Reincarnation

When I was in my twenties, I was in a pub quiz team. The team and I played home matches in the Three Tuns in Uxbridge, and travelled around the Greater London area playing other pub quiz teams. Sometimes we won.

On this occasion we went to a pub in Harrow that I hadn't been to before. I went into the bar, and almost immediately caught sight of someone who triggered in me a recognition and cascade of memories. The odd thing was that having had that flash of recognition, and a picture show of me, my sister and this person going to clubs in what I guess was the 1950s... I realised that I could not recall his name/I hadn't been to clubs with my sister and a man/there was no substance behind the memories.

I can still remember how it felt sitting there and trying to recall the detail from the pictures which had flashed passed me inside my head. The rooms I remembered were not rooms I have ever lived in. I was groping around for names and dates and something firm to back up the instant slideshow I had seen, but there wasn't anything there.

I was young and embarrassed and so I didn't go up to the guy and tell him that I had the strangest feeling that we had met in another life, and I have regretted that since.

Years later, I went to Rye and bought a book in the Martello bookshop on the High Street, called Destiny, by Martin Heald. As I read the book, I realised that I had dreamed about one chapter in it, and had described the dream almost exactly as it was described in the book. I was so struck by this that I corresponded with the author for a while.

I try to keep an open mind... it seems to me that the lessons of nature, the cycle of the seasons, the circle of birth and rebirth, lean towards the possibility of reincarnation. I have read that the bible once contained much more material about reincarnation, which was cut out of the bible at the behest of Constantine and his wife. Certainly there are still places in the bible which talk about people having returned in another form.

I do not have any facts which a scientist would accept, to prove that reincarnation is a fact, and personally I do not need them. I am happy to keep my mind open to the possibilities and aware of the improbabilities.

One area of research that has fascinated me in this relation, is the idea that people's appearance may be affected by their previous life. Ian Stevenson did some research with children, and various other people have asserted that this is true. There is a huge collection of photographs of possibly reincarnated individuals which are very interesting indeed, if your mind is open to the possibility.

Finding the website with those photographs led me to look for connections myself. So far, I think I have identified three. You will see above Antoni Gaudi, the artist and architect and Hundertwasser have very similar outlook and interests and appearance. The death of Gaudi was in 1926, and the birth of Hundertwasser in 1928. Their appearance was similar both as young men and as older men.

The other link in appearance is between the singer Eva Cassidy, and a little girl who captivated audiences at the recent Britain's Got Talent event: Connie Talbot. There is also the coincidence that not only do they bear a striking resemblance to each other but Connie chose to sing "Over the Rainbow", a song Eva used to sing.

The final couple are Nikola Tesla and Levashov.