I believe in the afterlife. That we are souls - spiritual beings having a human experience. I believe because I have read many credible accounts of people's past-life regressions, near-death experiences, channeled messages, mediums, etc from many different sources from all over the world.
Such as this:
In 1980, a woman, Catherine, was being hypnotized by psychiatrist Dr Brian Weiss as a solution to her uncontrollable anxiety and nightmares. Unexpectedly, while under hypnosis, Catherine began to narrate events from the “between lives” state:
"Soon she saw herself floating above her body, drawn to the familiar light. Her head began to roll slowly from side to side, as if she were scanning some scene. What she said next left me breathless, pulling the air from my lungs.
"Your father is here, and your son, who is a small child. Your father says you will know him because his name is Avrom, and your daughter is named after him. Also, his death was due to his heart. Your son's heart was also important, for it was backward, like a chicken's. HE MADE A GREAT SACRIFICE FOR YOU OUT OF HIS LOVE. His soul is very advanced. . . , His death satisfied his parents' debts. Also he wanted to show you that medicine could only go so far, that its scope is very limited."
Catherine stopped speaking, and I sat in an awed silence as my numbed mind tried to sort things out. Catherine knew very little about my personal life. I had been well schooled in traditional psychotherapeutic techniques. The therapist was supposed to be a tabula rasa, a blank tablet upon which the patient could project her own feelings, thoughts, and attitudes. I had kept this therapeutic distance with Catherine. She really knew me only as a psychiatrist, nothing of my past or of my private life. I had never even displayed my diplomas in the office.
THE GREATEST TRAGEDY IN MY LIFE HAD BEEN THE UNEXPECTED DEATH OF OUR FIRSTBORN SON, ADAM, who was only twenty-three days old when he died, early in 1971. About ten days after we had brought him home from the hospital, he had developed respiratory problems and "Total anomalous pulmonary venous drainage with an atrial septal defect," we were told. "It occurs once in approximately every ten million births." The pulmonary veins, which were supposed to bring oxygenated blood back to the heart, were incorrectly routed, entering the heart on the wrong side. It was as if his heart were turned around, backward. Extremely, extremely rare. Heroic open-heart surgery could not save Adam, who died several days later. We mourned for months, our hopes and dreams dashed. Our son, Jordan, was born a year later, a grateful balm for our wounds.
At the time of Adam's death, I had been wavering about my earlier choice of psychiatry as a career. After Adam's death, I firmly decided that I would make psychiatry my profession. I was angry that modern medicine, with all of its advanced skills and technology, could not save my son, this simple, tiny baby. My father had been in excellent health until he experienced a massive heart attack early in 1979, at the age of sixty-one, and he died three days later. His Hebrew name, Avrom, suited him better than the English, Alvin. Four months after his death, our daughter, Amy, was born, and she was named after him.
Here, in 1982, in my quiet, darkened office, a deafening cascade of hidden, secret truths was pouring upon me. Catherine could not possibly know this information. Th re was no place even to look it up. My father's Hebrew name, that I had a son who died in infancy from a one-in-ten million heart defect, my brooding about medicine, my father's death, and my daughter's naming-it was too much, too specific, too true. This unsophisticated laboratory technician was a conduit for transcendental knowledge.
"Who," I asked, "who is there? Who tells you these things?"
"The Masters," she whispered, "the Master Spirits tell me. They tell me I have lived eighty-six times in physical state." Catherine's breathing slowed, and her head stopped rolling from side to side. She was resting.”
Many Lives Many Masters - Dr Brian Weiss
A graduate of Columbia University and Yale Medical School, Brian L. Weiss M.D. is Chairman Emeritus of Psychiatry at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami.