| Children’s
Past Lives.
Chapter
1: Chase and Sarah
"Sit on your Mom's lap, close your eyes, and tell me
what you see when you hear the loud noises that scare you,"
Norman gently instructed Chase.
I
looked down at Chase's freckled face. Nothing could have prepared
me for what I was about to hear.
Young
Chase immediately began describing himself as a soldier-an
adult soldier-carrying a gun. "I'm standing behind a
rock. I'm carrying a long gun with a kind of sword at the
end." My heart was pounding in my ears and the hair on
my arms stood up as I listened. Sarah and I glanced at each
other in wide-eyed amazement.
"What
are you wearing?" Norman questioned.
"I
have dirty, ripped clothes, brown boots, a belt. I'm hiding
behind a rock, crouching on my knees and shooting at the enemy.
I'm at the edge of a valley. The battle is going on all around
me."
I
listened to Chase, surprised to hear him talk about war. He
had never been interested in war toys, and had never even
owned a toy gun. He always preferred games and construction
toys; he would spend hours at a time happily building with
blocks, Legos and his wooden trains. His television watching
was strictly limited to Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers, and
none of the Disney movies he had seen depicted war.
"I'm
behind a rock," he said again. "I don't want to
look, but I have to when I shoot. Smoke and flashes everywhere.
And loud noises: yelling, screaming, loud booms. I'm not sure
who I'm shooting at-there's so much smoke, so much going on.
I'm scared. I shoot at anything that moves. I really don't
want to be here and shoot other people."
Although
this was Chase's little-boy voice, his tone was serious and
mature-uncharacteristic of my happy five-year-old. He actually
seemed to be feeling this soldier's feelings and thinking
his thoughts. He really didn't want to be there shooting at
other men. This was not a glorified picture of war or soldiering;
Chase was describing the sentiments of a man in the heat of
battle who had serious doubts about the value of his actions,
was terrified, thinking only of staying alive. These feelings
and images were coming from some place deep within him. Chase
was not making this up.
Chase's
body, too, revealed how deeply he was experiencing this life.
As he described himself shooting from behind the rock, I could
feel his body tense on my lap. When he admitted he didn't
want to be there and shoot at other people, his breathing
quickened and he curled up into a ball, as if he were trying
to hide and avoid what he saw. Holding him, I could feel his
fear.
Norman
sensed Chase's distress with his role as a soldier who, in
order to survive, had to kill other men. He explained to Chase,
talking slowly, "We live many different lives on Earth.
We take turns playing different parts, like actors in a play.
We learn what it means to be human by playing these different
parts. Sometimes we are soldiers and kill others in a battle,
and sometimes we are killed. We are simply playing our parts
to learn." Using simple language, Norman emphasized to
Chase that there was no blame in being a soldier. He assured
Chase that he was just doing his job, even if he had to kill
other soldiers in battle.
As
he listened to Norman's assurances, I could feel my son's
body relax and his breathing become more regular. The anguished
look on his face melted away. Norman's words were helping.
Chase was actually understanding and responding to these universal
concepts.
Chapter
3: Musings on the playground
Over dessert, Cathy and I recalled several children we knew
who had phobias. We thought of one small child we both knew
who was terrified of water, whose mother could not coax him
into a swimming pool. Could he have drowned in another lifetime?
Would his fear go away simply by remembering his past life?
I
felt excitement rising in me as we followed this line of thinking.
Not just fears, but any traits could be the result of past
lives. We talked of children we knew who had unusual talents,
odd interests, or quirky behavior that puzzled their parents.
She told me the story of a three-year-old girl in her class
who sat crying in front of a small hole she had dug in the
playground and covered with leaves. When Cathy asked her what
was wrong she said, "I'm crying for my children who died
in the flood." Cathy questioned her parents about this,
but they couldn't explain it either.
Running
with the possibilities, we jumped to another idea. How often
do we find children in families who seem to be totally different
from each other and from their parents? We agreed that each
of us had felt the uniqueness of our own babies when we held
them for the first time; the seeds of personality were already
there at birth. We could feel it. Maybe this uniqueness is
not solely the result of random combinations of the parents'
genes. Maybe it's also due to traces of past life personality
and experience they bring with them to this life. And maybe
our children are much more than the blank slates to be written
upon by experience, as science has led us to believe for so
long.
In
the middle of one of these grand speculations, Cathy suddenly
realized that she was late and dashed off. She left me alone
at the table, sipping my coffee, buzzing with ideas.
Chapter
6: Dr. Ian Stevenson
Dr. Stevenson found that in 35 percent of his verified cases
(300 of 895), the children had birthmarks or birth defects
that matched wounds from their previous lives.
Birthmarks
are important because they offer physical evidence for the
link between past and present lives. One of Stevenson's cases
is of an Indian boy who remembered being killed by a shotgun
blast to his chest. On this boy's chest was an array of birthmarks
that matched the pattern and location (verified by the autopsy
report) of the fatal wounds. Another boy in India was born
with stubs for fingers on only his right hand - an extremely
rare condition. He remembered the life of boy who had his
fingers cut off by the blades of a fodder chopping machine.
One woman had three separate linear scarlike birthmarks on
her back. As a child, she remembered the life of a woman who
was killed by three blows to her back with an ax.
Dr.
Stevenson applied his usual rigorous methods to examining
and recording the birthmarks and birth defects. He required
that eyewitness reports verify that the marks were present
at birth. He carefully measured and photographed the marks.
