Past Lives and Reincarnation:

How can what I experienced in a Past Life be relevant to this one?

As Paul Aurand stated in the above quoted interview, “From the womb, we go back to the most recent past-life to review some of the significant events as well as how that life ended.” In a sense he is looking back in time – rather than forward in time – to learn more for his currently very much alive patient about that person’s most recent afterlife. Just as the famous poet William Wordsworth once said, “The child is the father of the man” it can also be said that a Past Life is the father of one’s Life between Lives (or afterlife), and that our most recent afterlife is the father of our present self. Thus, accessing information about our past lives, including the most recent one, can provide helpful information of great value to us regarding our present life.

The three most common sources for information concerning Past Lives are hypnotic regression studies (such as we just discussed regarding Life between Lives), a traditional past life regression and the spontaneous recollection by small children. In his second book on Past Lives entitled, Return to Life, Dr. Jim B.Tucker, M.D., a pediatric psychiatrist at the University of Virginia Medical School, internationally regarded as a leading scholar of children’s Past Lives, discusses a boy by the name of James Leininger who recalled a Past Life as James Huston, who was a World War II Navy fighter pilot killed in action while flying off his aircraft carrier Natoma Bay, then located in the Pacific Ocean. In essence, young James Leininger gave an incredibly detailed account of his past life, mentioning his naval aviator buddies by name, indicated that he was shot down off the coast of Iwo Jima and drew pictures from the time he was three or four years old depicting American and Japanese fighter planes in aerial combat. At that time he had recurring horrendous nightmares in which he was being burned alive inside a flaming airplane. The boy’s parents became determined to ascertain whether there was any basis to their young son’s claims and pursued a vigorous research investigation involving US Naval records pertaining to Second World War combat activities involving aircraft carriers in the Pacific Ocean. Dr. Tucker concludes his chapter by noting that this “little boy showed knowledge of the events from the Pacific in World War II, and not just knowledge, but emotions from those events and the trauma of being killed there. Even so, he is now a happy, thriving young man, the trauma seemingly behind him.

Dr. Tucker wrote that “After studying [many such] cases… I have concluded that some young children do appear to possess memories and emotions that come from a deceased individual. How does a reasonable person make sense of this? Something extraordinary seems to be going on, but how can an idea like past lives mesh with the world of science and all that we have learned through the scientific method? The answer lies in being aware that science involves more than just scientific materialism, the concept that the world consists entirely of physical matter. On the basis of materialism, most mainstream scientists would dismiss the cases out of hand because they say that no part of us can continue after our bodies die. As I learn more about scientific knowledge as it exists today, however, I have discovered that the picture is actually much more complex…I now believe that the physical grows out of the mental, meaning that the physical world is created out of something you can think of as Mind or consciousness or the spiritual. Our cases, and the possibility of children remembering past lives, then fit in nicely with a new understanding of existence.” 

In his two books on Past Lives all of the children Dr. Tucker discussed had vivid memories of a previous lifetime, but apparently none of them reported any recollection of what occurred to them between termination of that Past Life and their reincarnation in their present life. Generally speaking, few adults recall their past lives, and fewer still their Between Lives existence. Yet, through the technique of hypnotic regression Dr. Michael Newton, Paul Aurand and their 200  other professional colleagues around the world report that their clients recall not only their Past Lives, but also their Life Between Lives, often times including details regarding how they chose to reincarnate. Dr. Newton and nearly all other therapists who engage in hypnotic regression as part of their Life Between Lives therapeutic process believe that the dimension of their clients speaking while in hypnotic trance is the soul of that person. And their consensus is that prior to reincarnation each soul pre-selects a major purpose for its next life