Reincarnation or ”Tarnation” If You’re A Cowboy

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When you die and are brought back as a cowboy, call that reintarnation. That's right folks, we are gonna get pun-iful in today's episode as we dive deep into the life and times of Reincarnation. We’ve all heard about the tales, myths, pseudo-science factuals, testimonials, and first hand accounts of reincarnation. Is it real? Is this tabloid conjecture? Are we stuck in an everlasting cycle until we break free and reach enlightenment? Do we need to join the Flatliners in order to find out? Well, let's go over everything we know and maybe, some things you don't know.

For those of you who don't know what Reincarnation is, or maybe, just don't understand what it is; the Latin root of the word "reincarnation" literally translates to "entering the flesh again." Reincarnation is the idea that a part of every person—or, in certain cultures, every living thing—continues to exist after death. The transmigration belief varies by culture and is imagined to take the form of a newly born human being, animal, plant, spirit, or as a being in some other non-human realm of existence. This aspect may be the soul, mind, consciousness, or something transcendent that is reborn in an interconnected cycle of existence.

So reincarnation is the transfer of the soul, right? What is your soul? I feel that not everyone has a soul, or at the very least deserves one, but what is your soul? Where does it reside? Is it just an idea we give to help us cope with the nothingness that happens after the lights go out? Or is there more to the equation?

According to the religion of the ancient Egyptians, a person is composed of both bodily and spiritual components. Ancient Assyrian and Babylonian religion both contained concepts that are similar. The Kuttamuwa stele, a funeral stele for a royal official from Sam'al who died in the eighth century BCE, records Kuttamuwa asking his mourners to celebrate his life and his death with feasts "for my spirit that is in this stele." One of the oldest mentions of the soul existing independently of the body can be found here. The basalt stele, which weighs 800 pounds (360 kg), is 2 feet (0.61 m) wide and 3 feet (0.91 m) tall. It was found during the third season of excavations by the Oriental Institute's Neubauer Expedition in Chicago, Illinois.

The Baháʼí Faith affirms that "the soul is a sign of God, a heavenly gem whose reality the most learned of men hath failed to grasp, and whose mystery no mind, however acute, can ever hope to unravel". Bahá'u'lláh stated that the soul not only continues to live after the physical death of the human body, but is, in fact, immortal. Heaven can be seen partly as the soul's state of nearness to God; and hell as a state of remoteness from God. Each state follows as a natural consequence of individual efforts, or the lack thereof, to develop spiritually. Bahá'u'lláh taught that individuals have no existence prior to their life here on earth and the soul's evolution is always towards God and away from the material world.

Christian eschatology holds that after death, God will evaluate each person's soul and determine whether they will spend eternity in Heaven or Hell before being raised to life. This viewpoint is shared by the majority of Protestant denominations as well as the oldest branches of Christianity, including the Catholic Church and the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches. Some Protestant Christians think the soul is just "life," and they think the dead don't have conscious existence until the resurrection (Christian conditionalism). Some Protestant Christians think that rather than suffering for all eternity, the sinful' souls and bodies will be destroyed in Hell (annihilationism). Either in Heaven or in a Kingdom of God on earth, believers will receive eternal life and experience everlasting communion with God.

The present Catechism of the Catholic Church states that the term soul

“refers to the innermost aspect of [persons], that which is of greatest value in [them], that by which [they are] most especially in God's image: ‘soul’ signifies the spiritual principle in [humanity]”.

All souls living and dead will be judged by Jesus Christ when he comes back to earth. The Catholic Church teaches that the existence of each individual soul is dependent wholly upon God:

"The doctrine of the faith affirms that the spiritual and immortal soul is created immediately by God."

Protestants usually hold to the idea that the soul is real and eternal, but there are two main schools of thought regarding what this implies in terms of a hereafter. Some, following Jean Calvin, believe that the soul persists as consciousness after death. Some people, including those who follow Martin Luther, think that the soul passes away with the body and remains asleep (or "sleeps") until the time of the dead.

