It goes to what the purpose of life is.
Why are we here? Where did we come from? Religion attempts to answer this regardless of what it is. The religion that terrifies me more than any other is reincarnation. Once is enough for me to go around this merry-go-round. I knew a guy who thinks he's the reincarnation of Thomas Andrews, the designer of the Titanic. He grew up asking about aunts and uncles he never had, drawing pictures of a great ship with little boats in the water. As an adult he went to a hypnotherapist who specialized in past life regressions. He remembers thinking, "This is never going to work," and then he went under. He began speaking in a Scotch-Irish brogue and he later marketed the tapes. It was like listening to someone telling the story of his life. The family of Mr. Andrews, who perished on board the ship he designed, is not happy about this fellow. I've listened to his tapes a dozen times just for entertainment and wondered how he could have such experiences. But in one story, Andrews reports a verbal exchange with two other men, then leaves. Then he continues the story with what the men said after he left. How could someone "remember" a conversation he was not present to hear? Still, he spoke of his first car, the woman he married; he complained she was more interested in his car than in him (their first date was a ride in the car). He talked about being a kid, keeping bees, playing soccer; of being a mid-line manager, learning about steels. He talked about his dad, a constable and a religious man who had no toleration for alcohol. I wondered, where do people come up with that stuff.
When I talked to him, he told me he had memories, some vague, some more vivid. For example, he says he remembers vividly standing of scaffolds overlooking the twin ships Titanic and Olympic. I have no theories as to how these memories got into his head. He said he was punished as a child. Once, in school, he said he was caught staring out into a lake choked with ice near his school. He said the teacher dragged him from the room while he told her and the students to "stop millin' about and get into the little boats!"
Very strange. Don't know if the tapes or CDs are still available, but they used to be available from Amazon.
