Past life? Confused...

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This is rather long, but very important to me, so please bear with me! I deeply appreciate anyone who reads this, even if you don't have answers. (Also I hope this subject fits this area of the forum, I wasn't sure where to put it.)


I have memories of a life that isn't mine, and I don't understand.

First off, let me start by saying I'm sort of a Christian. Also maybe sort of a Quaker. And I don't really believe in stuff like reincarnation, astral projection, telepathy, etc. Growing up, all that seemed like the most strange and far-fetched stuff out there. But I think I'm starting to change my mind a just a little. Let me explain...

It started when I randomly remembered that when I was a kid, I'd have these weird... "fantasies". And realized they are NOT normal at all. I would pretend I had run away from home at a young age, and would look through the windows at happy families, knowing I could never belong. And I would always imagine being a teenager living on the streets in a big city. It was dangerous, I had nobody, and I lived a life of constant gloom and desperation, spending my evenings curled up on the ground. I was always running and running from the law, when at last, they caught me. I'd think, "My life is over now." But maybe that was ok.

Who the hell enjoys dreaming about that horrible stuff as a little kid?! When I thought back to it, I started to feel like it's much more than just something I had made up. It's super vivid. And personal. (Like not just a generic scene with me as the teenager character. It feels like an actual person's life.) And now, after remembering that this was a thing, I've started randomly "remembering" more details about this "life"; stuff that younger me never even thought of. And it's really been freaking me out.

I can see a house that I know I never lived in. And a town I've never been to. This girl loved taking walks in the fall, and often hung out around the train tracks. She seems about 17, and had a really common name like Sarah or something. She had straight reddish-brown hair and wore denim jackets and skinny pants.
Coincidentally, I'd always felt sort of nauseous being in towns with similar houses, gotten strangely clingy/sensitive/mopey/sentimental when fall started, and I've had recurring dreams about trains & tracks my whole life.

Now, at first, I started considering if it was a past life of mine. Because there's nothing like experiencing something yourself to make you start believing in it. But there are two problems with that theory.
1. This girl looks like she's from the late 90's or early 2000's, and I was born in 93'.
2. I see all or at least a lot of this life through a "3rd person" point of view. Like I'm watching this girl's life happen, instead of actually being this girl and seeing through her eyes.

I do have some other theories, though I really know nothing about them.
Maybe evil spirits are making up untrue things to try to get me involved in bad stuff.
Maybe her timeline and mine got sort of crossed somehow. (Or some other weird space-time things.)
Maybe I have some sort of psychic empathy, and I'm feeling the strong residual emotions, as some sort of closure for this girl, or even to help her get justice from those who wronged her.
Maybe I just have an overactive imagination and am blowing this way out of proportion.
Maybe I'm literally crazy.

This is where it gets tricky and kinda scary... This girl had a very tragic life and death. And I think some awful, awful things happened to her. But it's also very possible that some awful things happened to me when I was little. So all of this is getting tangled together. I'll have triggery moments and vague flashbacks and recall strange scenes, etc., but I don't know if they're repressed memories from my childhood, or something that happened to this girl, or a mixture of both. But I really need to figure out what's happening, because now it's getting personal.

I wouldn't even know how to find out if this girl was real, because I don't really even know her name, country, or decade. I'm just really confused and don't know what to do.

Soooo... thoughts? Advice? Questions?

...Maybe you have a , if not separated-at-birth identical twin , a slightly older cousin or something , and you've sensed her ?
I say that kind of as a joke , but...........

This is very interesting because I had similar thoughts (memories?) of another life from when I was aged 3-4 in this life. I was a young woman with long blonde hair and I travelled with the circus as a trapeze artist. I think I was involved with 2 men and I saw the face of one of these men who was very angry and strangled me. I thought about this other life a lot when I was a child but as I got older I thought about it less and less. Now I'm not sure if it was real or if I made it seem real by thinking about it so much. I too am interested to hear if others have experienced anything similar to these other life memories.

I went for past life regression about 8 years ago but did not recall my circus life. I talked about another life where I was married to an abusive man. I had a strong feeling that this man was the same man I was with for 8 years in my present life.

