Do "past lives" exist?

Past lives and reincarnation: what was once a hokey New Age theory is now a viral TikTok trend. Using a YouTube video to induce a state of hypnosis, TikTok users are emerging from their alleged hypnotic state with wild claims. Some say they discovered they “let the Trojan Horse in” during a battle in ancient Greece; others say their past lives were more recent, and that they died on 9/11 or caused the death of Princess Diana in 1997.

It’s easy to dismiss the “past life challenge” as harmless and silly. But in reality, this latest viral TikTok challenge is chock-full of ethical issues. While “past life regression” using a hypnotic YouTube video might sound like a fun sleepover game for 13-year-olds, it seems a bit disturbing that so many grown adults are wholeheartedly buying into this fad. One blogger covering the story likened it to the Ouija board craze of decades past. The difference, however, is that 13-year-olds playing with a Ouija board at sleepovers weren’t recording the experience for an online audience, hoping to go viral. Whenever someone is playing to an audience, hoping to earn views and “likes,” there is built-in incentive to embellish, if not flat-out lie.

Also, while it’s harmless and fun for some, the Past Life Challenge could create real problems for people who suffer from anxiety and other mental health issues. Some users are reporting visions—whether real or imagined—of past lives that were violent and traumatic. What will this mean for the person with severe, clinical anxiety, who—thanks to a YouTube video—now believes he witnessed unspeakable horrors in a “past life”? For the person with depression, what does it mean to believe that none of us are precious and unique, but just the latest bodily host for a spirit created eons ago?

Then there are the children. Instead of undergoing hypnosis themselves, some adults are using the challenge to tell stories about their kids and the “creepy” and “eerie” stories they’ve told about their past lives. One TikToker said she was “horrified” when her four-year-old saw her browsing a post about the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and announced “I used to work there”—the North Tower, which was destroyed by a plane-turned-cruise-missile. According to the user, the little girl said “the floor got really hot” and that she had to jump out the window to escape.

Needless to say, I am skeptical. That little kids are prone to making up stories is not news, especially to parents. The user insisted her daughter “knows nothing about 9/11,” but didn’t explain the details of the photo her daughter did see. Was it an image of the North Tower in flames? If so, it’s easy to see how a four-year-old would invent a story to personalize and make sense of such a horrific visual. Other parents claim their children told stories about how they fell into water and drowned, or that they were hit by a car. Again, is this evidence of the child’s “past life,” or is it just evidence that children make up stories—often based in their own fears and anxieties?

I do not believe in past lives. Through my interest in genetics and genealogy, however, I have learned one reason so many people believe they’ve had them. Thanks to the pioneering field of epigenetics-- he study of inherited changes in gene expression—there is growing evidence that memories, especially traumatic or emotionally charged memories, can alter a person’s DNA. The altered DNA is then passed on to the person’s children, grandchildren, and so on. Some researchers believe that “inherited memories” manifest as unexplained phobias and personality quirks. For instance, if your great-grandmother saw a friend drown as a child, you might end up with an overblown fear of swimming. Other researchers take the “inherited memory” theory even further, speculating we can actually see snippets of our ancestors’ memories—especially when we’re asleep.

Have you ever had an intense dream that seemed to clearly take place in the past? Epigenetics researchers who believe in inherited memories would tell you it’s not your own “past life” you’re seeing, but one of your ancestor’s. This is especially true if the memory involves a life-or-death experience, or an experience that could be critical to the survival of future generations.

I have often wondered if this has happened to me. When I was in elementary school, I had a dream I will never forget. It was so significant to me that I wrote down all the details in a notebook, wondering what it all meant. It was actually a rather short and simple dream: I was standing near a harbor in a place with a lot of green hills and stone walls, watching a couple of boats pull in. At first, this doesn’t seem unusual, and the people in my town are actually excited to see them. That changes when the people in the boats jump out and start chasing us, revealing they are armed with knives and other weapons. At some point, I trip over part of a stone wall jutting out of the ground, and when I look up, I’m puzzled and somewhat relieved to see the person chasing me is a kid—he appears to be about twelve years old. Still, he’s wearing a bizarre outfit, which looks barbaric and foreign and scary to me. The whole thing is bizarre and terrifying.

Obviously, this never happened to me. And I don’t believe it happened to me in a “past life,” either. It is far more likely that it happened to one of my ancestors. In the fifth grade, I turned my textbook and froze when I saw a drawing of a Viking longship. With later research, I learned one of the most heavily targeted lands for Viking attacks was Ireland, where my mother’s family lived until the late 1800s, and which has a lot of stone walls and green hills. As an adult, DNA testing—the company GenomeLink and its Viking DNA Project, specifically—revealed that I was indeed half Irish, but that I also had a small amount of DNA that undoubtedly came from Norwegian Vikings.

An inherited memory, or just a dream? You be the judge. While I don’t put as much stock into it as I did when I was a kid, the outcome makes me laugh: the Vikings in my dream were scary, but since they also show up in my DNA, they must have decided to chill out at some point and socialize with the locals on the Emerald Isle. Obviously, they liked each other enough to have babies together—so maybe their rude arrival can be forgiven.

I sincerely hope all the people participating in the “Past Life Challenge” can find that kind of happy ending. But if you’re prone to anxiety, skip the challenge. Let dreams from the past come naturally.