This blog is being presented in the light of offering some clarity as to the concept of walk-ins and how it became popularly accepted New Age belief only. It is not meant to advocate or deny the theory.

A walk-in is a new age concept of a person whose original soul has departed his or her body and has been replaced with a new soul, either temporarily or permanently.

Walk-in is an ancient concept first described in Hinduism whose modern name originated in the Spiritualist faith and was popularized by the related, but not identical New Age movements and beliefs. A walk-in is thought to be a person whose original soul has departed his or her body and been replaced with a new soul.

Walk-ins first appear in Hindu sacred literature. In Hindu belief, each person is comprised of several bodies, including the physical, astral, mental, refined, and so on. The only essence that is not a body, and therefore not tranferable, is the Atman. So according to this belief system, a walk-in, as described in the book Merging with Siva by Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, can take one or many of these bodies.

The most famous Hindu story of a walk-in is that of the missionary Saint Tirumular. Legend has it that he voluntarily left his body in order to reanimate a young cowherd who had just died. His own body was subsequently taken up to heaven by the god Siva, leaving him to spend the remainder of his life on earth in the body of the cowherd. He was able to access the dead man's knowledge, including his ability to speak Tamil.

In modern times, "true" or sincere walk-ins might be a rare but possibly real medical or mental health phenomenon. A typical walk-in report involves an individual (frequently, but not always, female) who is badly injured, falls ill or is in some way incapacitated, or seems to "die" on the operating table during surgery, perhaps later reporting a near-death experience. Others claim that deep emotional trauma and suicidal desires alone may set the stage for a walk-in experience.

After resuscitation, the person may behave in a manner completely at odds with earlier, established behavior patterns. She or he may speak in an unknown language and identify by a different name, and may be very frightened and confused, or supernally calm. While the experience cannot be determined to have any objective reality, subjectively it is deeply and importantly real for the affected individual.

Almost invariably, a walk-in will state they either do not know where the original inhabitant of the body has got to, or that the original soul has left it and gone on to heaven, or reincarnated, etc., leaving them in charge. The new individual may claim he or she is an angel; a "new" version of the former self; an older, more experienced soul; less often, a brand new one who has never incarnated before; or any manner of other origins.

Many walk-ins claim heightened psychic sensitivity and may take up work as New Age healers or ministers. Others claim inability to accomplish basic tasks of daily living. Clearly, at least for some, claiming a walk-in experience may have a number of secondary gains.

While the New Age belief system about walk-ins claims that these transitions can't occur involuntarily and that no soul walks into another's body without reason, the behaviour of some "new" people indicates that it may not always be so.

In classical cases, the change is immediately apparent. However, in cases where the "new soul" has enough information to take up the life of the "previous occupant" seamlessly, it may take weeks or months before a walk-in notices, or comes to believe, that a transition has indeed occurred. Occasionally, the "old self" returns after a period of months or years, and either the "new self" departs, or they coexist and may try to integrate into a single being, or work out a means of cooperation and live as two persons in one body.

This kind of walk-in is very similar to old-time, pre-Sybil cases of multiple personalities such as Mary Reynolds. A period of unconsciousness is followed by the manifestation of a new self. William James studied Reynolds and Ansel Bourne, and thought of multiple personality as something natural but not yet understood, rather than a mental disease.

Boris Sidis in his 1903 book Multiple Personalities recorded similar cases, involving both men and women.

In 1979, Spiritualist author Ruth Montgomery published Strangers Among Us, a collection of accounts of walk-ins. She included her own New Age theories and some improbable historical research, naming some renowned figures such as Thomas Jefferson as walk-ins. This and her follow-up book Threshold to Tomorrow brought the concept of walk-ins to the general public.

A belief system grew up around the walk-in experience, complete with all the usual New Age attributes such as "ascending into higher frequencies of evolution", predictions regarding Earth Changes, and the concept that the new person may possess a variety of psi powers unknown to ordinary human beings whose "vibrational levels" remain in lower frequencies.

The New Age walk-in belief system now includes a number of variant experiences such as channeling, telepathy contact with extraterrestrial intelligences, or soul merging, where the original soul is said to remain present, coexisting or integrating with the new one.

As of 2006, an increasing number of people claim some type of walk-in experience. Walk-ins were featured on the June 4, 1999 segment of Robert Stack's 'Unsolved Mysteries'. According to information presented on this program, there are now walk-in conventions, one of them drawing approximately 500 people.

Checklists to determine walk-in status include name changes, career changes, new interest in the study of psychic phenomena, a feeling that one is not really from Earth, or a sudden desire to move to a new environment.

Reported physical changes include memory loss and the sudden onset of allergic reactions. Since all of these factors could possibly be attributed to simple life changes such as adolescence or middle age, it's difficult to determine solely from such a checklist if a "true" walk-in has occurred.

The most logical method might be to determine if any specific event historically connected with walk-ins (anesthesia for surgery is one of the most common) occurred around the time one first started feeling differently. There is, however, no known scientific method to prove whether or not the walk-in experience has any objective reality, let alone how to determine if one has occurred.

The belief system states that all souls come to earth in order to accomplish missions of cosmic significance, and that a walk-in is a highly evolved soul who is here to help raise the vibrational levels of humanity and doesn't want to bother with the tedious process of incarnating in the usual fashion (i.e., birth).

There is  a very unusual case in that it involves bringing to life an apparently dead body, that belonging to Jasbir Jat, and the assumption of that body by a different soul, whose name in a prior incarnation was Sobha Ram. This is not really a reincarnation case, but a reanimation case where a separate soul “walks in” to take over a body that had previously been inhabited by a different soul. In past life regression therapy literature, “walk-ins” are reported, though generally these cases do not involve the death of an individual. Instead, in regression literature, it is described that a soul inhabiting a body volunteers to leave that body so that another soul can incarnate by using that same body.This case was researced by the famous Ian Sanderon M.D. who was a renowned reincarnation expert.

Read about it here: http://www.iisis.net/index.php?page=reincarnation-walk-in-ian-stevenson-sobha-ram-jasbir-jat-walter-semkiw&

Main article source:  http://www.crystalinks.com/walk_ins.html