My purpose here today is to take a moment and address three questions/concerns I have received that I thought were important and needed to be answered.  Without too much introduction, let’s get to it!

1.  Are you anti-reincarnation?

To make this one perfectly clear: Absolutely not.  I am, for the record – 100% PRO REINCARNATION.  I believe in it.

The intent of my blog is to be critical of reincarnation activity and discussion, specifically online.  If I have any problem with reincarnation, it is not with the belief itself, but with responses and reactions to that belief.

2.  Do you hate reincarnation forums?  Are you angry with (insert name of forum here) and are posting the kind of things you do because of that?

I do not hate reincarnation forums.  Yes, as I have mentioned in several posts I have had bad experiences myself and I know other people who have also had bad experiences.  This does not mean that I hate all reincarnation forums, or even that I hate any specific forums.  What I do dislike are the unpleasant things that seem to crop up around almost all reincarnation forums.

The goal of my blog (as stated on my About page which is available and easy to find) is to talk about reincarnation on the internet.  My goal is to inform and to stimulate reflection and discussion, not to insult or belittle.  I have been a member of MANY reincarnation forums in the past.  I have been banned from the vast majority of them.  I am up front and honest about this fact, but I do not hold any sort of personal grudge against any forum as a whole.  I wish every reincarnation forum with good intentions success for the sake of its community as a whole.

I was recently forwarded an excellent article that examined the interactions of groups of people.  In particular, this article looked at activist groups.  I think this is a valid parallel as they also tend to be small groups passionate about one subject.  The article pointed out many of the same problems I have discussed on this blog.  If it makes you feel better, many of the problems I bring up are common to small focused groups even when the focus is not reincarnation.  I am pointing out that these issues do occur in the reincarnation community, but I do not mean to imply that they are exclusive to it.

3.  You told MYstory!  You betrayed my trust!

This is a very touchy subject and one I would have addressed even if I had not had other feedback that needed response.

Over the years, I have read and been told many personal reincarnation experiences.  I have never shared a single experience on this blog that I did not have permission to share.  All of my examples are (whenever possible) generalized examples that I have pieced together from several accounts.  The truth of the matter is that there many similar stories out there in the reincarnation world.  If it seems like I have told ‘your’ story here, chances are that you simply aren’t the only person who has had that experience.  For example, one contested story I told was the one that centered around the person who claimed they had a past life as a queen and what was likely to happen if they made that claim.  That story was based on the experiences of three people (to be perfectly and brutally honest, myself included) who made a claim like that for the reason outlined in the post.  I was not thinking of a specific person when I made that example, nor did I give names or personal details.

This does not make your experience any less important or meaningful, but reincarnation stories and experiences tend to fall into patterns.  Social interactions are full of patterns, from how we say hello and good-bye, to the sort of conversation we will have with a friend we have not seen in gen years.  That’s simply the way of it.

Look at it this way… you’re not alone.

The next post is going to address some reader feedback as well, in regards to that issue and a couple of others.

In the last post, I brought up the reason that many reincarnation forums don’t last.  Originally, I had intended to include the contents of this post in that one but it seemed to be a large enough and important enough topic to warrant its own.  Let’s say that a forum is running out of discussion topics and there are few to no new members in sight.  Perhaps some new people have joined but they are quiet or they decided not to stay.  For whatever reason, things are looking grim and people are bored.  In some cases, this leads to drama or arguments, but in many it leads to an unfortunate phenomenon of increasingly bizarre claims and ‘new’ memories.

What are these new claims, exactly, and why do they turn up even from people who seem to be perfectly sane and settled in their former identities?

The Private Filing Cabinet

Most people who believe in reincarnation have what I like to call a Private Filing Cabinet.  It is one of those metal kind with a lock on it, for the sake of a visual aid.  This is where a person keeps theories, very personal memories, and their private reincarnation baggage.  Essentially, files in this cabinet are things that a person does not want to share with a large group of other people or post about ‘publicly’ on the Internet.

Here are examples of files in my own cabinet:

-That one famous past life that I really don’t feel comfortable talking about with anyone I don’t know exceptionally well
-Sexually explicit memories or otherwise very personal memories best not made public or opened to discussion and analysis
-Weird personal theories (we’re talking off the wall stuff, not things that could be brought up in a general reincarnation forum discussion) about the way reincarnation works based on personal experience and conclusions from my own memories and the examination of others
-Memories I have not classified or am not certain about that might cause others to jump to conclusions I don’t want them to, at least not until I am done with personal research
-Lives I’m really not sure about

The contents of others’ might vary a little but from a multitude of reincarnation discussions I can infer that most people who are active in the reincarnation community have similar types of private files.

Opening the Cabinet

Now, most people are going to share their private reincarnation stuff with certain people in their lives such as very good friends and significant others.  However, they will maintain a number of topics that they do not want to bring up in even a quasi-public situation.  When they join a reincarnation forum, they don’t even consider it since they will doubtless have many other things to talk about first.  If a person does share any of this information, it will tend to be with a couple of select people and likely in instant messages or e-mails.

So, what happens when people start running out of things to say?

Well, that is when people begin to feel the pressure to unlock the drawers and let others take a look at the files.  They may justify that they need external input on a matter or that this group of people is different and they have known them long enough to risk showing a bit more skin than they normally would.  This is almost always a bad idea.

