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Parapsychology

You Are Not My Mother: The Enduring Mystery of Past Lives

Is some form of existence after death possible?

Key points

  • The concept of reincarnation goes back thousands of years, and is a part of many religions.
  • Many studies of past life accounts across the world show that the phenomenon transcends cultural boundaries.
  • Stevenson identified people whose recollections were exceptionally precise and verified by multiple checks.
  • Claimed memories may influence a child’s development, becoming integrated into their emerging personality.

A few months ago, one of my patients mentioned that when her daughter Helen (not her real name) was about 2 years old, she would almost daily wail and protest, “You are not my mother.” Gradually, over time Helen stopped making this accusation.

Medium Past Life Memories
Medium Past Life Memories
Source: NASA/rawpixel

I recalled this incident recently when I read a paper by J. Keil [1] about a Turkish child who reportedly recalled a past life in in Istanbul, located 850 kilometers away, who had died, as was later found, 50 years before the child’s birth. Keil documented the child’s statements before identifying his previous personality. Below is an abbreviated version of the case.

In April 1997, JK met KA, who was then 6 years old, for the first time. KA’s parents told him that KA started to talk about another life around the age of 2 and a half. KA lived in Hatay. His parents were Alevi Muslims. Neither they nor their relatives had any information that suggested a connection between them and the previous personality described by KA.

KA said his family’s name had been Karakas and he had been an Armenian Christian. He was rich and lived in a large three-story house in Istanbul. His house was on the water and there was a church located behind it. People called him Fistik and his wife and children had Greek first names.

During a subsequent visit to Istanbul, JK located a three-story house overlooking the ocean with a church behind it in the Cengelkoy area, as described by KA. Nearby he found a local historian, Toran Togar, who said that an Armenian Christian had lived in the house that JK had identified, that he was rich, that he was the only Armenian in that district, that his family name was Karakas, that his wife came from a Greek Orthodox family.[1].

KA had a birthmark on his chest that was visible for several years after his birth. He claimed this mark corresponded to the wound caused by the bullet that killed him in his previous life. According to psychiatrist and researcher Ian Stevenson, 35 percent of cases involving children who claim to remember past lives have birthmarks or defects that correspond to wounds or injuries suffered in their previous lives.[2].

The investigation of past-life accounts was pioneered by Stevenson, director of the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia School of Medicine until he died in 2007. Stevenson proposed that certain phobias, affinities, exceptional abilities, and illnesses might not be fully explainable through genetics or environmental factors alone. He suggested that reincarnation could potentially serve as a third contributing factor. [5].

Claimed memories may influence a child’s development, becoming integrated into their emerging personality. This highlights the potential psychological and developmental implications of such experiences.

Michael Sudduth, a philosopher of religion at San Francisco State University, describes the remarkable case of James Leininger, an American child who began experiencing vivid nightmares of a plane crash at the age of 2. James spoke of being an American pilot killed when his plane was shot down by the Japanese during World War II. The child provided strikingly specific details, including the name of an aircraft carrier, the first and last name of a fellow crew member, and precise information about the crash site. Upon investigation, James’s parents found a significant correlation between his statements and the life and death of a WWII pilot named James Huston. [3].

This case not only contributes to the growing body of evidence supporting reincarnation but also aids in the study of the sources of memory in dreams. It suggests that dreams may serve more than just the purpose of memory consolidation; they could involve subliminal emotional processing of unresolved past-life experiences, especially if they remain relevant or anxiety-producing in the current life. [4].

Hypnosis has been widely used with adults seeking to explore their past lives. Hypnotists often instruct subjects, explicitly or implicitly, to "go back to another place and time." As a result, the subject may produce a "new personality" that seems to belong to another historical period and appear quite plausible to both the individual and observers. but may not represent genuine past-life memories.[5].

Victoria Hoover, a researcher at Stephen F. Austin State University highlights a recurring pattern in past-life recollections: why do so many memories involve traumatic deaths, famous or exceptional individuals, or dramatic events? [6].

Research on whether any personality type is more likely to recall a previous lifetime compared to people who don’t have, so far, not been fruitful. The same question emerges in cases of heart transplants where some recipients undergo a change of personality mirroring that of the donor and others don’t. Perhaps it is because some people are just more tuned into their bodies and unconscious processes than others. Simply put, they are more sensitive than the majority.[7].

A remarkable portion of the population of the world believes in some form of life after death, including 46 percent to 60 percent of those without any religious affiliation.[8]. The public Facebook group Verifiable Children’s Reincarnation Stories is incredibly popular. It has 250.2 K members and hundreds of posts each month.[9].

The concept of reincarnation and past lives is intriguing, supported by detailed verified reports from credible scholars. However, critics argue that many so-called past life memories can often be attributed to knowledge gleaned from parents or received from the media or culture. For my part, I wonder, if we all have lived in other bodies before, why is it that only a few of us can remember our past lives?

What do you think?

References

Stevenson, I. (2001). Children Who Remember Previous Lives: A Question of Reincarnation (rev. ed.). McFarland & Company

Keil, H. J., & Tucker, J. B. (2005). Cases with written records made before the previous personality was identified. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 19(1), 91-101[Canonical URL https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/]

Sudduth, M. (2024). The Augustine-Braude Bigelow Survival Debate: A Postmortem and Prospects for Future Directions. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 38(3), 468-531

Matlock, James G. (2019). Signs of Reincarnation: Exploring Beliefs, Cases, and Theory. Rowman & Littlefield.

Hoover, V. (2024). Are you Now, or Have You Ever Been, Cleopatra? A Study of Past Life Regression, Practitioners, and the Impact of Reincarnation Beliefs. scholarworks.sfasu.edu

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