Reincarnation

Scientific Research in reincarnation

You can discuss the reincarnation question from various points of view. One of these is to look upon it from a religious perspective, as we have just done. We can note that such and such a number of people believes in reincarnation as a reality. But no matter how many people believing in something, belief does not result in reality after all. Another point of view is to theorize about the subject and describe various speculative hypotheses of how we think reincarnation may be a reality. The crux of the matter is however, whether reincarnation can be discussed based on directly experience. In that case the question is no longer a matter of faith or a hypothetical thought, but on the contrary a question of immediately experienced reality.

It is an inevitable fact that numerous people have clear and extremely detailed memories that only seem to find a satisfactory explanation in past lives. It is often children who in amazingly ways are able to tell about past lives, and in a number of cases it has been possible to trace the place where the child maintains to have lived, and hereafter check details, which the child in no way can have had access to in this life. Studies show that children most often speak of past lives in the age between two and four years, and generally the ability to remember is reduced on to the age of seven. Also hypnotic experiments with grown-up persons by regression techniques have produced amazing results, which have been documented in books and in movies. These testimonies have not yet lead to serious scientific investigations on a larger scale, except from a few pioneers, who for decades have worked to surround the subject with respect. In recent years there has been a growing interest in the subject, especially because of Dr. Ian Stevenson's admirable and most meticulous research in past lives, which now because of the overwhelming number of testimonies is noticed around the world. Ian Stevenson is professor of psychiatry and used to be leader of the psychiatric department at the University of Virginia. He is now president of the department of personality studies at the same university. He has spent more than 40 years on studying cases that provide scientific material for the studying of memories of past lives, and he has more than 3000 examined cases in his archives. Even some of the most persistent sceptics agree that Stevenson's research produces some of the best testimonies so far on reincarnation up to today.

His research started in 1960, when he was studying a case with a child from Sri Lanka, who maintained to be able to remember a past life. Since then he has travelled the world and interviewed the many implicated persons with all kinds of cross checks and controlling investigations, when residence and family circumstances could be informed. In the late 1960'ies he published "Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation (the book was published in Denmark in 1970), which contains a number of typical and very different cases. Subsequently he continued his research and published other books, among others "Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect". In 1997 Stevenson then published the great two-volume work: "Reincarnation and Biology - A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects". In volume 1 he primarily describes birthmarks and in volume 2 he concentrates on deformities and other anomalies, which children are born with, and which - similar to birthmarks - cannot always be related to inheritance or events during pregnancy or birth. In the comprehensive work there are hundreds of pictures, which connect these features with past lives. The investigations have shown that birthmarks and deformities can be "impressions" or reminiscences of wounds or accidents in past lives. Inexplicable pigmentations in the skin can as an example result from injuries from past lives. Stevenson has studied the Native Americans in Alaska, who often have "prophetic dreams" of souls reincarnating. The Tlingit Native Americans and the Igboes in Nigeria often look if the newborns have physical feature that may indicate a recent deceased, and thus reincarnating person's characteristics. This is also part of Stevenson's investigations.