However, it usually is not the work of one person talking him or herself into sharing something they are unsure about.  Often, encouragement comes from other forum members who have taken a glimpse at the files.  Here is an example story that references several people I have known on several different forums.

A certain forum member secretly believes she might have lived a life as a queen.  She has been tossing this idea around in her own head for a few months to a year.  She even mentioned it to a couple of friends in the reincarnation community who she has known for a long time.  Her friends seem accepting and have also shared their own seemingly unbelievable stories.

She belongs to a reincarnation forum along with several of the above mentioned friends. There hasn’t been much to talk abut on the forum lately so one or two friends send her a message: Hey, why don’t you talk about your life as a queen.  Honestly, everyone here is so nice and they will accept it.

Personally, she isn’t sure.  Not only is she not sure about the life itself but she’s not sure about sharing it.  Still, her friends have a point, so she makes a post about her memories.

From this point our story can take a couple of different turns:

First, her friends were right.  Everyone else on the forum believes her and supports her.  She’s still not sure but now everyone knows her as the reincarnation of Queen Such-and-So.  She has a new identity in the reincarnation community that she didn’t want and must defend something she isn’t sure about.  Chances are her defenses are going to ruffle some feathers since they will be defensive and likely exaggerated since they have to cover up for her own insecurities.  This eventually leads to drama or her leaving the forum and the entire community out of frustration.

Second, her friends were wrong.  Other forum members are nice to her face but deep down they don’t believe her and begin to question the validity of her other claims.  This eventually explodes and she is saddled with a history of being, “That crazy girl who claimed she was a queen.”

All of this leads to the suggestion of another good reincarnation forum and discussion group guideline:

If you have to talk yourself into saying something, or someone else seems to be talking you into saying it — DON’T SAY IT.

If you are worried about there being no discussion or about a lack of contribution search for new things to say about lives you are comfortable with, specifically, a good idea is to tie a historical discussion to some facet of a life you have mentioned. Memories of a Victorian life is only a step away from a thread about historical costume, Victorian literature, or even what people who lived in Victorian Britain as a whole seem to have retained from those lives.

Reincarnation forums are not the place for peer pressure, but it affects them more often than it should or than any maintainer or moderator would like to admit.  I personally recall an incident where a forum moderator approached me with claiming a life for the sake of discussion, offering understanding and help with learning more about my past life.  That was an absolute worst case scenario, of course, and often the pressure to reveal things comes in the form of encouragement that those giving it believe is helpful.

Statements to watch out for:

“Don’t be silly, they’ll believe you!”

“Believe me, I lived then too and I knew that person!  You’re definately them!”

“Have you considered bringing up what we discussed in IM last night on the forum?  I think it could lead to a good discussion and I’ll try to keep it in line.”

I suppose that reincarnation is a bit like sex, or drugs, or… that baby octopus sushi with the spicy mayonnaise-based sauce.  If you don’t want to go there DON’T.

“People just quit posting stuff.”

Naturally, that begs a simple question – Why do people just stop posting stuff?  Certainly the reasons vary from forum member to forum member in a forum that ends this way, but I want to suggest a theory.

Reincarnation forums die because members run out of things to talk about.

Ultimately, there are only a limited number of topics that any reincarnation forum can cover before it reaches that point as long as the membership remains relatively unchanged.  As I have mentioned previously I have been a member of many reincarnation forums and the vast majority of those no longer exist.  All of those forums followed a particular pattern:

1.  The forum is founded by a group of excited and talkative people.
2.  Everyone discusses who they were in their past lives.  They post long threads about their memories.
3.  The group discusses specific memories.
4.  The group discusses general reincarnation topics.
5.  The group discusses more specialized topics particular to the group.  (EX: PTSD in a forum about military past lives.)
6.  Internet memes, humor, and creative stuff is posted as reincarnation discussion wears down.
7.  Members start to drift away.  Posting slows down.
8.  A few members make an effort to stir up conversation and attract new members.
9.  The forum essentially dies off or becomes a non-reincarnation  forum.  (EX: I’ve seen some turn into role-playing games, a purely social place, a political discussion, etc.)

Of course, some reincarnation forums are quite old and have managed to survive for years.  The reason some forums succeed is simple: New members.  Forums with a steady influx of new members have their lifetime extended each time a new person who actually posts signs up.  These forums are often full of drama and disagreement, but they are big, they are known, and they are the forums that get all the new people.

Sadly, most interested people are going to find their first reincarnation forum via Google or another search engine.  It might not be the right forum for that person, but it’s what a search turns up.  A new person with no knowledge of the community or connections via other social networking sites does not have a good chance of stumbling upon a smaller forum.  Even if new members of a major forum eventually wander off to smaller forums, they will more than likely make their first foray into online reincarnation with a large forum.  If they don’t join, chances are they will lurk and spread the word about the forum via association.

The number one reincarnation forum online for years has been connected to Children’s Past Lives.  This is still the number one Google search result for ‘reincarnation forum.’  Most of the people I met in the reincarnation community started out on the CPL forum or were a member of that forum at one point.  The majority of other reincarnation forums and discussion groups that exist now seem to be the red-haired stepchildren of Children’s Past Lives.  Probably the second most popular and well known forum, Reincarnation Cafe, was founded by a group of CPL forum members who wanted leave that forum for somewhere more sane and comfortable.  (My research into the matter seems to indicate this is the case.  If I’m completely off base and you know that I am, please let me know and I will edit.)  A couple of specialized groups (specifically those for ‘controversial’ groups of reincarnated people such as reincarnated Nazis) also formed via connections made and problems encountered on the CPL forum.

