I am not here to convince anyone, I am here to ask the question and perhaps give an opinion.
The Community of the Conscious Game offered a four day workshop about the subject, and I was there in the role of assistant, taking care of the sacred fire, playing the drums during the meditations given in each workshop and just witnessing the power of the human spirit.
You can call them past lives, regressions, purgatory, collective unconscious, heaven, methaphors for this life, etc. But whatever you call them will give them the strengh to be real, in your own life.
I very much like the saying that goes: "What you believe becomes real."
An example of this is Pablo, a thirty six years old man that assisted to the course, he arrived with the forehead full of wrinkles, the mind swarming with worries and the heart filled with sorrow. His father had died just a few months ago and he needed answers.
His words during the circle of the fourth day still echoes warmly in me: "Thanks to learning about my past lives I have found strenght to live this one, I know now that I can throw myself into the abyss and come back safe into the other side".