Reincarnation and The Self
(In)Frequently Asked Questions and Answers
Take this as my personal view and perception on Reincarnation, not as a general collection of resources and explanations like a FAQ.
Is there any proof about Reincarnation?
This question poses a lot of problems, since it’s not so clear what a "proof" is, and what as such would count. On the whole, people are looking for physical confirmation. For example, there is a story:
A man was remembering a past-life as German soldier in World-War II. During a past-life regression, he revealed his name as a soldier, and described the way he died, and expressed a pain in the neck. The hypnotherapist was looking for soldier records of WW-II and found an entry of with the name his client said, and a short note that this soldier was killed by a bullet into the neck.
In the last few years there were also books published about descriptions of children who described life-times they were adults and described their surrounding and relatives, which could be partly confirmed by historic records.
On the other hand, it really depends what you allow yourself to believe to be a proof. When you start to allow yourself to think and discover other life-streams or even so called past-lives, the issues of proof will change. Not that you are not looking for some evidence, but the inner knowing (beyond a doubt) will enter, instead of looking for physical evidence such as records in book-libraries.
Why don’t people remember having lived already?
There are many reasons, a few common ones I may briefly overview:
One major issue is, the concepts we hold, concerning life. We judge those who don’t live as we do, and condemn those who live other life-styles, who perhaps perceive certain aspects of life differently.
This issue of judging is important. It’s the same mechanism that prevents us from remembering. For example, if you lived a life-style or held to a certain pattern of behaviour, you currently would judge anything radically different as unacceptable, you keep this memory in your subconscious.
Many experiences are repeated (not just of past-lives) and often we realise, that certain episodes are looking similar , a familiar pattern. We as soul searchers for ‘possibilities to realise’, then possibly realise certain similarities, while preventing ourselves consciously remembering the failure, which in truth is not a failure, but non-released patterns we keep and we search to understand.
Excerpt of Christian Rationalism teaching:
A normal physical body may be said to be a perfect, finished piece of sculpture. When the spirit incarnates, it isolates itself from its past and forgets completely its previous incarnations. It only retains in its subconscious the experience gained from past ordeals and the tendencies resulting from the use of its free will. That is extremely good for the spirit. Firstly, the veil of matter prevents identification of enemies of previous incarnations and makes reconciliation possible, bringing them closer, without grudges or ill will. Secondly, with temporary oblivion of past mistakes, which so often humble, shame, subdue and even alienate the will, the incarnate spirit sort of begins a new existence in each passage through Earth.
Maybe I have to say too, that not remembering past-lives does not indicate lack of awareness. Some aware souls just don’t pay that much attention to other life-times they lived, and maybe realised the moment of Now so deeply that all life-times are lived as one experience - and this is then indeed a deep insight of soul.
What is the meaning of early child-death or children dying with early age?
Life in human-form means first of all "becoming and changing", living as spirit means foremost "to be, presence". You incarnate because you desire, you want to become something, even this is all illusion, you want become an expert soul-wise, as example, in trust, you may choose a life where trust will be a major issue, betrayal, trust etc. You may even have agreed to play a role for other spirits who are incarnate, i.e. some parents are living a dull life, and take all for granted, you as spirit serve them to become their baby, and leave in early age, to cause a shift in consciousness in the parents. Sure they are sad, but maybe they start to appreciate life more by this incidence. Sometimes souls come in service to make other incarnate souls more aware, however this finally can be achieved.
When exactly a soul takes possession of a physical body. Birth? Before? After? Time of conception?
It’s a gradual process, starts even by the soul trying to bring two people together so the soul can incarnate as their child. Some parents describe this pulling from spirits (see holistic-parenting list which has discussed this). I would say there are several steps: 1) choosing parents and having an agreement, 2) attempts to incarnate, 3) possible miscarriages, 4) pregnancy, 5) becoming aware of the fetus body, 6) communication fetus and mother, 7) becoming aware of body more, 8) lack of space, 9) birth, 10) delivery, first touch on skin, light, smell, air (first breathing), 11) being in mother arms (calm down), and also important 12) name giving (important to have the spirit identify with the body) whether this is informal or by baptism or other rituals.