So, where am I going with this?  Well, I suppose I am heading toward that inevitable conclusion that any reincarnation forum will die without a semi-steady influx of new members to post new memories and enliven old discussions.

Big forums, whether or not you personally like them or feel comfortable posting on one, are here to stay.

Next Post: The Effects of a Lull in the Conversation…

In one form or another, since about 1999. In it’s present form… um. Not sure… 2002, probably.  And it’s very nice of you to interview me and such for your charming blog. 

Awww, thanks.  I always thought it was more… militant and preachy than charming.  But, yes, thank you.  Anyhow, that’s quite a long time in internet terms.  Why did you originally create the site?

That is a somewhat complicated question. Initially, I think, I wanted to have a site of… being a site, as I had just learned to make them in school. I had one other (a les mis fan site, not deadness related), that I think came about first. The other thing I knew anything about and had any interest in dealing with was, of course, being a dead nazi… the original version of the site had a journal on it, though I gave that up when I got a diaryland. Also called diary of a dead nazi. It was going to be a repository for my old zines and sort of an all purpose personalsite, initially, to be quite honest.

So, it was originally going to be just a personal site?

Pretty much, yes. The deadnazi thing was sort of an overarching… well, personal thing, tying it all together. Humor, also, was always at least somewhat a part of it.

Right right.  However, you did become involved in the online dead nazi community, correct?

To some extent, ja, eventually. I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t one of the purposes for the specilization of the site later. I’d always speculated on what other deadnazis might be like…. admittedly, I didn’t initially think they’d be very much like me at all.

But, that wasn’t the case?

Much to my surprise, when I did stumble across others, indeed… they were, on the whole, pretty much entirely like me. 

Really?  How so?

They were essentially– the ones I ran into at the time, anyway– largely 18-30 something girls with gender/sexuality issues and a left-leaning, semi-activist political bent. There weren’t a lot of actual– that is to say, biological males in that bunch, and the few there were didn’t seem to be named… mostly they were of the clicking soldier varitey. Though I met some clicking soldier girls too. Those tended to conform to a whole other type. People who thought they’d been in the SS or had any real weight– you know, knew anything abotu that was going on at the time– they seemed rather like myself that way. 

That has been my experience as well.  Do you think there is a karmic or reincarnation-related reason for this?

I think in my case, it’s fairly straightforward, but then I haven’t seen many even nominally ‘of color’ dead nazis apart from myself, though I thought there would be more. I have seen a few asian girls, though usually it’s the white and the lower-middle middle class. But I don’t think that the Universe wanted to exactly punish people in that group, any more than say, the poor doomed fucks in the French Revolution– Marat and St Just and Danton and Robespierre and them. The Nazi officers were pretty much those people carried to an even more extreme extreme, excaberated by the presence of a leader and an external scapegoat. Eddie Izzard said it best when he pointed out the difference between killing other people and killing your own. Basically, I think we all got the Jean Paul Sartre, No Exit kind of personal hell… on the surface, our circumstances are pretty good. In my case, my childhood was fairly good to me. But I always kind of… knew about my own deadness, so I had this filter on things, a kind of context through which to view my new circumstances and I guess… find the humor? As for the rest, I can only assume that these are the circumstances which enable us to view things with the most humor, and irony, and perhaps compassion… through which we might learn the most. I feel that all circumstances we’re given, of any kind, are there so that we can choose to do the least harm, if  not the most good. When we choose that way, we’re reducing our karmic debt, and when we choose otherwise, we’re making some later set of circumstances worse, whether in this life or another.

That said, do you think there is any reason why younger women of that socio-economic bracket would be drawn to… well… Nazi Germany and/or the historical figures involved in it aside from reincarnation?

I’m not entirely sure. A lot of the ones my age had this… thing about it before there was really any media surrounding it… before Schindlers List, (I read that when it came out, due to my interest) before the habit of making movies about it (excepting, of course, Indiana Jones. I hated Temple of Doom, btw, which was the first one I saw), and before they reached the grade where Anne Frank was required reading. That said, it’s a pervasive stigma that’s kind of sitting over the whole 20th century. Nazis are the eternal villains of history, or so they seem /now/. Perhaps there’s a certain feeling of identification with people who seemed to really want nation-wide uniform unity, purpose, and improvement for everyone– and somehow, this other pretty horrific thing happened while they were doing that, as a part of that, which somehow swallowed up everything else good that might possibly have been accomplished. Also, I mean come on– the uniforms were designed by Hugo Boss.  If you’re a shiny happy young militant activist genderqueer baby dyke, you have to be drooling over those.

I was going to mention the uniforms.  HA!  Interesting.  Do you think it might have anything to do with the general fascination in fandom and elsewhere with villainous characters?  I’m just asking based on your comment about Nazis being the villains of history.

