Reincarnation, some believe and some don't. If I had to make a guess, I would say that the non believers outnumber the believers by quite a bit. I think we all know what reincarnation is said to be, it is someone being born again who lived before. This is a very simplistic definition of reincarnation, but it seems to fit quite nicely. There seem to be some strange cases around the world of this phenomena. So why would someone think that their child was the reincarnation of someone who lived before? The answer to this question is that the people who rely on evidence, must rely on what is known in the legal field as circumstantial evidence. Circumstantial evidence is indirect evidence. First of all there is no empirical evidence that people ever come back from the dead. Sure many of us believe in the afterlife because we believe in God and our faith dictates that we will rise from the dead. Others believe in reincarnation because their religion dictates this doctrine. These are our beliefs, but they certainly wouldn't stand up in a court of law.

There are a lot of problems extracting memories from children and many of these are the same problems that are found with trying to get info from people who claim to have been abducted by aliens. If hypnotism is used, the hypnotist sometimes will insert his ideas into the memory of the person. I am not saying that this is done on purpose, it could happen just because of the type of questions that are asked. Once you have a tainted memory then the entire experiment of tracing someone, who claims to be reincarnated, to their original host is lost, and children may be more susceptible to suggestion than even adults.

There is a strange thing about children, the ones that seem to remember previous lives are usually very young. Some estimate that most are between the ages of 2 years old to 5 years old. What has found to be very scary is the fact that some children have birthmarks that seem to be in the same place as wounds that were said to be on the person that was reincarnated. This is especially bothersome when the child starts speaking about some other life and talks about wounds and such and describes how they happened and where they were located. When a young child starts talking about his wife and children it can become very upsetting to his parents. Sometimes a young child might talk about his death in a previous life or what he did for a living. When this type of talk begins, then people can not help but suspect a previous life after a time. At first, I am sure, that they blame it on tv or an over active imagination, but as more and more facts come out, especially facts that they might be able to verify, then they have no choice but to at least suspect reincarnation. I have always had a theory about this. My theory is that memory may be passed on by people in ways that we can't even imagine right now. We are made of atoms after all. Maybe we even breathe in atoms. molecules or even cells of a deceased person that contain some sort of memory carrying device that implants itself in our brains. Think of it this way, if we have the memory then wouldn't we think it was our own memory, even if it wasn't?

Here is something that I have never seen mentioned before, maybe you have? In some areas where reincarnation is believed in, it is said that some people pray that they will be reincarnated into a certain family when they die because they know that this is a good family. One such group of people are the Tibetans. Reincarnation is expected and newborns are checked for tell tale marks to see if they match up with known marks and wounds of others. About 1/3 of children who were said to be reincarnated from people who died an unnatural death seemed to have some sort of phobia. Many children who were said to be reincarnated from people who were shot, displayed birth marks in the same area as where the bullet entered or exited the body of the person that they were said to be reincarnated from. These marks are certainly a mystery that is unexplainable. One Indian boy tells of his supposed former life by saying he remembers when he was another boy and put his hand, by mistake, into a machine and had his fingers chopped off. This boy had only stubs for fingers on one hand, the same hand that was supposedly put into the machine.

One thing that seems to stand out about reincarnation is the fact that it is claimed to occur far more often in Asian countries, where it is believed in more readily than in the western world. I am not saying that it isn't claimed to occur here, just far less often. The idea of reincarnation was opened to the western world by Plato and Socrates and then by some early Christian theologians. Some of these theologians were St. Augustine, St. Jerome and St. Gregory of Nyssa. The idea of reincarnation in the western world has sort of faded from popularity. When you believe in reincarnation, you have to also believe in the strange. An example of this is that people might believe that a child that was born after a parent died is that parent. This might make the child the mother's former husband or some such thing. There are also the cases where children start speaking a foreign language without ever having learned it. While rare, it is never the less very strange. The language is usually tied into the ethnic background of the person that is said to be reincarnated.

Here is a fact that I found unusual. Some children, who it was thought were reincarnated, later became Lesbians or Homosexuals and these were the children who thought that in their previous lives that were members of the opposite sex. Some children are said to remember more than one reincarnation event. One in particular remembers a person who was her husband in one life, her husband again hundreds of years later and today is her son.

When we talk about reincarnation, we have to think of a funnel turned upside down. The wide part are the children. More children remember reincarnation events than do adults. The adults are the small part of the funnel that is now on the top. Some adults do present some pressing cases for reincarnation such as Capt. Robert Snow who is the commander of the homicide branch of the Indianapolis Police Department and who has appeared in documentaries. Another is Sherrie Lea Laird who is said to be reincarnated from Marilyn Monroe.

I have to say that it is hard for me to accept the idea of reincarnation on several fronts. I have already discussed one with you and that was my theory on what is happening. Another front is the idea that a good part of the Earth's population is made up of people that have lived before. Another thing that I would have to consider, if I believed this way, is that I have a chance coming back as an animal or maybe a plant, if not, why not? Wouldn't that be something, if the Earth turned out to be some sort of purgatory where we kept getting reborn until we lived our lives correctly?