Past Lives –the benefit of knowing and understanding by Eckankar

Many of us believe that we have lived before, that we have experienced lives in many other places and times, as many life forms, even on many other planes of existence.  But why would we want to recall or understand those experiences?  And what benefit is there in accepting the existence of past lives?

I did not really appreciate my past lives until one day when it all became clear to me.

I have always had a profound fear of doctors, dentists and most of the medical profession.

I was with a group of close friends when one of them asked me if I understood German. I affirmed I did and as he and others around me continued speaking, mostly in German, I suddenly experienced a past life. It was so vivid and clear I was almost overwhelmed; I was in tears.

I realised that I was once a young Jewish man, during WW2 in Warsaw, in the ghetto, with my family, I was headstrong, determined not to be forced to do anything I did not want to do.  My mother begged me to be reasonable, to follow the directions I was given.  I was determined not to – I ran out of our apartment, screaming into the streets, towards soldiers and was immediately shot.  I died, suicided really, immediately and I expected that to be the end.

But it was not, I was reincarnated almost immediately as a baby, in the concentration camp hospital, where experiments were being carried out. The babble of German voices around me that I experienced with my friends in the present, conjured up the voices of German speaking doctors around and above me as I lay as a baby, helpless, unable to control anything around me.  I lived a life of pain and fear until I finally died in that lifetime.

Then it occurred to me! This was where my fear of doctors and the medical profession had come from. 

Then I realised that, having accepted the origin of that fear, being able to own that fear, I could now begin to overcome it.

That, I realised was the benefit of acknowledging past lives, learning the lessons inherent in them and putting those understandings into practice. I began to search in my dreams and spiritual experiences for indications of previous lives.

I have always used a spiritual exercise, a contemplation, where I sing HU (a soft chant) while I focus, with love, on various aspects of my life and my very being, allowing myself to ponder whatever comes into my consciousness.

But more importantly I lost a persistent fear of death, something that most of us have, I realised that death was not the end, but a conduit to the next step in my journey.  This profound experience was transformational, it effected my whole life.

So treasure your past life experiences, learn from them and move forward.

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