I do think that’s a reason some might become interested in it. For Gen-xers– I’m one, though just the tail end– we don’t take anything stated as an absolute at face value. Tell us something is good or evil, and not to question it? We’ve got to look closer and see for ourselves and pick out all the grey shades, or at least come to our own conclusion. Raise us traditionally religious? We’ll become Athiests. We’re a genration of contrarians. So when our teachers tell us these people are unfathomably evil, we’ve got to dig in and find out the truth. And I think a lot of us didn’t find heroes or villains, but just… people. Flawed, fucked up people who didn’t think enough about what they were doing and what it meant and man, could they have used some jewish philosophy, to be honest. I think for me, that’s why the whole deadness thing wasn’t as traumatic as it could have been, though I know it was for many others– or they say so, anyway. But then, as far as I’m convinced, I wasn’t as bad as I might have been.

That makes sense.  Getting back to deadnazi.net, how has it changed over the years?

Mostly it’s become more reincarnation focused, and finally, more humor focused. I had a forum on it for a while– phpbb– but it got hacked and I took it down. It never had much traffic, so I wasn’t really counting it much of a loss.

I know you aren’t really involved in the dead nazi community anymore per se but how do you think that has changed over the years… or has it changed at all?

Not entirely sure… I mean, I knew some people who were involved in it who were around 10 years older than me, and their dead nazi experience had some similarities to mine, but wasn’t really web based. And it was mixed up in a lot of other things, mostly bizarre magical tradition stuff that, while sort-of interesting, and harmless on the surface, leads to the kind of fu and drama that’s very toxic. Then there was the early web-people from like, 2000-2004 et al… I think they’re still kicking around. They didn’t really have much drama back in the day, but they seemed to be a pretty insular bunch. They had some doctrinal differences with the first bunch, but didn’t interact at all, that I could see. From what I understand, there’s been a BUNCH of drama since, and now there’s all these hotness communities and well… web craziness. Multiple claims and almost a fandom-level interest, which means it seems big, enormous, and absolutely shallow to anyone who acutally looks for it online, and non-existant to anyone who isn’t looking for it. And of course, there’s always been individual people floating around with their own thoughts and memories completely seperate from groups. I thought that there’d be sort of a critical mass of people sort of drifting together from all walks of life… but that’s how I’d write it happening in a story, you know. There’s far less certainty in real life, and a lot more squabbling and confusion. That all said, I don’t know what ‘the community’ looks like now… I don’t think there’s a single community anymore. I think it’s like the protestant church, and there’s a bunch of different denominations floating around, clinging to slight differences in the way they want to approach the whole subject.  You could call me the anti-ascetic stylite sitting atop my semi-isolate pillar of lulz, allowing the lulzworms to feed on the filth of my own bad taste.

Which was actually what I was going to ask about next.  Both your site and your dead nazi blog seem to be about humor now.  How does humor factor in?  Why did you decide to focus on humor and the lulz?  (Aside from that being the reason Hitler did everything he did… if encyclopia dramatica is to be believed.)

Ah, the humor. Lets see… I was going to say something here about Art Spiegleman’s excellent graphic novel set Maus, but that’s not really funny. I think the intense… angst of the whole deal got on my last nerve in my 10th grade year, when we went to a holocaust museum, and the exibits… some of them got kind of close to how I thought it should feel, but nothing really hit home. Nothing made you understand how these people thoughts any of this was a /good/ idea, by what flawed logic they operated, and by what devices they kept their brains functioning in the face of what they were doing… which can’t be realistically reproduced in a museum. So you know, straight history doesn’t get through enough. And I think by grade 10, we were all really… desensitized to it. 

But humor… humor we can relate to. Why is the daily show so popular? And more, the Colbert Report? In grade 11, my solution was to just take it to the nth– I came up with an idea for a show– Darling Adolphe’s Dancing Stormtrooper Review and Krystallnacht Cabaret perform Sieg Heil-lo Dolly! Which I so want to write in entirety someday. And in that year, we had the good fortune of seeing the show ‘GOOD’– which is a truly excellent piece of theatre, about a “Good” German, (who looked disturbingly like Drew Carey), and how he finds himself cheating on his infirm wife, convincing her to send her mother to the country to one of those old people ‘resorts’, distancing himself from his jewish best friend and therapist, being commended by Hitler for a book he wrote that did some small service to the German people, and ultimately, serving as a guard in a concentration camp. It was done with surrealism and humor, and it WORKED. And finally, that same year, my drama teacher showed me The Producers. And that pretty much cinched my devotion to the lulz. With humor, you have a context to deal with horrors, and admit to yourself that they /are/ horrible… logic seems clearer when you get it served in the context of, ‘laugh about it!’ as opposed to being preached to about it.

To finish up, do you have any advice for the young dead nazis out there?  Or to anyone who thinks they might have had a past life in Nazi Germany?

Um. Lessee. Don’t take anything too seriously, including yourself. Don’t listen to people who claim to know you better than you know yourself. Laugh a lot, and try not to get offended by things. Remember that all Hitler did was read a few pamphlets, and the whole world got fucked for it. And above all, remember that the overarching experience doesn’t matter to how you eat your breakfast– it can’t. It’s too big. Your personal experience and what you take from it does matter. So what were your mistakes then, and how can you /not/ make them now? Don’t use your deadness as an excuse, use it as a tool. And DON’T FUCK UP AGAIN. Seriously. Himmler can’t hurt you now. Even if you /were/ Himmler. Don’t get bullied around by people, don’t take anyone’s authority as given, and look beyond the immediate profit, and don’t let yourself get hemmed in by false constraints. Nothing is black and white. And above all, this from Maimonides– do unto others as you would to yourself: that is the whole of the Torah, the rest is commentary. And so should we all. Shalom Alechiem.

