Reincarnation Part I

Have you ever experienced dèja vu? You see something, and you feel as though you’ve seen it before, but don’t know where? You feel something, and you’re sure you felt it before? You know someone just by looking at the person? You recognize, or know a place, you have never been to? Are you knowledgeable about something you have never studied, or practiced? Have you ever had a flash back, or a memory, of something or someone, not of this life?

How do we explain the attainment of knowledge and talent in children at very young ages, such as Mozart, who was composing when he was 5, and playing before the Bavarian elector, and the Austrian empress, when he was only 6 years old, or Ernst Strauss, who at age 5, worked out the formula for the sum of an arithmetic progression, or Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz, who at age 10 published astronomical tables, or Maria Olmstead, who by age 4, was selling her paintings, for up to $24K, to name a very few?

All of these experiences have something in common. They all come from a former life—one which the soul experienced in a different body at a different time in history.

In Meno, Plato presents a dialogue between Socrates and Meno, on the acquisition of virtue, leading to the acquisition of knowledge. After much discussion, Socrates demonstrates his theory of inborn knowledge, by proposing geometrical questions to one of Meno’s servant boys, who by the nature of his status is illiterate. The boy is able to answer all the questions accurately, without prior education, study, or first-hand experience. Socrates asked, “If he did not acquire the knowledge in this life, then he must have had and learned it at some other time?” Inferring that the boy is recalling the information he learned in a previous life.

Clearly, the early philosophers, Socrates and his student, Plato, attribute the reincarnation of the soul to carry with it gnosis—knowledge, not based on science—acquired through the ages, and stored in the memory of the soul. The higher mind, or universal mind, is that part of us which transcends all time and space, knowing everything we have ever experienced, are experiencing, and will experience. Knowledge from past lives reaches us through dreams, intuition, and while in hypnosis. Like the waves of the sea rippling to and from the shore, bringing and taking with them sediments of the earth, so, too, our soul comes to the earth, bringing and taking with it knowledge, again and again.

In 1988 Dr. Brian Weiss, a noted psychiatrist in Miami, FL put his career on the line when he published Many Lives, Many Masters, a documentation of information received from one of his patients, a young woman named Catherine. During a regression to early childhood, Catherine went beyond early childhood to a previous life. Over time, Catherine recalled many previous lives, and life-between-life, revealing much information about karma and dharma. During an in-between life, Catherine remarked, “Our task is to learn, to become God-like through knowledge. We know so little. You [Dr. Weiss] are here to be my teacher. I have so much to learn. By knowledge we approach God, and then we can rest. Then we come back to teach and help others.” [P.46] Dr. Weiss became a believer when Catherine revealed personal and confidential information, about his father and his infant son, who were in spirit.

Karma and dharma are the reasons we incarnate again and again. Karma is the law of cause and effect. The word comes from the Sanskrit, which means action. It is the sum of what we have created in previous incarnations. The goal is to purify the soul by erasing negative karma. Our soul chooses to return in another body, to clear the negative karma, it didn’t clear before passing from its previous life, or lives, so that it can advance spiritually. Dharma, is the soul’s mission, or goals, for erasing negativity, according to the laws [scriptures], so that it can advance spiritually. When karma and dharma are successfully completed, our physical body dies, and our soul returns home, until it is time to incarnate, again.

For more on this please see my presentation on thebutterflygift.com.

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