I used to believe something akin to this, once. Ever since I can remember I have had memories of a life that seems inherently older than I am, vivid flashes of a life that isn't mine, and unusually for me, strong responses of emotions that I can't even routinely interpret/feel in normal life. It's not surprising that we interpret this as a past life.
But consider taking a step back from that classic kneejerk reaction - historically, myths, superstitions, even whole religions, have filled in the gaps of what the human intellect cannot understand at any given time. As we progress, those myths generally fall away to be replaced by understanding. Very few people honestly believe that gods in the sky are responsible for thunder, or that the earth is prevented from plummeting through space by being braced on the backs of elephants. One of my interests is neuroscience, and what we don't know about how the mind works far outweighs what we do know. I'm sure everyone has heard the theory of how we only use 10% of our brain capacity.
What the other 90% is doing is likely to be far more complicated, intricate and amazing than simply remembering the past experiences of a transmutated theoretical spirit.
I'm not saying discount a theosophical explanation completely as I said, we don't know for sure, but at this point I find it more likely that the explanation for these things is a mixture of the stronger impressions we were imprinted with as children and don't even consciously remember in the ego parts of our waking minds, and the interpretation of stimuli communicated in snatches from the unconscious, which interestingly enough, is highly symbolic and not as linear as the conscious mind. Maybe you were exposed to a story very like this when you were very young, too young to interpret it as outside of yourself, and don't even remember doing so, thus is is just there in your head without you having any recollection of how it could possibly have got there. Maybe it's an amalgamation of information you received pushed into the darkness - someone you saw somewhere, a dream you had, a movie you watched, someone you knew, all rolled into one so the conscious mind can make a judgement on it, file it, explain it. Maybe partly your mind considering, processing, projecting, seeking to understand via fantasy. The fact that you experience these memory-like images in third person seems to support this, as obviously we experience life through our own eyes.
I don't know your history or why you would jump to assuming bad spirits exist and are interested in getting you into trouble and are choosing to do so in such a vague fashion, but for my own opinion, I highly doubt it's likely.
The way I interpret my own experience with the sorts of "past life" issues you mention is through the lens of psychology and neuroscience, rather than this sort of quasi-spiritual approach. Such an explanation almost seems too easy to explain the processes going on in minds as complex as our own.
People can believe as they choose and I don't intend to be a dick about this, but I'd assume examining these impressions and trying to understand what they symbolise for you, what feelings they're involved with, the times or situations in your own life that relate to them, is likely to be far more productive and insightful than dismissing them as past lives or demonic communications.

Having been a bit of a "psychonaut" over the years, examining the ways one's mind can be used.
I appears to me the REM dream state opens up a part of our mind while we sleep to a non-linear time-space.
"imaginationland"
The only "real" things, are the things right in front of you that your senses are telling you about right now.
Memories can even be uncertain as they fade over time and the brain can get damaged easily without even knowing it simply by poor diet and lifestyle.
The brain is a really good calculator, and it uses a lot of the "imaginary" numbers like those used in rendering fractals.

Is it a "past life"? Who knows.

I've had dreams in the future, on alien planets, other dimensions.
I've made mistakes and had bad trips on things too, not fun at all.

Really those things from dreams and imagination are to be taken very lightly, not completely dismissed, but not to be taken literal either, it is a dream after all.

Science isn't even aware of how subtle electromagnetic energies around us are playing a role.
People can effect each others dreams in mysterious ways too.
There have been reports of collective dreaming.
You might have seen a past life of someone else you know.

It's too fuzzy for people to know for certain that why we dismiss it.
Or we saw some really scary stuff as small children and totally shut down our abilities.

I'm starting to think "autistic" really is more something else that ends with "-ic".
We just don't have any clue how to use our talents. Most of us completely shut it out and deny it because it scares us far too much. From all the descriptions of everyones experiences around here, I think we're looking at a web site full of psychics in denial or just completely confused by the ability. And of course, general society will never admit to or accept the idea of so many "psychics" running around. We'd have an X-men scenario.

But I'm sure I'm way off into "imaginationland" now, time to return to earth and play the "matter first" game.

Personally, I stick with it's mostly my imagination effected by feelings of empathy.
Sometimes an esoteric lesson can be learned.

And even if it is really a "past life"..... it's not the one your are in right now, and only be taken lightly. very lightly.
It's best not to travel down the lifelines too many times, it gets too confusing. Like I said, time is non-linear there, you can get lost really easily.