Another consideration is that puperty is also an major incarnation step when the lower chakras are fired-up and become active: development of an ego (solar-plexus), opening of sexual energy and expression (hara chakra), and base-chakra by anchoring ones unique energy, so the personality and all other chakras can "blossom". By using drugs (legal and illegal) one does play with the chakra, as example, smoking or drinking alcohol forces chakras to open up, and one does "balance" him or herself that way, for a teenager is a speedup of aging and forcing the chakras to "fireup" so to speak, it is not just to behave like an adult, but it’s also a desire to have all chakras to become active; in this case much understanding is required for the teenager to provide other tools than (legal or illegal) drugs such as tai-chi, or hatha yoga or any other kind of holistic body approach.
In this way, the entire life can be considered as a process of using and occupying the body, one time we are more aware of the tool ("body") sometimes less, and according spiritual healers often people are not fully in their body, carry emotional scars which prevent them to express all of themselves fully and manifest diseases.
What about abortions and miscarriages?
Abortion, miscarriages, this is a huge topic. The point is that a fetus is in between "of to be" and "of becoming", birth, and giving a name helps to form an individuality, to interrupt this process can be tremendous shocking experience. Now, before we judge, this shock, also loss of orientation of not being not really physical, and not longer be in spirit-realm gives an oportunity to shift consciousness and learn. I have seen cases where "stuck" spirits in their development incarnated, but couldn’t stay and experienced an miscarriage and left again. To explain this deeper I alone would write pages, but in order to understand this, we can look what abortion does; what killing does, it’s shedding away the body, it surely is "bad", but from a spiritual point of view, where no death or birth really exists, but only forms of transformation, those experiences are desired of the spirit to grow.
How many people recall being inside the womb of their mother? Or birth?
You can make a simply regressive meditation, most people automatically move back in fetus form (crowed together), many people start to cry because they felt so much comfort and love inside themselves as fetus, and experienced being born as trauma, actually I think majority of humankind has this trauma due improper birth process. But on the other hand it also shows one commitment to remember, those with a strong commitment will not fail to remember regardless of the birth conditions. We move from one illusion into another, as mentioned above, a transformation of spirit (birth and death).
How I can find out what I was in a previous life?
First, a lot of people suppose someone else has to tell them, and they wish to hear some mysterious and wonderful descriptions of lives they lived. Alot of personal projections and expectations appear and desire to be fulfilled. It’s alot of emotional and mind-related projection, which express an imbalance. For example to have solutions in past-lifes for problems which have their origin much more in a lack of self-confidence and facing the current challenges (problems) in current situation in their present lives.
This is the major difficulty to differentiate an emotional projection and a real inner emotional remembrance.
The issue to remember has to do with yourself, because you lived it, not someone else. Maybe others can assist you to figure out different aspects by their more objective and unattached point of view.
Anyway, the first thing to help to start remembering: look at patterns or circumstances which often happened to you, maybe in different surrounding, but primarily always the same.
Open yourself for any possibility, whether you were male or female, or good, or an evil personality. Don’t judge yourself with your current belief-system, let it open. Judging is the most effective veil to cover insights of past-lives or bigger understanding of Self.
Concrete issues:
Some of my personal thoughts on remembering:
I had lot of feelings of being killed in the desert and I drew a lot of pictures, but without really knowing what I drew. It just come out of my inner. And I was often playing with knives pretending like I would cut my own hands. I wasn’t conscious of this until others said to me: "Please stop playing with that knife!". I expressed my inner impressions when I was killed in a past-life (or even another time-frame) and my body was cut into pieces . . . and I still kept the impressions. Playing with the knife was one of the obvious signs, besides others mainly feelings and pictures I kept in me, which I didn’t share with others.
The non-balanced impressions were knocking in my inner door and penetrating my conscious-mind, waiting to be balanced and accepted into myself, my whole being: conscious mind and subconscious. The experience was somehow still going on, and jumped into this time-frame and affected my being . . . and I perceived it in myself as emotions without any origin in this present-life, it was very intense.
I became very sad, reached a real depression, and all the pain of being killed and especially the circumstances arround it . . . I was too identified with the experience, meaning I still was connected with it in this present time-frame and I was unable to see beyond the experience: I didn’t die, I just was forced to leave my body, and I somehow indulged in self-pity (victimisation pattern).
You may read other recalls like Mary’s Recognition or Being A Victim shared by Charles Spiegel.