Various new religious movements deriving from Adventism(Adventism is a branch of Protestant Christianity that believes in the imminent Second Coming (or the "Second Advent") of Jesus Christ.) — including Christadelphians, Seventh-day Adventists, and Jehovah's Witnesses — similarly believe that the dead do not possess a soul separate from the body and are unconscious until the resurrection.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that the spirit and body together constitute the Soul of Man (Mankind). "The spirit and the body are the soul of man." Latter-day Saints believe that the soul is the union of a pre-existing, God-made spirit and a temporal body, which is formed by physical conception on earth. After death, the spirit continues to live and progress in the Spirit world until the resurrection, when it is reunited with the body that once housed it. This reuniting of body and spirit results in a perfect soul that is immortal, and eternal, and capable of receiving a fulness of joy. Latter-day Saint cosmology also describes "intelligences" as the essence of consciousness or agency. These are co-eternal with God, and animate the spirits. The union of a newly-created spirit body with an eternally-existing intelligence constitutes a "spirit birth"[citation needed] and justifies God's title "Father of our spirits".

Some Confucian traditions draw a distinction between a spiritual soul and a physical soul.

Ātman is a Sanskrit word that means inner self or soul. In Hindu philosophy, especially in the Vedanta school of Hinduism, Ātman is the first principle, the true self of an individual beyond identification with phenomena, the essence of an individual. In order to attain liberation (moksha), a human being must acquire self-knowledge (atma jnana), which is to realize that one's true self (Ātman) is identical with the transcendent self.

The Quran, the holy book of Islam, uses two words to refer to the soul: rūḥ (translated as spirit, consciousness, pneuma or "soul") and nafs (translated as self, ego, psyche or "soul"), cognates of the Hebrew nefesh and ruach. The two terms are frequently used interchangeably, though rūḥ is more often used to denote the divine spirit or "the breath of life", while nafs designates one's disposition or characteristics. In Islamic philosophy, the immortal rūḥ "drives" the mortal nafs, which comprises temporal desires and perceptions necessary for living.

In Jainism, every living being, from plant or bacterium to human, has a soul and the concept forms the very basis of Jainism. According to Jainism, there is no beginning or end to the existence of the soul. It is eternal in nature and changes its form until it attains liberation.

Jiva is the immortal essence or soul of a living organism (human, animal, fish or plant etc.) which survives physical death. The concept of Ajiva in Jainism means "not soul", and represents matter (including body), time, space, non-motion and motion. In Jainism, a Jiva is either samsari (mundane, caught in cycle of rebirths) or mukta (liberated).

According to this belief until the time the soul is liberated from the saṃsāra (cycle of repeated birth and death), it gets attached to one of these bodies based on the karma (actions) of the individual soul. Irrespective of which state the soul is in, it has got the same attributes and qualities. The difference between the liberated and non-liberated souls is that the qualities and attributes are manifested completely in case of siddha (liberated soul) as they have overcome all the karmic bondages whereas in case of non-liberated souls they are partially exhibited. Souls who rise victorious over wicked emotions while still remaining within physical bodies are referred to as arihants.

Judaism relates the quality of one's soul to one's performance of the commandments (mitzvot) and reaching higher levels of understanding, and thus closeness to God.

The Scientology view is that a person does not have a soul, it is a soul. It is the belief of the religion that they do not have the power to force adherents' conclusions. Therefore, a person is immortal, and may be reincarnated if they wish. Scientologists view that one's future happiness and immortality, as guided by their spirituality, is influenced by how they live and act during their time on earth. The Scientology term for the soul is "thetan", derived from the Greek word "theta", symbolizing thought. Scientology counselling (called auditing) addresses the soul to improve abilities, both worldly and spiritual. The ideologies surrounding this understanding align with those of the five major world religions.

