The Boy Who Lived Before

[Jaggy Bunnet]

This boy claims to have a memory of his previous life, and the details he supplied have been matched with a real house and its dead occupants:

www thesun co uk /article/0,,2001290023-2006410683.html

What do you think really happened? The only things I can think of are really wild - like the parents being the ones who gave their son the story.

To be accurate SOME of the details (the totally unsurprising ones, like a white house on a Scottish island) were matched with a real house. MOST of the details (like the names he gave) did not match at all.

 

[Anders W. Bonde]

I know we've touched upon this before, but wouldn't the "ability" to tap one person's memories, store them somwhere in the universe and then magically implant them in someone else's mind later contavene both the first and second laws of thermodynamics (apart from pretty much all laws of nature)?

Believers in "afterlife" or reincarnation (heck, in incarnation even) need a tad more convincing evidence in order to even speculate about a mechanism. Parsimony says psychological and sociological phenomena can explain these experiences - no need to redo all scientific discoveries here.

Question to the believers: When are the "first" souls created, how many times are they recycled, do they eventually wear out, how does the production of souls keep up with increases in population, what happens where populations decrease?

 

[Irish Murdoch]

Question to the believers: When are the "first" souls created, how many times are they recycled, do they eventually wear out, how does the production of souls keep up with increases in population, what happens where populations decrease?

Well, as I hope is clear, I'm no believer. But I bet I can predict the sorts of answers that might result from a believer's Procrustean inventiveness here:

1. Time is cyclical, and so has no beginning. There is no time that the first souls are created.

2. Souls are recycled until they realise enlightenment, when they become eternally united with a pale mauve mist.

3. There are lots of souls in other realms/on other planets. There are enough to keep bodies in souls (or, ahem, souls in bodies) on this planet.

4. Where populations decrease, souls are reincarnated in other spiritual realms/on other planets.

Gosh! Inventing woo-woo explanations is more fun than I could have imagined possible!

 

[exarch]

3. There are lots of souls in other realms/on other planets. There are enough to keep bodies in souls (or, ahem, souls in bodies) on this planet.

4. Where populations decrease, souls are reincarnated in other spiritual realms/on other planets.

How many people have ever come forward claiming to be the reincarnation of some alien race? At the rate earth's population is increasing, there must be thousands upon thousands of souls migrating from one part of the galaxy to this planet. I suppose aliens are visiting our planet then. But they're not probing our rectums, they're probing our heads ...

Unless of course animals of lesser intelligence than humans also have souls, in which case the souls are just moving from an ever decreasing population of wildlife to an ever increasing human population.

 

[Brainache]

My daughter didn't talk much until she was about 2. The first words I her her say were "Ooh La La".(she would say it when she heard a loud noise or was startled in some way).
She also would sometimes say "oui" instead of "yes". There were no French speakers in the house or anywhere nearby that I could tell. Then one day when I was sitting on the back steps watching the sun set she came and stood beside me. She couldn't have been more than three years old. We could hear a train going past in the distance.
She said to me "when I was a grown-up I drove a train".

Now does this mean my daughter is the reincarnation of a French train driver?
She was born ten days after the death of Princess Diana.
I personally don't believe she is the reincarnation of a French train driver, but I still don't know where she got "ooh la la" from. I don't even think French people have ever used that expression outside of crap movies.
I don't think she had even seen an episode of "Madeline" although I guess it might be possible.

 

[exarch]

She also would sometimes say "oui" instead of "yes".

Did she actually say "Oui"? Or did she say "oui" the way you think French people say "oui"

 

[Brainache]

Well ok she said wee, but in context she meant yes not yipee or urine.
I would say "do you want a chippie?" and she would say "wee"

 

[steenkh]

Well ok she said wee, but in context she meant yes not yipee or urine.
I would say "do you want a chippie?" and she would say "wee"

Most children I have known have been slow to learn a word for "yes". It is always "no" that has been more important to them.

 

[Brainache]

Well she did say non! as well.
Only kidding. I don't believe that she is a reincarnation of anyone I'm just saying that if I was the kind of person who believed in these kinds of things, I probably would think it was true.
I would probably also try to find some reason why her teacher says she is so good at music.
A musical French Train Driver!!
Mon Dieu!

 

[tkingdoll]

Well she did say non! as well.
Only kidding. I don't believe that she is a reincarnation of anyone I'm just saying that if I was the kind of person who believed in these kinds of things, I probably would think it was true.
I would probably also try to find some reason why her teacher says she is so good at music.
A musical French Train Driver!!
Mon Dieu!

Well, if you did believe she was the French train driver, just ask her something that she's unlikely to know but that any Frenchman or train driver would know.

 

[Brainache]

She is nine now and I mentioned it at her birthday last week, she doesn't remember anything about any of it.

