May 19, 2011 -- 1:27PM, Craig_w_dressler wrote:

The book you refer to is certainly not Christian because it totally ignores Jesus' own words when he says: "It is appointed once for person to die and after that the judgment."  We only live once and then die.  Afterwards, our spirit will either be in heaven or hell.  The choice is ours to make.

Here's a excerpt from the book relating to that verse: " Since men only die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, too, offers himself only once to take the faults of many on himself, and when he appears a second time, it will not be to deal with sin but to reward with salvation those who are waiting for him" ( Jerusalem Bible ).   

The Catholic catechism cites this verse in it's refutation of reincarnation. "When 'the single course of our earthly life' is complete, we shall not return to other earthly lives: ' It is appointed for men to die once.' There is no 'reincarnation' after death." - The first thing to note in considering the "once to die" passage is it's context. The Author of Hebrews is not trying to deny reincarnation. Rather, he is explaining that repetitive blood sacrifices of animals were a part of the old covenant established by Moses but are not needed in the new covenant established by Jesus. Under the old covenant the priest of Isreal were required to make many sacrifices, using the blood of animals. But under the new covenant, Jesus shed his own blood, a sacrifice that was needed only once.  What does the author mean by saying " since men only die once"? The easiest explanation is that he is referring to the fact that our mortal bodies die only once. No one has tried to argue otherwise except Christians who believe in a bodily resurrection. And "after that comes the judgment" can refer to life reviews such as those reported in near-death experiences. But a post-life judgment does not preclude the possibility of the soul's returnng to earth in another mortal body. For the passage does not say, "It is appointed unto man once to live."

May 20, 2011 -- 6:45PM, Paravani wrote:

Hello, All!

I remember past lives.

In order of most, clearest memories to vaguest --

I remember one past life as an illiterate shepherd girl who was abducted and sold into slavery in Italy during the sixth century.

I remember one past life as a man, a law student in America during the first decades after the Revolution.

I remember being at Versailles during the eighteenth century.  (I believe that I was one of Louis XIV's many daughters.)

I believe I also spent a lifetime as a disciple of a Hindu guru.  I believe this based on the spontaneous memory of many Sanskrit words that have to do with the search for enlightment.

I believe that more recently, I spent a brief lifetime in Mao's Communist China.  I suspect that I died in the mines where I had been sent to work as "punishment", possibly while participating in an escape attempt.

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My first memories of past lives came to me in two extremely detailed and vivid dreams which were like no others.  They were first, coherent; second, in full color, complete with smells (the smell of sewage and woodsmoke predominated in the streets of post-Revolutionary Philadelphia); and third, they were historically very detailed and surprisingly accurate.  Waking from them was like being sucked back into the present time -- I could feel myself slipping forward through the ages before I awoke.

I had never studied the period in time of the dreams; and in the case of my lifetime as a shepherd girl, there is little historical material to study.  However, I remembered archaic vocabulary from my time in Philadelphia ("gaiters", the ribbons that hold up men's stockings), and I was able to approximately place the time of my life as a shepherd girl by the word "Visigoth", which came to me as a description of the raiders who stole me (and all the other women and children) from my village.

Besides those two dreams, my memories of Versailles were the most striking to me personally because I was wide awake at the time and in the company of my skeptical ex-husband. 

We were visiting Versailles for the first time, walking through the gardens, where my first impression was, "Oh, they've let the gardens go so badly!"   Even though the French government does keep the grounds somewhat trimmed and nicely planted, I felt as if they had been so much prettier "before".

I had barely started to ask myself what I meant by "before" when I began to see visions of huge white wings flying up in front of my face.  The wings were bigger than ducks', bigger than geese's...  very persistent and very distracting, because I couldn't imagine what kind of bird had wings that large.  Was I seeing angels???

No...  Swans!  The park used to be home to flocks of swans!

I told my ex-husband what I was seeing, and narrated what I remembered as I remembered it.  I told him that up ahead on the pathway we would come to the pond where the swans had nested...  and...

...  I had a memory, a funny memory, of a young man dressed in beautiful white brocade embroidered with gold thread, sitting on the edge of a fountain and leaning over.  He had a glass in his hand, and he was dipping it into the fountain to refill it with wine, red wine...  but he'd already drunk too much, so he fell in!  The fountain was shallow, so he stood up laughing...  and his beautiful suit was all red.

"There's a fountain up ahead that the King used to fill with wine for his grand garden parties," I told my ex-husband.  

When we turned the corner in the path, we saw a fountain in the distance...  and as we neared it, we could see the statue in the middle, with a couple of cherubs gamboling around him.  It was Bacchus, the God of Wine, and he was pouring water out of an ewer...

There is absolutely NO WAY I could have known that in advance.  We hadn't stopped off at the gift shop first, we had no maps, and I had never paid any attention to Versailles before that day.

When we did stop at the gift shop later, I bought a pack of postcards because there was a portrait of a young princess among them who seemed so familiar, so dear to me at first sight, I had to have her picture.

Love,

-- Claudia

Hi Claudia, Stories like this have always fascinated me. The deja vu stories of people who remember places that they have never been too and who remember something about things or subjects ( such as knowing foreign languages ) that they have no prior education of have always piqued my interest in reincarnation.