Marilyn Monroe | Sherrie Lea LairdPlease visit the new IISIS web site, www.iisis.net for many new reincarnation cases, including synopses of many reincarnation cases researched by Ian Stevenson, MD, of the University of Virginia. Sign up for the IISIS Newletter!
Adrian Finkelstein, MD, is a board certified psychiatrist who as been performing past life regressions as part of his practice for almost 30 years. Over six years ago, Dr. Finkelstein began working with Sherrie Lea Laird, who contacted him due to disturbing flashbacks of a past lifetime in which it appeared that she was Marilyn Monroe. After conducting extensive past life regressions, Dr. Finkelstein become convinced that Ms. Laird is indeed the reincarnation of Ms. Monroe, not only due to her memories, but also due to the presence of similarities in facial bone structure, hands, handwriting, voice pattern, linguistics and personality traits that exist between Marilyn Monroe and Sherrie Lea Laird. Further, Dr. Finkelstein notes that Ted Jordan (deceased), a close friend of Ms. Monroe's and author of Norma Jean: My Secret Life with Marilyn Monroe, had extensive telephone conversations with Ms. Laird. Mr. Jordan also came to the conclusion that Ms. Laird is the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe. Dr. Finkelstein’s work is summarized in his recently released book, Marilyn Monroe Returns: The Healing of a Soul, which was featured on CNN Showbiz Tonight in August 2006. Ms. Laird, who goes by the stage name, Sherrie Lea, is a singer whose production of No Ordinary Love hit the top of the charts in Canada and Europe. It is interesting to note that in her film Bus Stop, Marilyn’s role was of a singer named Cherie. As mentioned, Ms. Laird sought out Dr. Finkelstein after she started experiencing disturbing, intrusive flashbacks of her life as Marilyn Monroe. It is common in reincarnation cases that memories can be disturbing, as the individual does not have a context to understand the memories. As such, past life memories can interfere with life activities. This type of reaction was also described in the Barbro Karlen/Anne Frank case. Barbro began having spontaneous memories at age three which were so vivid that she lived, in effect, a double life. Her parents, who were Christians, did not understand how Barbro could have memories of another lifetime and were made uncomfortable by her experiences, which resulted in emotional isolation for Barbro as a child. When the memories started to subside at age 15, Barbro experienced great relief, as she was now able to live life “just as Barbro.” In a similar way, Sherrie was distressed by these intrusive memories of a past lifetime and sought out Dr. Finkelstein, who had been performing past life regressions for over thiry years and who had written, Your Past Lives and the Healing Process: A Psychiatrist Looks at Reincarnation and Spiritual Healing, first published in 1985. Dr. Finkelstein’s own history is quite dramatic and lends credibility to the reincarnation case of Marilyn Monroe/Sherrie Lea Laird. Dr. Finkelstein grew up in Communist Rumania at the end of the WWII. Due to the anti-Semitism that was characteristic of Rumania at that time, through great effort, Dr. Finkelstein and his family immigrated to Israel in the winter of 1960-61. His family was poor and he describes walking through the snow in torn shoes as his family made the rounds to make the necessary bribes to Communist officials, to get the needed paperwork to depart. To prepare for their planned move to Israel, Dr. Finkelstein taught himself Hebrew in secret, as it was illegal to study Hebrew in Romania. Though the competition was great, Dr. Finkelstein was admitted to the Hebrew University Hadassah Medical School. It was here that he first was exposed to hypnosis, which was used by a mentor to treat severe cases of asthma. Dr. Finkelstein witnessed how hypnosis could be used to stop severe asthma attacks in an almost miraculous way, which made a great impression on him. In 1967, Dr. Finkelstein served as a medical officer in the Six Day War, treating Israelis and Arabs alike. He won his MD in 1968. After moving to the United States, Dr. Finkelstein was accepted at the Menninger School of Psychiatry, which at the time, was one of the premiere psychiatric training institutes in the world. While at Menninger, Dr. Finkelstein cured one of his mentors of chronic, severe migraine headaches through hypnosis. After he graduated from Menniger, Dr. Finkelstein was given the Directorship of Outpatient Psychiatry at Mount Sinai Hospital in Chicago, and in addtion took on the position Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Chicago Medical School, University of Health Sciences in Chicago. He later became Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Rush University, Rush Presbyterian St. Luke’s Medical Center in Chicago. Dr. Finkelstein also undertook personal analysis for about 700 hours with a training analyst at