A few times i have been asked about the understanding of reincarnation and if it is really true.
It is never easy to explain how to experience past lives, but the monk Ajahn Brahm does it in a very good way in my view. In Buddhism we can experience it by entering the 4 jhanas.
if you like you can watch the video
If you have questions or your own thoughts of past life a discussion is alwas welcome
I'm a strong believer in reincarnation. It's not because of dogma or reading, but because of direct experience. So I'll offer up one Hindu view here, as there are other Hindu views. The Gaudiya Vaishnava view, for example, differs from the Saiva Siddhanta view.
Firstly, there is a misunderstanding as to what actually reincarnates. It is the soul body, and it's essence, the Self God (Brahman) that reincarnates. It is not the 'I' of this ego/individual lifetime. So from the mystical Hindu view, that soul has a body, not the physical body, or the intellectual body having a soul. Some people (outside of Hinduism) believe it's this identity of this lifetime that goes o heaven, continues, etc., but that's not the Hindu view.
So each lifetime, we (I'm using 'we' for the soul here, and often do. ) build a physical body, a mental body, and a physical body around us. it's temporary, the way a tree grows, but later dissipates. These bodies all have Sanskrit names and are written about in ancient Hindu scriptures. Individuals who have become spititual bings have the more inner bodies dominaing over the more external ones. Some people spend more time in their physical bodies, while others have the soul body more dominant. That's why holy people are shown with golden auras or halos.
I'll relate just a couple of stories illustrating how I came to my beliefs. take them as fiction if you wish. There are several more.
Young children are known to still have remnants of memories of the previous life, as the soul yet hasn't built it's new personality around itself. My mother related o me my first deeper words as a youngster, before I could read ... 'I want to go to the Himalayas to meditate'. This was on a western Canadian farm, no knowledge there of eastern things. I followed my maternal uncle back from India, he was killed on duty during WW2. He reincarnated as my elder brother, and I followed. I was female in the past life, and was either his lover, or his maidservant. Mom was totally convinced I was a girl in her womb. She had a very mystical nature to her, using premonition, stuff like that.
One of the signs of previous lives is birthmarks. Somebody I know figured they were receiving a Tami l from the Sri Lankan war who was murdered by soldiers, in a brutal way. His family survived, came as family refugees to Canada, and he followed them in his astral body, the first body built around the soul body. The child he was to be this lifetime had a dark hair patch on the side of her head, at the death point. (Axe blow to the head) Hindu legends tell of such things as clues to reincarnation.
So yeah, I believe in reincarnation. Add 10 more stories like this. It's experiential, not logical, not provable.