Craig, how on earth do you know that this indeed was a past life of his? How do you explain mediums who say that souls tell them there is no reincarnation? Please don't use the "my spirits are smarter than yours" theory.

Have you seen my other questions and posts on your other forum? It amazes me the way people will just believe anything out of the ordinary as absolute fact even when there is a mountain of evidence contrary to it.

In case you see this before you read my other posts and questions:

The influence of the Kardec school was powerful and, by the appeal of its reconciliation with the apparent injustices of life, it became more popular than the teachings of the Spiritualist Z. J. Piérart and his followers, who denied reincarnation and relied on the same kind of evidence as that which the Kardecists produced. Indeed, Alphonse Cahagnet, who kept the earliest careful trance records in France, was the first to whom the communicators emphatically denied reincarnation.

For its psychological import, it is also interesting to note that at the exact time of Kardec's death, Home claimed to have received the following communication: "I regret having taught the Spiritist doctrine. Allan Kardec." (See Home's book Lights and Shadows of Spiritualism, 1877.)
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle pointed out that since reincarnation for the spirits is a question of their own future, they may not be more enlightened on it than we are on our own fate.
The experiences of Carl A. Wickland and his wife in obsession cases did not bear out the theory. They were told by earth-bound spirits, brought into their rescue circles, that on passing over they had entered the auras of young children and obsessed them. The children, however, never ceased to struggle against these invaders.

FROM A CONVERSATION I HAD WITH A LEGITIMATE MEDIUM:

A vision and a birthmark may add up to reincarnation for some, but does not for me. If it was a legitimate vision, who says the vision was of his own life? It may have been an ancestor in spirit, the life of his spirit guide, the life of any other random person which could have been tapped in to and shown to him as another experienced it. As for deciding the birthmark was the arrow, well, I could quite easily substitute that if it was myself and say the small birthmark at the base of my skull was because an arrow shot me in the head. I am not going to assume though because I have a birthmark that it must be some previous life injury and conveniently from a life I had a vision of and have decided is my own. If that is the case and we supposedly have many, many, many lives, then surely we would have had multiples where we died from some sort of injury, and if that be the case, then why are we not all walking around covered in birthmarks?
A. Having a dream set in another time and place, which as far as I am concerned is not evidence of anything. We imagine up all sorts of things in our dreams.

B. Having a vision or what seems like a memory of another time and place, ... which can be done with psychic ability picking up on the energy of that and it’s meaning is absolutely nothing. Seeming to know about another's life does not mean it was our own life once upon a time, it would be the life of someone else in spirit that we are picking up on.

C. Others just want to believe in it with nothing to support it because they either like the idea of having many lives, think we need to have every imaginable experience, think we can only possibly learn from our mistakes by copping some sort of pay back or chance to correct a wrong doing in the form of Karma, or as one spirit I have spoken to put it "they can't yet conceive of another way of living so they hold a physical life as the pinnacle of existence".

So whilst some people think that evidence enough, I think it is no evidence at all. What strikes me -in no particular order - as illogical about reincarnation tho is ...

A. The amount of people who all claim to be the same historical figure - Cleopatra, Napoleon, etc, etc, .. they can't all be right! However, if they have had some experience which has led them to believe that, then it only backs up one of the points above, ... that they are dreaming something not true, picking up a thought energy that is just there to be tapped in to by anyone without it being applicable to themselves, or they just want to think they are based on pretty much nothing.

B. Reincarnation is going around in circles when the natural order of things is evolvement and progression.

C. If people come back here, who are mediums speaking to when giving messages? If people have no individuality/ identity, then how can mediums speak to them and identify them? Also how can mediums tell if they have one, two, three, etc, spirits linking to them if their separate uniqueness can not be sensed? It can - we can have more than one spirit link to us at the same time and be able to tell them apart simply by feeling the different energies.