I received my degree in history and shocked a couple of reincarnation communities at a couple of different times by claiming that they couldn’t believe everything they read in history books when it came to researching and verifying memories of their past lives.  It occurs to me that this statement is often misunderstood or taken to an extreme conclusion.  The statement is that you cannot believe EVERYTHING you read in history books.  This doesn’t mean that you can disagree with everything in them either.

So, two questions:

1.  Why can things in history books be questioned?
2.  What sort of things in history books can be questioned?

ONE.

History books are written by historians, and historians are people.   How often do people do things without a reason or an ultimate goal?  Writing a book is not an easy thing to do.  A history book often requires years of research, writing, and editing on the part of the author.  So, chances are that a history book is written with a goal in mind and written by a person who feels very strongly about the subject.

One of the first things a student is taught in historiography 101 is that all history books have a thesis of some sort.  This can be very broad, such as providing a concise history of a place that has never been provided before.  They can also be specific, such as demonstrating how Alexander Hamilton laid the foundation for the American economy.  The thesis is the point of the book.  When reading a history book to research a past life, the first thing a reader should do is try and find the thesis.  Often it is hidden in the introduction.  The thesis will usually reveal the point of the book and the bias of the author.

Historians, like all human beings, have personal bias.

A very extreme example of the bias of historians and how it affects and inspires their work can be found in the case of Alan Schom vs. Ben Weider.  Alan Schom wrote a well-known and relatively recent biography of Napoleon.  Reading even a couple pages of Schom’s 1,000+ page work the reader becomes immediately aware of the fact that Schom HATES Napoleon.  I mean, Schom /really/ hates Napoleon.  In later chapters he even makes references to purely psychotic behavior on the part of the Emperor including potential personal habits too disgusting to mention.  Let’s just say it involves human feces.

Ben Weider, on the other hand, was present and founder of the International Napoleonic Society, a group dedicated to promoting the ‘truth’ about Napoleon, as opposed to the horribly sordid and incorrect historical accounts that apparently exist.  An article written about Napoleon by Weider will obviously present an entirely different tone and a completely different overall picture of the Emperor.

Further proof of the bias of historians can be found in the simple fact that multiple history books have been written on the same subject.  Each of these books typically presents a different thesis, was written for a different reason, and is based on slightly different sources of information.

TWO.

Knowing that history books a biased, how can an individual pick out facts and thereby verify past life memories?  The answer is actually similar to how history students and historians work.  Collecting information about a past life, requires consulting a variety of different sources to discern facts and likely truths from opinions.

Going back to Schom vs. Weider, reading an account of Napoleon’s childhood by each author would reveal a very similar story at heart surrounded by opinion and different conclusions.  Weider would explain how Napoleon’s actions as a child obviously displayed his future leadership skills and brilliance.  Schom would point out how Napoleon was a psychopath from birth.

Both accounts, however, would allow the reader to learn the following:

Napoleon was born in 1769.  Napoleon and his family were Corsican.  Napoleon had a large number of brothers and sisters.  Napoleon really did not get along well with other children in school and was a lonely outcast.  Napoleon’s father got him admitted to a prestigious military academy in France.

From this, the reader can conclude that these are the likely historical facts of the story.  Someone researching past life memories for verification would be wrong to disagree with the fact that Napoleon was unpopular in school.  They could disagree with the fact that (from Schom) he frequently beat other children to a bloody pulp, or (from Weider) that he read and memorized every word of Caesar while the other boys spent all their free time playing idle games.  [Examples exaggerated in this paragraph.]

PRIMARY vs. SECONDARY SOURCES

In historical research, there are two types of informational sources, primary and secondary.  Primary sources are directly related to events.  They were produced at the time of the event.  Primary sources include:

-diaries
-newspaper articles
-photographs
-records
-videos
-recordings
-personal accounts
-letters

There are other types of primary sources but that should give you a good idea of the sort of documents and information.  Secondary sources are compiled from primary sources.  All history books a secondary sources.  Even a history of the Napoleonic Wars written immediately after the event is still a secondary source as it draws from an examination of primary sources.

When doing any kind of historical research, it is important to consult both primary and secondary sources.  When seriously researching a past life, a person should ALWAYS consult primary sources if they are available.  Primary sources, in general, are much more valuable than secondary sources.  This is because primary sources do not contain as much bias as secondary sources.

This is not to say that primary sources are not biased.  However, primary sources rarely contain hidden bias.  For example, a Nazi propaganda film certainly has a bias, but that bias is perfectly clear.  A history book examining Nazi Propaganda films will doubtless have more complex and not as obvious sorts of bias.  While a primary source must be considered in the context that produced it, primary sources allow the person examining them to draw their own conclusions.  Chances are when you examine primary sources that they are some of the same sources the author of a history book you pick up also examined.  If you look at them yourself, you can draw your own conclusions and you may be able to see how a historian paraphrased a quote to give it a different emphasis, mentions some newspaper articles but not others, etc.

HISTORICAL FACT

Historical facts are historical things that are so well documented that they cannot be denied.  They are the pillars and foundations of history.  Historical facts are going to include things like dates and names.

The Battle of Waterloo took place on  June 18th, 1815 – This is an example of historical fact.  This cannot be denied or argued with.