A popular belief in Shamanism is soul dualism, which is also known as "many souls" or "dualistic pluralism" and is crucial to the fundamental and vital idea of "soul flight" (also called "soul journey", "out-of-body experience", "ecstasy", or "astral projection"). The idea that there are two or more souls in each human being is known as the dualistic theory of the "free soul" and the "body soul." While awake, the former is connected to physiological processes and awareness, but the latter is free to roam when asleep or in trance states. There are numerous soul types with various purposes in some circumstances.

Shinto distinguishes between the souls of living persons (tamashii) and those of dead persons (mitama), each of which may have different aspects or sub-souls.

Sikhism considers the soul (atma) to be part of God (Waheguru). Various hymns are cited from the holy book Guru Granth Sahib (SGGS) that suggests this belief. "God is in the Soul and the Soul is in the God."

According to Chinese traditions, every person has two types of soul called hun and po, which are respectively yang and yin. Taoism believes in ten souls, sanhunqipo "three hun and seven po". A living being that loses any of them is said to have mental illness or unconsciousness, while a dead soul may reincarnate to a disability, lower desire realms, or may even be unable to reincarnate.

Damn, we’re getting deep here on the Train! Well, we did say we wanted to do this episode and to do it right, well, this is “da wey”.

Now it seems as though the soul is prevalent in just about every religion. Why? Is this just a way of putting a forced answer to a question that we cant solve? Like the creation of our existence or the so-called plan laid before us? Too deep? Anyways, in everything we hear there is usually some truth to what is said. The real strategy is finding out what is true and what is not.

While there has been no scientific confirmation of the physical reality of reincarnation, where the subject has been discussed, there are questions of whether and how such beliefs may be justified within the discourse of science and religion. Some champions of academic parapsychology have argued that they have scientific evidence even while their detractors have accused them of practicing a form of pseudoscience. Skeptic Carl Sagan asked the Dalai Lama what he would do if a fundamental tenet of his religion (reincarnation) were definitively disproved by science. The Dalai Lama answered, "If science can disprove reincarnation, Tibetan Buddhism would abandon reincarnation…but it's going to be mighty hard to disprove reincarnation." Sagan considered claims of memories of past lives to be worthy of research, although he considered reincarnation to be an unlikely explanation for these.

Over the course of 40 years, University of Virginia psychiatrist Ian Stevenson studied more than 2,500 cases of young children who claimed to remember previous lives. Twelve volumes were written by him, including Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect, Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects, and Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation. He documented the child's statements and the evidence of family members and other witnesses in his instances, frequently coupled with what he thought to be connections to a deceased person who in some ways seemed to match the child's memories. Stevenson also looked at instances in which he believed that birthmarks and birth abnormalities matched the wounds and scars on the deceased. Medical records, such as images from an autopsy, were occasionally included in his documentation. Stevenson anticipated criticism and mistrust of his beliefs since claims of former life memories are always open to accusations of fraudulent recollections and the simplicity with which such claims can be faked. He did look for contradictory information and other reasons for the claims, but as the Washington Post wrote, he frequently came to the conclusion that no regular explanation was enough.

Jim B. Tucker, Antonia Mills, Satwant Pasricha, Godwin Samararatne, and Erlendur Haraldsson are a few other academic scholars who have engaged in comparable study, although Stevenson's works continue to be the most well-known. Carl Sagan found Stevenson's work in this area to be so impressive that he used what were apparently Stevenson's investigations as an example of meticulously gathered empirical data in his book The Demon-Haunted World. Though he rejected reincarnation as a reasonable explanation for the stories, he wrote that the phenomenon of purported past-life memories should be further studied. In his book The End of Faith, Sam Harris mentioned Stevenson's writings as a component of a collection of evidence that appears to support the reality of psychic phenomena but only draws on arbitrary human experience.

