Past lives, do you believe?

[Stearmen]

The woods are full of people who used to be Cleopatra, but rarely do you find someone who used to be the guy who cleaned Cleopatra's stable.

Patton, always said he was just a foot soldier in his former lives. Then again, he was Patton!

 

[Stearmen]

If you were raised in the 50s as I was (born '47), you lived in the early days of television. Throughout that time, the Hollywood studios refused to release movies made post '49 to television. So the tv stations ran films from the '30s-40s and they ran them endlessly. So my generation saw all the movies our parents grew up with, but we saw them out of chronological order and we saw them over and over again. Thus we were imprinted with the Hollywood version of those two decades. The spread of color television in the late 50s created an irresistible demand for post-40s movies, which NBC met in 1961 with "NBC Saturday Night at the Movïes.

That is a lot of it for me! You remember Dialing For Dollars, all they plaid were films from the 30s through 50s! Also, do you remember on Saturday mornings, they played The Keystone Cop shorts, dubbed with wacky music? I had no idea I was watching silent films until I was a teenager.

 

[Redshoes51]

...I saw the movie, "Kelly's Heroes," and the village matched my memories exactly. I later found that I'd seen the movie in a theater as a very small kid (not in the first run) and for some reason, I remembered the visuals very clearly. Just saying, with movies it's so very easy to recall visuals from a place you're never been to...

Hi there, p51....

On the occurrence of the Mount Rushmore memory... I was a small boy... and I remember standing and looking up at the faces on the face of the mountain... the sky was that deep blue and there was a chill in the air... and a vivid blue sky... maybe like a crisp October morning... early fall... or maybe an early March day... and at the observation deck... I can recall standing atop a brick wall that had a metal bannister on it... I can still feel the cold metal...

But I certainly understand what you stated... I appreciated your feedback and comment...

~shoes~

 

[Redshoes51]

If reincarnation exists, my daughter is an old soul, wise beyond her years. She's been here many times before.

I've had several friends to say this of me... and I do believe that there is something to that statement about "old souls"... I'm not sure what it is... There are some people who have a great wisdom which is far beyond their years... as you stated...

~shoes~

 

[Zombie_61]

...Interestingly, I do believe in intuition and other things that fall under the "wacko" cloud for many people. I've seen things happen that simply I could not explain otherwise. Connections between mothers and children where something happened and they knew it without any formal communication.

That "wacko cloud" is one of the reasons I often hesitate to participate in conversations on this subject, and subjects peripheral to it for that matter. There are already enough people who believe I'm a bit of a lunatic, and there's no reason for me to provide fuel for their fires. I believe what I believe, and if someone asks me I'll share my thoughts with them, but I am in no way attempting to convince anyone to believe what I believe.

...I'm reminded of a movie (I think Kevin Costner said this?) where someone asks why when people think they lived past lives, it's always someone famous (or at least, very interesting)?

That was from Bull Durham. And you're right, it was Kevin Costner's character Crash Davis who asked it: "How come in former lifetimes, everybody is someone famous? I mean, how come nobody ever says they were Joe Schmoe?" I'm pretty sure I've been Joe Schmoe in all of my past lives, and I'm definitely Joe Schmoe in this one; I have no delusions of grandeur.

My brother, who used to be a big hunter, always said he wanted to be tied to a tree when he croaked so the animals could have dinner. Sure beats the expense of a funeral.

I've told everyone who might be responsible for the disposal of my dead carcass to do so in the least expensive and least problematic method possible. Regardless of whether or not there is an afterlife, once this body stops functioning I won't care what happens to it.

 

[Edward]

My brother, who used to be a big hunter, always said he wanted to be tied to a tree when he croaked so the animals could have dinner.
Sure beats the expense of a funeral.

I remember reading an article about indigenous people in a mountain region who, when they die, are left out on an open platform for the vultures. Their tribe will keep an eye on progress, and gradually chop down what's left until everything is pretty much consumed. In their belief-system as I recall, it was viewed as a path returning them to nature, so they could become one with the life force again. That's all I remember about it.

Someone alluded to it earlier in one of their posts... the possibility of DNA Memory... I remember a great memory of having been at Mount Rushmore... a great, vivid memory... I asked my Mom one day when it was that we went there... and she told me, 'we've never been there...'

but my memories are strong... so strong... I do believe I was there...

Death... much like Space Travel... is the next great Frontier...