Historical facts will be respected in all reputable works of history.  If you find a history book that seems to disagree with established historical fact, a good course of action is to dismiss the entire book.  The most common example of this kind of thing is Holocaust denial, especially in extreme versions of denying that it happened at all in the face of photographic, video, and written evidence.

HISTORICAL RESEARCH CHECKLIST

When you pick up any source material to research or verify a past life memory, here are some questions to ask about that source:

1. When was it written?  (Near the time in question?  Much later?)

2.  Where was it written? (In a country that admires the person?  In their own country?  In an enemy country?)

3.  If applicable – What is the thesis of the book, or why was this source created? (Check the introduction or the first chapter for a history book.  For a primary source, try and conclude why it exists.  A newspaper article is easy.  A film might be been created for informational purposes or propaganda reasons.  A song might have been written as a form of protest, etc.)

4.  Who created it?  (If it’s a historian, what else has he or she written?  If a primary source, who created it?)

The answers to these four questions will help to put the information in its proper context and hopefully give you a good idea of what sort of bias to expect.

FINAL NOTES

Historians focus on major events.  It is not possible to write a complete history of anything.  Most past life memories tend to be about commonplace events, even the memories of famous people can focus on the mundane.  The trick is determining if a memory is plausible given the context of history.  This can be as simple as a memory of your past life self eating a peppermint stick and finding several sources that report the person you think you might have been having a violent allergy to peppermint.

It can also be as complicated as determining whether or not someone might have been capable of a discreet homosexual affair.

Regardless of the purpose of the research, everyone should know that history books are flawed.  Historians are not always correct about everything.  Personal agendas aside, historians are working under the constrains of the material available to them which never tells the whole story.  They have to draw their own conclusions often based on their examination of available information.

Don’t be afraid to do so yourself.

1. The vast majority of people involved in discussing reincarnation online claim at least one famous past life

2. Most famous past lives have multiple claimants

3. Conflicts over famous past lives are often at the root of conflict between people discussing reincarnation, more than other topics

So, what can we deduce about the nature of FPL claims from this information.

I.  First, people who are vocal about reincarnation are going to be claiming famous past lives.  It can be observed that those who have the most famous and potentially questionable claims tend to be the loudest.  A frequently used argument is that people remember famous lives better, that they made a bigger impression on the person, so they remember more.  There is also a good chance that people remember famous past lives more because there is a massive amount of information about the life they are claiming available.  This results in two conflicting secondary theories.  One: The abundance of information serves as an inspiration for past life recall for the person.  Two: The abundance of information can implant false memories and make it easy to identify with famous people and create fake memories, especially since the person will have heard about the famous person when they were young either in school or from books.

II.  Second, we can easily conclude from the fact that the majority of famous past lives have one or more claimants that just as people are drawn to modern celebrities, they are drawn to dead ones.  Humans are fascinated by fame, and by famous people either modern or historical.  A famous past life with multiple claims likely has much more to say about the present than it does about actual past lives, soul-sharing, parallel incarnations, or anything else.  A FPL with a large number of claimants must have some facet that speaks to the problems and experiences of people today in general or a group of people.

To give a simple example:

When I was in college, Richard Sharpe novels and the BBC productions had a spike in popularity among college-aged girls.  I don’t know the reasons behind this flare in popularity, but it happened.  Around this time, the novel “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell” was released.  This book  also enjoyed a flare of popularity with an already Harry Potter and Napoleonic Era-interested audience.  During this time, there was a HUGE increase in the number of Napoleonic famous past life claims, especially the Duke of Wellington.

To follow with another, but slightly more obscure example:

For a couple of years after its release, the movie “The Patriot” had a small but dedicated fandom.  The most popular character amongst the fans was based on historical figure Banastre Tarleton.  Among members of the fandom, several competing FPL claims popped up for Tarleton.

III.  Third, famous past life claims are obviously a sensitive topic for people.  Why is this?
-Doubt is always going to be an element for most people.  I have not met anyone with a FPL claim who did not have moments of doubt and who was perfectly comfortable with it.  As such, having the claim questioned, vehemently disbelieved, their sanity called into question, etc. etc. was a very sensitive thing.  Someone who is not completely confident in something is not going to react very well when they are forced to defend it, especially against someone who likely has a better footing in terms of believability and logic.
-People who claim famous past lives know that other people might make the same claim.  Deep down they probably fear that other claimants might turn out to be correct and/or be favored by others when they have to conclude which person’s claim is valid.

The majority of past life communities are very accepting of famous past lives.  Many devote sections of their communities to the discussion of FPLs and spend considerable time debating them.  Famous Past Lives are a big deal in the online reincarnation community.  Unfortunately…

At least 99% of famous past life claims, if not more, are completely incorrect.

The famous past life community often expresses outrage at the fact that while people are willing to believe accounts of past lives as common people, their claims are dismissed as insanity.  They argue that since both claims are already expecting people to believe in reality of multiple lives, the specific claim should not matter.  This argument, however, is flawed.

-For the average person, believing in past lives really isn’t that much of a stretch.  Some recent survey proved that 20-something percent of Americans do.  For billions more, reincarnation is part of their religious beliefs and has been for centuries.  Believing that Jim Bob down the street used to be Napoleon is asking considerably more.