D. The fourth reason, and the one that clinches it being totally illogical to me is unfortunately a concept that is clear in my head but hard to externalize to explain to another as the spiritual side of it really has to be experienced to truly understand that there is no time beyond the divisions we apply based on our physical environment and our planets revolution (but divisions that do not apply when not on a revolving planet in a physical environment - making no time really) , other aspects that all tie in here refer to light and it taking what we perceive as 'time' to travel, our ability to literally see the past as it is unfolding due to technology such as the Hubble telescope based on light as it reaches it, and it also needs an understanding of Einstein’s time space continuum. You can at least read up on that last bit, (which will give you the cornerstone to understand a concept of an eternal now in which past and future are fluid and RE incarnation can not fit in to the reality of an eternal now) but people can spend ages trying to arrive at this understanding from a spiritual side of things and it takes a lot of deep contemplation, and possibly even a state of expanded consciousness. I sat and thought about this and nothing else for 4 days straight before it all clicked in to comprehension, so as you can appreciate, I can't exactly spill 4 days of thought processing out that easily. I can only say I don't 'believe' this, for me it is a ‘knowing’ as clear as knowing water is wet. I wish I could find words to make it make sense to someone who has not arrived there themselves, but I think that may be the only way to FULLY get it - for it to click in to knowingness for one's self.
Clearly I see no evidence to support that we come back, certainly not as animals (will get to that later) ... I don't buy in to karma either - cause and effect yes, but not this eye for an eye, do and have done to you thing, ... we don't need to cop something back to arrive at the conclusion we have done something un-ideal and learn from it, we don't need to eat well in this life and then starve to death in Africa in another to understand hunger, etc, ... and there are experiences beyond the physical we can experience too but none of us ever would if we kept having to come back here until we got everything right, coz I don't know a single person once out of childhood who can say they have led a faultless life. Yet, someone must be moving on coz we have evolved spirits coming back to tell us about their progression through the spirit realms and funnily enough, all over the world, and in many different places. I also don't believe that we lose the individuality/ personality that is ourselves. My experiences interacting with spirit indicate otherwise. I have done regression and had gone back to 'past lives' and believe it even less because of those experiences. I also allow that my mind is pretty powerful and its capabilities, heights, depths and limits are just not known. 'Akashic Record dipping' seems to have taken over from Angels in the psychic arena at the moment and, contrary to books, courses, or even experiences, no one can access another person's life. We are told by Spirit Teachers that when we leave our physical bodies and are ready to review our lives then we will do so with the assistance of an evolved spiritual being who will help us with what may be a pretty traumatic experience. Do you think for one minute every Tom, Dick and Harry on the earth has the right, or even the ability, to access our life records? Many people confuse psychic readings with reading Akashic Records. I find it strange that in 35 years of spirit communication, not one spirit contact i have had, has ever mentioned reincarnation. I do think if it is as important as a lot of people think it is, some mention might have been made.

As far as I am concerned, reincarnation is illogical to the laws of physics, speed of light, space, time, etc, ... when the speed of light ... the ability of technology such as the Hubble space telescope etc, shows us that the past is still perceivable dependant on light/images taking "time" as we call it, to be perceptible, eg: being able to view the past, ... this to me logically concludes that the present is only a perception of light/images as receivable. I accept space time continuums as logic, multiple facets of our greater selves perhaps existing in different space and time, ... but simultaneously, ... not concurrently. I am sure this sounds loopy to many, but ponder what Hubble is doing, what Einstein has said, spirit constantly telling us time is a human perception, ... then come at me with the alternate logic. Otherwise, I am sorry, I just can't wear this linear perception of existence as an absolute. I have never heard from a spirit believing they are going to reincarnate.

Speaking to spirit...and I know they all have as different a perspectives as we do here on earth, I kind of like one in particular’s comments, that those who are reincarnated, are those who have it ingrained in their psyche that being a human is the pinnacle of existence and can not truly conceive of anything beyond. I know myself and one other present looked at each other and made comments to the effect of - uh uh, nah, can't think of anything worse than repetition over progression. I don't care what supposed “evidence" anyone shoves in my face.

Q.Do we re-incarnate again on earth?
A.Now that is a question I find difficulty in answering. I have known no one who has. I passed over many years ago, and I have round about me those who lived thousands of years ago on earth. That is all I can say, because my knowledge does not permit me to say more.

SPIRIT MESSAGE:
Saelish - No such thing as reincarnation.

