Reincarnation

Throughout his life, Jung admitted his strong fascination with the theory of reincarnation but never declared himself for or against the idea. We simply don’t know whether he believed in past lives, nor can we say whether dreams reflect images from past lives. There are certain dreams set in a past time or place unfamiliar to you that you may find extremely hard to explain away as being merely symbolism, metaphor or allegory. There are those who do believe the dream state can be a gateway to past lives and that dreams featuring events before you were born are snapshots of past lives. It is said that these kinds of dreams, also known as karmic dreams, are incredibly real and intense. There’s a certain ’grand dream’ feeling that often accompanies them.

Even as the dream is taking place, you may be feeling a sense of awe and wonder. You awaken knowing that this dream is very special and that it relates to something about your distant past. There’s an inescapable feeling that the dream is about a past life.

In most cases, it is impossible to prove beyond doubt that a dream relates to a past life experience, as your dream is unlikely to give you the facts needed to prove them with public records of births, marriages and deaths. In the end, it simply comes down to a gut feeling, an unshakable belief that comes from deep within you. Whether you believe in reincarnation or not, what is important here is what you take from the dream as a lesson for your current life.

If the goal of reincarnation is to improve karma—the Buddhist principle of cosmic reward or punishment for the things you have done or left undone in past lives—then this dream offers you an opportunity for personal growth.

If, in dreams, you have the sensation of living a previous life (or that you reincarnate as something or someone), it means that you need to go beyond your current circumstances. The curiosity that you have to know the future encourages this kind of dream. In Asia it is believed that once man has reached an appropriate level of spirituality, he can remember his past lives. These come to human memory through meditation and through dreams.

The Hollywood actor Sylvester Stallone is convinced that he lived during the French Revolution; the singer Engelbert Humperdinck believes that in a past life he was a Roman emperor; and a Californian seer told the pop star Tina Turner that she is the incarnation of the wife of an Egyptian pharaoh.

To dream that you are reincarnated (born again) indicates that you need to deal with issues that you have been avoiding. You may have been given a second chance to regain what was previously thought to be lost. Alternatively, you are starting or entering a new stage in your life, and you now able to look toward the future without dwelling on the past.