-Mathematically, there is an infinately greater chance that you lived a past life as a common person.  Famous people count for less than 1% of the population, and always have.  If you lived a past life in Ancient Egypt, it simply is more likely that you were one of the tens of thousands of peasants, artisans, or slaves as opposed to the hanful of people who were members of the royal family.  This is a matter of simple, ghastly arithmetic.

As mentioned above, people are fascinated by famous people.  People today like to imagine what it might be like to be a queen, a famous actress, or a best-selling author.  The same thing simply has to apply to historical famous people and the search for famous past lives.

Sandra Sparks, a well known expert in the reincarnation realm, points out that (to paraphrase) people are drawn to personalities who have qualities that they want to possess.  Many active members of the online reincarnation community and even anyone with a long-standing personal interest will surely remember a time when they either considered, or took on, a past life identity to help them get through a tough time in their own life.  Past lives aside, most people can remember identifying strongly with a particular book, movie, or song during a certain time in their life because it was especially meaningful at that moment.

Simply put, famous past life claims are a type of fandom, but a more traditional one than claims of being famous characters from books/movies/games/TV shows or living a parallel life with a still-living famous person.

So, are all famous past life claims completely wrong?  No, they probably are not all wrong.  How do you tell?  Well, this isn’t an exact science, but here are a few things that might indicate that a claim has something to it.

1. Longevity – I know a few forum owners who maintain something like a ‘Three Year Rule.’  This means that the person needs to have claimed their famous past life for a number of years before talking about it with others.  People do change considerably as they grow and mature.  Most fannish obsessions or needs to cling to a personality to get through tough times will end after 1-3 years.  A famous past life that someone has claimed for a few years and continues to claim has a higher chance of being legitimate.  Anyone who doesn’t believe they will be a different person in three years probably isn’t mature enough to be doing serious reincarnation-related self-examination anyway.

2.  Uncommon – Is the claim a common one with many other people saying the lived the same life?  If so, there is a much higher chance that there is a modern reason for the claim than a real past life one.  A famous past life that doesn’t get much attention outside of history books is more likely to spawn a legitimate claim.  Does the person have fangirls, discussion communities dedicated to how awesome or hot the person was, a recently produced film or popular novel about their life?  If they do, see how the person feels when the fandom attention dies down.  A person can be a very big name historical figure and not be popular at all now.

3.  Sanity – What is the person making the claim like?  Do they seem sane and rational?  Do they talk about other topics besides their famous past life… including modern topics, general reincarnation disucssion, and offer input on the experiences of others?  Do they believe they were also a dragon and that they are half-lion now?  This is really a matter of common sense and your own judgement.

CONCLUSIONS:

-Be skeptical of any famous past life claim

-The online reincarnation community is essentially about famous past lives and tends to be obsessed with them

-Most people will outgrow their famous past life claims

-Most famous past life claims are just admiration for the famous person (or, as much as it pains me to say it, physical attraction to them)

The Internet has also given rise to many communities that exist to give their members a place to discuss their past lives.  The previous post outlined some of the reasons why people might want to avoid such communities.  This post takes the opposite side and will attempt to detail some of the benefits of taking the plunge and entering the online reincarnation community.

Humans are social creatures.  We crave interaction with other people and want to discuss our interests with others.  Chances are that you aren’t going to find too many local people who share an interest in reincarnation, let alone in your specific areas or lives of interest.  The closest you are probably going to get are history classes.  If you want to meet friends who share this interest, the Internet is going to be the best place to look and reincarnation communities the logical starting point.  Social interaction is important.  Further, working out your personal past life issues might not be possible without just being able to speak honestly about them with others, feedback aside.

For all of the problems that can occur with these communities, people often meet and become good friends though them.

A reincarnatin community can serve as a hub for the exchange of information.  Community members will each have different interests and have pursued different paths of historical interest.  Outside of college professors who teach history and published historians, members of reincarnation communities tend to be the most historically knowledgable people you can find.  Many also have a genuine passion for history.  Members of a community can exchange historical knowledge, book recommendations, and point out good resources for past life information that individuals might not have discovered on their own.

While it is unlikely that individuals will meet a specific person they knew in a past life, they do have a good chance of meeting someone from the same era and possibly the same country.  This provides an opportunity to share and compare memories for the purpose of verification.  The Internet is likely the only way these meetings and conversations can take place and the individuals are almost always separated geographically.

There is also a chance of meeting another person who might believe they lived the same past life as oneself.  While this is often a source of problems, it can also be benefitial, especially if it results in a realization that one of the parties was mistaken about the life in question and therefore can move on in a more productive direction.

Finally, members of a community can provide support for one another.  Since nothing can be 100% certain where past lives are concerned, individuals often find themselves frustrated, confused, or in doubt.  Often they need a bit of suppport, a pat on the back, or some encouragement to continue in their search.  A past life community is one of the few places that can readily offer this sort of understanding and support.

Part 2 of this series will take a look at the benefits of forums and discussion groups.

1. It isn’t safe and none of your information is secure.

While most past life communities require registration, moderator approval, and even questionaire’s and personal invitations the truth is that nothing you post on a past life forum is 100% safe.  It is inevitable that someone will gain membership to the community that you would prefer did not see your very personal stories.  It is very likely that someone will gain membership who will use that information in a way you did not want it used.  It is also very likely that your stories and experiences will be repeated outside the forum.  Other members will talk about them and even if your specific name is not mentioned your information will be spread around.