 

[ObscureReferenceMan]

Reminds me of watching a woman being hypnotically "regressed" (on P&T's Bullsh*t?). Apparently the woman was a French countess, or something. But when she spoke with the hypnotist, she spoke English with a (bad) French accent. Can someone explain this to me? (Well, someone from the woo camp. My explanation is that she's play acting.)

 

[sophia8]

She couldn't have been more than three years old. We could hear a train going past in the distance.
She said to me "when I was a grown-up I drove a train".

When my son was around that age, he once said almost exactly the same thing: "When I was grown-up, I swim!"
Just a couple of questions established that he actually meant "When I am grown-up, I willswim."
At that age, kids are still learning the technicalities of language, and easily get their tenses mixed up. Personally, I think this is what starts off most cases of reported childhood "reincarnation memories". It would also account for the "forgetting" of such claimed memories when the child gets older - the child simply learns how to use tenses.

 

[Loss Leader]

Infinite's post was two days ago. She's not coming back.

 

[Palimpsest]

Reminds me of watching a woman being hypnotically "regressed" (on P&T's Bullsh*t?). Apparently the woman was a French countess, or something. But when she spoke with the hypnotist, she spoke English with a (bad) French accent.

Oh, wow, I remember that. It was indeed on P&T B***s***, and she "regressed" to a noblewoman in Napoleon I's court. Worst French accent since Pepe Le Pew and those French knights in "Holy Grail."

 

[sophia8]

Reminds me of watching a woman being hypnotically "regressed" (on P&T's Bullsh*t?). Apparently the woman was a French countess, or something. But when she spoke with the hypnotist, she spoke English with a (bad) French accent. Can someone explain this to me? (Well, someone from the woo camp. My explanation is that she's play acting.)

Reincarnatees have a particular problem with accents, I've notice. For instance, about twenty years ago,the BBC showed a programme about a bloke who claimed to have been a Lancashire farm labourer who had thought in the Napleonic Wars. They bought him to the HQ of his "regiment" in Preston and showed him round the museum, where he amazed everyone by accurately describing a particular battle and managing to handle a gun of the period.
I was amazed that nobody seemed to notice that his accent was totally wrong - from London IRL, he was speaking as his reincarnated self in a mild Manchester accent that had clearly been picked up from watching Coronation Street (filmed and set in Manchester). The accents may sound all the same to London ears, but Manchester is not Lancashire and they don't sound anything like that anywhere north of the M60.
Furthermore, a real 19thC farm labourer from Lancashire would have had an accent so thick, and used so many dialect words, that he would have been incomprehensible to most of the audience.
Still, the fact that he used the wrong accent and no dialect did at least show that he was genuine in his belief. If he had been deliberately lying, he would have put in much more research.

 

[Irish Murdoch]

For instance, about twenty years ago,the BBC showed a programme about a bloke who claimed to have been a Lancashire farm labourer who had thought in the Napleonic Wars.

Was that a war of minds?

I was amazed that nobody seemed to notice that his accent was totally wrong - from London IRL, he was speaking as his reincarnated self in a mild Manchester accent that had clearly been picked up from watching Coronation Street (filmed and set in Manchester).

We have to add to that the fact that many of the accents on Coronation Street aren't Manchester accents either, but generic "northern" ones (frequently, in the days when I used to watch it anyway, Yorkshire accents) that southerners won't be able to tell apart.

Furthermore, a real 19thC farm labourer from Lancashire would have had an accent so thick, and used so many dialect words, that he would have been incomprehensible to most of the audience.

A very good point. I grew up in rural Lancashire, and when I was young (the early 70s) it was quite hard even for me to understand the older people! They spoke practically a different language. Go back to the Napoleonic Wars, and I guess the people in my neck of the woods might as well have been speaking Welsh ....

 

[Tamazon]

My 2 year-old niece went up to her mother the other day and told her matter of factly that "chinchillas live in the forest and are scared of pumas."
She's obviously a reincarnation of one of the Ugga Bugga tribe from somewhere in South America.

Hmmm. Or maybe she's been watching "Go, Diego, Go."

We don't give shildren enough credit. They are smarter then we think. My 4 year-old daughter says things that blow me away sometimes. And the more attention we give them for something, the more they are going to play on that.

 

[lolurigeller]

This boy claims to have a memory of his previous life, and the details he supplied have been matched with a real house and its dead occupants:

www thesun co uk /article/0,,2001290023-2006410683.html

What do you think really happened? The only things I can think of are really wild - like the parents being the ones who gave their son the story.

could you like you know? Get a working link to the article?

 

[Ripley Twenty-Nine]

I had a boyfriend once who was a hockey player (goalie) and played with Wayne Gretzkey here in Toronto...

So you believe your son is the reincarnated version of your boyfriend? That is so Freudian I don't even know where to start!

Having lived in Toronto for years, I find the most amazing part of the story to be the fact that someone could live in Toronto for more than a day and not be exposed to hockey! That borders on the paranormal in itself!