Paul Edwards, a philosopher, called Ian Stevenson's reincarnation tales "purely anecdotal and cherry-picked," refuting Stevenson's assertions. The stories, according to Edwards, are the products of selective thinking, suggestion, and false recollections that arise from the researcher's or the family's belief systems and cannot be taken into account as empirical proof. The philosopher Keith Augustine wrote in critique that the fact that "the vast majority of Stevenson's cases come from countries where a religious belief in reincarnation is strong, and rarely elsewhere, seems to indicate that cultural conditioning (rather than reincarnation) generates claims of spontaneous past-life memories." Further, Ian Wilson pointed out that a large number of Stevenson's cases consisted of poor children remembering wealthy lives or belonging to a higher caste. In these societies, claims of reincarnation are sometimes used as schemes to obtain money from the richer families of alleged former incarnations. Later, Stevenson wrote a book titled European Cases of the Reincarnation Type that collected cases from societies where reincarnation is not widely accepted. Robert Baker said that despite this, all of the past-life experiences examined by Stevenson and other parapsychologists are explicable in terms of well-known psychological characteristics, such as a combination of confabulation and cryptomnesia. Reincarnation conjures assumptions, according to Edwards, that are at odds with contemporary science. Reincarnation is subject to the rule that "extraordinary claims deserve extraordinary evidence" due to the fact that the vast majority of individuals have no memory of former lifetimes and that no mechanism has been empirically proven to allow a personality to escape death and move to another body. Researchers like Stevenson were aware of these restrictions.

Confabulation is a memory error in psychology that is described as the creation of false, distorted, or misconstrued memories about oneself or the outside environment. It is typically linked to a particular subset of dementias or certain types of brain injury, particularly aneurysms in the anterior communicating artery. Confabulation is a behavior that the basal forebrain is thought to be involved with, while research into this topic is currently ongoing. When someone confabulates, their memories are distorted or confused in terms of their temporal framing (such as timing, sequence, or duration), and these distortions can range from small mistakes to outright fabrications. They generally have a high degree of confidence in their memories, even when they are contradicted by other pieces of information.

When a forgotten memory resurfaces but is not recognized by the person as such, they think it to be something brand-new and unique. This condition is known as cryptomnesia. A person could mistakenly believe they came up with a joke, a music, a name, or a thought when they didn't mean to copy anything; instead, they were simply experiencing a memory as if it were a fresh source of inspiration. This is a memory bias.

Stevenson also asserted that there were a few instances that might have provided proof of xenoglossy, including two in which a subject was said to have engaged in conversation with speakers of the other language rather than just memorizing its terms. Reexamining these cases, University of Michigan linguist and skeptic Sarah Thomason came to the conclusion that "the linguistic evidence is too poor to provide support for the assertions of xenoglossy."

The paranormal phenomena of a person being able to speak, write, or understand a foreign language that they could not have learned naturally is called xenoglossy, also known as xenolalia. French parapsychologist Charles Richet coined the term "xenoglossy" in 1905. In addition to modern assertions made by parapsychologists and reincarnation researchers like Ian Stevenson, the New Testament contains claims of xenoglossy. The existence of xenoglossy as a real phenomenon is not supported by science. In xenoglossy, there are two distinct categories. Incomprehensible use of an unlearned language is known as repetitious xenoglossy, while comprehensively using an unlearned language as if it had already been learnt is known as responsive xenoglossy.

Some reincarnationists—Stevenson notoriously not included—place great emphasis on purported past-life memories that are regained while hypnotized during past-life regressions. The technique, which was made popular by psychiatrist Brian Weiss, who claims to have taken patients back in time more than 4,000 times since 1980, is sometimes referred to as a form of pseudoscience. These so-called memories have been shown to include historical mistakes derived from historical texts, popular historical myths, or contemporary popular culture. Studies on people who had past-life regressions found that the two most significant influences on the reported details of recollections were the individuals' reincarnation beliefs and the hypnotist's suggestions. The use of hypnosis and provocative inquiries may make a subject more prone to have false or distorted recollections. The source of the recollections is most likely cryptomnesia and confabulations, which mix experiences, knowledge, imagination, and suggestion or instruction from the hypnotist, as opposed to recall of a prior existence. Once they are formed, the memories become identical to memories based on actual life occurrences for the person.