All forums also present a risk of being hacked.  phpBB forums that are privately hosted are at the greatest risk here and chances are that if you asked the owners of a number of established past life communities they would report spam and troll posting, full on hacking that resulted in deletion of posts and the inability to access the community.  Even communities hosted by known hosts such as freeforums or zetaboards are not immune.  In general, a community that has not been hacked or experienced a security breech has simply not been around very long.

How comfortable are you with putting very personal, emotionally sensitive information on the Internet?

2.  You will have an upsetting experience involving another member or another group of members.

Past life communities are awash with drama.  Even the best managed group will have factions, dissatisfied members, and psychopaths constantly on the verge of snapping at you.  Take a look at forums for something that isn’t quite as personal, such as a video game.  Yes, you are going to see a high level of drama and argument.  Imagine this in relation to your personal beliefs and memories.

I have never known a single person who was active in the online reincarnation community who had not gotten into at least one major conflict with either other member(s) and/or moderators of a community.  These conflicts are always messy and very hurtful for all involved.  Often the conclusion will involve one or more parties being banned from the community, long-lasting resentments and hatreds, and general community-wide problems for weeks following.

If you end up on the wrong side of a community conflict you could lose friends, receive hateful e-mails, and often get a ‘mark’ on your reputation that will make participation in other communities more difficult or impossible.  Ultimately, reincarnation people on the Internet tend to move in the same circles and your reputation will follow you.  Even if you come out in a positive light from the conflict chances are it will have been long and painful anyway.

Again, these kinds of conflicts are not a possibility -  They are inevitable.  Most communities post long and complex sets of rules for this very reason, they are aware of nature of community conflict and how often it really does occur.

3. Your identity will be tied to your past life claims.

If you join a past life community chances are that the other members will know the names of your past life identity long before they know your real name in this life.  Take a moment to think over that statement and what it implies.

The past lives you claims constitute the foundations of your identity in the reincarnation community.  Chances are that as you get older you might begin to rethink some of your claims or realize that you were wrong about one or more of them.  Sadly, there is no reset button on your history from community discussions and relationships.  Some people will be more receptive to and acception of change than others.  Often a change will be taken badly by a community, especially since many people might have chosen to believe the previous claim and put emotional stock in it.

Many past life communities claim to be ‘forward thinking.’  However, they are still past life communities and were created to discuss experiences of and memories of past lives.  Even the most well-intentioned community that constantly reminds members that they are trying to learn about their past lives to grow in this life is not forward thinking.  Past life communities are about past lives. That is why they exist and that will be the focus of the discussion.  These communities are about looking back and your past life identies are what is going to matter here as far as how you are received and how others react to you.

4.  You are the ONLY person who can work out problems related to your past lives and truly know you past life identities.

Your brain is your brain.  You are the only one who knows exactly what you remember and how you react to those memories.  Other members of past life communities cannot see inside of your head.

No one else can look at a photo of you and know who you were in a past life.  No one else can read your memories and know with 100% certainty that you were such-and-so.  Often asking for the help of others to discover your past life identities and to work through past life problems ends up confusing the person asking even more or sending them down the wrong path.

I have often seen people take on past life identities they are not sure about because of pressure from a community.  Further, if a community is focused on a certain era or country other members will often begin to look into lives that fit it and are often encouraged by existing members to do so.   Now, this is almost never done maliciously (I have seen it done maliciously but that will be covered in detail in a later post) but it is simply human nature.  People want to connect with other people.  People join past life communities often to try and find others will experiences of the same place or era.  As mentioned in point 3, if someone ends up taking on an identity for these reasons they may find themselves stuck and miserable, unable to make any progress with their own real issues.

5. There are crazy people out there and cult-like groups who will try to recruit you.

There are plans for a later post dedicated purely to this topic along with accounts from two friends who were victims of such behavior.  For now, let’s keep it short.  While it is not common, there are people in the reincarnation community online who really can hurt you and impact your current life in a very real way.

Accounts of people moving across the country to live with people who they met via reincarnation-related discussion and winding up in abusive situations and relationships are not unheard of.  This is not something that will happen to even a small minority of people who choose to talk about reincarnation online but everyone should be aware that it DOES happen and it is often unnoticed.

Those are five points cover the majority of reasons why it might be a good idea to avoid getting involved with reincarnation online.  The next post will focus on the benefits.  However, it is important that everyone involved in these sorts of discussion understand the pitfalls, shortcomings, and risks.

I would like to wrap this up by pointing out that there are a large number of reincarnation communities out there.  Each community has different aims and purposes.  Some are more positive and productive places than others.  By no means are all such communities 100% bad but they do share the problems listed above along with their own.

Part 2 is coming soon.

The goal of this blog is to examine the online reincarnation community and the phenomenon of discussing past lives with others online.  We also want to provide a resource for those new to the whole thing and who are looking for guidance and help.

Reincarnation Online strives to be an unbiased source of discussion and information, well, as unbiased as anything concerning such a personal subject can possibly be.  Clicking on the About tab above will take you to a page with detailed information about Reincarnation Online along with information about how you can contribute.

This is a reinvention of an older blog that some may have seen on blogspot.  This new version aims to be more open and less personal.  This version will also be more skeptical and critical, so please be aware of that going in if you are a former reader of the old blog.

Thank you and welcome!  Happy reading.