~shoes~

Yes, that was me. It's no more than a theory, but it has always seemed plausible to me that our DNA contains memories of past relatives, handed down in our genetics. A form of reincarnation, I suppose. I have sensations myself. There's something in me is very stirred by doomed men fighting for their own survival, or because they're forced to, or because they're caught up in some sort of 'freedom fight' - French Revolution, Culloden, whatever. It's a very viscereal, emotional reaction out of all context of my own attitudes to conflict typically. I've often wondered what family history, pre-records, I'm tapping into there!

I had memories of Europe in WW2, very clear, I could even draw you a map of a village I could see in my mind as a small child.
I wondered why this was as I never crossed the pond until I was 18.
Then, in my teens, I saw the movie, "Kelly's Heroes," and the village matched my memories exactly. I later found that I'd seen the movie in a theater as a very small kid (not in the first run) and for some reason, I remembered the visuals very clearly.
Just saying, with movies it's so very easy to recall visuals from a place you're never been to...

It's certainly interesting how memory retains films. Films I thought I first saw in adulthood, there are some scenes so familiar that I realied I must have seen them as a child, on television. Long had a flash of memory of having seen a specific scene in a film, but didn't know what it was. Often not the most obvious scenes, either - George stopping the run on the bank in It's a Wonderful Life was one. Another was the expressions of the 'bad guy' leader and his girlfriend after the drag race scene in Grease - and the 'find a penny, pick it up'.

 

[Blackjack]

I think this is about the best argument FOR that I've read-
http://reluctant-messenger.com/reincarnation-proof.htm#interview

 

[Fading Fast]

If you were raised in the 50s as I was (born '47), you lived in the early days of television. Throughout that time, the Hollywood studios refused to release movies made post '49 to television. So the tv stations ran films from the '30s-40s and they ran them endlessly. So my generation saw all the movies our parents grew up with, but we saw them out of chronological order and we saw them over and over again. Thus we were imprinted with the Hollywood version of those two decades. The spread of color television in the late 50s created an irresistible demand for post-40s movies, which NBC met in 1961 with "NBC Saturday Night at the Movïes.

Growing up in the late '60s and '70s and watching / consuming all the old movies on TV, I saw the same ones my parents knew, but as you said, I came at them - especially as a kid - with no real context. Even before I had any meaningful understanding of WWI or WWII history, I'd been in the Air Force in WWI with Errol Flynn in "Dawn Patrol," Spencer Tracey took me on Doolittle's raid over Tokyo in WWII, I watched Hepburn and Grant flirt in "Bringing up Baby," and on and on. It's kind of a crazy way to learn about past times, but for me it sparked an interest that has never left. There might be a separate thread in here along the lines of "Adult Golden Era movies you saw as a kid before you understood the period." There's a better title (and even some just less-bad ones), but it might fly.

 

[Fading Fast]

... I also like to imagine that people like Hitler, Stalin and some of my old bosses have got a lot of work to do.

Wow, I've had some bad bosses (and, to be fair, some pretty good ones, too), but not sure I would group any of them in with Hitler or Stalin.

 

[LizzieMaine]

To say nothing of Walter O'Malley.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

Re- kids remembering supposed 'past lives'. I think only if the children have been raised in isolation,( untouched by media, TV, books, photo's, stories etc.) can we start to take the phenomena seriously. Children do have very active imaginations & it only takes a few bits of info gleemed here & there, even subliminally, for them to create a believable scenario.
Give me a documented account of an inuit child living on the North coast of Greenland, who had no contact with the outside world or it's technology , recalling a time when they were scything wheat on a Tuscan hillside, then maybe there might be something in it.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

Prehaps we aren't so much discussing past or future lives here but the human brain & how it plays tricks on us. When we consciously try to interprete the subconscious, things can get a little confusing. Our brains are constantly analizing & storing info & somethings which should have been put in the recycling bin or stocked elsewhere, end up being filed as a memory & so we believe them to be.
Take the sensation of 'deja vu'.... we now know it is merely one area of the brain working faster than another part but for a long time it was considered by many to be the result of experiencing the same situation in a previous (or another) life.

 

[p51]

Re- kids remembering supposed 'past lives'. I think only if the children have been raised in isolation,( untouched by media, TV, books, photo's, stories etc.) can we start to take the phenomena seriously. Children do have very active imaginations & it only takes a few bits of info gleemed here & there, even subliminally, for them to create a believable scenario.
Give me a documented account of an inuit child living on the North coast of Greenland, who had no contact with the outside world or it's technology , recalling a time when they were scything wheat on a Tuscan hillside, then maybe there might be something in it.

