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?