I don't think there's anything supernatural going on here. What you describe is absolutely possible for a non-crazy, non-reincarnated person to experience.

The key is that the human mind is really good at creating memories. I don't mean seeing something and remembering it, but actually manufacturing vivid memories that feel as real as anything. Numerous studies have shown that you can get people to "remember" things that never actually happened. In one case, test subjects were shown a short video, and asked some questions afterward. When one of the questions was something along the lines of "Did you see the car with the cracked headlamp", people genuinely said that they did remember it... but no such thing was in the video. There are also many cases having false memories of childhood abuse (accidentally) planted in their minds during psychotherapy. These people testified to being victims of horrible acts that never happened, but they remembered in detail. They weren't lying, but human memory isn't as perfect as we'd like it to be.

So, in summary, yes, it is entirely possible to have memories of things that never happened. Everyone does to a degree, yours just seem a bit more vivid than most.

By far the most probable explanation.

I wouldn't describe it as "overactive" but rather vivid or intense. "overactive" puts this faculty in a negative light when it may really be a gift.


You might use it to do something interesting. If you like words, you might use it to write novels or screenplays, for example. If you like images, you might use it to be a painter, photographer or filmmaker. If you like code, you could use it do something more exotic and interesting.

ASD tends to have an either non-existent or EXTREMELY VIVID imagination.

I definitely fall into the "extremely vivid" camp. I was the kid who could get lost for hours and hours and hours in playing pretend, all by myself. Never mind if I actually found another kid who wanted to participate in the fantasy with me.

I do run to mysticism and do believe in past lives and parallel universes and such. However, out of fear of becoming delusional, I try really hard not to let myself think about it much or often.

That said, I have had very clear memories/images of someone myself/not-myself as an aboriginal American, a frontier settler, and a European peasant circa the Dark Ages and Renaissance. Imagination?? Past life?? Mild psychotic delusion??

I don't freakin' know.

I do know that I have an extremely strong dislike of taking antipsychotics, and I see to manage to keep myself grounded in the current agreed-upon reality by telling myself that, regardless of who or what or where or when I might have been (or might one day be), I am here and this is now and that's what is important.

This. I agree wholeheartedly, so many things we have not a clue about and at times it can be easy to lose our grounding and as you said, focusing on the fact that we are here in the now is what I tell myself although at times it isn't easy.

What you describe is a well documented phenomenon. Human brains do their best to keep memories and imagination separated but never perfectly do so. It sounds like in this case your brain mixes the contents of the "me" box with the "imagination" box more than usual.

I'm a fellow imaginationaut - I have an extremely vivid imagination. Often (by my own intention) I have characters who are me and also are not me. Basically a version of me modified to fit into the context of the setting I'm exploring in my imagination.

I have many vivid places and events stored in my brain and I'm sure many of them came from my night dreams, which are as lucid as real.

Quantum physics may explain parallel universes and parallel selves. I strongly suggest you read a book I think is excellent called "The Yoga of time Travel, how the mind can defeat time" by Fred Alan Wolf. (I think he may also have a book on parallel universes but I haven't read that one).

I remember snippets of my past lives. Ive meet a couple of others (soul mates mine) who remember the same lives and were very important to me and me to them in those other lives. One of my children had an experience with a friend of hers in which he suddenly remembered a past life he had with her, she'd been leader of a cult and sacrificed him.. he freaked out and ended up under her bed, he was shaking in fright reliving it. She told me this and said she could remember she remembered she was a cult leader who did that. What hadn't told her before this was I remember also her sacrificing me when she was leader of a cult! I'd carried that memory for several years before she had that incident with her friend.

My other child I remember her in a previous life, she was a foster child of mine who died then at age of 3, I was partly responsible for her death, I and my husband of that time were abusive so she suffered terribly. I didn't save her from him and he killed her. She don't remember that life (well if she does she hasn't told me and I haven't told her what I remember).. this lifetime she's very bitter towards me and hates me and I think its cause she innerly knows I killed her in that other life (I guess it was around the 1800s, it was somewhere like England. We buried her body in the backyard).

