Random incidents often lead to profound discoveries. In 1960, Dr Ian Stevenson, former head of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia, and then Director of the Division of Perceptual Studies at the university, heard of a Sri Lankan child who claimed to remember a past life. He flew down to question the child, his parents, and the people whom the child claimed were his parents in his past life. The experience led Dr Stevenson to think reincarnation may be real. The more cases he pursued, the greater this conviction became.
Dr Stevenson, who passed away in 2007, published two articles in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research about children who remembered past lives. In 1974, he published his classic book, Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation. It is a product of scientific research into reincarnation. In 1997 Dr Stevenson published Reincarnation and Biology. The subject of the first volume is birthmarks.
Conducting research on children’s supposed memories of past lives, he noted they frequently had lasting birthmarks. In their past life memories, these were supposedly related to their murder or a violent death in a previous life. After investigating 210 children who claimed to remember past lives, he found about 35 per cent had birthmarks and/or birth defects that they (or adult informants) attributed to wounds on a person whose life the child remembers as its own. The birthmarks were usually hairless, puckered skin; some had little or no pigmentation while others had increased pigmentation. In 43 of 49 cases in which a medical document (usually a post-mortem report) was obtained, it confirmed the correspondence between wounds and birthmarks (or birth defects). There is little evidence that parents and others influenced the child’s mind in order to explain the birthmark or birth defect. “I did not accept any indicated mark as a birthmark unless a firsthand witness assured me that it had been noticed immediately after the child’s birth or, at most, within a few weeks. I enquired about the occurrence of similar birth marks in other members of the family; in nearly every instance this was denied, but in seven cases a genetic factor could not be excluded,” Dr Stevenson writes about his methodology.
In one case study, he mentions a Burmese child who remembered a deceased aunt who had died during a heart surgery. After obtaining the medical reports of the dead woman, he notices that the child had a long, vertical linear hypopigmented birthmark close to the midline of her lower chest and upper abdomen which corresponded to the surgical incision during the aunt’s surgery. Most of the cases where birthmarks and congenital deformities are present for which no medical explanations exist have one to five characteristics in common.
(1) In the most unusual scenario, it is possible that someone who believed in reincarnation expressed a wish to be reborn to a couple or one partner of a couple because they are convinced that they would be looked after by the ones they chose. Such requests are often expressed by the Tlingit Indians of Alaska and by the Tibetans.
(2) Prophetic dreams coincide with reincarnation belief. Someone who has died appears to a pregnant or to-be pregnant woman and informs that he or she will be reborn through her. Sometimes relatives or friends get dreams like these which they relate to the mother to be. Dr Stevenson found these prophetic dreams to be particularly prolific in Burma and among Alaskan Indians.
(3) In these cultures, a newborn child is thoroughly examined for recognisable marks to establish whether the deceased person they had once known has been reborn. Searching for identifying marks is common among cultures that believe in reincarnation; especially among the Tlingit Indians and the Igbos of Nigeria. Many West African tribes still make marks on dead bodies in order to be able to identify the person when he or she is reborn.
(4) The most frequent rebirth syndrome is a child remembering a past life. Children usually begin to talk about their memories between the ages of two and four. These memories gradually vanish when the child is between four and seven years old. Most of the children talk about their previous identity with great intensity and feeling. Often they cannot decide for themselves is the real world. They often experience a double existence: at times they live one life, and at times the other life takes over. This is why they usually speak of their past life in the present tense saying things like, “I have a husband and two children who live in Jaipur”. Almost all of them are able to speak about events leading up to their death. Such children tend to consider their previous parents to be their real parents rather than their present ones, and usually express a wish to return to them. When the previous family has been found and details about the person in that past life have come to light, then the unusual behaviour of the child is explained.
(5) Dr Stevenson found that many Indian children born in low caste families feel uncomfortable. He concludes they belonged to a higher caste in their previous lives. The child may ask to be served or waited on hand and foot and may refuse to wear cheap clothes. Dr Stevenson offers many examples of such unusual behaviour patterns. In 35 per cent of cases he investigated, children who died an unnatural death developed phobias. For example, if they had drowned in a past life then they frequently developed aquaphobia — fear of water. If they had been shot in their previous life, they were scared of guns and even sudden, loud bangs like crackers. Those who remembered having died in a road accident, were sometimes afraid of road travel.
Another frequently observed unusual form of behaviour, which Dr Stevenson called philias, concerns children who express the wish to eat alien food or to wear clothes that were culturally different. If a child had alcohol, tobacco or drug addictions as an adult in a previous incarnation, he or she may start asking for these substances and develop cravings at an early age.
Many children with past-life memories exhibit abilities or talents they had in their previous lives. Often children who were members of the opposite sex in their previous life show difficulty in adjusting to their current sex. Dr Stevenson concludes that this can lead to homosexuality later on in their lives. Girls reborn as boys may wish to dress as girls and prefer the company of girls rather than boys.
Until now all these human oddities have been a mystery to conventional psychiatrists since the parents could not be blamed for their children’s behaviour in such cases. Research in reincarnation, like Dr Stevenson’s, is shedding light on the subject. In the past, doctors were inclined to explain the personality oddities of children in terms of hormones, but the truth is beginning to dawn now.