Memories of a past life have confused the scientific community because no one can verify their source. Three possible explanations provide an evolving perspective on the phenomenon. They are not mutually exclusive; in fact, the first two explanations can be included in the latter - the idea of holographic recall.
Past Life Memories as Cryptamnesia
Skeptics believe that past life memories are due to cryptamnesia, an unconscious recollection of read material that spontaneously pops up in the mind as a memory.
They argue that close examination reveals that past life memories turn out to be details from forgotten books or films. One case of cryptamnesia occurred with a 19-year-old girl who detailed a Nazi raid in Finland. Under hypnosis, she revealed the source of her knowledge - a book that she read many years ago, but forgot.
Past Life Memories as Reincarnation
Promotional video:
Cryptamnesia is evidence of an assessment of a mental phenomenon in the left hemisphere of the brain. Beliefs in an afterlife and reincarnation often stem from the mystical experience of universal consciousness, a phenomenon that is primarily a activity of the right brain hemisphere.
One such example is Dr. Frank Oskey, professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University. He felt helpless when he saw children born with birth defects, children whom he could not help. One night, an angel appeared to him and told him that life and death are an endless cycle of improvements in which everyone participates. She also assured the doctor that children with birth defects can teach humanity a lesson in unconditional love, teach to love those who came to this earth not ideal.
Past life memories as holographic memories
A third explanation for past life memories is given by Dr. John Archibald Wheeler, a Princeton physicist who believes that memories are stored in lifestyles. Memories of past lives probably come from a universal memory source outside the human body. Children who have experienced clinical death report the existence of "an eternal omniscient space through which a person gains access to memory or mystical abilities." New scientific research into quantum holography suggests that the human body is a hologram in a holographic universe. A hologram is a part that contains information about everything. This means that every human cell contains all the DNA information of the human body, as well as all information about the universe. Thus,each person can access knowledge from all information fields of the universe.
The idea of holographic memories is relatively new; it points to a huge resource of universal consciousness to which modern man is just beginning to gain access. Mystical visions, like the story of Dr. John Oski, belong to the right temporal lobe. They cannot be scientifically substantiated and can only be perceived with an open heart and mind. Skeptics who view past life memories as cryptamnesia use only the left temporal lobe of reason and logic.
Using a hologram to explain the possibility of mystical experience completes the picture. Taken together, all three explanations provide a general approach to past life memories.