Reincarnation. Does it exist? Do our personalities live on in another body? I know we all have different personalities even our pets have different interests and reactions to things. Or, are we all fertilizer after our bodies can’t take life anymore. Some people feel as if they have been here before and will visit again as part of nature’s cycling and recycling.

Do our souls and personalities have a rebirth? A reincarnation? Do we remember from past lives so we can do things better? Maybe we come back as a fly or a snake and we have to cope with our new bodies. Re learn everything. I know this sounds crazy or like a cartoon where all the animals have personality.

More than 1,000 people went to conferences in N.Y.C. to uncover events and people in their past lives. Some people look to connect with someone who has died, some are just curious and some want more from their death. For $150 a ticket you can go to a reincarnation convention that is growing in popularity.

Dr. Brian Weiss, a firm believer in reincarnation and a graduate of Yale’s Medical School, a Psychiatrist, travels the globe hypnotizing ordinary people in an effort to recall things from long ago. He says hypnosis puts people in a relaxed state helping people to recall extraordinary things. He says that we are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spirits having a human experience. He believes our personality transforms into a new babies body. This belief goes back 3,000 years to India and Greece. The belief has been rejected by Jewish and Christian religions.

A Boston University Professor, Steven Prothero says reincarnation is alive and well in pop culture. Americans are fascinated by the idea that they have lived before. The problem with the people that reveal that they lived before never claim to be an ordinary or poor person. They boast that they were Cleopatra or wealthy famous men.

Do you believe in reincarnation? Yes! One out of every five people do believe.

Do you think you lived a previous life? Yes! One out of every ten people think they did.

In the Indian tradition reincarnation is a bad thing; not something you wanted. In America we view it as a second opportunity at life.

Another Psychiatrist, Jim Tucker of the University of Virginia does not use hypnosis. He keeps records on young children who have volunteered information on past lives because their accounts have the most details and offer events. He had a toddler that thought he was his diseased grandfather and picked him out of a old group picture. Many of the 2,500 children he interviewed describe past lives that died early or from a violent unexpected death like a car crash ,drowning, suicide or snake bite.

He even has photo’s of children that have birthmarks or scars where the violent death occurred on their former bodies. These are very conventional university professors that some believe are caught up in justifying crazy fairy tale stories. These guys still have their jobs! They believe that there really is more to life than just the physical. The fact that we all can talk to ourselves without opening our mouths or share our thought with other people is extraordinary. We can choose to open our mouth and share a thought with anyone we choose or not.

The owner of Skeptic Magazine, Michael Schimer, does not believe in any of this outer body personalities living on. He says, there isn’t anything left to be reborn. The evidence shows from science that damage to the brain, strokes, Alzheimer’s and dementia, examples of brain damage; when the brain tissue dies, the personality the person the memory dies with it.

The popularity of the psychiatrists view is increasing. The doctors admit that a sample of one’s DNA is not going to reveal that you were alive in the 11^th century. It is clinical proof from people’s revelations. Their view will not prove scientific certainty but neither can science prove reincarnation does not exist. There will always be spirituality.