Because it offers no proof for its assertions and makes people more susceptible to false recollections, past-life regression has been criticized as immoral. According to Luis Cordón, this can be harmful because it breeds delusions while passing itself off as therapy. Due to the fact that the memories are perceived as being equally vivid and impossible to distinguish from authentic recollections of actual occurrences, any damage may be challenging to repair.

The use of past-life regressions as a treatment technique has been contested by APA recognized groups as unethical. Furthermore, the hypnotic technique used to support past-life regression has come under fire for leaving the subject open to the implantation of false memories. Gabriel Andrade contends that past-life regression violates the Hippocratic Oath's first, do no harm (non-maleficence) tenet since the implantation of false memories may be damaging.

Now that we have a phenomenal understanding of reincarnation and the simplified version of the soul, we would like to share some examples of first hand accounts where reincarnation shows itself. All we ask of you, the listeners, is to give us your honest opinions and maybe share your own stories or beliefs.

Thank you to Listverse.com for some of the first hand accounts of reincarnation

10. Edward Austrian

A four-year-old boy called Edward Austrian had been complaining of a sore throat since his mother can remember. He also can’t stand grey, drizzly days, apparently. Around this time, the little boy began referring to his sore throat as his “shot”. His mother thought nothing of it. After all, kids mix up their words all the time. Doctor after doctor led to an unnecessary tonsil removal, which then led to an unexplained cyst developing in Edward’s throat. His parents were understandably worried. But then something strange happened. Edward started telling his mum detailed stories from WWI – things a four-year-old wouldn’t be able to absorb and remember from a TV show or movie. He spoke of life on the trenches and the day-to-day goings on of the war. And then… one day… he told his mother a graphic story of being shot in the throat and killed. “My name was James. I was 18 years old, in France,” he told his parents. “We were walking along through the mud. It was damp. It was cold. My rifle is heavy. I remember looking out and seeing trees and then there was desolation. I heard a shot come from behind. It went through someone else, hit me square in the back of the neck and I felt my throat fill with blood.” Let’s remember this kid is FOUR YEARS OLD. So that’s not the kind of thing he would learn from the Wiggles, right?

9. Bruce Whittier

Bruce Whittier had recurring dreams of being a Jewish man hiding in a house with his family. His name had been Stefan Horowitz, a Dutch Jew who was discovered in his hiding place along with his family and taken to Auschwitz, where he died. During and after the dreams, he felt panicked and restless. He began to record his dreams, and one night he dreamed about a clock, which he was able to draw in great detail upon waking.Whittier dreamed about the location of the clock in an antiques shop and went to look. The clock was visible in the shop window and looked exactly like the one in his dreams. Whittier asked the dealer where it had come from. It transpired that the dealer had bought the clock from among the property of a retired German major in The Netherlands. This convinced Whittier that he really had led a past life.

8. Peter Hume

Peter Hume, a bingo caller from Birmingham, England, started having very specific dreams about life on guard duty at the Scottish border in 1646. He was a foot soldier of Cromwell’s army and his name was John Raphael. When put under hypnosis, Hume remembered more details and locations. He started to visit places he remembered with his brother and even found small items that appeared to have come from the era in which he had lived, such as horse spurs.With the help of a village historian in Culmstock, South England, he even managed to positively identify details about a church that he had known—he was able to tell her that the church used to have a tower with a yew tree growing from it. This was not a published fact, and it startled her that Hume knew it—the church tower had been taken down in 1676. In local registers, John Raphael was discovered to have been married in the church. A civil war historian, Ronald Hutton, investigated the case and asked Hume very era-specific questions while under hypnosis. Hutton was not satisfied that Hume was totally in tune with the era of his past life, as he could not answer all his questions in a satisfactory way.

7. Gus Taylor

Gus Taylor was 18 months old when he started to say that he was his own grandfather. Young children can be confused about their own identity and those of their family members, but this was different. His grandfather had died a year before Gus was born and the boy totally believed they were the same person. When shown some family photographs, Gus identified “Grandpa Augie” when he was four years old.There was a family secret that nobody had ever spoken about in front of or around Gus—Augie’s sister had been murdered and dumped in the San Francisco Bay. The family were perplexed when the four-year-old child started to talk about his dead sister. According to Gus, God gave him a ticket after he died. With this ticket he was able to travel through a hole, after which he came back to life as Gus.

6. Imad Elawar

Five-year-old Imad Elawar from Lebanon started talking about his life in a nearby village. The first two words he spoke as a child were the names “Jamileh” and “Mahmoud,” and at the age of two he stopped a stranger outside and told him they had been neighbors. The child and his parents were investigated by Dr Ian Stevenson. Imad made over 55 different claims about his previous life.The family visited the village that the boy had been spoken of, together with Stevenson, and found the house where he claimed he had lived. Imad and his family were able to positively identify thirteen facts and memories that were confirmed as being accurate. Imad recognized his previous uncle, Mahmoud, and his mistress from a former life, Jamileh, from photographs. He was able to remember where he had kept his gun, a fact verified by others, and was able to have a chat with a stranger about their experiences during their army days. In total, 51 out of 57 of the experiences and places mentioned by Imad were verified during the visit.

5. James Leininger

At a very young age, James Leininger started to remember his life as a navy fighter pilot. Airplanes were the only toys he would play with, and after a time his plane obsession turned into a nightmare. He lost a lot of sleep and kept talking about flying planes, about the weapons, and the scary accident with his plane. James, who only watched kids’ programs on TV, showed his mother what a fighter plane drop tank was, and was able to check a plane over as a pilot would during a preflight check when he was just three years old.The child was able to tell his father that he used to take off from a boat called the Natoma and knew the name of a co-pilot, Jack Larson. The Natoma was indeed a Pacific ship and Larson was still alive. After James told his father that he had been killed in his plane at Iwo Jima, his father discovered a pilot called James M. Huston Jr. who had died there. This was especially strange, as James had started to sign his drawings “ ‘James 3’ ”. James’ family contacted Huston’s sister, and she sent James a bust and a model airplane that had been returned to her by the navy after her brother’s death.

4. Ruth Simmons

One of the best-known reincarnation stories is that of Ruth Simmons. In 1952, she underwent a series of hypnosis sessions during which her therapist, Morey Bernstein, regressed her back to her birth. She suddenly started to speak with a heavy Irish accent and remembered many specific details from her life as Bridey Murphy, who had lived in Belfast, Ireland in the 19th century. Not many of the things she mentioned could be verified. However, she recalled two people from whom she used to buy her food—a Mr. John Carrigan and a Mr. Farr. The town directory for 1865–66 lists the two individuals as grocers. The story is shown in a film from 1956 called The Search for Bridey Murphy.

3. Cameron Macauley

Cameron Macauley was born in Glasgow, Scotland. Since the age of two he told his mother he was from an island called Barra, off the west coast of Scotland. He talked about a white house and a beach on which planes landed. He had a black-and-white dog and his dad’s name was Shane Robertson—he was killed by a car. He drew the white house by the beach and complained of missing his other mother. As the child got more and more upset about missing Barra, his mother took him on a visit the the island, which was an hour-long flight away. The plane landed on the beach.The family found a white house owned by the Robertsons, and the black-and-white dog was in one of their family photographs, along with a car that Cameron had remembered. However, nobody recalled Shane. Cameron knew his way around the white house and was able to point out all its peculiarities.As he grew older, Cameron slowly lost his memories, but he is still convinced that death is not the end. Like Gus Taylor, he stated that he ended up in his mother’s tummy after he fell through a hole. The story was picked up by British television, making the Barra case one of the best-documented reincarnation stories.

