Deja Vu and visiting places of former lifetimes

Deja vu is an authentic experience, but it is only a fragment of a far greater phenomenon -- reincarnation

-Osho



How many times have we visited a new place and felt we have been there before..the strong deja vu feeling. Usually we dismiss this feeling. Somewhere in 2002-03, on one of my official visits to Rajasthan I had this strange feeling which I dismissed. It took me almost 6-7 years to make the connection and fit in the missing pieces.

We were on a management audit assignment to a factory in Chittor, Rajasthan. I always loved visiting the historical forts and museums. I had already visited the well preserved Jaipur palaces and museums by then. Chittor is famous for the Victory fort and Rani Padmini's palace. If I knew what was left of Rani Padmini s palace I would have given it a miss. It was a bare set of walls and a building....stripped of all its past glory unlike the Jaipur and Jodhpur palaces. Such a place would hardly evoke any strong emotion. Infact we were quite disappointed to see this place.

Somehow as I walked into what remained of the palace, I was gripped by strong feelings of sadness and a deep connectedness. It was a very low feeling and there was no logical reason for it. It was desolate and empty, maybe very few people visited this place. I ignored and dismissed this feeling as we all normally do. The driver led us to the back of the palace and showed us some water body and some vacant space. He said the famous Jauhar ( group suicide in times of war) was performed at this site. I thought maybe the eery, low feeling might be connected to that and just wanted to get away from the place. I never thought of this incident till much later in 2009 while undergoing a PLR session I saw my life in Rajasthan in the 1300s.
The session was more kinaesthetic ( feelings, sensations and emotions) than visual.
The feelings and emotions were undeniably alien so was the personality I assumed. I was a Rajasthani woman in my thirties..dressed in a ghagra and I was taken to a scene where i was jumping into the fire committing Jauhar. I said i had to sacrifice to protect my family honour, a concept I have personally never identified with in this life. I said this with a strange conviction and with no fear at all. In this life in sharp contrast I have been afraid of fire and getting burned always. I have a birth mark on the inner part of my left foot that resembles a scar left by acid.
In the past life I could feel the burning sensation on my left foot only..as if my soul left the body as soon as the body started burning.I could recall a Muslim invasion and that we were defeated in battle and so the women had taken this extreme step to escape further torture and humiliation.

I later researched on the historical facts

Battle with Sultan Alauddin Khilji in 1303 AD.
Sultan Alauddin Khilji – the ruler of Delhi - was so seduced by the beauty of Queen Rani Padmini, whose face he only had a glimpse of through the reflection in a mirror, that he chose to attack Chittorgarh. It was a battle that the Rajputs knew they had no chance of winning given the overwhelming force of Sultan Khilji’s army. In anticipation of the loss, Rani Padmini, along with all the other women of the fort, committed jauhar. 30,000 women are said to have committed jauhar at this time – the largest mass suicide in history. With nothing left to come back to, all the men in the fort donned saffron robes and marched into battle with Sultan Khilji to face certain death. In total, 50,000 people are said to have lost their lives in this battle. I also found that the jauhar was committed in the underground cellars of the palace and not on the outside like the driver had told us.

While Sultan Khilji was successful in conquering Chittaurgarh, he did not get what he really came for – i.e. Rani Padmini. Following Sultan Kilji’s death,Chittaurgarh was regained by the Rajputs.


Jauhar-The term is extended to describe the occasional practice of mass suicide carried out in medieval times by Rajput women and men. Mass self-immolation by women was called Jauhar. This was usually done before or at the same time their husbands, brothers, fathers and sons rode out in a charge to meet their attackers and certain death- wikipedia

The building that stands today is a reconstruction this could explain my initial disappointment to see the place.
Perhaps, I was one of the 30,000 women who jumped into the fire that day. The soul visits places it has been connected to in past lives,to retrieve that part of its energies it lost there..Was my soul trying to heal a wound almost 700 years old ?