Have you ever felt an instant connection to someone you’ve met for the first time? Have you ever been homesick for a place you’ve never been, or known more than you should have about a place you have visited for the first time? You may be experiencing memories from a past life.

Reincarnation, or being born again into a new body after one has died, is a notion that has been around for thousands of years. Most Eastern Religions, including Hinduism and Buddhism, believe in reincarnation, and always have.

In Buddhist mythology, each Dalai Lama is the reincarnation of the bodhisattva, Avalokiteshvara. When a Dalai Lama dies, his priests go out into the world to find him reincarnated as a young child. The child is put through a series of tests, including picking out the favorite toys of the previous Dalai Lamas. Once the Dalai Lama is found, the child is brought to the temple to prepare for his new duties as the Dalia Lama.

In the New Testament Jesus is said to have recognized the reincarnation of Elijah in John the Baptist, even when John, himself, was unaware of this.

“But I say to you that Elijah has already come, and they did not know him, and they did to him whatever they pleased. Thus also the Son of Man is bound to suffer from them. Then the disciples understood that what he had told them was about John the Baptist.” Matthew 17:12-13

In fact, though reincarnation does not really come up in the bible as a teaching, it appears that the disciples had taken it for granted.

“And his disciples asked him, saying, ‘Teacher, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Neither did he sin nor his parents. But that the works of God might be seen in him.’” John 9:2-3

If the man was born blind, he could not have done something in his current life to have caused the blindness. So this presents not only the idea of reincarnation, but also Karma.

Many famous people have held strong beliefs in reincarnation.

Henry Ford, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, believed he fought and died in the Battle of Gettysburg. In 1928, the San Francisco Examiner quoted Ford as saying “the discovery of reincarnation put my mind at ease. I would like to communicate to others the calmness that the long view of life gives to us.”

General George S. Patton, who believed he was General Hannibal in a previous life, wrote the poem ‘Through a Glass, Darkly,” about his beliefs in reincarnation.

Many children have had past life memories, and the University of Virginia, School of Medicine studies these cases on a regular basis.

Sometimes the trauma of a past life may follow someone into this life, causing undue pain and suffering that cannot be explained. Past Life Therapy is a type of hypnotherapy in which a person is hypnotized and regressed into a past life when hypnotic regression of this life proves to be ineffective.

Dr. Brian Weiss, a psychiatrist, medical doctor, and a pioneer in the field of past life therapy, says after having helped over 4,000 patients discover, through hypnosis, their own past lives, “my sense of shock at the fact of reincarnation, if not the fascination of discovery, has worn off.”

Whether you wholeheartedly believe in reincarnation, or simply like to entertain the idea, discovering who you may have been in a past life offers the opportunity to grow and heal in this one.

The Fox Channel covers a story on reincarnation: