There are some fascinating cases of children who can spontaneously remember details of their previous lives. Many of these cases have been collected by Dr. Ian Stevenson of the University of Virginia. One startling account of a child’s memories of a past life came to the attention of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, who sent a special representative to interview the concerned girl and verify her account.
RUBY LILAOWALA recounts a case history of rebirth. |
Her name is Kamaljit Kaur and she is the daughter of a schoolteacher in a Sikh family in the Punjab. One day, while visiting while visiting a local village fair with her parents, she suddenly asked her father to take her to another village, some distance away. The parents wanted to know the reason for her sudden request.
Little Kamaljit told them that she used to live in the neighbouring village and one day while cycling with her school-friend, they were hit by a bus. Her friend died instantly while she was hit on the head and was bleeding profusely. Her parents were summoned and they took her to Ambala where better medical facilities were available. However, little the little girl could not be saved.
As per Kamaljit’s insistence, her parents took her to the neighbouring village, which was about 25 miles away and she immediately recognised the spot where the bus had hit her. She then showed her parents the way to her previous house where she used to stay. The neighbours also confirmed the story that a little girl, named Rishma, who used to stay there had died in an accident while cycling. She recognised her parents of her previous birth and when her grandfather and uncles arrived, she recognised them and named them without mistake. She pointed out her own room and in the school-photo, she even named some of the girls. She even led the way to her uncle’s house.
The family started to piece the story together. Kamaljit Kaur was born ten months after Rishma died. Also, it is pertinent to understand that Rishma’s family, though they did not know whether reincarnation was accepted by the Sikhs, were convinced beyond any doubt that Kamaljit Kaur was in fact their Rishma.
One can doubt the story and discredit this account by claiming that the little girl’s family had put her up as reincarnation of Rishma for some reason of their own. But subsequents prove that they had no reason to do so. They were not claiming any money or fame but seemed genuinely embarrassed by all the attention they were receiving.
What is the cause of reincarnation and why it happens in few rare cases? Frankly, Evolution, Karma, Rebirth are subjects beyond the mental scope of ordinary people like us. Only the very pious, learned and evolved souls can understand these subjects and give convincing answers to these matters. Since the dawn of history, reincarnation and a firm faith in life after death have occupied an essential place in most the world’s religions.
Belief in rebirth existed amidst Christians in the early history of Christianity, and persisted in various forms well into the Middle Ages. Origen, one of the most influential of the church fathers, believed in the ‘pre-existence of souls’ and wrote in the third century: “Each soul comes to this world reinforced by the victories or enfeebled by the defeats of its previous lives.”
Although Christianity eventually rejected the belief of reincarnation, traces of it can be found throughout Renaissance and in the writings of major Romantic poets like Blake and Shelly and novelist Balzac. Since the advent of interest in Eastern religions that began in the last century, a remarkable number of Westerners have come to accept the Hindu and Buddhist knowledge of rebirth. One of them was the great American industrialist and philanthropist, Henry Ford, who spared no effort at spreading his views on reincarnation.
