Can some people really recall details of their past lives?

Can some people really recall details of their past lives?

I was pushed on to a quest frequently every time I encountered anything related to rebirth or reincarnation. I wanted to know why it had come to haunt me and one particular question that encourage me to explore - Do the dead actually return?

Well, it reminds me of a fable in the Mahabharata, the Indian epic. If you remember Amba was reborn as Shikhandi to avenge her humiliation by Bhishma and paves the way for his death. Lord Vishnu also incarnated nine times in different forms to fulfill different roles and we are still waiting for his tenth incarnation as kalki.Probably these all are related to punarjana.

The same scriptures further clarify that death is a mere point in the soul's journey to the ultimate goal of life- moksha or liberation from the cycle of life and death. Thus I relate it as the transmigration of the soul as the passage after death of the human or animal soul from a mortal body to a new incarnation in another body of the same or another species. But this network of life is not limited to fables and fantasies. There is several documented evidence of children remembering their past lives. Researchers have found that memories of past lives are most active during childhood, mainly between the ages of three and five.

Many of the movies have story based on rebirth which further encourage me to think why such kind of movies are being made. I differentiate between imagination and reality but such documents or movies that support the concept of rebirth.

Today again I watched a movie named Kudrat. The story of Kudrat was based in the city of Shimla where two lovers were born again. They were separated in their earlier lives by the evil desires of a rich person. How the story unfolds was told very differently but it revolved around the very concept of rebirth.. A true classic movie with a lot of British Era period buildings, atmosphere of the era gone by. It had suspense which chilled me and holded me till the end. The court scenes were ultimate where the issue of rebirth was picked up brilliantly.

To understand reincarnation or rebirth we must know its origins. The Bhagvad Purana states Just as commodities like gold and other articles change hands, a jiva (soul) wanders from one species of existence to another. So we are reborn and get a life in accordance with our past karmas or deeds.

Swami Vivekananda was even more emphatic on the role of free will. He has written that we all have the power to be what we are, and whatever we wish to be, we have the power to make ourselves." If what we are has been the result of our past actions, it certainly follows that whatever we wish to be in future can be produced by our present actions; so we have to know how to act." Most Buddhist sects agree with reincarnation. The Tibetan Book of The Dead describes the soul's passage after death and how it comes back to human form. The story of the Dalai Lama is the best example of children's past life memory. Each of the Dalai Lamas, over many centuries since the birth of the first in 1351 AD, followed the same line.

A little skeptical about this theory, I myself don't know about past lives, but I do agree that karma rebounds. Karma is action and just as whatever seed you sow becomes a plant of that species, so whatever action you perform must give its results.