More strangely, Ive had twice had incidences which seem to be parallel universes connecting with this one. In one of these someone spoke to me who my inner self thinks it was another me and gave me some info on where to find something I needed (a shop I'd already phoned but been told they were out of stock). This others inner communications with me was so strong that I ignored what I'd just been told on the phone and drove 1hr drive away the shop.. sure enough what I wanted was there after all. The shop had got it only 15mins before I arrived (I was after second hand surf board, a girly beginners board at a very cheap price and this other me told me where to go to get it during a heat wave in which there had been a rush to get things like this.. interestingly the surf board was called something I've been called, in real life). so just a flukey weird chance? or was something very strange going on here?

Another time.. I suddenly found myself in another (me) body while at same time she was me. I could feel what she was feeling and same with her with me, we recognised each other as our minds like linked and knew who each of us was. We were looking out from each others eyes (she was a shaman of a native indian tribe and I could feel her/my love for her people as she stood on the ridge overlooking their camp). I knew she was a past self of mine experiencing her future self through me.. we were both in the same moment with this experience.. feeling each other. So obviously we are capable transcending time and connecting with other selves.

Alternatively, we are capable of vividly imagining other selves across time and space.

This interests me greatly... I'm kind of curious to what extremes my aspie-ness might be taken to...

Once in college we had a past life hypnosis session. I didn't let myself go completely under but I had brief flashes of being a Russian woman freezing to death on a cold winter night. There was some kind of log cabin there but they wouldn't let me in. Of course then I had another "vision" if you will of being in an old stone courtyard with a well, and encountering a being I later realized perfectly matches the description of Tisiphone the Fury from Greek mythology... so I'm not sure what to think there.

I once had something of a fever dream where a voice explained to me how an omnipotent God is compatible with notions of free will, something to do with there being three time dimensions...

I also had a dream more recently that seemed very real and at the end involved a man who I instantly knew as "Cael" somehow. He told me some very deep stuff about what I'd been going through. That morning I looked up the name, and as it turns out Cael is thought to be an angel who watches over the astrological sign of Cancer. Being born in July, this was quite interesting to me.

I have at several occasions experienced precognition, where an unmistakable voice in my head tells me something is going to happen, usually a few minutes before it does. I also almost always have dreams about pets the night before they die, even when I'm not aware that there's something wrong with them.

I spent some time in evangelical Christianity and used to not think the Bible allowed for the possibility of reincarnation. I now think differently.

The images may be coming up to you now so that they can heal. You might read about the approach of the developer of past life therapy which has had results for some: http://www.pastlifetherapycenter.com/St ... usion.html

This speaker shares stories about the reality of reincarnation, how one of his friends was healed through resolving the memory of a traumatic death, and how he recalled his own previous life: http://www.essene.org/audiotapes/

Though reincarnation is taboo in modern evangelical Christianity, if you look at the answers Jesus got when He asked His disciples who men thought He was (Matt 16:14), the answers should make a Christian at least curious.

Some said He was John the Baptist. Others said Elijah the prophet, Jeremiah or one of the prophets. These people were all dead. Jesus clearly wasn't a dead Jeremiah come back to life like a zombie. To me it looks like an indication that in the ancient Hebrew culture, the idea of reincarnation was not foreign, and the Hebrews had a culture that was not averse to considering Jesus as being one of the prophets come to life in a different body.

Reincarnation is in fact still preserved as a concept in mystical Judaism. Some say Constantine took references to reincarnation out of the Bible, but it's difficult to sort through who took out what in which text and who wrote what back into them.

Edgar Cayce was a devout Christian, and was shocked when reincarnation started coming up in his readings: http://www.edgarcayce.org/are/edgarcayce.aspx?id=2578. I don't take the Cayce material as authoritative, but the advice he gave out of his readings cured many, many people.

You might try getting settled and just inquire of your own inner self what this is about and what, if any, direction you need to pursue to resolve it. I've done Past Life regression, and a skilled therapist can help you move through the timeline track. And there's no way of knowing even then if what you are imagining really happened or not. But if there's something in you that needs healing, this might be an opportunity to do that.

Yes, sounds familiar. My take is close to Pete's. I think that when we sleep, we sometimes ride along with other people who need support. Like the dream where you know you are home and it is not your home, you are connected with someone else, sharing your strength with them. Perhaps, each of us are entangled with other living things all over the galaxy.