We are not human beings having a spiritual-experience, but we are spiritual beings having a human-experience.
That is the consciousness which we finally forgot on the journey into matter.
How much time is between the incarnations?
One answer goes according the karmic urge to solve imbalances, as the soul likes to solve events or happenings with another experience in physical plane to balance a previous existence. More short the time is, more was the urge to solve it.
A friend told me his last incarnation was 800 years ago, which he could recall quite well. Another friend revealed to me it was just a short time of one year before he took another body. I would say for 1900-1950 a time-span of 10-50 years, this means people died between 1920-1960 are embodied today already again, please don’t take it too literally, since the World-War I and II were really an intense time of coming and going, so to speak.
The timespan between incarnations in earlier times of the middle ages was longer than today, which is because of the number of challenges which are possible to be experienced in one life today, which further has to do with the reality shift on Earth right now. The urge today to be incarnated is a kind of desire to participate in the religious, cultural and social changes.
What we are doing between the incarnations?
Before answering the questions, we have to remember that the projection of consciousness into matter is beyond time and space. But also, if the embodied consciousness portion is addicted or still connected with matter, it will remain in the astral-planes, and there the issue of obsession (in a heavy way such as possession) and ghosts gets starting (look at Reincarnation: "After Death" Problems ).
For example entities who experience a violent death or even leaving their bodies are confused and keep a lot of impressions and attention still toward physical plane. Such so called bounded-entities are not generally "bad" or so (as ghost-stories most imply), but are actually lost, because they feel that they have lost their connection to the physical, and therefore wish to participate, but are unable without a physical body, so they use hosts (other people) and project their desires into people’s minds. This issue is common with drug problems and some psychological diseases (schizophrenia). We start slowly to perceive the healing process in this manner too.
For beings who aren’t bounded in such painful trap, they remain in a more subtle realm of the astral-plane, where they prepare themselves for another projection into a body.
The "time" between incarnations is perceived differently by every being, depending on their insights of what the physical life was for, and the connection to matter.
How do I find which time (date or year) I lived?
This not easy so long as the conscious-mind is defending that your consciousness or existence was without this present belief-system and mind.
Dates and particular details are mostly forwarded by entities who assist your current incarnation. They are called guardians angels, who are connected often to friendships of past-lives or other life-times you were assisting them in a more physical manner.
I can’t get into details of guardian angels, since the subject gets then really huge. Just that in short, your existence on the physical is a process requires a lot of preparation. Generally said, incarnating isn’t just an accident, or result of having karma, as some superficially claim. There are many beings involved, and primarily you as multi-dimensional self, is choosing to express itself on the physical as well (more below).
When remembering past-lives, most of your conscious-mind becomes a receiver, if the belief-system is prepared. You receive impressions from the Akashic Record or higher (more subtle) planes, where any happenings of the physical plane are accessible, like a pool. When the subtle perceptions are expanded, the mind is functioning conscious as pattern storage of subtle planes, Today the term channelling is popular (earlier they were described as visions or revelations). Then in your conscious mind appears data, like someone else triggered synopsis in your head. If you are more trained in order of allowance, you get any date or information of a happening or so, just by sending from your mind (as a tool) the pattern, so the connected patterns bounce back to you, where your mind receives it.
Is suicide a shortcut to solve problems?
No, it’s a very traumatic experience for the person to find him or herself into state of confusion after death, and seeing nothing is solved, but a chance is missed. The soul is pulled to very dark astral places full sadness and anguish, where other spirits reside and are highly confused of what they did. After a period of "time" a new incarnation gets prepared and the soul comes into physical plane with no remembrance of the previous suicide. But the situation previously tried to escape will appear again, and the person has to face the very same issue again. No shortcut at all. Often people in depression or thoughts of doing suicide are accompanied by dazzled spirits who left their bodies by intentional death or even suicide.
Do animals, plants and minerals also reincarnate?
Since the concept of individualisation in animal, plants and mineral kingdoms aren’t deeply established, we can’t say the same being is incarnating into another body. It’s much more a consciousness-stream. In the case of cats or pets in general, it’s has been reported that the personality of the consciousness didn’t change that much, and could keep it from one form (body) into another.
