Do We Reincarnate From Past Lives?
By James Donahue
Over the years I have entertained strange
dreams that were so vivid that I had the distinct impression that I was living in two different planes of existence. I don’t
smoke, but I had a series of dreams in which I was trying to break a smoking habit, but secretly carrying a pack of cigarettes
in my pocket.
In yet another vivid dream I boarded a vintage single-engine bi-plane. Once someone turned the
propeller to get the motor running, I flew the plane, surprised that I knew what I was doing. I have never flown an aircraft
and never had a flying lesson.
Where did these memories come from?
I have always loved the water and in my
youth gave careful consideration to spending a life as a ship’s master. I even went so far as to join the Merchant Marine
and try to get a job on a Great Lakes freighter. There was a recession that year and after spending a few weeks sitting among
veteran sailors in a Detroit union hall, I gave up, took a land job and went back to college in the fall. I never lost my
interest in ships, I have written extensively about them, and was always the reporter that was an invited guest aboard the
Coast Guard vessels operating on the Great Lakes. It
struck me that I might have been a sailor in a past life.
A nephew on my wife’s side sat down at a piano as a young lad and began
playing as if he were an accomplished musician. Yet he never had a music lesson. Where did he acquire this skill. He has been
playing music by ear in his home ever since.
There is a well-documented story about a Louisiana boy, James Leininger, who
has had dreams and vivid memories of dying in a burning Corsair fighter after being shot down by a Japanese zero during World
War II. He even remembered his name, James Houston and the name of his carrier, the Natoma. A pilot by that name was killed
when his Corsair was shot down in 1945. He flew from a carrier named the Natoma Bay.
These are but a few of
the things we have noticed over the years that seem to support the belief by some in the reincarnation of souls from lifetime
to lifetime. There appears to be some fragment of memory of former lives that attaches itself to newborn babies, giving them
memory of lives lived in the past.
Now new research with mice at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta
has shown that information appears to be inherited biologically in the DNA passed from the mother to the newborn. For instance,
the mice pass on learned information about fearful and stressful situations that were endured by the parent.
If
the same memories are linked to human DNA, it might explain why some children grow up with a fear of heights, of flying, water
or being in confined rooms. In most cases this is not behavior learned by personal experiences confronting the child.
Researchers
have recently been studying a strange memory-type of phenomenon that occurs among people who have received heart, liver, kidney
or other type of organ transplant. Recipients of transplanted organs sometimes report personality changes, changes in musical
preference, and even changes in the foods they like. The DNA of the new body part appears to sometimes introduce these changes.
In my
own case, the vivid dreams of flying and failing to to give up a smoking habit came upon me shortly after I received several
pints of blood after suffering a bleeding ulcer.
The question then: are these strange memories being brought to us from someone
else’s DNA after it joins with our own, or is It proof of reincarnation from a previous life?
