Reincarnation

<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Reincarnation is the belief that the spirit of a being will inhabit more than one body in a succession of lives.

In various forms, it is a belief of many religions in the world, including ones with many adherents. It has been stated that the majority of people in the world believe in reincarnation.

The concept became well-known to many people for whom it is not a tenet of their religious belief system with the best-seller success of a book called The Search for Bridey Murphy in the mid-1950s. The book popularized the idea of using hypnosis to reach the knowledge of previous lives (called "past life regression").

In it, Virginia Tighe was supposedly regressed to a previous life as a 19th century Irish woman. Speaking as Bridey, she remembered specific details which could be checked.

After the book was published many of the facts were checked. Skeptical reaction suggested that she had access to the information through someone she had known years earlier. It was suggested that Virginia Tighe had unconscious recall of this information.

The evidence does not start and stop with Bridey Murphy. Dr. Ian Stevenson has done research into the issue, especially with children from India. Rather than using hypnosis, Dr. Stevenson has looked for spontaneous recall of verifiable information. Dr. Stevenson is considering reincarnation as one possible explanation. The Stevenson cases are very different from the Murphy case. One primary element is that they take place in a society where reincarnation is accepted. If a child is a reincarnation of someone from a more advantageous social stratum, there might be a reason for family members to "facilitate" such memories so that the child could make claim to previous life advantages.

The idea has been extended by some to allow for "future life progression." People are hypnotized to gain knowledge of their future lives, under the theory that time is not linear.

Some people use past life regression therapeutically. The belief is that residue from their past lives are negatively impacting their current lives. For example, someone who died in a fire might have a phobia about fires.