Here is one of my own experiences:
We had a dog called Silas, and he learned a special behaviour: how to accompany a horse, and some very specific things. After a year he was killed by a truck. A few months later my girlfriend received another dog, that needed a new home, and we gave him a home. We called him Misha. He had similar colours to Silas, but his eyes were different, and also a few behaviours were different. But Misha was knew some things, like what my girlfriend just thaught Silas about accompanying a horse. It was like, he was from the same "soul-stream", but not entirely the same personality as Silas.
About pets - you may read Animals Serving Humankind by Birgit Klein.
Can a human incarnate "backward" into an animal-form?
Some schools say no, some religions (Veda-culture , Greeks etc.) think it’s possible. In my opinion, the answer is not just yes or no. A closer view is needed about what a soul is. I may use the terminology of Consciousness instead of Soul to describe it:
Each body has certain features, the human-body allows a deep individualisation of the consciousness, creates an "I am" consciousness, primarily the mind-ego (survival):
Bodies are vessels that are able to keep a consciousness-stream. Since a human-body is a closed and individualised vessel, and a plant or stone is an open and less individualised vessel, as the consciousness stream penetrates the surrounding in unity, oneness of nature.
A human soul or consciousness can’t enter into a form of a plant as it is, it needs some flexibility. Some people who astral-project describe the feeling of connecting to a mountain, as partly loosing the identification of themselves, but a very intense feeling of being totally connected with nature.
So, if the soul-concept is limited in the physical personality (also still identified), it’s not possible. But if the soul-concept is perceived as a consciousness projection into a body, then it’s just another way to embody the consciousness.
Therefore, anything and everything is living . . . and self-aware, and it’s just the human-mind and body that doesn’t allow it sometimes to perceive it. Just as in cases of loving pets (cats and dogs) we may perceive the soul or a conscious personality. If we look with our heart to the world, we will know, everything is living and self-aware.
How many lives do people live on Earth?
It’s very important to define what we call a life, and how we determine an entity. For an etheric projection into matter I know this:
I only met few people having their first life here, few more with 5-10 lives (not much). I suppose somehow the average might be arround 10-20 lives. I don’t follow personally the view, that people have more than 50 lives on Earth, this impressions just is about etheric projections of Self.
But on the other hand, if all embodied beings become one with the Christ-consciousness, how many incarnations does Christ has? Since Christ energy/presence isn’t etheric, it penetrates every being: physical, astral or whatever plane.
In the case of a soul-family from the higher etheric individualise itself into different streams and embodies aspects into different physical bodies, their number of lives may reach hundreds or thousands. It really depends which portion of Self you count, which embodied itself. Such soul-families are an example: Family of Ra, Family of An and Isis and many others, which are also often referred as cosmic-energies.
Since there are past-lives, are there also future-lives?
Yes, we just focus into one time-frame, or more abstractly, into one possibility room, which is separated by the body and the physical senses which relate us to such a possibility-room or life. A future life doesn’t have to be a life on Earth, even certain past-lives. A more detailed answer follows below.
What about previous lives on other planets?
That’s an issue which soon follows and one needs to be very open for these concepts. Generally said, before incarnating or projecting the consciousness into physical plane, most entities choose more subtle planes, before taking body on Earth. Some common places or consciousness-focuses are the astral-planes of Venus , Jupiter and Sun. These planets are preparation areas prior to embodying yourself into matter and the physical plane.
More and more people (so-called Starseeds) remember and feel their connection to stars beyond our local solar-system: Pleiades , Sirius or other etheric doorways. We primarily refer to their physical aspects, but their etheric aspect is indeed the one which people truly feel connected.
What about being free of karma (or out of shamshara, wheel of birth and death)?
Especially eastern religion systems describe being trapped into matter of the physical plane, and give ways to get free, as some Yoga-Systems suppose. My view is much more, that the life in duality of the physical plane is an opportunity to grow. Not for leaving or escaping, but much more mastering the duality of good and evil, and looking behind the veil. In this view, karma is an instrument, a tool to realise duality.
You become free of karma, when you realised its teaching.
What’s about parallel lives?
Some embodied presence’s (people) are able to perceive by realising their multi-dimensional self as also other embodied presence’s, and are able to connect those presence’s as well. This may be also getting close of the subjects of soul family, and soul fragments. In this case of soul-fragments, almost the same consciousness embodies itself from the etheric into two or more different bodies, and often they don’t know of each other. But usually the etheric presence only seeds one presence into matter, rarely two or more. From a subtler plane it looks different . . .
