Have we lived before?

[equusv]

I just stumbled upon this thread today! I really need to plumb the depths of this forum sometime!

I'm sure many of the millions of believers in reincarnation; most of the Indian continent, the Buddhist countries, most Native Americans including the Inuit (Eskimo), the Druse Christians of Lebanon and others, consider the minority of Europeans and others who reject the idea of reincarnation, deluded and ignorant people. The open minded ones on either side of the debate will concede that one can only go by one's own experiences and beliefs.

I have believed in reincarnation based on my own experiences since I was a child but it's not for me to tell anyone that this is the way it is. For myself, I believe that I've been around repeatedly and many times as a soldier. I've seen and experienced too many specific and related things over 50 years to consider them coincidences.

Bonfire

[peterhogg]

If I was a soldier of the Great War I think I was one of those guys that got hit right after I kicked a rugby ball

[Bingo794]

Fascinating thread!

Earlier tonight I was discussing a friend who I had not seen for some time.

A bit of an eccentric, nice bloke, a little insular, but a genuine decent fellow with a pretty crazy pythonesque sense of humour. When he said something people listened, not that he said much. His humour was hidden, though when he did add a comment it was invariably hilarious. A top wit.

We had alot in common with our various interests, but he had never heard me mention my interest in all things connected to the Great War.

His enthusiasm for the subject was unbelievable, though his knowledge was patchy.

At the end of one of the long evenings at Christmas, he invited one or two of the chaps back to his home for a drink and a late night chat.

As the lads drifted off one by one, the worse for wear, he told me of his love of Wilfred Owen poetry.

It turned out that when he was a child in the 50's, his father took him to the battlefields of France and proceeded to reel off geographical information, positions of units, names of places, and other unknown data. This was all recorded by the local newspapers when a tour guide spoke to a reporter. Consequently, the paper had a write up and pictures included in the next issue.

Now, the poor chap feels he is the reincarnation of Wilfred Owen. He even had a type of 'stigmata' in the form of a hole in his neck where he could push beer through.

Was Owen Killed by a bullet through the neck?

He showed me copies of the French newspaper and it all seemed quite true.

I know it sounds crankish and odd, though he was a great bloke, intelligent, a self made millionaire, a man who took no prisoners with his wit, and 'did not suffer fools gladly.'

This thread just brought back the memory of the night when he told us.

As for my thoughts on the matter, I believe we are all as disposable as a brussel sprout on a stalk, when we pop off, that is the end of it all.

Though, it would be nice to think we could all be coming back for a repeat appearance.

Dick

[Jesse]

Anyone that sees my signature knows that I was a doctor in my past life.

I apologise if this has been raised before and I'm just playing the devils advocate but..

Why? do we hold such a close bond to so many men who went through so many ordeals and displayed so much endurance that is only scratched in this forum?

I remember telling my mother I'd lived before and had been a sportsman and she replied "Maybe you have lived before! but if you have you were in the military" referring to my obsession with military affairs by absorbing books on the subject (I was around 14 and wanted to play for a certain football club, I was gutted!!)

Does any other pal feel a bond to the past that is more than interest? and if so why? Do you ever feel something you're too embarassed to share? or is it just our absorption and knowledge of the period? I was a boy at the time of my innocent question but it got me thinking.

Hope I'm not considered ghoulish.

Atholl

[peterhogg]

I remain a skeptic as I believe on the preponderance of the evidence there is no proof of reincarnation nor rebirth. I am not discounting the experiences of others, but I would add there is so much about the brain that we do not understand and it is just as likely there is a scientific or physiological reason for the sensations or feelings some posters have had in relation to the sites of the Great War.

I would add this. Though I had read many accounts of the Great War, just as the Then and Now series, and other somewhat sanitized accounts, The War never seemed "real" to me in the sense that I could identify or recognize the human experience. The soldiers were two-dimensional. They were the dead and had died gloriously and we should remember them and that was it. It was no more accessible to me than Waterloo or the Crusades. That all changed when I read Middlebrook's First Day on the Somme as a boy in 1977. The greatness of his achievement was that he made the conflict "real". You realize that men said f--k in those days, that they died in horrible ways, that they bled; in short, he captured the tragedy and the pathos of that first day in ways I had never read before. It was the difference between black and white photos and a live action coloured film.

And he reminded the reader that those places (battlefields, monuments, trenches, shells and shrapnel) were still there, whereas before they felt to me as if they were on the moon.

So when I first visited Ancre Valley Cemetery and Thiepval in 1982 I was overwhelmed. It was hard for me to believe these places were there. The look and smell of the place overloaded my senses. It is like saying, "it's all here, just like Middlebrook wrote!"

What is my point? As another poster expressed it so eloquently in the "strange occurences" thread, our previous knowledge does inform our experience.

But I am willing to admit I am drawn to Beaumont Hamel and Thiepval in the same way I would be drawn to an old familiar place.

I will add this. I remember the first time I visited London in '77 and was at Victoria Station. The smell of that place made me immediately think of Great War soldiers arriving and departing. It was the first thought that sprang into my mind. Now I had seen Upstairs Downstairs and remember the scenes taken at one of London's train stations of wounded arriving. So this experience could very well be my knowledge informing it, plus a somewhat morbid fascination. Then again, it was strong sensation.

It is unlikely I was "there" before. There's just no substantial proof for the proposition. But a lingering doubt is always there. If I was there though, God help me. I hope I survived with my mind and body intact and if I didn't I hope it was quick.

sorry for the long post,

peter

and it never