Free Remembering Past Lives by Carl Llewellyn Weschcke, Ph.D.

Do you believe in Reincarnation?
    If “no”—Why Not?
    Let’s discuss this a bit so we understand what we’re “talking” about.
    Yes, “talking,” because even though we’re not actually meeting face to face— this is a book after all —we’re going to make this as much a two-sided conversation as possible by explaining what serious believers do mean about living many previous lives.
    First of all, this is not an academic book, so you are not going to see footnotes, detailed references, and a load of statistics. You can get all that you may want in other books (see the last page for some suggestions) but here we only want to introduce you to the subject, what it really involves, answer a few fundamental questions, and then give you the basic means to remember your own previous lives.
    Just to put a few things in context: a substantial percentage of the world’s population does believe in reincarnation, while a December 9, 2009 study by the Pew Forum reports that 24 percent of Americans overall and 22 percent of Christians and 28 percent of Catholics say they believe in reincarnation. And, generally, the higher the educational level, the greater the percentage. (Note: the Catholic Church forbids belief in reincarnation, just as do many of the more fundamentalist Christian, Jewish, and Islamic religions.)
    Yes, it is generally accepted in major world religions including Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Taoism, and most modern Neo-Pagan and African Traditionalist religions, as well as earlier shamanic and mystical traditions, the ancient religious and philosophical systems of Tibet, Egypt, Greece, the Mayans, Aztecs and Incas, and most indigenous religions we know of.
    Taking a slightly different approach, AllAboutSpirituality.org (May 24, 2011) posts that nearly 60 percent of Americans believe reincarnation is possible.
    Reincarnation is not, per se, a religious belief
    For a growing number of people it is a logically sensible philosophical understanding echoed in many metaphysical, spiritual, and psychological practices, and experienced in actual personal past-life memories (with some undertaken as part of paranormal research programs). Even many humanist and non-deist spiritually inclined people find reincarnation a belief that not only does not contradict their nonreligious perspective but makes sense of the beauty, wonder, complexity, and obvious evolutionary origins of human life as we know it.
    Some of the more famous people of recent history who publically acknowledged belief in reincarnation include Henry Ford (“I adopted the theory of Reincarnation when I was twenty six … Work is futile if the experience we collect in one life cannot be utilized in the next … Genius is experience. Some seem to think that it is a gift or talent, but it is the fruit of long experience in many lives.”); Benjamin Franklin (“Finding myself to exist in the world, I believe I shall, in some shape or other, always exist.”); Jack London (“I did not begin when I was born … I have been growing, developing, through incalculable myriads of millenniums … Oh, incalculable times again shall I be born.”); Mark Twain (“I have been more times than anybody except Krishna.”); Ralph Waldo Emerson (“The soul comes from without into the human body, as a temporary abode, and it goes out of it anew … it passes into other habitations, for the soul is immortal.”); Walt Whitman (“I Know I am deathless. No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.”); George Harrison (“Friends are all souls that we’ve known in other lives.”); actress Shirley MacLaine revealed that famous scientist Stephen Hawking confided in her that he believes he is the reincarnation of Isaac Newton.
    Does it really matter that we can say that some famous people have publically stated their belief in reincarnation? Not to this writer. My