Here is a short thought I received from Pat Ard (
francine.roberts@pscmail.ps.net):If you can understand the concept that our souls are fragmented and existing on several planes, then you are ready to consider this: Our souls are indeed immense enough to exist in many realities at once. A small seed of our soul is all that is necessary to manifest in each reality. This allows our soul to manifest many times in each reality, plane, etc. In fact, we run into ourselves everyday. The person sitting next to you might, in fact, be a manifestation of your soul seed. Once you grasp this concept, consider that we are all, indeed, one.
When we started to reincarnate, when will it end?
Many people ask with their minds, what meaning it has to live so many lives on and on. But I may ask back, do you think one life is enough to experience all of life itself?
Let me share three hypothetical conversation fragments:
Person with no insights of past-lives:
Person with some insights of different past-lives:
A self-realised person may answer like this:
Imagine you would dive into the ocean, but you would dive into many different areas in the same time, and you collect all impressions within yourself. Your sight and overview where you dived in is limited by the density of the water, you can look just few feet, because that’s the perception which your senses allow you to pass through. The mind and ego serves to process this, to stay there. You are separated by the body you use, and by addiction to the limited perception.
When you leave your body when you "die", you recall all impressions (life-film) and you bring the essence into your Higher-Self, your non-embodied aspect of Self.
For example, experiences where you meet Yourself are the light-visions in Near Death Experiences (NDE), when you leave the physical plane and you meet your Self who sent you into matter. This insight is not very common, since the belief-system of people who had a NDE doesn’t allow the possibility that they met their Self . . . but had visions of Jesus or other religious figures according their belief-system.
Another issue, some of the UFO encounters of so-called dancing lights are the future Selves who contacts the embodied presence of you. We just starting to understand this aspect in UFO-Phenomena - we indeed have to learn about ourselves while discovering. It’s indeed all interconnected, and so close we can’t see it. We really forgot so much about who we are.
Back to the beginning and ending of (re)-incarnation process: between your "first" incarnation and "last" one, there is no time in between, because you entered the physical time from the etheric plane, where time is flexible . . . and non existent in its linear behaviour.
Multi-Dimensional-Self and Reincarnation, what’s the connection?
The Self seeds itself into bodies, in different time-frames:
The embodied consciousness, with linear time perceptions, becomes partly aware of its multi-dimensional aspects, and starts to connect other time-frames. The easiest way to conceptualise it, is the past-lives or reincarnation perception, recognising the connections between other projections of Self.
The view of reincarnation is a step to understanding the multi-dimensional self.
A few thoughts from Ann Albers (
What if we remove the notions of time and space when we discuss re-incarnation. Then, perhaps, we’d better remove the "re" and call it incarnation. Maybe our soul projects portions of its consciousness in different space/time frames . . . all at once! Thus my white / 30-year old Ann-self is here now typing, while my native self is off doing his business while my other selves are learning other lessons! I actually experienced this in a past-life regression hypnosis.
I’ve always been troubled by the notion that we hang out on earth, go somewhere, come back later, etc. I’ve always thought that time is a notion in this dimension, but not in the dimension of the soul. Thus, imagine yourself above a puzzle, looking down at the pieces which represent different lifetimes. Until you rise above it a bit you don’t see the picture in its totality.
With this point of view, the timespan between incarnation is the nearness of the puzzle pieces. Are two life-times too interconnected with the glue of karma (ie. need for balance), we seed ourselves close together arround the different happenings (fast re-incarnation).
Excerpt of The Complete Ascension Manual written by Joshua David Stone
The Process of Reincarnation --- When a soul extension has spent the needed amount of time resting and reviewing the recent life [bardo], he will begin planning for his next incarnation. He chooses his parents, brothers and sisters, educational opportunities, male or female body, country, skin colour, and the astrological configuration to be born into. This is all decided upon by the soul extension, the soul, and the higher teachers and guides. [...] The true trauma is not death, but birth. A free spirit has now come back into the confines of a physical body that is not even developed yet. [...] A crib death occurs when the soul extension comes into the physical body and then changes his mind for some reason and returns back to spirit. The more obstacles the soul extension has chosen the greater the opportunity for spiritual growth and to pay off karmic debts.