Fair enough reasoning there. I agree fully.
All the cases I've read for reincarnation have centered around a context the person already understood.
Show me someone who explains sights and actions they don't get at all and maybe there could be support for it.

 

[ChiTownScion]

In a somewhat similar vein: I happen to love walking battlefields, particularly those of the Civil War. I'm not inclined to embrace supernaturalism- ghosts, auras, etc., and I know that there's a whole tourist industry built around that sort of thing. I definitely draw inspiration in, say, sitting atop Little Round Top and casting my eye on Seminary Ridge as the last golden rays of daylight cast their beams. I "feel" something, a sense of peace that I experience nowhere else. Considering the carnage that took place there over 150 years ago on those 3 days in July, I find that ironic. I feel the presence of the fallen not in any metaphysical sense, but definitely in a literary and historical sense. Mr. Lincoln made reference to the consecration of that ground, and I definitely experience that.

I get a very different sense walking the location of the Battle of the Little Big Horn in Montana. Perhaps it's the sense of isolation, the lack of battlefield monuments, and the fact that over a few hills from the interstate highway, you see very little of the 21st Century. It's very eerie, almost sinister. A fraction of the number of men fell there as fell at Gettysburg, and yet it seems a far more ominous locale.

 

[ButteMT61]

^^^ As in the Twilight Zone...

 

[2jakes]

^^^
Being “in the zone”.

If you’ve played tennis matches, you would know
what I mean & how it feels.

But tennis doesn’t own it.
There are other means.

 

[Smithy]

Wow, I've had some bad bosses (and, to be fair, some pretty good ones, too), but not sure I would group any of them in with Hitler or Stalin.

I've had a couple that would make even Stalin and Hitler think were morally bankrupt and ethicless!

 

[LizzieMaine]

That is a lot of it for me! You remember Dialing For Dollars, all they plaid were films from the 30s through 50s! Also, do you remember on Saturday mornings, they played The Keystone Cop shorts, dubbed with wacky music? I had no idea I was watching silent films until I was a teenager.

This type of thing went on all the way thru the 70s here -- we had three local stations, all of which had a cheap movie package they ran over and over again. The station with the pre-1948 Warner Bros. package ran everything in it, including the creakiest early talkies you can imagine -- George Arliss pictures, Betty Compson, Joe E. Brown, Louise Fazenda, all those people like that. I remember hurrying home from school one particular day to catch a 1930 Al Jolson picture I'd never seen before, and was always excited when the 1933-34 cycle of Warner musicals came around.

 

[2jakes]

Wow, I've had some bad bosses (and, to be fair, some pretty good ones, too), but not sure I would group any of them in with Hitler or Stalin.

I had one news director that came close to being a dictator.

The thing is, I also would get treated to a great lunch & given a day off
when I was not scheduled for one.Probably to ease the guilt .

The bad part was, I usually gave in .
And she knew it.

 

[Hurricane Jack]

In a somewhat similar vein: I happen to love walking battlefields, particularly those of the Civil War. I'm not inclined to embrace supernaturalism- ghosts, auras, etc., and I know that there's a whole tourist industry built around that sort of thing. I definitely draw inspiration in, say, sitting atop Little Round Top and casting my eye on Seminary Ridge as the last golden rays of daylight cast their beams. I "feel" something, a sense of peace that I experience nowhere else. Considering the carnage that took place there over 150 years ago on those 3 days in July, I find that ironic. I feel the presence of the fallen not in any metaphysical sense, but definitely in a literary and historical sense. Mr. Lincoln made reference to the consecration of that ground, and I definitely experience that.

I get a very different sense walking the location of the Battle of the Little Big Horn in Montana. Perhaps it's the sense of isolation, the lack of battlefield monuments, and the fact that over a few hills from the interstate highway, you see very little of the 21st Century. It's very eerie, almost sinister. A fraction of the number of men fell there as fell at Gettysburg, and yet it seems a far more ominous locale.

More than anywhere I have been I feel it at Shiloh Hill.

I felt it also about daylight before a morning service to honor the Native American Indians who lost their lives at Little Big Horn, just as the thunder of hooves could be heard as riders approached. I plan to go back next June for the 140th anniversary.

Great post!