He screened cases where the birth defect could have been genetic,
caused by a family relationship between the subject and the
deceased, or that could be explained by events during pregnancy.
Then he documented the facts of the previous personality's
life and death from eyewitness accounts, medical records,
and autopsy reports. (Remember, Dr. Stevenson was trained
as a medical doctor, so he knew what he was looking at.) Finally,
he would compare the verified death wounds or marks on the
previous personality with the marks on the child subject.
Dr.
Stevenson was very careful to guard against cases where the
past life memories were fabricated as a way of retroactively
explaining the birthmark. He would accept only those solved
cases where the child had sufficient verbal memories - the
many facts and people that Swarnlata remembered, for example
- to identify and locate the previous personality. In many
instances this was a person the child or his family had never
seen or known about. In other words, these cases had to stand
on their own merits before the birthmarks and birth defects
were admitted as further evidence.
Some
critics might attribute these birthmarks to chance. But a
significant number of Stevenson's birthmark cases involve
two or more matching birthmarks--for example, the woman who
had three scarlike marks on her back. Among the 210 cases
in his volumes are eighteen cases of double birthmarks. Nine
of these cases involve bullet wounds where not only do the
marks match the exact site of entry and exit, but the mark
corresponding to the entry wound is small and round, and the
mark corresponding to the exit wound is large and irregular.
This conforms perfectly to the ballistic fact that the exit
wound from a bullet is always larger than the hole where the
bullet entered the body.
What
are the odds that two birthmarks would randomly correspond
to two wounds? Stevenson did the calculation and determined
that the odds are 1 in 25,600. The odds against this happening
by chance eighteen times are astronomical.
Chapter
7: Children's past life memories
I wondered if wee children ruminate about the past while still
in their cribs, even before they can talk. Some of the children
were so young when they first began talking about their memories,
it seemed as if they had been just waiting for the words to
come, frustrated that they could not tell their parents what
they were thinking about. On the average, these toddlers were
two years old, and many of them still in diapers when they
first began speaking of their memories. They were still babies.
Elspeth
was only eighteen months old and had never put words together
before-had never uttered a complete sentence. One evening
when her mother was giving Elspeth her bath, the baby said,
"I'm going to take my vows." Her astonished mother
couldn't believe her ears. This was Elspeth's first complete
sentence-and did she say "vows"?
When
she questioned Elspeth, the little one replied, "I'm
not Elspeth now. I'm Rose, but I'm going to be Sister Teresa
Gregory." Now her mother was stunned. They were not Catholics:
Elspeth could not possibly have known about nuns and vows.
She was only a baby!
Elspeth
went on to tell her mother that "when I was here before"
she had been an old lady and wore a long black dress with
a black cloth over her head. That was it. Then one day, two
years later, Elspeth filled in the story about the nun's life,
describing her jobs at the convent. Her day began when it
was still dark; she milked goats, made cheese, and helped
prepare the food. The nuns said prayers often, and when a
certain bell was rung, they had to stop talking, no matter
what they were doing. Elspeth saw herself as an old woman
who fell over and died while saying prayers in her tiny room.
Chapter
10: The four signs
When I talk to people of children's past life memories, invariably
the first question they ask is: "How can you distinguish
past life stories from fantasies?"
At
first I could answer by saying only, "Well, the parent
just knows." Not a very satisfactory answer, I admit.
But as I studied the cases that came in and listened to parents
describe their experiences, I began to see and hear the same
comments over and over, almost word for word. These comments
were becoming very familiar. I found I could rely on them
as a test of past life memories. When parents described their
experiences to me for the first time, I found myself going
down a mental check-list to help me decide if the memories
they were describing were real or fantasy. This checklist
evolved into the Four Signs.
The
Four Signs of Children's Past Life Memory are:
1.
Matter-of-Fact Tone
2.
Consistency Over Time
3.
Knowledge Beyond Experience
4.
Corresponding Behavior and Traits
Chapter
12: What a parent can do
If she mentions dying, concentrate on the circumstances surrounding
the moment of death. Ask questions, like "How did you
die?" "Who was with you when you died?" "What
happened just before you died?" Use open questions, too,
like "What happened next?" "How did you feel?"
"What were you thinking?" Get as much information
as you can, so you can discern what unfinished business might
remain from the moment of death. Proceed gently, and in an
unexcited, matter-of-fact tone of voice. If she resists this
line of questioning, don't push.
After
she's told you as much as she can about the moment of death,
ask her, "Right after you died, then what happened?"
You might be rewarded with a full description of her journey
through the after-life bardos and heaven. Or your child may
simply say, "And then I came to you!" By tracing
this transition from past life death to rebirth, she may understand
for the first time that the past life is over, that she is
now in a new lifetime. This could be just the understanding
she needs to help her let go of the past and ground herself
in present reality. This realization alone may neutralize
the effects of an incomplete death.
Chapter
16: See children differently
Once we accept the fact that our own children have lived before,
we can never see any children the same way again. It changes
our concept of what children are.
We
can no longer see children as inferior to us simply because
they are little and can't reach the faucets or tie a shoe.
For now we know that children are more than just biological
beings shaped by heredity and environment. They are spiritual
beings, too, who bring with them wisdom and experience gathered
from other lives on earth. If we accept this view-that children
are experienced souls in little bodies-we realize that they
have more available to them, and more to offer us, than we
ever thought possible before.
Authors
Details: Carol Bowman Web
Site
Excerpted from Children's Past Lives, by Carol Bowman.
Published by Bantam Books. |
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