Received by James Padgett
Washington D.C.
I am here, Saelish.
I was, when on earth, an inhabitant of the great Empire of Assyria of which Nineveh was the capital. I was not a king but was one of a great king's magicians or wise men, and when I lived was a man of great influence and power in the kingdom.
I came tonight to tell you a great truth in connection with the soul. As you may infer, when I lived we knew nothing of the one and only God, but we worshipped many gods, great and little, and believed that these gods could help or harm us, just as we deserved their help or their injurious workings. And so our many gods sometimes came in conflict in their treatment of us poor mortals, so that we at times hardly knew whether our gods were our friends or our enemies.
Of course, the help that we sought for was all of a material nature, for never did we think of help in the way of preparing us for a future life; that, we supposed, was only for those of us who by our great achievement in battle or in intellectual pursuits would, upon death, become gods ourselves. The poor, ordinary mortals were only intended to live the mortal life, at least during the incarnation that they then had, and their expectations were that perhaps in some future incarnation, they might have the opportunity and the favors of the unknown gods, so that they might become gods themselves.
This was the substance of the beliefs and hopes of the Assyrians at that time - and many millions died in that belief and are now inhabitants of the several planes of certain spheres of the spirit world. None of them has ever returned for a new incarnation and thereby start on their way to become gods, and this for the reason which is sufficient to satisfy them when they became spirits, sooner or later: those men who they supposed had become gods when they died, were in the spirit world spirits themselves, and not gods at all (sic).
So you see that the soul, when once it leaves the physical body, never returns again to any physical body, but continues in the spirit world to exist as a soul with a body of spirit form and substance; and no spirit has ever experienced the sensation of becoming reincarnated. And this is the truth that I wished to tell you; that the soul, when once it leaves the physical body, never again finds its habitation in another or the same physical body, but forever thereafter occupies the spirit body, and that in the spirit world only.
When a mortal dies, earth, so far as being the home of that mortal again in earthly body, becomes a thing of the past - it is a mere way station which has been left behind, and will never again appear as a stopping place on the spirit's line of progression.
I thought it might do good for me to write this tonight, for it is the information from a spirit who long years ago lived on earth and believed in this doctrine of reincarnation, and who during all the long years of its spirit life has learned and experienced the truth, that reincarnation is a fable and has no real existence.
No, the soul never retraces its steps or its method of existence, for it never goes back from the spirit to mortal.
I know that on the earth today there are thousands of mortals who believe in this doctrine of reincarnation, and many thousands more have died in that belief, but they live and die in that belief, and only when the truth comes to them, do they realize that their belief was an erroneous one, and that they will never reach Nirvana by retracing their course of life through the physical body.
The soul never dies, but always lives, and whenever its position is such as to justify progression, it progresses.
I live in the sixth sphere, and am considered to be a very exalted spirit in my intellectual acquirements and in my condition of freedom from sin and errors which belonged to me on earth, and which belongs to every mortal. My happiness is very great, and my home and surroundings are beautiful.
This sphere is a wonderful place, not only because of the surroundings and homes of the inhabitants, but because of the great mental and moral development of those who live in that sphere. No spirit who has not that development can live in this sphere because of its unfitness.
Male and female spirits enjoy this wonderful development and their intercourse in the intellectual things that exist in this sphere is free and frequent, and the interchange of thoughts brings much happiness and satisfaction.
We don't know of any spheres beyond the sixth, although we have heard it rumored that there are other spheres, but we give little credence to these rumors, because none of us, I mean the inhabitants of this sphere, has ever found a higher one, and many of us live in the highest planes of this sphere.
Saelish

