. My set of silverware had handles of animal antlers which I found out later was popular at the time. In another scene, I saw myself fighting with a gentleman who was pulling my hair from where it wound around my head. I do remember feeling extremely angry when I experienced that. Fast-forward to me as an old lady. I was in my bedroom, my maid was closing all the curtains, and I was floating over the scene observing my own death. Fade to black on that one. 

After the regression, I met with the professor to ask his opinion on what I had experienced. In typical professor fashion, he answered my questions with more questions. “Have you ever met someone you feel you’ve known before? Have you known facts about something you have had no experience with? Some would say those are past-life experiences.” Um, okay. Thank you, Professor. 
I decided to stop at one session because I found regression to be fascinating, yes, but too much to wrap my brain around.

Both experiences gave me pause for thought. Certainly, these "lifetimes" were nothing I would have thought of or expected and I’m still unsure what to think of them. But it’s what I experienced and I file it away under “Things I’ve Experienced but Cannot Explain.”

That file seems to get bigger and bigger the older I get.

So, the subject makes it’s way into my novels. I don’t do it consciously, but when I go back and read what I’ve written, it’s there. The concept has been around since the Iron Age and in Indian and Greek philosophical traditions of 6th century BCE. To this day, it endures in many tribal societies; places such as Siberia, West Africa, North America, and Australia, and many religious philosophies around the world.

What are your thoughts? And more telling, how would those thoughts change if you experienced something you couldn't explain?