2. Parmod Sharma

Parmod Sharma was born in India in 1944. When he reached the age of two, he told his mother that his wife in Moradabad could cook for him, so she did not have to. Morabad was 145 kilometers (90 mi) away from his birthplace, Bisauli. Between the ages of three and four, Parmod described a business venture called “Mohan Brothers,” where he had worked with family members, selling cookies and water. He built miniature shops and served his family mud cookies and water. He had been a well-off tradesman and complained about the financially less rosy situation of his current family. He advised his parents against eating curd, and would not touch it himself. He said that he had become very ill after eating it in his old life. Parmod hated being submerged in a bath and told his parents that he had died in a bathtub. Pramod's parents promised to take him to Moradabad once he had learned to read. It turned out that there was a family by the name of Mehra that had run a soda and cookie shop called “Mohan Brothers.” Manager Parmanand Mehra had died in 1943 after gorging on curd and suffering from a gastrointestinal illness and peritonitis, from which he had eventually died. Parmanand had tried medicinal baths as a cure and had been given a bath very shortly before his death.

1. Steve Jobs

A software engineer called Tony Tseung, an employee of Apple, sent an email to a Buddhist group in Thailand, asking if they could tell him what had happened to Apple founder Steve Jobs after he died. The answer was that Jobs is now a celestial philosopher, in a glass palace that hovers over the Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California.In Malaysia, a group of Jobs’ admirers performed a religious ceremony after his funeral. During the ceremony, the group each took a bite from an apple before throwing it into the sea to speed up the process of reincarnation. Phra Chaibul Dhammajayo, one of the abbots at the Dhammakaya Temple, is convinced that Jobs has already been reborn. He is now a divine presence with a specific interest in science and art. Followers have received this information through a special message that was broadcast worldwide. Apparently, more specific details will be communicated when Jobs feels the need to pass on any knowledge or messages.

Ok… one last person who claims they were reincarnated!

Born on Dec. 11, 1926, Shanti Devi appeared to be a perfectly normal baby, until around the age of four when she began to ramble on about a past life in a town called Mathura, nearly 75 miles away..

Shortly after she learned to speak, Devi regaled her parents with stories of her past life in a town neither she nor her parents had ever been to.

Simple events would trigger memories of this life, like eating a meal that reminded her of foods she used to enjoy in her old days, or while getting dressed she’d tell her mother about the clothes she used to wear.

Devi eventually informed her parents that her previous name was Lugdi and that she died shortly after bearing a son in October of 1925. She added uncanny details about her labor pains and the surgical procedures she underwent.

Such facts, it seemed, couldn’t have been conjured up by even the most imaginative child.

When she revealed the name of her former husband, Devi’s family was shocked to discover that he was still alive and lived precisely where Devi had said she was from. A historic meeting was arranged between them ⏤ that not even science could quite explain.

Devi recalled in startling detail all the shops and streets in the town. She also began to speak of her husband, a merchant whose name she refused to reveal until she was about nine years old. But she did tell her parents that he was fair, had a wart on his left cheek, and wore reading glasses.

Despite the unusual specificity of her memories, Devi’s parents dismissed her recollections as mere childishness. But when Devi revealed that her husband’s name was Pandit Kedarnath Chaube, sometimes referred to as Kedar Nath, a friend of the family decided to find out if there was any truth to what she’d been saying.

The friend sent a letter to a merchant named Kedar Nath in Mathura to inquire about Devi’s unusual memories. To the friend’s surprise, Nath wrote back confirming all the details. Nath also agreed to send a relative to Devi’s home to gauge the situation.

In an effort to test her knowledge, the relative was brought before Devi first and introduced as her husband. Devi was not fooled and said that no, this was her husband’s cousin.

Shocked, Nath and the child he had with Lugdi, now ten years old, entered the home themselves. Upon seeing them, Devi reportedly burst into tears.