CORRECTION FROM THE OTHER SIDE

The most powerful testimonial came from Helena Blavatsky. Madam Blavatsky was a spiritualist medium of considerable talent and co-founder of the Theosophical Society. She was a pioneer of the New Thought Movement, the early forerunner of New Age. She stated, "I studied reincarnation in India and thought there was truth and justice in the theory that we come back to learn and grow. I taught the theory and wanted to bring it to the world. I felt that I remembered far back into my past, but I was mistaken. When you become sensitive and can feel the spirits around you, they speak to you by impressions, and their past will be like a panorama. A person feels it and will relive the past of spirits, but the mistake is made of taking this for the memory of past incarnations. I did not know this when I lived on earth, but when I came to the spirit side of life I learned differently. Once you reach the spirit world, where all is congenial, where all is life, where all is bliss, where there is no jealousy, no envy, where all is one grand harmony, do you think for one moment that you would want to leave that beautiful condition to come back to earth and be a little baby, restricted in mind and knowing nothing whatever?"
…The medium went into trance - his voice changed, and he gave an fascinating address from his spirit guide. When he finished, there were questions and answers. The one question which stuck with me was asked by a woman concerning reincarnation. The spirit guide, Magnus, replied that he had seen many spirits waiting to return to earth, but had never seen any spirits actually leave the spirit world. Furthermore, he added that he and his companions were more advanced than mortals and, therefore, could not imagine what would be accomplished by returning to the earth. I quickly glanced over at the woman to see her reaction. She was visibly taken back; obviously, this was not what she had expected to hear.

Do spirits reincarnate? Findlay replies: ?To return would be retrogression and we have no evidence that this is nature?s plan. It sounds simple and believable to those who have never thought out how we obtain our individual minds and become individual beings. These come from our parents as already explained. There is no mystery about it, so the one who believes that he or she is the reincarnation of some individual who once lived, must explain how this separate individual mind took the place of the combined minds of his or her parents at conception. It is caused by misunderstanding of the facts and sprang from minds. These views, I may say, receive the support of my informants in the Etheric world, who say that they know of no one who has incarnated again on earth. They have with them those who live on earth thousands of years ago, and those not with them have gone on to higher planes.

A guide of Emma Hardinge Britten when questioned on this subject asked: Does the eagle go back to the egg?

Psychologist Robert Baker demonstrated that belief in reincarnation is the greatest predictor of whether a subject would have a past-life memory while under past life regression hypnotherapy. Furthermore, Baker demonstrated that the subject's expectations significantly affect the past-life regressive session. He divided a group of 60 students into three groups. He told the first group that they were about to experience an exciting new therapy that could help them uncover their past lives. Eighty-five per cent in this group were successful in "remembering" a past life. He told the second group that they were to learn about a therapy which may or may not work to engender past-life memories. In this group, the success rate was 60%. He told the third group that the therapy was crazy and that normal people generally do not experience a past life. Only 10% of this group had a past-life "memory."

Some reincarnationists say that they can remember past incarnations. I believe two well known advocates of the theory have claimed to be re-embodiments of Hypatia. Since both were living at the same time, at least one of them must be wrong! But Swedenborg shows that they can have a completely different explanation. He tells us that we are in unconscious association with spirits who influence us in an inner way. On the communication of spirits with people on earth, he says in his Heaven and Hell, #256: Angels and spirits are not allowed to speak to a person from their own memory; only from the person's memory. Spirits and angels have a memory just as people do. If a spirit talked to a person from his own memory, the person would not know anything else but that all he thought then were his own thoughts, when they were actually the spirit's. It is like remembering things that the person never actually heard or saw. I have been shown by experience that it is like this. It was from this experience that some of the ancients got the belief that after several thousand years they would return to their former life, and to everything they did in it, and also that they had already returned from before. They concluded this because they occasionally had something like a memory of things that they had never seen or heard. This happened because spirits flowed from their own memory into the ideas of their thought. So according to Swedenborg, the claims of remembering past lives are due to the projection of the memory of a spirit into the mind of a person receptive to it. Each spirit has had his own life on earth, which the person would "remember" quite clearly, believing it to be a buried memory of one of his own past lives.
Is There Reincarnation?
The writings of 18th century Emanuel Swedenborg who claimed to have seen into the other side for 27 years do not support reincarnation. He wrote that we have one life - eternal - and that we are born into this physical world to prepare us for our eternal life. In the book, Heaven and Hell, Swedenborg explained that these memories of what is now called "past lives' are the memories of those who have gone before us. Very often, we sense these past memories and believe them to be our own. Swedenborg's explanation does not discount the experience - this life was lived - but not by the person claiming more than one life. We have one life - eternal life - and we are ourselves throughout eternity. Swedenborg also wrote that God, being Divine Wisdom, in addition to Divine Love, is always rational. In other words, God always makes sense. If something doesn't make sense, it is not from God.
I have been made aware that a reincarnationist website has quoted my above paragraph without identifying this article. The point was made that the above explanation does not take into consideration why some people are seemingly healed emotionally by "past life healing." Well, there is an easy explanation - it's called the placebo effect and it has been documented in medical studies. If a person believes that something will help them, it very often does - even if that something is a sugar pill. It's not a stretch of the imagination to see if someone believes that they have past lives - then going to past lives therapy will help them.

