Belief in reincarnation is common to most of the world’s spiritual traditions. It was shared by some of the early Church Fathers — especially in Alexandria, where the influence of Basilides and his fellow gnostics ran strong — though it was later condemned by the bishops. I have been interested in the theme since my early childhood because of recurring dreams of a Royal Air Force pilot who was shot down during World War II, and because of my frequent contacts, in dreamlike states, with personalities whose earthly homes seem to be in other times and places.

I have no doubt that our present life issues are related to personalities and dramas in other times, and that healing can come from recognizing some of these connections.. But we need to use discernment in evaluating what exactly is going on. When the law of karma (the belief that we must reap the consequences of our actions in previous lifetimes) is used to explain birth defects, poverty, and life handicaps, it can breed callous indifference to the plight of the less fortunate. There are other issues that I notice quite frequently in my practice:

1. “Past-life memories” can be memories of dead people who remain attached to the living.  I observe such confusion quite frequently in my workshops. For example, a troubled young man announced that he “knew” that many of his problems stemmed from the fact that he had been a Ku Klux Klan member involved in burnings and lynchings in the nineteenth century. When we looked into his case, we found that he had picked up a hitchhiker: a dead person whose memories the young man had confused with those of a previous life. Before this discovery, the young man had made little progress — by his own admission — in working off his “negative karma.” On the contrary, he had been inclined to act out some of the personality traits of the other character, adopting an excessively controlling and aggressive style toward others, this time in the name of spirituality, rather than white supremacy.
2. “Past-life memories” are often teaching stories. They may spring from many sources, including the lives of people to whom we are closely related within a biologically or spiritual family. Scenes from other lives, glimpsed in dreams or dreamlike states, can provide valuable insights. Sometimes they help us to image our relationships with other people in a revealing way, or to define key challenges we are facing in life. However, their teaching value may be reduced if you jump to the conclusion that you lives all these episodes in chronological sequence and are bound to the iron wheel of karma as a result.
3. What part of us is reborn? We are body, soul, and spirit. In our genes, we carry the memory of the entire history of our species since we crawled out of the primeval swamp. In our enduring spirit, we carry the spark of the divine. Though the soul that makes the bridge and enters into incarnation may retain — or recover — the memory of other life experiences, it may not be identical to the entity that animated those other bodies.
4. What if it is all happening now? In the world of spirit, as in dreams, there is only now. From this perspective, if I “was” the druid who refused to become the willing sacrifice in Scotland more than a thousand years ago, then what I do or fail to do in my present life will affect him as much as his actions will affect me. If there is causality at work, it will flow both ways. And glimpses of another life experience you may have had — or be having, in a parallel reality — may come just as easily from the future as the past.

We must live into our own times. It is important not to saddle ourselves (or others) with responsibility for what may have happened during another life experience. A woman in one of my workshops glimpsed a “past-life” experience in which she saw herself burned at a stake by a circle of cloaked inquisitors that included her husband. This neatly dramatized the way she now felt about her partner, and his defensiveness in the face of her spiritual quest. But to jump from that insight to the accusation that “the SOB is trying to do me in like he did before” would be of doubtful value to either party in the relationship!

Suppose you have already lived through many lifetimes, as ancient Celts, like modern Hindus (and many other peoples) believe. Too much knowledge of how you used or abused the opportunities of those life experiences could inflict crippling pain or guilt or feed feelings of hatred and revenge, if it returned to you before you were truly ready for it. If reincarnation is a fact, then we need to develop the grounding and humor required to integrate the memories we may be able to draw from past (or future) lives. Above all, we need to remember that the point of power is always now.

Adapted from Dreamgates: Exploring the Worlds of Soul, Imagination and Life Beyond Death by Robert Moss. Published by New World Library.