Nath requested to speak with Devi on his own, and by his own admission, claimed that each response she gave to his questions was entirely accurate.

“He found the replies to be quite correct and was moved to tears!” Read an account by an investigator on the case in 1937. “It was as though his dead wife was speaking.”

Shanti spent several days with Kedar Nath and his son before they had to return to Mathura. Saddened by their departure, she pleaded with her parents to let her take a trip to her former home.

She promised she could lead them directly to her old house and, perhaps to persuade them further, explained that she had a box of money buried there.

Devi’s parents relented — though considering the story had captured the attention of Mahatma Gandhi, they hardly had a choice. The famed Indian leader set up a commission to investigate the astonishing case, and in November of 1935, a dozen researchers joined Devi and her parents on the three-hour train ride to Mathura.

As one of the investigators recounted, “Once getting out of the railway station… the girl was put in the front seat and our carriage went ahead of all others. Necessary precautions were taken that no pedestrians should be allowed to lead the way. The driver was instructed to follow the route indicated only by the girl, without caring as to where he went.”

Sure enough, Devi had no problem directing the group to what she claimed was her former home. Along the way, she noted various streets that hadn’t been paved earlier and buildings that weren’t there during her previous life. The driver confirmed these observations were correct.

While exploring the house with Kedar Nath, a member of the commission asked about the buried treasure she mentioned. Shanti Devi promptly ran upstairs and headed straight to a corner of a room, declaring the box was hidden beneath the floorboard. Kedar Nath opened up the flooring and indeed found a small coffer. It was empty.

Shocked, Shanti Devi began looking inside the hole, certain the money was there. Kedar Nath then admitted that he had taken the cash after his wife’s death.

Devi’s reunion tour of Mathura continued to her former parents’ house. “She not only recognized it but was also able to identify her old ‘father’ and ‘mother’ in a crowd of more than 50 persons,” one of the investigators wrote. “The girl embraced her ‘parents’ who wept bitterly at her sight.”

Though she wished to stay in Mathura longer, Devi’s current parents and the investigators were soon headed back to Delhi. In their report, the commission found “no rational explanation” for what they witnessed.

Not only was Devi able to recall her life before, it seemed, but she also had an explanation for the afterlife. In 1936 and 1939, she relayed her experience in death to skeptics and hypnotists alike.

She claimed that at the time of her death, she felt dizzy and enveloped in a “profound darkness” before a flash of light revealed four men in yellow underwear before her.

“All the four seemed to be in their teens and their appearance and dress were very bright,” she once said while under hypnosis. “They put me in a cup and carried me.”

Devi said she saw the Hindu god Krishna showing each person a record of their good and bad activities on earth and telling them what would happen to them next.

Then, Devi said she was taken to a golden staircase from which she could see a river as “clean and pure as milk.” She said she saw souls there and they appeared like flames in lamps.

Years later, a 1958 newspaper interview followed up with her. At the time, Shanti Devi was 32 years old and had never married. She was living a quiet, spiritual life in Delhi.

She also said she’d planned to form an organization “devoted to the idea of living our lives according to the dictates of the inner voice.”

Shanti Devi passed away in 1987 at the age of 61. However, her story lives on courtesy of a book written by Swedish author Sture Lonnerstrand in 1994, which was translated to English in 1998.

Okay so that last one definitely seems a little… off kilter to say the least. One recurring theme with a lot of these stories though, is that the prior life that's experienced was cut short during a traumatic event. Now as we all know, most hauntings seem to be along the same lines. So are hauntings just reincarnation of the life lost with unfinished business? Stuck in Purgatory? I guess after this long ass episode we still don't have any answers. Hopefully, though, we have put you closer on the track to figuring it out for yourselves. Hey! If you figure something out, make sure to drop a line. After all, if we can't figure it out in this life, maybe we will be around to talk about it in the next.

The Best Movies About Reincarnation And Coming Back To Life (ranker.com)

Why isn't The Mummy on this list?!?!?!