The Transfiguration of Christ with the appearance of Moses and Elijah is also cited as "proof" of reincarnation. Yet, the disciples who witnessed the Transfiguration, Peter, James and John clearly recognized Moses and Elijah as themselves. Keep in mind that Moses and Elijah were seen many centuries after their death and they were recognized as Moses and Elijah.
I have pondered whether people believe reincarnation because they fear living in the spiritual world as a spirit. I had this fear myself - who wants to be an ethereal, vaporous form of themselves? Yet, according to Swedenborg, that is NOT what a spirit is. A spirit is merely a person that has died - and is now residing in the spiritual world. Our spirits have form - human form and we look very similar to what we look like now - only without physical or mental defect. The spiritual bodies that we reside in are merely the spiritual bodies that we were born with - and have developed in - when we leave this world, we merely cast off our physical bodies (like a pair of pajamas) and are then in the spiritual world. We have all the faculties of sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch. Indeed Swedenborg wrote that the spiritual universe looks very similar to our material universe.
Swedenborg wrote that there is a correspondence of all things in nature and spirit.
who doesn't, in their heart of hearts, long to be reunited with loved ones in an eternal Afterlife - never to be parted again? The idea of one individual/one life gives worth and dignity to each person.
"People who have had near-death experiences peek through the door of the afterlife, but Swedenborg explored the whole house." Kenneth Ring
And on January 2, 1929:
With regard to the doctrine of reincarnation and transmigration also, I have conversed with Swedenborg and some other Hindu souls. They all say that reincarnation is impossible . . .37 It is incidentally in this letter that Sundar Singh makes what is perhaps the only direct reference anywhere in the correspondence, to the writings of Swedenborg. And in a still later letter, dated March 11, 1929, he confirmed that he had found in the spiritual world "... scenes and things almost the same as Swedenborg has described.
NO REINCARNATION:
Swedenborg said that a person’s spirit does not come back to earth in a different form, repeatedly, until it is perfected, however, that when a person dies, their spirit is continually growing and perfected to eternity. Eternity is not some stagnant location where one’s spiritual journey plateaus.
This quote from Emanuel Swedenborg’s work confirms this point: "An enlightened reason can also grasp something of the infinity of God from the absence of limits to the growth of any science, and so to the growth of an individual’s intelligence and wisdom, each of which is capable of growth as a tree grows from seed, and woods and gardens from trees, for here there is no limit. The human memory is the soil in which they are planted, the understanding the medium in which they shoot, the will that in which they bear fruit. These two faculties, the understanding and the will, are such that they are capable of being cultivated and perfected throughout life in this world and afterwards to eternity."
He writes, “[most people] cannot conceive of entering the next life immediately after death and appearing there as people complete with face, body, arms, feet, and all the senses outward and inward. Still less can they conceive of wearing clothes and having homes and places to live in. The sole reason [for this] is that the thought of the majority is confined to the level of the physical senses, and therefore they think that things which they cannot see and touch have no existence; and also that few of them can be drawn away from things perceived by the outward senses to those more internal levels and thereby be raised to the light of heaven.” (Arcana Caelestia, paragraph 10758) He continues, “I have also talked at times to spirits whom I had known when they were living as people in the world. I have asked them whether they wished to be reclothed with their earthly body, as they had previously thought they were going to be. On hearing this the very idea of being joined to that body made them flee far away, struck with amazement that in the world blind belief devoid of all understanding had led them to think that way.” (Arcana Caelestia, paragraph 10758, subsection 4) The use of such beliefs remaining, and the reason Swedenborg says they are permitted to remain, is that they allow people to preserve an idea of life after death. I would add that they also maintain an idea of continued spiritual growth and development, rather than the traditional, static Christian concept of heaven.