the Psychoanalytic Institute in Chicago. During this time in Chicago, Dr. Finkelstein started doing past life regression therapy. I cite Dr. Finkelstein’s history and qualifications so that the reader with understand that he is an experienced psychiatrist and past life regression therapist who would easily distinguish genuine past life memories from fabricated memories, which makes the Marilyn Monroe/Sherry Lea Laird case all the more compelling. In his upcoming book, Dr. Finkelstein explains how Ms. Laird, who happens to be an excellent hypnotic subject, was guided into a “somnambulistic hypnotic state,” characterized by specific features, such as a “waxy face,” resulting from deeply relaxed facial musculature, which cannot be faked. Information obtained in this state is considered to be truthful, which is one reason why Dr. Finkelstein believes that Ms. Laird is the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe. One question that is often asked is why is it that it seems that everyone thinks they are someone famous in a past lifetime? The truth is that most people were not famous in past lives. Many times, when a psychic or a person gets an intuitive hit that an individual was a famous person in a past lifetime, in actually, the famous person is acting as a “landmark” for that incarnation. For example, a psychic may get the impression that a client was Cleopatra in a past lifetime, when in actuality, the client was Cleopatra’s advisor, maid or acquaintance. The psychic can't come up with the client’s specific name or identity in that era, so the closet, most prominent individual in that era, Cleopatra, pops into the psychic’s mind. I call these “landmark associations,” as the famous person acts as a landmark for a person’s past lifetime. On the other hand, famous people have to reincarnate just like everyone else and recent reincarnation research indicates that people reincarnate very quickly, almost continually. If this is true, then we would expect people such as Marilyn Monroe and Anne Frank to be reincarnated at this point in time. Some of the best reincarnation research has been done by Ian Stevenson, MD, at the University of Virginia, who made a career out of studying children who have spontaneous memories of past lives. Two key Stevenson cases have been published in the book Old Souls, written by journalist Tom Shroder. These two cases involve individuals from Lebanon, Suzanne Ghanem and Daniel Jurdi. Stevenson first studied Ghanem and Jurdi when they were approximately 3 years old, when they began having spontaneous memories of past lifetimes. Each child gave their biologic parents enough specific information, such as their past life family names and villages of origin, that the biologic parents were able to reunite the children with their past life families. When reunited, the child could identify past life family members by name and they knew secrets that no one outside of the past life family knew. The knowledge of these children, Suzanne Ghanem and Daniel Jurdi, was so impressive, that their past life families accepted them as the reincarnation of their deceased family members. Dr. Stevenson studied the Ghanem and Jurdi over 25 years ago, when they were young children. In their past lives, Suzanne Ghanem’s name was Hanan Monsour and Daniel Jurdi’s name was Rashid Khaddege. In 1998, Stevenson revisited Ghanem and Jurdi, who were now adults. A dramatic finding was that Ghanem and Jurdi, as adults, have the same physical appearance, the same facial features, as they did when they were adults in their previous lives.
The assertion that people reincarnate quickly, almost continually, is supported by the fact that Suzanne Ghanem was born only 10 days after Hanan Monsour died. Daniel Jurdi was born approximately a year after Rashid Khaddege died. The cases of Hanan Monsour/Suzanne Ghanem and Rashid Khaddege/Daniel Jurdi are featured in more detail in Return of the Revolutionaries: The Case for Reincarnation and Soul Groups Reunited, as well as in Tom Shroder’s, Old Souls. This observation that people have the same facial features from lifetime to lifetime has been corroborated in many other independently researched reincarnation cases, many of which are featured on this website, such as the cases of neurosurgeon Norm Shealy, Police Captain Robert Snow, Fire Chief Jeff Keene, William Barnes and the case of Barbro Karlen/Anne Frank. How do we validate past life matches as accurate matches? In validating a past life case, the following criteria should be met:
The case of Marilyn Monroe/Sherrie Lea Laird, meets all the criteria listed above and as such, I too support it as a valid reincarnation case. For an in depth understainding of the story of Sherrie Lea Laird, please read Dr. Finkelstein’s beautifully produced book, Marilyn Monroe Returns: The Healing of a Soul. For related information, visit Dr. Finkelstein's web site, www.pastlives.com and Kevin Ryerson's site, www.kevinryerson.com |
